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Comment by Gaelan | Hacker News Reader

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se.

If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged.

I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.

But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

One thing I've thought about is a sort of "crowdfunded patronage" model, where the creator of a work declares upfront how much money they want to make off of it, and releases it into the public domain once they've received that much money.

Another possibility is drastically reducing the term of copyright to 20 years or so. That'd still give 20 years to exploit the work—and I imagine most copyrighted works make most of their money in the first 20 years—while allowing others to reuse the work much more quickly.

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You're channeling Thomas Jefferson, who himself channeled a Zoroastrian idea. Jefferson said: "... no one possesses the less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me], as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without darkening me." [0]

The flaw in this concept is the free-rider problem:

1. Not all new IP can be created as a side project without funding.

Suppose that I have to come up with an investment of $X million to pay for the goods and services needed to develop something.

(Even assigning existing employees to do the work is an investment, because the money used to pay them presumably could be used for something else — i.e., investing in the new thing represents opportunity cost.)

Suppose also that the resulting IP is easily copied once the new product or service is out in the open.

Without some kind of legal monopoly under IP law, copiers — who aren't burdened by my development costs — can quickly run the market price down to marginal cost.

2. A marginal-cost market price means that I can't charge enough to be able to recoup my investment while still staying competitive.

That, in turn, means that I'm unlikely to be willing (or even able) to fund the investment needed to develop the IP.

3. That's why the U.S. Constitution, article I, section 8, clause 8, allows Congress to create IP rights for limited times.

[0] https://uh.edu/engines/epi792.htm

There are free-rider problems everywhere. From a "rights" perspective, the fact that you can see a free-rider problem and have an idea for some kind of law that you think would improve incentives doesn't justify using legal force to impose these changes on everyone else. But I'm not sure how many people there are these days for whom a "rights" argument carries weight.

For a more empirical approach, I think it's worth looking at "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [1], from 2008. "Chapter 8: Does Intellectual Monopoly Increase Innovation?" [2] may be of particular interest.

[1] http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...

[2] http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinal08.pdf

Very good stuff to read. I'm sure many like me came to the same conclusion on a [shall we say] more emotional level where a few good examples are enough to tip the scale. That book really demolish the monopoly rights from a functional perspective. An argument much more convincing for those who still think patents have merit.

Prince applauded Napster and said people could finally go back to making music for the sake of making music.

I personally don't consider any entertainment important enough to play a role in the design of society. As long as people are working themselves to death merely to sustain themselves they shouldn't be made to pay for your entertainment in any way.

That it also doesn't make any technical sense never truly occurred to me.

The fundamental issue with our copyright and patents laws are the length of validity. This in turn breeds more issues (with patents in particular) encouraging frivolous patents because there is such a long potential return on investment period.

I recommend we decrease patent durations of all varieties by about 50% (patents should never last longer than 10 years as they do now [0]). For copyrights, there is some merit to not allowing others to take over your work during the life of the author. But for anonymous works, works that have transferred ownership from the author, and for copyright terms after the death of the author, I would agree to a similar limit of 10 years of copyright.

[0] https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/patents/duratio....

> For copyrights, there is some merit to not allowing others to take over your work during the life of the author.

Care to expand on that?

If I'm understanding correctly, they are saying that people shouldn't be able to take over a copyrighted work during the lifetime of the original creator.

I would think this would make sense in some cases, like writing a story, and less sense in some others (software source code).

Small nitpick here. For drugs, novel drugs in particular, 20 years is actually the required amount of time for the pharma companies to actually turn a profit. The patent applications are submitted as soon as a viable drug is discovered. After this, it requires 10-15 years of animal testing, clinical trials, etc with costs amounting to 100s of millions to billions of dollars before it can be brought to market.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.25.2.4...

The initial conclusion your parent presents is the exact ruling in Dowling v. United States.

>Interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985...

.....

I do think grouping all IP into a bucket muddies the conversation. Trademark infringement, where one assumes the name of another product, possibly selling a counterfeit is closer to theft. It involves defrauding the consumer, and displaces a legitimate sale with a copy.

Copying a product, and selling it or giving it away free is one type of problem, but assuming someone elses trademark to mislead is a different magnitude of problem.

This assumes the creation of intellectual property is socially productive in itself. There's plenty of an actual property that doesn't need to exist, even if it costs a lot of money to develop. There's no reason the state couldn't efficiently allocate resources for the rest and give it immediately to the public domain.

seems like a basic problem with our economic system if there're useful things that need to be done but no one is able to do it without it costing them. or, if most ip isn't useful, then why do we need to incentivize it so much?

> But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

Why can't we? Wouldn't even that state be better than the current one, where publishers outright steal (in true meaning of the world) revenue from YouTube content creators because there might be a sound that's similar to some song written 30+ years ago?

The current state is so one-sided and abusive that it's not obvious that no-copyright world is worse. Heck, down this same thread we have people calling people who put books on the internet for everyone to read "criminals". How messed up is that?

> where publishers outright steal (in true meaning of the world) revenue from YouTube content creators because there might be a sound that's similar to some song written 30+ years ago?

Conversely for every one of these there are easily 1000 YouTube videos that shamelessly steal IP outside the bounds of fair use and nobody does anything. If pewdiepie posts a 30 second meme clip from the latest avengers people think it’s funny but if Disney used 30 seconds of pewdiepie in a movie without permission the internet would go nuts and lawyers would be lining up. Should copyright treat them so differently?

Copyright _does_ treat them differently. It's why fair use exists. Is Disney entitled to fair use inside a paid/sold product, with no criticism or enhancement?

Memes aren’t inherently fair use

Most people support copyright because they think content creators should be rewarded for their work. Unfortunately, the copyright laws that we have do much more than that, and that's a problem.

I support minimalist copyright laws, where for a set period of time (shorter than current copyright) an author/creator is the only person who can profit from work. For instance, an author publishes a book, and for 10 years is the only person able to sell copies, sell the manuscript to a publisher, etc.

But after 10 years, that book is essentially public knowledge. It's been out there, maybe some people have memorised portions of it, it's been read in a library far more times than it's been purchased, etc. At that point, I see no societal benefit to maintaining copyright. My own moral framework does not require an author to be rewarded indefinitely for their creative work (imagine if a builder and their estate received royalties every time somebody entered a building they constructed for 70 years? Absurd.)

I also have a huge problem with creative "rights". Take Harry Potter as an example. Everybody knows about Harry Potter, anybody could tell you the story, some people could probably reproduce a very rough abridged version from memory. It is part of our culture, cannon, consciousness, whatever. It's popular.

Now, if I want to make a Harry Potter game, or write a play, or do a live dramatisation, etc, I owe JK royalties. That to me is not fair. She has been rewarded for her work many times over. The ideas and the characters are now in everybody's minds. We know them. If I want to adapt them or discuss them through a creative work, I should be free to do so.

I often use the example of Ancient Greece to explain this. Almost all the written stories and poems we have from that time are simply written versions of stories told aurally. The Illyiyd as we have it is just one version that somebody wrote down of possibly hundreds of spoken versions that existed at the time. The Greek plays were part of their culture and were freely shared. Anybody could build on them, change them, and referencing them in new works was an honor to the original creator (if they were even known). It is very sad that the West has now favored infinite profit (I.E. copyright that lasts a lifetime) over the spreading of ideas and the sharing of common cultural references freely.

> Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

You say "of course", but let's examine that. Consider the free software movement. I work full time on D, and anyone can use D for any purpose they want to and don't owe me anything. Just like all the other open source software out there.

And yet, OSS is thriving and is often best-of-breed.

I am a big supporter of copyright reform. However, I think we do need some nuance when it comes to comparing OSS and multimedia/creative work.

On OSS, the only people working on it are people that a) volunteer to work on it b) people that are paid by a larger organisation to work on it (e.g. given x hours/week to work on OSS).

In film/TV, people do not volunteer to act, or edit footage, or operate cameras. Yes, there are indie films, and indie creators. They're all over YouTube. But big budget AAA effects cost money, and somebody has to pay for them. There has to be an incentive to create this content that is monetary.

Now, I am personally in favour of reeling back copyright to only protect the profiting off of work (i.e. only the original creator can sell copies of their work for a limited period of time), but anybody is free to reproduce without profit. And then after x period of time (10 years for instance), anybody is free to also sell it or use it in commercial works/adaptations.

I see no societal benefit to content creators being rewarded in perpetuity. You wrote a great book? Cool, you can profit from it for 10 years as a reward for your work. After that, you can make money doing speaking tours, or interviews, etc. Guaranteeing royalties for a book that I can go and borrow from a library, or for a film I can go watch at a friends place, for longer than around 10 years does not make any sense.

> But big budget AAA effects cost money, and somebody has to pay for them.

On the other hand, why does society need movies that cost $100 million to make? (Much of that being what the stars cost.)

> In film/TV, people do not volunteer to act, or edit footage, or operate cameras.

Programmers didn't do it much for free before OSS.

> Yes, there are indie films, and indie creators. They're all over YouTube.

Exactly.

> There has to be an incentive to create this content that is monetary.

Does there? Before OSS, people said the same thing about software.

>On the other hand, why does society need movies that cost $100 million to make? (Much of that being what the stars cost.)

I personally like some of these big budget movies.

This reminds me of when I was talking on reddit about OSS games and if it would work if everyone did OSS games. I countered to another comment that modern games require a lot of money because artists have to put in a lot of work to make the music and textures and images, coders have to put out a lot of lines of code, etc.

To which the reply was "I don't like these games anyway, I prefer text-based games without any of that."

That reply isn't wrong per-se, it just misses the target. Maybe you question why it's necessary or you simply don't enjoy them. But other people do and taking away something they enjoy needs to be weighed against why you're taking it away.

I do enjoy (some) of them.

But I often find a lower budget movie more enjoyable as the tend to concentrate more on having a better plot and wittier dialog.

In any case, if LOTR is what I have to give up in order to get an explosion of creativity by removing most copyright barriers, it's a fair trade.

I don't think it's an entirely fair trade.

> Programmers didn't do it much for free before OSS.

Yes they did. Most people started their programming careers by doing it for free at home. The 70s and 80s was full of people working on coding projects and sharing it with friends. This is what the OSS movement was born out of.

The reason people don't make high quality films as much for free, is because the equipment and much more expensive. And it also requires a coolocated team. It's just a very different ball game, and I don't think you can compare them.

Yeah, there were hobbyists doing it. They weren't writing professional quality software, though.

> why does society need movies that cost $100 million to make?

Why don't they need them? Who decides what is worthy?

The best answer is - the market. Ignore these movies and they might as well not exist for you.

My point is there's a heavy cost to society in the form of extensive copyright protections. Are the relatively few blockbuster movies worth compromising everything else? For example, myself and my buddies cannot create a new Star Trek episode, or a mashup of existing ST footage. I cannot create music that samples other tunes. Etc.

What is the high cost to society? If you want to mashup media that you have not created, you are essentially consuming that medium, or leveraging its fan-base despite not funding its growth. This applies to both large blockbusters, and small indie projects, that expect compensation.

The market you speak about is itself artificial, created by the copyright regime that we have, and its specific rules. Who decides the rules?

> I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.

Part of that harm is in creating monopolistic entities like Youtube because only big players can take on big media. If Youtube didn't have contentID they'd be sued into the ground by the publishers.

This is, in many ways, a world in which we already live due to the proliferation of piracy. There's still plenty of monetization opportunities:

- Art commissions

- Patreon

- Ad-sponsored serial content

- Subscription models

- Live shows

Those monetization options pay less than you think they do for the vast majority of creators.

The US copyright regime has been responsible for an amazing exponential growth in IP creation because creators are financially incentivized to create.

> Those monetization options pay less than you think they do for the vast majority of creators.

Traditional publishing has the same issue to a far greater extent, due to the inherent barriers to entry in that model. Something like Kickstarter or Patreon is actually far more equitable. (Bearing in mind that this sort of content provision is very much a superstar sector, with a handful of unicorns and lots and lots of also-rans, so "more equitable" is still quite relative!)

They pay less in a world where people are used to "buying" works rather than funding them. It's unreasonable to think that people would just stop spending their money if copyright was abolished.

A simple approach is to apply the "intellectual property" analogy consistently - and that means taxing it like we tax real estate.

You could have a short grace period - say, a couple of years - with no tax at all, to accommodate individuals and startups exploring a market etc. After that require explicit registration for continued protection, or else the work automatically falls into public domain. And anything on the registry is taxed.

Furthermore, said tax could be made progressive, to discourage copyright hoarding, and impose a natural term limit. More valuable works would have longer-lasting copyrights with such an arrangement, but there'd always be some point past which it's simply no longer profitable. No abandonware, either - if the tax isn't paid, it becomes PD.

I think the dilemma is more important than how we do the copyright laws right now. Sharing is always better as a model, it demands less restrictions for one, less oversight. I don't have a number how much the world population have grown since the laws were inacted, but it's at least in the 10 fold? What works on a "small" number of people might not scale. We as programmers know that. So what gives if everyone wants to be a millionare, which in a sense promotes that ignoring values/others around is a good idea if you yourself get a good life. In an ironic twist the most shared idea is the one that anyone could be rich, and that it is a good thing to be much richer than those around you.

So, what is a good life? I don't see living in a mansion or castle as a good way of life if measured that way. I rather see it how many people I can help along during my stay here, that's my measurement. Of course I absolutely hate copyright and the notion of IP.

Maybe the laws and lengths are good for the life views that people have right now. But maybe there's other incentives than the Right to the work, maybe good work could be measured in an other sense and rewarded more directly in your community. Globalisation when done badly is so bad for us since the ones in that bubble optimize for their own profit instead of the greater good (which is the best scenario in long sight).

Maybe I'm weird, but I am soo tired of the idea that we should only focus on ourselves all the time. Get good ideas out that will solve big problem, reward those that produce those ideas and those that want to do the miles. Less of the, look I changed color of this thing and now I got a patent on it and I will sue you. Reward ideas that makes sharing easier. We as a planet just don't have the time if we want to make it as a whole.

There's a real cost to government and society enforcing the copyright monopoly for the copyright owner. So why not have the copyright holder pay for upholding copyright?

Imagine differential pricing for enforcing copyright on a work depending on parameters:

- grow with every passing year - change with the level of protection required

  - zero for public domain and free (BSD/GPL/permissive CC style licensing)

  - symbolical amounts for CC no derivatives or non-commercial licensing

  - fixed amount plus percentage of revenue for other, more traditional licensing

The copyright owner pays the costs of enforcing copyright already...

Everybody obviously pays for copyright enforcement already through general taxation. Look at orphan works for a prime example of how this is less than ideal.

But that doesn't allow someone to violate the copyright, due to the potential risk, like a troll jumping out from below a bridge. It'd be better if there was a way to easily check if a copyright was being actively paid and maintained.

That's a ransom model. It's one of several [existing mechanisms] for funding free/libre/open (FLO) works… none of which appreciably move the needle on making a living off them.

I've spent a lot of time talking about Snowdrift.coop on HN recently so I'll skip the pitch this time and just link our [wiki], which has a suggested reading order front-and-center; I'm happy to join in follow-up discussion.

[existing mechanisms]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/existing-mechanisms#fn2

[wiki]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/

> I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged.

I agree that theft of digital goods is not equivalent to physical goods but abolition of copyright does not follow from that fact nor does it follow that theft of intellectual property is not possible.

I also agree this is an important conversation to have. The whole idea around copyright is to encourage the creation of intellectual property. If there is a fundamentally better way to do it that idea should flourish but I have yet to hear a realistic alternative.

> I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.

I would argue that the damage from having no copyright protections would be unquestionably worse than the trade offs they bring. People would of course still create, but so many works would simply not exist if there was no way to protect intellectual property.

Certainly there are minutiae of copyright that have gone too far in protections but that doesn’t mean the system itself should be done away with. The modern world created this system knowing full well there were trade offs.

I think if you talked to most authors they would have strong feelings that there need to be some legal means to ensure they are compensated for their work, and that someone else doesn't straight-up copy their novel, and then publish it and make a bundle.

I do totally agree that copyright is messed up, big-time.

To be honest I'm not sure that "free" sharing of knowledge really exists. Even in scientific communities I imagine certain knowledge is held back until, say, it's ready to be published so the scientists can get first credit. And so on.

Isn't that only getting halfway there? No one could "make a bundle" from copying my work if everything could be copied freely (including me, without some other way to get paid). I agree that authors (and musicians, and artists, etc.) would like to be paid for their work, though currently it seems like publishing companies manage to channel most of that money into their own pockets instead (and the costs of 'publishing' and 'distributing' a digital work are certainly a lot lower than a physical copy, yet somehow their prices are often the same).

Not quite sure what you mean, but imho the key statement in what you said is this:

> I agree that authors (and musicians, and artists, etc.) would like to be paid for their work

: )

"The whole idea around copyright is to encourage the creation of intellectual property. If there is a fundamentally better way to do it that idea should flourish but I have yet to hear a realistic alternative."

How about a basic income so the artists stop starving?

I am made worse off if you steal a copy of my book though. Suppose I sell the book for X dollars and the probability that any person without my book will buy it is Y. People who don't have my book have a value to me, specifically, YX dollars.

When you steal my book, you directly cost me YX dollars, which is probably an infinitesimal amount, but if everyone was allowed to freely copy the book, then it would be approximately 100% of the money to be made by writing a book.

Of course there are complications, like, you might buy it after pirating it, or, you weren't going to buy it anyway, or maybe you'll recommend it to a friend, but I think those considerations should be evaluated by the people with skin in the game - i.e the people who will make or lose money if they get it wrong.

You're assuming that Y is evenly distributed amongst all people, which is absolutely not the case. For example, I did most of my game pirating back in high school, when I didn't have a job (nor a car to get to a job and I lived out in the sticks) and had nothing but an allowance from my parents of ~$20 every month.

So the maximum amount I could theoretically spend on games per year? $120. The retail value of all of the different games I pirated annually? Well over $1,000, probably several thousand. So the probability of me paying for any significant portion of the games I pirated was effectively 0

I'm not assuming that at all. My model is extremely simplified so it would fit into a comment, but it doesn't need to be that simple for the general idea to hold.

Suppose you pirated a thousand games and would've legitimately purchased one. Your piracy then represents a theft of one game. Since there's no way to tell which one game you would've bought, we could simplify it to say that stole one one thousandth of a game from each publisher (assuming they were all unique publishers).

In reality, I think it's really hard to know what you would've done without access to piracy. It's almost certainly not "buy all the games" but it's also probably not "buy zero games".

I also pirated a lot of things when I was in college - partly because it was cheaper, and I was very cheap, and partly because it was easier than actually getting some things. One thing I try to do is separate my own personal bias (it can't be bad because I did it) from what seems like the clear harm and moral reasoning I laid out above. You're taking from the publishers, even if only small values, and if everyone did what you did, publishing couldn't exist as a business.

I think it makes sense that poor people would steal more frequently. They need to. It also makes sense that younger people would steal more frequently - they are less mature, think less about others, and less about the consequences. Given that, it doesn't surprise me that you and I both pirated more while younger. That said, even though it makes sense, that doesn't mean it's right.

That's a lot of supposing.

Suppose instead if piracy wasn't an option the poster just played free games instead, or did something else with their time.

> but it's also probably not "buy zero games".

In this scenario, the poster may very well not have a credit card (because what's the point if you have no income, also a minor), so it might very we be the case he was physically unable to purchase these games online, especially in the era before online "gift cards" were a thing.

"the maximum amount I could theoretically spend on games per year? $120"

For someone who complains about the quantity of my supposing, it's strange that you are supposing counterfactuals explicitly rejected by the OP.

Max theoretically i can spend (sum of all my income after basic needs met) != max i will spend on video games. In fact, it would be insane to assume that i would spend 100% of my disposible income on one thing.

> So the probability of me paying for any significant portion of the games I pirated was effectively 0

It was literally 1 in 10.

Which is a very long way from 0%.

Poster said in theory if he spent all his money he could pay for 10% of the games he pirated. It does not follow that he neccesarily would if piracy was not an option.

If i buy something for $0, and then later the cost goes up,it doesn't follow i would automatically buy it at an increased cost even if i can afford it.

I had other things to spend money on besides video games

No, because potential sales are not sales. You never had the XY dollars to begin with.

This is what separates IP theft from physical property theft.

I never said they were sales. I explicitly differentiated them from sales. They are potential sales, valued at YX and potential sales are what you lose. A sale has a value of X dollars.

That's what makes it not theft. Theft deprives the person of the original. If I have two books and you take one I have one book. If you buy one of my books and give it out, I did not have any of the books I had stolen from me.

Theft does deprive the victim of something. As I've written above, piracy is theft as it deprives the victim of potential sales.

Depriving someone of a potential sale is a weird definition of theft. Generalizing it seems like it would lead to problematic outcomes.

If a critic writes a negative book review, and people do not buy the book as a result, did the reviewer "steal" from the author?

You can't deprive someone of something they may or may not have had. Copyright infringement is legally not defined as theft for this reason.

Where it gets really muddy is whether copyright infringement causes any harm at all. We've had interest groups claiming millions of dollars worth of potential sales lost and we've had studies showing that actually piracy may be a net benefit to creators due to increased market exposure.

All of this pontification can be put aside though. China does not enforce copyright or most other IP laws, and yet has a thriving entertainment, engineering, literary, etc. industry. So clearly IP protection is not critical for innovation or a healthy industry, as interest groups here would have us believe.

No it doesn't. You can't steal something that hasn't happened yet.

E wry game I've bootleggedI've eventually gone and bought When I had the dosh and the terms were right. You can't claim you "lost me as a potential sale." Otherwise, you'd have grounds for counting everyone who didn't buy your game or whatever IP as a loss.

Until it materializes, it isn't yours to account for. Just as I can't sue a chicken for the egg inlaid, it makes no sense to allow for the legal recognition of "potential sales lost".

Especially nowadays more than ever, where one isn't even largely acquiring the thing anymore, but signing a contract to host an entertainment experience on hardware they supposedly own,but which has been in reality co-opted at the manufacturing and design level by rights holders to put in place the means of extortion from society their perceived pound of flesh with no recourse.

In fact, I'd say if it's fine for you to keep track of and argue the harm of lost potential sales, I should have a matching valid claim in potential buys I was never able to make because industry colluded to ensure that proprietary anti-features in the form of DRM were included in all the hardware I haven't subsequently purchased.

Fair's only fair after all.

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer the law stick to matters of the actual rather than hypothetical.

And before you argue there is a difference between not making something for purchase (hardware platforms sans DRM mechanisms) and not realizing a sale because of privacy, I would advise you to consider the dual nature of transactions. Value is not created, merely exchanged via fungible means. Just as I'm cheated out of DRM free hardware by collisions with industry by rights holders, so too are rights holders plagued by those who find ways around things.

I'd rather live in a world where useful information could flow freely. I'm still willing to compensate for something that genuinely entertains, enlightens, or helps me. That magnanimity goes down the hole once it turns into extortion.

And make no mistake, it always does. I've yet to see a significantly cheaper ebook than a paperback. Instead, I see them treated as roughly equivalent despite the sharp loss of utility of a DRM'd artifact.

Until that madness resolves, and I stop running into people who feel entitled to hypothetical sales, I see no reason to take rightholders as arguing at all in good faith.

I regret joining this topic because I think it invites arguments that are only philosophical and people are generally unlikely to change their minds from what they already believe. For example, when I read your comment I already know I disagree with you, and have but to set my fingertips to the keyboard to let the disagreement flow. In the same way, I know you'll disagree with me, and it's hard for me to see how there is anything productive here.

Violating copyright takes potential sales. Those have value. For example, if you had a product worth X dollars, and people had a Y chance of buying it, you could sell the rights to your product based on that value.

Our society respects the concept of potential sales or potential value in many ways. If I lie and say that your restaurant is filled with rats, what am I costing you, if not potential sales? I could sell options contracts that have potential value. If I break the fingers of a master pianist or a surgeon I may be sued for a greater amount of damages than if I broke the fingers of any professional who doesn't need manual dexterity.

Potential value is the basis for lots of business and productive endeavors. It's why society respects intellectual property rights, to give creators a chance to earn something from their work, which, without the supporting legal framework, would be hard to monetize.

I went to Amazon and looked at a top 10 list. The first five books available in paperback and Kindle format are:

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Literature-Fiction...

https://www.amazon.com/Opium-Absinthe-Novel-Lydia-Kang-ebook..., 4.99, 10.99 https://www.amazon.com/Bone-Jar-Detective-Kirby-Book-ebook/d... https://www.amazon.com/Book-Woman-Troublesome-Creek-Novel-eb... https://www.amazon.com/Someone-Elses-Secret-Julia-Spiro-eboo... https://www.amazon.com/Where-Crawdads-Sing-Delia-Owens/dp/07...

Average Kindle price: 7.51

Average paperback price: 11.7

Kindle is, on average, 64% the cost of a paperback. Combine that with greater functionality and ease of use, and I think the Kindle format is a winner.

What everyone is saying is exactly the opposite of philosophical. This is an argument of semantics.

The existing supreme court rulings are crystal clear that they treat infringement as a different type of crime than theft, as they have different properties. No one is arguing with you about IF loss of sales can occur. They are telling you the legal definition of theft does not cover loss of potential. Hence the use of the word infringement. You are trying to redefine the word theft from its existing legal usage. Use a different word than theft.

Dowling v. United States (1985)

>interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985...

This isnt about what we believe. It's what the law says and how the courts have told us they choose to interpret it. It's (interpreting their interpretation) is not really a debate or an argument open to interpretation, as they were so clear there really arent multiple ways to read it. This isnt about any of us changing our minds with regard to what theft means, as its not an opinion.

Do you genuinely interpret what I wrote as a claim that internet piracy met the legal definition of theft?

I am telling you, that everyone else arguing against you is having an argument of semantics, that you are using the wrong words to make your point.

Steal and theft are the wrong words to describe a loss of potential sale.

If you own a taco stand and I open a pizza place next to you, I will deprive you of some potential sales. Clearly, that condition isn't sufficient to indicate theft.

Then you writing the book in the first place is theft as it deprives other authors of potential sales.

This assumes that ideas can actually be stolen. If you release a creative work into the wild (i.e. publish it), then you have taken the risk that others will photocopy it, write it down word for word on a piece of paper, memorise it, be inspired by it and have a better more profitable idea, etc. Nobody can compel you to release work you've created, but once you release it then you've let it go.

Now, our society has decided that in order to give an incentive for people to buy books, we will make it illegal to copy books. That is arbitrary, and purely an economic decision.

If I go to a library that holds your book and memorise it, have I stolen it? What if everybody who ever wanted to buy your work decided they'd rather just read it once at a library? Is it stolen? Of course not.

When you purchase a book, you are rewarding the publisher for their time and materials in physically producing the book. The author already made their profit when the publisher bought the rights off them. If a publisher wishes to enter into a royalties agreement instead, they do so at their own risk. Society should not protect the royalty system, which I believe is unfair compared to the flat-rate payment anyway. For smaller authors, a publisher will usually work out how many copies they think they can sell, and give the author an amount proportional to that. They then bare the risk of selling less, and are exposed to the opportunity of selling more. The author has received their reward, and the publisher must do their best to sell them.

The only relevant question here is, "which benefits society more?"

The ip serves the author by paying his rent

The ip serves society by informing and empowering its members.

Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It's a Seductive Mirage

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

I'm aware of that article. My comment doesn't really pertain to trademarks, but I think my comment pertains equally well to copyright and patent laws. While it may be true that US law treats them differently, they are fundamentally the same thing—a mechanism to reward work that results in ideas, not tangible objects—and it often makes sense to discuss them at the same time, especially when we're broadly discussing how they should be handled as opposed to to the specifics of how US law handles them now.

> If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged.

Up until now, the value of a book has been set by the author, and reinforced by scarcity. Entire large economic models and systems have been built by tying the two together. What is supply and demand, when supply is infinite?

Basically, the author puts in some amount of thought and labor writing a book, and they get rewarded by a purchase. Capitalism is heavily based on this: "Labor results in production, production is rewarded by consumers, because they need to part with some money to benefit for the end result". The last item is no longer true, which has ripple effects all the way up the chain.

No wonder people want to bring back the economic models and systems of capitalism they're familiar with, by enforcing scarcity -- thousands of years of societal and economic development might be upended by new technology.

Libraries have always been a thorn in the side of capitalism, but they've usually been constrained and limited enough that they aren't a real threat. With the ease of digital copying, the seams are starting to tear much faster now.

Some want to dismantle copyright but keep the rest of the capitalist system in place, untouched, which I don't really see as realistic. I think the two are much more closely linked than you might imagine. If we're going to be overhauling the whole thing, we need to have systems in place for the huge societal impact it will have.

You fill in the rest of the dots for what new systems one might prefer over capitalism, and charting the course for what comes next, that can support people. At the very least, capitalism might just be on its way out.

While I agree in principle that intellectual property is somehow fundamentally different from physical property, in the case of the "stolen" book, the creator is not worse off only if the "thief" wouldn't have purchased the book otherwise.

It's certainly true that the creator isn't out of pocket per person who reads the book, but that's not necessarily the same as "no worse off."

I think another analogy can be better.

Imagine I want to fly somewhere, plane is half empty, I am going there and sitting. Don’t have ticket. (Imagining no enforcement)

Should I? Eventually this plane will fly there, my effect on cost is ignorable, I will be better, airline will not be worse.

I think this is an interesting analogy (maybe even better would be bus fare for a city bus).

However marginal cost is not zero for the airline. Fuel costs money. There are limited seats on the plane. The marginal cost of copying a digital book is actually zero.

However, even if marginal cost was 0 (lets say a movie theatre that is empty), it does somehow still seem wrong if its physical in a way i can't easily distinguish from the digital case.

I suppose maybe the difference is, that if i own a piece of land, i should have the right to prevent trespassing so i can enjoy the land without being harrased. Being able to charge admission is an extension of that. But the intellectual case, someone reading my book doesnt prevent me from enjoying reading my book myself.

Problem is audience, if we had unlimited number audience, maybe marginal cost would be zero.

In current situation, cost of production (including labor), is shared with intended audience.

Imagine a edge case, I am writing a book to a very specific audience, lets say only 100 people would be interested.

I spent lets say 100 usd. So basically cost for each reader will be 1 usd.

Or maybe you developing a SaaS app, would you be ok if I pay only my marginal cost?

Even the marginal cost of production/copying is zero, actual cost is not. (edit: removed second marginal)

> Even the marginal cost of production/copying is zero, actual marginal cost is not.

??? I'm confused. You seem to be redefining the term marginal cost to mean the opposite of what its normal definition is.

Sorry for confusion, second marginal was mistake, I meant even marginal cost is zero, actual cost is not.

My main point is even marginal cost is zero, there is another cost ignored (saas service example)

If you are ok with to pay 0 when marginal cost is 0, you should be ok to pay X when marginal cost is X. Then this justifies for you to pay marginal cost only.

So if we move to physical world, I can say I paid for one iPhone, but if marginal cost of iPhone is half price, so If I bought one, I can steal one.

weren’t there unintended consequences in the pharmaceutical industry for shorter patent windows? they would modify a drug ever so slightly, but enough to patent it again. I could imagine a similar consequence for shorter copyright windows.

If you steal my book, I don't get paid as much for the work I put into the book. So I am very clearly and obviously worse off.

I find it really, really strange that some people find this hard to understand.

And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright, it's just copyright with a different revenue model.

> And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright, it's just copyright with a different revenue model.

I was thinking it would go something like this:

I write a book. I decide that I want to make $100,000 from the book, so I put up a Kickstarter for that much. Once it hits the goal, I release the book into the public domain. Before then, I don't publish the book at all.

Unless your definition of "copyright" is much broader than mine, I don't think it's involved in that process.

Why am I willing to offer you money for a promise you wrote or will write a book? And why wouldn’t I just wait for others to pay for it?

It’s not comparable to physical items. For those, even if the promises aren’t kept, what is promised is generally clear. Usually the Kickstarter is just to bootstrap the production with the intention of future sales so there are incentives in place to make a quality product. And if I want the product I can either donate to the Kickstarter or pay for the product afterwards. In no case can I just get a free one.

> Why am I willing to offer you money for a promise you wrote or will write a book?

Generally, reputation is sufficient check to fraud in situations like this.

In a simple setup, you may trust the author because they've written many books in the past, and fraud is punishable by law. If the author is new or wants to provide extra assurances, they could release the first few chapters of the book, or in special cases have separate goals for each chapter. In an imaginable more commercialized system, a publishing company might pay the author and advance to write the book, and the handle ransoming the book.

As far as the free-rider problem goes, there is probably some issue with that in our current society, but voluntary financing of creative works could still be more economically efficient that the existing copyright regime.

I think it is incorrect to assume every free download would otherwise be converted to a sale.

I'd guess it's probably closer to every 100 free downloads, 1 sale is lost.

>If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off.

That's only true if 0% of copyright infringers would've paid for the book (either directly or via checking it out from a library that pays publishers per-borrow). That may be true for some individuals, but there's no way that it's true in the aggregate. There are some cases where copyright infringement might help with the bottom line (like if someone torrents a band's CD which inspires them to attend expensive concerts), but I for books I think that effect is drastically overpowered by the # of people that just don't want to pay.

"If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged."

you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid. with your mentality, it can be argued the same as downloading a movie or a song or an application. now... aren't all those things illegal and a form of stealing??? so why is downloading a book any different?

i really think that alot of people just don't think things though before they open their mouth and this is one time where you should have thought through your answer instead of jumping on the "knowledge should be free" bandwagon.

Illegal does not equal immoral; copying does not equal stealing.

Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published:

https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...

The law shouldn't guarantee you a successful business model. If you believe in capitalism, this should be self-evident. If you believe in socialism, this should also be self-evident. "We're going to enforce with a military your right to a successful business model" is absolutely silly and bizarrely harmful.

"Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published"

doesn't mean anything. it's still illegal.

If something is beneficial for everyone involved, why should it be illegal?

People are arguing for what should be, not what is. In that context it doesn't matter what happens to be illegal right now. Laws do change over time - and intellectual property is a relatively recent invention compared to normal property.

> Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published:

I never understand this argument at all.

Piracy of X improves sales of X is only relevant if you're keeping the business model of selling X.

It's an argument for small amounts of piracy not substituting for market demand in a meaningful amount, and possibly spurring increased market demand.

It's not an argument for it not being stealing, or against having an IP legal framework at all. If you remove the ability to sell things, there will be no sales for it to spur.

Also, only the most extreme liberterian capitalists believe in capitalism without any commercial regulations whatsoever. Literally the bare minimum is property rights.

If you remove the ability to sell things, there will be no sales for it to spur.

Books were sold long before intellectual property laws existed. Your argument is fallacious.

> the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid

I agree with you! As I said lower down in my comment:

> Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

I absolutely believe that we need to pay the creators of [what we would currently call] copyrighted works somehow. I'm just not convinced that the best way to do that is with a "per-consumer" cost. I go on to discuss some alternatives that still reward creators, but reduce some of the harmful impacts of copyright. I'll readily admit that I haven't thought those ideas through that much, but that's a far cry from completely failing to consider that creators need to be paid, as you seem to be implying I did.

> someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid

How much of what you pay for a book actually goes to the person who wrote it? How much of what you pay for music goes to the person who wrote it? How much of what you pay for a movie goes to the people who actually made the movie?

The answer in all of those cases is "not very much". And the reason that's the answer has nothing at all to do with people's unwillingness to pay creators for creating, and everything to do with a huge amount of money being skimmed off the top by companies who do not want to update their business models to the 21st century, and who are using copyright and patent law as an excuse to protect their outdated business structures.

>you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid.

I took time and energy to write and "publish" this HN comment, and possibly provided utility for someone reading it. Where's my money?

> i really think that alot of people just don't think things though before they open their mouth and this is one time where you should have thought through your answer instead of jumping on the "knowledge should be free" bandwagon.

Respectfully, if the original poster didn't think things through, you should be able to come up with a counter argument that goes beyond just asserting s/he is wrong. Something that appeals to some sort of underlying principle.

For non-intellectual property most justifications rest on, there is only 1 car, we can't both have it. Seems like it is most fair it belongs to the entity who made it (or for things in nature first to find), who can then trade it to other people. This argument rests on the notion "we can't both exclusively use something" which doesn't apply to ideas. The foundation for why intellectual property makes sense (in a philosophical sense) is much less clear, is a much more modern invention, and most of the time seems much more akin to the gov giving a tax benefit than to a natural right.

>"it can be argued the same as downloading a movie or a song or an application."

I don't think anyone is disputing this. I certainly think movies, songs and programs should be treated the same as books.

> so that person should be paid

Almost all people agree that creators and publishers should be paid, though perhaps in different amounts than they are now. However, some people think that criminalizing sharing is not necessarily the best way for society to accomplish this.

What if I just borrow your car when you're sleeping? You lose nothing.

What if I break into your house and use your TV while you're at work? You lose nothing.

What if I set up a tent on your lawn and take it down whenever you want to play frisbee? You lose nothing.

What if I grab some girl's butt at a dance club? She loses nothing.

As you can see, requiring an act to explicitly deprive someone of property is a slippery slope. There are dozens of examples of "borrowing" that just aren't done in polite society because the owner doesn't want them to be done.

The same is even more true here. Piracy hurts the author's ability to sell books. Free copies just have that effect. Every normal human understands it. Only a few computer people like to pretend that their "borrowing" is somehow magic.

Piracy destroys artists.

> What if I set up a tent on your lawn and take it down whenever you want to play frisbee? You lose nothing.

Much of northern europe has a "freedom to roam" making this explicitly legal and acceptable (within certain limits).

Nobody is saying that all law should be based in property. There are plenty of laws that aren't based in property and that is ok. E.g., we don't say murder is wrong because it deprives someone of property.

> There are dozens of examples of "borrowing" that just aren't done in polite society because the owner doesn't want them to be done.

And there are many examples of "borrowing" that are considered acceptable in polite society regardless of the "owner's" opinion. There are more factors in play then what the originator of the idea thinks of the matter.

> Piracy hurts the author's ability to sell books. Free copies just have that effect. Every normal human understands it

So? Society is not under a general responsibility to make people money. You can say the same thing about many acceptable activities: Negative critical reviews hurt the author's ability to sell books. Negative reviews just have that effect. Every normal human understands it.

> Much of northern Europe has a "freedom to roam"

I think this usually applies to large parks, forests and beaches etc; not residential lawns

> there are many examples of "borrowing" that are considered acceptable

can you give examples? of acceptable borrowing without consent, or in direct opposition to consent.

> Society is not under a general responsibility to make people money

What are the general responsibilities of society?

> can you give examples? of acceptable borrowing without consent, or in direct opposition to consent.

Well since we're talking about intellectual property, quoting is an obvious example. Often in debates (esp. Political) people will "borrow" their opposition's words against their will with the intention of making them look stupid.

Most science involves working off other's ideas, without the ideas originator's consent (but attribution is required).

> What are the general responsibilities of society?

That's a heavy philosophical question, and answers will vary. Usually involves ensuring the administration of justice and having a monoply on violence. Sometimes providing basic neccesesities is included. People often do include enforcing physical property rights here (i have never heard of people including intellectual prop rights, although there probably are people who feel that way). In some communist states, the right for every person to have a job is assumed, which i suppose could be taken to mean a responsibility to make people money. In capitalistic socities there is no garuntee of business success; the fundamental principle being either you should make money on your own merit or go out of business. At most there is a responsibility to create a fair marketplace, but what that means varries a lot.

Hmm, but I'm only taking about specifically copyrighted work, or works where the author has explicitly expressed that the work is not publicly available.

Most debates I see, the comments raise are wrt public comments, but otherwise I'd assume participants in a debate implicitly assume fair-use on relevant publications they have released.

I believe science works the same, the derived work isn't without consent, because the consent is implicit. So far as discoveries are copyrightable, they do require consent, and if they aren't they are usually kept secret, as trade secrets.

In the case of IP - it's pretty explicit (from the author) that consent is not granted without compensation.

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