Comment by krschultz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krschultz | Hacker News Reader

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Agreed, but what word would you use? We aren't trespassing when we use bittorrent. And I know people who have been attacked by pirates wielding guns onto their ships, so I just feel strange equating clicking on a link with a guy shooting a civilian with an AK47.

So I equate it to "theft of services". Let's say I get a massage, and then I just walk out the door and don't pay for it. I have clearly stolen that person's valuable time. Which isn't a perfect analogy becuase they have finite time vs being able to make infinite copies, but either way someone worked hard with the intention of getting paid for it, and there are people out there depriving them of the money they would have gotten (and please don't say "but I wouldn't have bought it anyway! which is also crap, becuase most people are downloading music they would have bought, its just the nature of blockbusters vs the long tail). So I don't know what the word is, but it is definitely closer to theft of services than anything else I can think of.

It's copyright infringement, that's what it is. If it were stealing, you wouldn't be able to get million-dollar verdicts against the people who do it.

Ok, but I think the point being made is that the artists (ignore the record companies, they're idiots) feel as if they are being stolen from.

Not just in monetary cost.

So; ethical theft?

We've all heard that record companies are evil, but then again they often pre-pay an artist to produce a record, pay for studio time, mixing, mastering, etc. There's a lot that goes into producing music, videos, and books than you see. Open up a book and look at the production credits. People do indexing, typesetting, copy editing, distribution, translations, artwork, and on and on. So if nobody's buying books, those people get hurt. But let's look at the author directly.

Authors often get advances against royalties. Let's say BigPublishingCo pays you $10,000 to write a book. Let's say your book doesn't do well. What are the odds you'll get to write a second book? As an author, you're looking at your future and trying to figure out how you can increase sales.

One way to do that is to make the pirate copies disappear.

That's what publishers try to do, so they can stay in business.

The artist pay for the pre-recording not the label. The cost will often be deducted from their share of the revenue.

Record companies work in a similar fashion to the way company store farms and factories work. A typical music recording contract will involve an advance given to the artists which they must pay back via their earnings on a small percentage of the total revenues from their album sales (perhaps 7%). They must use this advance to pay for studio time, music video production, and other expenses. The studio receives a larger percentage of album sale revenues while also "recouping" the amount of the advance by taking the portion of revenue that would normally go to the artists.

Let me know if you see any issues with this arrangement.

Typically, by the time a band has "recouped" its advance and has only began to start earning for the artists and has theoretically broken even according to the bizarre accounting of the studios in actuality it has resulted in a return on investment to the studios of several hundred percent.

Book publishing is similar but generally not quite so evil.

I don't believe intellectual property is a matter of ethics any more than arguing whether it is right or wrong to drive down the left side of the street.

The basis for IP law is to encourage the production of creative works. The moral imperative is to allow science and art to improve people's lives. IP law should be a practical set of rules to create a free market for these works.

Does the current system do this? Not very well. Neither does infringement in most cases.

> they're idiots

The idiots are still laughing all the way to the bank.

> So; ethical theft?

No, copyright infringement.

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