Comment by mfoy_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mfoy_ | Hacker News Reader

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What "right to access culture"? Last I checked there was no such thing. At least not remotely in the way you seem to mean it.

Even if there was, it certainly wouldn't define culture solely as "Hollywood movies and pop music". Broaden your cultural horizons.

Just like if you were to say "access to clean drinking water is my right", that wouldn't entitle you access to ALL clean drinking water. Just like "access to culture" wouldn't entitle you to pirating whatever content you feel like.

If you're going to try and take the moral high ground, do it right and just avoid consuming content produced by organizations you disapprove of.

A much stronger pro-piracy argument in my opinion is that of convenience and consumer experience. Legitimate paying customers suffer under the tyranny of DRM while pirates have a much better experience. If I buy a song on the Apple music store I may not be able to play it on every music player[0]. If I pirate it then I can convert the format and consume it however I like. Video games with DRM may require an Internet connection to "validate" when the pirated versions are available offline (remember that Sim City debacle?). What's worse, remember the SONY rootkit disaster? Also, Ubisoft actually had a remote code execution back door exploit for a while. I've never heard of a DRM that made anything better for the paying customer.

[0] This has apparently changed in recent years.

I do not define culture as "Hollywood movies and pop music," and do not appreciate the personal attack. You should learn how to read properly. My cultural horizons are broad enough, thank you.

Just because a right isn't spelled out in the constitution, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Yes, DRM in inconvenient, but that's not a moral issue like throwing people in jail, driving them to suicide, or taking all their possessions are, all previously used tactics by the copyright enforcers.

Sousa held a very low opinion of the emerging and upstart recording industry. Using an epithet coined by Mark Twain,[8] he derided recordings as "canned music", a reference to the early wax cylinder records that came in can-like cylindrical cardboard boxes. In a submission to a congressional hearing in 1906, he argued:

Sousa in 1900, by Elmer Chickering. These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape. Law professor Lawrence Lessig cited this passage[41] to argue that in creating a system of copyrights in which control of music is in the hands of record labels, Sousa was essentially correct.

2c

Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — "No, you move."

As cheesy as that quote is, it's absolutely right. Also note that posting it is probably a copyright violation and reading an unauthorised copy is, too. You're welcome to either forget reading it, or send a million dollars per letter to Marvel.

Or to Mark Twain's estate, seeing as he actually wrote those words in the first place.

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