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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

> The hilarious thing is this is going to drive people back to engaging in piracy on various levels

People aren't "driven to piracy". Piracy's a conscious decision to take what they want without paying for it.

It's a conscious decision, but that decision may be greatly influenced by the content being prohibitively expensive for them to otherwise obtain.

Or often not available at any price.

Sure, but that's the basic deal for any situation involving self-control and moral freedom.

There's an act you would like to perform, but it's unwise/moral/sinful/suboptimal. Do you do it or not?

Glad you asked! But some people may disagree with your premises rather than directly with your conclusions.

- if you steal that's bad - few people disagree with this

- if you sell unauthorized copies of someone else's thing, that's bad - few people disagree with this.

- if you make and watch an unauthorized copy of someone else's thing, but only for yourself, that's bad - most people kind of disagree with this, especially if in a vacuum.

- same as above, but you make minimum wage (because the economy is only growing for the 1%, not because you're lazy) at 2 jobs and you like 1 tv show from 6 Netflix clones and you think 6x12$/month is too much when you're already paying 100$+ for cable TV and internet and share a small apartment with 2 roommates, and student loans, and you don't have healthcare, so you pirate 3 tvshows. - you'll probably mentally rewrite this as "no, they were lazy, otherwise they'd be getting VC funding for their 3rd startup like me", but most people probably don't think this is wrong if they don't apply egocentric mental rewrites of reality. And of course, if the response to this person's "personal problems" is "not my problem, piracy objectively bad", then of course the correct response would be "somebody watched your video for free, not my problem".

- the content cannot be legally acquired in your country - probably less people find this bad.

- you pirated the content because you don't think the people who would profit deserve money - I would consider it ethical to pirate EA games and unethical to pirate most indie games. If ISIS (terrorist organisation) released a TV show, are you going to defend their IP rights?

- you pirated content because you don't believe in property rights - this one can be interesting. The USA's philosophical mind share is heavily propertarian, but how do you convince someone they stole your TV show view count (worth less than 10$ this month) when they believe you are sitting on top of the stolen value of the entire real estate of North America (stolen from the natives) and labor (some literally stolen from Africa, others where someone worth twice minimum wage in profits is paid minimum wage), then you have the balls to acuse them of theft? In fact, if you don't believe in property rights, then you think the gate keeping on this video is a form of theft, since without the right, it belongs to everyone.

"Piracy is theft, there are no valid nuances" isn't a good position.

I am not advocating for or against piracy, but it's not just the money. Convenience is also a major player. People want a Netflix situation where they can get most of their content and pay one bill and use one app. They don't want seven different services and bills and apps. If piracy becomes simpler than juggling all that, piracy rates will increase.

Piracy is a conscious decision to take the path of least resistance.

> People aren't "driven to piracy". Piracy's a conscious decision to take what they want without paying for it.

Do you believe in psychological studies? Dark UI patterns?

Denying these things doesn't make it less true. People take the lowest effort route to the end goal.

Dark patterns don’t “make” people pirate.

Pirating is the act of saying, “I want something I don’t have the rights to have.” And then taking it. Period.

There’s no way to rationalize immoral unethical behavior by hiding behind “psychological studies” and “dark UI patterns”.

You seem to think I'm rationalizing the morality of the act by pointing out the morality/ethics is really just another thing humans bend on when the incentives change.

If you want to argue incentives are fictional because "morality", I think we aren't going to have a productive discussion.

Yes, total cost is :

Cost of content + Cost of Aggravation. Even if I'm willing to pay for 10 services I dont care to look though the 10 services to find what i want to watch

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