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I think society as a whole should have a long and in depth discussion on piracy in the first place. Piracy in the digital age is a weasel word used by vested in

by prox 4y ago

I think society as a whole should have a long and in depth discussion on piracy in the first place. Piracy in the digital age is a weasel word used by vested interests. For instance datahoarding could be seen as a service to society. There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. Now there could be a loss of income if it grows out of control and artists are not being compensated. So obviously the discussion should focus on that. Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games. Apparently the same hasn’t played out for movies and songs on the whole.

the_af 4y ago
> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file Note we did have this conversation, years if not decades before. Everyone "in the know" already understands this. I bet most HN readers understand this. It's just that general consumers don't, and there was a successful propaganda campaign by media owners and distributors to label this as "piracy", and the name stuck. It seems educating users is an uphill battle when fighting against a propaganda campaign by companies with deep pockets.
throw10920 4y ago
> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. I can't tell if you're taking the word literally or not. For the sake of argument: Obviously there is no boat-stealing or plundering involved - no Johnny Depp or kraken here. But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft. You are not entitled to someone else's creative work under any conditions other than those that they set, period. Unless an artist explicitly says "here's this public domain artwork, share it however you want" (which some people do!), pirating is stealing - you are taking the work of someone's hands without paying them for it, and it literally doesn't matter if you wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, because the work does not belong to you - it belongs to the creator and they get to set the terms of use. If you want a game or a TV show or a movie so badly - make it yourself. Put your own effort and time and resources and creative energy into it - then you can set whatever terms you want on its distribution. Believing that you have the right to take whatever creative work that someone else put their effort into that you can get away with not paying for is one of the most extreme cases of entitlement I've ever witnessed, and it demonstrates an extreme selfishness and lack of respect for other human beings as equals. I would be very interested to hear what moral axioms could justify the position of "I can take whatever I want from other people as long as it doesn't deprive them of a physical good".
- survirtual 4y ago
  Nonsense. When these so called “creatives” (read: administrators) are making billions upon billions nickel and diming every little resemblance to “their work” (read: administrators and investors paying actual creators that lack negotiation skills jack diddly) at the cost of all of society (how far does copyright go these days?), they can stick it. By pirating, a user is not TAKING something from someone. That is like trying to own an idea and suing people for having the same idea. Digital data is easily duplicated and hurts no one to duplicate. If you wanted to be a twat and micromanage your works, you shouldn’t have digitized it. Go be a traditional oil artist or an opera singer or a circus performer, where in person experiences matter. If you want all the benefits of the digital world, then suck it up and be ready for digital works to be duplicated.
  - spfzero 4y ago
    That's like saying if we want the benefits of markets, be ready for theft. Society was ready for theft, and so created laws to make it illegal. That way we can have the benefit of a market with a low probability of being robbed on the way home. Seems to work out.
- slavak 4y ago
  Illegally downloading creative works is most assuredly _not_ theft, according to either the dictionary or the legal definitions, as no possessions are being taken and no one is being deprived of their property. Downloading creative works may or may not constitute copyright infringement; Relabeling it as "theft" is nothing more than a dishonest attempt at re-framing the conversation in a way that maximally benefits corporate interests.
  - gknoy 4y ago
    It's similar to theft only in the sense that you get stuff for free without permission. Before electronic copies, the only way to do that would be to physically steal such a thing. However, if it were possible to make copies of things via magic, without depriving people of such things, I don't think people would consider it theft. In literature, people tended to look on the idea of such things as wonderful miracles, to be celebrated -- feeding a herd of people from only a few fish, or a fairy godmother spinning fancy clothes via magic. No one ever reading Cinderella has ever considered it immoral for the fairy godmother to generate such a thing, and I suspect that most of society would similarly view it as natural and moral to let friends have copies of things that we have. Imagine being able to say, "Oh, yeah, this desk has perfect ergonomics for me! here's the pattern/recipe and you can print one once you get home", or "oh yeah, I like this TV design way better than my old one, here's how you can make one too" -- in short, we _absolutely_ would download a car, or give someone else a copy of our car. Now if only we could figure out how to pass value to creators and inventors in a way that isn't threatened by that, or by the advent of inventing-things-via-AI.
michaelcampbell 4y ago
> Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games. Honest question, if Steam suddenly ceases to be, are these downloaded games playable?
- freeCandy 4y ago
  If the game itself doesn't implement some sort of mandatory Steam login or DRM, then it's as easy as finding and running the executable from the downloaded game files. https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/135511757698553087 https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1355117576985...

by prox 4y ago

the_af 4y ago

> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file Note we did have this conversation, years if not decades before. Everyone "in the know" already understands this. I bet most HN readers understand this. It's just that general consumers don't, and there was a successful propaganda campaign by media owners and distributors to label this as "piracy", and the name stuck. It seems educating users is an uphill battle when fighting against a propaganda campaign by companies with deep pockets.

throw10920 4y ago

> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. I can't tell if you're taking the word literally or not. For the sake of argument: Obviously there is no boat-stealing or plundering involved - no Johnny Depp or kraken here. But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft. You are not entitled to someone else's creative work under any conditions other than those that they set, period. Unless an artist explicitly says "here's this public domain artwork, share it however you want" (which some people do!), pirating is stealing - you are taking the work of someone's hands without paying them for it, and it literally doesn't matter if you wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, because the work does not belong to you - it belongs to the creator and they get to set the terms of use. If you want a game or a TV show or a movie so badly - make it yourself. Put your own effort and time and resources and creative energy into it - then you can set whatever terms you want on its distribution. Believing that you have the right to take whatever creative work that someone else put their effort into that you can get away with not paying for is one of the most extreme cases of entitlement I've ever witnessed, and it demonstrates an extreme selfishness and lack of respect for other human beings as equals. I would be very interested to hear what moral axioms could justify the position of "I can take whatever I want from other people as long as it doesn't deprive them of a physical good".

survirtual 4y ago
Nonsense. When these so called “creatives” (read: administrators) are making billions upon billions nickel and diming every little resemblance to “their work” (read: administrators and investors paying actual creators that lack negotiation skills jack diddly) at the cost of all of society (how far does copyright go these days?), they can stick it. By pirating, a user is not TAKING something from someone. That is like trying to own an idea and suing people for having the same idea. Digital data is easily duplicated and hurts no one to duplicate. If you wanted to be a twat and micromanage your works, you shouldn’t have digitized it. Go be a traditional oil artist or an opera singer or a circus performer, where in person experiences matter. If you want all the benefits of the digital world, then suck it up and be ready for digital works to be duplicated.
- spfzero 4y ago
  That's like saying if we want the benefits of markets, be ready for theft. Society was ready for theft, and so created laws to make it illegal. That way we can have the benefit of a market with a low probability of being robbed on the way home. Seems to work out.
slavak 4y ago
Illegally downloading creative works is most assuredly _not_ theft, according to either the dictionary or the legal definitions, as no possessions are being taken and no one is being deprived of their property. Downloading creative works may or may not constitute copyright infringement; Relabeling it as "theft" is nothing more than a dishonest attempt at re-framing the conversation in a way that maximally benefits corporate interests.
- gknoy 4y ago
  It's similar to theft only in the sense that you get stuff for free without permission. Before electronic copies, the only way to do that would be to physically steal such a thing. However, if it were possible to make copies of things via magic, without depriving people of such things, I don't think people would consider it theft. In literature, people tended to look on the idea of such things as wonderful miracles, to be celebrated -- feeding a herd of people from only a few fish, or a fairy godmother spinning fancy clothes via magic. No one ever reading Cinderella has ever considered it immoral for the fairy godmother to generate such a thing, and I suspect that most of society would similarly view it as natural and moral to let friends have copies of things that we have. Imagine being able to say, "Oh, yeah, this desk has perfect ergonomics for me! here's the pattern/recipe and you can print one once you get home", or "oh yeah, I like this TV design way better than my old one, here's how you can make one too" -- in short, we _absolutely_ would download a car, or give someone else a copy of our car. Now if only we could figure out how to pass value to creators and inventors in a way that isn't threatened by that, or by the advent of inventing-things-via-AI.

michaelcampbell 4y ago

> Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games. Honest question, if Steam suddenly ceases to be, are these downloaded games playable?

freeCandy 4y ago
If the game itself doesn't implement some sort of mandatory Steam login or DRM, then it's as easy as finding and running the executable from the downloaded game files. https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/135511757698553087 https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1355117576985...