4 ms·

> distributes culture so is a public good only if you consider Disney moves as well as other Hollywood productions to contribute to the public good. I, for mys

> distributes culture so is a public good only if you consider Disney moves as well as other Hollywood productions to contribute to the public good. I, for myself, think that enabling the distribution of this kind of content is a disservice to humanity. I much prefer that people would have to pay for access.

Drakim 14y ago
For a lot of people who don't live in the profitable western parts of the world, paying for access is often not an option, because the company that owns the rights doesn't bother releasing their content in such places. A lot of companies even frown upon manual importing of physical media across the world, regional-locking the content. In the perfect world where piracy is stopped, they simply don't have access to this culture.
- coliveira 14y ago
  That's my point, why technology should be used to freely export Hollywood's version of culture? There are many ways in which technology can improve people's lives, but this is not one of them. On the contrary, it is making even harder for foreign countries to create their own entertainment industry, because it is very hard to compete with free.
- benologist 14y ago
  I think this is a an easily believable lie. People in developing countries almost exclusively do not have a personal computer and internet connection at home or work they can use to download stuff. They have basically three options: - buy movies and console games on the street 1000x faster and cheaper than downloading and 100% reliably - pay by the hour in an internet cafe to download to their usb stick or dumb phone / mp3 player, very heavily restricted by time, price and storage capacity - offline sharing amongst friends/family TPB is just a playground for rich kids in rich countries to download everything they want in exchange for viewing a smorgasbord of advertisements and affiliate links and dodgy spyware offers.
mtgx 14y ago
I understand what you're saying - that most of it is crap - just like in any particular ecosystem or class of content. Most of it will always be crap. However think about the impact some productions could have in some cultures - like say the V for Vendetta movie in China.

Drakim 14y ago

For a lot of people who don't live in the profitable western parts of the world, paying for access is often not an option, because the company that owns the rights doesn't bother releasing their content in such places. A lot of companies even frown upon manual importing of physical media across the world, regional-locking the content. In the perfect world where piracy is stopped, they simply don't have access to this culture.

coliveira 14y ago
That's my point, why technology should be used to freely export Hollywood's version of culture? There are many ways in which technology can improve people's lives, but this is not one of them. On the contrary, it is making even harder for foreign countries to create their own entertainment industry, because it is very hard to compete with free.
benologist 14y ago
I think this is a an easily believable lie. People in developing countries almost exclusively do not have a personal computer and internet connection at home or work they can use to download stuff. They have basically three options: - buy movies and console games on the street 1000x faster and cheaper than downloading and 100% reliably - pay by the hour in an internet cafe to download to their usb stick or dumb phone / mp3 player, very heavily restricted by time, price and storage capacity - offline sharing amongst friends/family TPB is just a playground for rich kids in rich countries to download everything they want in exchange for viewing a smorgasbord of advertisements and affiliate links and dodgy spyware offers.

mtgx 14y ago

I understand what you're saying - that most of it is crap - just like in any particular ecosystem or class of content. Most of it will always be crap. However think about the impact some productions could have in some cultures - like say the V for Vendetta movie in China.