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Comment by aasasd | Hacker News Reader

> If you put out a product on a medium whose design is fundamentally based on copying bits, I don't know how you can expect anything else to happen.

Exactly! If you exist in the universe where things can poke other things, don't get grumpy when you walk out the door and get stabbed. Should've sat on your ass at home.

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Yes! If you go out and get stabbed by a falling branch you've got no recourse. Of course, the argument you seem to be advocating for hinges on showing how a copy represents material harm. The usual argument is it represents a lost sale. Still not sure how you get sent to jail over that though, maybe the argument itself doesn't have much weight but the people invoking it can push their weight around.

First of all, it doesn't follow in any way from my comment that I'm ‘advocating for’ that argument. You just extrapolated somehow onto the stock set of anti-copyright arguments and decided that I'm opposed to one of them.

Actually, I'm sorta happy that such kinds of blatant strawmanning and anti-copyright crowd being generally pretty obnoxious led to me thinking these things over for myself, instead of just accepting everything that gets passed around again and again. So I guess thanks for that.

Oh! I'm sorry for offending you. We started with such sarcasm that I didn't think you'd feel the prick.

Sarcasm I don't mind—gotta eat my own food, obviously. However, shifting the discussion is a different matter, while I was replying to one specific claim. On top of that, the arguments about material harm, that you've mentioned, are utterly worn-out go-to points of the anti-copyright folks. I do have my opinion on whether they make much sense and are worth repeating in each discussion on piracy, but that's another topic.

I see. I'm not usually involved in conversations on this topic so I'm not really aware of whats considered an argument that is no longer valid from over-use.

I don't think it was shifting the discussion either. You made a sort of sarcastic remark about getting stabbed, I brought the focus back on going to jail over the topic at hand.

The usual argument has been shown false by many studies: piracy, in fact, spreads awareness of cultural products and thus creates sales that would otherwise never have happened. It is essentially free advertising.

While I am inclined to believe piracy spreads awareness of mass produced entertainment my personal anecdotes lead me to believe it's not about spreading awareness of any cultural products. Less well-known or minor but of great interests movies, books and music are more often than not almost impossible to obtain.

Seeders are not interested in few clicks. They pirate the Marvel Cinematic Universe because it brings in cliks. Follow the money of all the ads on these torrent sistes spreading awareness of culture.

In a sense they are not liberating anyone, they are trapping us in a smaller bubble.

You intentionally conflate seeders with torrent sites. These are not the same people. Seeders do not get money from torrent sites. Torrent sites do not host content, they do not engage in piracy any more than a phonebook engages in doxxing. They run ads simply to cover hosting the site itself.

If someone is trapping us in a bubble, it is the streaming sites who limit content access by geographical location.

You deliberately ignore my main point that piracy massively promotes mass media.

I don't see Star Wars or Game of Thrones in need of any free advertising given by piracy, that's a weird argument to make.

Frankly, I am just moving on from this topic on HN. Piracy good, netflix bad, got it.

No, it’s absolutely not the same thing. How can you compare something that harms no-one, to something that should clearly be illegal due to likelihood of death and maiming?

Because they are making a disingenuous and foolish argument.

The original argument is essentially "if this action is so easy then how can you make it illegal?" which is not a very good argument as pointed out. Your argument is about the morality of this action which is quite different.

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