Comment by Erwin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Erwin | Hacker News Reader

Let's pretend that some terrible remote exploit appears tomorrow, that allows anyone to get out the complete source of every SaaS server side app, which is the most prevalent setup here at HN startups. No harm is done to the server, no private user data escapes. No significant extra resources are used on copying the data.

What was previously impervious to copyright infringement, can now be easily copied. Illegal of course, but so is copyright infringement according to current laws.

You were just planning on selling the company for $5 million. But now, an exact copy is available on a site outside of your legal reach. They are able to do everything you do.

Will your potential buyer still offer you $5 million? Would you say that your pirate wasn't going to buy your company anyway and couldn't afford it, so he does you no harm? Your product was proprietary and hoarding data of users, he claims to be open and free. He claims that you are your code and ideas should belong to everyone, and you already got enough money from your first $2 million investment; asking for more would be greedy.

To me it seems that the only difference is that cracking a SaaS app is generally not technically possible, while removing the DRM on an installed app and then redistributing it is easy.

You've just demonstrated that our society is insane (at least in this case).

If we were not crazy, what harm could such a copy possibly do ? None. You effectively (though unwillingly) donated your knowledge to the world. You deserve even more than if you kept your code secret.

But.

By "donating", you lost leverage. You can no longer threaten people with not giving them what they want if they don't pay you.

This is by the way the problem with basically everything: making something abundant will add actual value, while at the same time destroying market value. It is most visible with Free Software, (vs Proprietary Software), but applies to anything. Say for instance that we could copy food the way we copy software.

Conclusion: our society in general (and the market in particular), is very poor at valuing things in the face of abundance. Somehow it needs scarcity. Paraphrasing In Time, "For a few to be wealthy, many must starve". I don't have a solution, but this is nuts.

There are other words for "unwilling donation".

Nuts is saying that an artist trying to extract value from things they create is "threatening people". God forbid you be "threatened" with not having a copy of the latest Coldplay album. The fact that you liken it to starving, indeed, indicates our society may have slipped into the grips of insanity.

This is already happening. Making a copy of a website is quite easy. Sure there are plenty of copycats of facebook out there, yet none is a threat. It happens a lot with games, apps etc too. Entertainment Content producers are not worried that someone will take their work and reuse it for their benefit, rather that they just don't pay for it. The real problem is not piracy (let's face it, even if SOPA passes, there are tons of ways to circumvent it). They need to realize that a) the actual value of their content has dropped due to technical advances and commoditization b) there is no better legal alternative to piracy in many cases (esp. if you live outside the US/UK).

People want to pay for content; there is just no easy way. Heck, I believe that even if they invented a "virtual ticket" that allowed you to watch a movie no matter which way you obtained it, people would buy.

p.s. speaking of piracy, here's a pirated copy of the parent post: http://instablogg.com/Du-dhKh

That is a description of technological advance. Means of accessing and communication information is improved, and in general that is most probably a gain. It disrupts some people expecting to continue as before, and that is bad. But we do not ultimately want to restrict gains from invention for the sake of a few temporary losers. We want to have some more general support for such 'casualties', and let everyone move forward in exploring innovation.

It all comes down to the basic physical limitations. Copying may be illegal, but there is no physical loss -- in fact the opposite, it is beneficial. We ideally want the economic system to evolve toward fully realising the resources available. That means copying is free, and everyone should benefit from it as much as they like. And production is scarce and has costs, hence commands a price in a market (and in a better form of market would then be used according to need).

Of course, we may or may not, in various ways, be able to reach that ideal. But a law -- like copyright -- that restricts us from using resources that are otherwise free is not justified in a fundamental way. It is there only pragmatically, to get the best out of practical limitations. It must not obstruct us from finding other ways.

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