4 ms·

I'm sure the people stealing stuff from Walgreens in SF also think the rest of us are chumps, but that doesn't make them right. I'm happy to pay to support the

I'm sure the people stealing stuff from Walgreens in SF also think the rest of us are chumps, but that doesn't make them right. I'm happy to pay to support the people making stuff I like - and the ability to do that directly instead of indirectly via ads (which I hate) is nice.

anonym29 1y ago
Goods in Walgreens are fundamentally dissimilar to YouTube videos. When you steal something from Walgreens, a legal person has had private property unjustly taken from them that prevents the rightful owner from using or obtaining benefit from the scarce physical good (in Walgreens' case, sale of that good). Conversely, even full-blown piracy of copyrighted content does NOT deprive the owner of private property, there is no prevention of the rightful owner to watch the video, nor is the rightful owner prevented from obtaining benefit, because there was no scarce physical good lost. Courts might say you can "own" an idea. I disagree, it's plainly and obviously ridiculous to compare a speaker or some snacks to a infinitely reproducible digital file, to say nothing of a single stream of an infinitely reproducible digital file that was intentionally uploaded to a platform that makes content available to non-paying users.
- strogonoff 1y ago
  A misconception I frequently see repeated is that if something can be copied effortlessly, then that becomes an argument for abolishing the concept of ownership in that domain. The mistake here is seeing it as a zero-sum game. The goal of IP rights is not to prevent party A from “depriving” party B of their property. Believe it or not, understanding that copying IP does not destroy the original is not some galaxy brain level thinking only available to the enlightened. Rather, the goal is to encourage the creativity and innovation that produces more of such intellectual property overall; offering a degree of control over your own IP is a mechanism[0] of getting there. A shining example of that is copyleft licensing. The concept of IP ownership powers GPL: in order to say “you must contribute back or disclose your source”, in order to give the assurance that programmer contributions will benefit the world rather than get embraced and extinguished by a megacorp, you must be able to execute the aforementioned control over the IP. Free and open software—including gems like Linux (probably the most popular OS in the world), Blender, etc.—flourished because of this control, not despite it. Many people, in their self-righteous crusade for free movies and stuff, completely miss that point. So, if anything, it is the opposite. The difficulty of stealing or copying a physical object already acts as a natural deterrent, which is why something that can be expropriated with no effort should require more explicit protection, not less. This should make intuitive sense to anyone who can see the value of intellectual property and it being the driving force of innovation. [0] If someone has an alternative mechanism in mind, I welcome a description of how it would work.
- therealpygon 1y ago
  I’m not against it, because you are correct that the cost to make a copy is near zero, but let’s not go full self-delusion that the content has zero cost.
- homefree 1y ago
  Just because a good is non-rival does not mean it therefore should be free. For a similar example, drug discovery often takes billions of dollars of investment - but once discovered is very inexpensive to copy. Does that mean once discovered it should be (nearly) free for anyone to manufacture? What would you consider the second order incentives of that kind of societal structure? These arguments when given a tiny bit of thought to the incentives they create fall apart instantly. It's a good way to end up in a communist type of social failure where nothing is created and everything is scarce. The goal of these laws is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" - it's about creating incentives that benefit the creator and the society. That's the purpose.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    Pharmaceuticals and YouTube videos are not the same thing. Why must they be treated identically when it comes to intellectual "property" law? Doesn't it make much more sense to offer more protection and incentives to lifesaving medications than to trite clickbait and video game livestreams? Why are we conflating the value of those two? Since we're not starting from a principled approach that acknowledges that nobody can "own" an idea, and instead going with a consequentialist approach - what are the horrific, severe consequences of not giving a few pennies in ad revenue to someone uploading a compilation video of other people's work that justify treating that the EXACT same way we treat lifesaving drugs? To be clear, I'm not proposing graduated IP protection (I am the abolitionist camp when it comes to IP), I'm pointing out that if you're really primarily concerned about the harms of second order effects from lack of innovation incentives, then easily 90%+ of all copyright-protected content (memes, reaction videos, TikTok dances) should get zero protection under your own logic, as there is questionable social value (if not outright negative), and essentially zero negative ramifications of not incentivizing that kind of slop. Consequentialism may not be the tool you want to rest your argument on if your argument is that every single video on YouTube deserves just as much copyright protection as pharmaceuticals.

anonym29 1y ago

Goods in Walgreens are fundamentally dissimilar to YouTube videos. When you steal something from Walgreens, a legal person has had private property unjustly taken from them that prevents the rightful owner from using or obtaining benefit from the scarce physical good (in Walgreens' case, sale of that good). Conversely, even full-blown piracy of copyrighted content does NOT deprive the owner of private property, there is no prevention of the rightful owner to watch the video, nor is the rightful owner prevented from obtaining benefit, because there was no scarce physical good lost. Courts might say you can "own" an idea. I disagree, it's plainly and obviously ridiculous to compare a speaker or some snacks to a infinitely reproducible digital file, to say nothing of a single stream of an infinitely reproducible digital file that was intentionally uploaded to a platform that makes content available to non-paying users.

strogonoff 1y ago
A misconception I frequently see repeated is that if something can be copied effortlessly, then that becomes an argument for abolishing the concept of ownership in that domain. The mistake here is seeing it as a zero-sum game. The goal of IP rights is not to prevent party A from “depriving” party B of their property. Believe it or not, understanding that copying IP does not destroy the original is not some galaxy brain level thinking only available to the enlightened. Rather, the goal is to encourage the creativity and innovation that produces more of such intellectual property overall; offering a degree of control over your own IP is a mechanism[0] of getting there. A shining example of that is copyleft licensing. The concept of IP ownership powers GPL: in order to say “you must contribute back or disclose your source”, in order to give the assurance that programmer contributions will benefit the world rather than get embraced and extinguished by a megacorp, you must be able to execute the aforementioned control over the IP. Free and open software—including gems like Linux (probably the most popular OS in the world), Blender, etc.—flourished because of this control, not despite it. Many people, in their self-righteous crusade for free movies and stuff, completely miss that point. So, if anything, it is the opposite. The difficulty of stealing or copying a physical object already acts as a natural deterrent, which is why something that can be expropriated with no effort should require more explicit protection, not less. This should make intuitive sense to anyone who can see the value of intellectual property and it being the driving force of innovation. [0] If someone has an alternative mechanism in mind, I welcome a description of how it would work.
therealpygon 1y ago
I’m not against it, because you are correct that the cost to make a copy is near zero, but let’s not go full self-delusion that the content has zero cost.
homefree 1y ago
Just because a good is non-rival does not mean it therefore should be free. For a similar example, drug discovery often takes billions of dollars of investment - but once discovered is very inexpensive to copy. Does that mean once discovered it should be (nearly) free for anyone to manufacture? What would you consider the second order incentives of that kind of societal structure? These arguments when given a tiny bit of thought to the incentives they create fall apart instantly. It's a good way to end up in a communist type of social failure where nothing is created and everything is scarce. The goal of these laws is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" - it's about creating incentives that benefit the creator and the society. That's the purpose.
- anonym29 1y ago
  Pharmaceuticals and YouTube videos are not the same thing. Why must they be treated identically when it comes to intellectual "property" law? Doesn't it make much more sense to offer more protection and incentives to lifesaving medications than to trite clickbait and video game livestreams? Why are we conflating the value of those two? Since we're not starting from a principled approach that acknowledges that nobody can "own" an idea, and instead going with a consequentialist approach - what are the horrific, severe consequences of not giving a few pennies in ad revenue to someone uploading a compilation video of other people's work that justify treating that the EXACT same way we treat lifesaving drugs? To be clear, I'm not proposing graduated IP protection (I am the abolitionist camp when it comes to IP), I'm pointing out that if you're really primarily concerned about the harms of second order effects from lack of innovation incentives, then easily 90%+ of all copyright-protected content (memes, reaction videos, TikTok dances) should get zero protection under your own logic, as there is questionable social value (if not outright negative), and essentially zero negative ramifications of not incentivizing that kind of slop. Consequentialism may not be the tool you want to rest your argument on if your argument is that every single video on YouTube deserves just as much copyright protection as pharmaceuticals.