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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

it worked for google, youtube, facebook, reddit, discord, tumblr, twitter . it's not exactly rocket science

It just works, and if anything, it's a sign the law is broken if you have to ignore it to succeed (and it's profitable to do so).

That's absurd. It's also incredibly profitable to rob a bank or to dump chemicals in the river instead of properly cleaning them up, but that's not a signal the law is broken.

You've missed the "if you have to ignore it to succeed" part of my comment.

You'll do fine without robbing a bank or dumping chemical waste (neither of which are profitable in practice now, as well). Meanwhile society is littered with so many small instances of copyright infringement (memes, which usually are not fair use; fan art; etc.) that it's common practice for rightsholders to look the other way - but it shouldn't have to be common practice, it should just be policy.

Also copyright infringement does not physically harm people.

> Also copyright infringement does not physically harm people.

Starving artists might disagree here.

How about slave labor? Definitely more profitable than paying employees. Is the law broken here, too?

Just look at the pyramids. Thanks to slave labour Egypt has now a reliable source of income from tourism. Let’s make it legal again.

LOL nice. The scary thing is it's hard to tell if this is sarcasm on HN these days. Some days reading this site, I think I've found someone who genuinely believes we should end all regulation because it's more profitable without.

It was sarcasm. I’m sure I’m not a sociopath.

You don't need slave labor to run a business.

Plenty of people have made that argument for a long time. They make it to this very day - "if we have to pay a living wage (or comply with safety regulations, or give benefits, or....) we'll go out of business!"

You can also run a business without being unethical

> You've missed the "if you have to ignore it to succeed" part of my comment.

Breaking the law makes a lot of terrible business models instantly profitable.

Imagine I have a uranium refinement company. It is a colossal capital investment and not many companies do it. Law forbids me to sell weapons grade uranium for random people, but it just happens those very people are the ones who are willing to pay a lot of money for it as long as I don’t ask too many questions.

Considering that it is solely a function of how influential, powerful, how much part of the aristocratic circle you are, or have bought them off that determines whether you are thrown in jail or are celebrated; by definition is is a clear signal that the law is broken.

Just because you can't rob a bank or pollute a river does not mean that the law is applied equally at all levels and, e.g., the government/Fed is stopped robbing our banks through inflation and debt, or the corporations they are beholden to are punished ro polluting and poisoning our bodies and environments.

"the King, in his gracious majesty, has forbidden both rich and poor alike, from sleeping under bridges in the rain"

The average (successful) bank robber gets less than $5000 in exchange for a substantial risk of going to prison for 10-25 years. It does not actually pay if you think ahead enough to do the math.

> the law is broken

according to some theory, the law is always broken in some ways, but the practice of a lawful society is to converge towards not-broken, over and over again. Is theory consistent with practice? well, ask yourself which governance, which language group, which implementors of law.. since they are composed of humans.

While we are at it with a thought exercise.. how are large tech companies with new sci-fi tech breaking laws at will for profit, so different than horse-lords or Roman legions taking what they will and "fixing the mess later" .. ?

You can make a loose analogy, but there's an enormous difference between violating IP rights and literally stealing things with physical violence.

There was a time when things like the music industry's comparison of piracy to stealing cars would be laughed at.

And now people argue blocking certain network elements from loading on a website is "piracy"

Its frankly disappointing how passified most internet users have gotten with regard to corporate BS in recent years

Well, when certain users have behplden themselves and their creature comforts to the corporate teat, that is expected to happen. Somehow, I doubt most Youtubers actually have the chops to set up their own hosting/streaming operation, plus maintain relationships with advertisers who pay their bills.

Does it not make sense then, that when such people have their livelihood threatened by the Ur-Intetnet ethos, that they turn against it?

I don't condone or support it, but I can understand how the shift has happened.

The law is not necessarily broken, but enforcement is.

I want to probe a couple of assumptions here...

1. Isn't it possible that there are some businesses that shouldn't succeed? I could give examples.

2. What if someone doesn't 'have' to ignore the law, they choose to ignore it because they think they 'have' to?

Right. This observation is not unique to the AI space. Efficient infringement has been around for many years.

And Uber and Airbnb.

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