How to stop illegal downloads | Hacker News Reader

How to stop illegal downloads

danariely.com

31 pointsnoahtkoch36 comments

>Then I asked him to imagine if the product in question represented several months or even years of his life. All that time he was creating, writing, editing, and marketing this thing in order to fund his next project. And then everyone downloaded it, illegally, for free.

So he responded to an actual argument with an appeal to emotions? And he seems to be proud of this?

Sorry, no. If you have a problem with an argument, you point out the flaw in the argument. You don't try to make the person giving the argument feel bad for the conclusion.

> It turns out that we view ourselves categorically as either good or bad, and moving from being 3% legal to being 4% legal is not a very compelling motivation.

This is very silly reasoning. People who download illegally don't view themselves as "bad", and most people I know who download illegally (aka "most people I know") also buy stuff in the same category as what they download.

Yes, I would love to hear this man explain how prices should be structured for a country like India or China.

Oh, you make less than 20$ a day? Well, I guess that means there is no legal way for you to become culturally enlightened.

I mean the claims that pirating are bad are easy for me to buy for pure entertainment, but I think it really falls apart when it comes to music and especially books. The idea of being able to distribute ereaders with 100g sticks filled with textbooks in any wanted language - it astounds me. It's so cheap. So easy. So many children would be able to get such a head start on life, with so many wonderful words to guide them on their path to becoming an adult.

But it will never, ever happen. Not until people start thinking less about exchanging money with other rich people.

> So he responded to an actual argument with an appeal to emotions? And he seems to be proud of this?

Not only that; his question is flawed and ironically very dishonest. Anyone who produces music, movies, games or books knows from the beginning they will be downloaded for free whether the author allows it or not. He will not unexpectedly find himself in that situation as the article implies.

With that in mind, anyone who wish to product music etc. has to reconcile themselves with this fact, and find a business model that works in the real world, not some idealized result of wishful thinking. Anything else would be madness.

Therefore, the answer to the question should be "AWESOME! Everyone downloaded it." Your worst nightmare should be that no one finds it worth pirating.

By preemptively dismissing any and all "rationalizations" as examples of flawed logic, this wise author has effectively created a black hole into which he can throw any counter-argument of his thesis, dismissing it all as "proving my point". Yikes - do we want to pay attention to the kind of rhetoretician who constructs such a system wherein no possible counter-argument is allowable?

I think you're missing his point. The ability to rationalize is what allows people to do bad things. Do you think someone who wants to steal something is going to say "Yeah, this is bad, but I'm going to do it anyway"? Not very often. It's probably more like: "I've had really bad luck in my life lately; I need this to help my family/etc...; One item won't make a difference to the shopkeeper".

So, no, he's not automatically dismissing any counterargument. He's saying that the ability to rationalize anything is a strong reason for immoral behavior.

For me he automatically dismissed the argument of the student giving his reasons to download (he wouldn't buy the music anyway, and the disc production are exploiting the artists).

If I killed somebody and tried to rationalize it (he would have died at some point anyway, maybe he was a bad person, etc.), you could retort that no matter what, I killed someone and it's just bad because you are causing lots of harm (the victim, his family and friends, etc.), but you couldn't tell someone who downloaded illegally some music that it's just a bad thing to do.

That's why I agree with the GP that his mention of the rationalization process is here to automatically dismiss counter argument. It is an interesting point, and I am sure people used this process to have a clear conscience having done really bad things, but it is not by itself a counter-argument to illegal download, or anything else.

Just like you attack any argument, by attacking its premises. In this case you pointed out the obvious one to attack, the assumption that rationalization is bad. I think this is a flawed understanding of how ethical systems evolve, that rationalization is how we use our rational mind to test and build our ethical systems. Otherwise we are merely left with appealing to authority as the only way to validate our ethical systems.

I like Ariely but he's off the mark here, and ironically I think his "conversion" is just as much a rationalization as any he represented in this post.

It sucks to work hard on something that you're not renumerated for to the degree you'd like. Suddenly maybe you're a big enough name that this isn't simply due to obscurity, and you resent the fact that people got something out of your effort without paying you for it. But the only thing obligating them to do so in an absolute sense is copyright, and the moral compass of great swaths of the general public seems to have evolved quite decisively beyond it, and as problematic as that is for the current model of creative business I doubt it will change any time soon. I'm no economist but I suspect it has to do with an innate understanding of the value of the bits in and of themselves, which due to the low cost of reproduction, is practically zero. This causes cognitive dissonance in some, who believe it is their moral duty to support the originators of those bits by purchasing them through on online store, but apart from the few who actually take an overtly principled stance on the matter, I suspect most who prefer this mode of distribution actually do so because what they are really buying is the convenience and quality of the transaction.

So yeah, artists deserve a fair shake in all this. But perhaps it's more sensible to recognize the market is shifting and that the artists and publishers of the future are going to need to take new approaches toward monetization.

> But the only thing obligating them to do so in an absolute sense is copyright, and the moral compass of great swaths of the general public seems to have evolved quite decisively beyond it, and as problematic as that is for the current model of creative business I doubt it will change any time soon.

I wouldn't be so sure respect for intellectual property was ever all that widespread.

We've simply transitioned from a state in which it was difficult to 'disrespect' intellectual property, to one in which it couldn't be easier.

I'm sure if, in the past, people could have costlessly and near-instantly duplicated and shared vinyl records, cassettes, etc. people would have done it in similarly large numbers as they do today.

That is because prior to the widespread availability of the Internet and of PCs, only a tiny minority of people were ever expected to think about copyrights. Nobody was being sued for copying pages from a book using their pen.

Supposedly, we expect people who have no legal background or training at all to understand a legal issue that is full of nuances and subtleties. Except that in reality, nobody expects people to be thinking about that, even the RIAA and MPAA, which is why restriction systems are being deployed all over the place. Everyone knows that the average American citizen never cared about copyrights and was only buying from "legitimate" sources because there was no alternative.

I think this issue deserves more thought and introspection than Ariely seems to have given it so far.

I think grecy's comparison to Catholicism is very striking. One common criticism of Christian religions is centered on the idea of "original sin" -- the idea that people are inherently evil and need to be saved. A similar criticism could (and maybe should) be applied to any law that is broken by a large number of citizens. When this happens, I would take it as a sign that there is something wrong with the law, not with people.

But anyway, the key thing is that Ariely seems to have a really exciting research question here, which is how and why do people rationalize illegal downloading, and he seems to be tossing it away in favor of dictating morality at them through a megaphone.

I download ebooks as well for several reasons without paying for them. I mostly get a epub version of a book and start reading it. This way I can see if I like the content and the style it's written in. I will get the book as a hardcover version and continue reading on paper at home and on my kindle on the go if I like the content after the first three chapter. So I have the advantages of both media. However, I wouldn't purchase the book a second time as ebook, because it's doesn't make any sense to pay for the same content again. And I wouldn't buy a ebook in the Kindle store, because I don't support this DRM crap at all. It's the same with movies. You'll have more disadvantages if you are honest and buy the movies then just downloading it from the pirate bay _without_ copy protection, ads & propaganda("bootlegger are criminals and have to go to jail for five years. Buy your movies").

I think it is very hard for people to understand the value of something that you can duplicate 1 million times with no additional resources or effort. Most honest people know that if you spent time building a birdhouse and they just took it from you, that they are stealing. You don't have it anymore and you spent time and money to make it. If there was a magic "replicator" machine, I think even our normal idea of what theft is, would change. If I could copy your birdhouse, and you could still keep your birdhouse, how is that even stealing? It think the only thing that would ever work is to allow people to give a "token" payment, perhaps a few cents, for the privilege of duplicated electronic content. iTunes offers something approaching that idea and it is doing great.

If I could copy someone's birdhouse, and they could still keep it, why should they even bother putting time into making the birdhouse in the first place if the whole point was to make money off of it? In that case, there's no incentive to create anything at all.

And secondly, I believe people need to respect other people's rules for their own content. It's rude to disregard someone's wishes with regard to what they've created. If someone says "Yeah, go ahead and feel free to copy my book" then that's fine. But if someone says "I'd really prefer it if people did not copy and distribute my work", and you do so anyway, well... that's just not very nice because you're disrespecting that person's wishes.

The only thing that matters when it comes to copyrights is what benefits society. It is not a matter of being rude or not being rude, it is not a matter of morality, it is not a matter of the creator's wishes, it is a matter of ensuring that the general public has access to "science and useful arts." Copyrights were created to promote businesses that make copies of creative works, because in the 18th century that was the best way to spread knowledge and art.

Of course, today we have a much better system for spreading knowledge: the Internet. We should be promoting that, and developing new systems for paying for creative work that are based on using the Internet (and especially peer to peer networks) to spread that work.

You're saying an author's own wishes do not matter in the manner his work is treated?

That is correct. The intent of copyright is not to support the wishes of the author, but to stimulate the progress of arts and sciences. http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/events/courses/1996/cmwh/Copyright/...

I like this. Living in America, I get bombarded with the Libertarian idea that one should focus on the self so much that I forget that there was a time when focusing on the progress of society was not heresy.

> If I could copy someone's birdhouse, and they could still keep it, why should they even bother putting time into making the birdhouse in the first place if the whole point was to make money off of it? In that case, there's no incentive to create anything at all.

You've just glimpsed the future. The creation of content without monetization as the primary, or indeed any, motivation.

There are other motivations to create original content, and monetization can be achieved indirectly (e.g. musicians sharing their music for free to sell concert tickets or merchandise, authors writing books to sell public speaking engagements) so that those involved in the creation of original content can still earn a living doing so.

Right, I can see things headed that way. I mean, people already create a lot of things just because they want to, and they want to see them shared.

The problem is that when the creation of something is expressly for the purpose of maintaining someone's livelihood, they should be the only person who decides how that content is handled. It isn't (or shouldn't) be up to everyone else to decide how their work is distributed just because everyone else thinks the world would be a better place if they just copied it all over the place.

The fact that their livelihood depends on other people consuming the content they create in specific ways (i.e. remunerating them in the process) does not give them the right to limit the ways in which other people can consume said content.

My opinion is the same as Rick Falkvinge's: "The role of any entrepreneur is to make money given the contemporary constraints of society and technology. They do not get to dismantle civil liberties, even if - and perhaps especially if - they are unable to make money in the face of sustained civil liberties."

What is funny is that if you look for the name of the book and the format you want the book to be, there is no single download link where you can buy.

So if this guy wants to sell, why don't give that options to the users. When the SEO will come to the books world?

To arrive at this dubious conclusion, the author, intentionally or not, mixes up a number of concepts that really have to be kept separate, should one want to arrive at any sane conclusion:

1) Not every download of his book is automatically illegal. Many countries have laws in which uploading constitutes copyright infringement, which can fall under criminal code if done commercially or on large scale, but where downloading is entirely legal. Calling people "illegal downloaders" won't help his case.

2) Identifying copyright infringement with theft does not help his case either. Such rhetoric is often used to make an action seem worse than it would otherwise be, but is dishonest and usually does not lead to a fruitful discussion.

3) From "illegal download" he makes the jump to "dishonesty". This confuses the matter of legality with morality. Ideally the two would align perfectly, but in practice this is often not so. Copyright law seems to be a field where very many people have doubts on whether the current system is a good one.

Once he has connected downloaders to "dishonesty", the whole thing essentially degrades into a bad rant. Making broad accusations of immorality, implying that people should think of themselves as polluted, and then claiming a moral high ground for himself, offering others a "fresh start" and "amnesty" won't accomplish any of the outcomes he seeks.

"Between September 2003 and April 2004, the RIAA, through its Clean Slate Program, offered individual file sharers amnesty for past infringements, 'on the condition that they refrain from future infringement,' and delete the infringing material."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_group_efforts_against_fil...

This is all too closely tied to "confession" in the Catholic sense.

Ugh.

Or perhaps we can be "Born again users".

I do use a Borne Again Shell :P

ObOnTopic: I thought the way copyright was written was that downloading is not illegal, but uploading (transmitting) was that actual illegal action. The only reason torrenters get in trouble is because they upload and download at the same time.

That could be a legal technicality in which someone writes a torrent client to download only, as to show lack of culpability in the act of uploading. Of course, this does indeed kill the network.

BitThief is a free riding BitTorrent client, that is, it downloads from BitTorrent swarms without contributing any resources itself.

http://bitthief.ethz.ch/

I believe it depends on the country. I think in Switzerland (and perhaps Canada for music?) downloading copyrighted material was legal, but uploading was illegal. But I am pretty sure that is not the case for the US, and downloading is still copyright infringement.

Perhaps food for thought here http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/p2p-downloading-i...

Amnesty isn't going to work because people don't feel like they're going to be caught, let alone punished. They feel safe downloading content and will even if the threat of enforcement is raised; humans have a natural tendency to feel safe doing "dangerous" things if they do them often and are familiar, i.e. driving, smoking, habitually lying or cheating.

People pirate in part for convenience and in part so they can sample the goods without risk. I doubt most people pirate to save money, but in all cases, either having a DRM-free product with a strong money-back guarantee, or offering all content available as an unlimited use subscription based product (like Safari) would make it more appealing to whip out that credit card, rather than pirate.

Sometimes people are just too poor to buy the content, in which case I think there should be a "food stamps" program for books. Yes, I know libraries exist but they're either poorly stocked or inconvenient in the eyes of younger people, making piracy uber attractive.

> However, the behaviors we most often observe and notice are ones that are outside of the legitimate domain (e.g., doping in sports, infidelity by politicians, exaggerated resumes by CEOs) and in these cases the social proof can change things for the worse.

The idea of scandal also has its place in the catholic doctrine, see the Catechism 2284-2287[1]:

> 2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. the person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense. [...]

[1] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P80.HTM

Oddly enough the first ebook I wrote for Kindle was pirated. It was not the best book, but sold 800+ copies in the first few months. I am trying to improve as a writer so I can write better. The ebook only got one star in a review, and I did not use DRM to protect it, so I guess someone bought it for 99 cents and then converted it to other formats and pirated it.

In a way it made my ebook more popular when it was given away for free. Kindle only allows me 5 days of a free Kindle Select promotion every 90 days, but because the book was illegally downloaded it someone became more popular even if it was hard to read and poorly formatted.

Eventually the Bit Torrent site took it down, and Amazon found it and I guess issued a cease and desist order or something.

I did not use DRM to protect it, so I guess someone bought it for 99 cents and then converted it to other formats and pirated it.

Even if you use DRM, the DRM can often be stripped off and then pirated. This is possible on the Amazon Kindle Store at least.

Easy. Make it legal.

Easier , make a product that cannot be downloaded , instead of selling ebooks , make an paid online eduction service where the added value is that you can ask question directly to the teacher giving the class, have your lessons updated ,etc... I'm a musician , i used to try to sell music online, now i sell my production talents to other musicians. That cannot be downloaded. So instead of trying to sell "goods" , sell services.

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