11 ms·

Copying Is Not Theft [video]

51 points by lagniappe 3y ago

seagreen 3y ago
I watched it, thought "this feels very last generation", and then saw it came out 13 years ago! Sidestepping the meaning of the word "theft", our situation is as follows. There are 3 ways to finance intellectual work: 1. $ 2. ads 3. nothing (and rely on gift-style work) I have a really, really strong opinion that one of these is terrible. So I think we should do whatever we can to encourage the others, especially the one that lets people pay for food. EDIT: I should note that I don't think the anti-copyright movement was bad during its time. They were definitely on the right side of things like Authors Guild v. Google. But I think the internet economy has gotten more mature and we now need more nuance than they provided.
- void-star 3y ago
  I’m not sure whether to call what we have now “nuanced” or whether it isn’t a result of that movement having mostly lost the fight some decade plus, though. Tried using a public library recently?
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
It can't be theft by definition, as no deprivation is taking place.
doodpants 3y ago
Based on a lot of the responses here, I feel compelled to say: saying "Copying is not theft" is not the same thing as saying "People should violate copyright law". I feel that "copying is not theft" is a truth that needs to be clarified because a lot of discussion around copyright and piracy tends to conflate copying and theft, which makes it natural to skew towards the point of view that the unauthorized sharing of content and ideas is an objectively immoral act, and paint the issue of piracy in terms of right and wrong, as opposed to legal vs. illegal. Whereas in my point of view, copyright law is an artificial construct that we as a society have chosen to enact, in order to support a certain model for financially compensating those who make creative works. Other societies may choose differently; copyright law is not a reflection of natural, fundamental morality regarding the sharing of ideas and creative works. In conclusion, when I personally say "copying is not theft", I'm simply saying, let's not conflate the issues, so we can have a more nuanced discussion. I'm not advocating piracy. And I would encourage others not to interpret "copying is not theft" that way.
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  I have chosen nothing. I was born here and you all have some shitty laws I don't agree with. There is nothing moral in dictating the "democratic majority"'s point of views on everyone. And not only because the government is corrupt and that's what the top 0.01% wants, not the majority - but because imposing ANY kind of freedom restriction (which doesn't violate the Non Aggression Principle) is violence. I'd recommend not to violate copyright (or other illegal victimless endeavours, eg. drugs), purely to stay away from trouble: the government has an armed force and can extort you even more money - or put you in a cage.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    I didn't choose to accept the NAP. It's a social construct just as much as copyright. It's certainly not a natural law, fundamental right, or immutable law of the universe.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  > that the unauthorized sharing of content and ideas is an objectively immoral act, and paint the issue of piracy in terms of right and wrong, as opposed to legal vs. illegal. Breaking the law is often considered immoral, depending on the person. > copyright law is an artificial construct Any human-made rule is artificial, any form of order in a society is artificial. Copyright laws are just on a very high level, compared to other rules. > copyright law is not a reflection of natural, fundamental morality regarding the sharing of ideas and creative works. There is nothing natural in creativity. It's all in your mind. There is also nothing natural about ownership, it's just rules that any higher society at some point considers as necessary. > In conclusion, when I personally say "copying is not theft", I'm simply saying, let's not conflate the issues, so we can have a more nuanced discussion. There is no nuanced discussion about this. Theft and stealing are legal terms. If you break the laws, they apply. If they not apply, you have not broken the law. The nuanced discussion is only about the laws themselves, whether they should exist and in which form and details. But this discussion is usually about whether people are willing to accept the foundation of society itself or not. In which case you could debate "nuanced" about any law.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
I had my own copyright infringed multiple times and honestly I don't care. It's a natural market tax for being popular, which likely means you are making plenty of money in sales as well. Of course I'll try to reduce the ways people can get my product for free so I can make more money, but I'm way more pissed about income tax, let's make that one illegal (as it once was). I can understand condemning the breach of contract of someone copying something they received and promised not to copy - but making simple for massive corporations to track and go after users is downright criminal and the nth demonstration that governments are corrupted and serve only the wealthy and powerful. Also, if I copied from someone else and I never accepted a contract with you, why should I limit what I can do? This is definitely not the pressing problem which needs a solution. While we're at it, let's get rid of patents too and allow copying ideas in our own country - so that we won't have to wait for a chinese rip-off in order to get cheaper products.
heroprotagonist 3y ago
If they won't let us own it even when we pay for it, we obviously can't steal it. We get permission to watch. If we watch without paying (or watching some ads in lieu of payment, or sponging off someone who has been authorised to display it to us like a hotel room or public air station), we are viewing without authorization. Just moving around bits from one machine to another isn't viewing in a traditional sense, though we might say our computer is viewing it without authorization. In which case, arrest the computer.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
When I saw the title I knew it would be by Nina Paley!
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  I loved her Mimi and Eunice cartoons in intellectual pooperty.
andsoitis 3y ago
Our minds have evolved to thinking of "theft" and "ownership" in terms of physical terms, for the most part. Digital presents dynamics that don't neatly fit that legacy mental model. With digital goods, it isn't about stealing a product. It is more about stealing an income stream or someone's time and labor. When I deprive someone of an income stream that they are able to generate without coercian (by forcing others to buy), I am stealing their income stream which is really stealing their labor and time. The object (in this case digital) is simply a proxy. Another angle to come at this from is to take it to the other extreme. If I spend all my days creating a digital product that people want, and everyone copies it, they are stealing my labor, my time, and I had no say in it.
- zerr 3y ago
  Unlike physical objects, copying digital goods has a zero cost, including for the author. So when the pricing does not reflect this (e.g. when ebook's and printed book's price is in the same order), it encourages unauthorised copying. It makes me think that sub-dollar and single digit pricing for digital goods are fair and expected.
  - sbuttgereit 3y ago
    This premise is terribly flawed and thus the conclusion is terribly flawed. First, the premise completely ignores the costs related to producing the original work being copied. That cost of development can at the very least be assigned to each copy made. And the assertion that "copying digital goods has a zero cost" is also false: if you've managed free access to electricity, storage, bandwidth, computer equipment, etc. let me know where so I can look to moving there. To be fair, many of those costs on a per unit basis are typically very small, but they are crucially not zero. Second. Prices are not a reflection of cost, but of value to the purchaser. Sure, when you produce a product, digital or otherwise, you are thinking about the cost to produce and trying to manage that aspect, but whatever the cost is it doesn't determine what the market will pay nor should it. If the product is highly valuable to a buyer, they'll pay more. To the degree you manage your costs relative to what the market will bear for the price, you will either profit to some variable degree or... if the market doesn't value you product for as much as it cost you... you'll lose your shirt. And yes, if I take a year to produce a piece of software and value my time producing it at say a modest $100k for my time, I could copy that software a billion times over only sell 10 copies: I'd only even break if each copy were sold at $10k each. It's true this isn't exactly a "Costs of Goods Sold" scenario in the regular sense, but it ultimately ends up meaning the same thing. So looking at just the cost of copying a digital asset without considering both the full cost of producing the asset relative to sales tells you nothing about what is fair in pricing. To be clear: a fair price is one where the money you spend on the product is less than the value you receive from that product in return. The actual dollar amount is irrelevant to it being a digital good, tangible good, or service.
RecycledEle 3y ago
Capitalism worked great for physical goods. Capitalism lifted more people out of poverty that any other system in human history. But capitalism has failed in the era of intellectual property. Students can not afford text books or online, machine-run certification prep classes. Authors and inventors get far less money than do corporate lawyers. I do not know of a good solution.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Reducing copyright to 10 years would be a good start. Disallow software patents and make it much easier/cheaper for patents to be disputed by prior art without having to pay to go to court.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Unfortunately, that’s a great argument… from anyone who has never run an online business, or developed a game, or written professional software. It’s so on the nose absurd in the logical conclusions of its worldview, that it’s a total nonstarter. I’m not saying I like the current regime; I’m saying this ain’t the solution.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  Nina Paley knows exactly what she's talking about, and she's trying to explain it to you here. Much of the current internet is based on Free/Libre/Open Source Software at least somewhere in the stack. Of the world's top 10 most visited websites, at least one is 100% Creative Commons. Several others have large chunks of FLOSS in the software stack. Feel free to disbelieve, but be aware that you've already been out-competed by people who DO participate in and/or make use of our digital commons (fairly or unfairly).
- raspyberr 3y ago
  Nina Paley has made comics, films, shorts, and she sells merchandise. Clearly something's working for her.
- iopq 3y ago
  I've ran an online business If we released our source code it would do absolutely nothing, since you don't have our business partners or customer base. All you could do is publish pages that look like ours
dist-epoch 3y ago
HN agrees with this. HN does not agree that AI should be allowed to train on copyrighted data and says that AI companies are "stealing" other people's work.
- zerr 3y ago
  `Copying for yourself` vs `copying for profit`
- xigoi 3y ago
  I think AI shouldn't get to have its cake and eat it too. If you train on copyrighted data because you don't believe in copyright, then you should also open-source the thing you trained.
  - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
    This is not the legal argument used for AI training. The legal argument that is used is that the way AI training works is in fact specifically permitted by copyright law (in the EU), or by fair use (in the US). This HN thread has a bit more detail, including links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37879938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37879938 If you don't want to click through and just read the argument presented by OpenAI on this topic, you can find it here: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_RFC-84-FR-58141.pdf https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_R...
    - xigoi 3y ago
      I'm not talking about how it works, but how it should work.
      - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
        > "If you train on copyrighted data because you don't believe in copyright" OpenAI may or may not believe in copyright, but they don't believe it applies in their case. From a different angle the US Copyright Office tends to agree, not accepting copyright registration for AI works. [2] We may end up agreeing that AI models and their output should be open source or even public domain. However, I would not argue that on the basis of "because the makers do not believe in copyright". I think the copyright argument might be orthogonal in general. [2] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05321/copyright-registration-guidance-works-containing-material-generated-by-artificial-intelligence https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05...
bumby 3y ago
Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution says, “Congress shall have power… to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The intent of limiting "copying" is that it protects the incentive of people to create, and through creation, progress of "science and useful arts." This video takes an overly simplified view of intellectual property. Imagine you spend a decade researching and developing a new tech product; as soon as it's to market everyone gets to copy it and, at least from a financial standpoint, you get nothing. That means most of the advancement will be left to those who already have the times and means to be scientific dilettantes, like the 18th and 19th centuries.
- appplication 3y ago
  I understand there is a whole contingent of humanity to which the constitution is holy gospel, but the thoughts of a small group of men 250 years ago on the issue is not really relevant to modern conversation on how to handle digital rights.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Do you have a non-ad hominem response to the point that was made?
    - appplication 3y ago
      If you felt that was an ad hominem, know that was not my intent. I do think it is a very salient point to bring up that when those words were written the concept of digital ownership and copying did not exist, nor did any meaningful parallels to such.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        It's ad hominem against the people who think the Constitution is good. That's even more irrelevant to the point than the other ad hominem, which is against the people who wrote it. If the principle doesn't hold up now, say why. What you're saying is salient is absolutely not. It's just "old thing bad". If it's bad it could've been written yesterday or a thousand years ago; same if it's good. Why do you think it's bad? Or do you only think in ad hominem?

51 points by lagniappe 3y ago

I watched it, thought "this feels very last generation", and then saw it came out 13 years ago! Sidestepping the meaning of the word "theft", our situation is as follows. There are 3 ways to finance intellectual work: 1. $ 2. ads 3. nothing (and rely on gift-style work) I have a really, really strong opinion that one of these is terrible. So I think we should do whatever we can to encourage the others, especially the one that lets people pay for food. EDIT: I should note that I don't think the anti-copyright movement was bad during its time. They were definitely on the right side of things like Authors Guild v. Google. But I think the internet economy has gotten more mature and we now need more nuance than they provided.

void-star 3y ago
I’m not sure whether to call what we have now “nuanced” or whether it isn’t a result of that movement having mostly lost the fight some decade plus, though. Tried using a public library recently?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

It can't be theft by definition, as no deprivation is taking place.

doodpants 3y ago

Based on a lot of the responses here, I feel compelled to say: saying "Copying is not theft" is not the same thing as saying "People should violate copyright law". I feel that "copying is not theft" is a truth that needs to be clarified because a lot of discussion around copyright and piracy tends to conflate copying and theft, which makes it natural to skew towards the point of view that the unauthorized sharing of content and ideas is an objectively immoral act, and paint the issue of piracy in terms of right and wrong, as opposed to legal vs. illegal. Whereas in my point of view, copyright law is an artificial construct that we as a society have chosen to enact, in order to support a certain model for financially compensating those who make creative works. Other societies may choose differently; copyright law is not a reflection of natural, fundamental morality regarding the sharing of ideas and creative works. In conclusion, when I personally say "copying is not theft", I'm simply saying, let's not conflate the issues, so we can have a more nuanced discussion. I'm not advocating piracy. And I would encourage others not to interpret "copying is not theft" that way.

jokethrowaway 3y ago
I have chosen nothing. I was born here and you all have some shitty laws I don't agree with. There is nothing moral in dictating the "democratic majority"'s point of views on everyone. And not only because the government is corrupt and that's what the top 0.01% wants, not the majority - but because imposing ANY kind of freedom restriction (which doesn't violate the Non Aggression Principle) is violence. I'd recommend not to violate copyright (or other illegal victimless endeavours, eg. drugs), purely to stay away from trouble: the government has an armed force and can extort you even more money - or put you in a cage.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  I didn't choose to accept the NAP. It's a social construct just as much as copyright. It's certainly not a natural law, fundamental right, or immutable law of the universe.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
> that the unauthorized sharing of content and ideas is an objectively immoral act, and paint the issue of piracy in terms of right and wrong, as opposed to legal vs. illegal. Breaking the law is often considered immoral, depending on the person. > copyright law is an artificial construct Any human-made rule is artificial, any form of order in a society is artificial. Copyright laws are just on a very high level, compared to other rules. > copyright law is not a reflection of natural, fundamental morality regarding the sharing of ideas and creative works. There is nothing natural in creativity. It's all in your mind. There is also nothing natural about ownership, it's just rules that any higher society at some point considers as necessary. > In conclusion, when I personally say "copying is not theft", I'm simply saying, let's not conflate the issues, so we can have a more nuanced discussion. There is no nuanced discussion about this. Theft and stealing are legal terms. If you break the laws, they apply. If they not apply, you have not broken the law. The nuanced discussion is only about the laws themselves, whether they should exist and in which form and details. But this discussion is usually about whether people are willing to accept the foundation of society itself or not. In which case you could debate "nuanced" about any law.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

I had my own copyright infringed multiple times and honestly I don't care. It's a natural market tax for being popular, which likely means you are making plenty of money in sales as well. Of course I'll try to reduce the ways people can get my product for free so I can make more money, but I'm way more pissed about income tax, let's make that one illegal (as it once was). I can understand condemning the breach of contract of someone copying something they received and promised not to copy - but making simple for massive corporations to track and go after users is downright criminal and the nth demonstration that governments are corrupted and serve only the wealthy and powerful. Also, if I copied from someone else and I never accepted a contract with you, why should I limit what I can do? This is definitely not the pressing problem which needs a solution. While we're at it, let's get rid of patents too and allow copying ideas in our own country - so that we won't have to wait for a chinese rip-off in order to get cheaper products.

heroprotagonist 3y ago

If they won't let us own it even when we pay for it, we obviously can't steal it. We get permission to watch. If we watch without paying (or watching some ads in lieu of payment, or sponging off someone who has been authorised to display it to us like a hotel room or public air station), we are viewing without authorization. Just moving around bits from one machine to another isn't viewing in a traditional sense, though we might say our computer is viewing it without authorization. In which case, arrest the computer.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

When I saw the title I knew it would be by Nina Paley!

RecycledEle 3y ago
I loved her Mimi and Eunice cartoons in intellectual pooperty.

andsoitis 3y ago

Our minds have evolved to thinking of "theft" and "ownership" in terms of physical terms, for the most part. Digital presents dynamics that don't neatly fit that legacy mental model. With digital goods, it isn't about stealing a product. It is more about stealing an income stream or someone's time and labor. When I deprive someone of an income stream that they are able to generate without coercian (by forcing others to buy), I am stealing their income stream which is really stealing their labor and time. The object (in this case digital) is simply a proxy. Another angle to come at this from is to take it to the other extreme. If I spend all my days creating a digital product that people want, and everyone copies it, they are stealing my labor, my time, and I had no say in it.

zerr 3y ago
Unlike physical objects, copying digital goods has a zero cost, including for the author. So when the pricing does not reflect this (e.g. when ebook's and printed book's price is in the same order), it encourages unauthorised copying. It makes me think that sub-dollar and single digit pricing for digital goods are fair and expected.
- sbuttgereit 3y ago
  This premise is terribly flawed and thus the conclusion is terribly flawed. First, the premise completely ignores the costs related to producing the original work being copied. That cost of development can at the very least be assigned to each copy made. And the assertion that "copying digital goods has a zero cost" is also false: if you've managed free access to electricity, storage, bandwidth, computer equipment, etc. let me know where so I can look to moving there. To be fair, many of those costs on a per unit basis are typically very small, but they are crucially not zero. Second. Prices are not a reflection of cost, but of value to the purchaser. Sure, when you produce a product, digital or otherwise, you are thinking about the cost to produce and trying to manage that aspect, but whatever the cost is it doesn't determine what the market will pay nor should it. If the product is highly valuable to a buyer, they'll pay more. To the degree you manage your costs relative to what the market will bear for the price, you will either profit to some variable degree or... if the market doesn't value you product for as much as it cost you... you'll lose your shirt. And yes, if I take a year to produce a piece of software and value my time producing it at say a modest $100k for my time, I could copy that software a billion times over only sell 10 copies: I'd only even break if each copy were sold at $10k each. It's true this isn't exactly a "Costs of Goods Sold" scenario in the regular sense, but it ultimately ends up meaning the same thing. So looking at just the cost of copying a digital asset without considering both the full cost of producing the asset relative to sales tells you nothing about what is fair in pricing. To be clear: a fair price is one where the money you spend on the product is less than the value you receive from that product in return. The actual dollar amount is irrelevant to it being a digital good, tangible good, or service.

RecycledEle 3y ago

Capitalism worked great for physical goods. Capitalism lifted more people out of poverty that any other system in human history. But capitalism has failed in the era of intellectual property. Students can not afford text books or online, machine-run certification prep classes. Authors and inventors get far less money than do corporate lawyers. I do not know of a good solution.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Reducing copyright to 10 years would be a good start. Disallow software patents and make it much easier/cheaper for patents to be disputed by prior art without having to pay to go to court.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Unfortunately, that’s a great argument… from anyone who has never run an online business, or developed a game, or written professional software. It’s so on the nose absurd in the logical conclusions of its worldview, that it’s a total nonstarter. I’m not saying I like the current regime; I’m saying this ain’t the solution.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Nina Paley knows exactly what she's talking about, and she's trying to explain it to you here. Much of the current internet is based on Free/Libre/Open Source Software at least somewhere in the stack. Of the world's top 10 most visited websites, at least one is 100% Creative Commons. Several others have large chunks of FLOSS in the software stack. Feel free to disbelieve, but be aware that you've already been out-competed by people who DO participate in and/or make use of our digital commons (fairly or unfairly).
raspyberr 3y ago
Nina Paley has made comics, films, shorts, and she sells merchandise. Clearly something's working for her.
iopq 3y ago
I've ran an online business If we released our source code it would do absolutely nothing, since you don't have our business partners or customer base. All you could do is publish pages that look like ours

dist-epoch 3y ago

HN agrees with this. HN does not agree that AI should be allowed to train on copyrighted data and says that AI companies are "stealing" other people's work.

zerr 3y ago
`Copying for yourself` vs `copying for profit`
xigoi 3y ago
I think AI shouldn't get to have its cake and eat it too. If you train on copyrighted data because you don't believe in copyright, then you should also open-source the thing you trained.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  This is not the legal argument used for AI training. The legal argument that is used is that the way AI training works is in fact specifically permitted by copyright law (in the EU), or by fair use (in the US). This HN thread has a bit more detail, including links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37879938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37879938 If you don't want to click through and just read the argument presented by OpenAI on this topic, you can find it here: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_RFC-84-FR-58141.pdf https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/OpenAI_R...
  - xigoi 3y ago
    I'm not talking about how it works, but how it should work.
    - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
      > "If you train on copyrighted data because you don't believe in copyright" OpenAI may or may not believe in copyright, but they don't believe it applies in their case. From a different angle the US Copyright Office tends to agree, not accepting copyright registration for AI works. [2] We may end up agreeing that AI models and their output should be open source or even public domain. However, I would not argue that on the basis of "because the makers do not believe in copyright". I think the copyright argument might be orthogonal in general. [2] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05321/copyright-registration-guidance-works-containing-material-generated-by-artificial-intelligence https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/16/2023-05...

bumby 3y ago

Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution says, “Congress shall have power… to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The intent of limiting "copying" is that it protects the incentive of people to create, and through creation, progress of "science and useful arts." This video takes an overly simplified view of intellectual property. Imagine you spend a decade researching and developing a new tech product; as soon as it's to market everyone gets to copy it and, at least from a financial standpoint, you get nothing. That means most of the advancement will be left to those who already have the times and means to be scientific dilettantes, like the 18th and 19th centuries.

appplication 3y ago
I understand there is a whole contingent of humanity to which the constitution is holy gospel, but the thoughts of a small group of men 250 years ago on the issue is not really relevant to modern conversation on how to handle digital rights.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Do you have a non-ad hominem response to the point that was made?
  - appplication 3y ago
    If you felt that was an ad hominem, know that was not my intent. I do think it is a very salient point to bring up that when those words were written the concept of digital ownership and copying did not exist, nor did any meaningful parallels to such.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      It's ad hominem against the people who think the Constitution is good. That's even more irrelevant to the point than the other ad hominem, which is against the people who wrote it. If the principle doesn't hold up now, say why. What you're saying is salient is absolutely not. It's just "old thing bad". If it's bad it could've been written yesterday or a thousand years ago; same if it's good. Why do you think it's bad? Or do you only think in ad hominem?