Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by planetguy | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

planetguy

Internet vigilantes do seem to have a somewhat confused reaction to copyright law.

The Oatmeal trying to get its content taken down from FunnyJunk: good.

Most other copyright holders trying to get their content taken down from almost anywhere else on the internet: bad.

It isn't even about the legal niceties of the situation, it's about the vibe, man.

View on HN

The Oatmeal's content is owned by the creator and is made freely available. FunnyJunk did not even credit Inman, they were effectively stealing his copyright, not merely pirating content.

"Most other copyright holders" -- this is much too general a claim.

Do people really complain if a south park episode is taken down from youtube? No, they don't. South Park episodes can easily be viewed at South Park studios.

Do people really complain that their bootlegged copy of Avengers got taken down from a filesharing site? Yes, but not from a vigilante-style moral high ground. What people really complain about is when invasive DRM-schemes are deployed that prevent normal people from, say, making a single copy of a movie they paid for.

Do people complain when a short youtube clip is taken down (eg, a highlight from a sports game)? Yes. Why? When the clip is not available anyhwere else and it kills the conversation. People linked that video in articles and forums and emails and discussions and now it's gone.

Do people complain when mashups involving copyrighted content are taken down? Yes, because mashups are believed to be fair use.

Do people complain when a home video gets taken down because for several seconds you can hear a copyrighted movie playing in the background? Yes, because that's just fucking ridiculous and I'm sure you agree.

I think you can now see some distinctions between what internet vigilantes tend to complain about and what actually happened with TheOatmeal, and the contradction only appears because you've abstracted and stereotyped way too much.

> Do people really complain if a south park episode is taken down from youtube?

Actually, it does kind of annoy me:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/layout/common/img/geoblock/m...

I've been seeing that for yonks now...

In fact, this is one of the things that pisses me off most about copyright law: the fact that it's still rooted in a pre-internet past where content owners are able to exploit geography for financial gain.

And it's not even clear to me what additional financial gain they are getting from most of the geo-blocking shenanigans.

I think it has to do with non-compete licensing. If they've licensed for Foo to be their distribution agent in country Bar, it doesn't do well to undermine their distribution rights with the online offering.

Fair enough. I think you get the main idea, though, which is that the "vibe" regarding exercise of copyright is influenced by many specific and often important details, even if not every person is always able to clearly articulate those details.

Glossing over those important details is what makes the behavior appear inconsistent (or "confused" as the previous poster suggested).

Another thing that annoys me about southparkstudios is you cannot view a new episode for an extended period of time. Why not just have another advertisement or two for the latest episodes and allow viewers to see them immediately?

It's like every little step towards the media availability that users deserve has to be beaten out of these studios. Granted that southparkstudios.com is a huge step forward....

Even pirates usually think that the original creators deserve credit, and many frown on taking other people's creations and earning money from them.

As an example, some people have called Inman a hypocrite for downloading Game of Thrones (because he couldn't find a way to pay for it), but still complaining about FunnyJunk. But there's a difference between A: watching Game of Thrones for free, and B: removing all credits from it, rebranding it as "Funnyjunk's Game of Thrones", and distributing it with Funnyjunk's ads.

You know, you shouldn't expect that "internet vigilantes" be consistent unless you know they're the same person. Yesterday I saw a website that was for gay marriage. The day before that I saw a website that was against gay marriage. But I'm not going to complain that the internet should make up its mind on the matter.

Second, it's quite possible for someone to be upset at FunnyJunk threatening to sue The Oatmeal even if they don't care about FunnyJunk's copyright infringement.

The only distinction I can think of is that in this case, copyright claimant is the original artist, and not a corporation.

In cases of movie & music piracy, the copyright claimant is a corporation. I suspect that copyright violators will rationalize the act as something that has negligible effect on the artist.

So, the distinction is self-serving and intellectually dishonest rationalization? Not exactly surprising.

I believe this is the same distinction the movie/music industry uses between what they rip off and what their potential customers use.

I mean I'm sure right now the RIAA is taking down most of their electronic back catalog until they figure out how to compensate the original artists behind the Amen Break sample.

For anyone with 20 minutes to spare, here is a great video explaining the prevalence of the "Amen Break" sample.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

It's a rebuttal to an argument with flawed assumptions anyway. "Internet vigilante" is a stereotype and we have no way of knowing that the people supporting Inman are the same people who complain about unspecified copyright holders taking down unspecified content from unspecified sites under unspecified conditions.

I notice you're ignoring most of the other explanations of this behavior, and instead picking on this one. Why?

If there's one thing that the study of ethics has consistently proven is that people will rationalize and bend their ethical code to fit their behavior and not change their behavior to live up to their ethical code. There are notable exceptions, but I'm generalizing on purpose.

So, when the same people get upset about FunnyJunk "stealing" content from TheOatmeal and then torrent Game of Thrones, they have to adapt their ethical code from "copyright infringement is bad" to "infringing upon an individual's copyright is different from infringing upon a corporation's copyright" or "HBO won't let me consume their media in the way that I want when I want it, so I'm just going to torrent it"

> they have to adapt their ethical code from "copyright infringement is bad"

How about "plagiarism is bad" and/or "monetarily profiting off the work of others is bad"? Both of those are self-consistent in this context.

Other very big distinction: the unauthorized user of the copyrighted work is making money out of it.

Most "internet vigilantes" support free exchange of copyrighted works between individuals, not companies taking your stuff and making money with it.

What about torrent trackers making money showing ads ? Or sites like Megaupload who made loads of money from ads ?

It's right that the final pirate is not making money... but the pirate in the middle is.

This is backwards. There is no "copyright claimant". Inman is complaining about having his works reproduced to push ad revenue without his permission but all he's doing is saying "bad on you, please stop". He's not filing a lawsuit. It's the copyright violator in this case who is making use of legal threats. Trying to map this onto the standard narrative of a copyright owner making a claim against a "pirate" or "sharer" is a mistake that will only lead to incorrect conclusions.

There's also the fact that the artist didn't sue, he just said "please stop" and made a funny comic about it. And the fact that the attribution was being removed.

I don't think very many people would be hating on the Hollywood studios if they were just saying, "Hey, man, if you're going to be putting up a torrent of our movie, please link back to us" without even getting the lawyers involved.

He wasn't asking the guy to take it down in this instance. He was directly responding to the legal threat. The history of the situation is there for context.

Right. The internet is not confused about this issue. The internet backlash is against FunnyJunk threatening a lawsuit against the Oatmeal. The Oatmeal could not have raised $100k+ in support of suing FunnyJunk.

edit: removed personal reference

Reply on news.ycombinator.com