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Comment by bligh____ | Hacker News Reader

Why is this vewed as an issue ? Copyright law is clearly law created by and for the corporations. Because real would concepts, such as stealing, do not really apply to the digital word. If you think of , say a movie as bread and say Netflix and a baker, then pirating a movie will be the same as buying a bread from the baker, make infinite copies of it and distribute them freely, it is not the same as stealing bread.

I don't see how is this wrong. Broken buisness models, which did not account for the web and lobbying made copyright what it is today, it's not a law which I feel morally aligned to.

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I agree with you, except for the fact that I have a couple of apps in the Apple Store and I wouldn't like someone copying and distributing freely my apps, and having 100,000 people enjoying my app while I collect only $1.

That said, we fought to have DRM-free material, not for piracy purposes, but for ease-of-use. Let's please not lose this Right because of some thieves.

[OT] And when your app only costs a dollar to begin with, then people feel justified to pirate it, because it's basically worthless crap anyway or you'd charge more.

So it’s okay to steal chewing gum because it’s cheap and probably crap?

No you don't steel anyting. You go to a guy who has bought the gum, and he somehow clones it and gives you the clone for free. This is not steeling, it sound more like a way to end word hunger.

That's a physical product, that's proper stealing, is that!

I hate when people do this, what if I download the app and it will be garbage ? Id lose money, that's also a reason for pirating content, when I search for a book on a certain topic I usually would discard 3 or 4 matches before choosing what I need, and the only way to discard these matches would be to read part of the book, the part which usually doesn't get in the previews.

Piracy is not just a way of getting content for free it's also a way not to lose money.

Low quality content is being intentionally sold to you. Just look at some books on programming, they trick you on thinking that they do have quality info, but in fact are just lazy rewrites of specifications or man pages. I also remember reading from HN about a guy who made millions by selling total garbage books on amazon.

Eventually if I found a good book I buy it as a way to thank the author, but buying books before reading them it is just a way to motivate people to produce more mediocre content.

Piracy fixed some issues (like extremely inflated profit margins in the Music/Movie industry) but it also created some others. It is no longer possible for small producers of movies or documentaries to fund themselves. It's also not possible to distribute software for people to run on their own machines and still get paid.

The piracy era was incredibly beneficial for society because it gave a lot of people access to software tools and knowledge they previously could never afford to access, but when it proliferated too much, the companies and individuals that produced software and books and video could no longer sustain themselves financially.

This doesn't mean piracy is inherently bad but instead we need a better system that can provide income to those producing useful material while ensuring access to that material to everyone that needs it. It's hard to achieve but it's certainly not impossible.

> It is no longer possible for small producers of movies or documentaries to fund themselves.

When was this golden age? Before the internet was widespread, small producers could not even get broadcasted due to the prohibitive cost of broadcasting methods.

> The piracy era was incredibly beneficial for society because it gave a lot of people access to software tools and knowledge they previously could never afford to access, but when it proliferated too much, the companies and individuals that produced software and books and video could no longer sustain themselves financially.

There's currently no research suggesting that piracy makes creators lose money unlike the movie industries are claiming.

> It is no longer possible for small producers of movies or documentaries to fund themselves.

KickStarter allow small producers to fund themselves, YouTube allow to monetize your views.

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