5 ms·

On pirates and piracy

152 points by jamesbritt 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
benvanderbeek 15y ago
This part of the final paragraph summarizes it well. "[St] Augustine tells the parable of a pirate captain who is captured and brought before Alexander the Great. The emperor says "How dare you terrorize the seas"? The pirate captain replies, "How dare you terrorize the whole world? Because I only have one ship, I'm called a pirate; because you have a great navy, you're called an emperor." The difference between a pirate and an emperor is one of scale only."
bad_user 15y ago
This article has a really good point - the discussion should shift from SOPA to how fucked-up and rotten these industries have become, on how they are destroying jobs, on how they are stifling creativity and ripping-off authors, on how they've abused the DMCA and on how they are bribing politicians.
- Volpe 15y ago
  Now now, everyone bribes politicians you can't single out one industry ;)
  - bad_user 15y ago
    Well, you can discus the morality of donations, but when you make public statements such as [1]: Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. If that's not bribery, then what is? [1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate-chris-dodd-and-mpaa-bribery-after-he-publicly-admited-bribing-politicans-pass/DffX0YQv https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate...
    - mc32 15y ago
      How is that any different from a private citizen saying, "Those who count on the elderly for support need to understand we'll be watching very carefully who's going to stand up for MedicAid when their jobs are at stake"? Bribery is, "Hey congressperson, I've got twenty thousand dollars that are yours if you change ordinance code to allow alcohol to be served at local gas stations." Usually the FBI is very keen to find corrupt politicians, so if there is a whiff, and for all we know, there might be in this case, but we don't know yet, they'll pursue it. Here's a partial list: http://www.topix.com/forum/world/russia/TTEIUECQCP1EGDHCL http://www.topix.com/forum/world/russia/TTEIUECQCP1EGDHCL It's not always clear-cut, but my understanding is that there needs to be an implication of a promise of direct action as a result of exchange of goods, money, services, etc.
      - Volpe 15y ago
        A little naive to think that's the only form of bribery. Campaign contributions are probably one of the biggest forms of bribery in the US. Regardless of whether you "ask for direct action" it is implicit that if the Tobacco industry gives you money, you don't go shitting all over the Tobacco industry, unless you don't want/need that money any more. It's still a bribe/corruption, but it seems it has become 'acceptable' in the US.
      - bad_user 15y ago
        I view donations this way ... I like you, I hope you succeed, here's some money to go forth and kick-ass. I view donations-related bribery this way ... my interests are important, here's some money to let you know how important they are ... you do know that I sell alcohol at local gas stations, right? Also, did I mention how I only sponsor politicians that serve my interests?. Yes, that's not explicit by itself. $500,000 ending up in some bank account is the explicit part. The government's purpose is to serve the interests of all the country's citizens, instead of listening to the highest bidder. How can that still be framed as free speech beats me.
jerf 15y ago
"At O'Reilly, we had a narrow escape a few years ago. "Head First Java" starts each chapter with an image taken from an old movie for which the copyright had expired, placing the movie in the public domain. Someone collected several of those movies into DVDs and copyrighted the DVD. Luckily, we discovered it (and were able to find new images) before we published the book and ended up with a court summons." I don't think that's how it works. You can take anything you want out of the public domain, make minimal changes to it meeting a certain standard, and copyright the result, but that only gives you a copyright to the result. You don't suddenly own the thing in the public domain, which would be utterly absurd. They may have been concerned about getting sued by someone claiming they took it from their resulting copyright work rather than the original public domain work, but even that would have been very easy to defend against and a lawsuit in bad faith to boot. (And those are just a constant threat, regardless.) I'll copy to only being a very interested layman and not a lawyer, but I've never heard of individuals being able to just reach out and grab things out of public domain at will and fully own them. If that were possible then there would simply be no such thing as public domain, and that's not the case.
- bad_user 15y ago
  So let's say that you release 2 DVDs with 3 movies each. Then a book, such as Head First Java has pictures in it from all 6 movies and no other. Clearly the selection of pictures in this case was inspired by the selection done for those 2 DVDs, is it not?
  - jerf 15y ago
    Bad example. Releasing those DVDs doesn't give you that much rights over the still-public-domain content. Look, it's not as if copyright isn't being abused rampantly by all sorts of parties from the top to the bottom, but let's not get stupid about it. There's no copyright doctrine that lets you own the entire idea of a particular list of six movies. Even to the extent you can have a collection copyright [1], that merely limits someone from releasing two DVDs with the exact same movies, if indeed it would even limit that as you'd at least face a bit of a challenge in convincing a judge that meets a minimum creativity bar. (Collections covered by that clause are generally somewhat larger.) Now more than ever, it's important to know exactly what we're facing and exactly what we're not facing, because if we let ourselves get sidetracked by entirely non-existent threats that's energy we're not spending on the real ones. [1]: http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm
breck 15y ago
Joel Spolsky offered the one and only sensible way to fight back that will actually work: go on the offensive and get legislation introduced to roll back the extensions of copyright & other IP laws. For example: "Roll back length of copyright protection to the minimum necessary "to promote the useful arts." Maybe 10 years?" Not only should these laws be rolled back anyway IMO, but by merely pushing for these you'll drain the resources of the RIAA&co so their offensive campaign stops. (https://plus.google.com/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSyaTf https://plus.google.com/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSy...)
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  If this is a game of setting the Overton Window then we absolutely have to push back, ideally with Draconian suggestions. The goal is to make the idea of rolling back copyright duration to 10 years appear to be quite a sensible compromise.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Anyone taking that approach will need to figure out how to counter the "international treaties that can only be modified by unanimous consent require us to have insanely long copyright terms" argument.
    - thyrsus 15y ago
      Reasonable: A treaty not in the interest of the United States nor of any free society should be abrogated. Nauseatingly effective: you would take Hollywood bribes to forfeit U.S. sovereignty to those socialist Europeans and thieving Asians?
- earbitscom 15y ago
  I could seemingly get behind a much shorter copyright term. However, won't the enforcement measures needed to protect those new works be just as complex, ineffective or invasive as they are for 70 year copyrights? Enforcing copyrighted works, no matter how long or short the period, would require much the same overreaching action, right?
Dn_Ab 15y ago
I have to say, if how this SOPA,PIPA,ACTA,megavideo stuff is working out was planned ahead, expected, executed and coordinated; I can't help but be incredibly impressed. If they anticipated and had plans for all these paths then I have to admit my admiration for their brilliance. From a game theoretic point of view these lobbyists or government groups or what have you were doing 5-step+ thinking. With respect to the recent events, everyone, including the tech community got played. Maybe not a Xanatos Gambit but verging on it. Over time they quietly passed a slew of boring laws with aggregate equivalence near enough to SOPA - just without the concentrated firepower. With the recent ACTA, there is now an international baseline for the basic framework to tackle these things. In the US, SOPA and PIPA could have even been red herrings. Tying up attention bandwidth and energy so they could later go ahead and pass future laws and enact similar initiatives, with SOPA as the new reference point. Knowing the people would be drained and full from victory. Basic psychology. And if SOPA passed, well the more the merrier. With that in place - even in the case of the failure of SOPA, the implications were clear. Nuclear options are on the table. Regardless of the success of the bill, they had a target, a well known centralized file sharing service. There were plenty of others, why megaupload? It is one of the most well known with some of the largest mindshare. Make an example of them and send a signal to similar and future services. With SOPA fresh in mind and now megaupload's demise, a chain reaction of similar services are either ending sharing or plain shutting down and taking people's files with them. Causing a cascade to all other services built on them - some legitimate the rest questionable. With this case a precedent is set, the significance and direction of which I am not studied enough to know. But anyways, this is just for file sharing and counterfeiting services no? They deserve to be taken down as most of their stuff is illegal. Even if the things that we feared would happen in the event of SOPA is now voluntarily occurring to that group they should have known the risks when choosing to take that direction. I don't know if it is appropriate to post the "First they came for the..." that is making its way around (maybe too much) but from an intellectual point of view this is amazing to watch unfold. Most of these bill writers probably have positive intent but the interactions involved are extremely nonlinear and sensitive, humans are not yet anywhere near intelligent enough to try and control such a dynamic and complex network without unintentionally compounding the scope, destabilization and extent of their actions. Morphing the entire network of interactions into something with consequences no one can truly predict. But even as many fall, the constant energy into the system will likely create a more complex, less centralized and bullet proof internet and society in general (hopefully). So I suppose the good thing is that the media company truly care about the internet. They are pushing its evolution to something more robust and are fighting complacency. Just need to be careful to not overwhelm positive energy with dissipative forces and cause extinction.
drostie 15y ago
I commented on the original but I think that others here might also value this here: I liked this post and the way that it turns the question of piracy upon itself, but I still felt like there were about three dramatic ideas missing, so I wrote those up and put them on my web site briefly: http://drostie.org/on_copying.html http://drostie.org/on_copying.html I fear I was too verbose in that essay and perhaps I will edit it more later -- but basically, those ideas are (1) that easy copying has led to an absurd situation where you can buy things without getting them; (2) that copying is both absurdly natural and restricting copying is absurdly natural, so that we feel entitled to do both; and (3) that the media companies today face an absurd situation where they fight for their lives -- and as Y Combinator said, they might do quite a bit of damage on their way down.

152 points by jamesbritt 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

This part of the final paragraph summarizes it well. "[St] Augustine tells the parable of a pirate captain who is captured and brought before Alexander the Great. The emperor says "How dare you terrorize the seas"? The pirate captain replies, "How dare you terrorize the whole world? Because I only have one ship, I'm called a pirate; because you have a great navy, you're called an emperor." The difference between a pirate and an emperor is one of scale only."

bad_user 15y ago

This article has a really good point - the discussion should shift from SOPA to how fucked-up and rotten these industries have become, on how they are destroying jobs, on how they are stifling creativity and ripping-off authors, on how they've abused the DMCA and on how they are bribing politicians.

Volpe 15y ago
Now now, everyone bribes politicians you can't single out one industry ;)
- bad_user 15y ago
  Well, you can discus the morality of donations, but when you make public statements such as [1]: Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. If that's not bribery, then what is? [1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate-chris-dodd-and-mpaa-bribery-after-he-publicly-admited-bribing-politicans-pass/DffX0YQv https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate...
  - mc32 15y ago
    How is that any different from a private citizen saying, "Those who count on the elderly for support need to understand we'll be watching very carefully who's going to stand up for MedicAid when their jobs are at stake"? Bribery is, "Hey congressperson, I've got twenty thousand dollars that are yours if you change ordinance code to allow alcohol to be served at local gas stations." Usually the FBI is very keen to find corrupt politicians, so if there is a whiff, and for all we know, there might be in this case, but we don't know yet, they'll pursue it. Here's a partial list: http://www.topix.com/forum/world/russia/TTEIUECQCP1EGDHCL http://www.topix.com/forum/world/russia/TTEIUECQCP1EGDHCL It's not always clear-cut, but my understanding is that there needs to be an implication of a promise of direct action as a result of exchange of goods, money, services, etc.
    - Volpe 15y ago
      A little naive to think that's the only form of bribery. Campaign contributions are probably one of the biggest forms of bribery in the US. Regardless of whether you "ask for direct action" it is implicit that if the Tobacco industry gives you money, you don't go shitting all over the Tobacco industry, unless you don't want/need that money any more. It's still a bribe/corruption, but it seems it has become 'acceptable' in the US.
    - bad_user 15y ago
      I view donations this way ... I like you, I hope you succeed, here's some money to go forth and kick-ass. I view donations-related bribery this way ... my interests are important, here's some money to let you know how important they are ... you do know that I sell alcohol at local gas stations, right? Also, did I mention how I only sponsor politicians that serve my interests?. Yes, that's not explicit by itself. $500,000 ending up in some bank account is the explicit part. The government's purpose is to serve the interests of all the country's citizens, instead of listening to the highest bidder. How can that still be framed as free speech beats me.

jerf 15y ago

"At O'Reilly, we had a narrow escape a few years ago. "Head First Java" starts each chapter with an image taken from an old movie for which the copyright had expired, placing the movie in the public domain. Someone collected several of those movies into DVDs and copyrighted the DVD. Luckily, we discovered it (and were able to find new images) before we published the book and ended up with a court summons." I don't think that's how it works. You can take anything you want out of the public domain, make minimal changes to it meeting a certain standard, and copyright the result, but that only gives you a copyright to the result. You don't suddenly own the thing in the public domain, which would be utterly absurd. They may have been concerned about getting sued by someone claiming they took it from their resulting copyright work rather than the original public domain work, but even that would have been very easy to defend against and a lawsuit in bad faith to boot. (And those are just a constant threat, regardless.) I'll copy to only being a very interested layman and not a lawyer, but I've never heard of individuals being able to just reach out and grab things out of public domain at will and fully own them. If that were possible then there would simply be no such thing as public domain, and that's not the case.

bad_user 15y ago
So let's say that you release 2 DVDs with 3 movies each. Then a book, such as Head First Java has pictures in it from all 6 movies and no other. Clearly the selection of pictures in this case was inspired by the selection done for those 2 DVDs, is it not?
- jerf 15y ago
  Bad example. Releasing those DVDs doesn't give you that much rights over the still-public-domain content. Look, it's not as if copyright isn't being abused rampantly by all sorts of parties from the top to the bottom, but let's not get stupid about it. There's no copyright doctrine that lets you own the entire idea of a particular list of six movies. Even to the extent you can have a collection copyright [1], that merely limits someone from releasing two DVDs with the exact same movies, if indeed it would even limit that as you'd at least face a bit of a challenge in convincing a judge that meets a minimum creativity bar. (Collections covered by that clause are generally somewhat larger.) Now more than ever, it's important to know exactly what we're facing and exactly what we're not facing, because if we let ourselves get sidetracked by entirely non-existent threats that's energy we're not spending on the real ones. [1]: http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm

breck 15y ago

Joel Spolsky offered the one and only sensible way to fight back that will actually work: go on the offensive and get legislation introduced to roll back the extensions of copyright & other IP laws. For example: "Roll back length of copyright protection to the minimum necessary "to promote the useful arts." Maybe 10 years?" Not only should these laws be rolled back anyway IMO, but by merely pushing for these you'll drain the resources of the RIAA&co so their offensive campaign stops. (https://plus.google.com/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSyaTf https://plus.google.com/117114202722218150209/posts/4GgaRiSy...)

jamesbritt 15y ago
If this is a game of setting the Overton Window then we absolutely have to push back, ideally with Draconian suggestions. The goal is to make the idea of rolling back copyright duration to 10 years appear to be quite a sensible compromise.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  Anyone taking that approach will need to figure out how to counter the "international treaties that can only be modified by unanimous consent require us to have insanely long copyright terms" argument.
  - thyrsus 15y ago
    Reasonable: A treaty not in the interest of the United States nor of any free society should be abrogated. Nauseatingly effective: you would take Hollywood bribes to forfeit U.S. sovereignty to those socialist Europeans and thieving Asians?
earbitscom 15y ago
I could seemingly get behind a much shorter copyright term. However, won't the enforcement measures needed to protect those new works be just as complex, ineffective or invasive as they are for 70 year copyrights? Enforcing copyrighted works, no matter how long or short the period, would require much the same overreaching action, right?

Dn_Ab 15y ago

I have to say, if how this SOPA,PIPA,ACTA,megavideo stuff is working out was planned ahead, expected, executed and coordinated; I can't help but be incredibly impressed. If they anticipated and had plans for all these paths then I have to admit my admiration for their brilliance. From a game theoretic point of view these lobbyists or government groups or what have you were doing 5-step+ thinking. With respect to the recent events, everyone, including the tech community got played. Maybe not a Xanatos Gambit but verging on it. Over time they quietly passed a slew of boring laws with aggregate equivalence near enough to SOPA - just without the concentrated firepower. With the recent ACTA, there is now an international baseline for the basic framework to tackle these things. In the US, SOPA and PIPA could have even been red herrings. Tying up attention bandwidth and energy so they could later go ahead and pass future laws and enact similar initiatives, with SOPA as the new reference point. Knowing the people would be drained and full from victory. Basic psychology. And if SOPA passed, well the more the merrier. With that in place - even in the case of the failure of SOPA, the implications were clear. Nuclear options are on the table. Regardless of the success of the bill, they had a target, a well known centralized file sharing service. There were plenty of others, why megaupload? It is one of the most well known with some of the largest mindshare. Make an example of them and send a signal to similar and future services. With SOPA fresh in mind and now megaupload's demise, a chain reaction of similar services are either ending sharing or plain shutting down and taking people's files with them. Causing a cascade to all other services built on them - some legitimate the rest questionable. With this case a precedent is set, the significance and direction of which I am not studied enough to know. But anyways, this is just for file sharing and counterfeiting services no? They deserve to be taken down as most of their stuff is illegal. Even if the things that we feared would happen in the event of SOPA is now voluntarily occurring to that group they should have known the risks when choosing to take that direction. I don't know if it is appropriate to post the "First they came for the..." that is making its way around (maybe too much) but from an intellectual point of view this is amazing to watch unfold. Most of these bill writers probably have positive intent but the interactions involved are extremely nonlinear and sensitive, humans are not yet anywhere near intelligent enough to try and control such a dynamic and complex network without unintentionally compounding the scope, destabilization and extent of their actions. Morphing the entire network of interactions into something with consequences no one can truly predict. But even as many fall, the constant energy into the system will likely create a more complex, less centralized and bullet proof internet and society in general (hopefully). So I suppose the good thing is that the media company truly care about the internet. They are pushing its evolution to something more robust and are fighting complacency. Just need to be careful to not overwhelm positive energy with dissipative forces and cause extinction.

drostie 15y ago

I commented on the original but I think that others here might also value this here: I liked this post and the way that it turns the question of piracy upon itself, but I still felt like there were about three dramatic ideas missing, so I wrote those up and put them on my web site briefly: http://drostie.org/on_copying.html http://drostie.org/on_copying.html I fear I was too verbose in that essay and perhaps I will edit it more later -- but basically, those ideas are (1) that easy copying has led to an absurd situation where you can buy things without getting them; (2) that copying is both absurdly natural and restricting copying is absurdly natural, so that we feel entitled to do both; and (3) that the media companies today face an absurd situation where they fight for their lives -- and as Y Combinator said, they might do quite a bit of damage on their way down.