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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it.

> Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value.

What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say hypothetically in the future stealing a car becomes easy and without consequence (even though it's still illegal) does that mean there is no market value for cars? Of course it doesn't. It shows that people care more about saving money

If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music, the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.

The convenience argument is also (for want of a better phrase) complete and utter bullshit. I can switch to itunes right now, type in a search term, hit purchase and have the song on my hard drive (and iphone and any other device I have connected to my itunes account) within 10 seconds. Hell, I'll open my screen recording program now and record me proving this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2wzb0-4Pg

People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it. It's not a matter of convenience, people go to more effort pirating than they would purchasing (except for cases where the music is not available commercially, but those instances are "rare" and not a worthy consideration for the sake of this argument).

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> People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it.

Please don't conflate tangible goods with intangible goods. Intangible goods are patterns. You can't steal a pattern, because a pattern can't be "owned" in any sense that a physical object can.

Now, you can have rights to a pattern and that right stops others from exploiting that pattern commercially, but you don't own the pattern. Even our current laws recognize this. After all, your right will expire, but if you own a car, you own it forever and without limits.

So enough with this "theft" bullshit.

Your comment in no way actually addresses what he's saying, which is a hypothesis to the justification for why people do things. In fact, he didn't even conflate the terms as I see it, unless you want to say piracy is only related to theft. And the section you quoted doesn't even have the term "theft" in it (which you also quoted). In short, it's a tired talking point of a technicality that adds almost nothing to the larger discussion.

It sounds like you have strong opinions on the topic -- I'd love to hear more about how you think people justify copyright infringement.

> I'd love to hear more about how you think people justify copyright infringement.

People don't justify anything. By saying that something needs to be justified, you are suggesting that this is a moral issue? It's wrong for me to copy patterns of bytes? If so, then I've been a sinner since I was 10. Remember those 5 1/4 floppies, BBSes, IRC, etc? Yeah.

Copyright law was designed with businesses in mind, not individuals. Fair use should be expanded to encompass all personal use of patented or copyrighted material. Restrictions should only apply to commercial application.

Speaking of business ...

Did I mention I create digital works every day? That's what I do. I create software. My work can easily be copied ... and if it was, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself. Actually, I wouldn't even blame myself. Because my rampant "piracy" as a kid made me realize something. There is no value in software. There is only value in service. The software I write is merely a tool that I use to render a service and even if you copied it, you would only be left with a tool. I'm the final part of the equation and I can't be copied. That's the right way to do software.

What people don't mention is that the software industry was first. Before music, before movies, before books, before any of that ... the software industry was forced to change, more than that, it was born changed, because digital "piracy" was born with the software industry.

If you build good software that does what it's supposed to, there's no need for service. There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service. But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it. I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.

You are a fine demagogue. You recognize exactly what I meant.

> There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service.

And then assume I meant something else.

> But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it.

Shame on you, sir.

> I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.

I think this is very much the wrong way to have a civilized discussion, despite your wit.

That's a shame - I was fond of the HTML pun. And I was legitimately unsure what you meant by your definition of service. Apologies if hedging my bet there irked you. I'm not a freelance/contractor/consultant and have no desire to be one, so the presumption that that's the only proper model for software development is one I don't take as a given.

For what it's worth, I don't agree you should be downvoted. But you also have made it hard to have an actual discussion by casting everything as right/wrong type of situation and then clearly dictating what is right or wrong. That really makes it hard to have a civilized discussion because there's no seeking of understanding, just refutation.

Maybe you don't, but others do. That's why Red Hat is a billion-dollar-a-year company.

Oh, absolutely. JBoss was long held up as the only viable model for being successful with open source and the inevitable model everyone would fall into. Give away the software, charge for support. The problem is support just isn't very scalable. There's room for both: different strokes for different folks.

But I still think the ideal in software should be for a tool that just works and is intuitive enough to not require training. There are a lot of tricky problem domains where that's unlikely to ever happen. Such is often the case with ideals.

> you own it forever and without limits.

The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is. Same as with those patterns of yours -- the laws could easily be changed so that you own the pattern always and forever. It's quite pointless to argue about the shoulds of the situation based on current law.

When we're talking about incentives for production and utility, it actually makes quite a bit of sense to conflate cars and music. They have many similar properties. On the consumption side, you do have to consider the added utility of making the music free, though, because some people will be able to consume it who otherwise wouldn't have paid.

The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is.

I disagree. I think it's part of the current social code/contract, not just the law. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA ads say exactly that - "you wouldn't steal a car" - because they know people find property (particularly personal property) to be something we have a right to.

> I think it's part of the current social code/contract

Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same. Laws are indirectly derived from the social code, so just move my statement up a level. You still can't answer the question of how the social code ought to view bits from how it currently views them.

Sometimes the social code is wrong, and those who believe that copyright piracy is bad for society are making the case that this is one of those times. Simply observing the current state of the social code in no way counters those arguments -- although some of them can be countered other ways.

Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same.

That's the thing: I don't believe they are. 46% (70% for young adults) of the US citizens admit to have committed copyright infringement. Almost no one agrees with large fines or with cutting off the connection for infringers.

I think there's a big disconnect between the social code and the law.

OK, there may be somewhat of a disconnect. On the other hand, that disconnect is irrelevant to my point. I'm only saying that you can't argue from what is to what should be. Whether it's the social code or the law, pointing out that it's currently in favor of copyright infringement doesn't prove anything about whether it should be in favor of copyright infringement.

The should, however, is derived from the is. Our prescriptive laws are, at least in theory, derived from descriptions of reality. Thus do we claim contraception should be legal. Thus do we claim interracial marriage should be legal. These rights are fought for; granted from first principles, but also from social realities. "All men are created equal" was only taken to include blacks after the Civil War.

So too must the public attitude towards filesharing define our laws surrounding it. The majority of people have, without caveat, expressed through their actions their belief that filesharing is, and should be, a normal and accepted part of society. This may rankle those whose paychecks are predicated upon the status quo, but it doesn't affect our shifting morals. We are a people who accept and embrace "copyright infringement". It is only once this reality is accepted that the content industry may move forwards.

Yes, but not the tautological is. "People should not be sued for their entire worth for pirating songs," isn't derived from, "People like to pirate songs." It's derived from, "punishment should be equitable," "pirating a few songs isn't that big of a deal," and "that's scary." And those are derived from even further beliefs.

The important question is, if you take the root beliefs and walk back up the tree, do all of the beliefs come to an overall support of free copying? Then you do that in aggregate for society, taking into account uncomfortable truths about the economics of music production and advertising where necessary and on a level individuals won't when they derive their inevitable personal free-riding preferences. Going from high level feeling to high level feeling ("I like file sharing" -> "file sharing is right") does not work. Almost everyone says that they would prefer to pay less tax too.

To put it another way, there are plenty of things people would do if they could get away with it. Not paying taxes, driving as fast as they want, tossing cigarette butts wherever, etc. Your exact argumentation could be used to say, "Society's views about these activities need to change," but that's not actually the case. All you are observing is that people will take advantage of situations where they can get away with something, even if it's not ultimately good for society as a whole. In no way do I accept the norms that you're deriving from this. Rather, I should say that I don't accept the way you are deriving them. My personal jury is still out on whether I think filesharing is a problem that needs to be addressed more or less forcefully.

if you own a car, you own it forever and without limits.

No you don't; the car must be titled, road-legal, emissions tested, insured, and you must be licensed to drive. Those are some of the limits on owning and using a car. Physical possession doesn't constitute a natural right.

More generally, you shouldn't pretend like you can divine human law from physical constraints. Human law serves humans. Property law serves humans. Laws might want to take into account the nature of intellectual property as bits, or they might not, depending on what is practical and desirable; but the bits are an implementation detail.

> No you don't; the car must be titled, road-legal, emissions tested, insured, and you must be licensed to drive.

That is not true. All of those things are necessary to use a car, not to own one.

I'm pretty sure you need a license to own a car in most jurisdictions, but that's not the point. (And you definitely need a title to own a car because that's how you own a car. In some jurisdictions merely possessing the physical copy of the title implies ownership of the car, which is why you always keep the title in a safe place.)

Actually, you made my point for me. The point is society limits the way people can use property for practical reasons. There's no reason you can't do that on intellectual property because "omg it's made of bits".

The title is one way to recognize the rightful owner. If the title is destroyed or missing, those who believe in natural rights would still recognize ownership. Those who believe in state-given rights might not.

Also, you mentioned earlier that mere possession does not imply rightful ownership. I totally agree, as would anyone who has been the victim of theft.

So off base. Where to begin...

> And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it.

He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content:

  The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the metadata
  was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never
  sort properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazon.

> If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music, the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.

What are you saying? Are you advocating for harsher consequences and more enforcement of existing law or more DRM? It's unusual to see so many luddites on HN. Personally, I'd prefer to see modernization of IP laws.

> He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content:

That's a tired and no longer relevant point. His point is that people will pay for the convenience of acquiring media, and then presents an example of when it was convenient to him (purchasing an ebook when the pirated version was sub par quality). However, as I showed in my video example, iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate, which shows (to me at least and I would hope everyone else) the issue is NOT acquisition of content or convenience, it's saving money.

Also no I don't think people should be punished more harshly for media piracy, I don't ever want to try and comment on the proper legal approach because I don't understand enough about the law to do it properly, but my basic thoughts on media piracy have been previously outlined here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694764

Piracy happens in most cases because it's FREE, this is the #1 reason, the fact that Spotify etc. are finding success should be the absolute proof: Spotify is free (or cheaper, if you pay for a subscription) than purchasing music, that's why people use it. Convenience is not a valid or relevant reason for (most) media piracy any more. There are some cases (such as acquiring the entire discography of an artist or group, which can't be done easily through any pre-existing product) which makes piracy more convenient, but the common use case of media acquisition (a single song or an artists latest album) is not part of the convenience.

Maybe iTunes "addressed the issue," but not in a satisfactory way. iTunes is not remotely convenient for me. I can't watch an iTunes movie on my TV without either a) Buying a useless gadget from Apple, or b) Removing the DRM. Also, things are generally available for piracy way earlier (we're talking months in some cases) than they are on iTunes. That is a huge, massive inconvenience.

As for prices, yes, iTunes is also much too expensive for many things — when I can buy a physical copy and have it shipped crosscountry to my house for a fraction of the cost of iTunes' lousy crippleware, something is wrong — but that seems beside the point. Yes, a lot of piracy happens because it's free. Most of that piracy doesn't really seem to be replacing sales and so isn't really relevant from an economic standpoint. Those people just want something for free. It seems like the point where piracy really becomes a problem is when it's the superior option even for people who could easily afford to buy your wares.

Also people like the convenience of choosing and sampling from a large catalog of songs/media while paying only for things they really like. That is why flat rate streaming services are popular. $0.99 in content industry's eyes might be very low and already accessible price. But its too high for consumer who probably listens to it once a month while sampling a lot of songs - one more reason why flat rate streaming is the way to go....

> iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate

iTunes still isn't the most convenient source for many things. My one experience with iTunes was trying to buy an album from a French musician. I spent several hours creating a fake French account with a legitimate French address and tracking down a French iTunes gift card. I had to give up, because the artist didn't take the time to manually check all 300 locales to include his album in.

You consider that 'solved'? The artist never got the money I was actively trying to give him.

You have to divorce the existence of piracy from the viability of the industry. What should matter to those running the companies in question is not how many people are getting something for nothing, but rather how much they're making off those who are paying, and how they can convince more people to pay. For some people, cost will be the overriding factor and they will always pirate, even if it's a worse experience. Others are willing to pay for an improved service. Focus on the latter, not the former. You will never squeeze money from the people who aren't willing to pay; they simply won't consume instead. Focus on making your money from those who are wiling to pay, and everyone will be better off.

> People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it.

This is the utilitarian, simplistic, convenient and completely false view. People are definitely NOT perfectly rational beings working towards their maximal, personal profit. This is why, BTW, libertarianism is a silly, childish pipe dream.

Coming back to the subject, people are perfectly aware that taking someone else's physical good may harm this person directly, that's why it's always carefully regulated by many told and untold rules. Even the most small, primitive societies have mechanisms for goods exchange and appropriation.

Digital goods aren't goods, they're information; when they're shared, the originator keeps them. Nobody never sold "information", only convenient, easy or practical access to it. People never bought "music" in the form of CDs, they bought CDs as the way to listen to the music they wanted.

> What shows market value is the desire for that product.

I disagree with this completely. There's a tremendous desire for oxygen. Literally every human being needs it nearly every second of their life. However, it has no market value because it's freely available wherever you go. You're basically saying that price should be determined solely by demand, regardless of supply. You're ignoring fully half of economic theory.

Yes, there is a huge demand for digital copies of music and video, but there's also an infinite supply of them.

If/when stealing cars becomes easy and without consequence (ie, I can copy yours and have my own), I suspect the auto industry would be in the exact same boat as the record industry is now.

I look forward to that day so we can all have awesome hybrid vehicles that run on garbage. I suspect people will also be able to make awesome mashups so I can get an EV Jeep pickup or a 2012 convertible beetle.

The stealing bit is a red herring. Copying is not stealing. I'm pretty sure I can now borrow a car and, if someone was willing to lend me a fully equipped workshop for free, build an exact replica of it without cost (in money). So in that sense, a car and a music file are the same. It's just that it's practical to do it with a music file, and not (yet) with a car.

> If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music

I think you've missed the parent's point. We have left the world where pirating is impossible. The question is how to deal with it. Thinking in unrealistic hypotheticals does little to inform the debate.

It informs the debate in the sense that it confirms music does have value. It's sophistic to claim that music has no value because people can avoid paying for it, which is I think the point your parent was trying to make.

We have to make sure that we do not conflate utility (absolute value) with market value.

Yes, market value is probably not the term we want to use to make statements about what should be done around copyright law. Anything you can't force people to pay for has no market value. Making a normative statement about whether people should have to pay for something based on market value is begging the question.

It's more important to think about utility, because that can help us answer the question of whether the government and laws should be used to create market value where there is none by trying to make a good excludable.

the reason they don't steal cars is consequence

Are you saying that 46% of US citizens* would steal a car if it was consequence free? Because I'd like to see some evidence of that.

* The number who have said to have committed copyright infringement.

Yes, I am absolutely stating that if you asked the "average American" whether or not they would steal cars if there were no consequences (financial, legal or moral) they would absolutely say "Yes, I would have no problems stealing a car".

Another way to ask the question is to say "What are the consequences of stealing a car from your neighbour?" and I would say the answers would be "Legal (theft), moral (I have taken someone else's car) and financial (I have saved money on a car)". If stealing a car was consequence free then none of these would matter.

Oh, I didn't think you were including moral consequences.

Then the questions I have are; why is copyright infringement free from moral consequences while car stealing isn't?

Because... Mark my words closely... When you steal my car, you deprive me of my car. When you take a picture of my picture of a lamborghini, you deprive me of nothing except for the artificial right to charge you for the right to take a picture of my picture of a car.

The moral consequences differ because the consequences differ.

If you are in the market of selling pictures of cars and you take a rare (in fact, entirely unique) photograph of a car, then someone else takes a picture of your picture and sets up shop next door to give them away for free, they have deprived you of your ability to earn money from distributing that which you invested in the creation of. Just like diluting your equity in a company, they have not taken your physical property (or shares) but they have taken value from you regardless.

Or let's say that I am the brother of El Presidente, and I run the state monopoly on cigars, and farmers grow tobacco and sell cigars directly to tourists, they re depriving me of the value of my mnopoly.

But they aren't depriving me of my tobacco. The two are different, which is why the morality of the two are different. Nobody denies that being able to get the police to enforce a monopoly has value, but it's not the same kind of value as the ability to enjoy smething for its intrnsic value to the owner.

Different kinds of value, therefore different kinds of morality. I'd say that the right to monopolize bits has nothing to do with the bits and everything to do with taxation or rent-seeking.

You're comparing someone selling a similar product that they had to grow on their own land using their own resources to someone taking a product that is completely unique and cannot be found in nature, and diluting your value from it down significantly without any financial repercussions to themselves. Apples and oranges.

I would think that people view car theft as more morally consequential than copyright infringement because of its tangible nature. If someone takes a car, someone else is now missing a car. However, if someone were to illegally download a song, nothing irreplaceable is taken (i.e. the artist isn't deprived of the music they have created).

I would also think that the relative value of the items makes a difference ethically. Assuming a song has a value on the market of $1 and a car has a going price of $10,000, the car is four orders of magnitude more expensive. Imagine if only one person could own a song at a time, and that song was valued the same as a car. I don't think you would see the rates of copyright infringement that you see today. For this same reason, I disagree that if car theft became consequence-free, many people would do it. The moral consequence is derived from the value of the object you are depriving someone of; a car is far more valuable than a song. Additionally, there's the ethical consequence of depriving someone of transportation, while taking a song does not really have any effects on a person's quality of life.

Absolutely they would. Similarly, an even greater majority of American drivers will disobey road safety laws (most commonly the speed limit) which are statistically shown to mitigate traffic fatalities. In other words, they will buy a ticket to a lottery of potentially killing other human beings solely to increase the perception that they're getting to their destination faster. And why? Mostly, because it's easy and there's rarely consequences.

And then, after they do that, they will spend countless hours writing message board posts on fora all over the Internet about how their speeding tickets are elaborate scams set by the government to raise revenue. Their justifications are almost as elaborate and refined as those of music pirates.

(I'm not on a high-horse here; I speed too.)

"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.

> Absolutely they would.

That's still just an assertion.

> an even greater majority of American drivers will disobey road safety laws (most commonly the speed limit) which are statistically shown to mitigate traffic fatalities.

And that's far from obvious, actually, especially when it comes to speed limits which you single out. See for example this analysis from the Cato Institute:

> Despite the fact that 33 states raised their speed limits immediately after the repeal of the mandatory federal speed limit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last October that "the traffic death rate dropped to a record low level in 1997." Moreover, the average fatality rate even fell in the states that raised their speed limits.

http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/speed-doesn...

"Everyone does it" is an important consideration, if only because making regular people into criminals erodes general respect for the rule of law. "Everyone does it" won't outweigh every harm, but it surely outweighs some.

That's what people who speed (ie: most people) say. "This is evidence we should raise the speed limit". And so we do, and state after state runs studies showing that the result of doing that is traffic fatalities.

Similarly, an even greater majority of American drivers will disobey road safety laws (most commonly the speed limit) which are statistically shown to mitigate traffic fatalities. In other words, they will buy a ticket to a lottery of potentially killing other human beings solely to increase the perception that they're getting to their destination faster. And why? Mostly, because it's easy and there's rarely consequences.

But stealing a car always has consequences: someone has one car less. Saying that people would steal cars if the stolen cars didn't disappear from their owners is illogical.

On the other hand, disobeying road safety laws doesn't in fact have consequences most of the time: people rarely get hurt. And it has been demonstrated that people are terrible at evaluating odds. So the situation is far from analogous.

"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.

It's not my argument. I was just questioning parent's claim about stealing cars.

This is just a matter of it being hard for us to weigh the relative values of probabilities. I mean, just getting in a car creates a measurable likelihood that you'll kill someone, but it doesn't bring it to a level that most people would consider worryingly high. Ditto for, say, ironing clothes — you increase the chance that somebody around you will die (e.g. from a fire), but not by enough to ping anyone's conscience. Most people view speeding the same way.

This is not at all the same thing as being willing to steal somebody else's car just because you know you won't get caught. In that case, you know that you are creating immediate harm to that person. People weigh that differently from a vague chance of killing an abstract person.

I would say it's because of consequence and anonymity, people do it because they won't be fined or arrested and no one knows about it.

People will do all sorts of crazy things if the system allows them to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

> People pirate music because it's free

I do think that's incorrect, but there's a broader picture issue that makes this irrelevant: Why does it even matter?

You're misunderstanding the original argument. Of course it's possible to make some money for selling something that is free. Specially if you convince people that it's not free, and that you'll go to jail if you do otherwise. But what they mean with "there's no market value", is that it doesn't create any new value to the economy. It's just money changing hands. If you ask me for 5 bucks and I say "yes, of course, no need to pay me back", we didn't just magically create value in the economy because I payed you 5 bucks for nothing. The value in the economy is the same, that's just money changing hands.

If I pay money for a copy of a song, that's just money changing hands. It didn't add any new value to the economy. If I didn't pay money for that copy of the song. The song would still be there. No change in value.

Unless, of course, if you make the argument that music would cease to exist if we start sharing it for free. Which I would honestly rather not get into.

So the billions of dollars that exist for developers because of the app store are not value to the economy? huh?

I'm not sure what do you think is related in your analogy. Seems like two completely separate examples. The software industry adapted to depend less on copyright faster than the music industry. You don't see as much valueless copy selling in our industry anymore. Music should be following us, but they're slower to adapt than we are. Which is exactly the whole point of this discussion. What are you trying to say?

Piracy is a reality in app stores. But you don't see developers running around to sue people downloading pirated copies. That's because they acknowledged that these people won't pay them and focus their efforts on people who do pay them. Most of the apps even have free versions just so that users can sample they app and judge it for them selves before buying it. All these are adaptations to the environment in which they operate. Content industry on the other hand refuses to adapt.

The free market is meant to make prices as low as possible, not as high as possible. That is why we have laws against monopolies and encourage competition. The argument that things should cost as much as people will pay for them is a pleasant fallacy of a businessman.

> If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music, the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.

so basically $10 per CD, everyone CAN AFFORD a wall full of CDs, lets say 10,000 of them, but they choose to steal instead? OK.

And they are welcome to keep paying for it--as the rest of us download free copies.

As for convenience, I may find it more convenient to download music from TPB or a college FTP than from iTunes, because I don't want to deal with their installer or give away my billing info. Convenience is an utterly subjective measure.

(also, your car analogy is shitty and bad and you should feel shitty and bad)

"because I don't want to deal with their installer or give away my billing info"

Of course - because once they have your billing info, they can actually bill you and your bank account will decrease by the cost of the CD.

So you pretty much proved his point - you just don't want to pay for something you can steal.

The word for this is "tragedy of the commons". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

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