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I'm tired of this. I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. I don't even feel guilty about it. If the artist wants money he should set up a d

I'm tired of this. I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. I don't even feel guilty about it. If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. I'm also tired of people preaching about how piracy is unethical. A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale. People cannot own information. You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. edit: And let us not forget the primary purpose of these laws. The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea. It was to provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite.

vibrunazo 14y ago
> If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. People used to think freeing someone's slave was unethical property theft as well. As soon as the economic interest shift, so does the mainstream ethics. Same will happen to piracy, as soon as authors cannot make money off copyright and patents. Then it's the monopoly of ideas that will become unethical, and not the other way around.
cheeze 14y ago
I Don't have a problem with it if I can get an ebook for a reasonable place. That being said, throughout college many of my books were ~$150. No way I'm paying that.
anigbrowl 14y ago
You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. And you can't copyright them either. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make?
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  > Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make? "I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants." Imagine if you had to pay for every one of the thousands little concept that your own idea (inevitably) derives from. That system would be unsustainable. We can only make progress because we can expand and improve on what were created before.
  - crusso 14y ago
    Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? That's a straw man. The argument for paying people for new IP is that for a limited time we should offer rewards for people to add to the collective knowledge of our society. So really in terms of your argument, the consumer isn't paying for "standing on the shoulder of giants" either. The consumer of IP is only paying for the incremental value added by the creator of the content. As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation.
    - vibrunazo 14y ago
      > Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? IP limits production to create artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at it, after you copyright or patent something. You are limiting what can be created in the world. > As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy. [1] Together with the monopoly selling rice, and other commodities, were the monopoly of printing books. At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate. That excuse was only invented after the "monopoly privilege" over copying books were renamed to "copy rights". At the same time that other monarchy monopolies were destroyed. Society never discovered that it's worth in the aggregate. You cannot prove it's worth in the aggregate. Any attempt so far to measure the aggregate has been absurd. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html
fossuser 14y ago
Too often people are just ignorant about the law's purpose, or they just don't understand it. I can see why too, it's a simpler argument with a lot of money behind it for the creator to say they should own what they create rather than realizing the limited time monopoly was only a means to promote the progress of science and useful arts. I wrote a bit about it here: http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-intended http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...
superuser2 14y ago
What do you do for a living?
planetguy 14y ago
I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. + A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale uhh huh? Why not just declare that you're not going to look at anything that's subject to copyright any more? That way you can avoid paying those evil royalties to the people who create artwork, and nobody can say you're wrong. Don't watch TV, don't listen to music, don't read any book published after [whatever the cutoff date is] and don't play video games. Sounds like that's what will make you happy.
- rcfox 14y ago
  He also wouldn't be allowed to read your comment either.
citricsquid 14y ago
> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. 1. If a musician doesn't want to have publishers taking a cut of the revenue from their music they are free to not have a publisher involved. 2. If a musician wants to distribute their music for free or have a pay what you want system they can. If a musician chooses to use a publisher or big label then you should respect that; pretending that a publisher is a worthless middleman and using it to justify pirating media is laughable. If the publisher was worthless then the musician would not be using them, would they? Do you really think people like Rihanna and One Direction wish they could set up a bandcamp account and get rid of the publishers? Of course not because publishers provide real tangible value. Either respect the wishes of the musician by consuming through official channels or just pirate it, don't pretend you're a noble person by wanting to "donate" to the musician directly, if the musician wanted that they would not have a label involved.
- moistgorilla 14y ago
  You completely misunderstood. I'm not justifying pirating by "pretending" the publisher is a worthless middleman. Did you not read my post? Piracy is not unethical. The fact that a middleman exists gives me more incentive to not purchase through the traditional means. Piracy is not unethical. It's not wrong. It's not stealing. If the musician wants to own the content they should simply not release it. I could care less about "respecting" the musician. Why should I pay money for low quality content when I could download the flac version for free without drm?
  - route66 14y ago
    Does repeating a statement as "Piracy is not stealing" make it true? Does echo-chambering the meme "Artists just ask for this" make it true after enough mindless repetition here and elsewhere? Why would any content creator (except, of course, producers of software, they laugh at you from their SaaS cloud) want to create anything if a pompous and self-righteous "respecting" in quotes is the spit in the face? Or could you care less? If so, why do you consider payment-or-not-download not an option? (hint: "because I can" was already answered but not considered satisfactory)
crusso 14y ago
>The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea Agreed, although getting wealthy off an idea isn't inherently unethical either. > provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Agreed. Rewarding people for adding "useful" pieces to societies knowledge base should be rewarded. > Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite. In the aggregate? I don't think so. The professor in the linked article for this thread is obviously doing the opposite. In undergraduate academia, 95% (made up number) of the actual knowledge in the materials being used to educate are or should be in the public domain. The fact that the market for calculus books didn't completely collapse with the advent of the laptop (let alone the ipad) is a sign that there's a deliberate effort in the academic world to force students to pay for intellectual property that has no value beyond what is already freely available elsewhere. But to generalize and claim that all copyright and patent laws are doing more harm than good is specious. Are you saying we should get rid of all IP protections? Completely?
DanBC 14y ago
> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. The middlemen play an important role in some industries. Many people ask cstross why he doesn't have a donation link so that people who've read a pirate version of one of his books can pay him. He is very clear - he wants you to buy a book of his (any book) so that his publisher can get some of the cash as well. Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. Some of this could be taken away from the middlemen. Kindles could have a "highlight typo / highlight grammar error" mode, which sends possible corrections to the publisher who reviews, then corrects them, and they get updated on the device. I've never trawled through a slush pile. But having seen some of the rubbish that comes out the end I dread to think what goes in the other end. > If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. I am happy to pirate a lot of content. But I try hard to pay for everything I pirate. Sometimes that's not possible (out of print book, no longer distributed video, etc.) There are lots of things about content distribution that really suck. But I do try to pay for my content. It is wrong to suggest that wanting to pay people for the work they do is something that only a dolt would do.
- lordlicorice 14y ago
  > Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. The author writes the book. Typesetting and "putting into ebook format" are a copy-and-paste affair, taking at most a day. Pirated books don't need to be printed or distributed.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    That time still isn't free.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      So, they pay once for that time and effort. That doesn't mean that they should be paid in perpetuity! Imagine a cobbler who fixes my shoes. Should I pay them for every step I take? Of course not, I pay them once for the work they have done.
Xcelerate 14y ago
Explain to me again why you should have something for free that I created by putting years of my life into it?

vibrunazo 14y ago

> If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. People used to think freeing someone's slave was unethical property theft as well. As soon as the economic interest shift, so does the mainstream ethics. Same will happen to piracy, as soon as authors cannot make money off copyright and patents. Then it's the monopoly of ideas that will become unethical, and not the other way around.

cheeze 14y ago

I Don't have a problem with it if I can get an ebook for a reasonable place. That being said, throughout college many of my books were ~$150. No way I'm paying that.

anigbrowl 14y ago

You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. And you can't copyright them either. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make?

vibrunazo 14y ago
> Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make? "I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants." Imagine if you had to pay for every one of the thousands little concept that your own idea (inevitably) derives from. That system would be unsustainable. We can only make progress because we can expand and improve on what were created before.
- crusso 14y ago
  Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? That's a straw man. The argument for paying people for new IP is that for a limited time we should offer rewards for people to add to the collective knowledge of our society. So really in terms of your argument, the consumer isn't paying for "standing on the shoulder of giants" either. The consumer of IP is only paying for the incremental value added by the creator of the content. As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation.
  - vibrunazo 14y ago
    > Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? IP limits production to create artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at it, after you copyright or patent something. You are limiting what can be created in the world. > As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy. [1] Together with the monopoly selling rice, and other commodities, were the monopoly of printing books. At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate. That excuse was only invented after the "monopoly privilege" over copying books were renamed to "copy rights". At the same time that other monarchy monopolies were destroyed. Society never discovered that it's worth in the aggregate. You cannot prove it's worth in the aggregate. Any attempt so far to measure the aggregate has been absurd. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html

fossuser 14y ago

Too often people are just ignorant about the law's purpose, or they just don't understand it. I can see why too, it's a simpler argument with a lot of money behind it for the creator to say they should own what they create rather than realizing the limited time monopoly was only a means to promote the progress of science and useful arts. I wrote a bit about it here: http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-intended http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...

superuser2 14y ago

What do you do for a living?

planetguy 14y ago

I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. + A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale uhh huh? Why not just declare that you're not going to look at anything that's subject to copyright any more? That way you can avoid paying those evil royalties to the people who create artwork, and nobody can say you're wrong. Don't watch TV, don't listen to music, don't read any book published after [whatever the cutoff date is] and don't play video games. Sounds like that's what will make you happy.

rcfox 14y ago
He also wouldn't be allowed to read your comment either.

citricsquid 14y ago

> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. 1. If a musician doesn't want to have publishers taking a cut of the revenue from their music they are free to not have a publisher involved. 2. If a musician wants to distribute their music for free or have a pay what you want system they can. If a musician chooses to use a publisher or big label then you should respect that; pretending that a publisher is a worthless middleman and using it to justify pirating media is laughable. If the publisher was worthless then the musician would not be using them, would they? Do you really think people like Rihanna and One Direction wish they could set up a bandcamp account and get rid of the publishers? Of course not because publishers provide real tangible value. Either respect the wishes of the musician by consuming through official channels or just pirate it, don't pretend you're a noble person by wanting to "donate" to the musician directly, if the musician wanted that they would not have a label involved.

moistgorilla 14y ago
You completely misunderstood. I'm not justifying pirating by "pretending" the publisher is a worthless middleman. Did you not read my post? Piracy is not unethical. The fact that a middleman exists gives me more incentive to not purchase through the traditional means. Piracy is not unethical. It's not wrong. It's not stealing. If the musician wants to own the content they should simply not release it. I could care less about "respecting" the musician. Why should I pay money for low quality content when I could download the flac version for free without drm?
- route66 14y ago
  Does repeating a statement as "Piracy is not stealing" make it true? Does echo-chambering the meme "Artists just ask for this" make it true after enough mindless repetition here and elsewhere? Why would any content creator (except, of course, producers of software, they laugh at you from their SaaS cloud) want to create anything if a pompous and self-righteous "respecting" in quotes is the spit in the face? Or could you care less? If so, why do you consider payment-or-not-download not an option? (hint: "because I can" was already answered but not considered satisfactory)

crusso 14y ago

>The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea Agreed, although getting wealthy off an idea isn't inherently unethical either. > provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Agreed. Rewarding people for adding "useful" pieces to societies knowledge base should be rewarded. > Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite. In the aggregate? I don't think so. The professor in the linked article for this thread is obviously doing the opposite. In undergraduate academia, 95% (made up number) of the actual knowledge in the materials being used to educate are or should be in the public domain. The fact that the market for calculus books didn't completely collapse with the advent of the laptop (let alone the ipad) is a sign that there's a deliberate effort in the academic world to force students to pay for intellectual property that has no value beyond what is already freely available elsewhere. But to generalize and claim that all copyright and patent laws are doing more harm than good is specious. Are you saying we should get rid of all IP protections? Completely?

DanBC 14y ago

> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. The middlemen play an important role in some industries. Many people ask cstross why he doesn't have a donation link so that people who've read a pirate version of one of his books can pay him. He is very clear - he wants you to buy a book of his (any book) so that his publisher can get some of the cash as well. Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. Some of this could be taken away from the middlemen. Kindles could have a "highlight typo / highlight grammar error" mode, which sends possible corrections to the publisher who reviews, then corrects them, and they get updated on the device. I've never trawled through a slush pile. But having seen some of the rubbish that comes out the end I dread to think what goes in the other end. > If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. I am happy to pirate a lot of content. But I try hard to pay for everything I pirate. Sometimes that's not possible (out of print book, no longer distributed video, etc.) There are lots of things about content distribution that really suck. But I do try to pay for my content. It is wrong to suggest that wanting to pay people for the work they do is something that only a dolt would do.

lordlicorice 14y ago
> Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. The author writes the book. Typesetting and "putting into ebook format" are a copy-and-paste affair, taking at most a day. Pirated books don't need to be printed or distributed.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  That time still isn't free.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    So, they pay once for that time and effort. That doesn't mean that they should be paid in perpetuity! Imagine a cobbler who fixes my shoes. Should I pay them for every step I take? Of course not, I pay them once for the work they have done.

Xcelerate 14y ago

Explain to me again why you should have something for free that I created by putting years of my life into it?