4 ms·

I hope every project you work on has it's source code stolen resulting in failure. And this is coming from a pretty crappy person, but this website sure does lo

I hope every project you work on has it's source code stolen resulting in failure. And this is coming from a pretty crappy person, but this website sure does love stealing from authors (so that it can enjoy the fruits of their labor).

xtian 4y ago
No one is entitled to a particular form of revenue. We live in an attention-based economy. Talented and savvy authors can find any number of ways to derive revenue from the attention their work attracts apart from charging IP tolls. If not, they can always get a job where they have no ownership stake in the fruits of their labor, like almost every other job and 99.9% of people writing code for money.
- misnome 4y ago
  This exact argument can be used to justify both POV. No one is entitled to have any particular piece of media available to them for free, either? Talented and savvy consumers can find any number of ways to make money to pay for media, like 99.9% of other consumers.
  - xtian 4y ago
    Except that making a living as an author or via another creative pursuit is a luxury and privilege premised upon the hard labor performed by countless others which actually reproduces our society. It’s also not really a matter of entitlement. It’s just an objective fact that trying to gatekeep knowledge behind IP toll bridges is a losing battle which only serves to hinder the development of many realms of human endeavor.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      You want to kill the goose so you can consume the eggs. You want to steal their products but condemn the creators. You must not know creative types and how much most of them sacrifice to try and create from the passion inside them.
      - xtian 4y ago
        Actually I do. Their passion doesn’t entitle them to anything, and their sacrifices pale in comparison to those made by people who do hard labor for a living. IP laws don’t protect small creators anyway, most of whom will fail regardless. They protect the big conglomerates from multitudes of potential creators who might otherwise find education and success outside of the established institutions.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Whilst I've some sympathies with this argument, it dismisses the larger question of how to provide societal benefits of information and entertainment creation. It's quite possible that the size of such sectors today is excessive, though there's a strong argument that information is under-incentivised whilst entertainment is excessively incentivised, to say nothing of various forms of manipulation and propaganda, or the negative impacts of surveillance and fraud that are intrinsic to the adtech field. So the question of incentives, compensation, financing, and revenue collection do deserve addressing. I do agree that the present model is addressing those specific elements quite poorly.
skyechurch 4y ago
Strong agree, I still haven't forgiven myself for that time ABBA starved to death after I taped "Dancing Queen" off the radio. I use OverDrive/LibGen etc because it's generally more convenient than the public library. If I like a book enough to actually finish it, I buy a paper copy because ebooks are inherently inferior and probably always will be. If I was still a student I would use OverDrive/LibGen etc specifically to steal from textbook publishers who charge $100 for an 18th edition riddled with factual and grammatical errors in hope that they would go bankrupt, but it wouldn't work. We have a long way yet to go.
anothernewdude 4y ago
Copyright enjoys stealing culture from everyone
Tams80 4y ago
I won't say if I have or haven't downloaded ebooks without paying. But I will say that I have bought both ebooks and physical books from authors that I like and appreciate the work and effort they have put into their craft. I've spent rather a lot on it, actually.
dredmorbius 4y ago
A wealth-indexed fee averaging about $5/mo per household in the US and collected through broadband providers could provide access to every work ever published, pay authors, and eliminate both the need and practice of piracy. The publishing industry prefers, however, to hoard its Smaug-gold, make criminals of the curious, deny access both to the vast majority of the population and to the vast majority of works, all to line its own pockets at an immense cost to the rest of us, authors, artists, musicians, and other creators included. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698018> Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz: "Knowledge is a public good" <https://archive.org/details/globalpublicgood0000unse/page/308/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/globalpublicgood0000unse/page/30...> Copyright is brain damage: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc>
- troad 4y ago
  I am opposed to copyright in its current form, but this is a very naïve suggestion. How exactly do you distribute the fee among authors? Who collects it? How does dispute resolution work, if I don't feel like I'm being compensated fairly? Can I opt out if I don't read books? What if everyone opts out and just continues pirating? Let's say I just published one hundred books of semi-AI generated bad fiction. When can I expect my cheques?
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    Have a look at Europe, where we have such money-redistribution organisations.
    - troad 4y ago
      Yes, legislatively-sanctioned rent seeking is common in Europe. In what way has the existence of such a scheme ameliorated the excesses of copyright law in Europe? Copyright terms are the same in Europe as in the United States (life + 70), but Europe tends to have weaker fair use provisions than the US (e.g. 'fair dealing' in the UK and Ireland). In what way have these schemes ended piracy, as the original commenter suggests they would?

xtian 4y ago

No one is entitled to a particular form of revenue. We live in an attention-based economy. Talented and savvy authors can find any number of ways to derive revenue from the attention their work attracts apart from charging IP tolls. If not, they can always get a job where they have no ownership stake in the fruits of their labor, like almost every other job and 99.9% of people writing code for money.

misnome 4y ago
This exact argument can be used to justify both POV. No one is entitled to have any particular piece of media available to them for free, either? Talented and savvy consumers can find any number of ways to make money to pay for media, like 99.9% of other consumers.
- xtian 4y ago
  Except that making a living as an author or via another creative pursuit is a luxury and privilege premised upon the hard labor performed by countless others which actually reproduces our society. It’s also not really a matter of entitlement. It’s just an objective fact that trying to gatekeep knowledge behind IP toll bridges is a losing battle which only serves to hinder the development of many realms of human endeavor.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    You want to kill the goose so you can consume the eggs. You want to steal their products but condemn the creators. You must not know creative types and how much most of them sacrifice to try and create from the passion inside them.
    - xtian 4y ago
      Actually I do. Their passion doesn’t entitle them to anything, and their sacrifices pale in comparison to those made by people who do hard labor for a living. IP laws don’t protect small creators anyway, most of whom will fail regardless. They protect the big conglomerates from multitudes of potential creators who might otherwise find education and success outside of the established institutions.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Whilst I've some sympathies with this argument, it dismisses the larger question of how to provide societal benefits of information and entertainment creation. It's quite possible that the size of such sectors today is excessive, though there's a strong argument that information is under-incentivised whilst entertainment is excessively incentivised, to say nothing of various forms of manipulation and propaganda, or the negative impacts of surveillance and fraud that are intrinsic to the adtech field. So the question of incentives, compensation, financing, and revenue collection do deserve addressing. I do agree that the present model is addressing those specific elements quite poorly.

skyechurch 4y ago

Strong agree, I still haven't forgiven myself for that time ABBA starved to death after I taped "Dancing Queen" off the radio. I use OverDrive/LibGen etc because it's generally more convenient than the public library. If I like a book enough to actually finish it, I buy a paper copy because ebooks are inherently inferior and probably always will be. If I was still a student I would use OverDrive/LibGen etc specifically to steal from textbook publishers who charge $100 for an 18th edition riddled with factual and grammatical errors in hope that they would go bankrupt, but it wouldn't work. We have a long way yet to go.

anothernewdude 4y ago

Tams80 4y ago

I won't say if I have or haven't downloaded ebooks without paying. But I will say that I have bought both ebooks and physical books from authors that I like and appreciate the work and effort they have put into their craft. I've spent rather a lot on it, actually.

dredmorbius 4y ago

A wealth-indexed fee averaging about $5/mo per household in the US and collected through broadband providers could provide access to every work ever published, pay authors, and eliminate both the need and practice of piracy. The publishing industry prefers, however, to hoard its Smaug-gold, make criminals of the curious, deny access both to the vast majority of the population and to the vast majority of works, all to line its own pockets at an immense cost to the rest of us, authors, artists, musicians, and other creators included. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33698018> Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz: "Knowledge is a public good" <https://archive.org/details/globalpublicgood0000unse/page/308/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/globalpublicgood0000unse/page/30...> Copyright is brain damage: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc https://yewtu.be/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc>

troad 4y ago
I am opposed to copyright in its current form, but this is a very naïve suggestion. How exactly do you distribute the fee among authors? Who collects it? How does dispute resolution work, if I don't feel like I'm being compensated fairly? Can I opt out if I don't read books? What if everyone opts out and just continues pirating? Let's say I just published one hundred books of semi-AI generated bad fiction. When can I expect my cheques?
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  Have a look at Europe, where we have such money-redistribution organisations.
  - troad 4y ago
    Yes, legislatively-sanctioned rent seeking is common in Europe. In what way has the existence of such a scheme ameliorated the excesses of copyright law in Europe? Copyright terms are the same in Europe as in the United States (life + 70), but Europe tends to have weaker fair use provisions than the US (e.g. 'fair dealing' in the UK and Ireland). In what way have these schemes ended piracy, as the original commenter suggests they would?