8 ms·

My comment doesn't directly relate to the issue in the article (how she's being put in jail early) but I'll go ahead anyway. Does anyone honestly think piracy

• rbanffy 15y ago
  There are a couple issues here. The first one is whether copyright infringement as I think she was part of really hurts content producers. If someone is unwilling to pay a couple dollars for a movie in iTunes, you are not likely to buy the DVD either, thus, it's not a lost sale. If, OTOH, the work gets more exposure thanks to alternative distribution networks and that generates more customer engagement, the content producer wins in the end. The second is whether books, movies, music and games whose primary purpose is to make a profit can be considered art. I think they can't. The primary purpose - and usefulness - of art is to transform the people who experience it. I don't think laws should protect the business model of selling art and experiences, but their usefulness. A third question is whether it's even possible to prevent the duplication of digital goods. Most probably it isn't. Businesses must adapt to new realities - should typewriter makers be afforded the right to ban computer sales because they hurt the already established business? Another one is whether they were turning in a profit. If they were, part of it belongs, rightfully, to the content producers. Finally, there is her attitude towards law enforcement. I understand her frustration with what she considers unfair laws and processes. I am not sure her attitude is constructive and that sending her to jail was the best way to deal with it. If I were the judge, I'd like to lecture her about what she's doing that can be misinterpreted as threats. Jails are very tense environments and they don't need more agitation than they already have.
  • lachyg 15y ago
    "The first one is whether copyright infringement as I think she was part of really hurts content producers. If someone is unwilling to pay a couple dollars for a movie in iTunes, you are not likely to buy the DVD either, thus, it's not a lost sale. If, OTOH, the work gets more exposure thanks to alternative distribution networks and that generates more customer engagement, the content producer wins in the end." Seriously? This is not an issue of whether it financially hurts the content producer, it's that you're getting it without paying for it, and others are paying for it. You're getting access to content that you haven't paid for.
    • dillona 15y ago
      What if you are not given the option to pay for it? Is it still wrong to download? Remember many people outside America can't use Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, etc.
      • lachyg 15y ago
        I'm one of those people with none of those options. Yes, it's definitely still wrong. Just because we don't have the option, doesn't mean it's morally / ethically right and or legal.
        • dillona 15y ago
          I suppose I just disagree. These are ephemeral goods we are talking about. Nobody loses anything if you download a movie. I don't see how it is morally wrong to download something if the creators refuse to take your money.
          • lachyg 15y ago
            Again, like all my opinions above I'm going to get downvoted, but I still can't comprehend how you can justify that it's not wrong to download it just because they're "ephemeral" digital goods. How does that make it any different? How about this: famous dress maker designs and creates an extravagant dress and then you, with your fine sowing skills replicate the dress entirely and wear it. Is that not wrong in your eyes? The above isn't the best example, but I still can't see the reasoning as to why it's not wrong.
• Zirro 15y ago
  As long as it is illegal, it is technically correct for them to be punished. Some laws, however, are too absurd to remain. Piracy, for me is certainly not about not wanting to pay. It's about the feeling that the money I pay mostly doesn't go to creators, but to the companies in-between who doesn't deserve it. I don't want to support such an industry. It also the fact that I want to push for legal alternatives which are as easy-to-use as piracy today. I want to press a link and have a 1080p DRM-free film download in minutes. The cost is not the issue. I hope that, within 20 years, sharing will be legal. Just because it's written as illegal in the law today, it's not set in stone. Things can change, and for the sake of the creative people, I hope it does.
  • Xlythe 15y ago
    Isn't it up to the creators to fight for more compensation? We, as consumers, shouldn't be justifying our actions by picking up a fight we were never asked to join. We've provided the technology to circumvent the middlemen, proven its preference among users. However, as it stands now, less money goes to the creators when you pirate than when you play by their game. Don't claim to be fighting in their name. I agree, though, that this industry is rotten... A pirated copy of any game, music, or video is not only cheaper and more convenient, but its of better quality (DRM-free). You can't win a fight where you attack both pirates and consumers.
    • Zirro 15y ago
      Well, personally I choose not to consume such content at all in most cases, but I sympathize with those who do pirate. If the artist get 5% of what I paid, and the rest of the money goes to those who promote SOPA, I'd rather torrent it. This is better in the long run, and I hope future creators will agree. Those who lose are the current artists who remain with the big companies. Hopefully, they'll find a way out of that system.
    • intended 15y ago
      Whats interesting is that they have the funds to still fight. This, to me, sounds like an inefficient business model. When you have the funds to fight both your customers and pirates, lobby the government, and constantly man a PR machine, while losing market share, I have to wonder - how much cash are they sitting on?
• realo 15y ago
  Picture this for a moment: It's your Birthday. Your friends invited you to the nicest restaurant in town. Very nice venue, food is great. End of meal... time for dessert. Your friends love you and, together, singe you the nicest rendition of 'Happy Birthday To You' you ever heard. Life is good. This was an illegal performance. Secret police comes in, puts your friends in prison (they stole & performed the song) and also you and everyone in the restaurant at that time go to prison as well because you got the song without paying the creators. Of course, according to the New extended SuperSOPA law, the restaurant is closed down, and it's owner is sent to prison as well, because he should not have allowed all this to happen in the first place. Do you really want to live in that Orwellian world?
  • hussong 15y ago
    Someone should make a short film about this scene, it would go pretty viral.
    • realo 15y ago
      That would be cool, as long as the 10,000$ license fee for "Happy Birthday" is paid to Warner... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
      • draggnar 15y ago
        What?! I was reading these comments thinking -- oh that would be funny if everything was under copywrite. I feel violated. The video, if you make it, should end with the fact that it actually is owned by Warner.
        • fossuser 15y ago
          The perhaps even stranger part is that there exists a public domain variant of the happy birthday song. The song was modified and it is this version that Warner owns the copyright to (and the one that we sing). The modification? -- One Note. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
• Tichy 15y ago
  People might not agree with every law in their country.
  • lachyg 15y ago
    And?
    • JoeAltmaier 15y ago
      Read something about Socrates sometime.
      • tsotha 15y ago
        Should we emulate someone who was forced to drink poison?
    • Tichy 15y ago
      Does it really need spelling out? Justice is not necessarily what the law says.
• dchest 15y ago
  Regarding the "illegal downloading" point, simple question: how do you recognize when the music, movie, photograph, or text that you downloaded (or viewed in browser -- there's no technical difference) has been "properly" licensed?
  • lachyg 15y ago
    What do you mean? I think most people know it's illegal when they go to download (or view) a movie on the 'net. Obviously photographs and text is a lot harder, but movies are pretty clear due to the cost that goes into production.
    • dchest 15y ago
      I think most people know it's illegal when they go to download (or view) a movie on the 'net. What about hulu.com? Should we have a list of "approved" websites somewhere? Also, how do you know that hulu has proper licenses for their videos? There was a recent case when Amazon licensed (remember, that we're dealing with licensing in case of copyright laws, not selling) "1984" for Kindles for which they didn't have the proper license. Why haven't those people (who downloaded the book into their Kindles) been prosecuted? It would be easy to do, since Amazon had the list of customers. Or should we apply laws selectively?
      • JoeAltmaier 15y ago
        Kind of straying from the mark. She was convicted because she ran the site, not because she uploaded one movie. In that example, its Amazon at 'fault'.
        • dchest 15y ago
          I was replying to the comment that "doesn't directly relate to the issue in the article" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3464128 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3464128
          • 15y ago
• toyg 15y ago
  I'll bite: do you honestly think people should be sent to prison for copyright offences? Monetary damages, yes; bankruptcy, maybe (if the infringement was on mass-scale and resulted in direct profit for the guilty, say, above 1000$); but prison? Prison is not about punishment, in a civil society; it's about isolating individuals with the potential to irreparably harm their community. Unless the copyright holders go bankrupt as a direct, proven result of infringers' actions, there is simply no irreparable harm done: the rightsholder still owns the IP and is free to sell it.
  • oelewapperke 15y ago
    Nobody goes to prison for copyright violations. That's civil law. It has the exact properties you desire it has. So what happened in this case ? I don't know. Maybe she violated a direct court order. Once a judge tells you to do something, after hearing you out, you have a limited time to get a case started in a higher court, or comply. If you don't go to a higher court, the decision of the judge actually takes precedence to any law for you personally. If you don't obey that court order, force can and will be used to make you comply. The law states that this force should be reasonable considering the offence (the offence in this case would be disobeying a judge, not copyright infringement. This is a very serious offence, and it's a criminal offence, not a civil one). If a certain amount of force does not work to make you comply, stronger force will be used until you comply. E.g. enforcing a restraining order. Starts with a polite request. That doesn't work, they do it in writing. If you still don't, the police is authorized to stop you physically a few times (like pulling you over). If this doesn't help, they will imprison you for progressively longer periods.
  • lachyg 15y ago
    Oh god no, definitely not. Monetary damages, yes. Prison sentences for a non-violent crime, definitely not.
    • fourspace 15y ago
      Just to play devil's advocate here, what you're saying is that folks like Bernie Madoff should not go to prison.
• cschwarm 15y ago
  There's probably no good answer to your question, since it depends on your choice of axioms. Given certain axioms, you might be able to logically derive the answer that "piracy" should not be punished. If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that piracy is illegal, and prevents authors to be payed. But just because something is illegal, doesn't mean it's right. Provided a law is morally wrong, for instance, punishment for breaking said law would also be morally wrong, and should not be supported. You'll probably also cheer to the freedom fighter breaking laws to overcome a dictator. Interestingly, most Americans would probably deny that anybody has a right to have income, or a minimum level of wealth and health in every other profession (for this would be "socialism"). So, why should authors and investors in creative works have that right? After all, the authors of most works have been payed. Most of the time, even the investors in these works have been paid as well. What you argue is basically that authors and investors haven't been paid 'enough'. But how do we rationally determine what payment is 'enough' or not? Of course, these "pirates" are fooling themselves if they think their moral arguments hold. Most of them don't do anything constructive (unlike, say, Open Source developers, or the Creative Commons community).
• tomp 15y ago
  Your assumptions are wrong. When people pirate content (download without paying), that doesn't necessarily mean that they are not paying the content creators. A Swiss government study found out that people's entertainment budgets are relatively constant - what we don't spend for digital content, we spend for concerts and such. So, there is no real economic harm from piracy (if there was, Hollywood wouldn't be having record profits...).
  • lachyg 15y ago
    In my opinion, that's completely besides the point. It doesn't matter if people wouldn't have bought it anyway. Just because we wouldn't have bought it anyway doesn't give us a right to download it. That's ridiculous. The issue with digital content versus physical content is that there is no cost of replication, whereas with physical goods the cost of replication goes beyond the initial R&D, it goes into the actual materials, machinery and labour to produce it. I believe this is where the "it's okay to pirate content" comes from -- because theres no 'money lost'.
  • tzs 15y ago
    > A Swiss government study found out that people's entertainment budgets are relatively constant - what we don't spend for digital content, we spend for concerts and such. So, there is no real economic harm from piracy Your second sentence does not follow at all from the first. When people have a fixed budget, piracy might not change how much they spend, but it will change the distribution of the spending. For instance, if someone could not pirate, they might buy two albums a month and see one movie in a theater. If they pirate, they can pirate the music, and go out to the movies twice. Same total spent, but the musicians have been harmed, and the movie producers have benefited.
• tomjen3 15y ago
  You were correctly downvoted for you posted a stupid question -- just because it is illegal doesn't make it wrong. And only wrong things should be punished.
  • lachyg 15y ago
    I would love to hear your explanation on why piracy is not wrong! That was the exact purpose of the question, so others would share their views on the matter and I would have an enlightened view.
    • regularfry 15y ago
      Flip the question on its head: why is piracy considered wrong? What is the specific, provable harm that it does? Is it true to say that there is no benefit to it? If there is a benefit, is the benefit to society greater than the harm to the creator? If there is no benefit to it, why does it happen? Does the cost of fighting it outweigh the harm done? What is the cost of fighting the fight if you disagree?
• Bud 15y ago
  Lachyg: You claim that downloaders must be punished because "they are getting the content without paying the creators". You actually don't have any idea whether this is the case. Please stop pretending that you do know. For instance, I have often downloaded or streamed content that I've already paid for in two (cable subscription, DVD purchase) or even three different ways. Who are you to assume that a given customer did not pay the creators? Frankly, since this fallaciousness is the entirety of your argument, you have a lot of nerve asking others for a logical argument about why a given downloaded should "go unpunished". In this society, last I checked, the default stance on any and all conduct was that it should "go unpunished", as you put it. Only via clear, just laws and rigorous proof should this standard ever be overruled.
  • lachyg 15y ago
    I obviously am referring to the people that have not paid ("without paying the content producers"). I'm not making assumptions, I'm not trying to take some moral high ground as you're making me out to be taking, I'm simply starting a discussion point and looking for logical reasoning. Your point has provided none, it's just provided some moral high ground. You completely ignored everything I said about the uploader too, the focus of my point.
• sklipo 15y ago
  Piracy is just copying information. The only "harm" it might do is make the person selling the information lose a sale that might never have taken place (I, for one, would not have bought the things I have pirated if I couldn't have pirated them). Basically, I don't think that I should be less free just because someone wants to make more money. If I was in charge, laws would only restrict the freedom of the people for the safety of others (and even then it would only do so by making harmful acts illegal, not by spying on them or other crazy things). Intellectual property would only outlaw copying for commercial use, which would allow artists to make money from movie theaters, concerts, etc. I'm sure many problems would arise from such a world, but I doubt that they'll be worse than the problems from the current system, and I'm sure that given time and actually implementing it, the kinks could be worked out.