6 ms·

I still don't understand this mindset. If one author wants to make the "new market" work for them by giving things away or taking donations, they can do that.

I still don't understand this mindset. If one author wants to make the "new market" work for them by giving things away or taking donations, they can do that. If that's the market you like to shop in, then donate or take freely. But if another author wants you to pay a specific price for their work when you want a copy, and you don't like the price, then you let them know that by not getting a copy. If your reason for not paying is because you don't like their publisher, then you let them know by not getting a copy. Lo and behold, the market will work itself out. Where does the mindset come from that you're still entitled to those things you're not willing to pay for? Or that your right to have them is more important than the rights of the people who made them? This is to say nothing about overreaching solutions - this guy is saying who cares about the particular solution, any one of them will require me to pay for things I want!

TomOfTTB 15y ago
I don’t want to give a false impression. I don’t advocate this mindset. But from a historical perspective it isn’t that hard to understand. The history of mankind has always been a process of vacillating between societies motivated by self-profit and societies that attempt to live communally. Right now the world has shifted more towards self-profit because we’re still living in the shadow of the Soviet Union’s collapse (the largest communal society ever attempted). But that doesn’t mean the idea of communal living has gone away completely. What the USSR proved more than anything is a society needs self-profit motivation in order to get people to put in the effort to excel. There were no startups in the USSR because no one was willing to put a large amount of effort into something that would eventually be owned by the government. But in that context artistic expression takes on a different bent because it is something most artists feel compelled to put effort into even without a profit motivation. So the question becomes “if something costs almost nothing to produce and the creator is compelled to create it without a profit motivation should it then be communal?”
- NSMeta 15y ago
  | There were no startups in the USSR because no one was willing to put a large amount of effort into something that would eventually be owned by the government. While this is correct, people were prohibited to start their own enterprises in the first place. Hence it's not the lack of profits that stopped the people - it's the fear of getting punished by the government. In my humble opinion, Soviet Union did not prove that society needs self-profit motivation, not in terms of accumulating wealth. What it did prove is that the State will sooner or later collapse(because of the class war) when it threatens, oppresses and all the power is situated in the hands of a few people at the top.
- wazoox 15y ago
  I've read an interesting paper on the pioneers of Soviet Computing. These guys were as passionate and hard at work as anyone in the Silicon Valley, and even did skunkworks on stuff they weren't allowed to work on... I'd say self-profit isn't the main motivation for creators, most of the time. Here's the book BTW: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/05/08/pioneers-of-soviet-computing/ http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/05/08/pioneers-of-soviet-c...
- lutorm 15y ago
  The Soviet Union was not a communal society. It was a dictatorship paying lip service to being a communal society. I'd venture to say that those running the USSR were quite motivated by self-profit.
  - TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
    I would agree with that statement. The goal of communism, as Marx states, is a society in which everyone is equal. It would also infer pure democracy, as people would have the right to modify the commune. There would also be no leaders, as nobody is above another. Where I find general distaste is how Marx decides how to craft a country under that system. His commentary generally include removal of children from families for education, elimination of religion and faith, and massive intermediary civil war to a socialist dictatorship that will _eventually_ lead to a utopian commune. Most get stuck on the socialist dictatorship and like the power and resources taken for their benefit.
nickgeiger 15y ago
Fair enough point and I do agree that this guy's article is perhaps lacking in proposing solutions or fully explaining the problem. The problem as I see it is that technology allows someone to avoid paying those "other authors that specific price for their work" as long as they are willing to spend some time and energy to pirate it. I believe people with more time than money will always exist. SOPA may make piracy more difficult, but it's not going to stop it, just as killing napster didn't stop music piracy. Is it really going to create more jobs other than employing people to respond to the new SOPA takedown requests? I think iTunes/Netflix/Rhapsody-type services are the right solution to this problem. Sure, a college kid can always pirate stuff for the sake of pirating or because they have no money, but most busy people that can afford to pay for it, as long as the asking price of the studios is not too egregious, they will usually pay it happily as long as it's easy. Simple paid options are the real solution here.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  Simple paid options may be the best option for all involved, but again, if someone makes their product difficult or expensive to get, nothing says every person ought to still be entitled to have it however they can get at it. Saying that you can't stop this behavior completely is irrelevant to whether you should aim to reduce it. None of the laws we have made something go away completely just by it being illegal.
  - nickgeiger 15y ago
    Great point, making something illegal doesn't stop it, but it just raises the price. Drugs come to mind as I read this. It becomes a problem to me when making something illegal raises the cost to society overall versus actually solving whatever problem it claimed to solve. Again, drugs is a great example because we have great costs as a society for law enforcement and prisons dedicated to making drugs illegal versus quite possibly less costs if at least some drugs were legal. To tie this back to the issue, I think SOPA taxes the Google's, Facebook's, etc of the world in an attempt to deal with piracy, which will only increase our costs as citizens for those services and not really solve the problem. Similarly, we also pay taxes to imprison drug offenders whilst drugs continue to be consumed at will.
rimantas 15y ago
The technology makes it a bit more complicated, by enabling almost zero-cost copying. This is very very new and when a lot of rules and laws were created nobody could foresee this case. I don't advocate piracy, but there is a stupid notion of "lost profit" when every pirated copy is assumed the copy not purchased. Sorry, but it does not work this way. If someone thinks that the price is to high or simply does not have the money then in the piracy-free world that person would simply not purchase the product. So, does this kind of person really harm the producer when he pirates in real world? What if he shows the pirated movie to his friends and they like it so much that they go and buy a copy for themselves? Then there is the whole "piracy as convenience" thing. The whole picture is very complicated and will take a long time to sort out.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  Just because it only costs $0.00 to make a copy, doesn't mean that's what it costs to make the product. And just because people talk about lost sales doesn't mean they assume every stolen copy is $.99 out of their pocket. It means that some people who take copies would buy them if they couldn't pirate them. Whether one wants to justify piracy by saying they wouldn't pay for the product anyway, or they end up buying a lot of products they pirate first, or they help "spread the word" to others who pay, at the end of the day they're all self-serving justifications for engaging in an involuntary exchange of disparate value with the creator.
- rrreese 15y ago
  There seem too be two flawed mindsets. On one hand you have people claiming that every pirated copy is lost revenue and that there are no positive benefits. Pirates are thieves destroying the lively hoods of hard working creators. On the other you have people claiming that piracy doesn't harm the industry (where music, film, software and books are interchangeable), and that piracy actually helps authors by increasing the publicity for their work. Both these stand points seem way to extreme. If a kid pirates Photoshop rather than drop a grand for it I don't really think Adobe has been harmed. On the other hand if the same guy grabs a movie of a torrent rather then dropping a few dollars (which they can afford) on a rental then that is lost money. Maybe for some artists of developers that loss will be offset by increased recognition or maybe it won't. It's a shame that so many people take such hard and fast stands for or against piracy, and we lack the more nuanced opinions that reflect the situation as it actually is. I guess "Pirates are thieves" or "Unknown band becomes smash hit due to torrenting" make more effective headlines then "Piracy is really complicated and effects different stake holders in different ways".
padolsey 15y ago
The question is: where does your mindset come from? Promoting a freer market does not mean sacrificing rights. To have my creation used and enjoyed by many would be great. The compensation I think I deserve is only symptomatic of the current economic system under which we live. Don't pretend that you're starting from square one and the OP is suggesting a great shift. It's you too that should explain your motives.
- nailer 15y ago
  I think most people (both in general, but particularly on HN as we make things here) wouldn't bother explaining what we generally take for common sense. However: - People that make things should be able to charge what they they want for them. - If people don't like the price that's fine, they're not forced to buy the item. - Taking something somebody has made without their permission is unethical. Edit: People convinced that the ability to easily take something making it right won't be convinced otherwise. This is HN - we make apps. Posts that advocate taking them without our permission should simply be flagged.
  - Peaker 15y ago
    The way I see it is the dilemma isn't between pirating a single project or not pirating it. The dilemma is whether society encourages people to build ideas upon ideas and push forward, or to lock up ideas in their own owner's domain, where nobody can build great things upon them. The open and closed worlds are not independent and disconnected. Whenever someone creates a closed, proprietary product and wants to restrict uses of it, he is directly harming the open world too, by drawing away resources from the creation of an eco system and net effects around the open product to the closed product. Also, assuming a person places some value X to openness, if the closed product is created and adds value Y to that particular person, and Y>X, it's effectively encouraging a closed world. I think the single greatest thing we're losing on is derivative works. We live in a world with almost no derivative works, because of closed creations. For that I partially blame the closed content authors and really wish they had created less of it. If you share these beliefs, it's easy to reach the conclusion that piracy is better than purchasing and encouraging these closed works. Of course it is better to avoid using it altogether (to avoid creating net effects around it), but if you are going to use something, it is better to pirate it than to purchase it legally.
bambax 15y ago
Ideas and the work of the mind are in the public domain; they belong to the public. If you come up with an original idea, even if this original idea cost you a year's work, this original idea that you and you alone built, belongs to everyone. Now, in order to encourage people to work on original ideas, it was decided to give to authors a right to their own work, for a limited time. This "right" is taken from the public domain (ie, the public). The justification is that by helping struggling authors, it lets them coming up with more original ideas, and therefore benefits the public. The deal is this: the public gives a piece of their own property to authors, in exchange for more work from those same authors. This system has grown out of proportion with its original intents. (The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system should have been considered broken). So, although it's currently illegal, and I don't approve of "piracy", it's not illegitimate to consider that if someone says something, I have a right to know what they're saying (especially if that doesn't cost them anything to let me hear it). You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should refrain from writing anything.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  > The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system should have been considered broken The system was created to encourage people to invest in the creation of new ideas and products. It's not always just an investment of time, which means you have to make it property that can be owned, traded and sold, with a known term. In your system where copyright dies with the author, the interests of others who might invest in a project or stand to gain from it (like a creator's children) are not looked after. By this mindset, everything Steve Jobs helped to create would now be free for "the public" to do with as they wish, and I imagine a lot of people would have stopped funding Steve's ideas when they found out he was sick. > You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should refrain from writing anything. I could, but it makes no sense to me to tell people who want to be compensated for making something valuable to stop doing it so that we can make whatever remaining works there are public domain.
  - 15y ago
InclinedPlane 15y ago
It is simply false to assume that everyone who consumes a work of intellectual property (music, movies, television, etc.) has purchased a copy of the work. That has never been true historically. The difference today is that technology has made possible new ways for people to consume IP without direct purchase and some publishers have yet to adapt.
hxa7241 15y ago
> Where does the mindset come from Most importantly, it comes from thinking about why the current laws and conventions are justified. They are not simply there in reality. Why do we have them? It is not about justifying piracy, it is saying we should not even have the laws in the first place that lead to the possibility of piracy. You might reply that this is ridiculous: simply changing the name of an act does not remove the harm it does. But this is the core of the matter: with copying, that reply is basically false! (Piracy is in legal terms a malum prohibitum not a malum in se.) Look at the underlying phenomena, prior to any legal construction. Copying is an abstract relation: there is no physical connection between an original and a copy. It no more harms someone to be copied than it harms the number 4 when you write it down. Since copying renders no harm, and in fact the opposite, it is very beneficial, and furthermore it is an abundance, why should we restrict it? (No moral argument for copyright/IP/etc. seems ever to have answered that.) In practice it may possibly be that selling creative effort is difficult to do optimally without some structure like copyright etc. That is the contention of the standard economic view. But that gives only a very particular and limited justification. Such restrictions on copying are justified only insofar as they actually turn out to help us overall. Which returns us the gist of the article: if those restrictions do not help much, or rather have comparable alternatives, the justification for their existence is gone.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  So if you go to the doctor for a regular check up and they take biological waste from your visit and send it to a company who uses your DNA to make multiple clones of you to be given to adoptive parents who can't have children, you're good with that?
  - hxa7241 15y ago
    Thinking about it, yes, that seems OK. It is not clear what the real problem is. It just seems challenging because of the oddness. There is some question of privacy: it might be objectionable there. But that does not really bear upon the core of copyright, which is about items that have been made public. One could pose a similar question: what if someone else decides to dress exactly like you, and go about like that? What grounds are there for your objection to that? (There do not seem to be any . . .) If they went so far as to impersonate you in the sense of identity fraud, there is a problem. But that is really about lying rather than copying per se, like counterfeiting.

TomOfTTB 15y ago

I don’t want to give a false impression. I don’t advocate this mindset. But from a historical perspective it isn’t that hard to understand. The history of mankind has always been a process of vacillating between societies motivated by self-profit and societies that attempt to live communally. Right now the world has shifted more towards self-profit because we’re still living in the shadow of the Soviet Union’s collapse (the largest communal society ever attempted). But that doesn’t mean the idea of communal living has gone away completely. What the USSR proved more than anything is a society needs self-profit motivation in order to get people to put in the effort to excel. There were no startups in the USSR because no one was willing to put a large amount of effort into something that would eventually be owned by the government. But in that context artistic expression takes on a different bent because it is something most artists feel compelled to put effort into even without a profit motivation. So the question becomes “if something costs almost nothing to produce and the creator is compelled to create it without a profit motivation should it then be communal?”

NSMeta 15y ago
| There were no startups in the USSR because no one was willing to put a large amount of effort into something that would eventually be owned by the government. While this is correct, people were prohibited to start their own enterprises in the first place. Hence it's not the lack of profits that stopped the people - it's the fear of getting punished by the government. In my humble opinion, Soviet Union did not prove that society needs self-profit motivation, not in terms of accumulating wealth. What it did prove is that the State will sooner or later collapse(because of the class war) when it threatens, oppresses and all the power is situated in the hands of a few people at the top.
wazoox 15y ago
I've read an interesting paper on the pioneers of Soviet Computing. These guys were as passionate and hard at work as anyone in the Silicon Valley, and even did skunkworks on stuff they weren't allowed to work on... I'd say self-profit isn't the main motivation for creators, most of the time. Here's the book BTW: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/05/08/pioneers-of-soviet-computing/ http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/05/08/pioneers-of-soviet-c...
lutorm 15y ago
The Soviet Union was not a communal society. It was a dictatorship paying lip service to being a communal society. I'd venture to say that those running the USSR were quite motivated by self-profit.
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
  I would agree with that statement. The goal of communism, as Marx states, is a society in which everyone is equal. It would also infer pure democracy, as people would have the right to modify the commune. There would also be no leaders, as nobody is above another. Where I find general distaste is how Marx decides how to craft a country under that system. His commentary generally include removal of children from families for education, elimination of religion and faith, and massive intermediary civil war to a socialist dictatorship that will _eventually_ lead to a utopian commune. Most get stuck on the socialist dictatorship and like the power and resources taken for their benefit.

nickgeiger 15y ago

Fair enough point and I do agree that this guy's article is perhaps lacking in proposing solutions or fully explaining the problem. The problem as I see it is that technology allows someone to avoid paying those "other authors that specific price for their work" as long as they are willing to spend some time and energy to pirate it. I believe people with more time than money will always exist. SOPA may make piracy more difficult, but it's not going to stop it, just as killing napster didn't stop music piracy. Is it really going to create more jobs other than employing people to respond to the new SOPA takedown requests? I think iTunes/Netflix/Rhapsody-type services are the right solution to this problem. Sure, a college kid can always pirate stuff for the sake of pirating or because they have no money, but most busy people that can afford to pay for it, as long as the asking price of the studios is not too egregious, they will usually pay it happily as long as it's easy. Simple paid options are the real solution here.

earbitscom 15y ago
Simple paid options may be the best option for all involved, but again, if someone makes their product difficult or expensive to get, nothing says every person ought to still be entitled to have it however they can get at it. Saying that you can't stop this behavior completely is irrelevant to whether you should aim to reduce it. None of the laws we have made something go away completely just by it being illegal.
- nickgeiger 15y ago
  Great point, making something illegal doesn't stop it, but it just raises the price. Drugs come to mind as I read this. It becomes a problem to me when making something illegal raises the cost to society overall versus actually solving whatever problem it claimed to solve. Again, drugs is a great example because we have great costs as a society for law enforcement and prisons dedicated to making drugs illegal versus quite possibly less costs if at least some drugs were legal. To tie this back to the issue, I think SOPA taxes the Google's, Facebook's, etc of the world in an attempt to deal with piracy, which will only increase our costs as citizens for those services and not really solve the problem. Similarly, we also pay taxes to imprison drug offenders whilst drugs continue to be consumed at will.

rimantas 15y ago

The technology makes it a bit more complicated, by enabling almost zero-cost copying. This is very very new and when a lot of rules and laws were created nobody could foresee this case. I don't advocate piracy, but there is a stupid notion of "lost profit" when every pirated copy is assumed the copy not purchased. Sorry, but it does not work this way. If someone thinks that the price is to high or simply does not have the money then in the piracy-free world that person would simply not purchase the product. So, does this kind of person really harm the producer when he pirates in real world? What if he shows the pirated movie to his friends and they like it so much that they go and buy a copy for themselves? Then there is the whole "piracy as convenience" thing. The whole picture is very complicated and will take a long time to sort out.

earbitscom 15y ago
Just because it only costs $0.00 to make a copy, doesn't mean that's what it costs to make the product. And just because people talk about lost sales doesn't mean they assume every stolen copy is $.99 out of their pocket. It means that some people who take copies would buy them if they couldn't pirate them. Whether one wants to justify piracy by saying they wouldn't pay for the product anyway, or they end up buying a lot of products they pirate first, or they help "spread the word" to others who pay, at the end of the day they're all self-serving justifications for engaging in an involuntary exchange of disparate value with the creator.
rrreese 15y ago
There seem too be two flawed mindsets. On one hand you have people claiming that every pirated copy is lost revenue and that there are no positive benefits. Pirates are thieves destroying the lively hoods of hard working creators. On the other you have people claiming that piracy doesn't harm the industry (where music, film, software and books are interchangeable), and that piracy actually helps authors by increasing the publicity for their work. Both these stand points seem way to extreme. If a kid pirates Photoshop rather than drop a grand for it I don't really think Adobe has been harmed. On the other hand if the same guy grabs a movie of a torrent rather then dropping a few dollars (which they can afford) on a rental then that is lost money. Maybe for some artists of developers that loss will be offset by increased recognition or maybe it won't. It's a shame that so many people take such hard and fast stands for or against piracy, and we lack the more nuanced opinions that reflect the situation as it actually is. I guess "Pirates are thieves" or "Unknown band becomes smash hit due to torrenting" make more effective headlines then "Piracy is really complicated and effects different stake holders in different ways".

padolsey 15y ago

The question is: where does your mindset come from? Promoting a freer market does not mean sacrificing rights. To have my creation used and enjoyed by many would be great. The compensation I think I deserve is only symptomatic of the current economic system under which we live. Don't pretend that you're starting from square one and the OP is suggesting a great shift. It's you too that should explain your motives.

nailer 15y ago
I think most people (both in general, but particularly on HN as we make things here) wouldn't bother explaining what we generally take for common sense. However: - People that make things should be able to charge what they they want for them. - If people don't like the price that's fine, they're not forced to buy the item. - Taking something somebody has made without their permission is unethical. Edit: People convinced that the ability to easily take something making it right won't be convinced otherwise. This is HN - we make apps. Posts that advocate taking them without our permission should simply be flagged.
- Peaker 15y ago
  The way I see it is the dilemma isn't between pirating a single project or not pirating it. The dilemma is whether society encourages people to build ideas upon ideas and push forward, or to lock up ideas in their own owner's domain, where nobody can build great things upon them. The open and closed worlds are not independent and disconnected. Whenever someone creates a closed, proprietary product and wants to restrict uses of it, he is directly harming the open world too, by drawing away resources from the creation of an eco system and net effects around the open product to the closed product. Also, assuming a person places some value X to openness, if the closed product is created and adds value Y to that particular person, and Y>X, it's effectively encouraging a closed world. I think the single greatest thing we're losing on is derivative works. We live in a world with almost no derivative works, because of closed creations. For that I partially blame the closed content authors and really wish they had created less of it. If you share these beliefs, it's easy to reach the conclusion that piracy is better than purchasing and encouraging these closed works. Of course it is better to avoid using it altogether (to avoid creating net effects around it), but if you are going to use something, it is better to pirate it than to purchase it legally.

bambax 15y ago

Ideas and the work of the mind are in the public domain; they belong to the public. If you come up with an original idea, even if this original idea cost you a year's work, this original idea that you and you alone built, belongs to everyone. Now, in order to encourage people to work on original ideas, it was decided to give to authors a right to their own work, for a limited time. This "right" is taken from the public domain (ie, the public). The justification is that by helping struggling authors, it lets them coming up with more original ideas, and therefore benefits the public. The deal is this: the public gives a piece of their own property to authors, in exchange for more work from those same authors. This system has grown out of proportion with its original intents. (The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system should have been considered broken). So, although it's currently illegal, and I don't approve of "piracy", it's not illegitimate to consider that if someone says something, I have a right to know what they're saying (especially if that doesn't cost them anything to let me hear it). You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should refrain from writing anything.

earbitscom 15y ago
> The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system should have been considered broken The system was created to encourage people to invest in the creation of new ideas and products. It's not always just an investment of time, which means you have to make it property that can be owned, traded and sold, with a known term. In your system where copyright dies with the author, the interests of others who might invest in a project or stand to gain from it (like a creator's children) are not looked after. By this mindset, everything Steve Jobs helped to create would now be free for "the public" to do with as they wish, and I imagine a lot of people would have stopped funding Steve's ideas when they found out he was sick. > You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should refrain from writing anything. I could, but it makes no sense to me to tell people who want to be compensated for making something valuable to stop doing it so that we can make whatever remaining works there are public domain.
- 15y ago

InclinedPlane 15y ago

It is simply false to assume that everyone who consumes a work of intellectual property (music, movies, television, etc.) has purchased a copy of the work. That has never been true historically. The difference today is that technology has made possible new ways for people to consume IP without direct purchase and some publishers have yet to adapt.

hxa7241 15y ago

> Where does the mindset come from Most importantly, it comes from thinking about why the current laws and conventions are justified. They are not simply there in reality. Why do we have them? It is not about justifying piracy, it is saying we should not even have the laws in the first place that lead to the possibility of piracy. You might reply that this is ridiculous: simply changing the name of an act does not remove the harm it does. But this is the core of the matter: with copying, that reply is basically false! (Piracy is in legal terms a malum prohibitum not a malum in se.) Look at the underlying phenomena, prior to any legal construction. Copying is an abstract relation: there is no physical connection between an original and a copy. It no more harms someone to be copied than it harms the number 4 when you write it down. Since copying renders no harm, and in fact the opposite, it is very beneficial, and furthermore it is an abundance, why should we restrict it? (No moral argument for copyright/IP/etc. seems ever to have answered that.) In practice it may possibly be that selling creative effort is difficult to do optimally without some structure like copyright etc. That is the contention of the standard economic view. But that gives only a very particular and limited justification. Such restrictions on copying are justified only insofar as they actually turn out to help us overall. Which returns us the gist of the article: if those restrictions do not help much, or rather have comparable alternatives, the justification for their existence is gone.

earbitscom 15y ago
So if you go to the doctor for a regular check up and they take biological waste from your visit and send it to a company who uses your DNA to make multiple clones of you to be given to adoptive parents who can't have children, you're good with that?
- hxa7241 15y ago
  Thinking about it, yes, that seems OK. It is not clear what the real problem is. It just seems challenging because of the oddness. There is some question of privacy: it might be objectionable there. But that does not really bear upon the core of copyright, which is about items that have been made public. One could pose a similar question: what if someone else decides to dress exactly like you, and go about like that? What grounds are there for your objection to that? (There do not seem to be any . . .) If they went so far as to impersonate you in the sense of identity fraud, there is a problem. But that is really about lying rather than copying per se, like counterfeiting.