7 ms·

I don't understand why everyone feels the need to portrait piracy as something good. I do it because I can.

by b3tta 14y ago

icebraining 14y ago
Because some people do actually believe it's something good?
belorn 14y ago
"If all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?" - Eben moglen
webreac 14y ago
Because the only way to prohibit piracy is to kill freedom of speech. If you want to protect freedom of exchange of data between people with no eavesdrop, you can not fight piracy.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Perhaps but that doesn't make piracy good. It might make it an unavoidable side effect of something that's good, but that's a different thing.
  - vy8vWJlco 14y ago
    If the freedom to communicate without fear of arbitrary interferance is a good thing (via the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) and "piracy" cannot be realistically stopped without compromising that freedom (for example, by requiring ISPs to support large-scale surveillance, or by undemocratically influencing the government to adopt positions that are in conflict with social norms) then "piracy" is a good thing in at least the sense that the freedom to participate in "piracy" is a pre-requisite for that other good thing. I think privacy easily trumps non-commercial copyright so even when I'm feeling sympathetic to the pro-copyright arguement I am not willing to budge if it means things like more surveillance or increasing the fear that your are being watched by your government or some copyright enforcement company. I think that's a common enough feeling to explain why "Pirate" political parties have any success (despite many political systems being dominated by a small number of established parties, and the popular sentiment being that voting for anything else is throwing your vote away). As you have observed, that is quite a different arguement from the other possibility presented in the main article - that "piracy" (what everyone used to simply call sharing) is a good thing - which I am also receptive to. I mean, why bother having the Internet if not for the potential to distribute everything everywhere without saying "Please sir, I want some more"?
  - eloisant 14y ago
    The important thing is not that piracy is good, but that the "war against piracy" is a bad thing. Just like in US drugs aren't "good" (at least they're no better than alcohol and cigarettes) but "the war on drugs" has a pretty devastating effect on the american society without addressing any drug problem. This is the same with piracy: to fight it movie and video games studio are adding DRM that affects paying customers without preventing piracy, and to censor piracy websites (like the Pirate Bay) the government passes laws that can later be used to silence an opposant (= restrict freedom of speech).
- tzs 14y ago
  And the only way to prohibit reckless driving is to kill freedom of travel, and the only way to prevent murder is to kill freedom of association, right? You are thinking in binary. Binary models underfit the real world.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
There are two different activities that can both be described as consuming intellectual property without paying the creator: sharing and piracy. In the past the limitations of having intellectual property tied to individual physical copies made it much easier to separate these activities which made it easy to promote one and punish the other. Also, long traditions of dealing with these different behaviors showed us the relative risks and benefits of them and allowed us to be comfortable with the idea of libraries, for example. Today, technology has erased those limitations and now the difference between sharing and piracy is much harder to determine, and the mechanisms for ensuring that sharing does not devolve into piracy are either much more technologically different or unproven. We know from history that there are many, many benefits to sharing and other means of IP consumption without direct monetary compensation. We have a high reverence for libraries, for example, and museums, and art galleries. Logically, there has been a great value to the world in having an enormously expanded volume of music, film, books, etc. available to the world through online file sharing. The question is whether or not this has made it more difficult for IP creators to make a living and if so what the appropriate solution to the problem is. Those who are extraordinarily naive and extraordinarily shallow minded imagine that there is no benefit to the world due to "piracy" and imagine that if we could just put a stop to it everything would go back to the way it was and we could stop worrying about it. That's not going to work though because we cannot go back. Things are going to change and the equation of how you make money on IP goods is going to be different in the future, that can't be avoided.
pi18n 14y ago
I got a torrent for some of the Coursera classes because I hated using their crap website. But those were offered for free in the first place so I don't feel very bad about it.

I don't understand why everyone feels the need to portrait piracy as something good. I do it because I can.

by b3tta 14y ago

I don't understand why everyone feels the need to portrait piracy as something good. I do it because I can.

icebraining 14y ago

Because some people do actually believe it's something good?

belorn 14y ago

"If all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?" - Eben moglen

webreac 14y ago

Because the only way to prohibit piracy is to kill freedom of speech. If you want to protect freedom of exchange of data between people with no eavesdrop, you can not fight piracy.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
Perhaps but that doesn't make piracy good. It might make it an unavoidable side effect of something that's good, but that's a different thing.
- vy8vWJlco 14y ago
  If the freedom to communicate without fear of arbitrary interferance is a good thing (via the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) and "piracy" cannot be realistically stopped without compromising that freedom (for example, by requiring ISPs to support large-scale surveillance, or by undemocratically influencing the government to adopt positions that are in conflict with social norms) then "piracy" is a good thing in at least the sense that the freedom to participate in "piracy" is a pre-requisite for that other good thing. I think privacy easily trumps non-commercial copyright so even when I'm feeling sympathetic to the pro-copyright arguement I am not willing to budge if it means things like more surveillance or increasing the fear that your are being watched by your government or some copyright enforcement company. I think that's a common enough feeling to explain why "Pirate" political parties have any success (despite many political systems being dominated by a small number of established parties, and the popular sentiment being that voting for anything else is throwing your vote away). As you have observed, that is quite a different arguement from the other possibility presented in the main article - that "piracy" (what everyone used to simply call sharing) is a good thing - which I am also receptive to. I mean, why bother having the Internet if not for the potential to distribute everything everywhere without saying "Please sir, I want some more"?
- eloisant 14y ago
  The important thing is not that piracy is good, but that the "war against piracy" is a bad thing. Just like in US drugs aren't "good" (at least they're no better than alcohol and cigarettes) but "the war on drugs" has a pretty devastating effect on the american society without addressing any drug problem. This is the same with piracy: to fight it movie and video games studio are adding DRM that affects paying customers without preventing piracy, and to censor piracy websites (like the Pirate Bay) the government passes laws that can later be used to silence an opposant (= restrict freedom of speech).
tzs 14y ago
And the only way to prohibit reckless driving is to kill freedom of travel, and the only way to prevent murder is to kill freedom of association, right? You are thinking in binary. Binary models underfit the real world.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

There are two different activities that can both be described as consuming intellectual property without paying the creator: sharing and piracy. In the past the limitations of having intellectual property tied to individual physical copies made it much easier to separate these activities which made it easy to promote one and punish the other. Also, long traditions of dealing with these different behaviors showed us the relative risks and benefits of them and allowed us to be comfortable with the idea of libraries, for example. Today, technology has erased those limitations and now the difference between sharing and piracy is much harder to determine, and the mechanisms for ensuring that sharing does not devolve into piracy are either much more technologically different or unproven. We know from history that there are many, many benefits to sharing and other means of IP consumption without direct monetary compensation. We have a high reverence for libraries, for example, and museums, and art galleries. Logically, there has been a great value to the world in having an enormously expanded volume of music, film, books, etc. available to the world through online file sharing. The question is whether or not this has made it more difficult for IP creators to make a living and if so what the appropriate solution to the problem is. Those who are extraordinarily naive and extraordinarily shallow minded imagine that there is no benefit to the world due to "piracy" and imagine that if we could just put a stop to it everything would go back to the way it was and we could stop worrying about it. That's not going to work though because we cannot go back. Things are going to change and the equation of how you make money on IP goods is going to be different in the future, that can't be avoided.

pi18n 14y ago

I got a torrent for some of the Coursera classes because I hated using their crap website. But those were offered for free in the first place so I don't feel very bad about it.