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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

by 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
Why are we working on new distribution channels like The Pirate Bay? Because we categorically reject the notion that corrupt, law-breaking middlemen who abuse the artist's right to be paid and abuse or refuse service to the customer -- I mean the MPAA, RIAA, etc. -- are a better alternative or economic model for a digital age than the free sharing of bits which is what the internet (and before that, usenet, and before that, sneakernet) has always been. We categorically reject the notion that we need state-sponsored controlled locked-down DRM ecosystems where hackers are thrown in jail for sending an HTTP request to an open server and cell phone unlocking is illegal, just so that the MPAA can continue to exist. The free as in zero dollars alternative _is_ what is happening to software: the price of an operating system is being driven to zero dollars. We celebrate this as the liberation of technology from the monopolistic, predatory, illegal activities that happened 20 years ago. We applaud the brilliant, profitable companies that are not hostile to free software (as in freedom). We hope more companies will learn how to do something like Github, The Linux Foundation, or Amazon EC2. Meanwhile, you can question the magic. It might not make sense to you, but it makes sense to John Perry Barlow: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html Why aren't you championing Actors Guilds, Authors fighting against Amazon's policies and fees, or even the fight against DRM?
- api 12y ago
  Edit: I deleted my original response because I figured out why we're arguing. "Free" is really a punk idea. It's a counterculture idea. "Steal this book" and all that. But ideas like that undergo a strange transformation when the power dynamics invert. Graffiti is also a counterculture thing, a rebellious thing. But what would happen if the police started doing it? Imagine you go outside and see a couple cops spray painting "just say no to drugs!" on the side of your house? You confront them and they start spewing stuff about how "there is no property man! I should be free to express myself!" (Great comedy skit right there...) The trouble is that hackers aren't rebels anymore. They aren't a counterculture. They've won. So stop talking like a rebel, because you aren't one. You are a member of a super-privileged super-empowered super-educated upper class with tremendous opportunity and unbelievable power. With your ideas and gravitas you can raise more capital than most people can save over a working lifetime, and if your "startup" is successful you could find yourself with four houses and a private jet. With somewhat less effort you can command incomes that are twice the national average for a whole family and still have enough energy left over to hack on things "in your spare time" and debate politics on sites like this. You can, with a few "hacks," crash whole corporate systems and cost people millions upon millions of dollars all by yourself. If you know a bit about networks you can probably pull it off without being caught, maybe deflect the blame toward a third world dictator and create an international incident that captures global headlines... FROM YOUR BEDROOM. You are upper class. You are rich and powerful -- far more powerful than the clueless geezers at the MPAA. I mean look... TPB gets taken down and six copies pop up in 24 hours. You can run circles around those morons because you're smarter, faster, ... YOU ARE THE F'ING MAN. You're not desperately struggling against the MPAA and the RIAA. Don't you get it? They're the ones desperately struggling against you, and it's a total rout. You are beating the living hell out of them. "Steal this book" is punk, but "steal all the books" is tyranny. In the hands of "the man," piracy becomes a tool for crushing and beggaring labor, disempowering the consumer, and creating a surveillance dystopia by baiting users into passive surveillance-based content aggregators. It's as ridiculous as graffiti in the hands of the police. You say "we" a lot. Let me tell you this. History will judge us on what we do with the awesome power we have been given. I'm not defending the old record companies. We could do better. We could create systems that allow artists to sell their works directly to their customers with almost zero percent overhead -- 100% to the artist! Not only that, but we could create in that transaction a direct personal social link between artist and fan, a real relationship. That's so much better than the old model for everyone. But no, we're building The Pirate Bay again, and again, and again, because we're cheap and we want free stuff. It's not just tyrannical and infantile. It's lame. It's not even technically interesting.

by api 12y ago

sounds 12y ago

Why are we working on new distribution channels like The Pirate Bay? Because we categorically reject the notion that corrupt, law-breaking middlemen who abuse the artist's right to be paid and abuse or refuse service to the customer -- I mean the MPAA, RIAA, etc. -- are a better alternative or economic model for a digital age than the free sharing of bits which is what the internet (and before that, usenet, and before that, sneakernet) has always been. We categorically reject the notion that we need state-sponsored controlled locked-down DRM ecosystems where hackers are thrown in jail for sending an HTTP request to an open server and cell phone unlocking is illegal, just so that the MPAA can continue to exist. The free as in zero dollars alternative _is_ what is happening to software: the price of an operating system is being driven to zero dollars. We celebrate this as the liberation of technology from the monopolistic, predatory, illegal activities that happened 20 years ago. We applaud the brilliant, profitable companies that are not hostile to free software (as in freedom). We hope more companies will learn how to do something like Github, The Linux Foundation, or Amazon EC2. Meanwhile, you can question the magic. It might not make sense to you, but it makes sense to John Perry Barlow: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html Why aren't you championing Actors Guilds, Authors fighting against Amazon's policies and fees, or even the fight against DRM?

api 12y ago
Edit: I deleted my original response because I figured out why we're arguing. "Free" is really a punk idea. It's a counterculture idea. "Steal this book" and all that. But ideas like that undergo a strange transformation when the power dynamics invert. Graffiti is also a counterculture thing, a rebellious thing. But what would happen if the police started doing it? Imagine you go outside and see a couple cops spray painting "just say no to drugs!" on the side of your house? You confront them and they start spewing stuff about how "there is no property man! I should be free to express myself!" (Great comedy skit right there...) The trouble is that hackers aren't rebels anymore. They aren't a counterculture. They've won. So stop talking like a rebel, because you aren't one. You are a member of a super-privileged super-empowered super-educated upper class with tremendous opportunity and unbelievable power. With your ideas and gravitas you can raise more capital than most people can save over a working lifetime, and if your "startup" is successful you could find yourself with four houses and a private jet. With somewhat less effort you can command incomes that are twice the national average for a whole family and still have enough energy left over to hack on things "in your spare time" and debate politics on sites like this. You can, with a few "hacks," crash whole corporate systems and cost people millions upon millions of dollars all by yourself. If you know a bit about networks you can probably pull it off without being caught, maybe deflect the blame toward a third world dictator and create an international incident that captures global headlines... FROM YOUR BEDROOM. You are upper class. You are rich and powerful -- far more powerful than the clueless geezers at the MPAA. I mean look... TPB gets taken down and six copies pop up in 24 hours. You can run circles around those morons because you're smarter, faster, ... YOU ARE THE F'ING MAN. You're not desperately struggling against the MPAA and the RIAA. Don't you get it? They're the ones desperately struggling against you, and it's a total rout. You are beating the living hell out of them. "Steal this book" is punk, but "steal all the books" is tyranny. In the hands of "the man," piracy becomes a tool for crushing and beggaring labor, disempowering the consumer, and creating a surveillance dystopia by baiting users into passive surveillance-based content aggregators. It's as ridiculous as graffiti in the hands of the police. You say "we" a lot. Let me tell you this. History will judge us on what we do with the awesome power we have been given. I'm not defending the old record companies. We could do better. We could create systems that allow artists to sell their works directly to their customers with almost zero percent overhead -- 100% to the artist! Not only that, but we could create in that transaction a direct personal social link between artist and fan, a real relationship. That's so much better than the old model for everyone. But no, we're building The Pirate Bay again, and again, and again, because we're cheap and we want free stuff. It's not just tyrannical and infantile. It's lame. It's not even technically interesting.