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"The trouble with law makers is the influence the music and film industry have on them. The facts are there to be seen. Someone who goes out of their way to get

"The trouble with law makers is the influence the music and film industry have on them. The facts are there to be seen. Someone who goes out of their way to get a pirate copy of something will typically spend more on entertainment than those who don't." I have yet to see any concrete evidence of this. "The music industry likes to believe that every track downloaded is 79p they could have had. That isn't the case at all. " It's funny. The excuses as to why people download pirated content changes every couple of years. Maybe it has to do with different age groups. Remember when albums where $20 and everyone complained that the reason they were downloading rather than buying was because it was too expensive and they couldn't buy an individual song? It put many stores out of business and many people lost their jobs. Nobody seem to talk about this though. It's ridiculous to me that with so many legal services and songs at .99, people still pirate music. But it does show that it was all just an excuse. People that pirate just want free stuff. "certainly isn't the devil which many law and policy makers make out it is" Piracy isn't 1-to-1 theft. However, if companies don't do anything about it, people will just expect their content to be free and in the future, they won't be able to charge anything for it. "If pirated content disappeared overnight I personally would mostly live without. If I did buy a DVD for a silly price, that would mean I wouldn't be visiting the cinema that week. I think the majority of my friends would do the same." You think the price is silly, yet you still download it. You are getting enjoyment out of listening or watching the content and you aren't compensating the artists and many people that went into creating it. How is this in any way honest?

Qz 15y ago
"I have yet to see any concrete evidence of this." Did you read the article?
niels_olson 15y ago
> How is this in any way honest? Through a paradigm shift, which is long overdue. Should the public have free access to scholarly papers and pay to see the doctor, lawyer, and geneticist? Should the public have free access to musical recordings and pay to see the artists live? Seems to me in both cases the net effect, the consequence, would be a higher quality of public discourse and appreciation. And that would be in the public's interest. By comparison, implicit in your argument is an endorsement of the current system, wherein 77 years of copyright is just fine. From a deontological perspective, perhaps. Certainly lawyers make their money perpetuating a purely deontological view of the world, claiming they're the only ones who can parse the ontology of duties. This divide between the deontological position to a consequentalist position is exactly the bridge Lessig believes the Supreme Court wanted him to cross, and he failed to realize it. Free Culture was his mea culpa. I'm not sure how old you are, but my personal observation at 35 is that the quality of public discourse has improved since the advent of the internet. It would be a tough sell to claim that more information is better, but more access to high quality information is worse. Fundamentally, it's not about honoring the terms of scams corporate lobbyists perpetrated as we awoke from a 50-year TV-induced coma. It's about the public interest. In that paradigm, a consequentalist paradigm focused on the public interest, more access to high quality information is better. Building the quantitative body of evidence to examine the consequentalist position is exactly what scholars have been laboring at for the last decade. And arguably the most advanced, sophisticated, educated society on the planet has examined the evidence and found it sufficient to directly, explicitly, reject in whole and in part, the deontological arguments of the old business model. I will stretch this a bit further: if you look at history, I think you will find progress is often a story that starts with a deontology, a consequentalist argument forms, which is then backed up with evidence, adopted, and then forms the foundation of a new, hopefully less misguided deontology. If you can identify a deontology, look for consequentalist arguments that oppose it. edit in reply to geoffschmidt: How to implement? I think we have seen that grandfathering current stakeholders has historically been an effective path to progress in the long term. As the new rules apply to more people, the old rules enjoy progressively fewer supporters, and eventually the new rules prevail. In terms of defining their copyright as "property", we're getting into the merits of the term "intellectual property", which is a red herring. There is no such thing under the law, but it is a very useful conflation of ideas for patent lawyers who need to pay off their Maseratis. The facts will set you free.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Totally agree. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the onus is on 'intellectual property' proponents to justify their position, instead of vice versa. It does not seem obvious to me that people have a natural right to make money on intangibles. Even copyright and patent law wasn't in inception about natural rights, so much as it was about 'encouraging continued creation,' but I've yet to see convincing evidence that intellectual property rights actually have this effect, or that lack of intellectual property rights discourage it.
  - tszyn 15y ago
    I'd like to live in a world in which people are rewarded for their contributions to society, how about you?
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      Sure. How do you measure it? The way capitalism measures it is by how much people are willing to pay for it. Seems to work pretty well, or at least (to borrow Churchill for my purpose) less badly than any other system. The upshot of this system, though, is that people have to figure out a way to get people to pay them for their contributions. It doesn't change for artists. Charging people for ~0 marginal cost copies is rapidly becoming not a way to get people to pay you. I think artists are going to do fine.
      - tszyn 15y ago
        If you agree that people should be rewarded for their contributions, then you should support a system which does that. The system of paying for zero-marginal-cost copies at least attempts to reward people proportionally to the perceived value of their work. Surely that's better than no system at all. Creating a system that rewards desirable behavior is the job of regulators. I don't see why we should succumb to defeatist claims like "It's all over. Just accept that your work is now worthless". No, we should do something about it, just like we are tackling pollution, crime, etc. One crucial step would be to make it easy for a creator to sell their work over the Web with a one-click interface, like buying an iPhone app. (BTW, I agree with the "less badly" assessment. Capitalism has been known to reward total crap.)
jrockway 15y ago
It's ridiculous to me that with so many legal services and songs at .99, people still pirate music. But it does show that it was all just an excuse. People that pirate just want free stuff. Not true at all. Say I have a US credit card but want to buy Japanese music. Too bad, it's not for sale to me unless I trek to Japan and buy a CD with cash. So I pirate it instead. Also, most $0.99 music stores sell compressed music, which is not acceptable to me. The pirates provide this to me for free, which makes the $0.99 song an inferior product. I do buy music that's distributed in FLAC format, however, like all of Jonathan Coulton's music. (There are also stores that cater to audiophiles and sell music at better than 44.1kHz/16-bit resolution. I buy music from them happily. The problem is they don't sell much music I like.)
- antr 15y ago
  100% agree. totally have the same issue with movies. if we are not catered for, why should we pay for a product that does not fit our needs. we are not the customers.
- res0nat0r 15y ago
  This seems to be the fundamental shift in thinking since mp3's have become so ubiquitous in the last 15 years. The thinking that, if this isn't offered the way I want (mainly priced at whatever I choose, or as close $0.00 as possible, or if it isn't available), then I am rightly justified to steal it. Doesn't anyone else think this is a problem? I'm not saying I don't do the same, but I don't justify it in any other way than saying that I want stuff for free.
  - jarek 15y ago
    I personally don't think it's a problem, because I don't agree with your classification of the action as "stealing." It's problematic enough with content I do actually want (copying is not directly analogous to stealing just like potential income is not the same as income), but when the business doesn't offer a product you want (so there isn't even lost potential income), obtaining such a product in a way that doesn't cost the business anything (such as copying a file) from a third party is not stealing.
kiba 15y ago
I don't really care if they can no longer run their business. We have more than enough musics and movies on this planet to enjoy for a thousand lifetime. The music and entertainment industry need consumers more than we need them.
- learc83 15y ago
  We may not need the publishers or the industry infrastructure, but I would argue we definitely need the artists. However my belief is that eventually music and eventually film will morph into primarily a hobby or very small business over time.
  - nooneelse 15y ago
    The creation of art is a basic human impulse. Art of many types would continue to exist and flourish without the "publishers or the industry infrastructure" as we know them today. Far from needing government to underwrite economic inducements to ensure that, it would have to legislatively ban art and have stern policing of such bans to have any hope of eradicating art and artists.
antr 15y ago
I am in Switzerland, and I download stuff, but I am not a pirate, I am a ghost. I am not doing anything ilegal. Here is my philosophy towards (primarily movie) piracy, and what piracy really is. As far I am concerned, to the eyes of the US Movie industry I am an inexistent customer: - When US movie/tv industry first releases content they only focus on the US. Consequently they discriminate (they have the right to do so) against potential non-US consumers. It takes weeks/months to get that content in Switzerland. - The imported US content, when in Switzerland is translated (French/German). I am not interested in translated content as much of the context/msg is lost in translation. I do the same with books, magazines, etc. - Given that it is practically impossible to pay for the content released in the US from Europe, and the quality (translation) of it has decreased, I am no longer a potential customer; better said, I have become a ghost. I am not being targeted/catered by this industry. The problem is not with consumers downloading content. The problem is that studios/producers, etc. have not got a business that serves these people. I do not download music, I don't need to. I have Spotify, Grooveshark and iTunes that cater my needs. I am willing to consume that content. On the other hand no company is serving my movie/TV needs, hence I am not a customer nor a pirate. I am a ghost.
paulhauggis 15y ago
I love. LOVE how the HN community downvotes me for merely having a differing opinion. I chock it up to insecure computer geeks. I would not want to live in a world where I am silenced for my opinion.
neworbit 15y ago
There's a reasonable and pragmatic expectation that a consumer is paying for an unlimited license to listen to whatever music they want (Spotify, Rhapsody, whatever). They are dealing with legacy devices by downloading tracks that work on those devices. In practice, this doesn't match the contracts that the unlimited streaming services have with the labels, but the nuance may be lost on customers who see this as simply "the music guys are trying to double-dip by making me pay twice when I'm already paying for an unlimited usage model". Customer perception of dishonesty and corruption on the part of the music industry is... not new, and may well serve as justification there. Customer expectation that music is free (because radio is) and that recording songs off the radio (for old farts like me who used to do that as kids) is legit also plays a part of it. Ultimately I suspect this amounts to "a ubiquitous celestial jukebox wins the consumer wallet", but we're not quite there yet.

Qz 15y ago

"I have yet to see any concrete evidence of this." Did you read the article?

niels_olson 15y ago

> How is this in any way honest? Through a paradigm shift, which is long overdue. Should the public have free access to scholarly papers and pay to see the doctor, lawyer, and geneticist? Should the public have free access to musical recordings and pay to see the artists live? Seems to me in both cases the net effect, the consequence, would be a higher quality of public discourse and appreciation. And that would be in the public's interest. By comparison, implicit in your argument is an endorsement of the current system, wherein 77 years of copyright is just fine. From a deontological perspective, perhaps. Certainly lawyers make their money perpetuating a purely deontological view of the world, claiming they're the only ones who can parse the ontology of duties. This divide between the deontological position to a consequentalist position is exactly the bridge Lessig believes the Supreme Court wanted him to cross, and he failed to realize it. Free Culture was his mea culpa. I'm not sure how old you are, but my personal observation at 35 is that the quality of public discourse has improved since the advent of the internet. It would be a tough sell to claim that more information is better, but more access to high quality information is worse. Fundamentally, it's not about honoring the terms of scams corporate lobbyists perpetrated as we awoke from a 50-year TV-induced coma. It's about the public interest. In that paradigm, a consequentalist paradigm focused on the public interest, more access to high quality information is better. Building the quantitative body of evidence to examine the consequentalist position is exactly what scholars have been laboring at for the last decade. And arguably the most advanced, sophisticated, educated society on the planet has examined the evidence and found it sufficient to directly, explicitly, reject in whole and in part, the deontological arguments of the old business model. I will stretch this a bit further: if you look at history, I think you will find progress is often a story that starts with a deontology, a consequentalist argument forms, which is then backed up with evidence, adopted, and then forms the foundation of a new, hopefully less misguided deontology. If you can identify a deontology, look for consequentalist arguments that oppose it. edit in reply to geoffschmidt: How to implement? I think we have seen that grandfathering current stakeholders has historically been an effective path to progress in the long term. As the new rules apply to more people, the old rules enjoy progressively fewer supporters, and eventually the new rules prevail. In terms of defining their copyright as "property", we're getting into the merits of the term "intellectual property", which is a red herring. There is no such thing under the law, but it is a very useful conflation of ideas for patent lawyers who need to pay off their Maseratis. The facts will set you free.

joebadmo 15y ago
Totally agree. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the onus is on 'intellectual property' proponents to justify their position, instead of vice versa. It does not seem obvious to me that people have a natural right to make money on intangibles. Even copyright and patent law wasn't in inception about natural rights, so much as it was about 'encouraging continued creation,' but I've yet to see convincing evidence that intellectual property rights actually have this effect, or that lack of intellectual property rights discourage it.
- tszyn 15y ago
  I'd like to live in a world in which people are rewarded for their contributions to society, how about you?
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    Sure. How do you measure it? The way capitalism measures it is by how much people are willing to pay for it. Seems to work pretty well, or at least (to borrow Churchill for my purpose) less badly than any other system. The upshot of this system, though, is that people have to figure out a way to get people to pay them for their contributions. It doesn't change for artists. Charging people for ~0 marginal cost copies is rapidly becoming not a way to get people to pay you. I think artists are going to do fine.
    - tszyn 15y ago
      If you agree that people should be rewarded for their contributions, then you should support a system which does that. The system of paying for zero-marginal-cost copies at least attempts to reward people proportionally to the perceived value of their work. Surely that's better than no system at all. Creating a system that rewards desirable behavior is the job of regulators. I don't see why we should succumb to defeatist claims like "It's all over. Just accept that your work is now worthless". No, we should do something about it, just like we are tackling pollution, crime, etc. One crucial step would be to make it easy for a creator to sell their work over the Web with a one-click interface, like buying an iPhone app. (BTW, I agree with the "less badly" assessment. Capitalism has been known to reward total crap.)

jrockway 15y ago

It's ridiculous to me that with so many legal services and songs at .99, people still pirate music. But it does show that it was all just an excuse. People that pirate just want free stuff. Not true at all. Say I have a US credit card but want to buy Japanese music. Too bad, it's not for sale to me unless I trek to Japan and buy a CD with cash. So I pirate it instead. Also, most $0.99 music stores sell compressed music, which is not acceptable to me. The pirates provide this to me for free, which makes the $0.99 song an inferior product. I do buy music that's distributed in FLAC format, however, like all of Jonathan Coulton's music. (There are also stores that cater to audiophiles and sell music at better than 44.1kHz/16-bit resolution. I buy music from them happily. The problem is they don't sell much music I like.)

antr 15y ago
100% agree. totally have the same issue with movies. if we are not catered for, why should we pay for a product that does not fit our needs. we are not the customers.
res0nat0r 15y ago
This seems to be the fundamental shift in thinking since mp3's have become so ubiquitous in the last 15 years. The thinking that, if this isn't offered the way I want (mainly priced at whatever I choose, or as close $0.00 as possible, or if it isn't available), then I am rightly justified to steal it. Doesn't anyone else think this is a problem? I'm not saying I don't do the same, but I don't justify it in any other way than saying that I want stuff for free.
- jarek 15y ago
  I personally don't think it's a problem, because I don't agree with your classification of the action as "stealing." It's problematic enough with content I do actually want (copying is not directly analogous to stealing just like potential income is not the same as income), but when the business doesn't offer a product you want (so there isn't even lost potential income), obtaining such a product in a way that doesn't cost the business anything (such as copying a file) from a third party is not stealing.

kiba 15y ago

I don't really care if they can no longer run their business. We have more than enough musics and movies on this planet to enjoy for a thousand lifetime. The music and entertainment industry need consumers more than we need them.

learc83 15y ago
We may not need the publishers or the industry infrastructure, but I would argue we definitely need the artists. However my belief is that eventually music and eventually film will morph into primarily a hobby or very small business over time.
- nooneelse 15y ago
  The creation of art is a basic human impulse. Art of many types would continue to exist and flourish without the "publishers or the industry infrastructure" as we know them today. Far from needing government to underwrite economic inducements to ensure that, it would have to legislatively ban art and have stern policing of such bans to have any hope of eradicating art and artists.

antr 15y ago

I am in Switzerland, and I download stuff, but I am not a pirate, I am a ghost. I am not doing anything ilegal. Here is my philosophy towards (primarily movie) piracy, and what piracy really is. As far I am concerned, to the eyes of the US Movie industry I am an inexistent customer: - When US movie/tv industry first releases content they only focus on the US. Consequently they discriminate (they have the right to do so) against potential non-US consumers. It takes weeks/months to get that content in Switzerland. - The imported US content, when in Switzerland is translated (French/German). I am not interested in translated content as much of the context/msg is lost in translation. I do the same with books, magazines, etc. - Given that it is practically impossible to pay for the content released in the US from Europe, and the quality (translation) of it has decreased, I am no longer a potential customer; better said, I have become a ghost. I am not being targeted/catered by this industry. The problem is not with consumers downloading content. The problem is that studios/producers, etc. have not got a business that serves these people. I do not download music, I don't need to. I have Spotify, Grooveshark and iTunes that cater my needs. I am willing to consume that content. On the other hand no company is serving my movie/TV needs, hence I am not a customer nor a pirate. I am a ghost.

paulhauggis 15y ago

I love. LOVE how the HN community downvotes me for merely having a differing opinion. I chock it up to insecure computer geeks. I would not want to live in a world where I am silenced for my opinion.

neworbit 15y ago

There's a reasonable and pragmatic expectation that a consumer is paying for an unlimited license to listen to whatever music they want (Spotify, Rhapsody, whatever). They are dealing with legacy devices by downloading tracks that work on those devices. In practice, this doesn't match the contracts that the unlimited streaming services have with the labels, but the nuance may be lost on customers who see this as simply "the music guys are trying to double-dip by making me pay twice when I'm already paying for an unlimited usage model". Customer perception of dishonesty and corruption on the part of the music industry is... not new, and may well serve as justification there. Customer expectation that music is free (because radio is) and that recording songs off the radio (for old farts like me who used to do that as kids) is legit also plays a part of it. Ultimately I suspect this amounts to "a ubiquitous celestial jukebox wins the consumer wallet", but we're not quite there yet.