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Comment by rubidium | Hacker News Reader

>But if you put enough hurdles in front of them, they will become pirates. As I did this morning.

People are seriously re-prioritizing their "needs". There's a prayer about having enough so you're not tempted to steal. It's supposed to be about food and daily necessities.

Apparently some people need music so much that it's worth stealing for. Can't you just move on with your life, and decide to not listen to that music?

Relevant discussion was "don't make me steal": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176804

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I don't see how it would have helped anyone if he had just moved on with his life and not downloaded the album. Isn't the usual justification for intellectual property that it rewards the creator? If you compare the "download the album" and the "move on and don't listen to the album at all" alternatives, the creator gets no reward either way, so it seems ethically neutral--- contrary to the case where he could've paid the creator and instead chose not to, where the creator actually loses out on a sale.

Now perhaps you could say that it's unethical because if he hadn't downloaded this album, he would've paid for someone else's, so he's not stealing from the creator of this album, but indirectly from the creators of other albums that he didn't buy instead. But that seems like an argument that proves too much; in that scenario, is it also unethical to listen to CC-licensed music, because doing so steals business from non-CC-licensed music?

So what if you don't see what the motivations are of the people who own the content or the distribution network? Can you imagine a world in which those people are making decisions whose justification they don't wish to share with you?

Maybe they've done A/B testing on the way to release content to maximize their profit or some other good that they value and think that revealing the results to you would affect the outcome.

I suppose I don't see that as part of the copyright social contract, though some people do argue for a complete ability to control (for a temporary period of time) the use of a work. The model of copyright that makes sense to me is intended to provide a mechanism for creators to be compensated for published work, i.e. to prevent readers/listeners/etc. from bypassing the paid distribution channel. The justification is that if everyone is funneled towards the paid distribution channel, that will provide funds and encouragement for more such work to be created and published.

But if the work isn't being published (or isn't being published to a particular audience), then that side of the social contract isn't being upheld, so the purpose of copyright (to encourage such material to be produced and made available) isn't being fulfilled, and therefore I don't see copyright as ethically applicable (or ethically applicable to that audience).

I guess a shorter version of the obligation I feel users of a work have is: Compensate the creator, if they'll take your money.

Invoking copyright just obfuscates the straightforward moral question. Someone has produced something which they wish to sell on whatever terms they make up. The decision of a potential consumer is to agree to the terms or not.

If you and the musician are face-to-face and she says you can have an MP3 of her music for $1000, it's not right to take it if you think it's too expensive.

I disagree; I don't believe there is any moral right to "sell on whatever terms they make up". I do think copyright is justified in an ethical sense, as a social contract that encourages the production of more creative works. (I was speaking in the ethical sense; my comment was certainly not accurate as a legal analysis of current U.S. copyright law.)

But I think the proper way to analyze ethical issues involving creative works is, therefore, to see who is upholding or violating the social contract that we call "copyright". I don't think there's any separate moral issue, and it certainly isn't a form of property (due to being non-rivalrous).

What do you mean by "non-rivalrous"?

It is a fairly common economic term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)

You're oversimplifying by applying physical property thinking to this.

I and a musician are face-to-face, and she says I'm not allowed to listen to this particular waveform unless I hand her $1000. It's not right for her to claim monopoly over this non-rivalrous good because she feels like she owns it.

The musician has spent part of her life creating this work with the expectation that she will receive the compensation she anticipated. It is not right for you to claim the fraction of her life invested in producing the work because of some zero-marginal-cost rationalization.

Anyway, is my understanding correct that if the artist was selling $1000 tokens to acquire her MP3 and you thought that was excessive, then you would take the token and leave whatever compensation you thought was appropriate?

> with the expectation that she will receive the compensation she anticipated.

She made an incorrect assumption. We don't work on the labor theory of value; things are only worth what you can sell them for.

> then you would take the token and leave whatever compensation you thought was appropriate?

It depends. I'd probably take the token and then get around to compensating her someday. If it was somebody I knew, I'd probably give it to them upfront, but if it was an unknown, I'd just end up buying a ticket to their next show and handing them some money at it. (Yes, I have done this before.)

I don't understand this logic. It seems like he took every avenue possible to attempt to pay for the music (much more than other people who don't know about grabbing a UK IP address) and he wound up unable to do so.

Sure, I suppose he could just move on with his life, but it's an album he really wanted and even offered to pay for it. Changes in how the record industry operates need to happen, not peoples priorities.

I entirely agree that changes in the record industry need to happen. And I entirely believe that more people will pirate until those changes happen. It would be great for the music industry to change, it needs it.

My only point: pirating is not a valid form of protest, because it is actually about you satisfying your wants.

Are you really saying that one can't enjoy the act of protesting?

"Pirating" music is as much an act of protest as it does satisfy. In fact, it doubles the enjoyment whilst filesharing is considered illegal, and triples it when you tell the world about it. It's practically free joy for the price of naught, and contributes to world peace.

>My only point: pirating is not a valid form of protest, because it is actually about you satisfying your wants.

How does the second follow from the first?

I'm reluctant to pay for music when I know that a large portion of the money is going towards the record industry, which essentially means that I'm contributing to efforts like ACTA, IPRED, attacks on net neutrality and the gradual shift to blaming the ISPs. To me this is far worse to society than anything allegedly caused by piracy.

Considering how little money the average artist get from record sales, I would rather protest the record companies by pirating the music and spending money directly on the artists through live venues and merchandise.

I am not stealing. I am downloading TV shows.

The other day I was at Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco, a bar designed and run like a 20's era speakeasy when alcohol was illegal. Can you imagine living in a world where the government, no, puritans, dictated what you can or cannot brew for your own consumption?

If you think sharing digital music is "stealing", then I suggest you get familiar with the principle of abundance. The real crime is in drawing an analogy between peers who elect to share digital information, and pirates who kill and steal limited resources in transit from A to B.

The fact is, while the market includes a large number of P2P filesharers, many people will gladly pay for convenience and live concert tickets, and none of this is going to change. If you can't deal with this, you are in the wrong business. If you are a musician who feels robbed by the masses of torrent sharers, then I dare you to reveal your identity and speak up against filesharing and see how quickly you alienate your fans.

Understand that when you liken the free flow of information to "stealing", you are speaking a point of view that is quickly becoming extinct. The next generation born into the P2P era will think nothing of this, and find your prudish inclinations out of touch with reality.

The real point isn't piracy, it's that the band and the record company lost the sale! They had a customer ready to give them money and they failed to get it. At that point whether he pirated it or did without is irrelevant. Talking about piracy just made it more dramatic.

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