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Comment by lelandfe | Hacker News Reader

> Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it?

"Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for over 100 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg

> Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited?

If you buy a copy of a book, you are not eligible to reprint that book and sell it yourself. There are limits on what folks can do with copyrighted works they buy.

It might be worth reading, for instance, about the American concept of first-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

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It's unclear why 'monopoly over making copies' is called in your comment by confusing term 'copyright'. Why something that is not 'right' and cannot exist as 'right' called by this strange term? How one can have 'right' over what others do? May be you can explain also that?

If such 'right' even exist then it belongs to people who wish to make copy of something isn't it?

It's hard to see why how and who on earth is entitled to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy as long as a person who makes copy doesn't present such copy as original.

Copyright is as much a "right" as mineral rights are a "right." It is just a system for regulating a particular industry. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all "rights" are "natural rights."

No rights are "natural rights".

> It's hard to see why how and who on earth is entitled to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy

The how and who are easy: the Constitution[0], and the American government.

The why is trickier, but the idea at least is that restricting copies means more people buy the "real" thing, which means more money goes to the owner, and creators are therefore more incentivized to make and copyright things in America.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

The "why" is that distribution is always cheaper than production of creative works. In other words, people who make new works are stuck with all the costs, while people who sell copies get all the profit. This also tends to be an asymmetric relationship: creators tend to be individuals while publishers tend to be large corporate enterprises with the ability and know-how to bury you. Copyright exists to force publishers to negotiate with creators that would otherwise have no leverage[0].

The idea that copies are supposed to be scarce is an invention of Disney marketing, and I'd argue contrary to the spirit of the law. The stated purpose of copyright is to increase the amount of works on the market (by giving creators some negotiating leverage with publishers), not to make individual copies more valuable. That's just a side effect, one that is supposed to be bounded by limited term lengths[1].

[0] For those wondering, this is also what drove copyright harmonization over the last century. Any difference in law between countries creates an avenue for publishers to find a way to cheat creators. Before the era of international copyright it was quite common for publishers to race creators to foreign markets, since translation was not yet an exclusive right of the creator and most countries did not recognize each other's copyright interests.

[1] Please stop laughing. I know life+70 is practically forever.

>Copyright exists to force publishers to negotiate with creators that would otherwise have no leverage[0].

In my experience when I was thinking to publish something on phtostock I was presented with automatic contract stripping me from all of my "leverage" and if I disagree? it's their way or highway. Of course I could not agree to that. So experience was rather short as you might guess and no live person was even involved on their behalf.

So in my experience it seems that you need some other "leverage" to force publishers to negotiate with creators.

>people who make new works are stuck with all the costs, while people who sell copies

I wasn't talking about 'selling copies'. I was talking about right of making copies. Selling copies is something else I think.

"[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

From the same source: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

I can see here mention of "exclusive Right".

Can't see there man in the middle having exclusive Right though who also allowed to strip all the rights from the Authors and Inventors. Can't see there any "copyright". Can't see there entitlement "to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy". Selling copy is something else. But who can prohibit making copy?

If you read this text you have copied it to your brain from the 'screen copy' of 'memory copy' of 'web response copy' of data stored on server which is 'copy of what I wrote' . There are more stages that I've mentioned of course and each of them produces copy.

>the idea at least is that restricting copies means more people buy the "real" thing

I do not see how current system is in the spirit of [0] and I do not see how current system is even in the spirit of what you've described. It's broken and works for other purposes. Doesn't "promote Progress of Science and useful Arts" it seems.

This is the last time I'll reply, your comments are admittedly going off the rails now.

> Can't see there any "copyright". Can't see there entitlement "to prohibit to anyone in having right to make a copy". Selling copy is something else. But who can prohibit making copy?

17 U.S.C.§106 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106

You also take umbrage with the fact that "copy" is fairly ambiguous. You can find the legal definition of "copy" in 17 U.S.C§101: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/101. It's fairly cut and dry.

>This is the last time I'll reply, your comments are admittedly going off the rails now.

It is your choice of course but please try to understand that I was not even trying to be on any rails there as I am questioning the logic and ideas behind the current laws because I observe inconsistency of current laws with initial idea of promoting progress in Science and Arts by giving exclusive Right to Authors and Inventors. Not some man-in-the-middle by the way. Authors and Inventors. Where ever I go I do not see copyright belonging to Authors, all I see is someone else who took all rights from those Authors and Inventors. Even if we accept such exclusive Right I do not see why such exclusive Right should be transferable as it is obviously would be abused and we observe that in reality.

>It's fairly cut and dry.

In the context I've described above while I am thankful to you without any irony for providing useful links to the current laws and definitions I am still more interested about ideas behind them rather then current implementations.

>You also take umbrage with the fact that "copy" is fairly ambiguous.

I would not use word 'umbrage' but when one questioning ideas behind certain definitions every term becomes open for interpretations and the current legal definition is just one of them.

It is called "Intellectual Property Rights", and has been defined for centuries as exactly sets of prohibitions against anyone having a right to make a copy (even if not presented as original).

The entire point is to encourage creative endeavors, whether by patents for inventions or by copyright for the arts. The ability to restrict trivial copying has been essential for the advancement of arts & sciences.

So, no, making a copy and giving it to your friend is technically against the law, but in a practical sense, unless you are doing it at scale, it is legal in a practical sense.

That said, the systems of both copyrights and patents are massively forking broken. And abused.

So, the need for overhaul is massive, but to act like it is some alien concept with no possible worth is not helpful to the discussion, merely disingenuous or ignorant.

The default in the USA is that nobody has the right to make a copy of something created by someone else. The right to make copies is limited to the creator of the work. We say "the creator owns the copyright".

Since the legal system in the USA (and elsewhere) has "evolved" to consider copyright to be property in most of the same senses as anything else you can own, it follows that copyright can be transferred to others.

You are welcome to disagree with either premise ("no copying of someone else's creation", "right to copy is property") but that's the situation at present, and it's not obviously wrong unless you adopt some philosophical positions that the USA (and most of western Europe) does not (in aggregate) hold.

"right" is the right word, the point here is that it is *exclusive.

Speech rights and copy rights are both rights. Great that speech rights are universal in most democratic countries. Awful that copy rights are exclusive.

"Piracy" has been a propaganda term in the copyright world...

FTFY

Piracy implies theft and sounds more serious; where as copyright infringement does not sounds as exciting...

(from wikipedia...)

Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works

Theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.

The correct term is probably greed: not giving back to the author of music, movie, software you use. But greed is also the foundation of our economy, so copyright owners had to come up with a different word.

Copyrights have very little to do with paying content creators. From the very first copyright law (the Statute of Anne) it was about securing profits for the industry, who invariably give only a tiny slice of those profits, if anything, to the content creators. Hollywood studios are famous for trying to screw actors, screenwriters, and others out of their share of blockbuster movie profits. Likewise with the music industry -- most musicians do not make anything close to enough money on record sales (or the modern equivalent) to live on, even as the studios themselves bring in vast sums of money.

So in a sense you are right, "greed" is the operative word -- not on the part of people who download, but on the part of the people who benefit most from the copyright system.

>"Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for over 100 years.

So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to see logical connection there.

In our power to reconsider false and confusing terminology.

>So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct? Hard to see logical connection there.

Well... Yes? That's how words work, really. If enough people agree a word means something, then it does.

No, that's how words lose their meaning: when they are used in inappropriate context to describe something completely unrelated.

Another modern example of a word that rapidly loses its meaning is "fascism": these days it is used as a general term for any policy not supported by the person that uses it. BLM fascists, left fascists, ultraright fascists, antifa fascists. On the subreddit about new Apple "Foundation" show someone described the depicted Empire as fascist. Everybody are fascists, especially the US who have fascias everywhere in state imagery!

I hate what you refer to too, it's essentially changing the meaning of a word with political intent. It also happened with "tolerance", went from enduring something you don't like to not caring about it in the first place.

But all that does it make words mean different things at different points in time, which is still just how words work. The meaning of the word "gay" is pretty different now than what it was, "meat" used to refer to all solid food, not just muscle and organs, "tweeting" is, at this point, more used as a reference to an internet service than to birds.

We didn't get to learn a final and set version of our languages, we just got the current one, they all keep changing nonstop and words changing meaning is just one of the ways in which that happens.

But in our case, "piracy" has exactly same meaning as it did 400 years ago: attacks on sea vessels, plunder of wealth and kidnapping of people for ransom or for sale.

It has precisely zero relation to copyright infringement, and should not be used to denote the it.

When healthy discussion is needed wrong terms do not help because they become propaganda terms masking the real meaning. In that case they should be reconsidered and corrected for discussion to have any chance for success.

> In our power to reconsider false and confusing terminology.

Is it? Framing a conversation through word connotation is a very powerful, and oft used, political tool. It isn't necessarily within your power to control it when stronger political and social forces are pushing it in other directions.

> So if it's long enough it assumes it's correct

Sure, that's a good enough of a descriptivist basis for a definition to be "correct."

I'd wager most folks on here don't see the name "The Pirate Bay" and question what it has to do with literal seafaring scallywags.

counterpoint. I do. every time. Using the term "pirate" or "piracy" for copyright infringement annoys the hell out of me.

You don’t question it because of actual confusion. You’re questioning it because you want to question it each time you come across it. Makes sense. It is an issue for you.

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