6 ms·

> I don't believe SaaS is moral > I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative… and now when I can afford to pay for

> I don't believe SaaS is moral > I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now or us a FOSS alternative… and now when I can afford to pay for subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS is so fucking untenable that I just can't. Imagine stealing peoples work you admit you can afford, and claiming their business model is immoral!

HideousKojima 4y ago
How is it stealing? They don't suddenly not licenses of their software to sell anymore because someone made an unlicensed copy.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
It is immoral. The copyright monopoly plus copy sales model was bad enough. Now we live in digital fiefdoms and get sold like cattle to advertisers and other developers. The only moral model is free software.
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  Correct. Artificial scarcity is immoral, we need to move to a system where it's not necessary to restrict people from having access to something that has a real cost approaching zero in order to collect rents. SaaS is a perversion created by a system that cannot separate value from scarcity even though the reality is that software is infinitely replicable.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Yes. It's the 21st century, artificial scarcity no longer makes any sense. Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs. People need new business models. Selling bits doesn't work. Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it.
    - phendrenad2 4y ago
      > Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs So you'll be okay with me photocopying a printed book you published and giving it away for free, because "trivially" is a relative term, and I can certainly "trivially" reproduce your book a million times (compared to 12th century monks copying holy works by hand)? > Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it And I suppose copyrighted printed books (and poems, and song lyrics) destroyed "free press" as we know it?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - matheusmoreira 4y ago
        > So you'll be okay with me Yes. > And I suppose copyrighted printed books (and poems, and song lyrics) destroyed "free press" as we know it? That's not what I was talking about. The destruction of free computing will come about due to copyright enforcement and the technology necessary for its implementation. Copying is a fundamental computer operation. If I'm in control of the computer, I can make it copy anything including copyrighted works and there's nothing they can do about it. So how do you prevent people from copying whatever they want? You take control of the computer. This is our reality today. This is their solution to the "allow them to run all programs except those we don't like" problem. Our computers are already pwned right out of the factory. They have inaccessible memory, secure enclaves, ring -3 operating systems overseeing everything, cryptographic checks to ensure the corporation's system hasn't been "tampered with", the works. Apple computers have cryptography that prevents you from running software not blessed by trillion dollar corporations. With this technology in place, our computing freedom is gone. We can no longer do what we want, only what they allow. It's gonna get way worse. One day we're going to need government signatures to run software because democratized cryptography undermines their authority and is too subversive to be allowed for the common citizen. I think computers are among the most important inventions of mankind and far too valuable to sacrifice for the sake of irrelevant business models from centuries ago. One would think other Hacker News users would understand and agree since the copyright industry works every day to undermine and destroy everything that's dear to us.
horsawlarway 4y ago
These are mostly non-sequiturs, with some plausible cases. For example - I don't think subscription licensing for media is moral, and I think legally it's a rife place for some serious case law. Simple example - Recording shows for personal consumption (time shifting) is absolutely allowed under current copyright law. If I subscribe to netflix for a month and record every show I want to watch to my personal NAS... I'm not breaking the law at all. I'll then happily stop paying the subscription after a month. Moral? Probably not. Legal? Sure. But... what if I really do want a moral way to consume netflix content at a later date for a non-recurring, non-changed-at-their-whim cost? Well - sucks to be me because there's literally no way to buy it. I think that's also fairly immoral. I'm literally being held captive to a subscription for eternity, with no way to negotiate the deal, and the real loss of any catalogue item at any time with no recourse. Moral? Fuck no. Legal? Sure. So... Where is the middle ground? Because I'd really, desperately like to see a better middle ground. Where I don't have to feel like a thief, and also don't feel like I'm getting extorted to watch some shows. This mostly also holds for many saas companies. It's especially obvious in cases where the product used to be a stand-alone binary that I could install, but is now a packaged saas product, that's arguably worse (adobe photoshop comes to mind - but lots of companies are moving this direction). I used to be willing to enter a deal where I got a static item in exchange for a fixed cost - but the new deal is... I get ephemeral products that change price/features/capabilities at any moment and with zero recourse. And companies aren't doing this because it benefits the users - they're doing it because it's LITERAL rent seeking behavior. They know that profits are higher with this strategy. So again - is stealing it moral? I would say no. But I don't think that in any way invalidates that the subscription model is hands down abusive to customers. Personally I've moved to self-hosted and open source everywhere I can.
- bestnameever 4y ago
  > But... what if I really do want a moral way to consume netflix content at a later date for a non-recurring, non-changed-at-their-whim cost? Well - sucks to be me because there's literally no way to buy it. I think that's also fairly immoral. I'm literally being held captive to a subscription for eternity, with no way to negotiate the deal, and the real loss of any catalogue item at any time with no recourse. Moral? Fuck no. Legal? Sure. > So... Where is the middle ground? Because I'd really, desperately like to see a better middle ground. Where I don't have to feel like a thief, and also don't feel like I'm getting extorted to watch some shows. Most content can be purchased outside of Netflix at some point, on DVD or another medium.

HideousKojima 4y ago

How is it stealing? They don't suddenly not licenses of their software to sell anymore because someone made an unlicensed copy.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

It is immoral. The copyright monopoly plus copy sales model was bad enough. Now we live in digital fiefdoms and get sold like cattle to advertisers and other developers. The only moral model is free software.

thot_experiment 4y ago
Correct. Artificial scarcity is immoral, we need to move to a system where it's not necessary to restrict people from having access to something that has a real cost approaching zero in order to collect rents. SaaS is a perversion created by a system that cannot separate value from scarcity even though the reality is that software is infinitely replicable.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Yes. It's the 21st century, artificial scarcity no longer makes any sense. Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs. People need new business models. Selling bits doesn't work. Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    > Globally networked computers exist and they trivially render any information abundant at negligible costs So you'll be okay with me photocopying a printed book you published and giving it away for free, because "trivially" is a relative term, and I can certainly "trivially" reproduce your book a million times (compared to 12th century monks copying holy works by hand)? > Attempting to make it work requires the destruction of free computing as we know it And I suppose copyrighted printed books (and poems, and song lyrics) destroyed "free press" as we know it?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      > So you'll be okay with me Yes. > And I suppose copyrighted printed books (and poems, and song lyrics) destroyed "free press" as we know it? That's not what I was talking about. The destruction of free computing will come about due to copyright enforcement and the technology necessary for its implementation. Copying is a fundamental computer operation. If I'm in control of the computer, I can make it copy anything including copyrighted works and there's nothing they can do about it. So how do you prevent people from copying whatever they want? You take control of the computer. This is our reality today. This is their solution to the "allow them to run all programs except those we don't like" problem. Our computers are already pwned right out of the factory. They have inaccessible memory, secure enclaves, ring -3 operating systems overseeing everything, cryptographic checks to ensure the corporation's system hasn't been "tampered with", the works. Apple computers have cryptography that prevents you from running software not blessed by trillion dollar corporations. With this technology in place, our computing freedom is gone. We can no longer do what we want, only what they allow. It's gonna get way worse. One day we're going to need government signatures to run software because democratized cryptography undermines their authority and is too subversive to be allowed for the common citizen. I think computers are among the most important inventions of mankind and far too valuable to sacrifice for the sake of irrelevant business models from centuries ago. One would think other Hacker News users would understand and agree since the copyright industry works every day to undermine and destroy everything that's dear to us.

horsawlarway 4y ago

These are mostly non-sequiturs, with some plausible cases. For example - I don't think subscription licensing for media is moral, and I think legally it's a rife place for some serious case law. Simple example - Recording shows for personal consumption (time shifting) is absolutely allowed under current copyright law. If I subscribe to netflix for a month and record every show I want to watch to my personal NAS... I'm not breaking the law at all. I'll then happily stop paying the subscription after a month. Moral? Probably not. Legal? Sure. But... what if I really do want a moral way to consume netflix content at a later date for a non-recurring, non-changed-at-their-whim cost? Well - sucks to be me because there's literally no way to buy it. I think that's also fairly immoral. I'm literally being held captive to a subscription for eternity, with no way to negotiate the deal, and the real loss of any catalogue item at any time with no recourse. Moral? Fuck no. Legal? Sure. So... Where is the middle ground? Because I'd really, desperately like to see a better middle ground. Where I don't have to feel like a thief, and also don't feel like I'm getting extorted to watch some shows. This mostly also holds for many saas companies. It's especially obvious in cases where the product used to be a stand-alone binary that I could install, but is now a packaged saas product, that's arguably worse (adobe photoshop comes to mind - but lots of companies are moving this direction). I used to be willing to enter a deal where I got a static item in exchange for a fixed cost - but the new deal is... I get ephemeral products that change price/features/capabilities at any moment and with zero recourse. And companies aren't doing this because it benefits the users - they're doing it because it's LITERAL rent seeking behavior. They know that profits are higher with this strategy. So again - is stealing it moral? I would say no. But I don't think that in any way invalidates that the subscription model is hands down abusive to customers. Personally I've moved to self-hosted and open source everywhere I can.

bestnameever 4y ago
> But... what if I really do want a moral way to consume netflix content at a later date for a non-recurring, non-changed-at-their-whim cost? Well - sucks to be me because there's literally no way to buy it. I think that's also fairly immoral. I'm literally being held captive to a subscription for eternity, with no way to negotiate the deal, and the real loss of any catalogue item at any time with no recourse. Moral? Fuck no. Legal? Sure. > So... Where is the middle ground? Because I'd really, desperately like to see a better middle ground. Where I don't have to feel like a thief, and also don't feel like I'm getting extorted to watch some shows. Most content can be purchased outside of Netflix at some point, on DVD or another medium.