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I know it’s not necessarily the same people, but it feels contradictory for this community to say “copyright infringement isn’t theft” when we’re talking about

by shwaj 2y ago

I know it’s not necessarily the same people, but it feels contradictory for this community to say “copyright infringement isn’t theft” when we’re talking about movies, but use the opposite language when talking about GPL source code.

traverseda 2y ago
You can live in the gift economy or the money economy. Taking stuff from the gift economy and selling it is gross.
- shwaj 2y ago
  I agree completely, and yet I would still prefer language to be used consistently.
  - traverseda 2y ago
    I think the "information want to be free" crowd is very consistent. They want the information to be free. They don't want artificial scarcity. Sure they'll use IP as a means to an end, but that doesn't mean they believe IP is a good idea in general. It's just one of few tools that exist to solve it. In an ideal world all software would be forced to be FOSS, and we'd have to come up with ways of funding it that aren't based on artificial scarcity.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - drdeca 2y ago
      It seems like a bit of a strong restriction to have in the law that if I distribute an executable (which people may reverse engineer, modify, redistribute as they wish) that I am obligated to provide the source code upon request. Like, what if I want to release a rather difficult puzzle in the form of an obfuscated executable and provide a reward to the first person who solves it? If I’m required to release the source code upon request, then that kind of spoils the puzzle. (Sure, I can say that anyone who gets the source code this way is ineligible for the prize, but how could I tell?) This is of course a somewhat silly and niche edge case. Still though, it doesn’t seem natural/appropriate for a law would prevent such a thing. Whereas, agreeing to only distribute modifications I make to some software written by others if I’m willing to distribute the source code to my modifications, well, that would just be an agreement I would be making, and seems unobjectionable. Though, I wouldn’t really claim that all IP is illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much shorter duration. So maybe I’m not really in the camp being described. I think the freedoms described in the GPL are good. I guess one alternative could be to say that all software written “for a useful purpose” (or something like that) has to have the source code made available, and that could handle the puzzle case I mentioned? It does seem important to avoid the case where one needs to use some software for something but is prevented from modifying it due to not having the source code. So… maybe if one is only required to provide the source code if someone could reasonably be described as “needing” the software for something? (E.g. if you “need it in order to get your printer working”, or the like.)
      - tikhonj 2y ago
        The puzzle case is no different to how you can't sell somebody a rubiks cube without allowing them to "solve" it by taking it apart and putting it back together. You can make a physical item intentionally hard to work with or modify, but I see that as a shortcoming of our current legal standard—that's why we need some kind of "right to repair" framework. Requiring people to distribute human-readable code alongside software follows the same underlying philosophy as physical "right to repair" requirements.
        drdeca 2y ago
        I wasn’t thinking forbidding them from decompiling it or anything. I don’t think any rights are violated if government doesn’t issue any further copyright protections (even though I don’t think this for the best). I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the puzzle. I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t compel the puzzle designer to distribute disassembled versions of the puzzle. If other people want to take apart their rubix cubes, they’re free to, I just shouldn’t be forced to help them take it apart.
        ndriscoll 2y ago
        A reasonable tradeoff to explore is that software ought to work like a halfway-point between copyright and patents: in exchange for an exclusive right to distribute your binaries for 10-15 years, you provide your documentation for how it works (including source code) so others can build on your work after the exclusivity period ends. The exclusive right does not cover the basic idea/independent implementations of the same functionality. Potentially utilitarian software and creative software could be treated differently, e.g. have an escrow for games (for which user customizations are less important). Obviously DRM to restrict user modifications is unethical and harmful toward functioning markets and should be illegal.
      - traverseda 2y ago
        >Though, I wouldn’t really claim that all IP is illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much shorter duration. For what it's worth that's the camp I'm in as well, I'm just being a bit silly for the sake of argument.
    - fallingknife 2y ago
      They want other people's information to be free for them. I doubt very much that they want their professional work to be free to other people. It takes a certain kind of insanity to think that it's feasible to spend millions of dollars writing software when your customers are all entitled to take it for free.
      - notpushkin 2y ago
        I’ve heard an argument that people / companies would still pay for custom development, like they do now. It is a pretty weak argument, but I do see the point.
        fallingknife 2y ago
        Sure, custom development could still be a thing under such a framework because there is only a single potential user, but can you imagine how catastrophically expensive that would be? The business of software development would be absolute misery to work in as the core skill would be to write such convoluted, impenetrable, single use code at the pain of being put out of business by source code copiers. Software would be completely out of reach to most consumers and small businesses. Basically we would be back in the 70s where computing was only available to large enterprise.
        wizzwizz4 2y ago
        I'm with you until the final sentence. From my perspective, that's the current state of software development. Hundreds of megabytes of JavaScript and "assets" for what could be a 60KiB bundle of HTML, or a 500KiB Win32 program.
        notpushkin 2y ago
        Yeah, the reality is, our industry produces a lot of garbage right now. That wouldn’t change. Still, there are people who care about quality, and some of them also share their work with others. Those people would exist regardless of whether there is copyright or not. The only difference is, we won’t have LICENSE files anymore.
    - notpushkin 2y ago
      What if I hand-code something in asm? What if I tell you I hand-coded something in asm, but secretly used a Rust compiler with an obfuscator?
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        Not everyone is stupid; people would catch on very quickly.
  - timeon 2y ago
    Things are often inconsistent however there are cases where something appears inconsistent but it is only lack of knowledge of observer that displays it as inconsistent. At least that is what I have learned today in some different matter (I was that observer).
  - bnjms 2y ago
    Then you’ll have to invent new language for one or the other because they’ve different and merely related meanings. I agree though. We should always intend for accurate and consistent language.
- coldpie 2y ago
  I dislike this framing. I was paid money for over a decade to write GPL'd code; I didn't do it as a gift. I release my code under the GPL for selfish reasons: I want others to be able to improve it, and me to be able to take advantage of their improvements. To me, it's not a gift, it's just the most efficient way to write software.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    OP is not asserting that all GPL'd code is part of the "gift economy". I also wrote some GPLv2 code a large corp in the past, and I wouldn't consider it that, either. But projects like UBlock Origin that are run by volunteer contributors are very different. You seem to be basing your rejection of "gift economy" as a label for the latter on the basis that it's not done for entirely altruistic purpose. But that is generally true of gift economies - most people who participate in them (and I'm not just talking of software here!) are not doing it out of purely altruistic motives, and actually expect to receive benefit from such an economy as well. Usually this is cultural, but some people, like you, might consciously believe that it's the most efficient way to distribute goods (whatever their definition of "efficient" might be).
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    you can work at a charity and still be paid, even though the "non-profit" moniker can confuse layman. > I release my code under the GPL for selfish reasons: I want others to be able to improve it, and me to be able to take advantage of their improvements. I suppose that metphor depends on what you think of community efforts. Like say, sharing a food recipe or a workout routine. I see see the framing as "giving it away". Even if your endgoal is an ultimately selfish search of "better recipe/routine to use".
- 14 2y ago
  One thing I see over and over again is that those with lower moral standards often seem to prosper. The saying cheaters never prosper has never seemed to hold true from what I have seen. Still I hold myself to a high standard in life even if I could get away with something I believe in morals. If I find a wallet I return it with all it's cash. Sadly if you have no morals you take the cash and come out ahead. My son last year had $900 in his wallet and dropped it. Returned with no money. I could never do that as I would be thinking that is someones rent money or bills or food for their family. The person with low morals however gets a new ps5 and some games or whatever else they wanted. I can only hope the person who took it was in a worse situation and paid their rent or something. Thankfully my son only learned a hard lesson and was not without food or rent or anything.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Most people want to live in a high trust society. Unfortunately the low trust society moves in.
echelon 2y ago
Rhymes with horseshoe theory. People are willing to let behavior slide when it aligns with their interests, but will call it out when the "other team" does it. - Copyright abuse of games, movies, commercial software vs open source software - Censorship of conservative speech vs censorship of liberal speech - Genocide of one geopolitical entity vs another geopolitical entity - Separation of church/state with mandated removal of religious symbols from students and government places vs freedom of religion with removal of LGBT symbols from students and government places - Use of executive branch authority for [liberal goal] vs [conservative goal] It's the same behavior on both sides, just different groups of people doing it.
- DrewRWx 2y ago
  Good thing the ends matter more than the means.
- mouse_ 2y ago
  The problem is that enforcement is unequal and always seems to benefit the rich over the creators. If I use Photoshop's 1's and 0's and don't follow Photoshop's rules, I could be bankrupt and thrown onto the streets, dramatically decreasing my life expectancy, or locked up and legally enslaved by Tyson Foods. If PayPal, an 85 billion dollar market cap figure that has monopolized a large amount of digital commerce, uses our 1's and 0's and don't follow our rules, we're laughed at, because we are not an 85 billion dollar market cap figure. I expect you understand this on some level. > - Censorship of conservative speech vs censorship of liberal speech How so? There are many left aligned websites that remove conservative content, and many conservative websites that remove lefty content, many sites that allow both and many sites that remove both. Perhaps I misunderstood, apologies if so.
- skyyler 2y ago
  >- Separation of church/state with mandated removal of religious symbols from students and government places vs freedom of religion with removal of LGBT symbols from students and government places >It's the same behavior on both sides, just different groups of people doing it. I'm actually curious to understand how you came to the conclusion that non-standard sexual and gender identities are equivalent to a religion to you. I don't mean to start an argument here, but do you actually believe that endorsing a specific religion is the same as endorsing gay rights?
mouse_ 2y ago
If copyright infringement is theft, then stealing GPL code is theft. If copyright infringement isn't theft (our goal), then it doesn't matter. Hope that makes some sense.
jrflowers 2y ago
If it isn’t the same people your observation is that some people say one thing about one topic and other people say something else about a completely different topic. That is like saying some people like elephants and other people speak Portuguese
tikhonj 2y ago
The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright; the fact that it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation detail. If you believe information should be free to share and remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not theft and that not releasing code is wrong. The fact that the proprietary code is based on GPL code just shows that the ex-Honey folks are hypocrites: they're trying to use copyright to control their code, but breaking the same rules in the way they reuse others' code.
- coldpie 2y ago
  > The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright; the fact that it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation detail. > If you believe information should be free to share and remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not theft No, this is absolutely incorrect. GPL requires copyright (or similar mechanism) to function. Without copyright, anyone could take the GPL'd code and release a compiled binary without releasing source. Releasing the source is the "payment" for being granted a license to copy the original code; without releasing the source, you are in violation of the author's copyright. No one who wants to use the GPL to protect their and their users' rights would advocate for eliminating copyright, because the GPL's goals cannot be achieved without copyright.
  - tikhonj 2y ago
    The more direct solution would be a law that required distributing human-editable code alongside software. No need for copyright or anything remotely similar. Code being copyrightable would just be getting in the way at that point. But in a world where that is politically infeasible, we have to use whatever tools we have at hand to get as close as we can. And, unfortunately, the tool we happen to have is the modern copyright regime.
    - coldpie 2y ago
      > The more direct solution would be a law that required distributing human-editable code alongside software. Hmm okay yeah, I buy that. Good rebuttal, I retract my comment :)
handsclean 2y ago
“So you’re pro assault when somebody’s broken into your home at night, but suddenly anti assault when I want to punch your grandma?” Exaggerated but the same idea. Though people often communicate and maybe even internalize it in simplified “copyright bad” form, actual beliefs are much more contextual. The piracy debate would look a lot different if it weren’t literally millionaires demanding money from children.
timeon 2y ago
Road to hell is paved by devils advocates.
bnjms 2y ago
Being fair these are semantically different meanings of “theft”. 1. Movie copyright is compared, by its owners and the law, to physical theft. This type of theft does not remove the physical use or any use from the owners. 2. GPL copyright only requires sharing changed code. Failing to disclose the changes actually does affect the owners in the way claimed. They’re two different social contracts and we need different words for them. Honestly many social problems are like this.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  We do have that. In law copyright infringement is categorically not "theft" and is not even handled by the same type of court. The "copyright infringement (is / isn't) theft" argument is drivel on the same intellectual level as "corporations are people."
  - somat 2y ago
    right, infringement is not theft, and corporations are not people. Corporations are governments. The corporation you probably thinking of right now is a small private government to run a for profit endeavor. But note that cities are also corporations.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Corporations are not 'people' as in 'natural persons', but they are 'persons', as in 'juridical person' -- as are trusts, estates, and other institutions.
      - somat 2y ago
        Trusts etc. are mechanisms to move inheritance from personal law into corporate law. This lets you game the system as corporate privilege often handles this more gracefully than personal privilege(wills and inheritance). Probably want to contact a lawyer for the nuances, but the thousand foot view is you create a corporation with yourself as chief officer, and others as backup officers. set your corporate law to make your backup officers useless until the death of the chief officer and strict guidelines as to how the backup officers are to manage corporate assets. then finally transfer assets to the corporation. The point being, the thing that makes a corporation a corporation is its corporate law governing its members, thus the assertion that corporations are not people, they are governments.
spoaceman7777 2y ago
You're missing the point of GPL-style licensed Open Source Software. It's a matter of copy_left_, vs copyright. The difference isn't comparing the rights of GPL software writers/publishers vs the rights of movie publishers. It's about the idea that software (and, for many, all digital media) should be free. The GPL is designed to "infect" other projects, by forcing them to be free if the GPL code is included. It's using IP/copyright laws to combat profiteering in software (and, in the case of movies, Blender releases a GPL'd movie every few years). It's the activists' FOSS license, unlike the MIT/BSD/Apache licenses, which are just the literal definition of Free and Open Source, no strings attached.
croes 2y ago
Movie copyright violation: more people than intended can see the movie. GPL violation: less people than intended can see the code.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Isn’t this the difference between MIT and GPL?
derac 2y ago
Individual pirates are rarely profiting from it. I'd wager most people who think pirating a movie is fine aren't cool with printing 1000 bluerays and hawking them at the flea market.
- NikkiA 2y ago
  Also most pirates abhor people that charge for access to pirated content.
  - 14 2y ago
    I once paid for a Plex share that initially was very convenient. Some free stream sites can be very slow and constant buffering. The plex share had high bandwidth connection and a huge library with content from basically all major streaming services at a great price so it was an easy buy. Plex started cracking down hard and it would disconnect way too often and require the guy setting it back up again which could take a half hour or a half a day so I ended up moving on. I was paying for netflix until my kids could no longer watch from my house and my exwife's house. After that nonsense I just taught my kids how to find stuff for free. I used to pirate all my games but now pay for all of it. I am trying to rack my head around why I stopped with games but having a hard time thinking of what made me change. For PC I just think it probably is risky running pirated software that may be malicious. For things like the switch well I have a older switch that can be fully modded but haven't due to not having the time to fully research all the ins and outs and not wanting my kids switch to be banned or something.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  That is hypocrisy on the level of thinking buying drugs is ok but selling them is bad. You can argue about the severity of the behavior, but if you are drawing moral lines in the sand, buyer and seller are always on the same side.
  - ramon156 2y ago
    You're arguing movies against drugs. Obviously buying drugs is bad, is downloading movies inherently as bad?
jorl17 2y ago
Not saying I agree with infringing on copyright, but I don't think it's contradictory: GPL: "The code must be shared" Downloading/Pirating movies. "The movies should be shared" I don't think people that people who believe in the GPL and pirate movies often do so because "pirating is the right thing to do", but one can certainly make the case that they share the same basic idea.
loeg 2y ago
It's just different people. "Copyright infringement isn't theft" is an extremely niche viewpoint in general.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Niche viewpoint amongst whom? IP lawyers?
medo-bear 2y ago
infringing on copyright is like stealing from the rich infringing on copyleft is like stealing from the poor its the difference between robin hood and government corruption
- iamacyborg 2y ago
  A lot of folks creating unique IP aren’t rich though?
  - medo-bear 2y ago
    [dead]
  - DirkH 2y ago
    Consider a homeless person stole from a food bank to sell the food to make money - and nowhere acknowledged where the food came from or that others can get the same food for free; and moreover claimed "this is fresh food I have meticulously sourced myself!" Everyone from the foodbank to other homeless people would justifiably be furious at this scam artist when they learn more. That's the morally repugnant situation we find ourselves in with Honey. Copyleft infringement is perhaps better thought of as stealing from a foodbank than government corruption.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  Said on a forum where 99% of the posters are rich. When I see drivel like this it reminds me to be grateful that I wasn't born with the narcissistic delusion to believe that my behavior is privileged and morally superior to the same by others. The height of insanity is seeing yourself as the moral arbiter of the universe.
  - DirkH 2y ago
    I legitimately don't see how your point meaningfully connects to the comment you're responding to
llm_trw 2y ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som... In short: until society changes you play by its rules.
timewizard 2y ago
> this community to say “copyright infringement isn’t theft” when we’re talking about movies I wasn't aware there was this community standard. I explicitly disagree with it and I presume many others here would as well. The contradiction exists only in your one sided assertion. I think the position is more nuanced. Once I've paid for the movie then breaking it's "copyright circumvention measures" so I may copy it or display it for my own purposes and reasons is neither immoral or illegal regardless of what hollywood or the law they paid for says. I also think that Copyright terms being the life of the author are explicitly in violation of the Constitution, let alone, life plus some arbitrary term. These laws have fallen out of the service of the many and into the hands of the few. There's a habit to "point out the contradiction" in these forums. I think it's almost always misguided.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
belorn 2y ago
There are very many differences already pointed out, so to add an other one, there is a difference between a company doing something at scale and for profit, and a private person doing something for themselves. The people in this community that says “copyright infringement isn’t theft” do not refer to copyright infringement where people exploit the work for-profit and put it out as their own (feel free to find a single occurrence to prove me wrong). The word plagiarism comes to mind, which is morally and (depending on country and circumstance) legally a bigger crime than copyright infringement. The legal system usually also recognize that exploitation done for-profit and large scale should be considered worse and punished harder.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
Yeah, they used the wrong word. No "stealing" of code is happening here. It's just infringement of someone's copyrights. Theoretically, they could be taken to court over it. In practice, courts are a rich corporation's game. Copyright should not even exist to begin with. GPL is just there to try to use the system against itself by essentially forcing everything it touches to be public domain. GPL is barely above the copyright industry from a moral standpoint. That usually causes people to treat violations of it far more charitably. Nobody feels sorry for the trillion dollar copyright industry. We live in a world where the same trillion dollar corporations who compare us all to high seas pirates who rape and burn will also engage in AI washing of copyrighted material at industrial scales. That's a far more interesting contradiction than what you're presenting and far more deserving of the people's indignation.
ramon156 2y ago
I guess the difference lies in ownership. If I pirate movies I won't claim that I own the rights to that movie. Can't really say the same when I have a product with stolen code.
cherryteastain 2y ago
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... FSF address this issue directly. GPL is basically fighting fire with fire.
Affric 2y ago
Absolutely not and if it weren’t for the US copyright/IP lobby it wouldn’t even be a crime in many places. Copyright infringement may be criminal. But compared with theft there’s, rightly, a higher standard of proof required.
raincole 2y ago
Because most people in this community know how much effort it takes to make software, but not that to make movies.
prmoustache 2y ago
Which community are you talking about in the first place?
GrantMoyer 2y ago
They are different senses of the terms. In "copyright infringement isn't theft", "theft" is in the sense if car theft. In the title, "stolen" is in the sense of a stolen idea. Copyright infringement, while it may be wrong, truely isn't akin to car theft. It is however akin to a stolen idea. A car theft deprives the rightful owner of the car, but they don't otherwise care that the thief now has a car. An idea theft doesn't deprive the thinker of the idea, but they care that the thief is benefiting from the idea without compensation. Yet they don't care if someone becomes aware of the idea, but keeps it to themself.
mulmen 2y ago
A community is made up of individuals who each hold their own potentially conflicting opinions.
sophacles 2y ago
Copyright infringement isn't theft, whether it's about movies or source code. I don't care about the movie industry, and don't care if they lose money. I don't care about the software industry or if they lose money. I do care about information being freely available whether its in the form of movies or source code - it's in no way contradictory for me to want people locking up source code to be stopped from doing so while also wanting to see more torrenting. Copyright law is a tool - much like fire. I don't want my house to burn down, but I also don't want the fire in the furnace to go out... is it contradictory that i want to use fire to keep warm but not have all my possessions destroyed?

by shwaj 2y ago

traverseda 2y ago

You can live in the gift economy or the money economy. Taking stuff from the gift economy and selling it is gross.

shwaj 2y ago
I agree completely, and yet I would still prefer language to be used consistently.
- traverseda 2y ago
  I think the "information want to be free" crowd is very consistent. They want the information to be free. They don't want artificial scarcity. Sure they'll use IP as a means to an end, but that doesn't mean they believe IP is a good idea in general. It's just one of few tools that exist to solve it. In an ideal world all software would be forced to be FOSS, and we'd have to come up with ways of funding it that aren't based on artificial scarcity.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - drdeca 2y ago
    It seems like a bit of a strong restriction to have in the law that if I distribute an executable (which people may reverse engineer, modify, redistribute as they wish) that I am obligated to provide the source code upon request. Like, what if I want to release a rather difficult puzzle in the form of an obfuscated executable and provide a reward to the first person who solves it? If I’m required to release the source code upon request, then that kind of spoils the puzzle. (Sure, I can say that anyone who gets the source code this way is ineligible for the prize, but how could I tell?) This is of course a somewhat silly and niche edge case. Still though, it doesn’t seem natural/appropriate for a law would prevent such a thing. Whereas, agreeing to only distribute modifications I make to some software written by others if I’m willing to distribute the source code to my modifications, well, that would just be an agreement I would be making, and seems unobjectionable. Though, I wouldn’t really claim that all IP is illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much shorter duration. So maybe I’m not really in the camp being described. I think the freedoms described in the GPL are good. I guess one alternative could be to say that all software written “for a useful purpose” (or something like that) has to have the source code made available, and that could handle the puzzle case I mentioned? It does seem important to avoid the case where one needs to use some software for something but is prevented from modifying it due to not having the source code. So… maybe if one is only required to provide the source code if someone could reasonably be described as “needing” the software for something? (E.g. if you “need it in order to get your printer working”, or the like.)
    - tikhonj 2y ago
      The puzzle case is no different to how you can't sell somebody a rubiks cube without allowing them to "solve" it by taking it apart and putting it back together. You can make a physical item intentionally hard to work with or modify, but I see that as a shortcoming of our current legal standard—that's why we need some kind of "right to repair" framework. Requiring people to distribute human-readable code alongside software follows the same underlying philosophy as physical "right to repair" requirements.
      - drdeca 2y ago
        I wasn’t thinking forbidding them from decompiling it or anything. I don’t think any rights are violated if government doesn’t issue any further copyright protections (even though I don’t think this for the best). I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the puzzle. I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t compel the puzzle designer to distribute disassembled versions of the puzzle. If other people want to take apart their rubix cubes, they’re free to, I just shouldn’t be forced to help them take it apart.
        ndriscoll 2y ago
        A reasonable tradeoff to explore is that software ought to work like a halfway-point between copyright and patents: in exchange for an exclusive right to distribute your binaries for 10-15 years, you provide your documentation for how it works (including source code) so others can build on your work after the exclusivity period ends. The exclusive right does not cover the basic idea/independent implementations of the same functionality. Potentially utilitarian software and creative software could be treated differently, e.g. have an escrow for games (for which user customizations are less important). Obviously DRM to restrict user modifications is unethical and harmful toward functioning markets and should be illegal.
    - traverseda 2y ago
      >Though, I wouldn’t really claim that all IP is illegitimate. I think many IP protections go way too far and last too long, but, I think some amount of copyright and patents is probably a good idea, though for a much shorter duration. For what it's worth that's the camp I'm in as well, I'm just being a bit silly for the sake of argument.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    They want other people's information to be free for them. I doubt very much that they want their professional work to be free to other people. It takes a certain kind of insanity to think that it's feasible to spend millions of dollars writing software when your customers are all entitled to take it for free.
    - notpushkin 2y ago
      I’ve heard an argument that people / companies would still pay for custom development, like they do now. It is a pretty weak argument, but I do see the point.
      - fallingknife 2y ago
        Sure, custom development could still be a thing under such a framework because there is only a single potential user, but can you imagine how catastrophically expensive that would be? The business of software development would be absolute misery to work in as the core skill would be to write such convoluted, impenetrable, single use code at the pain of being put out of business by source code copiers. Software would be completely out of reach to most consumers and small businesses. Basically we would be back in the 70s where computing was only available to large enterprise.
        wizzwizz4 2y ago
        I'm with you until the final sentence. From my perspective, that's the current state of software development. Hundreds of megabytes of JavaScript and "assets" for what could be a 60KiB bundle of HTML, or a 500KiB Win32 program.
        notpushkin 2y ago
        Yeah, the reality is, our industry produces a lot of garbage right now. That wouldn’t change. Still, there are people who care about quality, and some of them also share their work with others. Those people would exist regardless of whether there is copyright or not. The only difference is, we won’t have LICENSE files anymore.
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    What if I hand-code something in asm? What if I tell you I hand-coded something in asm, but secretly used a Rust compiler with an obfuscator?
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Not everyone is stupid; people would catch on very quickly.
- timeon 2y ago
  Things are often inconsistent however there are cases where something appears inconsistent but it is only lack of knowledge of observer that displays it as inconsistent. At least that is what I have learned today in some different matter (I was that observer).
- bnjms 2y ago
  Then you’ll have to invent new language for one or the other because they’ve different and merely related meanings. I agree though. We should always intend for accurate and consistent language.
coldpie 2y ago
I dislike this framing. I was paid money for over a decade to write GPL'd code; I didn't do it as a gift. I release my code under the GPL for selfish reasons: I want others to be able to improve it, and me to be able to take advantage of their improvements. To me, it's not a gift, it's just the most efficient way to write software.
- int_19h 2y ago
  OP is not asserting that all GPL'd code is part of the "gift economy". I also wrote some GPLv2 code a large corp in the past, and I wouldn't consider it that, either. But projects like UBlock Origin that are run by volunteer contributors are very different. You seem to be basing your rejection of "gift economy" as a label for the latter on the basis that it's not done for entirely altruistic purpose. But that is generally true of gift economies - most people who participate in them (and I'm not just talking of software here!) are not doing it out of purely altruistic motives, and actually expect to receive benefit from such an economy as well. Usually this is cultural, but some people, like you, might consciously believe that it's the most efficient way to distribute goods (whatever their definition of "efficient" might be).
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  you can work at a charity and still be paid, even though the "non-profit" moniker can confuse layman. > I release my code under the GPL for selfish reasons: I want others to be able to improve it, and me to be able to take advantage of their improvements. I suppose that metphor depends on what you think of community efforts. Like say, sharing a food recipe or a workout routine. I see see the framing as "giving it away". Even if your endgoal is an ultimately selfish search of "better recipe/routine to use".
14 2y ago
One thing I see over and over again is that those with lower moral standards often seem to prosper. The saying cheaters never prosper has never seemed to hold true from what I have seen. Still I hold myself to a high standard in life even if I could get away with something I believe in morals. If I find a wallet I return it with all it's cash. Sadly if you have no morals you take the cash and come out ahead. My son last year had $900 in his wallet and dropped it. Returned with no money. I could never do that as I would be thinking that is someones rent money or bills or food for their family. The person with low morals however gets a new ps5 and some games or whatever else they wanted. I can only hope the person who took it was in a worse situation and paid their rent or something. Thankfully my son only learned a hard lesson and was not without food or rent or anything.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Most people want to live in a high trust society. Unfortunately the low trust society moves in.

echelon 2y ago

Rhymes with horseshoe theory. People are willing to let behavior slide when it aligns with their interests, but will call it out when the "other team" does it. - Copyright abuse of games, movies, commercial software vs open source software - Censorship of conservative speech vs censorship of liberal speech - Genocide of one geopolitical entity vs another geopolitical entity - Separation of church/state with mandated removal of religious symbols from students and government places vs freedom of religion with removal of LGBT symbols from students and government places - Use of executive branch authority for [liberal goal] vs [conservative goal] It's the same behavior on both sides, just different groups of people doing it.

DrewRWx 2y ago
Good thing the ends matter more than the means.
mouse_ 2y ago
The problem is that enforcement is unequal and always seems to benefit the rich over the creators. If I use Photoshop's 1's and 0's and don't follow Photoshop's rules, I could be bankrupt and thrown onto the streets, dramatically decreasing my life expectancy, or locked up and legally enslaved by Tyson Foods. If PayPal, an 85 billion dollar market cap figure that has monopolized a large amount of digital commerce, uses our 1's and 0's and don't follow our rules, we're laughed at, because we are not an 85 billion dollar market cap figure. I expect you understand this on some level. > - Censorship of conservative speech vs censorship of liberal speech How so? There are many left aligned websites that remove conservative content, and many conservative websites that remove lefty content, many sites that allow both and many sites that remove both. Perhaps I misunderstood, apologies if so.
skyyler 2y ago
>- Separation of church/state with mandated removal of religious symbols from students and government places vs freedom of religion with removal of LGBT symbols from students and government places >It's the same behavior on both sides, just different groups of people doing it. I'm actually curious to understand how you came to the conclusion that non-standard sexual and gender identities are equivalent to a religion to you. I don't mean to start an argument here, but do you actually believe that endorsing a specific religion is the same as endorsing gay rights?

mouse_ 2y ago

If copyright infringement is theft, then stealing GPL code is theft. If copyright infringement isn't theft (our goal), then it doesn't matter. Hope that makes some sense.

jrflowers 2y ago

If it isn’t the same people your observation is that some people say one thing about one topic and other people say something else about a completely different topic. That is like saying some people like elephants and other people speak Portuguese

tikhonj 2y ago

The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright; the fact that it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation detail. If you believe information should be free to share and remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not theft and that not releasing code is wrong. The fact that the proprietary code is based on GPL code just shows that the ex-Honey folks are hypocrites: they're trying to use copyright to control their code, but breaking the same rules in the way they reuse others' code.

coldpie 2y ago
> The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright; the fact that it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation detail. > If you believe information should be free to share and remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not theft No, this is absolutely incorrect. GPL requires copyright (or similar mechanism) to function. Without copyright, anyone could take the GPL'd code and release a compiled binary without releasing source. Releasing the source is the "payment" for being granted a license to copy the original code; without releasing the source, you are in violation of the author's copyright. No one who wants to use the GPL to protect their and their users' rights would advocate for eliminating copyright, because the GPL's goals cannot be achieved without copyright.
- tikhonj 2y ago
  The more direct solution would be a law that required distributing human-editable code alongside software. No need for copyright or anything remotely similar. Code being copyrightable would just be getting in the way at that point. But in a world where that is politically infeasible, we have to use whatever tools we have at hand to get as close as we can. And, unfortunately, the tool we happen to have is the modern copyright regime.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    > The more direct solution would be a law that required distributing human-editable code alongside software. Hmm okay yeah, I buy that. Good rebuttal, I retract my comment :)

handsclean 2y ago

“So you’re pro assault when somebody’s broken into your home at night, but suddenly anti assault when I want to punch your grandma?” Exaggerated but the same idea. Though people often communicate and maybe even internalize it in simplified “copyright bad” form, actual beliefs are much more contextual. The piracy debate would look a lot different if it weren’t literally millionaires demanding money from children.

timeon 2y ago

Road to hell is paved by devils advocates.

bnjms 2y ago

Being fair these are semantically different meanings of “theft”. 1. Movie copyright is compared, by its owners and the law, to physical theft. This type of theft does not remove the physical use or any use from the owners. 2. GPL copyright only requires sharing changed code. Failing to disclose the changes actually does affect the owners in the way claimed. They’re two different social contracts and we need different words for them. Honestly many social problems are like this.

fallingknife 2y ago
We do have that. In law copyright infringement is categorically not "theft" and is not even handled by the same type of court. The "copyright infringement (is / isn't) theft" argument is drivel on the same intellectual level as "corporations are people."
- somat 2y ago
  right, infringement is not theft, and corporations are not people. Corporations are governments. The corporation you probably thinking of right now is a small private government to run a for profit endeavor. But note that cities are also corporations.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Corporations are not 'people' as in 'natural persons', but they are 'persons', as in 'juridical person' -- as are trusts, estates, and other institutions.
    - somat 2y ago
      Trusts etc. are mechanisms to move inheritance from personal law into corporate law. This lets you game the system as corporate privilege often handles this more gracefully than personal privilege(wills and inheritance). Probably want to contact a lawyer for the nuances, but the thousand foot view is you create a corporation with yourself as chief officer, and others as backup officers. set your corporate law to make your backup officers useless until the death of the chief officer and strict guidelines as to how the backup officers are to manage corporate assets. then finally transfer assets to the corporation. The point being, the thing that makes a corporation a corporation is its corporate law governing its members, thus the assertion that corporations are not people, they are governments.

spoaceman7777 2y ago

You're missing the point of GPL-style licensed Open Source Software. It's a matter of copy_left_, vs copyright. The difference isn't comparing the rights of GPL software writers/publishers vs the rights of movie publishers. It's about the idea that software (and, for many, all digital media) should be free. The GPL is designed to "infect" other projects, by forcing them to be free if the GPL code is included. It's using IP/copyright laws to combat profiteering in software (and, in the case of movies, Blender releases a GPL'd movie every few years). It's the activists' FOSS license, unlike the MIT/BSD/Apache licenses, which are just the literal definition of Free and Open Source, no strings attached.

croes 2y ago

Movie copyright violation: more people than intended can see the movie. GPL violation: less people than intended can see the code.

mulmen 2y ago
Isn’t this the difference between MIT and GPL?

derac 2y ago

Individual pirates are rarely profiting from it. I'd wager most people who think pirating a movie is fine aren't cool with printing 1000 bluerays and hawking them at the flea market.

NikkiA 2y ago
Also most pirates abhor people that charge for access to pirated content.
- 14 2y ago
  I once paid for a Plex share that initially was very convenient. Some free stream sites can be very slow and constant buffering. The plex share had high bandwidth connection and a huge library with content from basically all major streaming services at a great price so it was an easy buy. Plex started cracking down hard and it would disconnect way too often and require the guy setting it back up again which could take a half hour or a half a day so I ended up moving on. I was paying for netflix until my kids could no longer watch from my house and my exwife's house. After that nonsense I just taught my kids how to find stuff for free. I used to pirate all my games but now pay for all of it. I am trying to rack my head around why I stopped with games but having a hard time thinking of what made me change. For PC I just think it probably is risky running pirated software that may be malicious. For things like the switch well I have a older switch that can be fully modded but haven't due to not having the time to fully research all the ins and outs and not wanting my kids switch to be banned or something.
fallingknife 2y ago
That is hypocrisy on the level of thinking buying drugs is ok but selling them is bad. You can argue about the severity of the behavior, but if you are drawing moral lines in the sand, buyer and seller are always on the same side.
- ramon156 2y ago
  You're arguing movies against drugs. Obviously buying drugs is bad, is downloading movies inherently as bad?

jorl17 2y ago

Not saying I agree with infringing on copyright, but I don't think it's contradictory: GPL: "The code must be shared" Downloading/Pirating movies. "The movies should be shared" I don't think people that people who believe in the GPL and pirate movies often do so because "pirating is the right thing to do", but one can certainly make the case that they share the same basic idea.

loeg 2y ago

It's just different people. "Copyright infringement isn't theft" is an extremely niche viewpoint in general.

throwaway48476 2y ago
Niche viewpoint amongst whom? IP lawyers?

medo-bear 2y ago

infringing on copyright is like stealing from the rich infringing on copyleft is like stealing from the poor its the difference between robin hood and government corruption

iamacyborg 2y ago
A lot of folks creating unique IP aren’t rich though?
- medo-bear 2y ago
  [dead]
- DirkH 2y ago
  Consider a homeless person stole from a food bank to sell the food to make money - and nowhere acknowledged where the food came from or that others can get the same food for free; and moreover claimed "this is fresh food I have meticulously sourced myself!" Everyone from the foodbank to other homeless people would justifiably be furious at this scam artist when they learn more. That's the morally repugnant situation we find ourselves in with Honey. Copyleft infringement is perhaps better thought of as stealing from a foodbank than government corruption.
fallingknife 2y ago
Said on a forum where 99% of the posters are rich. When I see drivel like this it reminds me to be grateful that I wasn't born with the narcissistic delusion to believe that my behavior is privileged and morally superior to the same by others. The height of insanity is seeing yourself as the moral arbiter of the universe.
- DirkH 2y ago
  I legitimately don't see how your point meaningfully connects to the comment you're responding to

llm_trw 2y ago

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som... In short: until society changes you play by its rules.

timewizard 2y ago

> this community to say “copyright infringement isn’t theft” when we’re talking about movies I wasn't aware there was this community standard. I explicitly disagree with it and I presume many others here would as well. The contradiction exists only in your one sided assertion. I think the position is more nuanced. Once I've paid for the movie then breaking it's "copyright circumvention measures" so I may copy it or display it for my own purposes and reasons is neither immoral or illegal regardless of what hollywood or the law they paid for says. I also think that Copyright terms being the life of the author are explicitly in violation of the Constitution, let alone, life plus some arbitrary term. These laws have fallen out of the service of the many and into the hands of the few. There's a habit to "point out the contradiction" in these forums. I think it's almost always misguided.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

belorn 2y ago

There are very many differences already pointed out, so to add an other one, there is a difference between a company doing something at scale and for profit, and a private person doing something for themselves. The people in this community that says “copyright infringement isn’t theft” do not refer to copyright infringement where people exploit the work for-profit and put it out as their own (feel free to find a single occurrence to prove me wrong). The word plagiarism comes to mind, which is morally and (depending on country and circumstance) legally a bigger crime than copyright infringement. The legal system usually also recognize that exploitation done for-profit and large scale should be considered worse and punished harder.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

Yeah, they used the wrong word. No "stealing" of code is happening here. It's just infringement of someone's copyrights. Theoretically, they could be taken to court over it. In practice, courts are a rich corporation's game. Copyright should not even exist to begin with. GPL is just there to try to use the system against itself by essentially forcing everything it touches to be public domain. GPL is barely above the copyright industry from a moral standpoint. That usually causes people to treat violations of it far more charitably. Nobody feels sorry for the trillion dollar copyright industry. We live in a world where the same trillion dollar corporations who compare us all to high seas pirates who rape and burn will also engage in AI washing of copyrighted material at industrial scales. That's a far more interesting contradiction than what you're presenting and far more deserving of the people's indignation.

ramon156 2y ago

I guess the difference lies in ownership. If I pirate movies I won't claim that I own the rights to that movie. Can't really say the same when I have a product with stolen code.

cherryteastain 2y ago

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... FSF address this issue directly. GPL is basically fighting fire with fire.

Affric 2y ago

Absolutely not and if it weren’t for the US copyright/IP lobby it wouldn’t even be a crime in many places. Copyright infringement may be criminal. But compared with theft there’s, rightly, a higher standard of proof required.

raincole 2y ago

Because most people in this community know how much effort it takes to make software, but not that to make movies.

prmoustache 2y ago

Which community are you talking about in the first place?

GrantMoyer 2y ago

They are different senses of the terms. In "copyright infringement isn't theft", "theft" is in the sense if car theft. In the title, "stolen" is in the sense of a stolen idea. Copyright infringement, while it may be wrong, truely isn't akin to car theft. It is however akin to a stolen idea. A car theft deprives the rightful owner of the car, but they don't otherwise care that the thief now has a car. An idea theft doesn't deprive the thinker of the idea, but they care that the thief is benefiting from the idea without compensation. Yet they don't care if someone becomes aware of the idea, but keeps it to themself.

mulmen 2y ago

A community is made up of individuals who each hold their own potentially conflicting opinions.

sophacles 2y ago

Copyright infringement isn't theft, whether it's about movies or source code. I don't care about the movie industry, and don't care if they lose money. I don't care about the software industry or if they lose money. I do care about information being freely available whether its in the form of movies or source code - it's in no way contradictory for me to want people locking up source code to be stopped from doing so while also wanting to see more torrenting. Copyright law is a tool - much like fire. I don't want my house to burn down, but I also don't want the fire in the furnace to go out... is it contradictory that i want to use fire to keep warm but not have all my possessions destroyed?