5 ms·

If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it. In the end, it always boils down to pirates being spoiled. People never pirate to ma

by city41 15y ago

If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it. In the end, it always boils down to pirates being spoiled. People never pirate to make ends meet. There is no digital content that is essential to anyone's life. People pirate because they want to be entertained but they don't want to pay for it.

njs12345 15y ago
What's the difference? In both cases the pirate is deriving an economic benefit without directly causing an economic cost.
- al_james 15y ago
  There is an economic cost. If even one person pirates a digital work who WOULD have paid for it had pirating not been an option, it causes a cost to the producer of the media. So there is a real cost.
  - drcube 15y ago
    And if one person buys a digital work due to piracy who otherwise would not have even known the artist existed, there is a benefit. Do you have any evidence that the costs outweigh the benefits?
    - nirvdrum 15y ago
      Who is pirating works from artists they've never heard of? Everyone I know who pirates stuff is actively looking for something.
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        Everybody I know... They download in bulk and sift through it looking for things they like. And without exception, all of those "pirates" that I know have much larger legal bluray and record collections than I do.
- olavk 15y ago
  If the pirate is enjoying the music, then clearly the pirate would be willing to pay something more than nothing to hear the music, if piracy were not easily avaliable.
  - egil 15y ago
    Of course, but that implies that it is possible to pay for it. The copyright holders must adapt business models so potential customers can pay for a product they want, not some inferior DRM that hurts the customer. As long as piracy gives potential customers the best product, the incentive to pay is lost.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    > be willing to pay something more than nothing to hear the music. In this case $0 or even a negative value amount is what you can plug into something. Why? Think about artists that tried pay-what-you-want model. A lot of people pay $0. Some pay $0.10. But a lot pay $0. However, what they pay with is with their time and attention. I used to know someone who managed a movie theater. He would sneak us into movies quite often. Good and bad. And quite often after coming out of the movie I felt like wanting "my free back". Let's say an artist is unknown and I am a customer that has quite a few connection ( a blog with a large following perhaps ). Then what would make sense is for me to pay a negative amount ( the artist would pay me to spend my time listening to his new cool record in the hopes that I might spread the news about it ).
    - moozilla 15y ago
      > Think about artists that tried pay-what-you-want model. A lot of people pay $0. Some pay $0.10. But a lot pay $0. FWIW, the only album I've paid for in years was a pay-what-you-want deal. I paid something like $3. Which was all that was left in my bank account after I paid my rent and bought groceries for that month - I'm a college student.
- njs12345 15y ago
  If the pirate derives benefit from it but less benefit than the price and thus does not consume, then there is a deadweight loss. In this case, piracy provides a net benefit to society. (Studies have shown that the sales-displacing effect of piracy in music ranges from 42% to no effect at all[1]. If all piracy could be prevented, that's an awfully large deadweight loss) [1] http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~rtelang/SmithTelang.pdf http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~rtelang/SmithTelang.pdf
alextgordon 15y ago
<rant> So then, what if I am willing to pay for it? I would very much like to watch US TV shows. Preferably on a computer, since I don't have a TV (but on TV would be a good effort too!) Unfortunately, somebody has decided that I am not allowed to. If try to buy Hulu Plus, I am greeted with a nice message telling me to fuck off back to where I came from. Same with Netflix. Hell, I can't even watch a 2 minute clip of the Daily Show without resorting to browser gymnastics. So I pirate US TV shows. Mercilessly. I can't see a downside. If the piracy has no effect on their profit margins, then we continue to get great TV content. If they go bankrupt, then some people who I violently despise lose their jobs. It's win/win!
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  To me this - the market is not meeting the demand - is the single best argument. If something is available legally and at a reasonable price (by which I mean not only available second hand for £100 as a collectable, rather than "99p for an MP3, that's outrageous" etc...) I either buy it or accept I won't have it. If it's not available I have no real issue with getting it illegally. Frankly if the media companies adopted day and date releases worldwide for content and worked to make their back catalogues widely available through convenient means (by which iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and so on count) a lot of the best arguments in favour of piracy dry up.
  - j-kidd 15y ago
    > If something is available legally and at a reasonable price (by which I mean not only available second hand for £100 as a collectable, rather than "99p for an MP3, that's outrageous" etc...) I either buy it or accept I won't have it. You are assuming the world is full of honorable people like yourself. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. In the words of Scott Adams: "The least effective system ever invented is something called the honor system. The theory guiding this system is that people are not huge weasels."
    - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      I'm not necessarily suggesting that it's workable as a solution for the whole industry, more that for those who wish to "combat piracy", if you strip away the objections that honest people have, you have a better chance of making your case.
cturner 15y ago
Is it correct that your premise is that if you don't pay for something then you don't have the right to enjoy it? Do you also apply this principle to sex? What about borrowed books, good views, jokes, ideas, intelligent conversation, exercise?
- city41 15y ago
  Do you work for free? It's pretty essential to all of society that work and/or value is generally paid for. You demanding that content be available for free simply because you want it is no different from your boss deciding to not pay you because he doesn't want to. Yes people can choose to make their work available for free, and that's great. But that choice again lies in the person who created the work, not the person who consumes it. And to be perfectly clear, I have no delusion that piracy will ever go away. It's a fact of the digital world. My point is pirates should not delude themselves into thinking what they do is justified. It's not.
  - gnaritas 15y ago
    The value of said work lies in the consumer, not the producer. If consumers by in large don't want to pay for something, then it simply isn't valuable and producing something in that segment and then complaining about piracy is rather pointless. You know going in consumers don't value that because they're accustomed to getting it for free. You had better expect piracy.
    - cturner 15y ago
      Your point about value lying in the consumer is a good response to the parent. The parent implies that society should invent business models to protect people who do things (but then even fails to make the point through use of word "generally"). However, I don't think the rest of your points are strong. People might not want to pay for apples, but that doesn't give them the justification to steal them. That's not because they don't value them - clearly they do. Or else they wouldn't want them. Copying is different to stealing because in copying you don't deprive the creating from anything apart from completely arbitrary rights that the law grants to them. It may also be worth raising that there's room for a difference between protection of 1. privacy (this photo is of me and I don't want it released because that would be invasive to a reasonable definition of privacy); 2. first release (I created something but it's personal, I haven't released it to anyone, and don't want people redistributing it - this is an anti-right, but more reasonable than the next one); 3. Protection of publishers (I create something, and the government gives me a monopoly over all copies and derivatives of it to such an extent that government invades people's civil liberties to protect my business models).
rdtsc 15y ago
> they have no right to enjoy it. Why? Where did that right comes from. Who legislates enjoyment? Or are you saying it is a moral law?

by city41 15y ago

njs12345 15y ago

What's the difference? In both cases the pirate is deriving an economic benefit without directly causing an economic cost.

al_james 15y ago
There is an economic cost. If even one person pirates a digital work who WOULD have paid for it had pirating not been an option, it causes a cost to the producer of the media. So there is a real cost.
- drcube 15y ago
  And if one person buys a digital work due to piracy who otherwise would not have even known the artist existed, there is a benefit. Do you have any evidence that the costs outweigh the benefits?
  - nirvdrum 15y ago
    Who is pirating works from artists they've never heard of? Everyone I know who pirates stuff is actively looking for something.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Everybody I know... They download in bulk and sift through it looking for things they like. And without exception, all of those "pirates" that I know have much larger legal bluray and record collections than I do.
olavk 15y ago
If the pirate is enjoying the music, then clearly the pirate would be willing to pay something more than nothing to hear the music, if piracy were not easily avaliable.
- egil 15y ago
  Of course, but that implies that it is possible to pay for it. The copyright holders must adapt business models so potential customers can pay for a product they want, not some inferior DRM that hurts the customer. As long as piracy gives potential customers the best product, the incentive to pay is lost.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  > be willing to pay something more than nothing to hear the music. In this case $0 or even a negative value amount is what you can plug into something. Why? Think about artists that tried pay-what-you-want model. A lot of people pay $0. Some pay $0.10. But a lot pay $0. However, what they pay with is with their time and attention. I used to know someone who managed a movie theater. He would sneak us into movies quite often. Good and bad. And quite often after coming out of the movie I felt like wanting "my free back". Let's say an artist is unknown and I am a customer that has quite a few connection ( a blog with a large following perhaps ). Then what would make sense is for me to pay a negative amount ( the artist would pay me to spend my time listening to his new cool record in the hopes that I might spread the news about it ).
  - moozilla 15y ago
    > Think about artists that tried pay-what-you-want model. A lot of people pay $0. Some pay $0.10. But a lot pay $0. FWIW, the only album I've paid for in years was a pay-what-you-want deal. I paid something like $3. Which was all that was left in my bank account after I paid my rent and bought groceries for that month - I'm a college student.
njs12345 15y ago
If the pirate derives benefit from it but less benefit than the price and thus does not consume, then there is a deadweight loss. In this case, piracy provides a net benefit to society. (Studies have shown that the sales-displacing effect of piracy in music ranges from 42% to no effect at all[1]. If all piracy could be prevented, that's an awfully large deadweight loss) [1] http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~rtelang/SmithTelang.pdf http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~rtelang/SmithTelang.pdf

alextgordon 15y ago

<rant> So then, what if I am willing to pay for it? I would very much like to watch US TV shows. Preferably on a computer, since I don't have a TV (but on TV would be a good effort too!) Unfortunately, somebody has decided that I am not allowed to. If try to buy Hulu Plus, I am greeted with a nice message telling me to fuck off back to where I came from. Same with Netflix. Hell, I can't even watch a 2 minute clip of the Daily Show without resorting to browser gymnastics. So I pirate US TV shows. Mercilessly. I can't see a downside. If the piracy has no effect on their profit margins, then we continue to get great TV content. If they go bankrupt, then some people who I violently despise lose their jobs. It's win/win!

Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
To me this - the market is not meeting the demand - is the single best argument. If something is available legally and at a reasonable price (by which I mean not only available second hand for £100 as a collectable, rather than "99p for an MP3, that's outrageous" etc...) I either buy it or accept I won't have it. If it's not available I have no real issue with getting it illegally. Frankly if the media companies adopted day and date releases worldwide for content and worked to make their back catalogues widely available through convenient means (by which iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and so on count) a lot of the best arguments in favour of piracy dry up.
- j-kidd 15y ago
  > If something is available legally and at a reasonable price (by which I mean not only available second hand for £100 as a collectable, rather than "99p for an MP3, that's outrageous" etc...) I either buy it or accept I won't have it. You are assuming the world is full of honorable people like yourself. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. In the words of Scott Adams: "The least effective system ever invented is something called the honor system. The theory guiding this system is that people are not huge weasels."
  - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
    I'm not necessarily suggesting that it's workable as a solution for the whole industry, more that for those who wish to "combat piracy", if you strip away the objections that honest people have, you have a better chance of making your case.

cturner 15y ago

Is it correct that your premise is that if you don't pay for something then you don't have the right to enjoy it? Do you also apply this principle to sex? What about borrowed books, good views, jokes, ideas, intelligent conversation, exercise?

city41 15y ago
Do you work for free? It's pretty essential to all of society that work and/or value is generally paid for. You demanding that content be available for free simply because you want it is no different from your boss deciding to not pay you because he doesn't want to. Yes people can choose to make their work available for free, and that's great. But that choice again lies in the person who created the work, not the person who consumes it. And to be perfectly clear, I have no delusion that piracy will ever go away. It's a fact of the digital world. My point is pirates should not delude themselves into thinking what they do is justified. It's not.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  The value of said work lies in the consumer, not the producer. If consumers by in large don't want to pay for something, then it simply isn't valuable and producing something in that segment and then complaining about piracy is rather pointless. You know going in consumers don't value that because they're accustomed to getting it for free. You had better expect piracy.
  - cturner 15y ago
    Your point about value lying in the consumer is a good response to the parent. The parent implies that society should invent business models to protect people who do things (but then even fails to make the point through use of word "generally"). However, I don't think the rest of your points are strong. People might not want to pay for apples, but that doesn't give them the justification to steal them. That's not because they don't value them - clearly they do. Or else they wouldn't want them. Copying is different to stealing because in copying you don't deprive the creating from anything apart from completely arbitrary rights that the law grants to them. It may also be worth raising that there's room for a difference between protection of 1. privacy (this photo is of me and I don't want it released because that would be invasive to a reasonable definition of privacy); 2. first release (I created something but it's personal, I haven't released it to anyone, and don't want people redistributing it - this is an anti-right, but more reasonable than the next one); 3. Protection of publishers (I create something, and the government gives me a monopoly over all copies and derivatives of it to such an extent that government invades people's civil liberties to protect my business models).

rdtsc 15y ago

> they have no right to enjoy it. Why? Where did that right comes from. Who legislates enjoyment? Or are you saying it is a moral law?