5 ms·

In my experience, people's reasons for piracy are a pretty even mix of all these issues (service problems, principles, and cost) I'd certainly pirate less if I

by squigz 6mo ago

In my experience, people's reasons for piracy are a pretty even mix of all these issues (service problems, principles, and cost) I'd certainly pirate less if I could afford it, but even if I could, I'd still pirate a lot of stuff because I don't want to worry about what streaming service it's on this week, or because I don't want to contribute to monopolization of some industry. And sure, I'd still pirate some things because I find they're overpriced. > I know I'll never win this argument on Hacker News because every piracy conversation turns into an infinite game of moving goalposts, where there's always a new rationalization at every turn. What argument are you referring to, out of curiosity? That some people pirate things 'cause they're poor and make nice-sounding rationalizations about it? Okay, that definitely happens, you win. But I don't think that really takes away from the other valid arguments for piracy?

akramachamarei 6mo ago
> I'd certainly pirate less if I could afford it
- squigz 6mo ago
  What's your point?
  - akramachamarei 6mo ago
    Try substituting some other verbs in there to see if it comes to you: "I'd certainly wrestle less if I could afford it." "I'd certainly eat less ice cream if I could afford it."
otterley 6mo ago
What are these "valid arguments for piracy" you refer to? Content isn't food, shelter, or clothing. It's a "nice to have" in one's life. It's literally entertainment.
- necovek 6mo ago
  They wrote them out. And digital media is similarly fungible, and media companies owning copyright can produce a single copy at insignificant cost — and illegal copies are usually produced at no cost to them too. If you would rather not consume content than pay with time and money being asked of you, there is no real loss to anyone if you consume an illegal copy.
  - otterley 6mo ago
    > They wrote them out. Convenience is not a valid reason to violate others' rights. > there is no real loss to anyone if you consume an illegal copy. There is a real loss: The owner isn’t getting paid when people consume their product for free and without their permission. The entire point of copyright is to protect the time investment of and opportunity cost borne by the author when marginal reproduction cost is zero, or close to zero. This is because we as a society value intellectual labor. We want people to invent things and produce entertainment, and we incentivize it via the profit motive. You can’t write software for a living and not understand this. It’s what puts food on your own table. Don’t try to rationalize it.
    - necovek 6mo ago
      I've spent the bulk of my career being paid to write software that was published under open source licenses. I was paid to write exactly the software the business needed to be built, with software being the tool for the business to provide value to their customers and not a money extracting scheme. I've also worked on complex web applications/systems, where operation of the web site is ultimately the cost that needs to be continuously borne to extract profit from software itself. Yes, someone else can optimize and do operation better than you (eg. see Amazon vs Elastic and numerous other cases of open-source companies being overtaken by their SW being run by well funded teams), but there is low risk of illegal use in this case. Today I am paid to write software that the business believes will provide them profit that will pay for my services. The software I write is tied to a physical product being sold and is effectively the enabler and mostly useless without the physical product itself. Other engineers at the company I am at are building software that requires a lot of support to operate as it manages critical infrastructure country-sized systems, and ultimately, even if someone could get this software without paying a license, they'd probably have no idea how to operate it effectively. Most of the internet infrastructure works on open and free software, where at "worst", copyright protections are turned upside down to make them copyleft if software is not available under more permissive licenses like MIT, BSD or even put into public domain. Companies that used to pay best SW engineering salaries like Google, Meta and Amazon would likely not face any significant business loss if all of their software (source code included) was publicly leaked: SW is a tool for them to provide an ad platform or cloud infrastructure service.

by squigz 6mo ago

akramachamarei 6mo ago

> I'd certainly pirate less if I could afford it

squigz 6mo ago
What's your point?
- akramachamarei 6mo ago
  Try substituting some other verbs in there to see if it comes to you: "I'd certainly wrestle less if I could afford it." "I'd certainly eat less ice cream if I could afford it."

otterley 6mo ago

What are these "valid arguments for piracy" you refer to? Content isn't food, shelter, or clothing. It's a "nice to have" in one's life. It's literally entertainment.

necovek 6mo ago
They wrote them out. And digital media is similarly fungible, and media companies owning copyright can produce a single copy at insignificant cost — and illegal copies are usually produced at no cost to them too. If you would rather not consume content than pay with time and money being asked of you, there is no real loss to anyone if you consume an illegal copy.
- otterley 6mo ago
  > They wrote them out. Convenience is not a valid reason to violate others' rights. > there is no real loss to anyone if you consume an illegal copy. There is a real loss: The owner isn’t getting paid when people consume their product for free and without their permission. The entire point of copyright is to protect the time investment of and opportunity cost borne by the author when marginal reproduction cost is zero, or close to zero. This is because we as a society value intellectual labor. We want people to invent things and produce entertainment, and we incentivize it via the profit motive. You can’t write software for a living and not understand this. It’s what puts food on your own table. Don’t try to rationalize it.
  - necovek 6mo ago
    I've spent the bulk of my career being paid to write software that was published under open source licenses. I was paid to write exactly the software the business needed to be built, with software being the tool for the business to provide value to their customers and not a money extracting scheme. I've also worked on complex web applications/systems, where operation of the web site is ultimately the cost that needs to be continuously borne to extract profit from software itself. Yes, someone else can optimize and do operation better than you (eg. see Amazon vs Elastic and numerous other cases of open-source companies being overtaken by their SW being run by well funded teams), but there is low risk of illegal use in this case. Today I am paid to write software that the business believes will provide them profit that will pay for my services. The software I write is tied to a physical product being sold and is effectively the enabler and mostly useless without the physical product itself. Other engineers at the company I am at are building software that requires a lot of support to operate as it manages critical infrastructure country-sized systems, and ultimately, even if someone could get this software without paying a license, they'd probably have no idea how to operate it effectively. Most of the internet infrastructure works on open and free software, where at "worst", copyright protections are turned upside down to make them copyleft if software is not available under more permissive licenses like MIT, BSD or even put into public domain. Companies that used to pay best SW engineering salaries like Google, Meta and Amazon would likely not face any significant business loss if all of their software (source code included) was publicly leaked: SW is a tool for them to provide an ad platform or cloud infrastructure service.