3 ms·

> I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we have to pay to have knowledge. It's

> I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we have to pay to have knowledge. It's more like if we don't have money, we can't have knowledge. For all human history, access to knowledge requires wealth. Simple example — If I want to know how to fix a particular old refrigerator I bought second hand, I need to buy the manual. That said, I enjoy the story of Jesus feeding hundreds of people with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread. I point out the story is also a parable. Jesus is somehow duplicating the fish and bread to feed the crowd. Isn’t this similar to knowledge? Should we not spread knowledge in a similar way if it’s of no cost to us? If you say “no, the author needs to be paid!” Then I ask, “is not the fisherman and baker missing out on profit from the sale of fish and bread?” It always brings an interesting discussion around this topic. Fundamentally, I agree knowledge should be free. I post my blogs for free for this very reason. If I need to make money, I do work, sell products; etc.

FormerBandmate 4y ago
Theoretically if Jesus duplicated fish and bread on an industrial scale, yeah, it would. Also, labor still needs to be put in to make the products, all piracy does is make it incredibly easy to make additional copies. There’s a reason musicians have to constantly tour and the middle class of music has entirely degraded since the 90s
- achenet 4y ago
  if the people Jesus fed with the duplicated fish and bread were too poor to afford buying any food, is that still lost sales? If some student in Rwanda downloads a copy of some obscure Springer-Verlag text (I'm picking on SV because their practices with research publications are just so cynically rent-seeking it's easy to criticize them) that costs five times his annual income and probably isn't even available for sale in the country, is that really a lost sale? You brought up music - I'm an amateur/trying to get to semi-pro musician myself, and my current "business model" is basically the Patreon approach - make something people love, let them give you money for it. I'm also an ardent fan of several bands (Surfer Blood being one very notable example) whose work I originally discovered via piracy. Since that first listen at age 16, I've bought digital copies of their work on Bandcamp and have bought tickets to see them live. If I like the work I will do my best to support the creator. I don't see why some massive record company needs to take a 50% cut so they can pay their "Managing Director of Artistic Innovation" his seven figure salary. The argument "a pirated copy is a lost sale" is false in the general case, as my aforementioned examples demonstrate.

FormerBandmate 4y ago

Theoretically if Jesus duplicated fish and bread on an industrial scale, yeah, it would. Also, labor still needs to be put in to make the products, all piracy does is make it incredibly easy to make additional copies. There’s a reason musicians have to constantly tour and the middle class of music has entirely degraded since the 90s

achenet 4y ago
if the people Jesus fed with the duplicated fish and bread were too poor to afford buying any food, is that still lost sales? If some student in Rwanda downloads a copy of some obscure Springer-Verlag text (I'm picking on SV because their practices with research publications are just so cynically rent-seeking it's easy to criticize them) that costs five times his annual income and probably isn't even available for sale in the country, is that really a lost sale? You brought up music - I'm an amateur/trying to get to semi-pro musician myself, and my current "business model" is basically the Patreon approach - make something people love, let them give you money for it. I'm also an ardent fan of several bands (Surfer Blood being one very notable example) whose work I originally discovered via piracy. Since that first listen at age 16, I've bought digital copies of their work on Bandcamp and have bought tickets to see them live. If I like the work I will do my best to support the creator. I don't see why some massive record company needs to take a 50% cut so they can pay their "Managing Director of Artistic Innovation" his seven figure salary. The argument "a pirated copy is a lost sale" is false in the general case, as my aforementioned examples demonstrate.