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Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

The concept of intellectual property was invented to further certain economic goals. It provides a social good. There is no doubt about that but it has a drastically shorter history than the concept of physical property (which predates written records to my knowledge)

The legal system has evolved many safeguards over the years related to improper search, self-incrimination and due process.

I find it curious how easily the latter is sacrificed in favour of the former without anyone suggesting we need to continually reevaluate the degree that the former provides us benefit.

I think this is partly a language problem. Intellectual "Property" has now become merely Intellectual Property without the quotes. This sleight of hand has led many to forget it's origin's and contingent nature and to treat it as some kind of natural right rather than a concession from the state to further commerce and creativity.

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> There is no doubt about that

Yes there is. Look up dominant assurance contracts.

Why is it that people don't even think there could be doubt that the fundamental idea of copyright is sound? Why do they not look up if there have been arguments the opposite way? People are been given handwavey arguments for why the free market can't do this, why the free market can't do that, why this requires government intervention. And then they buy the reasoning that if not for copyright, there would be no incentive to provide intellectual goods. And then they immediately buy the conclusion that we ought to have copyright lengths of 70 years, that we ought to apply copyright automatically to all created goods. Soon they tell you that actually copyright was a natural right all along!

The whole thing is diseased. At least have some doubt.

Reading their whole post, their opinion seems to either be similar to yours, both of you end by rejecting it as a natural right, or they are the most devout absolute monarchist in centuries.

There really is no doubt that it provided some good, there is doubt that it provided a total benefit or if that good was worth the cost.

I actually do but I was trying to state a reasonable middle ground and sow some seeds of doubt. The general consensus seems to be that intellectual property is an unbridled good and so moving the needle a small amount towards doubt seemed like a good first step.

That ship sailed long ago (at least one or two copyright extensions ago in the last century) when copyright and patents ceased to serve their intended purpose and started being used to protect business turf in perpetuity.

I think it's mostly a money problem. IP owners have a lot more money with which they can influence politics than people pirating movies.

Isn't that a systematic problem? Money should not influence politics

Should they not?

Money is free speech ... :-P

Doesn't pure Capitalism require that money rules?

Pure capitalism has no government that would suppress armed pushback

Pure capitalism relies on government to enforce contracts.

There's no capitalism without government, that would be anarchy.

Whether it's big government (with welfare, education, etc) or not, is another thing. But capitalism, pure or not, requires police, army, courts, and so on, and by extension, a tax system to fund their operation.

Else, it's just might that enforces anything it wants, and there are no contracts other than between people of equal power (since the more powerful can just steal whatever people with less power have).

Pure capitalism specifically doesn't rely on government with anything - even courts and enforcement would be private. It's much more complex, I recommend you to read something by Ludwig von Mises, he answers what you said on top of saying why it'd be more fair etc. And yes, pure capitalism is anarchy but that doesn't mean there would not be order.

Of course these terms were redefined a lot during the last 100 years. We might simply misunderstand each other because each of us uses a different definition made by another person and taught by another school of thought as well as different university/professor.

Anyways even if there was a government and law enforcement etc, in pure capitalism having more money would not help, government would be strictly neutral and the civil law minimal. If the government helps a company it's definitely not pure capitalism regardless of what the exact definition is.

>Pure capitalism specifically doesn't rely on government with anything - even courts and enforcement would be private.

Doesn't make sense to have private courts since anybody with a large enough power (e.g. hired thugs) can take them over.

If you mean that the individuals in such a scheme would agree to pay each to have a "private court/police" enforce their contracts etc, then that's the same as government, just one without voting (and presumably there would be some way to settle how those courts/police would operate too, which might end up as a contract itself, but people will have to agree to its terms first, so there's some voting there too).

>If the government helps a company it's definitely not pure capitalism regardless of what the exact definition is.

How that makes it anything more than wishful thinking though? If the government officials pocket money to favor one company, that's fully compatible with the greed and egoism that's essential for capitalism (according to Adam Smith and co “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest").

What would prevent them to do it under the table, aside from morals?

>If you mean that the individuals in such a scheme would agree to pay each to have a "private court/police" enforce their contracts etc, then that's the same as government, just one without voting

Actually, there is voting. Those individuals are voting with their money. But, this is more direct market signaling rather than being relayed to a "representative" in our "republic".

>Those individuals are voting with their money.

In that case, a person with more money will have more influence over that police/court etc to favor them.

How's that different (except cruder) than the current scheme, where the do it through influencing government first? It just makes it more explicit and removes any counter-balances.

You're thinking about it on a too small scale, but there are many more factors - it's not just a single transaction! Consider what happens to stocks when a company does something unpopular.

I reiterate my recommendation of Ludwig von Mises. His books are really good and it's worth a read even if you completely disagree (just like I read Marx). He tried to answer every question you've written here and definitely more in detail and better than I ever could. There are even individual texts online (taken out of his books) where you can read about a single issue - the texts are not even that long, 20 minutes a piece.

I'll have a look, thanks.

As for that though:

>You're thinking about it on a too small scale, but there are many more factors - it's not just a single transaction! Consider what happens to stocks when a company does something unpopular.

Their success might not depend on popular demand or any stock market. They might have control over something valuable like oil or water supplies, which is not very elastic in its demand.

A company's success always relies on customers; the key here being elasticity in supply because then customers can simply sidestep the offending company by creating a new one. Of course the company might somehow gain a natural monopoly, however I think that technological progress will solve that for us - there is a lot of water in space and oil will be replaced by electricity/hydrogen pretty soon anyways, definitely earlier than any entity at all including governments would be able to control even a single resource planet-wide.

Then there is the people factor - people are not dumb, they simply will not sell their water/oil resources if they see someone trying to build a monopoly.

IMHO oil company influence on the government is a major hold up of electrification (actively opposing nuclear power plants and so on) - without that influence electricity could be much cheaper and electric vehicles in bigger demand, government funds could be invested in research of batteries etc.

The assumption of modern anarchists is that contrary to the past, a single individual today is very powerful and independent thanks to technology and the riches it comes with - and they could use that strength in combination with other individuals to resist corporations and shape the world around them. Consider that just 100 years ago mere communication between ordinary people was almost impossible on longer distances, today ordinary people are able to buy a tank or a small fighter jet (of course in a group - BTW I actually have a friend that owns a tank and another friend that owns a fighter jet, of course gunless).

Politics are controlled by two things:

(a) money

(b) popular revolt (or vigilance)

Without (b) there's just (a).

There's some kind of moral value in there some where isn't there? a little shred of human decency? At least for a month or two when the politicians first get started?

In some few specific cases? Sure. On average/over time? Effectively never.

It's easy to adapt one's moral values to what brings in more money.

"Yeah, I'm getting these paybacks from companies, but I do it to support my campaign, else this scoundrel, my opponent would have gotten elected, who would have voted for very bad policies".

Besides, long term, the system self-selects against too much morality. If they can't trust you to keep your mouth shut and play the game, you wont get the support you need to get to the next level.

The one willing to put up with everything and anything, either participating, or keeping their mouth shut and pretending to be above it while still allowing it to happen, becomes President.

Money (USD) is controlled by one thing:

* The FED

That's just an agency.

He who has the money controls the FED too.

> The concept of intellectual property [...] provides a social good. There is no doubt about that [...]

There's definitely a doubt about that. Not only about copyright but even about patents. Nearly all most influential discoveries were not patented.

And when it comes to copyright there is vast amount of data how disregarding copyright improves peoples lives and economy developments. Outside US there are whole industries running on pirate software thay wouldn't exist if copyright was enforced.

The websites offering piracy services or advertising/promoting the availability of pirated content should simply be blocked at a national level. It seems to be working well enough in Australia: piracy visits are down 50%, piracy volumes are down 25%. This is following their DNS-based blocking of sites like ThePirateBay a few years ago. Its certainly better than suing people.

Let's start by dialing back the ridiculous DRM, which makes it a lot more convenient to pirate content, rather than pay for the DRM-laden official releases.

No thanks.

I prefer to help content rights holders fund increasingly broad DRM capabilities which enable control of my devices by unknown third parties. Can't wait until the next "innovation" like this gem comes out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

What ridiculous DRM?

I can use Google for piracy, should that be blocked as well? Search for "NameOfMovie watch online free" and either the top links will be just that or the "DMCA Blocked" link at the bottom will be another website containing exactly that.

Should we block Google?

If not, under what situation would we block other sites? They also just 'link to content' rather than host it themselves.

The industry generates a list of URLs which are submitted to an Australian court to review, then ISPs are instructed to block them.

Of course there are loopholes, but a 53% reduction in vists to piracy sites after about 14 months indicates that the blocking was effective.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/site-blocking-hinders-fewe...

> Of course there are loopholes, but a 53% reduction in vists to piracy sites after about 14 months indicates that the blocking was effective.

How do stats like that even get generated? Don't they assume that one knows literally all piracy going on?

Just because there was a 53% reduction in visits to certain piracy sites, who's gonna say those 53% didn't simply go to other, not tracked/blocked, sites to get what they want?

Does that translate to more media sales? Is all the "whack-a-mole" game even worth the revenue increase? In any case does the increased revenue benefit the australian population?

Fairfax owned SMH were one of the major groups lobbying for these measures, largely due to impact on cable TV sales. It's no surprise they claim they were successful, and it's not one we can consider overly credible.

Around the time these rules came in, Netflix became a thing, and Australian networks started to compete by removing the pattern of putting shows on TV two years after being shown in the US.

I remember when they were promoting a big deal around cliffhangers in Lost, but anyone with ThePirateBay had seen the next two seasons. The fact this situation is largely addressed is why most people around me stopped pirating.

Does this perhaps coincide with services like netflix gaining in popularity?

It probably helped, but piracy site visits were down 53% in 14 months.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/site-blocking-hinders-fewe...

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