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Comment by shiroiushi | Hacker News Reader

>One thing you might be overlooking is that there are often substitutes for the pirated products.

This works for software tools, but it doesn't work for movies or other artistic works. For example, personally, I'm a firm believer that no one should pirate Windows: if you can't afford it, then you have lots of free options available (namely, countless Linux distros). Same goes for Photoshop: if you can't afford it (or don't want to), there's free alternatives like Krita. These software programs are just tools to accomplish a task; if you can't get access to one, you can likely find something else to do the same thing.

You can't make this argument for watching a movie, though. You can't substitute some crap movie like Gigli or The Room for the experience of a cinematic masterpiece like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Lawrence of Arabia. It's like comparing some 4-year-old's crayon drawing to a painting by one of the masters.

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> You can't make this argument for watching a movie, though. You can't substitute some crap movie like Gigli or The Room for the experience of a cinematic masterpiece like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Lawrence of Arabia. It's like comparing some 4-year-old's crayon drawing to a painting by one of the masters.

You can't substitute mspaint for photoshop either, what a weird take.

And you can substitute any capeshit movie for any other capeshit movie since they're all the same.

Your analogy makes no sense.

There is only one Photoshop, just like there is only one 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There are lots of other tools, some of which are free, much like there are lots of other forms of culture and entertainment. Absolute masterpieces come into the public domain every year, and become free for a new generation of people to enjoy.

Why are public domain forms of culture and entertainment insufficient? The list of classics in the public domain vastly outnumbers the list of contemporary classics.

FWIW, I disagree entirely. Copyright infringement is a natural consequence of free market dynamics and the marginal costs of replication of IP being near zero, just like spillage and theft is a natural consequence of physical stores. It’s part of the cost of doing business.

I know plenty of people who manage to substitute some random crap for great movies; they just want something that will pass a few hours, they don't care about having their minds blown.

> “You can't make this argument for watching a movie, though.”

HA! And yet my local library makes this argument all the time.

Context, I had a discussion with the media buyer at my local library about how many DVDs they were de-acquisitioning, and how meager were their new purchases of movies and series. Of course I was referring to A-list material. The library has a contracted online streaming service and the librarian offered this service as equivalent. It’s not. It’s not the Criterion Collection. It’s the equivalent of carob substituted for chocolate.

Whatever you think about DVDs compared to streaming, I like going to my local library. And other libraries in my system have much better collections. It’s just poor management (I’m sure I won’t convince many others who have already committed to going streaming or don’t like their public library. So I’ll just say this, they routinely buy ‘altered to fit your television’ copies of action films. Uggg)

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