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Comment by ishansharma | Hacker News Reader

Now if whole music, movie and gaming industry could think like this:

"If people buy my ebook and then distribute it to 20 people, and each of those distributes it to 20 more, and those to 20 more … I’ve lost $76,000 in ebook revenues. Perhaps. That’s if you agree with the assumption that all those people would have bought the ebook if it hadn’t been freely distributed. I don’t buy that. In this example, thousands of people are reading my work (and learning about Zen Habits) who wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s good for any content creator. Also: I’ve made more money since releasing copyright, by far, than when I had copyright." -From the page.

Love his viewpoint about copyright and piracy.

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If a content creator wants to release everything they've ever created without copyright, or for free, they should absolutely have the right to do that. However a content creator should also have the right to be restrictive, to say that only people that pay $1000 for a license can access the content, or that another company can sell access in return for $1000.

    That’s good for any content creator

That's good for any content creator if they value in-discriminatory consumption, which they are under no obligation to value. A content creator should have control over their content. It should be just as acceptable for this author to want everyone to have access for free as it is for another author to want $10 for every copy.

If you love and agree with his view point, great, but so many people agree with him and then take it as far as "well this content creator is okay with it, so all content creators should be!".

A content creator should have control over their content.

Absolutely! Up and until they decide to relinquish it by selling a copy to someone. Then that person should have control over his or her copy.

But should that control extend to the right to make further copies? If you say yes, then you've effectively eliminated the creator's control over their work, since copies are effectively free to distribute. If you say no, then you're stuck with a policy that there's no practical way to enforce.

should that control extend to the right to make further copies?

Sure, they bought it, it's theirs. That question makes as much sense as asking if car owners should be able to give lifts with his own car.

you've effectively eliminated the creator's control over their work

No, the creator did that by relinquishing part of his work to other(s).

That question makes as much sense as asking if car owners should be able to give lifts with his own car.

I think that most copyright owners are interested in restricting the making of copies because selling copies is a source of revenue for them. Revenue with which they buy food, and clothes, and housing, and cars.

When food and clothes and housing and cars are all able to be freely copied just like music recordings and books and movies are, then the makers of media would likely be less interested in making sure they get paid for their work. If they need a new car, they can just copy one, for free.

I know why many copyright holders want to keep their (our, since I'm one as well) privileges. That doesn't mean I have to agree that we as society should grant it.

Is the claim that media products are inherently worthless, and time spent working on them is inherently time donated to the good of society?

Sure you bought it, but what did you buy? Did you buy the rights to whatever you please with it? It depends. Say I only sell an MP3 through Amazon what are you doing? You're buying it with the following terms of use, which you agree to by the very act of forking money over for it:

2.1 Rights Granted. Upon payment for Music Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Music Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to the Agreement.

2.2 Restrictions. You must comply with all applicable copyright and other laws in your use of the Music Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you may not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use the Music Content. We do not grant you any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Music Content. As required by our Music Content providers, Music Content is available only to customers located in the United States.

Sure, and Amazon should be able to go after the buyer for the breach of contract. The people who subsequently got a copy (and didn't know of the breach) should not be bound by it, though.

Those people would be benefitting from the original pirate's crime. Generally feigning ignorance is not enough to absolve you from the responsibility in such cases. If you buy a stolen car (even not knowing that it was stolen) the police will take it away from you and will not reimburse you, and you may be even looking at jail time.

This kind of copyright infringement is not a crime, at least not in the US, and in this hypothetical situation it wouldn't be more than a ToS violation. Comparing this to stealing is specious.

If you want to demonstrate that non-colluding third-party beneficiaries can be sued for the breach of contract of a second party, be my guest, though (I honestly don't know).

The only way here to accept that content will be pirated but trust users to do right thing as well.

Many content creators put off users with their stupid DRM implementations. I remember buying a game for some $34 in 2008. But that game had 5 copy limit. Now I am what you can call a "regular formatter". Formatted PC twice, changed laptop and now I do not own license to that game.

Let user make copies, but trust that they won't copy them further.

But the issue here is not only the end users, but also publishers and others who could potentially make a business out of selling this authors work without paying him one cent. There is in my opinion little reason to want to get rid of ones copyright, it's better then to declare that it can be used freely without charge for non commercial use for example. Or if the intention is to sell it, simply not using any DRM schemes at all.

It is a thing in property sale, to occasionally contain contractual obligations that force the buyer to act in a certain way (you may not cut down these trees) and additionally force the buyer to keep that obligation attached to later sales.

On the surface, I cannot think of a good reason why that should not also be able to be applied to the sale of software.

Your comment basically just says "I think copyright should exist", but it doesn't really provide any arguments for your opinion.

My own opinion is that copyright decreases total utility/well-being of society, and I disagree with the claim that copyright is required to create works of art/media. For more detailed argument why copyright is not needed I recommend the book Against Intellectual Monopoly.

Copyright is the bedrock of much of the Free and open source software I use every day so in that regard I think it's a great thing.

That doesn't mean there are not improvements to be made to its application in practice, or that copyright justifies the use of any number of unethical tools (like DRM).

I should have clarified that. I do not want everyone to do that. Just that I hate the way RIAA and MIAA take the approach to other extreme and eat a lot of money that artists should get.

If someone wants to sell for $1000, I am in. But if some middleman wants to sell it for $1000 and give $10 to creator plus restrict me from using the content the way I want, I hate that!

What if that middleman is providing value?

Despite the rise of the Internet, a bunch of new artists who were probably in diapers when Napster came out continue to sign up with those middlemen.

>However a content creator should also have the right to be restrictive, to say that only people that pay $1000 for a license can access the content, or that another company can sell access in return for $1000.

Why? That is not a right in the US the same way that free religious expression is a right. Copyright was left to Congress to define however they liked, later shaped by corporate interests and international agreements.

Regarding the morality of copyright: music, movies, books and so on are all part of our culture, and I find it reprehensible that you want to limit the sharing of our culture for 100 years at a time [1].

[1] Current copyright terms in the US are mostly life of the creator + 70 years, or 95 years for corporate works. 100 years is a conservative average.

Being entertained is not a moral right.

If someone wants to charge you a thousand bucks to watch the movie they've created it is their right to do so.

Culture drives creative works, and creative works drive culture. It's harmful to the progress of civilization to limit the use of works too severely.

That said, I can't sleep in, eat, or drive good feels, so I'd like to derive benefit from what I create, at least while I'm alive. Unless a post-scarcity world happens in my lifetime, in which case I'll offer up all my work with minimal restrictions.

> If a content creator wants to release everything they've ever created without copyright, or for free, they should absolutely have the right to do that. However a content creator should also have the right to be restrictive

Of course, the difference between these two options is that one requires a massive government bureaucracy and potentially millions of dollars of money and time spent in court.

The trouble is you cannot make a business out of this. Imagine if Valve did this. I brought Half Life 3 for £30. I then launch a web store and sell it for £15. I make a few hundred thousand selling a half price copy of a full price uncopyrighted game.

I think a lot of content owners are aware of piracy, copyright infringement and its benefits. The Game of Thrones director(?) was talking about the benefits of piracy recently.

A lot of content owners don't enforce their copyright, don't send out the hounds and I think a lot of content owners actually benefit from this. I have seen software creators detect pirated installs and instead of shutting them down talk about their small studio and ask when you have the money to buy the software. For some companies this is far more effective than adding a kill switch. For others it really isn't.

You can make a business out of this, and there are plenty of examples of it. Just because some people would buy HL3 from your store, some other people would not. Just because people can already pirate games, doesn't mean everyone will.

Just because someone downloads a game from a torrent site doesn't mean they won't buy the full copy.

Why would people pay for content that is freely available? Pretty much all content nowadays can be downloaded freely, that doesn't mean there's no business around the production of such content. People still pay money to consume media. It doesn't matter why people do it, if one can show empirically that people pay for content.

For example, I can download Cory Doctorow's books freely, but I choose to pay for the books. It doesn't matter why I do it, it just matters that I do. Just like thousands of other readers.

There used to be a website where you could buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (without the trademarks) for a lot of smaller price than the official version. That business didn't lasted long.

A lot of people like to pay for a service. They want to pay for Spotify, for example. It's a good service and it's priced correctly. Significant portion of Spotify users could download the music using P2P networks, but they kinda like the service that they're provided. The same applies to Steam, and Amazon's ebook store and so on.

Is it more difficult to create a business without copyright protection? Probably yes. Is it impossible? Certainly not.

Copyright is a monopoly which grants exclusive right to make copies. Monopolies should always be balanced to benefit the public, not corporations who are trying to make a profit.

It's pretty clear that current copyright law is too strict. The duration should be reduced to 5-10 years (which according to studies is the timeframe to bring in 90% of the profit for the work of art). I personally don't see a case for copyright laws at all, but we should start with 5-10 years.

The resounding success of Steam sales, the Humble Indie Bundle, etc. shows pretty convincingly that most gamers are quite price-sensitive. In general, the people who choose to pay for content out of the goodness of their heart, rather than because it's required or because it's less convenient to get it for free, are decidedly in the minority.

I don't think that's quite correct. I see "gamers" being more marketing-sensitive than they are price-sensitive. There are sales in many other places but for whatever reason they don't get as much public exposure as the Steam sales. Even though almost all of it can be acquired for free, people tend to contribute financially to what they think is the least fraudulent option because they certainly do see the service value in purchasing any kind of content. Unfortunately, when it comes to this content, most people also seem have no idea how the publishing business behind it works. Of course all the publishing companies want to keep it this way.

> There used to be a website where you could buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (without the trademarks) for a lot of smaller price than the official version. That business doesn't lasted long.

I'm not sure what you mean? CentOS and Scientific Linux, the two main RHEL clones, are doing fine, as is RHEL itself.

That anecdote was from the Against Intellectual Monopoly book:

>For example, Red Hat is a company that sold a modified and customized Linux system with easy installation and many other useful features. Although the underlying Linux system is obtained by Red Hat for free, the customization and testing conducted by Red Hat is costly. Using prices quoted on the Internet on July 10, 2002, Red Hat charged $59.95 for a package containing its system. Because it is based on the underlying Linux system, Red Hat must also make available its code to competitors.

>As a result, anyone who wishes to can sell their own “Red Hat” system. And, in fact, there were at least two companies, Hcidesign and Linuxemporium, that did exactly this. For example, on July 10, 2002, Hcidesign offered for sale Red Hat Linux 7.2 for a price of $16.00, about 1/3rd of the price charged by Red Hat. Linuxemporium.co.uk offered a similar deal.

>So how does Red Hat stay in business? For starters, it turns out that Red Hat sold many more $59.95 packages than Hcidesign and Linuxemporium sold $16.00 packages. Moreover Red Hat is a large well known company, while no one has ever heard of the other two, nor does it appear that they ever represented a dangerous market threat to Red Hat.

>How could this be? Or more accurately, how could this not be? Have you ever used software that worked properly? If you had a problem with software you bought, and had to call the seller for advice – who would you prefer to call – the people who wrote the program, or the people who copied it?

>The story is not over yet, please bear with us. Taking years in writing a book chapter is not a proof of high productivity, but there is a silver lining. On December 24, 2006, we went back to the Internet to see what happened to these three companies. All three of them still exist, and many other have joined the game.

>After years of having all its innovations mercilessly “pirated” Red Hat is still the market leader, has a world wide web of offices, sells lots of Linux-based software products while also giving away lots of others for free and its revenues are soaring. Hcidesign, in spite the advantage of being a legal pirate does not seem to have done very well; it is still there, but it is selling very few products and all Linux-based products are now off its shelves.

>Linuxemporium had a more interesting life. After either changing its name to or been acquired by ChyGwyn, it is back in business under the original name and it is thriving. Indeed, it has pioneered an entire new line of business: it sells at positive prices software that is downloadable for free from the original companies, by claiming it sells “high class software for the cognoscenti”. The power and creativity of competitive markets sometimes surprise even us!

I feel like that snippet significantly misrepresents both the growth of RH and their current business model.

>If you had a problem with software you bought, and had to call the seller for advice – who would you prefer to call – the people who wrote the program, or the people who copied it?

And this sentence is particularly misleading. It kinda implies that RH wrote RHEL entirely, or that the authors of the software would be the best point of contact. Both are demonstrably false. Only a part of RHEL is written by RH employees, and one reason why people are paying RH is so that they do not need to interact with upstream developers (ie "the people who wrote the program"). LKML can be fairly abrasive experience.

Most of the stuff you mention are successful only because the massive scale they are operating on. Without copyrights I'm afraid that smaller entities would have even harder time succeeding when they can not use exclusivity as a leverage against the larger corporations.

Back in the day, you could buy netscape for about $30. Or you could get it for free- legitimately. The paid offering did not last long. When you legitimise "piracy" (not a good word, but you know what I mean), you can bet the price will approach zero.

Believe it or not, I have a thriving business where all the products (books and courses) are uncopyrighted. People will still pay for uncopyrighted works. I'm only one of many examples.

Good for him, he is quite brave regarding how much he uncopyrighted. But still, I checked just now and - correct me if I am wrong - not all his books are free, for example "The Little Guide to Un-Procrastination". Also, he is selling courses.

As I understand it, he is selling some products, and uncopyrighted some others for marketing purposes. Interestingly, some people will pay also for those works which are uncopyrighted. Still, it isn't the case that everything he offers is free and can be paid only voluntarily.

Free and uncopyrighted are different things. The author didn't claim the books were free.

But by giving up his right as an author to decide how his work is copied and distributed, he has no way of enforcing that. Instead he relies solely on the goodness of his "customers" hearts. Most open source licenses understands this and keep a final say in how the work can be used, for example.

Agreed. His uncopyrighted books are basically marketing for his paid courses, so yeah, getting rid of copyright can work well in such a scenario where you just want to reach a big audience.

For more niche books with only a small and professional audience i dont think it would work.

I have been following his blog since the beginning and I can tell you when he went the uncopyright route he wasn't selling courses. He started doing it only recently, he might have written commercial books though. I found one of his book on torrent site when googling for review (google didn't penalize pirate search results during that time) and emailed him about it. He basically said he doesn't care and pointed me to his uncopyright page.

I charge for pretty much all my products, including books and courses (except the blog, which is free). They are all uncopyrighted. Somehow, I still make a living.

So no hits in Google? Even if it isn't free, you can buy it and put it up on the Internet for everyone to download.

Uncopyrighted != free. The first thing he says in the statement is: "If people buy my ebook...".

Nothing can ever be free if you use the logic that "People are allowed to donate in support of my work"

it will get there, as distribution gets more focalised on the creator while losing the middle man. so everyone wins.

authors are the tip of the spear because the blogosphere works so well in the current internet, but the rest are following

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