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That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable. Can I speak as one of the creati

That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable. Can I speak as one of the creative people that, you know, actually works to produce the content so many people seem to feel righteously entitled to? If you're going to pirate/copyright infringe, do so, but please stop trying to rebrand it as a freedom of speech issue. It's embarrassing. As I see it, there are four types of people who generally don't pirate content: - The technically illiterate. - People who have made a conscious decision to support the producer of the content. - People who fear enforcement of copyright law. - People who have no interest in the content available. The whole piracy political movement is manifestly obviously just rationalisation, with the goal of striking back at shadowy 'middle men' being particularly ridiculous.

belorn 14y ago
>People who have made a concious decision to support the producer of the content. Pirates are those that proportional spends more money to support artists and producers, than those that do not pirate. Many make very conscious decisions in regard to independent labels, so that money gets funneled to those that need them mostly. As for your comment as a whole, rationalization to explain political motives is as old as politics itself. Worker movement = people who just want more wages and work less. Social reforms = people who want free money. Medical reforms = people who want free medical care. Tax abolition = people want to spend less money on taxes. Green movement = ... Sorry, the argument of rationalization to explain political motives are a horrible bad argument.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  I'm interested in the idea that those who pirate tend also to be those who spend the most. Right now we know that's true and I'd surmise it's because those who pirate are those who are most interested in the medium therefore consume it most in all it's forms. But most people now are those who've grown up with some understanding that music or movies or games are things you might / should pay for. My question is will it continue to be the case that the largest consumers of media continue to be those who actually pay most once you have a generation who've been bought up with torrenting as their primary method of consumption? Essentially are we in an interim space where it sort of works because the core consumer group have an expectation and a behaviour pattern which is a hangover from a previous time but which won't be replicated in the future?
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > My question is will it continue to be the case that the largest consumers of media continue to be those who actually pay most once you have a generation who've been bought up with torrenting as their primary method of consumption? This is a very important question to keep in mind. Forget about when the economy is bad, like the last couple of years. Even in the best of times, children have a very limited amount of money when it comes to purchasing media, and conversely have a relatively large amount of time. Torrents completely obviate the need for children to spend their allowance or money they worked for on content, and are easy for them to figure out with some time. Why spend that precious money on music or movies when you can spend it on a physical object instead? The real problem is that once the torrenting habit is established, it's very difficult to break it. I'm talking about people under the age of 20 here - people who started torrenting at 12 or 13, when torrents first took off in the early 2000s. Contrary to what many people on this site suggest, torrenting is not that hard once you've learned how to do it when you have the free time (as a teenager), and viruses are not rampant, particularly if you're downloading only media (and not software). The only thing it's missing is live streaming, but with fast connections these days (which will only get faster over time), you can still get an HD movie in under half an hour.
    - belorn 14y ago
      It's an important question, but I don't know why we need to bunch together childrens purchasing habits, and adults. They are after all quite different markets. I don't think we can ever get back where childrens money, saved over months and months of having a paper route, goes back to pay for culture, art and useful information (programs). There is also a question if its morally right to deny children of culture, art and useful information, on the basis if they can pay for it. Currently, schools are the primary actor in bridging the gap between rich children, and poor ones, but its not a long term solution. For adults, its a complete different question, one which usually ends up on the question of convenience, price and opportunity. Afterall, Wallmart will always sell DVD's and games, even if copyright would go away. They also sell bottled water, and in some places, air. Torrenting and wallmart dvd's do not directly compete for the same market group. In same way, streaming provide a convenience that torrenting do not. Add channels with preselected entertainment, and we are talking about quite different experience between streaming and torrenting. If you are a person who careful select what you want to view before hand, and got time to prepare downloads, and do not impulsive buy DVD's at stands, then yes you might be a person who would rather torrent than buy (and thus get a superior product without drm). On other hand, that kind of person is much more likely to spend money on independent movies, on cinemas and expensive collector boxes with additional items like props and books.
- oh_sigh 14y ago
  > Pirates are those that proportional spends more money to support artists and producers, than those that do not pirate. This means absolutely nothing. According to your logic, if someone spends enough money on media, they get an all you can eat pass to all other media? How much money would these pirates spend on media if they did not pirate? Presumably more than they currently spend.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Difficult to prove one way or the other. Some people may be able to afford to spend $50 (say) on stuff a month and then download everything they want they can't afford. Take away downloading and the still only spend $50 - they can't afford more and just put up with having less (by afford here I also include choose to spend $50 - essentially people who for one reason or another will cap their spending around a certain amount then after that make do). In this case you're potentially damaging the artist by stopping them copying as there's no money to be had BUT they might get exposure to an artist through piracy and become a legitimate consumer of their work later. In a similar vein they might be being given copies stuff by friends who like an artist and will then go on to buy other material by that artist actually increasing the total spend (I'm guessing I'm not the only person who has been given a mix tape / CD and gone on to love something off it and make a legitimate purchase). Or they might be downloading on a "try before you buy" basis in which case they might just seek out other ways to sample stuff before they buy it and their spend doesn't go up. They might be downloading stuff that you can't buy legitimately (I've done that) in which case the amount they spend doesn't go up because there is no legitimate alternative. Reality is that the amount spent per person on average would probably go up some but not as much as the assorted industries being "wronged" by piracy make out and it's a fair bit more complex than they make out.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      True, but then if you buy your first $50 worth of media every month and then pirate the rest. Those unlucky enough to be in the second group get kinda screwed. Maybe you the stuff you pirated is better than the stuff you paid for? In which case since you probably can't get a refund on that you should really buy the stuff you pirated next month instead. How often that happens in practise is uncertain. Or maybe it all averages out in aggregate.
ryanstewart 14y ago
"That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable." But doesn't that speak to the exact issue you're responding to? I'd more than happily pay for Game of Thrones season 2 if it were available for me to pay for on its own or with other things I want. The problem is that in order to get it I have to subscribe to cable, which is a hefty tax to pay for a single show. I'm not begrudging HBO for deciding that's the best way for them to make money. But I gladly reward artists and companies that are thinking outside the box and doing direct-to-consumer or generally breaking away from the middle man.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  The problem with citing Louis CK or Radiohead when discussing this issue is that they are outliers. They are individual artists, working in mediums with little to no overhead who have established reputations. But film, tv, games, software - some of these projects take thousands of people working full time for years, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.
  - king_jester 14y ago
    It's true that some types of film, tv, games, and software made with huge budgets and teams. However, all of these things are still produced by individuals and small groups of people, even without the change of major financial success. The rise of things like kickstarter, bandcamp, youtube, etc. are all evidence of people looking to and actually creating something.
    - MrScruff 14y ago
      Indeed, but the public's appetite for alternative and crowd funded entertainment is relatively insignificant, as evidenced by a glance at your average torrent tracker. That's why it's described as alternative. The public want slick, expensively produced mass market entertainment. They just don't want to pay for it if they can avoid it.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
jellicle 14y ago
But your post is the one with the righteous entitlement.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  Could you explain?
  - narag 14y ago
    I'm not him, but I believe I can: the fact that you make some work doesn't mean that you're entitled to be paid for it. Enforcement is not free in any sense. You have a problem: people doesn't want to use the content in a way that's easy to monetize. You don't like the solution of changing your business model. So the answer is draconian IP laws, privacy invasions and public resources devoted to ensure private profits. Resources paid by every tax payer, that can be used to prosecute most of them. The entitlement is forgetting that copyright (or property at large for the matter) is just a means to an end, not an absolute concept. For me, if the price of privacy and freedom is that professional contents producing disappears, so be it. Now what? Would you consider changing the business model or would you rather see the business dying? For the people in the industry (the proverbial "middle-man") the answer is clear: they don't think it's gonna die before they cash, so they're happy taking the hard line and stretching the rope.
    - MrScruff 14y ago
      the fact that you make some work doesn't mean that you're entitled to be paid for it. You've constructed a straw man, I haven't once argued for draconian IP law. I simply stated that those that engage in piracy should be honest to themselves about their own motivations. I'm not even judging them, it's just the political affectations I find preposterous. Most laws have developed from a consensus of what benefits society as a whole. This is no different. Nobody is claiming entitlement to be paid for anything. They're asking for the ability to choose on which basis people consume their product. We already have laws for this, the currently difficulty is in how to enforce them. I don't claim to have an answer to that question.
rayiner 14y ago
> That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable. Thank you for that. The rhetoric on this issue is really over the top. While all content I think is entitled to certain protections as art, let's not pretend that the content in question is high art. It's entertainment, largely produced by people for the sole purpose of making a lot of money.
nocipher 14y ago
I think the argument is valid. Even some libraries have movies and video games. I fail to see how downloading media has a fundamental different effect than merely borrowing it. Even arguing that borrowing is temporary seems a poor argument at best. Most people only play games or watch movies a small number of times and then rarely pick them up again. And, even so, there is nothing stopping borrowing again. If the library paradigm is okay, why is the downloading content paradigm not okay?
- rayiner 14y ago
  Because library shelves don't consist 90% of pop movies, video games, and music. Pirating the latest Halo game is not the same as borrowing a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  - kragen 14y ago
    Torrents don't consist 90% of those things either. The largest audio torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 is a sample library for use in creating your own songs. The largest video torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 is a collection of the X-Files TV show; #2 is a collection of 50 classic movies (A Clockwork Orange, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, and so on) --- the movie equivalent of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The largest software torrents on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 are chess tablebases --- used for research into the game of chess --- Microsoft Windows 7, and auto repair software called Alldata. The top "other" torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 is a preservation copy of GeoCities, which contained the full weirdness of the late-90s web in miniature, and after a duplicate of the same torrent, #2 is an archive of chemical journals. I think what you're probably thinking of is not library shelves but library checkouts. And I think that you'll find that library checkouts did consist 90% of trashy paperbacks, the text equivalent of pop movies, back when people got that kind of stuff from libraries instead of online.
    - GHFigs 14y ago
Tipzntrix 14y ago
Even the technically illiterate hit the black market from time to time to gorge on some shady-looking but insanely cheap DVDs.
coliveira 14y ago
Great comment. It seems interesting how people don't see the contradiction of having everything for free. Why do people think we are entitled to have Disney content, or Harry Potter books for free? Why Google and related companies seem to believe they have the right to display newspapers' content for free? Just because everything is nowadays in digital format doesn't mean that we are entitled to have a copy of it.
- njharman 14y ago
  In the USA (at least) specific laws (copyright) had to be passed to make these inherently and naturally free things a protected monopoly.
  - coliveira 14y ago
    Every property law is unnatural. Who says that I can't own the land across my backyard?... Yes, some stupid law that was passed to invalidate my natural right of conquering that land with a club in hand. The civilized society was created by imposing these laws, and copyright laws allowed the establishment of an industry for creative works.
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      First off, 'Conquering' is not a natural right. Second, personal property and real property are different categories. Real estate is somewhat artificial, but the ownership of personal items that you can carry around is a very natural right. It comes naturally from possession and autonomy, and does not need laws to exist.
      - coliveira 14y ago
        But somehow every other "artificial" right, like real estate, looks OK for you other than copyright... This is what I call bending the argument for particular gain.
        14y ago
yebyen 14y ago
In any other industry, when you have one guy who deals his wares to thousands of other vendors and enforces an exclusivity relationship such as in Hollywood, allowing no other sources to produce similar work, demanding the price remain artificially high, and what do you call it? Price fixing! Racketeering! A cartel! Mr. Producer, do you want to support a whole cartel? How much of the product of your work is siphoned into the pockets of these middlemen that you claim are so shadowy? Is it because you don't want to pay them that you downplay their role? Why are they entitled to a share of what you earn, when distribution models that scale and support themselves in a feedback loop like BitTorrent are available, and the people who are consuming your content will foot the bill to the cartels for these distribution contracts? What justification is there for price fixing, where regions that have larger collections of wealth amassed into smaller groups that can afford to pay more are gouged? What basis have you to charge more in the US or Australia than in India and Africa, where digital broadcast entertainment might be more or less pervasive? I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this. What specifically are you angry about? Is it my claim that piracy is more about convenience and personal gain than free speech? Would you disagree with that sentiment? Could you explain why? I'm not sure what to make of the rest of your post but I think you have quite a narrow view of the film industry. I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.
  - yebyen 14y ago
truebecomefalse 14y ago
What about me? I bought Assassins Creed 3 on steam last week and ordered an xbox360 controller for PC from Amazon. I had the game downloaded and everything ready to go to have a relaxing day of gaming this Saturday. The problem came when I was required to create a UPlay account in order to open my game. Ubisoft's servers were down and I was not able to create an account or play the game. I spent a couple precious hours of my Saturday dealing with their incompetence and then gave up and decided to pirate the game. I was not very pleased at this point and walked in to my office where we have a 1Gbit connection. I proceeded to torrent the game and grabbed Farcry 3 as well because, fuck em. This took about 45 minutes of downloading. I walked home and was playing 15 minutes later. Ubisoft is forever on my To-Pirate list for brazenly wasting my time on their pointless DRM. I don't think I fit in your narrow categories. PS: I spend about 200$/month on paid iTunes Content.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  While I sympathise with your issues with Ubisoft's ridiculously hamfisted DRM, I simply don't believe this is a significant driving force behind piracy. I'm not claiming it doesn't exist though, or endorsing horrible DRM.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  That is a minor category made possible by the major ones. The torrent you used was not seeded and distributed just for those who had paid for the game. I myself prefer to pirate ISOs rather than find reinstallation media in my closet (a rare need), and it is just as irrelevant given most people seeding and peering also want the serial crack/gen file as well.
- jonhohle 14y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks this is a completely unreasonable response? You purchased the game, whether or not you should be allowed to download another (slightly modified) copy is a legal gray area - but one I would morally support. Downloading other products from the same company, just because they ticked you off? You've just escalated the situation from what is likely an unfortunately operational issue (no malice) to some form of revenge. If you want relief from the harm done to you (which, I would argue getting the pirated copy of AC3 was), allow a court to determine the reward. In this situation, it's likely overkill.
wwwtyro 14y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to consider the anti-IP position as one of simple rationalization. I once held your position, and now consider it to have been a narrow-minded mistake (that was directed at my past self, not you). Give me a moment to explain my philosophical transformation by way of example: Suppose you walk out into some unclaimed forest and gather some wood. Per John Locke, you have mixed your labor (gathering) with a natural resource (wood) and now own the gathered wood. And what is ownership? Ownership is the right to do with your property whatever you'd like, provided what you do does not affect or threaten the property of others (including the property they have in their own persons). This is understood intuitively in the scope of the example here that it would be wrong for someone to, by force and against your will, take the wood that you gathered. To continue the example: your friend Bob approaches you and shows you an invention of his - a wooden seat, exquisitely crafted and very comfortable to sit upon. It's a fantastic idea, and you're really quite taken with it. Instead of purchasing the seat, however, you decide to produce some of your own, using the wood you own, for your own use and to sell to others. You do so. Bob comes to you, quite upset. You've stolen his idea, he says, and profited with it against his will. And here the internal conflict introduced by the concept of "intellectual" property is highlighted. You used your own property as you pleased and in a way that did not harm or threaten to harm anyone else's property, and yet according to Bob, you've violated his "intellectual" property rights. In fact, the only way to not violate Bob's "intellectual" property is to not do with your property as you please, even though that use is entirely nonviolent. Bob's exercise of his "intellectual" property right is a violation of your property right! I hope I have sufficiently demonstrated here that IP cannot be a right at all, because it destroys the internal consistency of property rights in general. The response to this is usually utilitarian: "But how are artists going to get paid without IP?" I offer a riposte here not because I have to (the ends do not justify the means) but because some people need firm ground to stand upon before they can move into a brave new world sans copyright. The threshold pledge system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system) is a means of providing compensation to artists for their work that does not depend upon IP law.
- joseflavio 14y ago
  You summarized very well exactly how I feel about IP! Before our century the word for IP was "Monopoly Privileges". It is funny and scary how a simple change in wording: adding "property", is slowly brainwashing people in a very unnatural way of thinking.
mrtron 14y ago
For ever 1000$ sold in the music industry, the artist gets 20$. I don't see how you see the "middle men" portion ridiculous. The music scene would be optimized for musicians if there was a 100% piracy/distribution rate and artists sold their own tickets/merch/ringtones/etc online.
deleted 14y ago
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bad_user 14y ago
> The technically illiterate I can assure you, those people can and do pirate content just fine, in many cases being easier to copy it from torrents than it is to purchase it ;-) > People who have made a conscious decision to support the producer of the content There are 2 problems with these kind of people: as such purchases are all about giving-back, they are easily pissed off by DRM schemes and they are a minority, because we are talking about an economy based on artificial scarcity here. > People who fear enforcement of copyright law Also a minority, especially because the probability of being prosecuted as an individual for copyright infringement is smaller than being hit by a car tomorrow. > The whole piracy political movement is manifestly obviously just rationalisation You cannot hand-wave facts.
scotty79 14y ago
I just don't think anyones feeling of entitlement to get some money should trump my right to get and share information.
peapicker 14y ago
Missed one type of person - People who believe it is unethical to pirate content Nothing to do with fear, or interest, or deciding to support the content producer.
freshhawk 14y ago
What about the fact that infringing copyright is only going to get easier as technology improves while every conceivable method of policing the internet for copyright necessarily involves complete surveillance of all communication by citizens? It's not being "rebranded" as a freedom of speech issue, it has become one by the nature of the only possible ways to enforce copyright laws on the internet. I agree that a "right to share 3rd party artistic works" isn't freedom of speech, but protecting the ability of people to secretly transfer bits is abso-fucking-lutely the freedom of speech issue of our time. It's the difference between a stance based on what you think "should be" and one based on the practical limitations inherent in designing legal constraints around online sharing. We can give enormous surveillance powers to some central group to police copyright and destroy freedom of speech, we can have no way to stop copyright infringement except for cultural norms or we can reevaluate how we, as a society, compensate artists. This has been reevaluated many times in the last thousand years and it looks like another one has been thrust upon us, since I'm not sure we can stop people from sharing files just by shaming them. Pirates spend more money buying artistic works than non-pirates so I can't blame people who feel that the honesty system will work, but I don't really think it will work. I'm too cynical perhaps.

belorn 14y ago

>People who have made a concious decision to support the producer of the content. Pirates are those that proportional spends more money to support artists and producers, than those that do not pirate. Many make very conscious decisions in regard to independent labels, so that money gets funneled to those that need them mostly. As for your comment as a whole, rationalization to explain political motives is as old as politics itself. Worker movement = people who just want more wages and work less. Social reforms = people who want free money. Medical reforms = people who want free medical care. Tax abolition = people want to spend less money on taxes. Green movement = ... Sorry, the argument of rationalization to explain political motives are a horrible bad argument.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
I'm interested in the idea that those who pirate tend also to be those who spend the most. Right now we know that's true and I'd surmise it's because those who pirate are those who are most interested in the medium therefore consume it most in all it's forms. But most people now are those who've grown up with some understanding that music or movies or games are things you might / should pay for. My question is will it continue to be the case that the largest consumers of media continue to be those who actually pay most once you have a generation who've been bought up with torrenting as their primary method of consumption? Essentially are we in an interim space where it sort of works because the core consumer group have an expectation and a behaviour pattern which is a hangover from a previous time but which won't be replicated in the future?
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > My question is will it continue to be the case that the largest consumers of media continue to be those who actually pay most once you have a generation who've been bought up with torrenting as their primary method of consumption? This is a very important question to keep in mind. Forget about when the economy is bad, like the last couple of years. Even in the best of times, children have a very limited amount of money when it comes to purchasing media, and conversely have a relatively large amount of time. Torrents completely obviate the need for children to spend their allowance or money they worked for on content, and are easy for them to figure out with some time. Why spend that precious money on music or movies when you can spend it on a physical object instead? The real problem is that once the torrenting habit is established, it's very difficult to break it. I'm talking about people under the age of 20 here - people who started torrenting at 12 or 13, when torrents first took off in the early 2000s. Contrary to what many people on this site suggest, torrenting is not that hard once you've learned how to do it when you have the free time (as a teenager), and viruses are not rampant, particularly if you're downloading only media (and not software). The only thing it's missing is live streaming, but with fast connections these days (which will only get faster over time), you can still get an HD movie in under half an hour.
  - belorn 14y ago
    It's an important question, but I don't know why we need to bunch together childrens purchasing habits, and adults. They are after all quite different markets. I don't think we can ever get back where childrens money, saved over months and months of having a paper route, goes back to pay for culture, art and useful information (programs). There is also a question if its morally right to deny children of culture, art and useful information, on the basis if they can pay for it. Currently, schools are the primary actor in bridging the gap between rich children, and poor ones, but its not a long term solution. For adults, its a complete different question, one which usually ends up on the question of convenience, price and opportunity. Afterall, Wallmart will always sell DVD's and games, even if copyright would go away. They also sell bottled water, and in some places, air. Torrenting and wallmart dvd's do not directly compete for the same market group. In same way, streaming provide a convenience that torrenting do not. Add channels with preselected entertainment, and we are talking about quite different experience between streaming and torrenting. If you are a person who careful select what you want to view before hand, and got time to prepare downloads, and do not impulsive buy DVD's at stands, then yes you might be a person who would rather torrent than buy (and thus get a superior product without drm). On other hand, that kind of person is much more likely to spend money on independent movies, on cinemas and expensive collector boxes with additional items like props and books.
oh_sigh 14y ago
> Pirates are those that proportional spends more money to support artists and producers, than those that do not pirate. This means absolutely nothing. According to your logic, if someone spends enough money on media, they get an all you can eat pass to all other media? How much money would these pirates spend on media if they did not pirate? Presumably more than they currently spend.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Difficult to prove one way or the other. Some people may be able to afford to spend $50 (say) on stuff a month and then download everything they want they can't afford. Take away downloading and the still only spend $50 - they can't afford more and just put up with having less (by afford here I also include choose to spend $50 - essentially people who for one reason or another will cap their spending around a certain amount then after that make do). In this case you're potentially damaging the artist by stopping them copying as there's no money to be had BUT they might get exposure to an artist through piracy and become a legitimate consumer of their work later. In a similar vein they might be being given copies stuff by friends who like an artist and will then go on to buy other material by that artist actually increasing the total spend (I'm guessing I'm not the only person who has been given a mix tape / CD and gone on to love something off it and make a legitimate purchase). Or they might be downloading on a "try before you buy" basis in which case they might just seek out other ways to sample stuff before they buy it and their spend doesn't go up. They might be downloading stuff that you can't buy legitimately (I've done that) in which case the amount they spend doesn't go up because there is no legitimate alternative. Reality is that the amount spent per person on average would probably go up some but not as much as the assorted industries being "wronged" by piracy make out and it's a fair bit more complex than they make out.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    True, but then if you buy your first $50 worth of media every month and then pirate the rest. Those unlucky enough to be in the second group get kinda screwed. Maybe you the stuff you pirated is better than the stuff you paid for? In which case since you probably can't get a refund on that you should really buy the stuff you pirated next month instead. How often that happens in practise is uncertain. Or maybe it all averages out in aggregate.

ryanstewart 14y ago

"That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable." But doesn't that speak to the exact issue you're responding to? I'd more than happily pay for Game of Thrones season 2 if it were available for me to pay for on its own or with other things I want. The problem is that in order to get it I have to subscribe to cable, which is a hefty tax to pay for a single show. I'm not begrudging HBO for deciding that's the best way for them to make money. But I gladly reward artists and companies that are thinking outside the box and doing direct-to-consumer or generally breaking away from the middle man.

MrScruff 14y ago
The problem with citing Louis CK or Radiohead when discussing this issue is that they are outliers. They are individual artists, working in mediums with little to no overhead who have established reputations. But film, tv, games, software - some of these projects take thousands of people working full time for years, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.
- king_jester 14y ago
  It's true that some types of film, tv, games, and software made with huge budgets and teams. However, all of these things are still produced by individuals and small groups of people, even without the change of major financial success. The rise of things like kickstarter, bandcamp, youtube, etc. are all evidence of people looking to and actually creating something.
  - MrScruff 14y ago
    Indeed, but the public's appetite for alternative and crowd funded entertainment is relatively insignificant, as evidenced by a glance at your average torrent tracker. That's why it's described as alternative. The public want slick, expensively produced mass market entertainment. They just don't want to pay for it if they can avoid it.
- jiggy2011 14y ago

jellicle 14y ago

But your post is the one with the righteous entitlement.

MrScruff 14y ago
Could you explain?
- narag 14y ago
  I'm not him, but I believe I can: the fact that you make some work doesn't mean that you're entitled to be paid for it. Enforcement is not free in any sense. You have a problem: people doesn't want to use the content in a way that's easy to monetize. You don't like the solution of changing your business model. So the answer is draconian IP laws, privacy invasions and public resources devoted to ensure private profits. Resources paid by every tax payer, that can be used to prosecute most of them. The entitlement is forgetting that copyright (or property at large for the matter) is just a means to an end, not an absolute concept. For me, if the price of privacy and freedom is that professional contents producing disappears, so be it. Now what? Would you consider changing the business model or would you rather see the business dying? For the people in the industry (the proverbial "middle-man") the answer is clear: they don't think it's gonna die before they cash, so they're happy taking the hard line and stretching the rope.
  - MrScruff 14y ago
    the fact that you make some work doesn't mean that you're entitled to be paid for it. You've constructed a straw man, I haven't once argued for draconian IP law. I simply stated that those that engage in piracy should be honest to themselves about their own motivations. I'm not even judging them, it's just the political affectations I find preposterous. Most laws have developed from a consensus of what benefits society as a whole. This is no different. Nobody is claiming entitlement to be paid for anything. They're asking for the ability to choose on which basis people consume their product. We already have laws for this, the currently difficulty is in how to enforce them. I don't claim to have an answer to that question.

rayiner 14y ago

> That's a nice noble reframing of humanities innate desire to have access to Game of Thrones season 2 without paying for cable. Thank you for that. The rhetoric on this issue is really over the top. While all content I think is entitled to certain protections as art, let's not pretend that the content in question is high art. It's entertainment, largely produced by people for the sole purpose of making a lot of money.

nocipher 14y ago

I think the argument is valid. Even some libraries have movies and video games. I fail to see how downloading media has a fundamental different effect than merely borrowing it. Even arguing that borrowing is temporary seems a poor argument at best. Most people only play games or watch movies a small number of times and then rarely pick them up again. And, even so, there is nothing stopping borrowing again. If the library paradigm is okay, why is the downloading content paradigm not okay?

rayiner 14y ago
Because library shelves don't consist 90% of pop movies, video games, and music. Pirating the latest Halo game is not the same as borrowing a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
- kragen 14y ago
  Torrents don't consist 90% of those things either. The largest audio torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 is a sample library for use in creating your own songs. The largest video torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 is a collection of the X-Files TV show; #2 is a collection of 50 classic movies (A Clockwork Orange, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, and so on) --- the movie equivalent of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The largest software torrents on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 are chess tablebases --- used for research into the game of chess --- Microsoft Windows 7, and auto repair software called Alldata. The top "other" torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 is a preservation copy of GeoCities, which contained the full weirdness of the late-90s web in miniature, and after a duplicate of the same torrent, #2 is an archive of chemical journals. I think what you're probably thinking of is not library shelves but library checkouts. And I think that you'll find that library checkouts did consist 90% of trashy paperbacks, the text equivalent of pop movies, back when people got that kind of stuff from libraries instead of online.
  - GHFigs 14y ago

Tipzntrix 14y ago

Even the technically illiterate hit the black market from time to time to gorge on some shady-looking but insanely cheap DVDs.

coliveira 14y ago

Great comment. It seems interesting how people don't see the contradiction of having everything for free. Why do people think we are entitled to have Disney content, or Harry Potter books for free? Why Google and related companies seem to believe they have the right to display newspapers' content for free? Just because everything is nowadays in digital format doesn't mean that we are entitled to have a copy of it.

njharman 14y ago
In the USA (at least) specific laws (copyright) had to be passed to make these inherently and naturally free things a protected monopoly.
- coliveira 14y ago
  Every property law is unnatural. Who says that I can't own the land across my backyard?... Yes, some stupid law that was passed to invalidate my natural right of conquering that land with a club in hand. The civilized society was created by imposing these laws, and copyright laws allowed the establishment of an industry for creative works.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    First off, 'Conquering' is not a natural right. Second, personal property and real property are different categories. Real estate is somewhat artificial, but the ownership of personal items that you can carry around is a very natural right. It comes naturally from possession and autonomy, and does not need laws to exist.
    - coliveira 14y ago
      But somehow every other "artificial" right, like real estate, looks OK for you other than copyright... This is what I call bending the argument for particular gain.
      - 14y ago

yebyen 14y ago

In any other industry, when you have one guy who deals his wares to thousands of other vendors and enforces an exclusivity relationship such as in Hollywood, allowing no other sources to produce similar work, demanding the price remain artificially high, and what do you call it? Price fixing! Racketeering! A cartel! Mr. Producer, do you want to support a whole cartel? How much of the product of your work is siphoned into the pockets of these middlemen that you claim are so shadowy? Is it because you don't want to pay them that you downplay their role? Why are they entitled to a share of what you earn, when distribution models that scale and support themselves in a feedback loop like BitTorrent are available, and the people who are consuming your content will foot the bill to the cartels for these distribution contracts? What justification is there for price fixing, where regions that have larger collections of wealth amassed into smaller groups that can afford to pay more are gouged? What basis have you to charge more in the US or Australia than in India and Africa, where digital broadcast entertainment might be more or less pervasive? I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this.

MrScruff 14y ago
I am obviously very angry, I don't know what you make, but the reality seems to be that you are claiming ownership of an arrangement of bits. It's in my nature when discovering interesting configurations of bits to show them to others, or to keep them to myself (to maximize my benefit from them), and it's wrong for you to play on both sides of the fence like this. What specifically are you angry about? Is it my claim that piracy is more about convenience and personal gain than free speech? Would you disagree with that sentiment? Could you explain why? I'm not sure what to make of the rest of your post but I think you have quite a narrow view of the film industry. I can assure you that vast, vast majority of people you might meet who work in film spend their time thinking about making films, not price fixing.
- yebyen 14y ago

truebecomefalse 14y ago

What about me? I bought Assassins Creed 3 on steam last week and ordered an xbox360 controller for PC from Amazon. I had the game downloaded and everything ready to go to have a relaxing day of gaming this Saturday. The problem came when I was required to create a UPlay account in order to open my game. Ubisoft's servers were down and I was not able to create an account or play the game. I spent a couple precious hours of my Saturday dealing with their incompetence and then gave up and decided to pirate the game. I was not very pleased at this point and walked in to my office where we have a 1Gbit connection. I proceeded to torrent the game and grabbed Farcry 3 as well because, fuck em. This took about 45 minutes of downloading. I walked home and was playing 15 minutes later. Ubisoft is forever on my To-Pirate list for brazenly wasting my time on their pointless DRM. I don't think I fit in your narrow categories. PS: I spend about 200$/month on paid iTunes Content.

MrScruff 14y ago
While I sympathise with your issues with Ubisoft's ridiculously hamfisted DRM, I simply don't believe this is a significant driving force behind piracy. I'm not claiming it doesn't exist though, or endorsing horrible DRM.
1123581321 14y ago
That is a minor category made possible by the major ones. The torrent you used was not seeded and distributed just for those who had paid for the game. I myself prefer to pirate ISOs rather than find reinstallation media in my closet (a rare need), and it is just as irrelevant given most people seeding and peering also want the serial crack/gen file as well.
jonhohle 14y ago
Am I the only one who thinks this is a completely unreasonable response? You purchased the game, whether or not you should be allowed to download another (slightly modified) copy is a legal gray area - but one I would morally support. Downloading other products from the same company, just because they ticked you off? You've just escalated the situation from what is likely an unfortunately operational issue (no malice) to some form of revenge. If you want relief from the harm done to you (which, I would argue getting the pirated copy of AC3 was), allow a court to determine the reward. In this situation, it's likely overkill.

wwwtyro 14y ago

I wouldn't be so quick to consider the anti-IP position as one of simple rationalization. I once held your position, and now consider it to have been a narrow-minded mistake (that was directed at my past self, not you). Give me a moment to explain my philosophical transformation by way of example: Suppose you walk out into some unclaimed forest and gather some wood. Per John Locke, you have mixed your labor (gathering) with a natural resource (wood) and now own the gathered wood. And what is ownership? Ownership is the right to do with your property whatever you'd like, provided what you do does not affect or threaten the property of others (including the property they have in their own persons). This is understood intuitively in the scope of the example here that it would be wrong for someone to, by force and against your will, take the wood that you gathered. To continue the example: your friend Bob approaches you and shows you an invention of his - a wooden seat, exquisitely crafted and very comfortable to sit upon. It's a fantastic idea, and you're really quite taken with it. Instead of purchasing the seat, however, you decide to produce some of your own, using the wood you own, for your own use and to sell to others. You do so. Bob comes to you, quite upset. You've stolen his idea, he says, and profited with it against his will. And here the internal conflict introduced by the concept of "intellectual" property is highlighted. You used your own property as you pleased and in a way that did not harm or threaten to harm anyone else's property, and yet according to Bob, you've violated his "intellectual" property rights. In fact, the only way to not violate Bob's "intellectual" property is to not do with your property as you please, even though that use is entirely nonviolent. Bob's exercise of his "intellectual" property right is a violation of your property right! I hope I have sufficiently demonstrated here that IP cannot be a right at all, because it destroys the internal consistency of property rights in general. The response to this is usually utilitarian: "But how are artists going to get paid without IP?" I offer a riposte here not because I have to (the ends do not justify the means) but because some people need firm ground to stand upon before they can move into a brave new world sans copyright. The threshold pledge system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system) is a means of providing compensation to artists for their work that does not depend upon IP law.

joseflavio 14y ago
You summarized very well exactly how I feel about IP! Before our century the word for IP was "Monopoly Privileges". It is funny and scary how a simple change in wording: adding "property", is slowly brainwashing people in a very unnatural way of thinking.

mrtron 14y ago

For ever 1000$ sold in the music industry, the artist gets 20$. I don't see how you see the "middle men" portion ridiculous. The music scene would be optimized for musicians if there was a 100% piracy/distribution rate and artists sold their own tickets/merch/ringtones/etc online.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

bad_user 14y ago

> The technically illiterate I can assure you, those people can and do pirate content just fine, in many cases being easier to copy it from torrents than it is to purchase it ;-) > People who have made a conscious decision to support the producer of the content There are 2 problems with these kind of people: as such purchases are all about giving-back, they are easily pissed off by DRM schemes and they are a minority, because we are talking about an economy based on artificial scarcity here. > People who fear enforcement of copyright law Also a minority, especially because the probability of being prosecuted as an individual for copyright infringement is smaller than being hit by a car tomorrow. > The whole piracy political movement is manifestly obviously just rationalisation You cannot hand-wave facts.

scotty79 14y ago

I just don't think anyones feeling of entitlement to get some money should trump my right to get and share information.

peapicker 14y ago

Missed one type of person - People who believe it is unethical to pirate content Nothing to do with fear, or interest, or deciding to support the content producer.

freshhawk 14y ago

What about the fact that infringing copyright is only going to get easier as technology improves while every conceivable method of policing the internet for copyright necessarily involves complete surveillance of all communication by citizens? It's not being "rebranded" as a freedom of speech issue, it has become one by the nature of the only possible ways to enforce copyright laws on the internet. I agree that a "right to share 3rd party artistic works" isn't freedom of speech, but protecting the ability of people to secretly transfer bits is abso-fucking-lutely the freedom of speech issue of our time. It's the difference between a stance based on what you think "should be" and one based on the practical limitations inherent in designing legal constraints around online sharing. We can give enormous surveillance powers to some central group to police copyright and destroy freedom of speech, we can have no way to stop copyright infringement except for cultural norms or we can reevaluate how we, as a society, compensate artists. This has been reevaluated many times in the last thousand years and it looks like another one has been thrust upon us, since I'm not sure we can stop people from sharing files just by shaming them. Pirates spend more money buying artistic works than non-pirates so I can't blame people who feel that the honesty system will work, but I don't really think it will work. I'm too cynical perhaps.