4 ms·

>The parent comment is putting it as nicely as it can be put. If you don't want people to pirate your music, your only path of recourse as a musician is to stop

by slg 1y ago

>The parent comment is putting it as nicely as it can be put. If you don't want people to pirate your music, your only path of recourse as a musician is to stop uploading digital copies of your work. There is no honor system in music or data and there never will be. I'm just tired of this technolibertarian mindset of "it's not wrong because no one is stopping me from doing it". There is no "honor system" in life either and if you see that as permission to be an asshole, that just makes you an asshole. And if your best defense against being accused of being an asshole is some form of "they couldn't stop me", then you're tacitly admitting to being an asshole.

bigyabai 1y ago
Then maybe we'll never see eye-to-eye. I grew up with an iTunes account, but I never spent my money on music. Some weeks my family lived paycheck-to-paycheck, some nights skipping dinner. I downloaded my music off YouTube to my 2005 HP Compaq, put it on my iTunes library and synced it to my iPod Shuffle. Didn't weigh on my conscience when I pirated video games or FL Studio either, not then and not now. If that made me an asshole, then 11-year-old me was a supervillain bumping Aphex Twin. Oftentimes I think HN forgets to consider the 99% when contemplating ethics over sous-vide.
- slg 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    You actually don't understand the consumer desire for free, if you necessarily conflate it with class warfare and moral grandstanding. It seems to be a karma sink insisting upon this, but this is the hacker ethos. Nobody lords information over anyone, any paywall you erect will eventually fall. For fuck's sake, children are being firebombed in Gaza right now, and this is the imperative ethical hill you choose to die on? Draw out this line of reasoning long enough, and one could argue that Richard Stallman is the worst human alive for "moral grandstanding" the software industry and taking glee in destroying software jobs with copyleft licensing. But more accurately, he ushered in the information age for everyone and prevented it from being cordoned-off behind a proprietary paywall. Yes, he predicated Napster and ThePirateBay and 4chan and all the horrible examples you're apt to draw upon. But he also invariably pushed technology forward - we're better people, that we aren't slaving away remaking the Cairo library for the 30,000th time. Common access to at least some information enables a great deal of art and provides countless value to would-be artists. I'd like to think that the entire human race is bettered with access to information. It would certainly be idyllic if we could compensate artists, authors and scientists along the way, but humanity would be ruined if all information came at-cost. I am willing to fight for a world where individuals have free access to information, and I reckon my tools are more powerful than the publishers who seek to thwart me. I won't stop when the musicians scream out bloody murder, and if you think that's the most immoral thing imaginable then don't ask how 15-year-old me found the money to afford Jimmy John's.
    - cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
    - slg 1y ago
      >For fuck's sake, children are being firebombed in Gaza right now, and this is the imperative ethical hill you choose to die on? Nonsense like this is where I leave the conversation. You can't deny the accusations of moral grandstanding in the same breath you say this. I commented directly on the topic being discussed in a specific HN thread. That does not mean I think this is the most important issue on the planet and the non-sequitur of contrasting a discussion of IP law with children in Gaza being firebombed is just straight up offensive. The "karma sink" here isn't voicing your "ethos", it is you.
    - jazzyjackson 1y ago
      I love seeing your perspective here among all the hand wringing, thanks for not letting downvotes scare you off. IMO it’s regressive to think just because someone has no money they should have no music, and it’s rich seeing calls for free information get downvoted on the same site singing praises of LLMs, as tho those companies paid a dime for their source material
      - AlecSchueler 1y ago
        > IMO it’s regressive to think just because someone has no money they should have no music The person they're responding to has repeatedly said this is not their position.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      Argue one way or the other but it's extremely distasteful to use the suffering of children in Gaza in that way.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- 9dev 1y ago
  Our legal and economic systems just don’t work that way, being poor is no excuse for doing something illegal. Add to that that not all musicians are Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, but might just as well have to fight to survive, living from Spotify payout to gig revenue as well. I sympathise with people trying to get access to culture by all means, but we cannot wholesale morally legitimise freeloading because of that. We all get to enjoy a broad cultural landscape, but that can only exist if most people pay for content.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    > Our legal and economic systems just don’t work that way, being poor is no excuse for doing something illegal. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not criminal. Or in other jurisdictions, it’s not an offense at all, but rather priced in to the costs of recordable media and storage media/devices.
  - scns 1y ago
    > Spotify payout ~1000$ to ~12000$ a year: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/19/zoe-keating-spotify-2018-payout/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/19/zoe-keating-spot...
voidfunc 1y ago
Unfortunately the winds are not blowing in your preferred direction. We are being shown time and time again and in increasing frequency that being an asshole is the best way to succeed.
- anon_e-moose 1y ago
  That short-term individual success is at the expense of the wider long-term success. If 10 people live in a lake and I fish more than everyone I will be better off that others. But then everyone else will seek the same individual short-term success because my first step in being an asshole was not punished. We will all end up starving in this scenario. A central authority agreed by all to manage this situation fairly is the way out. Rules agreed to in common beforehand and enforced by a neutral party.
  - voidfunc 1y ago
    You're missing the key next step where after you get yours you start figuring out ways to deny others from getting theirs either through bullying, state-supported violence or legal means :)
  - thwarted 1y ago
    Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.
    - ninetyninenine 1y ago
      It's only a tragedy if everyone acts the same way. If a few act against the grain then it's no longer a tragedy. The common thief is an example. Also pirating games and movies is another example.
    - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      Tragedy of the Commons is bullshit. Just one pessimistic, selfish asshole penning out a manifesto on how everyone is just as miserable and awful as he is. It assumes that individuals, left to their own devices, will inevitably over-consume shared resources out of selfishness. But this narrative ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary: communities around the world have sustainably managed commons through norms, trust, and mutual accountability. And he wasn't just wrong for the hell of it. He used it to argue against immigration and for coercive population control, not to promote environmental stewardship. His model erases the role of governance, culture, and cooperation, reducing human behavior to a simplistic race to depletion. In reality, the commons don’t fail because they’re shared. They fail when they’re mismanaged, privatized, or stripped of the social fabric that sustains them. I would go so far to say that the only way this concept has ever come close to being "correct" is the culturally inert modern Western world which has replaced everyone's souls with aimless desires for products and cheap dopamine hits, far from anything approaching our natural state.

by slg 1y ago

bigyabai 1y ago

Then maybe we'll never see eye-to-eye. I grew up with an iTunes account, but I never spent my money on music. Some weeks my family lived paycheck-to-paycheck, some nights skipping dinner. I downloaded my music off YouTube to my 2005 HP Compaq, put it on my iTunes library and synced it to my iPod Shuffle. Didn't weigh on my conscience when I pirated video games or FL Studio either, not then and not now. If that made me an asshole, then 11-year-old me was a supervillain bumping Aphex Twin. Oftentimes I think HN forgets to consider the 99% when contemplating ethics over sous-vide.

slg 1y ago
[flagged]
- bigyabai 1y ago
  You actually don't understand the consumer desire for free, if you necessarily conflate it with class warfare and moral grandstanding. It seems to be a karma sink insisting upon this, but this is the hacker ethos. Nobody lords information over anyone, any paywall you erect will eventually fall. For fuck's sake, children are being firebombed in Gaza right now, and this is the imperative ethical hill you choose to die on? Draw out this line of reasoning long enough, and one could argue that Richard Stallman is the worst human alive for "moral grandstanding" the software industry and taking glee in destroying software jobs with copyleft licensing. But more accurately, he ushered in the information age for everyone and prevented it from being cordoned-off behind a proprietary paywall. Yes, he predicated Napster and ThePirateBay and 4chan and all the horrible examples you're apt to draw upon. But he also invariably pushed technology forward - we're better people, that we aren't slaving away remaking the Cairo library for the 30,000th time. Common access to at least some information enables a great deal of art and provides countless value to would-be artists. I'd like to think that the entire human race is bettered with access to information. It would certainly be idyllic if we could compensate artists, authors and scientists along the way, but humanity would be ruined if all information came at-cost. I am willing to fight for a world where individuals have free access to information, and I reckon my tools are more powerful than the publishers who seek to thwart me. I won't stop when the musicians scream out bloody murder, and if you think that's the most immoral thing imaginable then don't ask how 15-year-old me found the money to afford Jimmy John's.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - slg 1y ago
    >For fuck's sake, children are being firebombed in Gaza right now, and this is the imperative ethical hill you choose to die on? Nonsense like this is where I leave the conversation. You can't deny the accusations of moral grandstanding in the same breath you say this. I commented directly on the topic being discussed in a specific HN thread. That does not mean I think this is the most important issue on the planet and the non-sequitur of contrasting a discussion of IP law with children in Gaza being firebombed is just straight up offensive. The "karma sink" here isn't voicing your "ethos", it is you.
  - jazzyjackson 1y ago
    I love seeing your perspective here among all the hand wringing, thanks for not letting downvotes scare you off. IMO it’s regressive to think just because someone has no money they should have no music, and it’s rich seeing calls for free information get downvoted on the same site singing praises of LLMs, as tho those companies paid a dime for their source material
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      > IMO it’s regressive to think just because someone has no money they should have no music The person they're responding to has repeatedly said this is not their position.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    Argue one way or the other but it's extremely distasteful to use the suffering of children in Gaza in that way.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
9dev 1y ago
Our legal and economic systems just don’t work that way, being poor is no excuse for doing something illegal. Add to that that not all musicians are Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, but might just as well have to fight to survive, living from Spotify payout to gig revenue as well. I sympathise with people trying to get access to culture by all means, but we cannot wholesale morally legitimise freeloading because of that. We all get to enjoy a broad cultural landscape, but that can only exist if most people pay for content.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  > Our legal and economic systems just don’t work that way, being poor is no excuse for doing something illegal. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not criminal. Or in other jurisdictions, it’s not an offense at all, but rather priced in to the costs of recordable media and storage media/devices.
- scns 1y ago
  > Spotify payout ~1000$ to ~12000$ a year: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/19/zoe-keating-spotify-2018-payout/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/19/zoe-keating-spot...

voidfunc 1y ago

Unfortunately the winds are not blowing in your preferred direction. We are being shown time and time again and in increasing frequency that being an asshole is the best way to succeed.

anon_e-moose 1y ago
That short-term individual success is at the expense of the wider long-term success. If 10 people live in a lake and I fish more than everyone I will be better off that others. But then everyone else will seek the same individual short-term success because my first step in being an asshole was not punished. We will all end up starving in this scenario. A central authority agreed by all to manage this situation fairly is the way out. Rules agreed to in common beforehand and enforced by a neutral party.
- voidfunc 1y ago
  You're missing the key next step where after you get yours you start figuring out ways to deny others from getting theirs either through bullying, state-supported violence or legal means :)
- thwarted 1y ago
  Tragedy of the Commons Ruins Everything Around Me.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    It's only a tragedy if everyone acts the same way. If a few act against the grain then it's no longer a tragedy. The common thief is an example. Also pirating games and movies is another example.
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    Tragedy of the Commons is bullshit. Just one pessimistic, selfish asshole penning out a manifesto on how everyone is just as miserable and awful as he is. It assumes that individuals, left to their own devices, will inevitably over-consume shared resources out of selfishness. But this narrative ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary: communities around the world have sustainably managed commons through norms, trust, and mutual accountability. And he wasn't just wrong for the hell of it. He used it to argue against immigration and for coercive population control, not to promote environmental stewardship. His model erases the role of governance, culture, and cooperation, reducing human behavior to a simplistic race to depletion. In reality, the commons don’t fail because they’re shared. They fail when they’re mismanaged, privatized, or stripped of the social fabric that sustains them. I would go so far to say that the only way this concept has ever come close to being "correct" is the culturally inert modern Western world which has replaced everyone's souls with aimless desires for products and cheap dopamine hits, far from anything approaching our natural state.