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Comment by gmarx | Hacker News Reader

You can argue about whether to call it stealing but it is breaking the law. It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics. Sure GenX has its share of amoral people, but at least they had the good taste to lie about it. I mean, that's kind of admitting that morality is important

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You can consider copyright infringement wrong and simultaneously believe criminalizing it as theft is a bad idea.

For example jay-walking is wrong because it's dangerous but many people do it anyway and it's not generally villianized. So then is the solution having police patrols in the streets fining/arresting people as a deterance? Will that reduce the problem and legitimately help both pedestrians and drivers? Or will educating people on the risks, creating alternatives such as adding more crossing points, improving cars ability to detect pedestrians, etc, etc, be a better solution?

Not everything is black or white, good or bad.

I'm think simultaneously improving pedestrian facilities while making penalties on jaywalking harsh is an okay idea, especially if the goal is 100% compliance.

What if you just noticed that there are already tunnels under all the roads?

Is it then immoral to walk under the road when some people interpret that as technically jay walking even though you're not directly effecting anyone in the way that the law assumes you will?

It's a bad analogy but I'll try to play along:

The tunnels are private property, with a sign saying "Private Property - Do Not Enter", and nothing gives you the inherent right to use them.

I made no statement about whether or to what extent the law should punish this.

> You can argue about whether to call it stealing but it is breaking the law. It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics

You're conflating laws and morality. Wouldn't it make more sense that the people pirating movies don't see it as morally wrong, instead of people pirating movies because they are amoral?

No, I'm not. I'm making two different statements about related aspects of the same act. I'm surprised, but shouldn't be by the down votes in this thread and the disturbing responses. You guys do in fact proudly believe it is right to steal someone else's work product

When you wrote:

> It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics. Sure GenX has its share of amoral people, but at least they had the good taste to lie about it. I mean, that's kind of admitting that morality is important

You are either saying saying society is more immoral now (which is irrelevant and off-topic), or saying the piracy is immoral, which is debatable. But then you don't provide any points to back up your argument.

Your first sentence, that piracy is illegal, is true but also besides the point of morality. Slavery was legal for a long time and I'm pretty sure we can all agree it was not moral just because it was legal. Apparently it's illegal to have an ice cream cone in your back pocket in Alabama, does that immediately make it immoral?

You keep calling it stealing, which it is not. If you want to bring legality into the debate, piracy is legally not stealing. Loaded words like that do nothing to help a discussion.

> You guys do in fact proudly believe it is right to steal someone else's work product

And where are you getting this info? I haven't pirated anything for years and am generally against it. I certainly don't believe it's anyone's right to do so. I bet many people here feel the same way.

However at the same time, realistically, I don't believe piracy is causing as much harm as anyone makes it out to be. Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who pirates things or has pirated things that would have purchased it otherwise. They just don't view/listen to/use the thing.

Often the most successful software products are the ones with the highest piracy rates. Anti-piracy measures generally screw over the average consumer more than they screw over pirates.

I liken it to jay-walking. Is it illegal? Sure. Is it bad in some circumstances? Sure. Should we dedicate a giant task force to jaywalking, create city streets that have anti-jaywalking barriers, and lock up anyone who does it? That would do more harm than good.

> Sure GenX has its share of amoral people, but at least they had the good taste to lie about it. I mean, that's kind of admitting that morality is important.

If that's your morality then everyone after GenX surely dodged a bullet. You'd prefer someone act like a psychopath rather than admit they don't agree with your moral code.

Equating one nation's laws at one point in time to morality and ethics is just the icing on the cake. Perhaps you still think that African-American men who marry white women or use non-segregated bathrooms are immoral too?

"It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics."

Not moral or ethics? I don't think so. Do you mean different morals and ethics that yours, maybe?

That comment about the new generations is so old as the first generation, by the way.

Do you ever speed? Did you ever drink before legal age? Most people [citation needed] think of pirating a song or a movie as being on that level, if at all.

Huh? My dad who is 65 now was proudly buying illegal cable descramblers in the 80s and bragging to all his friends about it, who would then go on to buy descramblers of their own. Since then he's moved on to Napster, Kazaa, Moviebox, Popcorn time, and Kodi.

Ah yes, the old, "my one counterexample totally refutes your hyperbolic generalization response". I'll try to remember to include a paragraph full of statistical disclaimers the next time I contribute a generalization to an internet discussion

What's interesting in this case is that the guys who are loading some software are being prosecuted. They haven't stolen anything.

If there's a specific law they're breaking, I'd be surprised.

I'm not sure about the UK where these arrests occurred, but in the US it might fall afoul of the "making available" concept of US copyright law. In other words, the original content creator has the exclusive right to make the content available for public consumption, whether by paid or free streaming or download, and any other entity that makes the content available is in violation of copyright law. I'd be interested in the outcome of an arrest over Kodi boxes here in the States, especially if it were challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court, as the "loaded Kodi box" guys are not streaming the content themselves, only providing an easy path (and profiting).

But the article seems to say that the Kodi software itself doesn't allow piracy, it's just software that third parties have written add-ons to, and those third-party add-ons give access to pirated content.

If that's actually the case, then it's hard for me to see how selling the fully-loaded Kodi box is more illegal than selling a computer with an internet connection. After all, there's third party software for computers that give access to pirated content as well, right?

edit: Ah, I guess I misunderstood the article. Some people are selling boxes preloaded with Kodi, and other people are selling boxes preloaded with Kodi+the third party apps, I guess?

Yes, I think that's the key distinction. Kodi is available (for example) in the Play Store so selling a box with it pre-installed is not illegal. However, if you go the extra step and include the piracy add-ons and (potentially) a subscription IPTV service then you've overstepped the line.

It probably depends somewhat on how these devices are marketed. I was in a resturaunt last year where a salesperson was showing one of these boxes to the resturaunt owners, he had it hooked up to the TV and he was accessing pirated content while claiming it was "included" in the price of the box ($499!) and "completely legal". Definitely questionable.

The text refers to a current test-case giving three charges, two of selling boxes "adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of effective technological measures" and one of "advertising a product to circumvent technological measures" [1].

It looks like the law stems from European Directive 2001/29/EC (2001) [2][3]. That directive isn't law in itself, it's an instruction for the EU member states to implement law to deliver that directive (in fact, the UK were initially convicted of failing to implement it by the 2002 deadline).

At a guess, the relevant law is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 24 [4]:

  Secondary infringement: providing means for making infringing copies.
  (1)Copyright in a work is infringed by a person who, without the licence of the copyright owner—
     (a) makes,
     (b) imports into the United Kingdom,
     (c) possesses in the course of a business, or
     (d) sells or lets for hire, or offers or exposes for sale or hire,
     an article specifically designed or adapted for making copies of that work, knowing or having reason to believe that it is to be used to make infringing copies.

[1] http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/kodi-box-cou...

[2] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A6...

[3] http://www.out-law.com/page-333

[4] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/24

What morals and ethics are you referring to exactly? I don't really know you and you assume we have the same beliefs.

Taking someone's work product under circumstances that they do not want you to is wrong. The fact that it is super easy to do and does not result in him possessing few physical goods at the end of the process does not make this an exception. The fact that they are not offering it to you at a price and level of convenience that you have decided would be just, does not make it right

You should try spending a year as a production assistant and then come back to me.

I am always fascinated by people like you. I assume you are apart of the tech industry. I would have never became apart of this industry if I thought the way you did. I got into this industry because things move faster than the low. Things are too slow. I don't give a fuck about laws if things move too slow.

Our society is doomed

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