Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

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> Why does that matter?

It matters because the economic argument is the only marginally justifiable motivation for the heavy handed enforcement of copyright over civil rights. And I'm being very generous in using the word "justifiable".

> People pirate media because they don't want to pay for it.

People pirate media because they understand they shouldn't have to pay for it. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's). Everything else is either tax or extortion.

You know, passive phrases like "owning the rights" are so insidiously misleading. Nobody "owns rights", all that actually happens is that the rights of others get limited. That's how this convoluted artificial construct works.

No, I'm not denying that that leaves us with the original problem of stimulating the creation and distribution of original work.

But millions have woken up from the shared illusion of copyright, and no amount of enforcement, DRM or just incessantly repeating the words "stealing", "pirate" etcetera is going to put them back to sleep.

> People pirate media because they don't want to pay for it.

>>> People pirate media because they understand they shouldn't have to pay for it. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's). Everything else is either tax or extortion.

I guess I just come at this from a different angle. I never really felt that I was entitled to media that I didn't produce myself. And that if I wanted that media, there is a price to pay for it. And that if you don't want the media, you don't pay a price for it.

Am I missing something here?

Yes, he's objecting to the idea that intellectual property is valid, and there's a good case to be made for that.

People instinctively feel paying for property and services is justified, but not for information and intellectual property is just a way of trying to make people think information is property. If I steal something from you, I must have deprived you of it; copying is not stealing.

You are raising good point, as information before the modern age used to be generally free (freedom + beer), and artists earned on performance.

It's really just the entertainment media version of patent trolling... it will eventually be killed or moderated just like patent trolling is. We just have to wait until someone figures out a better system to replace them with.

This semantic argument really needs to die. The legality and/or morality of the act is not determined by its label. Stealing or not, it is immoral and illegal to appropriate digital goods for oneself without honoring the financial stipulations set forth by the creator/owner of the property.

That is your opinion, many disagree. Your morals may not be my morals and many reject any notion of information copying being wrong in any way. You're still trying to call information property that can be owned, apparently not realizing that the very concept is being rejected, information is not property and the concept of ownership simply makes no sense.

The very notion of ownership stems from physical scarcity, the concept does not logically transfer to digital information.

This is why this debate is really a religious one. It's your beliefs against mine. You believe digitization relinquishes one's right to future revenue from the creation. I do not.

In a world where your beliefs are supported by the courts, a creator's only means to ensure a revenue stream from their creations is to present them only in controlled physical environments free of digitizers.

I don't think that's a better world than the one where creators can expect revenue by selling their digitized creations.

>In a world where your beliefs are supported by the courts, a creator's only means to ensure a revenue stream from their creations is to present them only in controlled physical environments free of digitizers.

Bullcrap. They'd just have to make their money in ways that do not depend on distribution of non-scarce goods. And they already do.

Musicians, for example, are performers. They have a service to sell. That's how many make their bucks. There's models like Kickstarter, where you pay upfront - for the act of creating, not for the eventual distribution (which is costless). Donations or patronage can be a valid source of income, too.

Your claim that we need to restrict access to a good that is inherently not scarce (and indeed, not depletable) for artists to make a living at all is a disingenuous lie and flies in the face of reality.

You're quite simply wrong; content creators have plenty of ways to make money other than distribution. Secondly, the market doesn't owe creators a living and manipulating the market by creating an artificial concept that allows someone to own information is wrong.

If the only way a creator can make money is by using law to create artificial scarcity, then whatever he's creating isn't deserving of pay; if it were, the market would value it without the fake scarcity imposed by law. There was a time when creators were paid to create, rather than for content distribution, we need to return to those times.

You are simply defending the status quote without understanding the critique against it.

All books and the information contained therein should be free because Xerox allows you to copy them?

Without physical scarcity, the concept of ownership makes no sense. You can't own information.

But you can charge for access to that information, and unfortunately for those who think they should have the right to free access to any information because it is in digital format are going to be on the wrong side of the law for many years to come I believe...

> But you can charge for access to that information

Only because laws force us to, not because it's the proper market solution to the problem. And it has nothing to do with being digital; if you think it does, you don't understand the complaint. All information should be freely copyable. Whether it's photocopying a book, or burning a copy of a CD, I've deprived no one of anything because there is no natural scarcity of anything that is copyable and thus no justification for ownership claims of pure information. If I see a chair you have that I like, and I build a complete perfect replica of it, I've not taken anything from you, you have no natural claim of damage.

Not really. If IP laws in the US went poof tomorrow, then say goodbye to the multimillion dollar tv shows and movies you think you deserve to have access to for free. People won't spend time creating these things anymore because there isn't any monetary incentive to do so.

Sure you will retort with yes there will be content, but it will be cheap, crap content and say goodbye to the next Harry Potter, Chris Nolans and World of Warcrafts of the world.

Copyright has worked because even due to the ability to easily duplicate content (previously via Xerox), now via the net, content creators see it as a viable way to protect their time spent creating something and to (hopefully) reward their efforts.

Again, this just isn't true. See the movie industry learning that to avoid piracy of new movies from killing profits, they need only release worldwide all at once. People will happily pay money for the experience of the theater; they pirate when it's the only way to get something or when a company is asking too much for something.

Secondly, absent ip, they'd just make more but cheaper movies to target more niche markets; the blockbuster isn't really a great business model to begin with, it just works because law makes an artificial market for it. If the market can't naturally support the blockbuster, then they should go away. A world absent more Michael Bay flicks is a better world anyway.

How is the next 300 million dollar Batman flick going to ever get made if the studios let everyone go see the movie for free? It won't get made.

No it isn't because there is zero demand for those types of movies, in fact there is a huge demand. It is because of copyright that they get the up front funding as the studios can be sure they have protection to make up the cost at release time (if the audiences like the flick enough to go see it).

> How is the next 300 million dollar Batman flick going to ever get made if the studios let everyone go see the movie for free? It won't get made.

What a fucking loss for humanity.

I'm pretty sure JK Rowling would have written Harry Potter (the book) with or without IP laws. I'm pretty sure Notch would have written Minecraft with or without IP laws. I'm pretty sure there were several bloody fantastic games made in the 90s when game piracy was easier and more common.

> How is the next 300 million dollar Batman flick going to ever get made if the studios let everyone go see the movie for free? It won't get made.

IP isn't what makes people pay to see Batman. The loss of IP would not prevent studios from making a killing with Batman at a theater, they'd just have to be a touch more creative in controlling distribution, timing, and release of the official copy. Even without IP, they can contract with the theater to make it a violation of the contract for the theater to copy the film as a condition of getting it. IP isn't what protects the movie industry, it's what protects the home video industry and some of the long tail profits.

Also, making a great movie doesn't require 300 million dollars, and the world did just fine before 300 million dollars movies existed.

>I guess I just come at this from a different angle. I never really felt that I was entitled to media that I didn't produce myself.

I never felt that an organization had the right to prevent me from accessing a piece of our culture because they have a piece of paper.

Copyright as it exists today transfers ownership of culture from artists to corporation; subsequent bartering of ownership means that the price _you_ want to pay goes nowhere near those what made it.

It is a travesty that Apple was _bragging_ that the Beatles music was in the iTunes store, as if that was some accomplishment of openness instead of lawyerly bickering.

Which is all to say: it isn't the paying for it that makes people oppose copyright. It's who we'd have to pay.

It's a travesty that consumers still think producers must relinquish all rights to income post-digitization. You don't have a "right" to culture. If it weren't for the risk and expense of marketing the corporations invest in the success of the music, you probably wouldn't have ever heard of the music to download it.

I am glad the courts have consistently ruled in favor of the producers over the privileged consumer class. We need more creativity and production. Production should be rewarded.

>> "I never felt that an organization had the right to prevent me from accessing a piece of our culture because they have a piece of paper."

All paintings, music, theater, opera, digital photographs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera: So this is all free then? Sounds good to me. I mean, if you're telling me I'm entitled to all of this, I guess that's pretty cool. Not sure my friends who went to film school will like not having jobs, but if that's what the world owes me... too bad for them.

>> "Which is all to say: it isn't the paying for it that makes people oppose copyright. It's who we'd have to pay."

You don't like music executives.

I don't like banks.

But if I want to buy a house I'm going to have to go through one in all likelihood. Because I hate bankers, that does not entitle me to a free house.

And what do you do professionally? What if a large part of the country decided they don't like your industry, and that you shouldn't be paid for any of your services or goods?

I never really felt that I was entitled to media that I didn't produce myself.

That's not the question. The question is whether you're entitled to prohibit people from sharing media with each other.

If you don't feel entitled to the media, nobody is saying you must get it. You're free to remain media-less.

> Am I missing something here?

The current view from the entitled that since it is easy to get for free, then there isn't any reason why it shouldn't legally be free otherwise. No amount of grand vision writeups on how information wants to be free will say anything different than this basic point.

Everything should be free, except of course whatever the entitled do for work, that obviously should be paid for, because hey that actually affects their income, not someone elses.

Devil's Advocate here. The phrase "owning the rights" applies to the physical world as well as to media. You "own the rights" to your land. You then get to restrict what other people do on your land. This is just as arbitrary and artificial a construct as copyright.

This is very true, and its shocking sometimes to realize how your "ownership" of physical property can be restricted by third parties.

The key difference between physical property and intellectual property is the ease of rights enforcement. It's easy to detect when someone has infringed your rights on your own physical property. The progress of the internet, on the other hand, makes it constantly harder to detect and punish infringement of intellectual property rights. It is still unknown whether reversing this trend will retard the potential of the Internet, but certain recent legislative attempts lead me to believe so.

I think that the debate will ultimately turn on the question of ease of enforcement. All the philosophical trappings of whether certain rights should be granted is irrelevant if they can't be granted.

Land is rival: the owner needs to restrict others in order to not be restricted from accessing the land themself.

Informational goods are nonrival: any number of people can use them without obstructing anyone else's use.

So normal property laws are not 'just as arbitrary and artificial' as intellectual monopoly laws: they are grounded in actual physical limitations.

You then get to restrict what other people do on your land.

Even this is far from universal. In many countries (Norway and Sweden for example), there are strict rules on what you can and cannot restrict people from doing on your land. You cannot stop me from walking across your land, camping on your land or foraging for food on your land (assuming of course I do these things in a reasonable and sensible manner, ie do my best to remain out of sight, don't camp too close to buildings, don't cut down trees or damage crops, don't stay in one place for too long etc, etc. ). Basically my right to free access to nature supersedes your right to do what you want with your land. The same sort of conceptual argument could be made about the "rights" to media.

> People pirate media because they understand they shouldn't have to pay for it. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's). Everything else is either tax or extortion.

People pirate media because they can. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's) because we can't get away without doing so due to technical and/or legal constraints. Everything else is rationalization.

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