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Comment by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | Hacker News Reader

> pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market

Why are we assuming there's a viable market? People are trying to sell something that's worthless[0] and they're whining when other people offer it for free. I get that someone had to go through the trouble -- admittedly it's usually a fair amount of effort -- to make the thing that others want but, unfortunately, they didn't make something from which they can expect to profit. I think many people would prefer that to be different but that is just how it is (from my perspective).

[0] This is controversial, and thus the likely point of disagreement for most. If the only thing I need is 1 copy of The Little Mermaid (and a computer) to make 1e9 copies of The Little Mermaid, then The Little Mermaid doesn't have value as a thing to be sold.

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So no books, movies, music - anything that can be duplicated digitally - has value as a thing to be sold? I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument.

Why does digital duplication make any difference? When you are buying a physical book you are not paying just for the paper and the printing process. So the remaining part of the cost - writer's check, publisher's check, etc - is what you should be paying for when consuming things digitally (plus the cost of streaming, storage and whatnot).

> Why are we assuming there's a viable market?

Because there is? There is a proven, big, viable, essential market for creating and distributing ideas.

You seem to be understanding me correctly. When one buys a physical book, they are paying for the paper and the printing process. That is the barrier to entry for producing such a copy for sharing, distinctly different from producing a shareable copy of, e.g., a .mp4 file.

This person did not have this barrier to entry and therefore they did not see value in selling what they copied. The work does not have value in a market unless the value is propped up artificially as is currently being done by copyright law.

> I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument.

If it helps, these markets were clearly viable when certain resources were required to copy and distribute works. The difference with today is the public internet and the proliferation of personal general-purpose computers that people like to keep on themselves at all times. It's new and it's causing market disruptions.

Finally, I'll say that many people will choose to give money for things even if they aren't otherwise required to pay: Humble Bundle, Patreon, Youtube, Twitch, etc. People donate to the Wikimedia Foundation only because they are asked, to the point that that the organization now has an order of magnitude more money in the bank than Wikipedia's annual operating costs (recent funding controversies aside, they donate because they think it helps keep around something they'd like to see stick around).

Your position somehow completely ignores the cost of... producing the content itself. It might come as a surprise, but people who write books, make music, film movies all have expenses. Yes it's "free" to make a digital copy, but that ignores the cost of producing content. It sometimes takes years to produce and release a movie, hundreds if not thousands of people are involved. Who is paying for that? Should they all go to Patreon and ask for donations?

> It might come as a surprise, ...

Please don't condescend.

> Yes it's "free" to make a digital copy, but that ignores the cost of producing content.

I am not ignoring the cost, I am simply not respecting it. They are trying to run a business; the costs of doing so are their problem. If they cannot capture revenue to offset the mentioned costs, then they do not have a viable business. Currently, copyright law is required for the revenue to be captured, thus the business is not viable.

It is unfortunate, but I don't see how I am mistaken (I can understand disagreement that copyright law is broken, but it would be disagreement).

How is this different from any other theft?

I don’t respect the bakery down the road and will steal their products. Yes it’s protected by laws, but I don’t respect that either. It’s unfortunate, but it’s their own fault for not creating a viable business.

> How is this different from any other theft?

Nobody is being deprived of anything. If I buy a pastry from the bakery and then use a machine I own to materialize perfect copies of the pastry, what did I steal? Certainly not anything that needs to be replaced.

Infringement is not theft under any legal framework that is beholden to Berne

Touring is the biggest source of revenue for the musician. If they show up and you buy a ticket to their show, you've just given them maybe an order of magnitude more money than they would ever have gotten from you from record sales or streams alone. If you buy one of the $40 fruit of the loom shirts they are selling then that covers the costs for another dozen pirates.

Plus, what about used physical media? Do you think if I bought a used Beatles cd, I should be mailing a $20 bill to Paul McCartney? Am I stealing from Paul when I listen to that CD for free from the library? Or when I borrow my friends CD? Should the FBI come a knocking if my friend remixes it into a mixtape? Absolutely not. So it shouldn't be considered stealing when someone passes me a digital file that came from someone down the line buying the album.

> Touring is the biggest source of revenue for the musician.

Not since Covid. Lots of headliner-class bands have cancelled their tours the last few months.

It's not like the record company is giving them a greater cut to compensate. Plus I'm sure they are still selling merch

> essential market

A market that relies on government granted monopoly is not a market.

> buying a physical book you are not paying just for the paper and the printing process

But it should. Books should only be priced the cost of the paper and ink.

The very first Nobel winner Paul Samuelson[0] makes the argument here[1] when discussing how lighthouse economics works that anything with zero marginal costs that has a price other than free is by definition an economic loss. If it is in the best interest to have lighthouses, or firemen, or media, they should fund the creation themselves and everyone should be able to enjoy the results.

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

[1]: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/econ335/out/lighthouse.pdf - page 359, first paragraph

If it had no value then people would not want it, so would not pirate it.

The simple fact that people want to pirate a thing means it has value.

If I get a copy of my friend's copy of The Wolf of Wall Street -- of course which they got from a torrent -- the real world value of a new copy that I create approaches nil.

Marginal value going to zero does not negate original total value, it only increases the total value more slowly per item.

The items still have value, and now larger total value than before.

You're sinking your own argument.

Fair enough, I lost myself in that comment.

What I mean to say is that the thing has no value in a market where it's being sold digitally. If it's so easy for a person to make copies of something and share it with their friends then some people will make every copy they can and give it to whomever asks. In this world of proliferated general purpose computers and the public internet, it turns out people can make infinite copies and give them to everyone. I 1) do not think it's necessarily wrong for someone to choose to do that and 2) do not agree with where the line has been drawn for when it is considered wrong. In this case, the person downloaded 100TB and uploaded 20TB and we're saying it's wrong enough to be 5 times more receptive than giving that we threaten prison.

All that being said, I see a situation where someone thinks they have something they can sell, but then it happens that anyone can indiscriminately make and share copies of the thing so it's not actually worth buying. The producers of the thing then start whining about people making copies and those people who choose to do that get thrown in prison. It's very hard for me not to see the people being imprisoned as the victims when the people alleging harm have done fuck all to prove that they were caused any harm.

>What I mean to say is that the thing has no value in a market where it's being sold digitally.

Again, yes it does. If it had no value no one would buy it. If it had no value people would not pirate it. People would not hoard it.

And even marginal value is not zero. For someone to make a copy costs some input (time. energy, desire), and they do it because it has value.

I think you have a really bad handle on the meaning of value. All of your misunderstandings seem to be trying to rationalize taking things others created that do have value (both to them and to you) without exchanging value to them.

If it didn't have value, don't copy it. If you take the time and effort to copy it, it has value. Everything else is trying to rationalize taking something you do value at the expense of the creator.

So sure you can wish everything were free to take or copy. But fortunately society does realize there is value in getting people to create things we can all enjoy, even if you decide in your world it's ok to take enjoyment from the labor of others without returning value to them for it. Thankfully the rest of the world doesn't see it that way, otherwise there would be an awful lot less stuff to enjoy.

I get the feeling you stopped reading my previous comment after reading the part you quoted. At any rate, you don't seem to be addressing what was expressed. I can understand that you disagree but please have more respect for the opinions that are offered to you.

I read it. It's all predicated on your belief things have no value, which you repeated many times before your last post.

I fundamentally disagree: things have value since people want them.

Ease of copying doesn't absolve them from obtaining value at the creators expense.

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