"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders | Hacker News Reader

"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders

arstechnica.com

18 pointsolefoo47 comments

Whatever new word they come up with, it will eventually sound sexy, too, assuming it sticks.

Rebelling against self-destructive authoritarianism == sexy, no matter what you call it.

The euphemistic treadmill runs in both directions!

I'd like to know how James Murdoch manages to reproduce and distribute Pringles with virtually zero cost as compared with traditional manufacturing? I'd sure like that app, "click to create a new pack of Pringles".

He's either being naive or intellectually dishonest; and I don't think he's naive.

That was the part that stuck out to me the most. Someone in the music/movie industries certainly must understand the fundamental difference between copyright infringement and physical theft.

It's either that or they have a massive human resources problem.

Your argument begs its conclusion. You say that someone in the music industry must understand "the fundamental difference between X and Y." This implies that there is such a difference and takes it as fact without asserting it as such. That is normally fine, but in this case that's the exact point you are debating with the music industry.

Is there a need to state the obvious? Both copyright infringement and theft can be economically damaging to the victim, but this does not mean they are equivalent.

> Is there a need to state the obvious?

There is a need to state the obvious when you are talking about record industry executives who are stating that they disagree with what you or I consider to be obvious.

If it was that obvious, there wouldn't be any debate, would there?

There is no debate. Copyright infringement is not theft. Copyright infringement is also not murder, arson, or vandalism. Words mean something. That's why we have different words for different things. When someone says "Copyright infringement is theft", they're making a rhetorical point by conflating two different things, just like when someone says "All property is theft." This does not mean there is any debate that "property" and "theft" are the same thing.

> There is no debate

Well, I guess you automatically "win" whatever discussion you are having when you open with those four words. I presume the logical next step is for us to switch into Monty Python skit mode:

"There is no debate."

"Yes there is."

"No there isn't."

"Yes there is."

"No there isn't."

"Well the RIAA is debating you, so yes there is."

"No they aren't. They can't simply make a rhetorical point conflating two different things and call that a debate. They have to make something that I agree is a valid debating point."

"No they don't."

"Yes they do..."

Stealing someone's intellectual property would imply that they no longer have the ability to sell licences or transfer the ownership rights of the intellectual property. So if it was actually possible to steal a song, what you'd be stealing is all future royalties on the song as well as the right to transfer ownership of the intellectual property to someone else, while at the same time preventing the original owner from doing the same. Which is, of course, preposterous.

If someone infringes on your copyright, you can still continue selling licences as well as fully transfer ownership of the intellectual property. That's why it's not stealing. Note: I'm not condoning copyright infringement, just pointing out that it's not equivalent to stealing.

I don't see the debate you're referring to. When the music industry chooses to redefine a word, pointing out that that's what they're doing is sufficient. I took the extra step of actually repeating the definitions here, but that shouldn't be necessary.

Hey, I don't disagree with your feelings on the matter, but there is still a logical fallacy in the way you put it the first time. Consider the following statements:

1. There must be some executive who agrees that there is a difference between copying and theft, and;

2. There must be some executive who agrees that since there is a fundamental difference between an act that gives to one without depriving another and an act which gives to one while depriving another, there must therefore be a fundamental difference between copying and theft, and;

3. There must be some executive who understands the difference between copying and theft.

The first one makes it plain that there is debate as to whether X and Y are different. The second puts your terms on display for debate. The third assumes them.

I'm not actually the person who made the first statement. But as I see it, he made 2 statements:

1. Stated (as fact) that there is a fundamental difference between copyright infringement and physcal theft.

2. Expressed dismay at the apparent lack of understanding of the above fact by the music / movie industries.

Expressing dismay because someone else seems unaware of something you hold as a fact is not a logical fallacy in and of itself. It may be possible to show the fact is incorrect and the dismay therefore unnecessary, but that doesn't make it a fallacy.

I agree with the way you have broken the statement up. Begging the question is not so much a logical fallacy as a tautological argument. The issue is that item 1 is not so much stated as assumed en passant. It's kind of like asking "When did you stop beating your wife."

The statement is couched as being about point number two, but if we say either "yes, there are music executives who understand" or "no, you're wrong, no music executives understand," either way we are forced to agree with the first point.

For the record, I agree with both points, but I also acknowledge that the matter is subject to debate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

I quote: This fallacy is often confused with begging the question, which offers a premise no more plausible than, and often just a restatement of, the conclusion.

It does become a loaded question if you ask a music industry exec: "Are you aware of the fundamental difference between copyright infringement and stealing?" But, as the wikipedia article says, that's not the same as begging the question. In any case, it's not a loaded question, since it's not a question to begin with.

The original poster did not ask us to answer the question about the record / film industry, while accepting his other statement. He was saying "I believe that there is a fundamental difference between X and Y, and am dismayed by the lack of understanding of this difference in the record / film industry". I doubt he had formal logic in mind.

EDIT: But you do make some very points, and I'm willing to concede that I may be completely wrong about what the original guy was trying to say, or how it should be interpreted. I really should spend less time on HN :)

Perhaps it is a loaded statement :-)

Thanks, I learned something from your points and research.

Yeah, learned something too. Thanks.

He's either being naive or intellectually dishonest; and I don't think he's naive.

This meme needs to die [1]. A fisherman doesn't care that a dolphin isn't a fish - when he calls it that, he means that it swims in the sea, gets caught in his net, and tastes delicious. Similarly, Murdoch's perspective is that of the copyright investor - he sees the purpose of copyright law as creating and protecting a new class of property in order to encourage its production. His assets are invested in the production of this "new-style-property" which the federal government promised to protect (just as it does material property). From his point of view, the nature of distribution of that property just aren't relevant.

1. The cognitive bias is so painfully blatant: "the guy I disagree with is a liar bullshitting idiots, or is an idiot himself"? Come on.

> This meme needs to die ... The cognitive bias is so painfully blatant: "the guy I disagree with is a liar bullshitting idiots, or is an idiot himself"? Come on.

Cognitive bias? Why restate the assertion with loaded terms?

Are you saying that it is not intellectually dishonest to equate copyright infringement with theft? Theft deprives its victim of property.

He's saying the laws we agreed on treat physical property and intellectual property the same, and so to Murdoch there's no need to regard the differences.

> He's saying the laws we agreed on treat physical property and intellectual property the same

Well this seems incorrect on its face. e.g. Copyright law

To my knowledge, copyright does not even address physical property. Thus it does not treat physical property the same as intellectual property.

Cognitive bias? Why restate the assertion with loaded terms?

The bias is the desire to demonize someone perceived as an adversary as a liar and an idiot, even if it isn't an accurate model of their behavior. Demonizing someone is nice if you want to start a lynching mob, but not if you want to understand their point of view.

Are you saying that it is not intellectually dishonest to equate copyright infringement with theft?

Precisely. Just as it isn't "intellectually dishonest" to equate a dolphin with a fish, from the point of view of an guy in a boat with a spear.

Theft deprives its victim of property.

Technical detail. Murdoch is investing billions of dollars into what he sees as a "factory manufacturing IP". To him, the output of that factory is his property. Think of it as a magic chicken machine - if you have a machine that makes chickens out of nothing, does that justify stealing chickens from you? After all, you can make more copies of at no cost.

I don't think Murdoch is an idiot, far from it. Is he a liar, well I'm with Dr House (a fictional medical consultant) on that one - we all lie in some measure. Here Murdoch is spinning the standard lie equating theft (illegal) with copy infringement (tortuous) in order to enhance peoples guilt.

They are markedly different. Equating them is, as I rather cicuitiously said, intellectually dishonest. Theft denies a person the possession of the property, copyright infringement does not.

Copyright as it has been formulated, to encourage movement of works into the public domain in return for a limited monopoly, is a fantastic legal device. But the likes of Murdoch have perverted this deal - I don't deny content creators a right to profit from their work. However, the major corporations and the governments that have acceded to their demands have denied the free enjoyment of much work which should by now have entered the public domain.

The terms of copyright should have reduced in-line with lower cost reproduction methods but instead it has increased. If there is any theft involved in all this it is theft from the public domain.

Intellectual property is not really a "new class" of property it has been around for centuries and began precipitating into law with Queen Anne's Statute in the early 1700s. It is simply a reflection that a man should earn from the fruit of his labours whether they be physical or ethereal fruit.

Talking about trivial consumer products brings a lot of emotion into this kind of debate.

How does this differ from digital services such as FathomDB or Heroku? If I crack their service somehow so that I can use their product to help my company make more money without paying them, am I a thief?

If you somehow obtain their source code and run your own server, that would be copyright infringement.

If you manage to use it on their servers, with the associated running costs (disk space, CPU and RAM usage, support if you're a clever cracker) then you are in fact a thief - you are stealing their resources.

I really don't understand the whole controversy around piracy. The fact of the matter is, it's a real hassal to purchase and use physical media and the respective industries are spending all of their money suing the consumer instead of listening to what might make them spend more money.

Sure the word sounds glamorous if you're a blithering idiot. When someone downloads a torrent, they aren't thinking "Damn I'm like Johnny Depp!" They are thinking "This is so much easier than dealing with 15 FBI warnings and a stack of previews I can't skip before I watch this movie."

Think about it: You know the guy selling screeners and movie copies in the subway for $10 a piece? ...the same thing you can buy in the store without all of the copyright notices and advertisements and $30 cheaper. Which one would you rather buy?

Is it that "piracy" is too sexy, or is it that DRM and the alternatives those companies offer a bad deal?

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png

Also, being forced to sit through stuff stinks. If I am offered an alternative, I'll take it. I'll even pay.

"Rightsholders" sounds too respectable. They should be called Information Monopolists (IM).

"There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff"

Other than shoplifting is probably a misdeamenor with small fine and maybe 30-90 days in county jail. Whereas copyright infringment does such violence to (USA)society that it's been deemed necessary to punish with 5yrs in (federal) jail and $250,000 fine per instance of infringing. So, actually physically stealing CD == wrist slap (first time offender). Threatining out of date industry's business model 75 years and 3.75 million dollars (15 song CD).

"International Chamber of Commerce which argued that 1.2 million jobs could be lost in Europe as a result of copyright infringement by 2015"

Is a meaningless metric unless compared to the number of jobs that could be lost in Europe by 2015 due to the ever expanding and insanely broad copyright protections.

I personally have had a career in IT due to pirated versions of DOS/Windows (20+ years ago, gotta start somewhere) and other softwares along the way. And btw by becoming a professional I've recommended, got purchased & installed way, way more $$$ worth of software than I have ever pirated. Studies have been done showing similar effects for music.

Of course these days cause of absurd DRM, EULA's, et al I recommend / work with Open Source almost exclusively. So, it's really your own paranoid control fetishes that are destroying your industries. Not Sexsay Pirates.

People wouldn't associate pirates with Johnny Depp if they hadn't made a movie showing how cool pirates are, starring Johnny Depp. Hollywood likes to make movies glamorizing criminals -- public enemies, goodfellas, princes of thieves: crime is cool, except when it's happening to us.

Perhaps we should call it "stealing" instead? No problem, as long as people don't associate it with Russell Crowe in Robin Hood (coming to a theater near you; check your local listings).

Stealing is simply an inappropriate term any way you look at it. Stealing involves a transfer of an item from one party to another. It's not stealing if the original person still has it.

Yes, but this is precisely the kind of term they will choose, regardless of appropriateness; "piracy" was not exactly a textbook definition of copyright infringement, either. I am pointing out that "stealing" is not an improvement over "piracy", as far as the perceived coolness of the crime.

The music industry is probably happier with their choice of label in Germany. Pirated copies are widely called „Raubkopieren“ (lit. robbed copies) and pirates are widely called „Raubkopierer“ (lit. people who rob copies).

Just as the pirate label that‘s a pretty stupid description. Making copies might be wrong but it’s not robbery.

I wonder what new words they can come up with. Thief does not really work because for centuries it too obviously meant something very different.

Maybe one could find some good word in world of sex offenders and perverts?

How do you call jerking off to someones picture that had not been explicitly sold to you for that purpose either by model, photographer or someone who has agreement with both of them without informing any of them what you are doing especially if some people buy exactly this picture from them for exactly that purpose?

If I were a memetic engineer in the pay of the rightsholders I'd probably try to coopt the term 'leech'. As it has connotations of parasitism and failure to contribute; and it's already in use in the community for people who download but never upload (almost every bittorrent tracker will report the number of leechers and seeders).

In bit-torrent terminology leechers do upload but they do not have whole file. Seeders have whole file which means that the keep being connected to torrent network despite the fact that they have no longer any selfish goal in this.

I also like to be called a hacker.

This week, at the unveiling of a new study for the International Chamber of Commerce which argued that 1.2 million jobs could be lost in Europe as a result of copyright infringement by 2015, the head of the International Actors' Federation lamented the term.

"1.2 million jobs lost" seems like it's a loaded term. Is this going to push the unemployment rate higher? Is it a permanent loss? Will these people get jobs elsewhere? What would the people do in these jobs if this industry never existed? People have been saying that copyright infringement is going to hurt employment for years, and yet the industries continue to exist and people continue to find work.

I don't have a reference to back this up, but I seem to remember that the word piracy was deliberately chosen but the industry to make it sound like a real crime. Copying and sharing were the words used by ordinary users usually.

Where will this all end? Is plagiarism theft? Is copying your neighbour's garden design theft? Is copying a competitors phone design theft?

The digital rights for both sides need to be worked out. I'm all for investors making money, but paying copyright holders to sing folk songs (long after the initial money has been made) can't be fair either.

Some of this is just greed over sales that would never have happened really, and a want to make content scarce when it's not.

There's more and more research showing that sharing causes people to be more interested in things, which lead to them spending more money.

I wish there was more obvious research on this. Because sharing all my music with all my friends (and anyone else, really) causes them to be more interested in music and ultimately become a bigger follower of music. This is also true for movies and TV.

While research might show that in some cases, I'm sure it's not true in all industries. And whatever anyone wants to call it (a rather silly debate), copyright infringement isn't right. Site designs, indie music, the written word, photographs, open source software: it's not just big industry.

But back to the research, I'd be interested if they focused on the industries, or rather, simply the medium (TV, Movies).

It's interesting to note that the word piracy has applied to this sort of thing for over 300 years.

http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=187

Bit late I think.

And here am I, always thinking "piracy" was a term way too negative for what I like to call "copyism".

exactly.

I can't wait to get my copy of Murdoch's Newspeak Dictionary: 2º Edition. Doubleplusgood!

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