No, really, it's not. For the most part it is encouraging people to consume something for free they should have paid for.
I really don't get the love for TPB and copyright infringement in general on HN when most are dreaming of starting businesses where you need people to hand over money.
So, the Robin Hood analogy works perfectly then.
The movie and music companies aren't suffering, artists aren't suffering (in fact, in can be argued that artists embracing the new media world are flourishing), software companies and developers aren't suffering. There is more music, movies and software than ever before.
The whole piracy issue is overblown.
In the US, the copyright exists To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts (2). It essentially is allowed to exist with the hopes that on average it will further the common good, but it is limited because even at the time, there was a good deal of skepticism about that monopoly power. With regards to music and the visual and performing artists, I think many might actually argue that they are expressly uninterested in meeting the definition of "useful": "Art is art and everything is everything else." (3). But even if we offend them, it must surely be useful to lower the cost music in the air. It must surely be in the public good to reduce the cost of happiness.
I would be interested in hearing why you think right is what you think it is, your understanding of the history of where copyright came from.
(1) http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
(2) US Constitution, Article 1, section 8, clause 8
The whole piracy issue is overblown."
In real world economics, you argument actually supports the exact opposite. When supply increases and demand decreases, the ability for an artist to sell enough music to live on gets exponentially harder.
When a few people buy the music, then spread it by piracy means its not just the artist and music companies who are losing money. It's the producers, the mixers and dozens of other technical people not making a million dollars when Jay-Z's new album sells 10K copies in the first week.
The piracy issue is overblown only to those who have never experienced it first hand. It's not just the artist and the big music companies you're hurting, there's a ton of lower level people who work in the industry who are suffering because of piracy.
The argument seems to be that file-sharing is bad because "potential" jobs are destroyed. This doesn't seem like an argument formed in principle because the internet has destroyed many "potential" jobs (see blockbuster, b&n). Innovation kills jobs (and creates them) and I'm okay with this. But I'm not okay with killing innovation by means of legislation.
For that argument to make sense, you have to assume that an artist has a right to make a living selling music. If you believe that then the status quo ante was failing miserably (because almost all artists were never signed by a label with the marketing power to make them economically viable).
On a more generic level, the fight between governments and media corporations and the Pirate Bay are interesting from a technological and ideological standpoint; How does a service stay operational against a large and well financed fight that wants to shut it down?
While "Piracy" is the very visible fight, this question is likewise relevant to activists and protesters as well as free speech in repressive governments. It is also relevant to providers that are attacked by malcontents, black hat organizations, and less-than-egalitarian governments that are attempting to disrupt their services.
Whatever you think of TPB, you have to give them credit for being both nimble and technologically savvy in solving a problem of service disruption against what many would see as long odds. They give us an interesting case study of how to deal with service disruption and how it can be dealt with. All the companies that pass through HN have to deal with the problems of Uptime, especially in the case of adversarial situations that are beyond our control.
This particular case is interesting because the service is dealing with a well organized and deliberate attack against it as well as it's users. Downtime due to malicious hackers and automated attacks is a thorny problem. It becomes trickier when we want to protect sensitive customer data.
While I don't expect a detailed technical breakdown of their systems, I would love to read their whitepaper.
You act as though people's consumption of media is this black hole, this void that feeds but produces nothing of value. It can't be further from the truth. People actively market the things they listen to and enjoy. They remix and create new content. They integrate it into their culture and social networks (both the virtual and meatspace ones).
This is value creation at its finest, and yet no dollar amount is placed on it (yet).
As to TPB specificly it's think anime fan subs for nitch shows that are never going to be released in the US.
Games, movies, TV Shows, Desktop Software and Market apps; everything that is available for pirating, will be pirated. Sure, some part of it is due to the fact that they cannot buy-watch-use this material either due to them being delay for years or because they require Credit Cards while most Indians have a Debit Card but that is a very small percentage of the entire sales loss.
Therefore, Indians do not buy digital content as often as their US counterparts who are able to legally and easily.
You believe that this is some part of it. I believe that this is ALL of it. If media companies made it easier for people to get access to media easily and for a reasonable price, piracy will all but disappear.
I don't care if some artist or some coder somewhere doesn't get paid for some work well done. The future of our species is at stake here and we are trying to paint a bright future for your great grandchildren.
A future where your children rule over the machine, not where the machine rules over you. In my machine, I may break the law if I choose to do so. the machine under my desk shall not be made into an iron fist of the government. I will fight this to the death. we have your best interests in mind. the internet is going to become a mind, and we need to protect this baby. It is still an infant.
the government has no idea how to raise it, it only knows how to bleed it and tax it. I give this baby a voice.
I didn't know being able to watch Game of Thrones 30 minutes after it airs on HBO via your computer without paying was such a dire thing.