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I'll bite. Why do you think this "clearly unethical"? I don't think it's clear at all. Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know al

I'll bite. Why do you think this "clearly unethical"? I don't think it's clear at all. Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care? You know what the truth is, for me, and everyone I know, at least? The truth is, we don't care about "other" people's opinions on ethics (where "other" people=people on the internet, in the government, in anti-piracy ads, etc). The fact is, it's socially acceptable, among my social circles, to pirate, to use drugs, and to {participate in,facilitate} underage drinking. So I have no qualms with people I know doing so, nor if I were to do so myself. You don't pirate, ever? Because it's "clearly unethical"? Do everyone in your social circles hold similar opinions? Do you jaywalk? Have you ever used drugs, or facilitated illegal drinking? Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious. I guess my point is, I don't think ethics matter. I don't think about whether what I do is ethical. I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things), because I have empathy. I guess you could say I have ethics in that if you asked me why I don't, I'd say "it's wrong", but I'd never say something is "clearly unethical" and try to argue why. I'd say it's wrong because it's hurtful, and I don't like being hurt. Is this just me?

jellicle 14y ago
I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring". As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy. Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  It isn't a 'human right' to be able to watch Game of Thrones or Batman Begins without paying for it I don't believe. It is ignorant to try and claim otherwise.
  - enjalot 14y ago
    Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins? Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret.
    - david_shaw 14y ago
      >Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins? Is it a right to make money off of Game of Thrones? No. Is it their right to charge for content they've created? In my opinion, yes. I am a huge advocate of open source software. I'm not an advocate of taking other peoples' software and forcing it to be free, against the creators' wishes. Sharing a book, or facts from a library or notes from a university lecture is one thing. Downloading a copy of a movie, a video game, or software is another. Let's say you made a startup that, rather than SaaS, actually wrote a thick client. They're cool, so let's make it easy and say it's DRM-free. Let's say it's a cool, new IDE. You spent the last year of your life working on this IDE, and you see that it's up on The Pirate Bay. Sure, at first you'll probably be flattered. Then you realize, wait a minute, this is getting 1000x the downloads my actual product is getting. Maybe your sales increase as a result of the "free marketing," but that is the best case scenario. If sales don't increase, you've worked hard and not been compensated. Do I think that most movies (especially in theatres) are overpriced and a rip off? Hell yeah I do, which is why I spend my money on Netflix which seems more sanely priced. You don't have a right to all the software you want without paying the people who made it; you don't have a right to watch the latest movies and TV shows without paying the people who created them; you don't have a right to listen to that new CD in the store without paying the artists. I think that big business/media generally rips off consumers. I don't think that pirates are evil; I think that they're desperate and that business needs to adjust to their needs. Have I ever pirated computer games? Sure. But when Valve's Steam became more convenient to use than a badly cracked torrent, that became my number one resource for games. I used to pirate movies because renting or buying them was such a pain in the ass. With iTunes rentals and Netflix, that problem has been solved too. If you want to make a stand, maybe against DRM with which you disagree, do so by purchasing from people who are making a stand too; for example, I hope you bought Louis C.K.'s $5 DRM-free show a couple of months ago. >Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret. How do you suggest we reinterpret? Should everyone get everything they want for free? Should all the tech startups that we read about on Hacker News and root for have no business model, because charging for software or media is so wrong? We live in a capitalist society, and in order to "reinterpret" science and arts as free-for-all, we'd need to completely reorganize our economic system. I'm not saying that we've got it down perfectly (in fact, I'd say the opposite), so I'm open to your suggestions and ideas.
- leot 14y ago
  It's interesting that, today, it seems most ignored creative people would be content with merely getting and, for a spell, keeping some small part of the world's attention. To be richly compensated is really just a bonus. That said, I suppose one nice thing about getting money is that it will stick around even after the spotlight goes elsewhere.
- notJim 14y ago
  > I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring". I don't think you can assert this without providing some backup. It's certainly the case that sharing certain information with certain parties is a high impulse, but the idea that we have a strong impulse for all information to be shared freely is highly unintuitive to me, merely based on my experiences. Furthermore, that something is an impulse does not make it ethical. We have many impulses (sex, food, violence), and acting on them unquestioningly would lead to many unethical things. We also do not categorically say that all of these impulses must be fulfilled in an ethical society. For example, most people would not agree that I have a certain right to act violently at times, because of my violent impulses. > As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy. That's not what a monopoly is. A monopoly would be if only company could “create” culture. (Or if it was group, it'd be an oligopoly, but I'd still understand your point.) But we're not in that situation. Especially with the internet, we're not in that situation. Anyone can create culture, and they have the ability to choose how exclusive it is. I would guess, though I can't back this up, that at this point in history we have more free culture than ever before. We have the opposite of a monopoly on our culture. > Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet. It's both, and why shouldn't it be? The studio executives behind making Game of Thrones play their part just as George RR Martin and Aidan Gillen do. There is an argument to be had that perhaps the compensation for these roles is skewed relative to their importance, but I don't believe that argument would lead to “therefore, no one has any right to make money on Game of Thrones.”
- J3L2404 14y ago
  Bullshit and you probably know it. You are not just destroying monopolies, but independents too. >I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. How about your personal data ace?
- laughinghan 14y ago
  No offense to you personally, jellicle, but why is this the top comment and why can't I downvote it? This is more of a tangential provocative comment than a response. This is a rather extreme argument. You really think the impulse to share is universally stronger than the impulse to be secretive, the exact inverse, for example? Specifically, what about private data? How far does this ethical obligation to share go? How much effort is one ethically obligated to expend to share? Before I knew what I was doing with HTML and CSS, some stuff I did didn't work due to what I am now quite sure were browser bugs. Was it unethical for me not to share that knowledge? Is it unethical now for me not to be trying to figure out how to reproduce those bugs again to share? Is it unethical for artists, writers, coders, even mathematicians not to share unfinished works, code and proofs?
  - irahul 14y ago
    > No offense to you personally, jellicle, but why is this the top comment and why can't I downvote it? It's the top comment because HN's formula(votes, time lapsed) ranked it highest; and you can't downvotte replies to your comments.
- deleted 14y ago
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Tycho 14y ago
It's parasitical. And dishonours the intentions of the content creators.
- tomp 14y ago
  Most content creators that I know would be very glad if the whole world woudl listen to their music! More likely, I'm dishonouring the intentions of the content distributors. And I really don't give a fuck about them, they certainly don't honor anybody/anything other than cash!
  - Tycho 14y ago
    What did the content creators intend when they accepted investment to realise their works. Or what did they intend when they agreed to provide their creative input to a movie for a fee. Or what did they intend when they signed the rights to their work over to a distributor in exchange for some form of compensation or royalty payments?
- hxa7241 14y ago
  It is not necessarily parasitical (and not at all dishonourable), because the only justification for imposing restrictions on people's freedom to share informational goods is the standard economic rationale, and we cannot a priori specify the correct extent of that. If copyright is actually too long (broad, etc.) a de facto reduction of it by illicit copying would be economically beneficial (and that seems most likely the case).
  - Tycho 14y ago
    Someone worked really hard to make something, then you take it without permission. You want others to live for your sake. That makes you a parasite.
    - nddrylliog 14y ago
      You clearly lack perspective: try to reverse the point of view and apply the same logic. An employer wants others to live for his sake, does that make him a parasite? No. (The analogy fails to go any further, but your point is nonetheless invalid.) Plus, if you had some intuition, you'd realized that 1) we too, have worked really hard on movies.io (and still are), and 2) we would love to work towards a legal solution. Discussing with people right now, will press release if/when that happens. But our requirements are pretty steep, cf. http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/ http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/
watsix 14y ago
Using drugs, "facilitating underage drinking" and even jaywalking are quite a bit different than stealing. You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok, but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal, you lack empathy for the act, and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another. Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble. You do steal, and you do hurt people. You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.
- icebraining 14y ago
  "Stealing", as you call it, doesn't "hurt the creators of the material" any more than simply not buying does. In fact, if anything it helps: Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/vwapj/IndustryCanadaPaperMay4_2007_en.pdf/$FILE/IndustryCanadaPaperMay4_2007_en.pdf http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/vwapj/IndustryCan... You may say it's still wrong - and that's a valid opinion, 'though I don't share it - but "hurting the creators" is just false.
  - watsix 14y ago
    That only works if you contend that every single person who pirated something would not have purchased the thing otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's wrong in the same way that saying every single pirated copy of something results in lost revenue (as the MPAA and RIAA contend.) It might not be as wrong, but it's still wrong. And while there are plenty of studies that suggest piracy might help sales, there are also plenty that suggest that it does not: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-digital-piracy-really https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-digit... In fact, while the issue is plenty debatable I'd say that most of the evidence comes down on the side of "yes, piracy hurts sales, just no where near as much as the MPAA would have you think." (Though even the article above suggests that piracy wouldn't be as much of an issue if movies were released worldwide simultaneously.) Furthermore, "hurting the creators" needn't necessarily be financial. There are many, many artists, programmers, etc. -- not big publishers, but creators -- who hate piracy with a passion. They often feel under assault by Internet companies the way that people here feel under assault by the MPAA. I think they're misguided, but it's irresponsible to just say "fuck you, this doesn't hurt." So no, "hurting the creators" is not false, probably not financially and certainly not ethically (you're doing something with their work they don't want.) It's valid to say that the creators have to suck it up and adapt, and that many of them won't be able to make money in the ways they did before. But they are getting hurt.
mistermann 14y ago
So if someone produces a work in digital form, and it is explicitly their intent to earn a living from people paying them money to view this work, can you think of anything even remotely unethical about the release and downloading of the work on a torrent site?
ma2rten 14y ago
Since you asked, I shall explain. Here is my working definition of something that immoral: Violating the written or unwritten rules of the society one lives in, in a way that is directly harmful to another person or group of people, though ones actions. So taking drugs is fine, since you are not harming another person. Downloading a film is also fine for the same reason. With selling drugs and jaywalking it depends. Building a torrent site is different though, because under the rules of our society someone who made a movie can decide who sees that movie and who does not. You are taking that right away from them by distributing that movie. If the rules make sense or does not really matter (within reason), it is a rule that we as a society agreed upon. EDIT: I don't think morality can ever be subject to loopholes and technicalities, it's governed by common sense. However, the counter-argument that would let count is good intentions: if OP truly believes that the world might become a better place as the result of his action and he has no selfish motivations at all, I might consider it moral (at least from his point of view).
- theorique 14y ago
  A torrent site is not morally or legally equivalent to "distributing that movie", however. It may seem like a nit-picking distinction or technicality, but the law is made up of such technicalities. With magnet links, the indirection is even greater.
  - praxulus 14y ago
    I believe we're talking ethically, not legally. I don't believe there are technicalities in ethics like there are in law.
- thomasluce 14y ago
  I would like to put out there that morals and ethics are two different things. Ethics has to do with what you _think_ is right or wrong, regardless of the actions that you take. Specifically, ethics is the philosophy/study of morals, not their application.
- sigzero 14y ago
  Ethics and morals are not the same.
J3L2404 14y ago
HN is dead.
- laughinghan 14y ago
  Really? You think yourself so above me, so better than me, in every way, that not only don't I deserve a response, but I herald the death of the HN as a place for insightful discussions? Maybe there would be more insightful discussions if people had more to say than "HN is dead" in response to a confused, imperfect person expressing where they are on the path to discerning right from wrong.
  - J3L2404 14y ago
    You have plenty of responses. But you are probably right. I'm the problem.
    - nddrylliog 14y ago
      From your comment history, you sound very sour and jaded. I do not envy you. If reading HN (and commenting on this kind of submission) makes you unhappy, why don't you just stop and focus on the things that make you happy?
      - J3L2404 14y ago
        I would love to tell you what is wrOng with you but I am kind of busy
  - J3L2404 14y ago
    Well I am sorry if I offended you.
paulhauggis 14y ago
"Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?" I love discussions like this, because something like this is not clearly unethical, but when GNU code is used without following the license (like in the thesis Wordpress theme debacle awhile back, people cry "theft". "I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)" This is a nice way of trying to legitimize piracy. As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs?
- laughinghan 14y ago
  1. That's actually very good point. I don't know anything about this "thesis Wordpress theme debacle", but if someone copied GNU code without attribution, for example, even though it doesn't obviously hurt anyone, I'd think that's wrong. I think the difference is twofold: it's socially unacceptable, and empathically, I'd be offended if someone plagiarized my work. 2. I am not trying to legitimize piracy just because "I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)", and I didn't say so. What I mean, and what I tried to say, was that I haven't decided whether I think piracy is ethical or not, and I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the forseeable future. As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs? I'm surprised you take it as a given that you should feel bad doing so. We live in a very capitalistic world, and I think most capitalists would say no, you absolutely shouldn't feel bad. Do you believe we should be employing people in obsolete jobs just to avoid putting people out of work? I will happily provide examples compiled by capitalists of just that, taken to the extreme, to prove how bad of an idea it is.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  Interestingly, the GPL seems to come up every time there is a discussion about copyright law. The fact that the GPL uses copyright is just an implementation detail. In a very real sense, the GPL is the opposite of normal copyright--it turns copyright law against itself. It goes further than not having any copyright (e.g. public domain/BSD/MIT): it not only ensures this particular work is free, it ensures all the works it can affect also remain free. So the issue (from an idealist's standpoint) is not that the copyright of a GPL project is infringed but rather that additional limits are added on the project. The idea behind the GPL is to ensure that not only can everybody access the program, but they can legally and practically modify it. The people infringing are the ones who stop others from accessing the intellectual "property"--the very opposite of "pirates"! In the open source world, the most direct analog of something like piracy is distributing a normally paid project for free, legally (e.g. CentOS vs RHEL). Not only is this legal, but it's completely reasonable--nobody's crying foul! (You are not allowed to use trademarks, but that's completely orthogonal to copyright.) So really, the arguments against copyright and for the GPL are the same. If anything, the latter is actually more extreme: it ensures not only access but the ability to modify. In the FSF's perfect world, copyright would not be necessary for the GPL--all software would just be free (as in speech) by default. So supporting the GPL and opposing other copyright is entirely consistent.
dorian-graph 14y ago
I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good. If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation. We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's. A world with no measuring sticks yet many measurements. I suppose that's a difference between a lot of people, there are those who think things are simply determined by who they're standing around whereas there are those who hold to more definite and progressive concepts of things that don't change as if a wave driven by the winds of the sea and tossed about. Then again, I avoid jaywalking, which is seen as madness by some and is often trailed by some silly rant about police making money. It's viewed differently by others and those are generally the ones I prefer to be around as they're a little more uplifting and less vulgar. I avoid cheating too, for example, classes at university finished yesterday for this semester and I had one last, small piece of assessment to hand in and I had done it incorrectly and I asking a friend how she went about solving it—it turns out my calculations and the like were correct, there was just something wrong with my logic—she said to just copy her answer verbatim which I couldn't do despite her arguments that it's not worth much, it's the last day or 'everyone does it' which sounded like a puppet talking. No, it's not just you, everyone has accomplices. I.
- laughinghan 14y ago
  Wow, finally a thoughtful, non-knee-jerk response. Thank you for taking the time to write this. I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good. I agree with that, I was more trying to say that I don't really choose my actions based on whether I think they're "good" or "bad". In fact, when I chide someone, I tell them what they're doing is "uncool". This made me realize I'm actually choosing my actions based on social acceptability, and I felt like, doesn't everyone? In fact, e.g. bus driver segregating the bus, we as a society even consider this ok. If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation. My impression is that throughout human history, the "state of things" has been determined by groupthink, and it will be basically until the Singularity (but that's any day now, right?). Now don't get me wrong, it's lead to all manner of problems (Godwin's law is relevant here), but it seems to me to be a fundamental element of the human condition. We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's. Care to elaborate on "retarded"? Do you not see this new relativistic, cosmopolitan world as an improvement over when people had absolute convictions? I was taught that they used them to justify what we now consider heinous crimes. "selfish" being good is a capitalistic idea, but "everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's" sounds quite socialist, so this seems contradictory. silly rant about police making money While I agree that a lot of people have an unfair bias against the police, it's not silly to be worried about unnecessary laws motivated by government revenues, do you think this never happens? The rest of your comment: Why do you avoid jaywalking, and why did you refuse to copy her answer? What do you think of people who jaywalk, and who copy other people's answers, and who pirate movies? Would you say what they're doing is unethical, or even "clearly unethical"? I think the copying answers thing is especially interesting, because while there's controversial arguments about the hurtfulness of jaywalking and pirating, copying someone's answer to a problem you know how to do, with their permission, is the ultimate example of a victimless, but apparently in your eyes, unethical act. Is it just the principle of the matter, because you feel like you'd be presenting her work as your own? There was a class at university I took where my friend and I would pair on working through the problems on the whiteboard, and she would write the solutions down, and I, who always procrastinated way more than her, ended up regularly copying her solutions (not verbatim, heavily paraphrased, but definitely not working it out on my own again). Would you do that? If not, would you judge me for it?
koko775 14y ago
Disclaimer: I work at a legal online video streaming site. Jaywalking, doing drugs, and underage drinking are fundamentally acts against rules, not acts against entities. A risk is being taken and the burden of failure is on the risk-taker. Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to get into that? Acquiring media in an unauthorized fashion is an act against the creator and their licensed distributor. That makes it unethical. You can separate whether an action is justified, and whether it's ethical. There are clearly reasons to pirate - valid or not^, the act itself is not ethical. And I think it's clearly so. ^ personal opinion: mostly not There's also the separate but related issue that many believe that entertainment is a right, or that it should be available in all mediums. While I do believe that it should be available anywhere at any time, pirating should not at all be considered an ethical recourse to acquiring it through other means. Art doesn't exist absent the influence of money. Entertainment is commercial art but that doesn't mean that its artistic value excuses the viewer from participating in the artist's (creator's) intentions for distribution.
- praxulus 14y ago
  Nit picking: Jaywalking can put other people at risk if there's any amount of traffic. On a completely empty stretch of road it's not unethical, but the line between safe and unsafe jaywalking is extremely blurred.
- pyre 14y ago
  > Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to > get into that? Let's. Example: The legal drinking age in Detroit, Michigan, USA is 21 years of age. The legal drinking age in Windsor, Ontario, Canada (right across the river from Detroit) is 19 years old. A 19 year old US citizen drives across the Detroit River and buys a drink at a bar. Is the bar acting unethically? If not, how is it any different (ethically) to sell alcohol to the same 19 year old while in Detroit? Discuss.
  - koko775 14y ago
    The bar did not travel state lines. If the laws allow it, they have fulfilled their obligation. If, on the other hand, they are actively targeting and soliciting orders for alcohol from 19-year-old US citizens to pick up and consume, for example, at parties, then perhaps they have done something unethical. That is beside the point, however, as the questions of jurisdiction with respect to copyright are somewhat more well-established than that.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
halayli 14y ago
Pirating movies is stealing. There is no other way of putting it. I'll let you decide whether you find stealing ethical or not. It might depend on your social circle. If you were a member of a gang, you'll find it socially acceptable among your social circles to kill people and sell drugs probably.
- quarterto 14y ago
  Theft is defined as unlawful deprivation of use of property. Piracy does not stop the original owner from continuing to sell. It's a lost customer, not a lost sale.
  - petitmiam 14y ago
    Am I even a lost customer if the original owner, never gave me the option to legally buy the product (in my country) in the first place?
- yuvadam 14y ago
  This is 2012. Are we still doing the whole pirating == stealing thing?
dusanbab 14y ago
laughinghan, I don't buy your physical / virtual goods distinction. Your argument is inconsistent - if you were prepared to shoplift the same movie from a store I wouldn't agree with your ethics, but you would at least be acting consistently. Good point RE social stigma attached to this, but IMO it's simply a reflection of the penalty most territories attach to physical theft compared to virtual. The latter is also a lot easier to perpetrate. I can't cite evidence immediately, but it's fairly accepted that length of jail terms influence per-capita crime rates of most crime types.
superuser2 14y ago
You are declaring yourself entitled to other people's creative output. They go to work every day and practice their crafts. You benefit from their work, but refuse to pay the craftsmen. Car theft is a stupid analogy because that deprives someone of a car. The better analogy is that an electrician came and rewired your house. (The lighting rig for a single scene is probably thirty times as complex.) You paid for parts and gas, but decided not to pay for the labor listed in the quote you accepted. You've valued his labor at $0, which is fine, but not if you expect him to perform it. I don't like making distributors rich either. I would love to see a nonprofit HBO-like studio selling online subscriptions. But the market hasn't yet created one capable of producing content I want. Sounds like a brilliant startup opportunity.

jellicle 14y ago

I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring". As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy. Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet.

res0nat0r 14y ago
It isn't a 'human right' to be able to watch Game of Thrones or Batman Begins without paying for it I don't believe. It is ignorant to try and claim otherwise.
- enjalot 14y ago
  Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins? Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret.
  - david_shaw 14y ago
    >Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins? Is it a right to make money off of Game of Thrones? No. Is it their right to charge for content they've created? In my opinion, yes. I am a huge advocate of open source software. I'm not an advocate of taking other peoples' software and forcing it to be free, against the creators' wishes. Sharing a book, or facts from a library or notes from a university lecture is one thing. Downloading a copy of a movie, a video game, or software is another. Let's say you made a startup that, rather than SaaS, actually wrote a thick client. They're cool, so let's make it easy and say it's DRM-free. Let's say it's a cool, new IDE. You spent the last year of your life working on this IDE, and you see that it's up on The Pirate Bay. Sure, at first you'll probably be flattered. Then you realize, wait a minute, this is getting 1000x the downloads my actual product is getting. Maybe your sales increase as a result of the "free marketing," but that is the best case scenario. If sales don't increase, you've worked hard and not been compensated. Do I think that most movies (especially in theatres) are overpriced and a rip off? Hell yeah I do, which is why I spend my money on Netflix which seems more sanely priced. You don't have a right to all the software you want without paying the people who made it; you don't have a right to watch the latest movies and TV shows without paying the people who created them; you don't have a right to listen to that new CD in the store without paying the artists. I think that big business/media generally rips off consumers. I don't think that pirates are evil; I think that they're desperate and that business needs to adjust to their needs. Have I ever pirated computer games? Sure. But when Valve's Steam became more convenient to use than a badly cracked torrent, that became my number one resource for games. I used to pirate movies because renting or buying them was such a pain in the ass. With iTunes rentals and Netflix, that problem has been solved too. If you want to make a stand, maybe against DRM with which you disagree, do so by purchasing from people who are making a stand too; for example, I hope you bought Louis C.K.'s $5 DRM-free show a couple of months ago. >Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret. How do you suggest we reinterpret? Should everyone get everything they want for free? Should all the tech startups that we read about on Hacker News and root for have no business model, because charging for software or media is so wrong? We live in a capitalist society, and in order to "reinterpret" science and arts as free-for-all, we'd need to completely reorganize our economic system. I'm not saying that we've got it down perfectly (in fact, I'd say the opposite), so I'm open to your suggestions and ideas.
leot 14y ago
It's interesting that, today, it seems most ignored creative people would be content with merely getting and, for a spell, keeping some small part of the world's attention. To be richly compensated is really just a bonus. That said, I suppose one nice thing about getting money is that it will stick around even after the spotlight goes elsewhere.
notJim 14y ago
> I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring". I don't think you can assert this without providing some backup. It's certainly the case that sharing certain information with certain parties is a high impulse, but the idea that we have a strong impulse for all information to be shared freely is highly unintuitive to me, merely based on my experiences. Furthermore, that something is an impulse does not make it ethical. We have many impulses (sex, food, violence), and acting on them unquestioningly would lead to many unethical things. We also do not categorically say that all of these impulses must be fulfilled in an ethical society. For example, most people would not agree that I have a certain right to act violently at times, because of my violent impulses. > As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy. That's not what a monopoly is. A monopoly would be if only company could “create” culture. (Or if it was group, it'd be an oligopoly, but I'd still understand your point.) But we're not in that situation. Especially with the internet, we're not in that situation. Anyone can create culture, and they have the ability to choose how exclusive it is. I would guess, though I can't back this up, that at this point in history we have more free culture than ever before. We have the opposite of a monopoly on our culture. > Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet. It's both, and why shouldn't it be? The studio executives behind making Game of Thrones play their part just as George RR Martin and Aidan Gillen do. There is an argument to be had that perhaps the compensation for these roles is skewed relative to their importance, but I don't believe that argument would lead to “therefore, no one has any right to make money on Game of Thrones.”
J3L2404 14y ago
Bullshit and you probably know it. You are not just destroying monopolies, but independents too. >I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. How about your personal data ace?
laughinghan 14y ago
No offense to you personally, jellicle, but why is this the top comment and why can't I downvote it? This is more of a tangential provocative comment than a response. This is a rather extreme argument. You really think the impulse to share is universally stronger than the impulse to be secretive, the exact inverse, for example? Specifically, what about private data? How far does this ethical obligation to share go? How much effort is one ethically obligated to expend to share? Before I knew what I was doing with HTML and CSS, some stuff I did didn't work due to what I am now quite sure were browser bugs. Was it unethical for me not to share that knowledge? Is it unethical now for me not to be trying to figure out how to reproduce those bugs again to share? Is it unethical for artists, writers, coders, even mathematicians not to share unfinished works, code and proofs?
- irahul 14y ago
  > No offense to you personally, jellicle, but why is this the top comment and why can't I downvote it? It's the top comment because HN's formula(votes, time lapsed) ranked it highest; and you can't downvotte replies to your comments.
deleted 14y ago
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Tycho 14y ago

It's parasitical. And dishonours the intentions of the content creators.

tomp 14y ago
Most content creators that I know would be very glad if the whole world woudl listen to their music! More likely, I'm dishonouring the intentions of the content distributors. And I really don't give a fuck about them, they certainly don't honor anybody/anything other than cash!
- Tycho 14y ago
  What did the content creators intend when they accepted investment to realise their works. Or what did they intend when they agreed to provide their creative input to a movie for a fee. Or what did they intend when they signed the rights to their work over to a distributor in exchange for some form of compensation or royalty payments?
hxa7241 14y ago
It is not necessarily parasitical (and not at all dishonourable), because the only justification for imposing restrictions on people's freedom to share informational goods is the standard economic rationale, and we cannot a priori specify the correct extent of that. If copyright is actually too long (broad, etc.) a de facto reduction of it by illicit copying would be economically beneficial (and that seems most likely the case).
- Tycho 14y ago
  Someone worked really hard to make something, then you take it without permission. You want others to live for your sake. That makes you a parasite.
  - nddrylliog 14y ago
    You clearly lack perspective: try to reverse the point of view and apply the same logic. An employer wants others to live for his sake, does that make him a parasite? No. (The analogy fails to go any further, but your point is nonetheless invalid.) Plus, if you had some intuition, you'd realized that 1) we too, have worked really hard on movies.io (and still are), and 2) we would love to work towards a legal solution. Discussing with people right now, will press release if/when that happens. But our requirements are pretty steep, cf. http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/ http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/

watsix 14y ago

Using drugs, "facilitating underage drinking" and even jaywalking are quite a bit different than stealing. You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok, but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal, you lack empathy for the act, and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another. Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble. You do steal, and you do hurt people. You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.

icebraining 14y ago
"Stealing", as you call it, doesn't "hurt the creators of the material" any more than simply not buying does. In fact, if anything it helps: Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/vwapj/IndustryCanadaPaperMay4_2007_en.pdf/$FILE/IndustryCanadaPaperMay4_2007_en.pdf http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/vwapj/IndustryCan... You may say it's still wrong - and that's a valid opinion, 'though I don't share it - but "hurting the creators" is just false.
- watsix 14y ago
  That only works if you contend that every single person who pirated something would not have purchased the thing otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's wrong in the same way that saying every single pirated copy of something results in lost revenue (as the MPAA and RIAA contend.) It might not be as wrong, but it's still wrong. And while there are plenty of studies that suggest piracy might help sales, there are also plenty that suggest that it does not: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-digital-piracy-really https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-digit... In fact, while the issue is plenty debatable I'd say that most of the evidence comes down on the side of "yes, piracy hurts sales, just no where near as much as the MPAA would have you think." (Though even the article above suggests that piracy wouldn't be as much of an issue if movies were released worldwide simultaneously.) Furthermore, "hurting the creators" needn't necessarily be financial. There are many, many artists, programmers, etc. -- not big publishers, but creators -- who hate piracy with a passion. They often feel under assault by Internet companies the way that people here feel under assault by the MPAA. I think they're misguided, but it's irresponsible to just say "fuck you, this doesn't hurt." So no, "hurting the creators" is not false, probably not financially and certainly not ethically (you're doing something with their work they don't want.) It's valid to say that the creators have to suck it up and adapt, and that many of them won't be able to make money in the ways they did before. But they are getting hurt.

mistermann 14y ago

So if someone produces a work in digital form, and it is explicitly their intent to earn a living from people paying them money to view this work, can you think of anything even remotely unethical about the release and downloading of the work on a torrent site?

ma2rten 14y ago

Since you asked, I shall explain. Here is my working definition of something that immoral: Violating the written or unwritten rules of the society one lives in, in a way that is directly harmful to another person or group of people, though ones actions. So taking drugs is fine, since you are not harming another person. Downloading a film is also fine for the same reason. With selling drugs and jaywalking it depends. Building a torrent site is different though, because under the rules of our society someone who made a movie can decide who sees that movie and who does not. You are taking that right away from them by distributing that movie. If the rules make sense or does not really matter (within reason), it is a rule that we as a society agreed upon. EDIT: I don't think morality can ever be subject to loopholes and technicalities, it's governed by common sense. However, the counter-argument that would let count is good intentions: if OP truly believes that the world might become a better place as the result of his action and he has no selfish motivations at all, I might consider it moral (at least from his point of view).

theorique 14y ago
A torrent site is not morally or legally equivalent to "distributing that movie", however. It may seem like a nit-picking distinction or technicality, but the law is made up of such technicalities. With magnet links, the indirection is even greater.
- praxulus 14y ago
  I believe we're talking ethically, not legally. I don't believe there are technicalities in ethics like there are in law.
thomasluce 14y ago
I would like to put out there that morals and ethics are two different things. Ethics has to do with what you _think_ is right or wrong, regardless of the actions that you take. Specifically, ethics is the philosophy/study of morals, not their application.
sigzero 14y ago
Ethics and morals are not the same.

J3L2404 14y ago

HN is dead.

laughinghan 14y ago
Really? You think yourself so above me, so better than me, in every way, that not only don't I deserve a response, but I herald the death of the HN as a place for insightful discussions? Maybe there would be more insightful discussions if people had more to say than "HN is dead" in response to a confused, imperfect person expressing where they are on the path to discerning right from wrong.
- J3L2404 14y ago
  You have plenty of responses. But you are probably right. I'm the problem.
  - nddrylliog 14y ago
    From your comment history, you sound very sour and jaded. I do not envy you. If reading HN (and commenting on this kind of submission) makes you unhappy, why don't you just stop and focus on the things that make you happy?
    - J3L2404 14y ago
      I would love to tell you what is wrOng with you but I am kind of busy
- J3L2404 14y ago
  Well I am sorry if I offended you.

paulhauggis 14y ago

"Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?" I love discussions like this, because something like this is not clearly unethical, but when GNU code is used without following the license (like in the thesis Wordpress theme debacle awhile back, people cry "theft". "I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)" This is a nice way of trying to legitimize piracy. As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs?

laughinghan 14y ago
1. That's actually very good point. I don't know anything about this "thesis Wordpress theme debacle", but if someone copied GNU code without attribution, for example, even though it doesn't obviously hurt anyone, I'd think that's wrong. I think the difference is twofold: it's socially unacceptable, and empathically, I'd be offended if someone plagiarized my work. 2. I am not trying to legitimize piracy just because "I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)", and I didn't say so. What I mean, and what I tried to say, was that I haven't decided whether I think piracy is ethical or not, and I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the forseeable future. As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs? I'm surprised you take it as a given that you should feel bad doing so. We live in a very capitalistic world, and I think most capitalists would say no, you absolutely shouldn't feel bad. Do you believe we should be employing people in obsolete jobs just to avoid putting people out of work? I will happily provide examples compiled by capitalists of just that, taken to the extreme, to prove how bad of an idea it is.
tikhonj 14y ago
Interestingly, the GPL seems to come up every time there is a discussion about copyright law. The fact that the GPL uses copyright is just an implementation detail. In a very real sense, the GPL is the opposite of normal copyright--it turns copyright law against itself. It goes further than not having any copyright (e.g. public domain/BSD/MIT): it not only ensures this particular work is free, it ensures all the works it can affect also remain free. So the issue (from an idealist's standpoint) is not that the copyright of a GPL project is infringed but rather that additional limits are added on the project. The idea behind the GPL is to ensure that not only can everybody access the program, but they can legally and practically modify it. The people infringing are the ones who stop others from accessing the intellectual "property"--the very opposite of "pirates"! In the open source world, the most direct analog of something like piracy is distributing a normally paid project for free, legally (e.g. CentOS vs RHEL). Not only is this legal, but it's completely reasonable--nobody's crying foul! (You are not allowed to use trademarks, but that's completely orthogonal to copyright.) So really, the arguments against copyright and for the GPL are the same. If anything, the latter is actually more extreme: it ensures not only access but the ability to modify. In the FSF's perfect world, copyright would not be necessary for the GPL--all software would just be free (as in speech) by default. So supporting the GPL and opposing other copyright is entirely consistent.

dorian-graph 14y ago

I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good. If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation. We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's. A world with no measuring sticks yet many measurements. I suppose that's a difference between a lot of people, there are those who think things are simply determined by who they're standing around whereas there are those who hold to more definite and progressive concepts of things that don't change as if a wave driven by the winds of the sea and tossed about. Then again, I avoid jaywalking, which is seen as madness by some and is often trailed by some silly rant about police making money. It's viewed differently by others and those are generally the ones I prefer to be around as they're a little more uplifting and less vulgar. I avoid cheating too, for example, classes at university finished yesterday for this semester and I had one last, small piece of assessment to hand in and I had done it incorrectly and I asking a friend how she went about solving it—it turns out my calculations and the like were correct, there was just something wrong with my logic—she said to just copy her answer verbatim which I couldn't do despite her arguments that it's not worth much, it's the last day or 'everyone does it' which sounded like a puppet talking. No, it's not just you, everyone has accomplices. I.

laughinghan 14y ago
Wow, finally a thoughtful, non-knee-jerk response. Thank you for taking the time to write this. I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good. I agree with that, I was more trying to say that I don't really choose my actions based on whether I think they're "good" or "bad". In fact, when I chide someone, I tell them what they're doing is "uncool". This made me realize I'm actually choosing my actions based on social acceptability, and I felt like, doesn't everyone? In fact, e.g. bus driver segregating the bus, we as a society even consider this ok. If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation. My impression is that throughout human history, the "state of things" has been determined by groupthink, and it will be basically until the Singularity (but that's any day now, right?). Now don't get me wrong, it's lead to all manner of problems (Godwin's law is relevant here), but it seems to me to be a fundamental element of the human condition. We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's. Care to elaborate on "retarded"? Do you not see this new relativistic, cosmopolitan world as an improvement over when people had absolute convictions? I was taught that they used them to justify what we now consider heinous crimes. "selfish" being good is a capitalistic idea, but "everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's" sounds quite socialist, so this seems contradictory. silly rant about police making money While I agree that a lot of people have an unfair bias against the police, it's not silly to be worried about unnecessary laws motivated by government revenues, do you think this never happens? The rest of your comment: Why do you avoid jaywalking, and why did you refuse to copy her answer? What do you think of people who jaywalk, and who copy other people's answers, and who pirate movies? Would you say what they're doing is unethical, or even "clearly unethical"? I think the copying answers thing is especially interesting, because while there's controversial arguments about the hurtfulness of jaywalking and pirating, copying someone's answer to a problem you know how to do, with their permission, is the ultimate example of a victimless, but apparently in your eyes, unethical act. Is it just the principle of the matter, because you feel like you'd be presenting her work as your own? There was a class at university I took where my friend and I would pair on working through the problems on the whiteboard, and she would write the solutions down, and I, who always procrastinated way more than her, ended up regularly copying her solutions (not verbatim, heavily paraphrased, but definitely not working it out on my own again). Would you do that? If not, would you judge me for it?

koko775 14y ago

Disclaimer: I work at a legal online video streaming site. Jaywalking, doing drugs, and underage drinking are fundamentally acts against rules, not acts against entities. A risk is being taken and the burden of failure is on the risk-taker. Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to get into that? Acquiring media in an unauthorized fashion is an act against the creator and their licensed distributor. That makes it unethical. You can separate whether an action is justified, and whether it's ethical. There are clearly reasons to pirate - valid or not^, the act itself is not ethical. And I think it's clearly so. ^ personal opinion: mostly not There's also the separate but related issue that many believe that entertainment is a right, or that it should be available in all mediums. While I do believe that it should be available anywhere at any time, pirating should not at all be considered an ethical recourse to acquiring it through other means. Art doesn't exist absent the influence of money. Entertainment is commercial art but that doesn't mean that its artistic value excuses the viewer from participating in the artist's (creator's) intentions for distribution.

praxulus 14y ago
Nit picking: Jaywalking can put other people at risk if there's any amount of traffic. On a completely empty stretch of road it's not unethical, but the line between safe and unsafe jaywalking is extremely blurred.
pyre 14y ago
> Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to > get into that? Let's. Example: The legal drinking age in Detroit, Michigan, USA is 21 years of age. The legal drinking age in Windsor, Ontario, Canada (right across the river from Detroit) is 19 years old. A 19 year old US citizen drives across the Detroit River and buys a drink at a bar. Is the bar acting unethically? If not, how is it any different (ethically) to sell alcohol to the same 19 year old while in Detroit? Discuss.
- koko775 14y ago
  The bar did not travel state lines. If the laws allow it, they have fulfilled their obligation. If, on the other hand, they are actively targeting and soliciting orders for alcohol from 19-year-old US citizens to pick up and consume, for example, at parties, then perhaps they have done something unethical. That is beside the point, however, as the questions of jurisdiction with respect to copyright are somewhat more well-established than that.

deleted 14y ago

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halayli 14y ago

Pirating movies is stealing. There is no other way of putting it. I'll let you decide whether you find stealing ethical or not. It might depend on your social circle. If you were a member of a gang, you'll find it socially acceptable among your social circles to kill people and sell drugs probably.

quarterto 14y ago
Theft is defined as unlawful deprivation of use of property. Piracy does not stop the original owner from continuing to sell. It's a lost customer, not a lost sale.
- petitmiam 14y ago
  Am I even a lost customer if the original owner, never gave me the option to legally buy the product (in my country) in the first place?
yuvadam 14y ago
This is 2012. Are we still doing the whole pirating == stealing thing?

dusanbab 14y ago

laughinghan, I don't buy your physical / virtual goods distinction. Your argument is inconsistent - if you were prepared to shoplift the same movie from a store I wouldn't agree with your ethics, but you would at least be acting consistently. Good point RE social stigma attached to this, but IMO it's simply a reflection of the penalty most territories attach to physical theft compared to virtual. The latter is also a lot easier to perpetrate. I can't cite evidence immediately, but it's fairly accepted that length of jail terms influence per-capita crime rates of most crime types.

superuser2 14y ago

You are declaring yourself entitled to other people's creative output. They go to work every day and practice their crafts. You benefit from their work, but refuse to pay the craftsmen. Car theft is a stupid analogy because that deprives someone of a car. The better analogy is that an electrician came and rewired your house. (The lighting rig for a single scene is probably thirty times as complex.) You paid for parts and gas, but decided not to pay for the labor listed in the quote you accepted. You've valued his labor at $0, which is fine, but not if you expect him to perform it. I don't like making distributors rich either. I would love to see a nonprofit HBO-like studio selling online subscriptions. But the market hasn't yet created one capable of producing content I want. Sounds like a brilliant startup opportunity.