Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

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It's our decision as a society how much of a monopoly we grant copyright holders, and whether we also grant them the ability to seize property, like domain names, without due process.

Our society is richer because Jobs and Wozniak, before they founded Apple, helped people steal telecommunications services. The world is more connected because Zennstrom and Friis, before they made Skype, behaved like 'scum' in your eyes with file-sharing Kazaa. Our culture is richer because whole genres of music and other creative arts have at times ignored the rules against sampling, collage, and other reuse.

The simple 'always defer to all prior rules' argument isn't welfare-maximizing for either individuals or the world.

And even as we enforce current laws, which I accept as a general necessity, the accused deserve a chance to make their case, and the standards for enforcement need to be clear and applied evenly. A surprise domain-name seizure without notice only makes sense in emergency situations.

> A surprise domain-name seizure without notice only makes sense in emergency situations.

Do you think that the police give the owner of a store filled with pirated DVDs a chance to make their case? No, they seize the stolen property and close the store.

> Our culture is richer because whole genres of music and other creative arts have at times ignored the rules against sampling, collage, and other reuse.

You seem to be picking and choosing here. The subjects of these domain name seizures weren't using this stuff in a fair use manner, they were straight up distributing (and profiting from, through ads) stolen goods and selling counterfeit goods. Our culture isn't being made richer by someone selling counterfeit purses or helping people steal movies, TV shows, and video games.

It's easy to make these statements in vague terms, but imagine if you were an iPhone game developer whose $2 game was being distributed to tens of thousands of people by piracy networks, hurting your already lower-middle-class income. Do you think that's making our culture richer?

Disabling an entire domain name remotely is different from seizing physical counterfeits or evidence -- in its impact on speech rights and other legal activities, for example. We know what was alleged against these sites, but not their possible defenses -- that they were selling designer lookalikes without intent to deceive, for example, or providing DMCA-compliant search and user-contributed content services.

How do you know IP violations don't make our society and culture richer? The USA's greatest period of growth -- over 100 years ago -- and China's more recently were both characterized by lax IP enforcement compared to slower-growing areas.

In your scenario about software piracy, it really depends on whether the pirated copies primarily displaced sales, or went to young/poor/loosely-attached users who wouldn't have purchased at the actual price, anyway. It is not the case that if a wand could be waved and all piracy prevented, every pirated copy would be replaced with a paid copy. Given that, some piracy in OS, office, and even game software is thought to help top publishers by making their titles/franchises more popular. It's not at all the same as 1 copy made, 1 sale lost, someone loses more than the 'pirate' gained. Sometimes it's a boon for the pirate and neutral-to-mildly-beneficial outcome for the rightsholder.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I don't see how you can say Apple and Skype exist because of Blue Boxes and Kazaa. That's like saying "The Pianist" exists because Roman Polanski raped some 13 year old...

"The Pianist" was not a more advanced expression of Polanski's sexual predilections. Those entrepreneurs' later tech ventures were more advanced expressions of the same causes that led to their early ones. Cutting off theif technical and entrepreneurial careers early might very well have created a different world today.

Of course not every crime enables, nor is excused by, later creative output.

But for Jobs/Wozniak, and Zennstrom/Friis, their legally-dubious earlier activities were closely related to the later more-famous and above-board collaborations. They were each hacking together, for fun or profit and arguably against the law, in hardware/software domains similar to their later successes.

You also shouldn't underestimate the effectiveness of conspiring with someone on something a little naughty to establish a strong trusting working relationship. Perhaps you've heard the expression, 'thick as thieves'?

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