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Comment by PrimeMcFly | Hacker News Reader

It makes piracy that much more important.

I've always had mixed emotions about the whole piracy subject, but they have become less mixed and more supportive recently.

Seeing Harmy's "Despecialized" versions of the original Star Wars trilogy was a watershed for me. They're the best way of seeing the originals without Lucas's strange 90's CGI inserted into a 1970's movie, but technically they're piracy. (Oddly the pirate in a sense created a transformative work to more accurately re-create the original experience, but I'm sure Disney would prefer to see him crucified for the effort).

Anyway, I'm going to watch what I want and not worry about the philosophical questions at this point; I will worry about keeping the downloads anonymous though ;)

Personally I think piracy is the future. It's a net good for society and a normal behavior, and it doesn't hurt anyone. Corporations are just greedy.

These giant content monopolies are on their way out anyway, with personal AI tech that can generate movies and content on demand coming within 10 years.

Completely unfettered piracy is arguably not a net-good for society. I would also say the same about the current 95-year copyright term. There's a huge space between those two poles though that can be explored.

People sharing content is natural human behavior, and in 20 years of studying piracy it hasn't been found to hurt content producers.

Agreed. I went all-in on paying for streaming years back and cut back on my pirating. Now that things are getting significantly more user-hostile, I'm finding myself pirating a lot more often. Oh well.

They clearly don't want our money anyway.

One day, piracy won’t be viable. Some new tech and/or legislation will gradually wipe it out (Eg, required software running on everyone’s machines validating every file, invasive stuff like that could happen in 20 years), maybe not today, but one day. We can’t rely on it

The only way piracy won't be viable is if manufacturers succeed in taking control of computers away from consumers.

I don't think we will ever let that happen.

> I don't think we will ever let that happen.

The number of iPhones is on the rise, the desktop share's declining.

If you're reading Cory Doctorow books and blogposts, that's exactly what "they" are working on and the part of the population that cares about this may be a lot smaller than you think.

I know they are trying, but there will always be people with the knowledge to resist, like the HN crowd.

I can see more devices like iphones being sold and locked down, but I can't see open computers not being sold anymore, not so long as there are companies and people with a will to make them. Look at System76 as an example.

Try to watch Netflix on System76 computers in 4k. I heard it's impossible.

Hence piracy.

I hope you're doing it anonymously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37016638

Not even slightly worried. In the US they have to notify the ISP first and there is a 'strikes' system.

Most ISPs don't care.

It's happening already. "Trusted Computing" is only the start. Can you even buy a CPU that isn't filled with that shit? Or a motherboard where every last chip is open/fully documented and verifiable?

I have been told (but not confirmed) that recent versions of iOS won't let you add non-DRM protected music to your library (and for a monthly fee you can get a service that provides you with DRM protected versions of any non-DRM protected music you have). That seems bonkers to me, so does anyone know what the actual story is there?

Since day one, iOS has never let you just add MP3s to the music library on the phone directly - you've always had to sync it through iTunes on a computer.

This made sense when the behavior was inherited from iPods and two-way sync was difficult, but then they never had any incentive to add the ability once people stopped connecting their phones to computers anymore and they could just force people to buy all their music from them instead.

Things have changed drastically (a lot more than I expected) since the mobile revolution.

Our ISP reads torrents, then a random content owner sends a nastygram if the name matches something from the last 40 years or so (also depending on how popular).

I mostly download ancient stuff which flies under the radar; that's how I figured the enforcement parameters.

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