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Torrenting should be legal because criminalizing decentralized network technology fucks up the internet and requires the government to spy on all traffic.

This kind of argument is quite similar to why drugs should be legal even if their effects are bad -- the effects of prohibition are simply worse, and immoral.

"Information wants to be free" is not a crazy hippie idea, it's just the fact that it's extremely difficult (or basically tyrannical) to stop information from flowing once you have internet.

Should content creators be paid? They should be paid whatever they convince someone to pay them. Indeed it's not my job to figure it out. Maybe selling consumer download access to digital audio is not a viable business model in the presence of hard-to-stop piracy; well then, sell something else.

If it's not your job to figure it out, why do you feel entitled to their content without paying?

That's an interesting question to ask the vast hordes of people around the world who partake in torrents -- applied ethics research.

When I used to torrent stuff, it was mostly because I was a kid with no money to spend. I'm glad my family wasn't sued for a hundred thousand dollars or whatever!

One could also ask "why do you feel entitled to their money for the content"?

Honestly, some of the best content I have ever gotten was (in essence) "gifted" to me by the creator; whether as a free download, or perhaps directly given to me in some fashion. I enjoyed it so much so, that I felt compelled to gift them a monetary amount back, along with some kind words of thanks and encouragement for them to continue creating.

I much prefer this kind of reciprocal exchange, than what is currently the default case. Certainly, there are going to be those who take the gift, and never give back.

But they likely would have done that anyhow, regardless of the system in place, as we see today (outside of draconian DRM schemes and whatnot - for the majority of that, I've just simply not purchased those items, even though I do want them - are they somehow still entitled to my money?)

"One could also ask "why do you feel entitled to their money for the content"?"

No, you absolutely could not. The content is the result of their hard work. You could no more say that than I could say that I'm entitled to having you paint my house without paying you.

"Honestly, some of the best content I have ever gotten was (in essence) "gifted" to me by the creator; whether as a free download, or perhaps directly given to me in some fashion. I enjoyed it so much so, that I felt compelled to gift them a monetary amount back, along with some kind words of thanks and encouragement for them to continue creating."

That is the creator's choice to do that. But not every creator wants to do that. In those cases, you should not take their hard work without paying for it.

"I've just simply not purchased those items, even though I do want them - are they somehow still entitled to my money?"

No, but no one is saying that. In fact, people are saying that is the proper way to go. Yet, many here are saying that they are still entitled to the work despite not paying for it. I find it extremely disingenuous that you would try to say that, though.

'torrenting should be legal but content creators should work in the free market, eh?

I sincerely hope someone invents a protocol that will allow me to torrent a few cents out of your bank account every day. OK, that will be inconvenient for you but hey, that's not my problem. Money is just a social construct anyway so it's not like your loss actually matters in the overall scheme of things.

If money worked like MP3 files, being infinitely copyable in a non-zero sum way, it would indeed be hard to stop people from copying "my" money. Since that's not how it works, banks already successfully protect our accounts. These problems are qualitatively very different.

Surely you are aware that money is not grounded in physical objects but in notional promises and contractual relations. I certainly support the use of any software that enriches me at your expense, since you seem willing to do the same to me.

The flaw in your argument is that you think because mp3 files are copyable that technical reality obviates any moral right of content creator in deciding who they sell to and under what conditions. Since you don't think that content creators should be able to contractually or legally bind people from making copies, why should I care about your equally notional property interest? If you feel somehow diminished by my helping myself to your property, well just make more and sell it or something. It's not my problem.

I think that content creators simply are not able to prevent copying. If I have a folder of mp3s on my computer and my friend asks for a copy, it's so easy for me to say yes and just copy the files, instead of saying "sorry, this material is copyrighted, and I must concede the moral rights of the content creator and deny your wish." If a content creator wishes to stop this kind of heinous immoral piracy, how will they go about? Well, putting spyware and rootkits onto music CDs is a good start, right? Then move on to combating the open internet.

Thought experiment:

I leave $100 on a table, with a sign that says "do not take this money, it belongs to me", and I walk away - maybe to go to the bathroom or something.

You come along and say to yourself "wow, I'd love a hundred dollars, but I can't take that money - it's not mine. However..." - and out of your back pocket you whip out your handy-dandy molecular duplication machine...

...which you then point at the money, press a button, and it spits out an identical duplicate of the money on the table. Satisfied, you walk away.

I come back to the table, see the money undisturbed, pick it up, and go on my way.

Have I somehow lost something or been diminished in some fashion?

Let's say the same thing could be applied to goods - like someone makes a complete copy of your car, at no cost to them. Have you lost something by them now having a copy of your car?

Let's say you build something, perhaps something unique. You create a video of it, and post some pictures of it on Ebay, Youtube, Craigslist, etc - because you want to sell it. Someone studies the design (the videos and images) and recreates it perfectly (this can be done, btw); have you now lost something because they have a copy of the item?

No. This is not a valid comparison. For one, you are completely forgetting the effort involved in creating the work in the first place.

That effort doesn't suddenly become meaningless because a copy is made.

> LITERALLY DESTROYING ENTIRE INDUSTRIES AS WE STAND

HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC!

This is why pro-copyright arguments get downvoted, we've heard the hyperbole for decades and got fed up with it.

Journalism has a lot of problems, but I don't think actual copyright infringement is at the root of them, it's more a combination of unbundling classified ads etc. and the nasty realisation that lots of the public doesn't actually want accurate news so much as confirmation of their prejudices.

You've confused my argument. I'm not trying to be rude, but maybe you should read it again? Let me see if I can explain it better.

First, the fact that people refuse to pay for journalism online is very truly killing journalism online. There was nothing hyperbolic about what I said in GP, and there's nothing hyperbolic about this statement now. This is, I think, indisputable.

What I'm arguing is that people pervasively and stubbornly refuse to pay for things online, but then then turn around and say "content creators should solve the problem that I don't want to pay for things online." It doesn't cross their mind that this is a massive problem that is crushing entire industries, and Joe "I have an online indie band" Schmoe might not be able to reconcile it himself.

If the reputable publishers banded together and created a single platform that I paid for, where my payment was weighted towards the sites that I actually read articles from, then maybe they wouldn't be in so much trouble. Instead they each create their own platform and ask for a price that simply doesn't represent the value they provide, then bitch that nobody's taking them up on the offer.

Spotify works because they have large enough catalogues that I don't need to also have an Apple Music and a Google Play Music subscription, whereas the New York Times is basically just a donation since I'm inevitably going to have to go elsewhere for other journalism even in the same categories as they report on.

For the case of video, Disney + co have been attacking consumer rights for nearly a century via lobbying and as a result I don't care if they all go out of business. Fuck them for making copyright the 70+ year joke it is today.

There's lots of 'Joe Schmoe' indie musicians on YouTube who successfully monetize via Patreon, Bandcamp, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and video game soundtracks. Sure, few or none of them are seeing the success of somebody like Beyonce or Justin Bieber, but if that's your standard then you'll have a hard time convincing anybody.

As for journalism, others have made most of the points about its many problems. I just want to add that I'd like to see a major effort towards non-profit investigative journalism. It's pretty clear now that journalism is a commons so it's high time we treated it like one and worked to manage it the way we manage clean drinking water or wilderness preserves.

It's not hyperbole. Piracy has wrecked the low-budget movie industry, for one. You just don't want to take responsibility for the externalities that follow from your choices.

I ask people regularly to pay for a service that I provide for free:

https://easy-a.net/

The only thing I provide for paying me are some nice graphs and insight(s) (predict end of semester grades for the given student/user) if they pay me $20 / year. That's from college students... and I have plenty paying me.

All the data was gathered from a FOIA request which I make publically available. The only private data is what users enter about themselves.

You're not describing cognitive dissonance. There's nothing inherently incompatible between free sharing and paid creators. It's hard, of course, but most economic issues are hard.

I'd argue that an irreconcilable world view - or at least one that you are not capable of reconciling - is cognitive dissonance.

If you CAN reconcile it, you don't have congnitive dissonance. But most people don't get that far.

If your standard of avoiding cognitive dissonance requires being an economist, it's too high.

It's enough to have a reasonable justification to say that it can be reconciled. There's no need to force the person to do that reconciliation.

What I'm saying is that in some cases I do believe it to be irreconcileable.

Irreconcilable even by a dictator-for-a-day? As far as I'm concerned the idea of a tax that funds content creation is a pretty good existence proof of reconciling those two ideas.

I have absolutely no problem with paying content creators. Torrenting makes me very uneasy when it's distributing cracks and work by small scale creatives who will be - sometimes have been - forced to give up because of piracy.

That's not a win. It simply isn't. No matter how you look at it or rationalise it, there is no way to make it a good thing.

Unfortunately the existing corporates are also very bad at paying content creators.

In fact they're criminally bad. Knowingly, deliberately, fraudulently bad. (See "Hollywood Accounting.")

Torrenting could have fixed this by providing a second informal distribution channel. The big torrent sites - which were making huge amounts of money at their peak - could have fixed it by becoming the new investors and incubators of talent.

They could have become the new music and film industry. They could have taken down Hollywood by offering real decentralised competition to the entire business process.

Instead a load of college kids and the odd activist said "Fuck that - I want my free music and movies" and that was as far as it went.

Now we're back with creatives earning less than they were before torrenting started, partly because torrenting set the bar so low it made the ridiculous streamimg deals offered by Spotify etc look a serious business proposition.

The reality is that most of the rhetoric around free/open stuff is bullshit. None of it works as well as it's claimed to, and some of it is actively destructive.

I really don't have a problem with alternative models of creation, contribution, and reward. But inventing new models that actually generate and reward high quality content would require dealing with reality, not just indulging in rhetoric and self-justification.

There doesn't seem to be much chance of that happening any time soon.

>They haven't thought that far.

Sorry, but that's not just a false claim it's straight up dishonest. Peter Sunde also started Flattr, the pirate party and the CCC have been trying to popularize concepts like culture coins for years, just because you don't know about these things does not mean they don't exist/nobody is thinking about better solutions.

Say what you want, modern copyright-law is simply broken and needs to be rebuild from the ground up to account for our modern digitally driven economies.

It's not dishonest, it's representative of the actual situation. You don't even have to look very far: there are people IN THIS ACTUAL THREAD who admit they haven't thought about it and don't need to.

I wasn't saying "literally no one has tried to think this through", I was saying "a random guy off the street has not thought this through."

>It's not dishonest, it's representative of the actual situation.

If you claim "they" don't even "think that far", while there are plenty of examples of "them" thinking further, then there's nothing representative at all about your statement. Copyright reform was, and still is, the platform the pirate party is running for all over the world.

The random guy off the street also does not think about solving energy problems for the world, as such random guy off the street can be hardly a measure for anything at all.

Yeah, it does need to be rebuilt. but I have seen hardly anyone putting in any effort to do that, while lots and lots of people just help themselves to cultural output and excuse the resulting lack of revenue by saying 'lol copyright is broken.'

Maybe next time try offering some new solutions before wrecking entire industries that you know nothing about and didn't take the time to understand, instead choosing to characterize them as part fo some monolithic Big Media that you feel OK about hating.

>I have seen hardly anyone putting in any effort to do that

Because the only people in any position to actually do anything about that are not willing to do anything about it.

But there are also plenty of examples for when the effort paid off in very big ways, like iTunes, Steam and the now thriving VoD business.

>before wrecking entire industries that you know nothing about and didn't take the time to understand

Like what? You offer nothing but dramatics while ignoring the actual realities. What industries got actually "wrecked"? And what industries profited immensely by appealing to customers demands, instead of trying to dictate to customers what they are supposed to "want"?

iTunes was a success because Apple took cues from what made music piracy so sucessfull. They took note of customers not wanting to be forced to buy overpriced full albums if they just want a single song, they took note of the ease of use.

Same story with Steam: Ease of use and massive discounts, lessons taken straight from the piracy scene and applied for business success.

VoD is going the same route right now but guess what mostly hampers the business from global expansion? Copyrights and the whole legal rattail that comes with it. Why does my German Prime subscription not give me access to Prime content on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk? Why do so few Blu-Rays have a proper selection of different subtitles/dubs on them? As long as "buying the real thing" ends up being more of a hassle than just pirating it, that long pirating will, of course, stay the more popular choice.

>the resulting lack of revenue by saying 'lol copyright is broken.'

Try to imagine the "lack of revenue" that would exist without iTunes and Steam existing, that's actual measurable revenue and not fairy tale "nobody buys my product, can't be because it sucks, must be piracy!" revenue.

You should try to present an argument against the position of your opponents in good faith, against the best version of their argument. Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean they are experiencing "cognitive dissonance". Armchair psychoanalyzing millions of people across the Internet and accusing them of some mental dysfunction because they dared to disagree with you does not paint your argument in a good light.

You seem so upset about entire industries being destroyed -- last I heard industries were fine. Movies are being made and are making money. Music is proliferating everywhere and people are managing to make money. Artists are being screwed out of their money as they have been since decades before the Internet existed. Games, one of the most pirated things in the world are a huge booming industry. Journalism is not dying because of piracy -- has anyone ever pirated a newspaper or magazine? Illegal torrents of copies of the New York Times? What? Histrionics and caps lock don't particularly help your case, explain what you are talking about.

It's certainly possible that the market is simply not an effective driver for artistic creation, especially in a world where art can be copy pasted trivially -- in the past, art has been mostly funded by the state or by wealthy individuals and patrons. Perhaps that model is better.

It's also possible that the "cure" of locking down the Internet, mass surveillance to identify pirates, designing DRM so that machines work against their owners' interests and no longer obey the user is worse than the "disease" of piracy.

I think our first disagreement comes over the meaning of cognitive dissonance itself. I don't believe it to be a mental disorder- just that you're holding 2 conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. I'm well aware that I often do that, as so others. There's nothing horribly wrong with it, other than of course that you should realize you're doing it and stop.

Maybe you could turn your statements about good faith first on me and assume that I'm not accusing everyone who disagrees with me of having a mental disorder. That would be rather extreme. :)

In fact, it's rather surprising to me that you write about good faith but take my own argument in such poor faith!

As for dying industries, I was referring to journalism and you are the second person to miss that so I am willing to believe I did a poor job explaining. I think I clarified well here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14107993

The bad faith I was referring to was the multiple-paragraph long rant that takes place entirely in your perception of the internal thought process of the people that disagree with you. Let them speak for themselves, they're perfectly capable of it.

I agree journalism is dying and I agree it is relevant to this discussion tangentially: journalism is dying purely because capitalism cannot sustain it anymore. It needs to be propped up by government funding or charity or it will die.

The market is a horribly ineffective as a funding source for quality journalism.

The market is also a horribly ineffective as a funding source for any kind of art that isn't completely mainstream.

If you ask a Libertarian, that means that good journalism and art aren't worth anything and deserve to wither away.

In my view, they both need to be propped up by the government to survive. The record industry has found a way to get the government to force people to give them money with IP laws, etc. Journalism hasn't found a way to do that yet so it's just charity for now.

Government subsidies for art and journalism is probably where we should be heading, instead of a punishment regime that requires DRM and surveillance and ruins lives all to benefit the tiny group of ultrawealthy capitalist IP rightsholders who give crumbs to the people who create their content.

Everyone thinks content creators should get paid. It is so universally accepted that saying it is almost like saying nothing at all. But which content creators? How much? By what mechanism? What about the people who hold the copyrights, who are often not content creators at all? Under our current scheme, they are the ones who get paid, and content creators by default get nothing; content rightsholders get paid. It is a happy coincidence that sometimes rightsholders and creators coincide.

> LITERALLY DESTROYING ENTIRE INDUSTRIES AS WE STAND DEBATING WHETHER IT'S POSSIBLE?

Except that's not true. Never has been. This kind of hyperbole just makes people switch off and stop listening.