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Comment by MiguelHudnandez | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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 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

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.

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