5 ms·

Even if people might think that freely sharing movies shouldn't be illegal, I think that most people feel that some random guy on the internet making money dist

by rtpg 12y ago

Even if people might think that freely sharing movies shouldn't be illegal, I think that most people feel that some random guy on the internet making money distributing camrips of The Dark Night is Not Cool(tm). I think a lot less people have much of an opinion on unlicensed cabbies existing. AirBnB is a bit more controversial (anti-subletting clauses are there for neighbors more than for landlords, and NIMBY plays a role), but some people are cool with that so long as they trust their neighbor's judgement. I do agree that the SV-ness of these two companies has helped immensely.

howeyc 12y ago
What people think is immaterial. With all three companies (Uber,Airbnb,MegaUpload) you have people breaking the law using the service. All three services turned a blind eye to this in the name of "disruption." Kim's downfall is likely twofold: 1. Lack of Valley VCs with money saying what he's doing is good for the world. 2. The entertainment money lobby is very strong. I don't think there are taxi or anti-subletting lobbies of similar weight.
toyg 12y ago
> I think a lot less people have much of an opinion on unlicensed cabbies existing. No, it's just that the taxi lobby is less powerful than Hollywood, and is less used to spreading mass-propaganda. Have you ever seen ads shouting "Driving an unlicensed cab is A FELONY!" before every piece of entertainment you consume? That's why you think "most people feel" this or that about copyright infringement. It has nothing to do with the actual matter or the intensity of "natural feelings" of Joe Average about this or that topic. After all, before Napster was sued, the overwhelming majority of any population had no qualms whatsoever about copying anything digital (computer programs etc), not unlike we all had no qualms about using Uber until cabbies revolted. Napster/Mega/Uber/AirBnB all shared the commonality of enabling illegal practices on a scale previously deemed impossible. Whether this is a good thing or a bad one, it depends on individual categories, but there is no denying that they all share a fundamental challenge/disobedience of established laws.
- rtpg 12y ago
  Please read what I said a bit more carefully. I don't think people had a problem with Napster because it was the logical extension of copying your friends' tapes. But I think some people have moral qualms about copying tapes and then selling them for more than cost.
  - toyg 12y ago
    Please read what I said more carefully. My point is that nobody was even thinking of digital duplication as an issue that required discerning between people doing it for love and people doing it for money. We were forced to develop an opinion, forced to draw this particular line by established interests crying foul ever since the '70s (and probably even before). We weren't born with an innate sense that is wrong to pay for certain types of digital copies; our rational economic instinct is to try and get the best bang for our buck, not to investigate whether the seller is actually allowed to sell us that particular bang. That is why contraband is as old as the world. It was a constant stream of threats and propaganda from established interests that taught us that there is a "good copy" and a "bad copy" and people selling "bad copies" are unworthy of getting our money. Now it's natural to think that there is a line to draw, regardless of where you actually draw it. That line wasn't there before "they" told us to look for it. For taxis and hospitality, this process of education/indoctrination has not happened, because there was no real need -- these matters were settled in law decades ago through the (mostly democratic) process, and that was it. Established interests could draw the line at any time with a couple of phone calls, because you can't hide a hotel or a cab for long; there was no need to involve the public, no need to divulge the finer points of hospitality law or to develop in their customers a critical approach to doing business in these markets like the entertainment industry was doing. Now Uber and AirBnB are simply bypassing these established systems by using scale. They make infringers small enough and numerous enough to make enforcement unpractical on the ground, and use that as a lever to remove established systems of control. Incumbents are forced to ask the public to do the enforcement themselves, like the entertainment industry started doing so many years ago. So now more and more people know that there is a line to draw in those industries as well, but in numbers nowhere near what the entertainment industry amassed in almost 50 years of continuous advertisement of "bad practices". That doesn't mean that they don't have the exact same reasons of the entertainment industry: "the law says X and these people are doing Y, please make them stop". (In fact, they probably have even more reasons, since regulation of these industries has some foundation in actual threats to the public -- hotels with no emergency exit, drunk unlicensed drivers etc. -- whereas nobody ever died because of an unlicensed tape.)

by rtpg 12y ago

howeyc 12y ago

What people think is immaterial. With all three companies (Uber,Airbnb,MegaUpload) you have people breaking the law using the service. All three services turned a blind eye to this in the name of "disruption." Kim's downfall is likely twofold: 1. Lack of Valley VCs with money saying what he's doing is good for the world. 2. The entertainment money lobby is very strong. I don't think there are taxi or anti-subletting lobbies of similar weight.

toyg 12y ago

> I think a lot less people have much of an opinion on unlicensed cabbies existing. No, it's just that the taxi lobby is less powerful than Hollywood, and is less used to spreading mass-propaganda. Have you ever seen ads shouting "Driving an unlicensed cab is A FELONY!" before every piece of entertainment you consume? That's why you think "most people feel" this or that about copyright infringement. It has nothing to do with the actual matter or the intensity of "natural feelings" of Joe Average about this or that topic. After all, before Napster was sued, the overwhelming majority of any population had no qualms whatsoever about copying anything digital (computer programs etc), not unlike we all had no qualms about using Uber until cabbies revolted. Napster/Mega/Uber/AirBnB all shared the commonality of enabling illegal practices on a scale previously deemed impossible. Whether this is a good thing or a bad one, it depends on individual categories, but there is no denying that they all share a fundamental challenge/disobedience of established laws.

rtpg 12y ago
Please read what I said a bit more carefully. I don't think people had a problem with Napster because it was the logical extension of copying your friends' tapes. But I think some people have moral qualms about copying tapes and then selling them for more than cost.
- toyg 12y ago
  Please read what I said more carefully. My point is that nobody was even thinking of digital duplication as an issue that required discerning between people doing it for love and people doing it for money. We were forced to develop an opinion, forced to draw this particular line by established interests crying foul ever since the '70s (and probably even before). We weren't born with an innate sense that is wrong to pay for certain types of digital copies; our rational economic instinct is to try and get the best bang for our buck, not to investigate whether the seller is actually allowed to sell us that particular bang. That is why contraband is as old as the world. It was a constant stream of threats and propaganda from established interests that taught us that there is a "good copy" and a "bad copy" and people selling "bad copies" are unworthy of getting our money. Now it's natural to think that there is a line to draw, regardless of where you actually draw it. That line wasn't there before "they" told us to look for it. For taxis and hospitality, this process of education/indoctrination has not happened, because there was no real need -- these matters were settled in law decades ago through the (mostly democratic) process, and that was it. Established interests could draw the line at any time with a couple of phone calls, because you can't hide a hotel or a cab for long; there was no need to involve the public, no need to divulge the finer points of hospitality law or to develop in their customers a critical approach to doing business in these markets like the entertainment industry was doing. Now Uber and AirBnB are simply bypassing these established systems by using scale. They make infringers small enough and numerous enough to make enforcement unpractical on the ground, and use that as a lever to remove established systems of control. Incumbents are forced to ask the public to do the enforcement themselves, like the entertainment industry started doing so many years ago. So now more and more people know that there is a line to draw in those industries as well, but in numbers nowhere near what the entertainment industry amassed in almost 50 years of continuous advertisement of "bad practices". That doesn't mean that they don't have the exact same reasons of the entertainment industry: "the law says X and these people are doing Y, please make them stop". (In fact, they probably have even more reasons, since regulation of these industries has some foundation in actual threats to the public -- hotels with no emergency exit, drunk unlicensed drivers etc. -- whereas nobody ever died because of an unlicensed tape.)