3 ms·

But if I have two options: 1) Not watch a Movie/TV Show or 2) Pirate it (there's no option to buy it, which is true for most of the world besides the US), isn't

by ojii 12y ago

But if I have two options: 1) Not watch a Movie/TV Show or 2) Pirate it (there's no option to buy it, which is true for most of the world besides the US), isn't piracy a "victimless" crime as in the producers of the content don't lose sales, because there was no way to do a sale in the first place?

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "isn't piracy a "victimless" crime as in the producers of the content don't lose sales" I don't know. Maybe the creator didn't want people in a certain country to view the material. Maybe it hurts their feelings that it's being pirated. Maybe they have a release planned 6 months from now in a certain country and their sales will be down for that. There's no way to know for certain you won't be causing harm.
- icebraining 12y ago
  As a copyright holder of my HN posts, it hurts my feelings seeing you criticize pirates. Please refrain from doing so as a condition of downloading my posts.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  > There's no way to know for certain you won't be causing harm. Harm must be proven to receive civil redress. Potential, unrealized harm is not actionable. If your neighbor digs a bottomless pit in his backyard, and posts trespass warnings, you cannot sue to have him fill it because your kids might fall in. They would, after all, need to trespass in order to do that. But you could tell your insurance adjuster, they could apply a risk premium to a policy, based on the presence of the hole, and you could sue your neighbor for that. The argument against piracy is essentially a neighbor saying that 40 of their kids accidentally fell into the hole, except they also somehow lost all the birth certificates and forgot the kids' names. There's just no way that anyone can prove that sort of harm. But if the content industry ever tried to take out an insurance policy for sales lost to piracy, that would be a reasoned, independent, and measurable assessment of their harm, and they couldn't make up those BS numbers about how many dozens of their non-existent children fell into the pit, lost forever, even to the public records and the memory of their parents.
Thlom 12y ago
Third option: Wait until it's released in your region. As long as TV-shows are broadcasted on television you can't expect all shows to be isntantly available in your region. Some will, somw won't, depending on distribution/broadcast agreements.
- narrowrail 12y ago
  >you can't expect all shows to be isntantly available in your region. I believe TPB and kickass proves this statement false. I don't know what 'region' I'm in, and I don't care.
tptacek 12y ago
Without meaning to single you out: message board nerds like us have a bad habit of writing as if this observation was a keen bit of insight about piracy, but it's in fact a classic economic problem: the problem of free-riders. If you want to see it in action in a setting where we don't get derailed so easily by its implications, consider vaccination.

by ojii 12y ago

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "isn't piracy a "victimless" crime as in the producers of the content don't lose sales" I don't know. Maybe the creator didn't want people in a certain country to view the material. Maybe it hurts their feelings that it's being pirated. Maybe they have a release planned 6 months from now in a certain country and their sales will be down for that. There's no way to know for certain you won't be causing harm.

icebraining 12y ago
As a copyright holder of my HN posts, it hurts my feelings seeing you criticize pirates. Please refrain from doing so as a condition of downloading my posts.
logfromblammo 12y ago
> There's no way to know for certain you won't be causing harm. Harm must be proven to receive civil redress. Potential, unrealized harm is not actionable. If your neighbor digs a bottomless pit in his backyard, and posts trespass warnings, you cannot sue to have him fill it because your kids might fall in. They would, after all, need to trespass in order to do that. But you could tell your insurance adjuster, they could apply a risk premium to a policy, based on the presence of the hole, and you could sue your neighbor for that. The argument against piracy is essentially a neighbor saying that 40 of their kids accidentally fell into the hole, except they also somehow lost all the birth certificates and forgot the kids' names. There's just no way that anyone can prove that sort of harm. But if the content industry ever tried to take out an insurance policy for sales lost to piracy, that would be a reasoned, independent, and measurable assessment of their harm, and they couldn't make up those BS numbers about how many dozens of their non-existent children fell into the pit, lost forever, even to the public records and the memory of their parents.

Thlom 12y ago

Third option: Wait until it's released in your region. As long as TV-shows are broadcasted on television you can't expect all shows to be isntantly available in your region. Some will, somw won't, depending on distribution/broadcast agreements.

narrowrail 12y ago
>you can't expect all shows to be isntantly available in your region. I believe TPB and kickass proves this statement false. I don't know what 'region' I'm in, and I don't care.

tptacek 12y ago

Without meaning to single you out: message board nerds like us have a bad habit of writing as if this observation was a keen bit of insight about piracy, but it's in fact a classic economic problem: the problem of free-riders. If you want to see it in action in a setting where we don't get derailed so easily by its implications, consider vaccination.