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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

Piracy is the answer.

I'm a big fan of old scifi films and series and the more obscure ones are getting harder to track down. Quite a lot of the stuff produced in the early 70s is sometimes available on DVD which can easily be ripped, but it depends on whether it was popular enough for them to issue it.

With some old BBC series, I'm in the position of paying for a license, but not everything is available. Just before Xmas, I was searching for M.R.James Christmas Ghost Story adaptations and whilst I was able to get the newer Mark Gatiss produced ones from iPlayer, the older "Tractate Middoth" isn't available (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03n2rnf).

There's going to be so many lost productions unless pirates get together to hoard old media.

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I think society as a whole should have a long and in depth discussion on piracy in the first place. Piracy in the digital age is a weasel word used by vested interests. For instance datahoarding could be seen as a service to society.

There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. Now there could be a loss of income if it grows out of control and artists are not being compensated. So obviously the discussion should focus on that.

Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games. Apparently the same hasn’t played out for movies and songs on the whole.

> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file

Note we did have this conversation, years if not decades before. Everyone "in the know" already understands this. I bet most HN readers understand this.

It's just that general consumers don't, and there was a successful propaganda campaign by media owners and distributors to label this as "piracy", and the name stuck.

It seems educating users is an uphill battle when fighting against a propaganda campaign by companies with deep pockets.

> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file.

I can't tell if you're taking the word literally or not. For the sake of argument:

Obviously there is no boat-stealing or plundering involved - no Johnny Depp or kraken here. But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft. You are not entitled to someone else's creative work under any conditions other than those that they set, period.

Unless an artist explicitly says "here's this public domain artwork, share it however you want" (which some people do!), pirating is stealing - you are taking the work of someone's hands without paying them for it, and it literally doesn't matter if you wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, because the work does not belong to you - it belongs to the creator and they get to set the terms of use.

If you want a game or a TV show or a movie so badly - make it yourself. Put your own effort and time and resources and creative energy into it - then you can set whatever terms you want on its distribution.

Believing that you have the right to take whatever creative work that someone else put their effort into that you can get away with not paying for is one of the most extreme cases of entitlement I've ever witnessed, and it demonstrates an extreme selfishness and lack of respect for other human beings as equals.

I would be very interested to hear what moral axioms could justify the position of "I can take whatever I want from other people as long as it doesn't deprive them of a physical good".

Nonsense.

When these so called “creatives” (read: administrators) are making billions upon billions nickel and diming every little resemblance to “their work” (read: administrators and investors paying actual creators that lack negotiation skills jack diddly) at the cost of all of society (how far does copyright go these days?), they can stick it.

By pirating, a user is not TAKING something from someone. That is like trying to own an idea and suing people for having the same idea. Digital data is easily duplicated and hurts no one to duplicate. If you wanted to be a twat and micromanage your works, you shouldn’t have digitized it. Go be a traditional oil artist or an opera singer or a circus performer, where in person experiences matter.

If you want all the benefits of the digital world, then suck it up and be ready for digital works to be duplicated.

That's like saying if we want the benefits of markets, be ready for theft. Society was ready for theft, and so created laws to make it illegal. That way we can have the benefit of a market with a low probability of being robbed on the way home. Seems to work out.

Illegally downloading creative works is most assuredly _not_ theft, according to either the dictionary or the legal definitions, as no possessions are being taken and no one is being deprived of their property. Downloading creative works may or may not constitute copyright infringement; Relabeling it as "theft" is nothing more than a dishonest attempt at re-framing the conversation in a way that maximally benefits corporate interests.

It's similar to theft only in the sense that you get stuff for free without permission.

Before electronic copies, the only way to do that would be to physically steal such a thing. However, if it were possible to make copies of things via magic, without depriving people of such things, I don't think people would consider it theft. In literature, people tended to look on the idea of such things as wonderful miracles, to be celebrated -- feeding a herd of people from only a few fish, or a fairy godmother spinning fancy clothes via magic. No one ever reading Cinderella has ever considered it immoral for the fairy godmother to generate such a thing, and I suspect that most of society would similarly view it as natural and moral to let friends have copies of things that we have.

Imagine being able to say, "Oh, yeah, this desk has perfect ergonomics for me! here's the pattern/recipe and you can print one once you get home", or "oh yeah, I like this TV design way better than my old one, here's how you can make one too" -- in short, we _absolutely_ would download a car, or give someone else a copy of our car.

Now if only we could figure out how to pass value to creators and inventors in a way that isn't threatened by that, or by the advent of inventing-things-via-AI.

You are wrong about copying. It was perfectly normal to photocopy books at schools and universities since these were long out of print, the libraries didn't have enough copies, or whatever other reason, in some areas of the world even before computers.

Your points strongly align with my views, and “how to pass value” is why I have been so excited by contract-native blockchains.

I can imagine a world where each creative negotiates their public contract associated with a work, then when the work is released anyone in the world can pay/donate anything they want to the wallet in direct recognition and know without question that every creator will get a fair piece of it.

“Piracy” would be the same as the radio (a convenient way to get exposure), and I suspect that people who do the actual work would see much less drama.

> Before electronic copies, the only way to do that would be to physically steal such a thing.

Or buy a knockoff for cheap.

As the sibling to yours said, it is closest to forgery or counterfeiting, rather than theft. I don't think that changes it much re. maximally benefiting corporate interests. It might benefit them a little less maximally, but not by much.

You’re right. That one time my employer didn’t pay me for 3 pay circles- it wasn’t theft, it was piracy or copyright infringement. Simply a breach in contract.

Not the same thing.

I liked the Windows spin it: "You may be a victim of software counterfeiting."

Because they're right, the closest physical equivalent of software "piracy" isn't stealing, which takes the existing item and deprives someone of it, it's forgery, which creates a new "copy" of the item that certainly doesn't have the right provenance and incidentally might, possibly, differ in functional characteristics as well. It devalues legitimate copies of the item in the same ways that counterfeiting does, not the way that theft does.

While you do disclaim that no stealing occurs when pirating at the start of your post, you do not internalize what that means throughout the rest of your comment. This is evident throughout the rest of your comment through your continued choice of using the word "take". No "taking" occurs by making a copy of a file.

Stealing is bad for a specific reason: it's a zero sum game. If you are to benefit from stealing somebody else has to lose something. Stealing is parasitism (benefiting while harming someone else) on other people / society. But if I could magically create a copy of something you own (e.g. your TV), and we both keep our own copy, there is nothing morally wrong with that, even if there are arbitrary laws that make it illegal.

Piracy is closer to the second case. Me making a copy of a file does not limit others from using that file. It is not a zero sum game. It's commensalism (benefiting without harming or benefiting anyone else), not parasitism. Morally it is at worst neutral.

Not to mention that copyright hasn't been a thing for the wast majority of human history and we did just fine. Standing up to arbitrary, unjust laws is a moral good.

Wouldn’t cloning a TV deprive the manufacturer (and all associated parties) of revenue?

Doesn’t copying a digital work without consent deprive the creator (and all associated parties) of revenue?

Isn’t deliberately depriving a person or persons of remuneration for their work stealing?

The laws against making digital copies of a work without the consent of the rights holder are not arbitrary. They’re in place to ensure those who invested time and money into creating something can earn money from the thing they create.

>Wouldn’t cloning a TV deprive the manufacturer (and all associated parties) of revenue?

>Doesn’t copying a digital work without consent deprive the creator (and all associated parties) of revenue?

Depriving of revenue is not stealing, as I outlined in my previous post. The author still has access to their work and the ability to sell it if there is sufficient demand. If something had been stolen neither of those are the case. If "depriving of revenue" constituted stealing I could ask you for $100, you could refuse, and that would be theft because you "deprive me of revenue". This would be ridiculous for obvious reasons.

>Isn’t deliberately depriving a person or persons of remuneration for their work stealing?

No, as I outlined clearly in my previous comment.

>The laws against making digital copies of a work without the consent of the rights holder are not arbitrary. They’re in place to ensure those who invested time and money into creating something can earn money from the thing they create.

You might have had a case here if copyright ended with the death of the author and was limited to a reasonable time frame within the lifespan of an author, but this has not been the case for a long time. Copyright in the US is up to 70 years after the authors death. That is an arbitrary and unjust law that only benefits mega corps. Hence it is morally right to stand against the law through civil disobedience.

I just can’t accept that depriving someone of revenue for hard work (toil, stress, exhaustion, etc.) isn’t stealing.

The act of people stealing the work is a clear demonstration of sufficient demand, no? If the price is too high or supply too low, that doesn’t excuse theft. It never has.

Wage theft is stealing. If I tell you I’ll paint your house for $100 and then paint your house and you don’t pay me, that’s theft, which is stealing.

Piracy is equivalent to wage theft, which is stealing. A bunch of people did a bunch of work and ask that people pay for the output of their labor. Those who decide to take that output without paying are stealing. They are thieves.

The length of copyright laws is a separate matter. Yeah, they protect major artists and labels with millions, but they also protect small artists who live off their work.

If you take a digital copy of something for free that you should have paid for, you are not a pirate and you are not Robin Hood, you are a thief. The same as someone who walks into a store and steals or snatches a purse off a park bench.

I’ve been seeing people deflect morality over stealing digital copies for most of my life and it’s always amazed me how it’s the only act of thievery that people openly discuss and brag about.

Somehow stealing copies of art is okay, but stealing cars is not.

> I’ve been seeing people deflect morality over stealing digital copies for most of my life and it’s always amazed me how it’s the only act of thievery that people openly discuss and brag about.

Maybe you should try considering why this is so. Perhaps it's not actually thievery?

If I "steal" a production that was made in the 1970s, so what? Who am I hurting?

Corporations that have long outlived the original creator and cry about you not paying them. The horror!

I agree with this. Theft of digital copies is still theft.

Someone made something with the intention of selling _copies_ of said thing.

Taking a copy for free deprives the creator (or the rights owner) of revenue. That is stealing.

Yeah it’s often exceedingly inconvenient or sometimes impossible to legally obtain a copy of a movie, song, book or software. But that still doesn’t justify stealing a copy.

The availability of copies of digital products to you is at the discretion of the rights holder. You don’t get to decide that you now have the right to take a free copy.

If you decide to take a free copy of a digital product without the rights holder’s consent, you are stealing, which is wrong, no matter how much you want the thing or how expensive or difficult it is to obtain.

Not so simple; how many times have I been told by someone they won’t buy my book, they’ll check it out from the library. This is not theft or piracy, but it’s taking the total value of something without compensation to the creator

This is absurd. Libraries are a legal construct that artists accept in order to provide a tradeoff between profit and benefit to society, the library still purchases copies of the work, and as those copies wear out over time and new ones need to be purchase, an individual is still indirectly and effectively paying a small amount to the artist (although, again, even if they weren't it wouldn't matter, because the creator agreed to the terms of the library, unlike with digital theft). They're not remotely comparable to piracy.

> the creator agreed to the terms of the library

Really? When/where?

Check your contracts with the publisher of your book.

Can you link to an example of such a contract? And besides, I thought the First Sale Doctrine meant that no matter what your contract said, once the book was sold that the copyright holder didn't have any say over that copy of it anymore.

I’ve always wondered about this. In need to do some Googling, unless someone knows the answer.

Are libraries entitled to loan any book on the market? Do they need permission? Do they ever provide compensation?

> Are libraries entitled to loan any book on the market? Do they need permission? Do they ever provide compensation?

My understanding is the answers are yes, no, and nothing besides the normal purchase price of the book.

Amd no comparison was made to piracy

I'd be more receptive to copyright if it was the rightful creators who owned rights, and investors could only lease limited rights from the owner. Instead, the capital owners have written the law, and the creators are lucky to get pennies from sale of their work. I see no reason to pay to corp C who bought "rights" from corp B who bought rights from corp A who strongarmed a bookwriter into a one-sided contract where the corp gets all the rights. Taking from robbers isn't theft, it's rightful redistribution of knowledge in our society.

This is a convenient assumption for those who choose to pirate. Even if we assume that it's appropriate to dictate what kinds of contracts artists should or shouldn't enter into with publishers and whether you think they're "strongarmed" or not, this specific scenario only really holds water if you take the time to confirm whether the structure you describe is the one being used in practice before pirating the work.

Self-publishing is growing year over year. More and more authors are publishing their own work on platforms where they get 70% (in case of KDP)-100% (in case of direct sales) royalties. Along with the time to write the actual thing this also usually involves paying out of pocket for things like editors and covers. If you're genuinely committed to this scenario you're describing, I hope you check whether you're actually "taking from robbers" or taking from the author who created the book you're enjoying.

It might be entitlement. But I dont f*cking care anymore.

Having to manage 7 subscription services for the 5 movies I watch per month and having to divide by zero to transfer my files from one device to another is hell.

I don't buy digital goods anymore, except games. And you know why? Because everything is on steam and available with one click.

> But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft.

Can you look up the legal definition of theft in your country and post it.

Here's mine (Canada)

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-322.ht...

" 322 (1) Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent

(a) to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;

(b) to pledge it or deposit it as security;

(c) to part with it under a condition with respect to its return that the person who parts with it may be unable to perform; or

(d) to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be restored in the condition in which it was at the time it was taken or converted. "

Please outline how downloading a movie meets that definition.

I'm not advocating piracy, but lets stop with the "theft" rhetoric which clearly it fails to meet the legal definition.

I can absolutely see that piracy could fit under (a).

"to deprive the owner of it" it being copyright

They have the right over copies, and to make money from it if they choose.

Are you hung up on that it has to be some physical object?

Edit: to be clear, in this reasoning, the thing deprived from someone is not your copy of the movie, but rather the right of copying.

It is not theft.

You really need to use the right word, and that word is infringement.

Theft requires someone somewhere be denied something they own and that does not happen when an unauthorized copy is performed.

Using the right words might lead us to better laws we all can live with. Starting with the wrong ones will continue to hurt everyone.

>Obviously there is no boat-stealing or plundering involved - no Johnny Depp or kraken here. But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft. You are not entitled to someone else's creative work under any conditions other than those that they set, period.

Well, you've bought into the lie. It is not theft because you are not depriving the original owner of it. it's breach of contract at the very most and it's an incredibly harmful to society contract that will likely never be fixed legally because entrenched interested have too much invested in keeping that system broken and abusing monopoly to rent seek excess profits from the masses.

Believing that you have the right to deprive me of the fruits of my own labor copying something is one of the most extreme cases of entitlement I've ever witnessed. No one is taking anything from anyone. The creator of the work still has their own copy of their work. People are spending their own effort making copies of data released into the wild by the creator and that's it.

Further, the economics of any particular created work where the marginal cost of copying is effectively zero are incredibly clear. The largest welfare improvement is from distributing that created work to everyone for the marginal cost (aka zero) and allowing everyone to create derivative works if they choose. The only reason to have any sort of copyright is to encourage additional works to be created and that should be tempered to the minimum time needed given the massive dead weight loss from distributing said works at above marginal cost. So, how long does a copyright term need to be to encourage new works? I am extremely skeptical of any claim beyond high single digit numbers of years and it is extremely clear that copyright terms measured in decades (or worse in author's life time plus decades) cause massive dead weight loss and are utter insanity.

My rule is I try to pay you, and if you refuse my money, I get it elsewhere. If a movie is in cinemas in my home town, I will pay to watch. Netflix accepts my money, so I pay them every month. Disney, HBO, Hulu, etc. do not (they do not operate in my country), so I do not feel any guilt watching their media by "some other means". After all, I'm not depriving you of any revenue if you don't want any revenue from me to begin with.

> Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games.

Honest question, if Steam suddenly ceases to be, are these downloaded games playable?

If the game itself doesn't implement some sort of mandatory Steam login or DRM, then it's as easy as finding and running the executable from the downloaded game files.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1355117576985...

You can literarry find everything, but for rarest stuff you need to search for dedicated private commune.

FYI: https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5940948

Thank you, kind stranger, but I've already sailed across the pira-seas and have obtained a copy. My point was that as a BBC license fee payer (for many years), I have paid for that programme to be produced and by all rights it should be available on iPlayer.

(I'm not even going to mention the complete rights cluster-duck that is Monkey Dust (and yes, I've already got a copy of all the series))

Can you name some of the obscure 70s sci-fi? I would like to watch them. My downloads are TV series for Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Battlestar Galactica, etc, but it’s limited and probably not too obscure and also… American besides the 70s Doctor Who saved Survivors (was that 80s?)

The TV series of Logan's Run and Planet of the Apes are reasonably obscure because they weren't too popular (I've got hold of both them, by the way).

Some other titles to pique your interest:

1981 BBC version of The Day of the Triffids

1979 Tales of the Unexpected (not scifi really)

1979 Sapphire & Steel (with the most annoying introduction - they are not elements!)

1979 Quatermass series

1979 The Omega Factor

1978 Blake's 7 (should not really count as obscure due to the impact the series had)

1977 The Fantastic Journey

1977 Children of the Stones

1977 Beasts (anthology series by Nigel Kneale)

1975 Sky

1975 The Invisible Man (really cheesy, featuring David McCallum)

1975 The Changes

1974 Zodiac

1973 The Tomorrow People

1970 Timeslip

1969 The Owl Service

1968 The Champions

1966 The Time Tunnel

1966 Mission: Impossible

1965 Out of the Unknown

1960 The Strange World of Gurney Slade

1958 Quatermass and the Pit mini-series

1955 Quatermass II

BBC version of the Triffids is legendary in my book. Don't forget 1975 BBC show Survivors.

I had to buy The Survivors on DVD because no one was seeding it, and no one was streaming it, either. I wonder how common that is for obscure TV shows?

Where do you find these seeded? I only know about Pirate Bay and 1337x.

I found season 1 of The Survivors easily enough, although it looks like season 3 might be available as well. I use prowlarr (https://wiki.servarr.com/en/prowlarr) which searches a big list of various sites and integrates easily enough with qbittorrent.

There's a handful of old British TV that I've bought on DVD because I couldn't find anyone seeding it.

(Just bought the three seasons of Survivor on DVD now)

Thanks for the prowlarr tip. Enjoy The Survivors! I did.

I do happen to be a John Wyndham fan and try to track down adaptations, and yes, the BBC one is the best (I remember watching it when it was first aired). The newer remake with Eddie Izzard was disappointing. I'm often surprised that his stories don't get more adaptations - where's Kraken Wakes and The Chrysalids? (Chocky was made into a good kids TV series back in the day).

I hadn't heard of Survivors, but that looks right up my street. I used to be massively into Doctor Who and the Terry Nation novels. I can only find the first season easily.

Have you tried BritBox? Some of those shows are available legally on there.

No, I haven't tried it. Being a subscription service, it kind of proves my point that even BBC shows financed via the TV license payers (including me) are now being locked behind paywalls and the more obscure ones will just disappear. (To make that list I just pulled some titles from my TV series library, so I don't need to locate any of them).

Two more entries for your really nice list:

1976 Gemini Man [another Invisible Man adaptation]

1976 Star Maidens

Sure, its a scam, like bunch of other things.

Just the other day, I've been searching for the Open University video of "Hotel Hilbert" from 1996: https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/program/video...

Can't find that anywhere though I was hopeful that BFI might have had a copy: https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b80e92d21

I grabbed those old M.R.James Christmas Ghost Stories years ago (no idea where I downloaded them from but they were obviously rips from fairly recent BBC broadcasts). BBC used to have an online shop where you could buy things legitimately but they shut it down. No idea why.

Tractate Middoth adaptation is awful Gatiss tripe. (He's so hit-and-miss, and this is a miss for me). It's also on YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU

My favorite of those M R.James adaptations, by far, is A View From A Hill. It's on YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh0ybk-xyk

I agree about Gatiss. I really enjoyed the original 1972 version of "The Amazing Mr Blunden" and was excited to see it getting remade last year (by Gatiss) but it was just meh.

I went on a scavenge hunt for M.R. James productions after catching Robert Lloyd Parry's (https://www.nunkie.co.uk/the-mr-james-project) reading of two stories in the basement of Bristol Cathedral. I've got hold of A View From A Hill but haven't seen it yet. Incidentally, I did enjoy the recent Count Magnus.

And for most non-English books and movies, good luck buying them anywhere in the English-speaking world.

>I'm a big fan of old scifi films and series and the more obscure ones are getting harder to track down.

Gets even harder when you're dealing with hearing loss and it's nearly impossible to find subtitles for some older releases, despite there having been such when they were available....even for some non-obscure stuff. Some stuff is sitting in streaming-rights purgatory, the last release was on DVD and no one has it any more, etc etc...

The people at OpenSubtitles.org do their best to curate a good collection but those are only as good as the people who upload them.

Doesn't the BBC offer a service where you can request recordings of any historic broadcast?

The German public-service broadcasters like ARD, ZDF and many regional ones offer such a service. I can request a program from the 70ies, tell the name and (helpfully) where and when it was broadcasted. Then they search through their massive archive, make a copy on DVD and send them to you. It's not cheap (up to 40€ per hour of program), but it is legal for personal use. No need here to pirate anything, except very very old broadcasts from before ... around 1967.

I assume you have already found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU

I have been told that the BBC have a massive digital vault of shows that are available to producers obviously since iPlayer came into being any shows listed are there, just not available. And they are constantly archiving old material.

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