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> Of course, some people just want free shit. People deserve free shit. If it costs ~$0.00 to copy something, the morally just thing to do is to give everyone

> Of course, some people just want free shit. People deserve free shit. If it costs ~$0.00 to copy something, the morally just thing to do is to give everyone who wants it a copy. If we could generate infinite socks for free, it would be outrageous to tolerate anyone living with cold, blistery feet. The only reason copyright exists is to incentivize the creation of new shit. If we need to fund sock R&D, maybe we need a revenue stream for that.

jpc0 3y ago
Please let me know your address, I will send you storage medium and you copy all contents of your hard drive please.
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  That's a privacy violation. Different things.
  - jpc0 3y ago
    The property you own or rent is not private information. I never said the address needs to be your home address, you could send a PO Box register to a shell company and have a hobo pick it up and transport it across the country for you if anonymity is an issue but privacy certianly isn't an issue here.
    - CaptainFever 3y ago
      I was referring to the hard drive part. Though yes, this would be more of an anonymity concern.
      - jpc0 3y ago
        Ah that would be true, I didn't have your private files in mind, more code, audio tracks, movies, series, artwork ( I want them monkeys ) you get the drift. Biggest one for this audience would be code (since in high likelihood if you have the other's its likely pirated unless you are streaming your own ripped media ) if you would even be allowed to redistribute the code you have written, you probably would have some deep seated issue eith just handing it off to some stranger for free unless of course, you like me, are a big proponent of OSS. But even then I have several proprietary codebases that I own but sure wouldn't share willingly.
        CaptainFever 3y ago
        I think I would be fine with that tbh! I would assume most people here are big proponents of OSS.
- ForHackernews 3y ago
  I would happily seed torrents of all the media on my hard drive...except I'd get a copyright strike from my ISP.
CaptainFever 3y ago
> People deserve free shit. If it costs ~$0.00 to copy something, the morally just thing to do is to give everyone who wants it a copy. If we could generate infinite socks for free, it would be outrageous to tolerate anyone living with cold, blistery feet. This is such a great way to put it. It's as if we're living in a world where a sci-fi replicator exists and abundance is possible, but we're not allowed to use it, so nothing changes. Meanwhile, corporations just manufacture a product once, then copies it for free forevermore, selling each one for a price with an infinite profit margin.
vcg3rd 3y ago
Why not use an actual real example instead of a fantasy of infinite socks? And you bind your concept of "morally just" to cost. What if it cost $.05 to copy? Why is moral and just (related but not equivalent) bound to cost? As to a real example: a professor of medieval history has incurred the cost of his education, including reading handwriting in a foreign language, the cost of time, effort, travel and more in researching and writing and has now typed up a book on his computer and it is "free"[1] to distribute so it's morally just to give a copy to all who want it? You pretty much cloaked your greed in a word salad of meaningless moralizing with a jargon dressing and no real context. [1] Even digital requires the cost of equipment, electricity, and access, so if you bind morally just to free it doesn't exist.
- MacsHeadroom 3y ago
  Nobody has a moral right to be reimbursed for the costs they incurred to produce an original work. If they produce it under a contract then they have a contractual right to be paid as stipulated in the contract.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    We aren't talking about moral rights, we are talking about incentives to produce the work in the first place.
  - vcg3rd 3y ago
    Where did I write one has a moral right to reimbursement? Your inferences are you own. Let me restate what I clearly and obviously wrote: The history professor has no moral obligation to give his book away digitally. The person I replied to stated unequivocally that people deserve free stuff if it cost nothing. I refuted both that argument and the argument that anything is distributed, let alone produced, without cost. Is that clear enough or do you want to build another strawman?
tzs 3y ago
> The only reason copyright exists is to incentivize the creation of new shit. If we need to fund sock R&D, maybe we need a revenue stream for that OK. So how do we do that? There are two issues that need to be solved when it comes to funding the development of things that have zero marginal cost of production. 1. How much total funding should we provide for a given category of such goods, such as music or movies or books or computer programs? 2. How do we decide what particular creators or particular works to fund? Historically the answer has often been "government does both". For example the rulers of renaissance city states would choose artists to fund. These states would compete to have the best artists. The church was also often a major source of funding for music and painting and sculptures (I say "the" church because there was usually a state mandated religion). In the US "government does both" would probably not be politically tenable. It probably needs to be something that at least approximates a free market. The first thing that comes to mind is to actually have a free market in these goods. The issue there is that free markets work best when certain requirements are met. The mathematical economists can prove that if goods have some certain properties ("rivalrous" and "excludable" goods) then a free market in those goods leads to optimal production and consumption of those goods. Some examples of such goods are food, bicycles, washing machines, and basically most physical goods that an individual can own and use. That does assume a somewhat ideal free market with plenty of competition, low barriers to entry, and things like that, so real free markets usually aren't actually optimum, but they can decently approximate it. When you have goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable free markets, even ideal free markets, are not optimum. The market under produces the good, in the sense that consumers can afford more of and want more of the good than the market produces. Digital music, movies, books, and software are generally in that category. There are a few approaches that have been suggested to handle this under production problem. 1. Don't handle it. Individual artists can make their money elsewhere and do art as a hobby, or make their money off of donations, or find a wealthy patron, or something like that. If it means we no longer have new big art, like movies that involve several hundred people working for several years to make, so be it. 2. Government funds it and chooses which art to fund. Maybe based on polls or something, or maybe there is a Ministry of the Arts that picks. As mentioned earlier, this is probably too "not free market" for the US. 3. Government funds it, but funding is distributed via some objective method that doesn't involve the government deciding what art to fund. For example they could get statistics from major download sites and divvy up the money based on popularity. Richard Stallman has suggested such an approach for music copying, with the money distributed in proportion to the cube root of popularity. As far as how much to fund, that could also be somewhat tied to how much people download, probably by a tax on something that correlates somewhat well with downloading. Since the vast majority of copying will take place using the internet, and the vast majority of people consume art, the most common suggestion I've seen is for the tax to be on internet service. 4. Legally treat these goods as if they were rivalrous and excludable. This is the approach taken under current copyright law. Then the free market does handle the production problem. The market determines how much money goes to new art and to which art that money goes. But it does mean the consumer pays more than the ideal free market price for that art which would be the marginal cost of production (which is essentially zero for digital goods).
johnnyanmac 3y ago
depends on the item. Socks are valuable and ensure better health. A copy of Breaking Bad isn't really anything anyone is entitled to watch for free. A car is essential but a Ferrari isn't. Computing is essential but not everyone wants nor needs the highest end hardware with the newest graphics card. Luxuries are just that. And what makes this conversation so muddy online is how so many people seem to do this because they desire luxuries, not because they need a texbook to gather knowledge, nor some gray market luxuries like an old game that isn't sold and was never even available in your native language (possibly requiring a fan patch to translate for them). People want the best, latest, and greatest, for free right now, and some flimsy justification to rationalize them as a good person for pirating it. It just feels entitled.

jpc0 3y ago

Please let me know your address, I will send you storage medium and you copy all contents of your hard drive please.

CaptainFever 3y ago
That's a privacy violation. Different things.
- jpc0 3y ago
  The property you own or rent is not private information. I never said the address needs to be your home address, you could send a PO Box register to a shell company and have a hobo pick it up and transport it across the country for you if anonymity is an issue but privacy certianly isn't an issue here.
  - CaptainFever 3y ago
    I was referring to the hard drive part. Though yes, this would be more of an anonymity concern.
    - jpc0 3y ago
      Ah that would be true, I didn't have your private files in mind, more code, audio tracks, movies, series, artwork ( I want them monkeys ) you get the drift. Biggest one for this audience would be code (since in high likelihood if you have the other's its likely pirated unless you are streaming your own ripped media ) if you would even be allowed to redistribute the code you have written, you probably would have some deep seated issue eith just handing it off to some stranger for free unless of course, you like me, are a big proponent of OSS. But even then I have several proprietary codebases that I own but sure wouldn't share willingly.
      - CaptainFever 3y ago
        I think I would be fine with that tbh! I would assume most people here are big proponents of OSS.
ForHackernews 3y ago
I would happily seed torrents of all the media on my hard drive...except I'd get a copyright strike from my ISP.

CaptainFever 3y ago

> People deserve free shit. If it costs ~$0.00 to copy something, the morally just thing to do is to give everyone who wants it a copy. If we could generate infinite socks for free, it would be outrageous to tolerate anyone living with cold, blistery feet. This is such a great way to put it. It's as if we're living in a world where a sci-fi replicator exists and abundance is possible, but we're not allowed to use it, so nothing changes. Meanwhile, corporations just manufacture a product once, then copies it for free forevermore, selling each one for a price with an infinite profit margin.

vcg3rd 3y ago

Why not use an actual real example instead of a fantasy of infinite socks? And you bind your concept of "morally just" to cost. What if it cost $.05 to copy? Why is moral and just (related but not equivalent) bound to cost? As to a real example: a professor of medieval history has incurred the cost of his education, including reading handwriting in a foreign language, the cost of time, effort, travel and more in researching and writing and has now typed up a book on his computer and it is "free"[1] to distribute so it's morally just to give a copy to all who want it? You pretty much cloaked your greed in a word salad of meaningless moralizing with a jargon dressing and no real context. [1] Even digital requires the cost of equipment, electricity, and access, so if you bind morally just to free it doesn't exist.

MacsHeadroom 3y ago
Nobody has a moral right to be reimbursed for the costs they incurred to produce an original work. If they produce it under a contract then they have a contractual right to be paid as stipulated in the contract.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  We aren't talking about moral rights, we are talking about incentives to produce the work in the first place.
- vcg3rd 3y ago
  Where did I write one has a moral right to reimbursement? Your inferences are you own. Let me restate what I clearly and obviously wrote: The history professor has no moral obligation to give his book away digitally. The person I replied to stated unequivocally that people deserve free stuff if it cost nothing. I refuted both that argument and the argument that anything is distributed, let alone produced, without cost. Is that clear enough or do you want to build another strawman?

tzs 3y ago

> The only reason copyright exists is to incentivize the creation of new shit. If we need to fund sock R&D, maybe we need a revenue stream for that OK. So how do we do that? There are two issues that need to be solved when it comes to funding the development of things that have zero marginal cost of production. 1. How much total funding should we provide for a given category of such goods, such as music or movies or books or computer programs? 2. How do we decide what particular creators or particular works to fund? Historically the answer has often been "government does both". For example the rulers of renaissance city states would choose artists to fund. These states would compete to have the best artists. The church was also often a major source of funding for music and painting and sculptures (I say "the" church because there was usually a state mandated religion). In the US "government does both" would probably not be politically tenable. It probably needs to be something that at least approximates a free market. The first thing that comes to mind is to actually have a free market in these goods. The issue there is that free markets work best when certain requirements are met. The mathematical economists can prove that if goods have some certain properties ("rivalrous" and "excludable" goods) then a free market in those goods leads to optimal production and consumption of those goods. Some examples of such goods are food, bicycles, washing machines, and basically most physical goods that an individual can own and use. That does assume a somewhat ideal free market with plenty of competition, low barriers to entry, and things like that, so real free markets usually aren't actually optimum, but they can decently approximate it. When you have goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable free markets, even ideal free markets, are not optimum. The market under produces the good, in the sense that consumers can afford more of and want more of the good than the market produces. Digital music, movies, books, and software are generally in that category. There are a few approaches that have been suggested to handle this under production problem. 1. Don't handle it. Individual artists can make their money elsewhere and do art as a hobby, or make their money off of donations, or find a wealthy patron, or something like that. If it means we no longer have new big art, like movies that involve several hundred people working for several years to make, so be it. 2. Government funds it and chooses which art to fund. Maybe based on polls or something, or maybe there is a Ministry of the Arts that picks. As mentioned earlier, this is probably too "not free market" for the US. 3. Government funds it, but funding is distributed via some objective method that doesn't involve the government deciding what art to fund. For example they could get statistics from major download sites and divvy up the money based on popularity. Richard Stallman has suggested such an approach for music copying, with the money distributed in proportion to the cube root of popularity. As far as how much to fund, that could also be somewhat tied to how much people download, probably by a tax on something that correlates somewhat well with downloading. Since the vast majority of copying will take place using the internet, and the vast majority of people consume art, the most common suggestion I've seen is for the tax to be on internet service. 4. Legally treat these goods as if they were rivalrous and excludable. This is the approach taken under current copyright law. Then the free market does handle the production problem. The market determines how much money goes to new art and to which art that money goes. But it does mean the consumer pays more than the ideal free market price for that art which would be the marginal cost of production (which is essentially zero for digital goods).

johnnyanmac 3y ago

depends on the item. Socks are valuable and ensure better health. A copy of Breaking Bad isn't really anything anyone is entitled to watch for free. A car is essential but a Ferrari isn't. Computing is essential but not everyone wants nor needs the highest end hardware with the newest graphics card. Luxuries are just that. And what makes this conversation so muddy online is how so many people seem to do this because they desire luxuries, not because they need a texbook to gather knowledge, nor some gray market luxuries like an old game that isn't sold and was never even available in your native language (possibly requiring a fan patch to translate for them). People want the best, latest, and greatest, for free right now, and some flimsy justification to rationalize them as a good person for pirating it. It just feels entitled.