Hacker News Reader

Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

subscriptions for things that have no reason to be provided as a service instead of as a product), make the users the products themselves

It seems to be working okay for YouTube and Twitch content creators. By monetizing via donations, Patreon patronage, and Twitch subscriptions, creators form a closer and more direct relationship with their audience. Twitch streamers especially are rewarded for engaging directly with people in chat.

For programmers it's different. Your best bet is to get paid by a company to work on proprietary business software, which can be highly specialized to the company and protected by trade secrets.

View on HN

Entertainment seems to be swinging back to being primarily a service business, after a relatively short period as a hit-driven product business. It's not uncommon to hear a fan talking about buying a product specifically to support the creator.

> It's not uncommon to hear a fan talking about buying a product specifically to support the creator.

A consideration: Could a reason for this also be that people do want to avoid that their money goes to "evil media companies" who will use this money to fight against them (think DRM, think anti-consumer legislation etc.)?

It's not uncommon to hear a fan talking about buying a product specifically to support the creator.

And that sentiment is great, but while it's not unusual, it's certainly not the view that most people take. If even 10% of the people who like our stuff on social media and enjoy using the free versions actually paid even for the cheapest one-off purchase or shortest subscription to support the creators, I'd be writing to you from great hall of my palace right now.

Trade secrets are protected only by intellectual property regimes, and we're talking about a world without intellectual property.

> Trade secrets are protected only by intellectual property regimes, and we're talking about a world without intellectual property.

Not in Germany. In Germany, there exists a class of criminal acts that are subsumed unter the umbrella term "Geheimnisverrat" (secret betrayal), which also includes revealing trade secrets:

> https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Geheimnisverrat&o...

That's still just enforcement of intellectual property.

> That's still just enforcement of intellectual property.

No, in German law, this is a completely different criminal offence.

Ah, I see, so we could abolish IP law by renaming it to Conditionally Shared Secrets and keeping all provisions the same? No, that would be ridiculous. The concept of intellectual property is obviously unaffected by the implementation of the enforcement regime.

> Ah, I see, so we could abolish IP law by renaming it to Conditionally Shared Secrets and keeping all provisions the same?

I will try to explain it to you again: the purpose of all the criminal offences that are subsumed under "Geheimnisverrat" in German law is to punish leaking confidential information (e.g. trade secrets).

For example, a movie that is available on a BluRay disc, is not confidential because you can easily buy it. Thus, copying a BluRay disc etc. is does not belong under the umbrella term "Geheimnisverrat" because the content of the BluRay disc is not confidential data, but copyrighted.

Thus, in German law, Urheberrechtsverletzung (roughly and often translated with "copyright violation", though not identical) and Geheimnisverrat (secret betrayal) are very different criminal acts.

My point is that it's still intellectual property even if it isn't copyright, because it says that you can hold on to secrets and that secrets are protected like property.

Go back to the beginning of the thread:

> "Intellectual property" is fundamentally different from classical property because information is not an exclusive good. If I hold an apple, you cannot hold the same apple, but we can both hold a digital copy with the same information.

The same thing applies to these secrets. It's just a subtype of intellectual property. In the US, too, trade secrets and copyright violation are handled under different sections of the law. They are different acts, just like in Germany (hence the different name - copyright vs. trade secret).

But they're both intellectual property and the arguments against work against both.

Changing the legal framework around intellectual property doesn't stop it from being intellectual property.

> Changing the legal framework around intellectual property doesn't stop it from being intellectual property.

As I wrote under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20811544 "Geheimnisverrat" applies to leaking confidential data (e.g. trade secrets, but not copyrighted works that are publicly available).

Intellectual property does not mean 'copyright', it broadly refers to any sort of creation that isn't physical in nature. Trade secrets are legally enforced differently than copyright in the United States as well, but they are both forms of intellectual property.

No, they're also protected by contract law. I don't think anyone who opposes intellectual property law is opposed to contract law. Non-disclosure agreements are widespread and straightforward. Why would we need extra protection specifically for trade secrets?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com