4 ms·

The computer geek in me agrees with this guy, but the business major in me just laughed. Not because of his arguments -- they are sound, in my opinion -- but be

by tomc1985 15y ago

The computer geek in me agrees with this guy, but the business major in me just laughed. Not because of his arguments -- they are sound, in my opinion -- but because of his attitude. I fail to see how this 'petulant child' attitude that we geeks like to adopt re: DRM does us any good. Yes, shit be expensive, yo. But taking an uncompromising attitude, especially when we are nothing more than a vocal minority... it's like we want the larger world to not take geeks seriously. And World of Goo for $20? Please. It's so easy to find games at a discount that buying software online at full price is borderline idiotic. WOG, like many games (esp. indie titles), is regularly discounted through the myriad different channels it is sold in. (Humble Indie Bundle is one.) All you need is patience. On another note: World of Goo is not worth $20? Really? There seems to be this growing attitude of petulant, childish snobbery among us geeks. "We're ADD, broke, impatient, and really, really lazy, and because we're your customers you do what we say or we pirate your shit." That's the vibe I got from Why I Pirate, and it's a vibe that smells like extortion. Giving the media companies a taste of their own medicine, perhaps? I can see the suits reading this little piece and instantly binning it. You catch more flies with honey, not vinegar. I really like YC's stance on Hollywood (re: funding more startups that attack hollywood directly)... we all agree that Big Content needs to die, and they're putting money down to help. Writing longwinded, rambling TL;DR diatribes (hint: the 20,000 character limit is there for a REASON) does not. Remember that we're nothing more than a vocal minority. Act as such.

AndrewDucker 15y ago
I'm not convinced that we are a vocal minority when it comes to piracy. I think that many, many people act in the way described in his post. And that more do so every day.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  True, at least geeks generally have specific qualms with the content industries like DRM etc and most of us believe that there needs to be some sustainable way of financing these works. For most people the attitude is closer to "I can get it for free so I'll take it shrug"
  - AndrewDucker 15y ago
    Geeks tend to have more philosophical differences with things like DRM. But real people get annoyed with them the first time it hits them (like UBISofts DRM servers going down, or realising they can't take their Kindle books to a different book reader).
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      I think we have philosophical differences partly because we can see the potential impact on all users somewhat ahead of time. It's quite hard to convince people that it really is important to maintain some ability to control their own computing devices even if they have no intention of directly doing so themselves. I often think that climate scientists must have similar problems.
- tomc1985 15y ago
  The non-geeks -- at least, the ones that can afford Netflix, Hulu, etc -- are satisfied. iTunes/Spotify/Grooveshark has most-to-all of the music they want, Hulu and Netflix cover the video stuff... there doesn't seem to be as much piracy coming from the mainstream crowd now that more convenient options are available. The same could be said with gamers, though they are a little more prone to piracy. What's with the author's Steam hatred? Do people still do that? (Soooo 2005, guys) What is there to hate about Steam when nearly every other media platform is worse? Steam is leaps and bounds better than the competition, AND it supports indie devs fairly, AND its got some pretty cool features, AND everyone still gets paid. Yes we geeks want unprotected super duper high quality downloads that we can transcode to 80,000,000 devices in a billion different formats. We want these things because we're nerds. Most people aren't nerds, and they don't care. Ours is a quixotic fight with unreasonable (at this time) demands, and totally undeserving of the relentless sense of entitlement we seem to feel towards it. We're forgetting that, in the end, this is all about entertainment. Not poverty, not starvation, not joblessness. Just entertainment -- diversions, mostly. There's a million ways to entertain oneself, and most of them don't involve Big Content. http://i39.tinypic.com/15n7sj6.jpg http://i39.tinypic.com/15n7sj6.jpg
- krschultz 15y ago
  We don't matter. Think about the pricing of HDMI cables. You and I both know you can pick them up on Amazon for $7. But Best Buy charges $50. There is no real difference. Why doesn't Best Buy charge $10 or something like that? They are literally ripping people off. Let's say that the cost to Best Buy is $5. If they charge $10, they make $5 each. If they sell it for $50, they make $45 each. Obviously a lot of people will just order it online. But when you are making 9x the profit for each one, you can lose 80% of the people and still come out ahead. So they can make albums cost $2 and hopefully capture 100% of all people, or they continue charge $10 and lose some people. Again, as long as they're not losing 80% of people, they are coming out ahead. And I'm not convinced that at $2 you would get 100% of people.
  - mkoivuni 15y ago
    Well said, in that light you could even view the content providers as altruistic by relying on those with the money to pay higher prices while those without resort to piracy and get it for free.
  - afterburner 15y ago
    "on Amazon for $7" Or on Monoprice for $1 ;)
  - dyselon 15y ago
    I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but if we don't matter to content creators, I'm baffled as to why they spend so much time bitching about us.
crusso 15y ago
Well said -- although I think that there is a "market" for this kind of diatribe. Obviously HN sent it up its list, so you know that Reddit loves it. There's a fringe element like myself that doesn't really care about free downloading but that also doesn't care for Big Content and the way that they have such a disproportionate influence on law enforcement, culture, and politics. At the least, it's good that some folks get a reminder that all the Chicken Little tactics of Big Content don't match up with their market performance. It's good because it's a reminder that when they see a Chris Dodd getting cosy with some politicians or bills... that's a bad thing and they should vote against it/them.

AndrewDucker 15y ago

I'm not convinced that we are a vocal minority when it comes to piracy. I think that many, many people act in the way described in his post. And that more do so every day.

jiggy2011 15y ago
True, at least geeks generally have specific qualms with the content industries like DRM etc and most of us believe that there needs to be some sustainable way of financing these works. For most people the attitude is closer to "I can get it for free so I'll take it shrug"
- AndrewDucker 15y ago
  Geeks tend to have more philosophical differences with things like DRM. But real people get annoyed with them the first time it hits them (like UBISofts DRM servers going down, or realising they can't take their Kindle books to a different book reader).
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    I think we have philosophical differences partly because we can see the potential impact on all users somewhat ahead of time. It's quite hard to convince people that it really is important to maintain some ability to control their own computing devices even if they have no intention of directly doing so themselves. I often think that climate scientists must have similar problems.
tomc1985 15y ago
The non-geeks -- at least, the ones that can afford Netflix, Hulu, etc -- are satisfied. iTunes/Spotify/Grooveshark has most-to-all of the music they want, Hulu and Netflix cover the video stuff... there doesn't seem to be as much piracy coming from the mainstream crowd now that more convenient options are available. The same could be said with gamers, though they are a little more prone to piracy. What's with the author's Steam hatred? Do people still do that? (Soooo 2005, guys) What is there to hate about Steam when nearly every other media platform is worse? Steam is leaps and bounds better than the competition, AND it supports indie devs fairly, AND its got some pretty cool features, AND everyone still gets paid. Yes we geeks want unprotected super duper high quality downloads that we can transcode to 80,000,000 devices in a billion different formats. We want these things because we're nerds. Most people aren't nerds, and they don't care. Ours is a quixotic fight with unreasonable (at this time) demands, and totally undeserving of the relentless sense of entitlement we seem to feel towards it. We're forgetting that, in the end, this is all about entertainment. Not poverty, not starvation, not joblessness. Just entertainment -- diversions, mostly. There's a million ways to entertain oneself, and most of them don't involve Big Content. http://i39.tinypic.com/15n7sj6.jpg http://i39.tinypic.com/15n7sj6.jpg
krschultz 15y ago
We don't matter. Think about the pricing of HDMI cables. You and I both know you can pick them up on Amazon for $7. But Best Buy charges $50. There is no real difference. Why doesn't Best Buy charge $10 or something like that? They are literally ripping people off. Let's say that the cost to Best Buy is $5. If they charge $10, they make $5 each. If they sell it for $50, they make $45 each. Obviously a lot of people will just order it online. But when you are making 9x the profit for each one, you can lose 80% of the people and still come out ahead. So they can make albums cost $2 and hopefully capture 100% of all people, or they continue charge $10 and lose some people. Again, as long as they're not losing 80% of people, they are coming out ahead. And I'm not convinced that at $2 you would get 100% of people.
- mkoivuni 15y ago
  Well said, in that light you could even view the content providers as altruistic by relying on those with the money to pay higher prices while those without resort to piracy and get it for free.
- afterburner 15y ago
  "on Amazon for $7" Or on Monoprice for $1 ;)
- dyselon 15y ago
  I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but if we don't matter to content creators, I'm baffled as to why they spend so much time bitching about us.

crusso 15y ago

Well said -- although I think that there is a "market" for this kind of diatribe. Obviously HN sent it up its list, so you know that Reddit loves it. There's a fringe element like myself that doesn't really care about free downloading but that also doesn't care for Big Content and the way that they have such a disproportionate influence on law enforcement, culture, and politics. At the least, it's good that some folks get a reminder that all the Chicken Little tactics of Big Content don't match up with their market performance. It's good because it's a reminder that when they see a Chris Dodd getting cosy with some politicians or bills... that's a bad thing and they should vote against it/them.