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Comment by pfisch | Hacker News Reader

I personally like that movies and videogames exist and can be made with large budgets because that generally makes them better.

I don't see how that continues without IP.

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You have no idea how good the Avengers movies are in the timeline where the US issues Internet bans for piracy and does a comprehensive job of protecting the rights of creators in other countries as well. Our IP situation is anarchy compared to theirs, and our comic book movies are embarrasments.

In that timeline there's a comment chain:

>> So this dev lost his job because he couldn't work during covid after getting Internet banned for pirating some movie. Doesn't that seem excessive?

> Okay, yes, maybe a little. But let me ask you this: How could Disney-XBox Studios have afforded the $2.3T Iron Man vs. Master Chief sequel if they weren't able to protect their investment? I just don't see how that movie gets made without strong IP law.

The Benedict Cumberbatch from their side could probably transport you over, if you want. They're pretty accepting of immigrants, as long as you're willing to get The Implant.

More Lord of the Flies than Anarchy. There's definitely hierarchy in our system.

It will continue without IP once people realize that the creative arts benefit from people doing it for the love of the art, as opposed to doing it out of a fear of starvation.

People should get paid to create things, and get paid what the work is worth.

Right now, people get paid a small fraction of what it's worth, while the bigger fraction goes to execs who have had no hand in creating anything of value. And those execs get paid for selling something that their workers have made, not for making it.

Big-budget movies should get made because people democratically decided that we want to collectively spend resources on making such a movie, not because unelected company execs say so who have exclusive control over a huge amount of capital and who can use IP laws to extol more capital from innocent people who just wanna watch a decent movie.

> People should get paid to create things, and get paid what the work is worth.

This is literally how it works today though. No one is intentionally paying employees more than they have to, and if they pay less than they have to, they lose employees.

Basically this is just an anticapitalist rant. Not useful even if one agrees with the premise.

> This is literally how it works today though.

If it did, then by definition, companies wouldn't be making profit for the shareholders.

> that generally makes them better.

This is a very questionable statement.

There will still be a first to market advantage.

I don't see how that works in a world truly without copyright.

You can't spend hundreds of millions making GTA6 if the first person you sell it to can give away copies.

Oh, were you not alive when Steam started being a thing and piracy sharply reduced? Turns out people like to buy things from people who make things they like.

I was alive, yes, it sounds like you weren't because Steam was universally hated for the DRM inconvenience it put around HL2.

Hahaha no, but I did forget that it affected HL2. It was interesting how the more egregious DRM actually made the product worse, people downloading the cracked version were legitimately just choosing the superior version.

You can, but you'd use more DRM and server components. In the extreme your game would be streaming on something like GeForce Now so only paying customers can access it.

To a large extent we also see that today (because let's be honest, current copyright law is not enforced very consistently) and there are still big-budget movies and games being released.

Copies of GTA 6 won't work online, which is what the vast majority of people are likely going to be buying it for. Lack of copyright also doesn't mean lack of sales. GTA 5 was a huge commercial success despite being cracked in days.

I pay for Tidal and buy 99% of my games despite having access to safe private trackers. On the other hand I pirate 100% of my TV and movies. Make of that what you will but for me it's always a service issue (or lack thereof).

Without copyright, it wouldn’t just be pirates on shady websites distributing GTA5. It would be ripped and sold at Walmart and on Steam by anyone.

Why would anyone pay for HBO when Netflix could just put up The Last of Us without paying a cent.

Why would AMC theaters pay Disney for Avengers 5 when they can just pay some Disney employee to send them a copy for free?

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