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Comment by benreesman | Hacker News Reader

I've recently switched to privacy respecting computing options, so of course lost access to everything I've bought from Apple and Amazon for the last 20 years.

If I never paid for content again they'd still be in my debt.

You wouldn't steal a car would you? No, but I'd repossess one from some delinquent son of a bitch in a suit.

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I see no strong moral argument against ripping DVDs (from the library or similar) of content you paid for on Apple or Amazon.

There's no moral argument against ripping DVDs one way or the other.

There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

But there's nothing immoral about copying or watching something you came across. The author isn't injured by it- nobody is. Except, like I said, perhaps society in general.

> arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

They really, really don't. The tradeoff of offering temporary legal privileges in exchange for a future richer public domain resulted in better stuff for everybody. Those legal privileges have become effectively permanent, so the trade is broken.

citation?

> There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

They make rich people richer, we have ample evidence for that. But research ... the majority is funded by governments. But content creation ... the majority of high quality Youtube for example in funded in advance by Patreon and similar solutions.

>There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

You raise a valid point. When copyright was first envisioned in 1710, the world population was 600M, literacy rates b/w 5-25% (rural/urban).

That argument does not stand today - we don't need protections since the number of producers of better stuff will simply compete in the market of ideas. Pearl clutching of ideas isn't a problem.

The main moral argument for intellectual property rights seems to be "because that's how the world already works and we don't want to disrupt that less it be artists or inventors that get the shaft", and yet we don't have strong cases of intellectual property protecting artists or inventors in the first place. Not as a primary effect of IP, anyway.

In my country it is not illegal to download or share copyright content for non-profit and personal use. It's the IPTVs, torrent and streaming pirate sites with Ads or asking for money the ones that should die (that's why I don't agree with Anna's Archive profiting from sharing copyrighted content).

As I said before: it's 2025, we shouldn't need an ad infested "website" to share, discover and download content in a p2p fashion. Kademilla and similar DHT truly decentralized tech has existed for more than 15 years...

The problem is that new generations want to profit from everything and have stopped "sharing is caring"

There are ways to get your content out of DRM walled gardens, e.g. Streamfab.

It's easier to just make a list and torrent.

"If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing."

I've argued that if 'buy' is DRM encrusted shit (hardware or software), then the sale should be considered fraudulent conversion to a rental.

And since its a rental, and the company still retains control, that's a lot of capex they failed to declare with the IRS. And yeah, tax fraud.

This should be pushed into the public consciousness as far as possible

You only rented licenses if you didn't receive physical copies or DRM-free downloads.

The button said "Buy" and it was next to one that said "Rent". I bought it.

If they choose to make retrieving my purchase from the warehouse difficult, then I will take it by force with a torrent.

True, but that's marketing. Without a DRM-free digital copy, it's still "For as long as we allow you to have". Steam also doesn't allow selling "licenses" or whole accounts. All money paid to streaming and "buy" on most platforms is for temporary, pretend purchase. One exception of media distributors is GoG where offline, DRM-free copies are offered.

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