5 ms·

I generally agree, but I hate to be one of the only people on HN who ever brings this up: If there is no way to restrict piracy, and if piracy is generally nor

• pdkl95 12y ago
  > Nothing is free. Did you not get the whole concept of "digital"? Information most certainly is free. It's getting someone to make the specific types of information you want that costs money. Of course there are ways of restricting copyright infringement: laws respect for the legal system. A monopoly on the distribution is a powerful thing - it gives you a fairly easy civil case against anybody who violates that monopoly. What it doesn't do is grant you free enforcement of that monopoly, nor does it guarantee that someone will actually buy your product. Just because you want to make some type of art doesn't mean others actually want it or that it is worth any amount of funding >0. Also, you seem to be under the impression that money (profit motive) is the only way stuff gets created, which is patently incorrect. "disempowering"? Did you watch those talks? (mainly #2) This is about human rights that the arts should not trump just because they want to assert some new type of "property right" simply because they have devised some sort of technical trick to that tries to enforce some aspect of their monopoly. To continue the example used by Doctorow, just because you have a copyright or patent on the software that runs a cochlear implant, you shouldn't be automatically able to extend those monopolies to override the wishes of the person who actually has the cochlear implant surgically inserted into their skull. Restrictions - limiting someone's uses - are trivial to talk about when the copyright is on some movie that isn't really important, so some people have accepted the DRM argument for movies. The point of Doctorow's talk is that the concept of restrictions becomes VERY different when you're talking about repossessing someone's legs or hearing. A lot of this issue comes down to the propaganda that has been used by the media industry over the last few decades. They created the incorrect term "Intellectual Property", when property rights are not what the government grants you when you get a copyright or patent. You get some legal rights, which is fine. You get an easy civil court case. The current effort is to try and extend that limited, specific purpose monopoly into other areas by claiming that your movie, book, song, or software is "property". Being "property" is important, because it is a lot easier to make a case that your property should be defended by force. We defend traditional property because it is finite (aka a "scarce resource"). Government granted fictions don't need such protection, as they already have it by definition! Now, you're worried about how interesting art and such will be created, and the answer to that is simple: the same ways it has always been created, and if you're clever, some new ways. It is easy to use Kickstarter as an example of new ways to fund things, but the cool, really interesting ways haven't even been invented yet. I realize that this is probably a hard and risky business, but a copyright doesn't mean you should be able to remove that risk by break the general purpose computer. A copyright doesn't mean you should be able to get rights beyond the first sale and the ability to sue people that distribute your monopoly protected works, just because you found some technical trick (DRM) to make that distribution initially difficult. Being able to sue someone doesn't mean you're entitled to have the government any enforcement costs. Most importantly, that same copyright doesn't grant you a market or audience or any kind of guaranteed income, nor should it trump any *human rights". It will be hard for a while, as new styles of funding are explored. Many musicians have already moved back to a live-performance model, with patronage being used in some areas. I suggest that anybody thinking that restrictions (DRM) are necessary instead focus their time and money on changing to a new funding model - or inventing one - instead of wasting that their time and money trying to prop up pre-general-purpose-computer business models.
  • api 12y ago
    Oh I get it. I just think it's not relevant to TPB at all, and that the linking of the two things is a giant exercise in changing-the-subject. (1) Destroy old business model. (2) ... hand wavey magic happens here ... (3) Utopia! I question #2 categorically. The magic never comes. Historically people have to struggle to be compensated fairly for their work. It was true for labor in the late 19th century, it's true for Chinese sweatshop workers, and it's true for content creators. A rising tide does not automatically lift all boats, and models of fair labor compensation do not appear without a struggle. Let's be totally clear here. I see the piracy issue as an issue of labor fairness vs. labor exploitation. If programmers were the ones on the chopping block, none of you people would be talking like this. You'd all be up in arms and talking about what can be done. This is entitled elitism of the first order; only some professions are entitled to compensation or for their wishes about how their works are used to be respected. Why is it that there are a million hackers working on new alternatives to The Pirate Bay, yet I see almost nobody working on new ways for authors, musicians, and artists to connect directly with their audiences? TPB doesn't connect musician to audience -- it distances musician from audience even more than the record companies ever did! Piracy is the ultimate in passive consumerism. It's consumerism so passive there isn't even a twice-removed economic connection. There's no connection at all. You -- the viewer or listener -- might as well not even exist. If the goal is to get the scummy record companies out of the loop, why aren't hackers working on that? Why doesn't somebody create a distributed, censorship-resistant medium for people to publish creative work that incorporates a transparent and direct-to-the-creator Bitcoin-based mechanism for payment? I'm not even talking about DRM, which I agree doesn't work. I'm talking about a simple mechanism. On TPB, Popcorn Time, and any number of these other things, I don't even see a way to pay the artists if I want to. There's not even a "tip" functionality. I think the intent is clear from the absence of anything like that in the design. This is about free, not freedom. You're appropriating a bunch of high-minded rhetoric, but the reality is you're just cheapskates who want free labor. I'll reserve my respect for people who actually make things of their own and put them out there to advance the cause of freedom-- people like Linus, or DJB, or pretty much every original OSS software author out there.
    • sounds 12y ago
• avn2109 12y ago
  >> "how on Earth to artists, musicians, journalists, authors, etc. ever get paid for anything?" There is exactly 0 danger of running out of creative people, regardless of whether or not they get paid. The creativity is built into the human psyche at a low level; it existed long before money, and it will exist long after our civilization has crumbled. In fact, we could totally ban music/painting/whatever, and creativity would still be extremely common. Whether or not there exists an entertainment _business_ has nothing to do with promoting the creation of art. In fact, the industrial-entertainment complex is probably a net drag on creative expression via crowding-out effects.
  • api 12y ago
    "There is exactly 0 danger of running out of creative people, regardless of whether or not they get paid." I consider this abusive, exploitative, and mean spirited in the extreme. "Yeah, we enjoy their work and it enriches our lives, but no way we're going to even slightly inconvenience ourselves to support them. Let the artists starve... there'll always be more where those came from!" You could say the same thing about underpaid Chinese sweatshop workers I guess... "there's always more where those came from!"
    • logfromblammo 12y ago
      I am writing a novel. After more than two years of working on it intermittently, on nights and weekends, I consider it about 80% complete. (Naturally, it will probably take 2 years to finish the remaining 20%.) I am not being paid to do it. I have no particular expectation that anyone will give me money for it after it is done. I also know that it is probably not as good as a novel written by any of my favorite professional authors. To indulge this new hobby, I have something called "a day job". Other people who create artworks frequently have one. Only a select few have the independent means to create art full time, and some have acquired a large enough base of supporters to make a living at it. We have a wealthy society. As such, we are capable of supporting a certain number of people as artists. But the world does not owe you a living. Less popular and less prolific authors cannot expect to earn enough to write full time just because Stephen King can. A musical performer can't expect to buy a new car even once in his lifetime just because Taylor Swift can now afford one every year for the rest of her life. A painter can't expect to get out of community service because a Banksy can sell for thousands of dollars. The plain fact of the matter is that there are more people who want to be professional artists than society is currently willing to support. Society likes some artists enough to make them rich, but you're not going to be one of them (unless you get really lucky or are terrifyingly talented). There are plenty more that society will support in a middle-class lifestyle. But for the most part, the aspiring artist's default assumption should be that society wouldn't give two steaming piles for a new work, and it should stay that way until well after the first check clears. As for myself, I have no plans to quit my day job. Even if I think that my book is better than Twilight, the author of that... piece... actually has dollar-denominated approval from productive society to write books as her full-time profession. Currently, my plans are to eliminate piracy by seeding the torrents myself, while also providing a painless way for readers to pay me what they want, even if it is just a compliment with no money attached. If I get even one penny, it will be more than what I expected in return for a work of art that no one but me ever asked for. That is why there is no danger to artistic culture. Even if no one else cares for it, there is still a reward for the creators in their pride of craftsmanship, their knowledge that they created something unique, that did not exist until their will brought it into existence.