Hacker News Reader

Comment by austerity | Hacker News Reader

I've just checked and the content is still there, so he clearly hasn't stolen it.

Well, people were going to that site to get the content, and now they are not (all) going there. Clearly the site has lost something, especially something that ties directly into their revenue. If one considers the content as a proxy for the lost revenue -- which is reasonable, since it's the content that attracts traffic -- one could say it's been stolen.

Of course, since it's not your work that is being mis-appropriated, you're free to look at it another way :-)

I would surmise that most readers of Hacker News either use an ad-blocker or don't click on ads often/ever. Viewed in this light, traffic to the site from here might even be considered a cost!

Revenue is to be made on unique visitors and impressions. No clicks are required.

So the loss of traffic is a good thing because advertisers aren't paying for impressions that aren't actually seen? ;)

The advertiser usually doesn't care, since most ad blockers prevent the ad call, and their budget will be spent on another visitor. The ad blockers that render the ad off-canvas are bad for the advertiser, since they're getting charged for an ad that has no possibility of being seen.

Sites want as many unique visitors as possible because larger sites get more attention from advertisers, it permits better frequency capping, and enables better segmentation of audiences. Even though they get paid per impression, larger uniques tend to allow for higher CPMs.

Separately, it's worth considering that many writers are measured on metrics: uniques, minutes, shares, comments, etc. In some places, they might even get paid on such performance (I think Gawker did this). When content gets copied, the writer can be deprived of such credit.

> The ad blockers that render the ad off-canvas are bad for the advertiser, since they're getting charged for an ad that has no possibility of being seen.

I was wondering whether such ad-blockers exist. Searching for one and installing it now.

We all know that he means copyright infringement: the content was reproduced without permission. Using the literal definitions of the words "stealing,""theft," and "piracy" mistakes pedantry as rebuttal, and helps no one when discussing copyrights.

I'm all for using the actual meaning of words. If that means it is harder to make emotional arguments, then so be it.

I am, too, but like "hacking," those horses have long left the barn.

Though I had a good chuckle at the grandparent post, it seems to be less about preventing emotional arguments and more about derailing a legitimate concern (potential loss of revenue or whatever) with pedantry.

Words do not have an "actual" meaning. They have definitions assigned on a more or less arbitrary basis, and there may be multiple conflicting definitions for any one word†. The Greeks used to believe that foreigners were stupid because they spoke something that was not proper Greek. Nowadays we laugh at their naïveté, but then turn around and talk about the "actual meaning of words." It's just silly.

† Just within English we have words like "cleave," that are widely accepted as meaning both "hold on tightly" and "separate." And in Spanish, we have "dame" which means "give," while in Japanese they use the same word to mean "don't do that." Can we declare the Spanish or the Japanese to be wrong about what that word means?

> Words do not have an "actual" meaning.

When they are terms of art, they frequently do.

No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art. That meaning is not more "real" than other meanings, though is more likely to be contextually appropriate. The fact that "reduce" is a term of art in programming for "debug" does not make somebody who uses it in cooking instructions wrong.

Basically, what I'm saying is, the fact that you and your friends use a word a certain way doesn't automatically invalidate other people's usages. It is true that mattmanser's use of "steal" was not legally precise, but neither are many colloquial uses of the word ("It was such a steal at $5!", "He's stealing third", "Great artists steal", "His identity got stolen", etc.). You would be right to object if he had been raising a legal argument based around the concept of theft, but he wasn't, so it seems overly pedantic to me.

> No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art.

You are getting close to the point here.

Why does a term of art have a specific meaning to a practitioner of that art? Answer that, and you will have determined why words have meanings in any context.

It makes it easier for the practitioners to discuss their art. Jargon is useful if all parties understand the concepts and the forms (words assigned to the concept) used to represent them. Otherwise you have to expand the jargon into larger units.

Borrowing words across fields (because of similarity) can cause confusion. One person may assign a meaning from a different field than the other interlocutors are using.

It's not quite the same as pedantry; it's using sarcasm to make the point that copyright infringement is not the same thing as theft and pretending that it is is misleading and deceptive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com