5 ms·

Wait, now I'm confused. I thought data wanted to be free and copyright laws were archaic and meant to be broken? Someone set me straight, quick!

rosser 14y ago
The outcry here is less about whether copyrights are being respected, than about whether copyrights are being respected by people who insist that you must respect copyrights.
- pi18n 14y ago
  Also there are plenty of us that are pro-reform and anti-outrageous lawsuits who are also against the infringement as well. When I see a large player in the industry fuck up and "steal" someone's copyrighted work, it's yet another example of how they don't give a shit about artists, despite what they claim. These incidents are perhaps a good way to show the public what large media corporations are really concerned with; making money for the execs at the expense of anyone else. If the public is aware, maybe we'll have better success at reforming copyright and other IP laws. (Although I cannot deny there is the schadenfreude aspect of it also.) But please note the scare quotes, because it's not a theft, due to the exact reasons I would argue regarding any other two entities with copyright disputes.
- gwern 14y ago
  I believe the phrase is: "live by the sword, die by the sword".
jonny_eh 14y ago
Depends on who you ask, Hacker News isn't a hivemind. If you were to ask Fox though, I'm sure they'd insisted that copyright laws are important and should never be violated.
- skrebbel 14y ago
  > Hacker News isn't a hivemind. Are you sure?
  - sesqu 14y ago
    Are you saying you disagree? Because that sounds willful.
- thoughtcriminal 14y ago
  You must be new here.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
If the entire cast and crew of Glee were pirating JoCo's tracks I doubt he would care, this is not that.
charlieok 14y ago
JoCo is an artist with massive geek cred (sells songs from his own site DRM free, tours with John Hodgman, sings about code monkeys and other geeky things). Glee is part of News Corp. :) More seriously, JoCo is aware of the unfavorable legal situation given that his work was a cover. But the way he sees it, it'd be nice if he got something from Fox. Attribution, for example -- credit for his arrangement of the song. Glee/Fox was unwilling. I do not know why.
ShawnBird 14y ago
Well it seems like the main concerns are the fact that nobody got JoCo's approval before moving forward and there does not seem to be any attribution. I don't entirely agree with the outrage but the fact that this is done by Fox who are real jerks about their own copyright really sets off the hypocrisy alarm.
gfodor 14y ago
Piracy is a bit more forgivable than reselling someone else's work.
- benologist 14y ago
  Most online piracy is some asshole reselling someone else's work on a website full of ads, charging subscriptions, requiring donations, etc.
pygy_ 14y ago
1. It's plagiarism, not just copyright infringement. It is (or was, not sure it's still up) labeled "Baby Got Back (Glee version)", on the Swedish iTunes store, Coulton is not credited at all. 2. It's being sold for a profit... 3. ... by people who sue others for disproportionate sums, for sharing stuff for free. Coulton actually published a karaoke version of the song, they just added a new, almost identical vocal track.
onemorepassword 14y ago
Like many, you may have confused copyright law with ordinary respect and decency. Personally, I'm against any and all forms of copyright. That doesn't mean I cannot consider people that pass of other people's work as their own to be complete assholes. Also, there are plenty of other laws to cover that. IANAL, but I'm thinking of plagiarism, forgery etcetera.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >Also, there are plenty of other laws to cover that. IANAL, but I'm thinking of plagiarism, forgery etcetera. Actually, plagiarism is not, as far as I know, a legally recognized concept. If you want to go after someone for plagiarism, you're going to have to pound that screw in with the hammer of copyright law.
cygx 14y ago
There's more than one way to violate intellectual 'property' rights, and they need (or at least should) not be treated identically. A (probably) incomplete list I just pulled out of my a^w head: 1. plagiarism 2. espionage 3. for-profit pirating 4. non-profit pirating 5. willful patent infringement 6. accidental patent infringement
mistercow 14y ago
Every goddamned time an issue of plagiarism comes up, some clever person comes and says "I thought you guys loved piracy! How is this different?" And the difference is about as profound as the difference between downloading a file and stealing a bike. The main reason that this is so appalling, while file sharing is not, is that it's a case of someone taking credit for someone else's work. There is a huge difference between taking someone else's work and saying "Hey, listen to this cool cover that JoCo did" and taking it and saying "Hey, I wrote this cover of Baby Got Back!" Another big difference is profit. I think most of people feel like downloading a song or movie for yourself and maybe some friends and enjoying it is fine, and that a site like The Pirate Bay covering their bandwidth costs with ads is totally understandable. But I think most people also think that a guy who burns movies to DVDs and sells them on the street corner is an asshole. Finally, especially in light of that latter point, you've got one of the big media players, all of whom have lobbied hard for stronger copyright law, refusing to play by the same rules that they want to impose on everyone else.
- stch 14y ago
  >But I think most people also think that a guy who burns movies to DVDs and sells them on the street corner is an asshole. Do you actually think that? All that talk on HN recently about the new megaupload would have me think the opposite, unless MU's bandwidth costs were a quarter billion dollars.
- csense 14y ago
  > one of the big media players, all of whom have lobbied hard for stronger copyright law, refusing to play by the same rules that they want to impose on everyone else. "Neither a pirate nor a hypocrite be." -- Shakespeare [citation needed] [dubious, discuss]
npsimons 14y ago
Ah yes, the inevitable "you hipocrites!" comment, from someone who has such a black and white view of the world, it's surprising they aren't constantly bleeding from being cut on all the sharp edges. You know, maybe some of us have a more nuanced view of how things should be. Maybe we think that the people that actually create something (you know, the artists?) should at least get credit; maybe not rewarded indefinitely, but at least given a chance in the market, while not wanting to see their grandchildren leach off a government granted monopoly. Maybe we are in favor of artists who obviously get it (JoCo sells his music with no DRM, in any format you want, not to mention plenty of free samples) not being plagiarized by huge media conglomerates run by ruthless fatcats without an ounce of creativity, who are still stuck in the mindset of being the gatekeepers. Or maybe we're all just spoiled hypocritical children like you've painted us. Yeah, that must be it.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  Should at least get credit? You are against piracy then I hope. Most content creators when they put a product out asking for money consider you legally paying them their asking price in exchange for their product as "credit". Also when did a handful of writers at Glee become the stance of the whole Newscorp evil empire? Until every decision by every subordinate is reviewed by Murdoch or the Board of Directors for possible copyright infringement painting Fox as a whole responsible as part of their normal MO is false.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >Most content creators when they put a product out asking for money consider you legally paying them their asking price in exchange for their product as "credit". It sounds like you are willfully misinterpreting the concept of "giving credit". Paying for something is compensation, not credit. The concept of downloading something without paying for it is totally unrelated to the concept of claiming that you created someone else's work.
  - MichaelGG 14y ago
    Credit in this case means attribution. Pirate sites don't say "I made Game of Thrones" or rename it and try to pretend it's their own work. They present it as "This movie, released by whatever-group". People get far more upset about "stealing" attribution than copyright infringement.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

rosser 14y ago

The outcry here is less about whether copyrights are being respected, than about whether copyrights are being respected by people who insist that you must respect copyrights.

pi18n 14y ago
Also there are plenty of us that are pro-reform and anti-outrageous lawsuits who are also against the infringement as well. When I see a large player in the industry fuck up and "steal" someone's copyrighted work, it's yet another example of how they don't give a shit about artists, despite what they claim. These incidents are perhaps a good way to show the public what large media corporations are really concerned with; making money for the execs at the expense of anyone else. If the public is aware, maybe we'll have better success at reforming copyright and other IP laws. (Although I cannot deny there is the schadenfreude aspect of it also.) But please note the scare quotes, because it's not a theft, due to the exact reasons I would argue regarding any other two entities with copyright disputes.
gwern 14y ago
I believe the phrase is: "live by the sword, die by the sword".

jonny_eh 14y ago

Depends on who you ask, Hacker News isn't a hivemind. If you were to ask Fox though, I'm sure they'd insisted that copyright laws are important and should never be violated.

skrebbel 14y ago
> Hacker News isn't a hivemind. Are you sure?
- sesqu 14y ago
  Are you saying you disagree? Because that sounds willful.
thoughtcriminal 14y ago
You must be new here.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

If the entire cast and crew of Glee were pirating JoCo's tracks I doubt he would care, this is not that.

charlieok 14y ago

JoCo is an artist with massive geek cred (sells songs from his own site DRM free, tours with John Hodgman, sings about code monkeys and other geeky things). Glee is part of News Corp. :) More seriously, JoCo is aware of the unfavorable legal situation given that his work was a cover. But the way he sees it, it'd be nice if he got something from Fox. Attribution, for example -- credit for his arrangement of the song. Glee/Fox was unwilling. I do not know why.

ShawnBird 14y ago

Well it seems like the main concerns are the fact that nobody got JoCo's approval before moving forward and there does not seem to be any attribution. I don't entirely agree with the outrage but the fact that this is done by Fox who are real jerks about their own copyright really sets off the hypocrisy alarm.

gfodor 14y ago

Piracy is a bit more forgivable than reselling someone else's work.

benologist 14y ago
Most online piracy is some asshole reselling someone else's work on a website full of ads, charging subscriptions, requiring donations, etc.

pygy_ 14y ago

1. It's plagiarism, not just copyright infringement. It is (or was, not sure it's still up) labeled "Baby Got Back (Glee version)", on the Swedish iTunes store, Coulton is not credited at all. 2. It's being sold for a profit... 3. ... by people who sue others for disproportionate sums, for sharing stuff for free. Coulton actually published a karaoke version of the song, they just added a new, almost identical vocal track.

onemorepassword 14y ago

Like many, you may have confused copyright law with ordinary respect and decency. Personally, I'm against any and all forms of copyright. That doesn't mean I cannot consider people that pass of other people's work as their own to be complete assholes. Also, there are plenty of other laws to cover that. IANAL, but I'm thinking of plagiarism, forgery etcetera.

mistercow 14y ago
>Also, there are plenty of other laws to cover that. IANAL, but I'm thinking of plagiarism, forgery etcetera. Actually, plagiarism is not, as far as I know, a legally recognized concept. If you want to go after someone for plagiarism, you're going to have to pound that screw in with the hammer of copyright law.

cygx 14y ago

There's more than one way to violate intellectual 'property' rights, and they need (or at least should) not be treated identically. A (probably) incomplete list I just pulled out of my a^w head: 1. plagiarism 2. espionage 3. for-profit pirating 4. non-profit pirating 5. willful patent infringement 6. accidental patent infringement

mistercow 14y ago

Every goddamned time an issue of plagiarism comes up, some clever person comes and says "I thought you guys loved piracy! How is this different?" And the difference is about as profound as the difference between downloading a file and stealing a bike. The main reason that this is so appalling, while file sharing is not, is that it's a case of someone taking credit for someone else's work. There is a huge difference between taking someone else's work and saying "Hey, listen to this cool cover that JoCo did" and taking it and saying "Hey, I wrote this cover of Baby Got Back!" Another big difference is profit. I think most of people feel like downloading a song or movie for yourself and maybe some friends and enjoying it is fine, and that a site like The Pirate Bay covering their bandwidth costs with ads is totally understandable. But I think most people also think that a guy who burns movies to DVDs and sells them on the street corner is an asshole. Finally, especially in light of that latter point, you've got one of the big media players, all of whom have lobbied hard for stronger copyright law, refusing to play by the same rules that they want to impose on everyone else.

stch 14y ago
>But I think most people also think that a guy who burns movies to DVDs and sells them on the street corner is an asshole. Do you actually think that? All that talk on HN recently about the new megaupload would have me think the opposite, unless MU's bandwidth costs were a quarter billion dollars.
csense 14y ago
> one of the big media players, all of whom have lobbied hard for stronger copyright law, refusing to play by the same rules that they want to impose on everyone else. "Neither a pirate nor a hypocrite be." -- Shakespeare [citation needed] [dubious, discuss]

npsimons 14y ago

Ah yes, the inevitable "you hipocrites!" comment, from someone who has such a black and white view of the world, it's surprising they aren't constantly bleeding from being cut on all the sharp edges. You know, maybe some of us have a more nuanced view of how things should be. Maybe we think that the people that actually create something (you know, the artists?) should at least get credit; maybe not rewarded indefinitely, but at least given a chance in the market, while not wanting to see their grandchildren leach off a government granted monopoly. Maybe we are in favor of artists who obviously get it (JoCo sells his music with no DRM, in any format you want, not to mention plenty of free samples) not being plagiarized by huge media conglomerates run by ruthless fatcats without an ounce of creativity, who are still stuck in the mindset of being the gatekeepers. Or maybe we're all just spoiled hypocritical children like you've painted us. Yeah, that must be it.

res0nat0r 14y ago
Should at least get credit? You are against piracy then I hope. Most content creators when they put a product out asking for money consider you legally paying them their asking price in exchange for their product as "credit". Also when did a handful of writers at Glee become the stance of the whole Newscorp evil empire? Until every decision by every subordinate is reviewed by Murdoch or the Board of Directors for possible copyright infringement painting Fox as a whole responsible as part of their normal MO is false.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >Most content creators when they put a product out asking for money consider you legally paying them their asking price in exchange for their product as "credit". It sounds like you are willfully misinterpreting the concept of "giving credit". Paying for something is compensation, not credit. The concept of downloading something without paying for it is totally unrelated to the concept of claiming that you created someone else's work.
- MichaelGG 14y ago
  Credit in this case means attribution. Pirate sites don't say "I made Game of Thrones" or rename it and try to pretend it's their own work. They present it as "This movie, released by whatever-group". People get far more upset about "stealing" attribution than copyright infringement.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]