8 ms·

Meanwhile the pirate bay is still compatible with pretty much any system on the planet. If you want my money you'll have to provide at least the same amount of

Meanwhile the pirate bay is still compatible with pretty much any system on the planet. If you want my money you'll have to provide at least the same amount of service. And stop being assholes trying to pass massive surveillance laws every three months.

rayiner 13y ago
If you don't like the terms for which someone is offering their original creations, why don't you just buy a different product sold on terms you agree with? There's no shortage of indie content out there, you know. Or maybe create it yourself? By pirating it instead, you acknowledge that these content creators make something unique and non-fungible and irreplaceable, but then assert that nonetheless they shouldn't have the right to set the terms on which they distribute those creations to the public. I think the pro-piracy position is just totally irrational. If I'm gay and I don't like Chick Fil-A's anti-gay message, should I: a) refuse to do business with them; or b) steal chicken sandwiches instead?[1] The big media companies don't have a monopoly on content. The costs to both produce and consume indie content are lower than they ever have been. [1] At this point someone will bring out the "copying isn't stealing" hypothetical. Technically true, but consider this: any product has a delta between its market price and its marginal cost of production. The marginal cost of producing a copy of a piece of digital content isn't zero, but it's very close to it. But lots of products sell for far more than their marginal cost of reproduction. Is it okay to steal sandwiches from Chick fil-A if you leave an amount of money that covers the cost of producing the next sandwich? Apply that reasoning to products like Apple computers or Prada handbags that sell for far more than their marginal cost of production. Is it okay to take those items and leave an amount of money that compensates for the cost of replacing it? Or do we have a general understanding that companies that produce things have a right to the profit they can earn on each item?
- gtirloni 13y ago
  By pirating it instead, you acknowledge that these content creators make something unique and non-fungible and irreplaceable Don't they? The problem is not with what they create, it's how they want to limit your options of using what you legally bought.
  - talmand 13y ago
    In that case your situation is different because you're complaining about how they attempt to limit you after you bought their product. You have valid complaints. Almost all complaints on the pro-piracy side are not valid.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Copyright is a tradeoff between society and creators, where we take rights away from the public to give copyright holders an opportunity to profit more from a work, in the hope that the net effect is of benefit to society. It is perfectly possible to believe that the way copyright terms have been extended and the way usage restrictions have hollowed out public access means the balance has been distorted to a point where the bargain is no longer justifiable. The widespread acceptance of piracy indicates that the support for the current copyright regime is likely to crumble, and my guess is that it is largely down to the way copyright holders have massively abused their position to shift the balance ever further towards them. In other words, despite pretty much never pirating anything these days - I have a collection of about 500 or so legally bought DVDs: I have very little sympathy. They've largely brought this on themselves. They do need to realise that their copyright protections are artificial restrictions that comes with a price, and that can be rolled back or revoked.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Rational but self-serving (I don't like that law; I'll pretend to be a public-access crusader and hey, get my movies for free why not)
    - chongli 13y ago
      As opposed to the self-serving corporations that don't like the law and give large amounts of money to politicians to change it?
    - vidarh 13y ago
      People get their movies for free without having any reason to be or label themselves as a "public-access crusader". That's a large part of the point: These laws are failing because people are widely ignoring them. People are not labelling themselves as "public-access crusaders" because they are able to just go on with their lives and carry out actions they don't really see anything wrong with in the face of so totally ineffectual enforcement that most people never give the issue much thought at all. The much more telling thing is that there is no public moral outrage from large numbers of "intellectual property crusaders" who decry the lack of enforcement - the limited outrage there is almost entirely corporate and/or paid. This shows how disconnected copyright law has become from prevailing culture. The copyright holders have already for the most part lost - the question is not if the legal framework will change, but how long they can hold it in place.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  You've raised some valid points, but I'd like to respond simply: I (personally) pirate most things that I pirate because a lot of these things are not comfortably affordable to me. I wish I could buy all the books that I want, the entertainment to keep wife & me (and the kids) happy and up with current culture such that I have a proper sense of what everybody's like these days so I can communicate with them easily, buy the design and video editing software for my startup, - and then have all these things work in my own terms without being a total pain in my a-hole. (mp3 works on my phone... but not on my wife's? Fuck that, I like being able to share songs I like). But... I can't really do all of this, I don't have the money. If and when I have the means to do this comfortably, I'll do it! Until then, this is the way I'm gonna go. And the thing is, if I was not pirating all of these things and simply abstaining from enjoying these costly goods, it still would all be the same to the entity I'd buy it from -- because from their view it's a) simply not consume, or b) consume -- and for the time being at least contribute to fulfilling a network effects popularity of the thing, or at least get interested enough to be a willing buyer sometime in the future, (see Adobe and Microsoft leaked documents expressing their being okay people pirating their products. I'm sure you understand that Adobe and MS would indeed that you rather use a pirated copy of Windows/Photoshop than to go with Linux (or GIMP)... because this way you at least get hooked/familiarized with it, and might buy it legally when you're a business owner or something).
  - pilom 13y ago
    You're argument is the same as this: I'm poor and I like chicken sandwiches because all my friends like chicken sandwiches. I can't afford chicken sandwiches so I steal them instead so that I can fit in with my friends (sometimes I leave a couple quarters on the counter because that is all it costs them to make one and I'd like them to break even). The company I steal them from shouldn't be upset with me because I've been able to find out who has the best chicken sandwiches and when I have money I'll pay for my chicken sandwiches. Yes, the company can say "consume and pay or don't consume" because they paid all the money to make the content in the first place. Any other option is stealing.
    - w1ntermute 13y ago
- arjie 13y ago
  This ship has sailed. For most people this is no ethical dilemma. Argue all you want, but the user does not care. They have the whip hand. If we don't provide something suitable, they will not care. No one is going to buy a TV for Amazon Instant Video support. They will buy the TV, see that it does not support the service, and promptly pirate the content they want. We will adapt to this situation, or lose to those who will. And if no one adapts? Then many will pirate. And all our diatribes against freeloaders will do nothing to stop them.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    "For most people this is no ethical dilemma"? That's an argument? For most of Wall Street there's no ethical dilemma in speculative schemes that wreck the commercial paper market. Can I trot out "for most people there's no dilemma" in the zillion HN Wall Street threads too?
    - arjie 13y ago
      It's not an argument. It's a statement of what I believe to be fact. We can try legislation, DRM, or better services. The first two aren't working. I'm not saying it's good that it's this way. I pay.
  - tunap 13y ago
    "No one is going to buy a TV for Amazon Instant Video support. " Actually, a client bought a "smart" TV to watch BlazeTV. When he realized it wasn't smart enough to offer the channel he wanted(licensing, crap proprietary software) he called me to "make it work". I bought a Roku, delivered & set it up. He watched < 4 hours of the target channel, called me up and told me to pack the whole thing up. Gone are the Roku, the TV and all subscriptions cancelled. Here's a target consumer who wants to pay but is not willing to pay, pay more & then jump through a myriad of hoops. edit, forgot your 2nd paragraph: he doesn't pirate the content, it's not that important to him. He does listen to the live audio offered free of charge on his phone now that I set that up for him.
- dangerlibrary 13y ago
  Re: "copying isn't stealing": If a producer prices someone out of the market, he/she is no longer a potential customer. That's a business decision about market size made by the producer - they get higher profits at a higher price point and smaller market. Great! However, producers don't get to complain about piracy by people who aren't in their market. Unless they eventually put the product on sale at some point, a pirate has no impact on the bottom line. In the simple (one-price-forever) case, the producer lost nothing - not even potential profit, because the consumer was already priced out.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - dangerlibrary 13y ago
      If my $1,000 were to magically, instantly transform into an identical Hermes bag sitting on the counter, I'm not sure how they'd ever even know it happened. Who was harmed? Fashion is a little different, too. There's very little software that operates in a world where exclusivity is an important aspect of pricing - Hermes bags cost $10,000 because people like to signal that they can afford a $10,000 bag. The value is very quickly diluted with greater availability. I can't think of a digital product that operates that way - maybe niche data re-selling? Certainly not TV shows or movies or songs.
      - TeMPOraL 13y ago
        > because people like to signal Yes; signaling seems to be an important part of value for the producers, not only in fashion. It's the same in expensive cars, expensive electronics (think Apple), etc. Not surprisingly, those are the companies that are the loudest about chinese knockoffs. If I were to 3D scan and then replicate the bag with subatomic precision using Star Trek replicator, I don't think anyone would feel that I'm stealing something, but people would still point out that this is not a real Hermes bag (so I got something of lesser worth). And if I took the original and left the copy in the shop, it could be considered theft even though you couldn't tell a difference with a scanning electron microscope. It's funny how society and moral intuitions work; a very interesting topic.
- gizzlon 13y ago
  why don't you just buy a different product sold on terms you agree with? I'm not GP, but I think the real problem is lack of competition. There's no real competition in this marked, they all collude. One example: If Big-Movie-Studio-A sold their movies online as downloadable, DRM-free content, I would be much more inclined to buy their movies instead of the competitions. There's hundreds of ways the movie studios could differentiate themselves, but they don't. They obviously do not want to compete on most fronts.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
skore 13y ago
This is, as always, the elephant in the room. A lot of people are seeing their internet use throttled for certain services lately, so even the supposedly "simple and fast" alternatives are taking a beating in the race these days. (Bittorrent) P2P technology is a marvel to me. It's such a simple concept and the recent advances at distributed links, encrypting and/or obfuscating the traffic etc. have done a good job keeping up with attempts at limiting it. It's fast, takes little effort to use and makes incredible use of the resources that the internet offers while being more true to its core values (fault tolerance, distributed data, "route around censorship" etc.). If you want to (and have a modern connection), you can find TV Shows in high definition shortly after their original broadcast, with zero advertisement interruptions and at download speeds that vastly exceed realtime streaming. Even in the rare cases where you cannot stream what you have downloaded so far (because of early missing chunks), simply waiting a minute or two will usually do the trick. What I would call the "inconvenience level" is down to where the time you need to wait for your content to be ready is about what you need for getting a round of snacks. Ergo: Virtually Zero. A content consumer like myself, in particular using a GNU+Linux system, is receiving vastly superior service at pretty much zero cost (save for effort and internet fees). Not to mention that for a content publisher, bittorrent is a mindblowingly simple and cost effective tool. For a while, I was actually considering moving away from my usual routine of "watch first, buy properly (in disc form) later". With all the BS they are still attempting to shovel into those, however (in particular the recent net-neutrality and surveillance crap), I find it harder and harder to ease up on my stance. In my opinion they should burn it all down, put it on bittorrent and charge in crypto money. Pretty sure we will be moving to some form of that eventually, might as well get it over with before we have to endure even more collateral damage from outdated monopolies trying a little too hard having it their way.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  save for effort Aye, there's the rub.
  - Kluny 13y ago
    To me, it seems like the easiest thing in the world go to the the Pirate Bay, look something up, click "Get this torrent" and wait ten minutes or so for it to show up. Then I tried teaching someone who's not tech savvy to do it. She didn't have adblock, so she was confused by the Russian wives for sale and by the multiple Download buttons. She was deeply suspicious of having to download uTorrent and completely lost as to how to choose which of several available torrents she should pick. I don't know. I try to use Netflix on someone's Xbox and have the exact same problem. How the hell am I supposed to navigate with a joystick? Is it A or B to select? How do I go back? Maybe we're all just getting old.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Obxkcd: http://xkcd.com/488/ http://xkcd.com/488/

rayiner 13y ago

If you don't like the terms for which someone is offering their original creations, why don't you just buy a different product sold on terms you agree with? There's no shortage of indie content out there, you know. Or maybe create it yourself? By pirating it instead, you acknowledge that these content creators make something unique and non-fungible and irreplaceable, but then assert that nonetheless they shouldn't have the right to set the terms on which they distribute those creations to the public. I think the pro-piracy position is just totally irrational. If I'm gay and I don't like Chick Fil-A's anti-gay message, should I: a) refuse to do business with them; or b) steal chicken sandwiches instead?[1] The big media companies don't have a monopoly on content. The costs to both produce and consume indie content are lower than they ever have been. [1] At this point someone will bring out the "copying isn't stealing" hypothetical. Technically true, but consider this: any product has a delta between its market price and its marginal cost of production. The marginal cost of producing a copy of a piece of digital content isn't zero, but it's very close to it. But lots of products sell for far more than their marginal cost of reproduction. Is it okay to steal sandwiches from Chick fil-A if you leave an amount of money that covers the cost of producing the next sandwich? Apply that reasoning to products like Apple computers or Prada handbags that sell for far more than their marginal cost of production. Is it okay to take those items and leave an amount of money that compensates for the cost of replacing it? Or do we have a general understanding that companies that produce things have a right to the profit they can earn on each item?

gtirloni 13y ago
By pirating it instead, you acknowledge that these content creators make something unique and non-fungible and irreplaceable Don't they? The problem is not with what they create, it's how they want to limit your options of using what you legally bought.
- talmand 13y ago
  In that case your situation is different because you're complaining about how they attempt to limit you after you bought their product. You have valid complaints. Almost all complaints on the pro-piracy side are not valid.
vidarh 13y ago
Copyright is a tradeoff between society and creators, where we take rights away from the public to give copyright holders an opportunity to profit more from a work, in the hope that the net effect is of benefit to society. It is perfectly possible to believe that the way copyright terms have been extended and the way usage restrictions have hollowed out public access means the balance has been distorted to a point where the bargain is no longer justifiable. The widespread acceptance of piracy indicates that the support for the current copyright regime is likely to crumble, and my guess is that it is largely down to the way copyright holders have massively abused their position to shift the balance ever further towards them. In other words, despite pretty much never pirating anything these days - I have a collection of about 500 or so legally bought DVDs: I have very little sympathy. They've largely brought this on themselves. They do need to realise that their copyright protections are artificial restrictions that comes with a price, and that can be rolled back or revoked.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Rational but self-serving (I don't like that law; I'll pretend to be a public-access crusader and hey, get my movies for free why not)
  - chongli 13y ago
    As opposed to the self-serving corporations that don't like the law and give large amounts of money to politicians to change it?
  - vidarh 13y ago
    People get their movies for free without having any reason to be or label themselves as a "public-access crusader". That's a large part of the point: These laws are failing because people are widely ignoring them. People are not labelling themselves as "public-access crusaders" because they are able to just go on with their lives and carry out actions they don't really see anything wrong with in the face of so totally ineffectual enforcement that most people never give the issue much thought at all. The much more telling thing is that there is no public moral outrage from large numbers of "intellectual property crusaders" who decry the lack of enforcement - the limited outrage there is almost entirely corporate and/or paid. This shows how disconnected copyright law has become from prevailing culture. The copyright holders have already for the most part lost - the question is not if the legal framework will change, but how long they can hold it in place.
selmnoo 13y ago
You've raised some valid points, but I'd like to respond simply: I (personally) pirate most things that I pirate because a lot of these things are not comfortably affordable to me. I wish I could buy all the books that I want, the entertainment to keep wife & me (and the kids) happy and up with current culture such that I have a proper sense of what everybody's like these days so I can communicate with them easily, buy the design and video editing software for my startup, - and then have all these things work in my own terms without being a total pain in my a-hole. (mp3 works on my phone... but not on my wife's? Fuck that, I like being able to share songs I like). But... I can't really do all of this, I don't have the money. If and when I have the means to do this comfortably, I'll do it! Until then, this is the way I'm gonna go. And the thing is, if I was not pirating all of these things and simply abstaining from enjoying these costly goods, it still would all be the same to the entity I'd buy it from -- because from their view it's a) simply not consume, or b) consume -- and for the time being at least contribute to fulfilling a network effects popularity of the thing, or at least get interested enough to be a willing buyer sometime in the future, (see Adobe and Microsoft leaked documents expressing their being okay people pirating their products. I'm sure you understand that Adobe and MS would indeed that you rather use a pirated copy of Windows/Photoshop than to go with Linux (or GIMP)... because this way you at least get hooked/familiarized with it, and might buy it legally when you're a business owner or something).
- pilom 13y ago
  You're argument is the same as this: I'm poor and I like chicken sandwiches because all my friends like chicken sandwiches. I can't afford chicken sandwiches so I steal them instead so that I can fit in with my friends (sometimes I leave a couple quarters on the counter because that is all it costs them to make one and I'd like them to break even). The company I steal them from shouldn't be upset with me because I've been able to find out who has the best chicken sandwiches and when I have money I'll pay for my chicken sandwiches. Yes, the company can say "consume and pay or don't consume" because they paid all the money to make the content in the first place. Any other option is stealing.
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
arjie 13y ago
This ship has sailed. For most people this is no ethical dilemma. Argue all you want, but the user does not care. They have the whip hand. If we don't provide something suitable, they will not care. No one is going to buy a TV for Amazon Instant Video support. They will buy the TV, see that it does not support the service, and promptly pirate the content they want. We will adapt to this situation, or lose to those who will. And if no one adapts? Then many will pirate. And all our diatribes against freeloaders will do nothing to stop them.
- tptacek 13y ago
  "For most people this is no ethical dilemma"? That's an argument? For most of Wall Street there's no ethical dilemma in speculative schemes that wreck the commercial paper market. Can I trot out "for most people there's no dilemma" in the zillion HN Wall Street threads too?
  - arjie 13y ago
    It's not an argument. It's a statement of what I believe to be fact. We can try legislation, DRM, or better services. The first two aren't working. I'm not saying it's good that it's this way. I pay.
- tunap 13y ago
  "No one is going to buy a TV for Amazon Instant Video support. " Actually, a client bought a "smart" TV to watch BlazeTV. When he realized it wasn't smart enough to offer the channel he wanted(licensing, crap proprietary software) he called me to "make it work". I bought a Roku, delivered & set it up. He watched < 4 hours of the target channel, called me up and told me to pack the whole thing up. Gone are the Roku, the TV and all subscriptions cancelled. Here's a target consumer who wants to pay but is not willing to pay, pay more & then jump through a myriad of hoops. edit, forgot your 2nd paragraph: he doesn't pirate the content, it's not that important to him. He does listen to the live audio offered free of charge on his phone now that I set that up for him.
dangerlibrary 13y ago
Re: "copying isn't stealing": If a producer prices someone out of the market, he/she is no longer a potential customer. That's a business decision about market size made by the producer - they get higher profits at a higher price point and smaller market. Great! However, producers don't get to complain about piracy by people who aren't in their market. Unless they eventually put the product on sale at some point, a pirate has no impact on the bottom line. In the simple (one-price-forever) case, the producer lost nothing - not even potential profit, because the consumer was already priced out.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangerlibrary 13y ago
    If my $1,000 were to magically, instantly transform into an identical Hermes bag sitting on the counter, I'm not sure how they'd ever even know it happened. Who was harmed? Fashion is a little different, too. There's very little software that operates in a world where exclusivity is an important aspect of pricing - Hermes bags cost $10,000 because people like to signal that they can afford a $10,000 bag. The value is very quickly diluted with greater availability. I can't think of a digital product that operates that way - maybe niche data re-selling? Certainly not TV shows or movies or songs.
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      > because people like to signal Yes; signaling seems to be an important part of value for the producers, not only in fashion. It's the same in expensive cars, expensive electronics (think Apple), etc. Not surprisingly, those are the companies that are the loudest about chinese knockoffs. If I were to 3D scan and then replicate the bag with subatomic precision using Star Trek replicator, I don't think anyone would feel that I'm stealing something, but people would still point out that this is not a real Hermes bag (so I got something of lesser worth). And if I took the original and left the copy in the shop, it could be considered theft even though you couldn't tell a difference with a scanning electron microscope. It's funny how society and moral intuitions work; a very interesting topic.
gizzlon 13y ago
why don't you just buy a different product sold on terms you agree with? I'm not GP, but I think the real problem is lack of competition. There's no real competition in this marked, they all collude. One example: If Big-Movie-Studio-A sold their movies online as downloadable, DRM-free content, I would be much more inclined to buy their movies instead of the competitions. There's hundreds of ways the movie studios could differentiate themselves, but they don't. They obviously do not want to compete on most fronts.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

skore 13y ago

This is, as always, the elephant in the room. A lot of people are seeing their internet use throttled for certain services lately, so even the supposedly "simple and fast" alternatives are taking a beating in the race these days. (Bittorrent) P2P technology is a marvel to me. It's such a simple concept and the recent advances at distributed links, encrypting and/or obfuscating the traffic etc. have done a good job keeping up with attempts at limiting it. It's fast, takes little effort to use and makes incredible use of the resources that the internet offers while being more true to its core values (fault tolerance, distributed data, "route around censorship" etc.). If you want to (and have a modern connection), you can find TV Shows in high definition shortly after their original broadcast, with zero advertisement interruptions and at download speeds that vastly exceed realtime streaming. Even in the rare cases where you cannot stream what you have downloaded so far (because of early missing chunks), simply waiting a minute or two will usually do the trick. What I would call the "inconvenience level" is down to where the time you need to wait for your content to be ready is about what you need for getting a round of snacks. Ergo: Virtually Zero. A content consumer like myself, in particular using a GNU+Linux system, is receiving vastly superior service at pretty much zero cost (save for effort and internet fees). Not to mention that for a content publisher, bittorrent is a mindblowingly simple and cost effective tool. For a while, I was actually considering moving away from my usual routine of "watch first, buy properly (in disc form) later". With all the BS they are still attempting to shovel into those, however (in particular the recent net-neutrality and surveillance crap), I find it harder and harder to ease up on my stance. In my opinion they should burn it all down, put it on bittorrent and charge in crypto money. Pretty sure we will be moving to some form of that eventually, might as well get it over with before we have to endure even more collateral damage from outdated monopolies trying a little too hard having it their way.

ctdonath 13y ago
save for effort Aye, there's the rub.
- Kluny 13y ago
  To me, it seems like the easiest thing in the world go to the the Pirate Bay, look something up, click "Get this torrent" and wait ten minutes or so for it to show up. Then I tried teaching someone who's not tech savvy to do it. She didn't have adblock, so she was confused by the Russian wives for sale and by the multiple Download buttons. She was deeply suspicious of having to download uTorrent and completely lost as to how to choose which of several available torrents she should pick. I don't know. I try to use Netflix on someone's Xbox and have the exact same problem. How the hell am I supposed to navigate with a joystick? Is it A or B to select? How do I go back? Maybe we're all just getting old.

dredmorbius 13y ago

Obxkcd: http://xkcd.com/488/ http://xkcd.com/488/