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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, but downloading entertainment is not a human right. He didn't exactly feed starving people by breaking the law. He put up a torrent aggregator to, mostly, Hollywood movies and shoved aggressive and high-revenue porn and malware ads into every nook and cranny of that site.

HN and those passionate about internet freedoms deserve better heroes than guys like Sunde, Dotcom, and Ulbricht. These guys very much enriched themselves via what was essentially a web based business and any "freedom fighter" argument is pretty disingenuous at this point.

Personally, I see malware coming from ad networks and other dirty tricks TPB did as a bigger issue than being able to watch Spiderman 3 without paying. Honestly, now he's painting himself as a some anti-spying hero when his site was the #1 vector of aggressive spy and malware onto people's computers? I mean, it fucking took over the search box when you clicked on it and launched a download to suspicious-toolbar.exe immediately. What link actually took you to the torrent? Not the dozen of so "DOWNLOAD NOW" buttons Sunde happily populated his site with. We need less of that stuff, please.

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Yeah, Sunde's far from being the martyr he's trying to portrait.

"8 months in jail in Sweden" is not that much of a big deal, I mean, jail is still jail but he's writing it as if he were some kind of digital Mandela, far from it, I'd argue that the publicity associated with his sentence was extremely beneficial in terms of exposure of the site and thus economical revenue.

Yesterday's post about him not being OK with what TPB had become (a sexist 10th anniversary party, a site full of ads) really show how twisted the guy's mind is; he truly believes (or wants the public to believe) that his ideals are good and pristine and that the business he created had spontaneously (and against his will, yeah) became something else. Well done is better than well said; I'll believe his statements the day he spends a major part of his wealth in supporting actual charity or at least some kind of net-neutrality non-profit projects. This guy is Kim Dotcom all the way.

> I'm sorry, but downloading entertain is not a human right.

Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. Maybe certain entertainment business models aren't sustainable in the internet age. It's not like we'll run out of entertainment. Most cat-based YouTube videos are better than the Real Housewives of Schenectady anyway.

And to extort and imprison people for the sake of a business model is terrible.

>Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right.

No, but at least in the U.S., and most of the rest of the world, it is a legal right. Does that count for nothing just because we're on the internet?

Human rights exist regardless of whether a particular legal framework honors them. Everyone has the right to speech, including the right to the private transmission of data, the right to assemble to pursue common interests, etc. Those rights have limitations when it comes to harming people, but people aren't being harmed by any particular copy of Duck Dynasty S06E03.

The thing being harmed here is a business model. I vehemently disagree that someone should be fined or imprisoned in the name of a business model, especially an entertainment one. If the law says that's what happens, the law is unjust.

That being said, copying things that aren't yours without permission is a jerk thing to do. That shouldn't make you a criminal, however.

Do business models not pay people's salaries? Is this not an interest worth protecting? I think you're view is in trouble (or at least, extremely radical) if it depends on the premise that no law that protects only financial interests can result in imprisonment.

I think this is actually the one (perhaps only) point where copyright infringement is actually analogous to theft. Why do we prohibit shoplifting? Because shoplifting prevents a business owner from profiting off of the thing he had intended to sell, in addition to depriving him of his investment in the inventory (of course, no business owner cares much about his inventory for its own sake, he cares about it because it represents potential profit).

As many will be eager to point out, intellectual property is not finite. But this only means that you're depriving the IP owner of less profit than you would be if it were a tangible good, not that it deprives him of none. You might just as well say, oh well the thief would never have bought that DVD anyway, and the business owner has millions of them (and insurance!), so it's not really something the law should worry about... Also see mc32's sibling comment with some other excellent examples.

grandparent said that he disagreed with people being imprisoned or fined for copyright infringement.

Those are punishments.

Asking the violator to cough up the retail price of the pirated product on the other hand wouldn't be a punishment for criminal acts, it would be solving a civil dispute.

Of course making this work at scale is not something that can be done in courts. And making unilateral claims sufficient to require someone to pay up is a bad idea too.

That's why some propose a general copyright levy, or a "culture tax" that gets redistributed to producers.

I think I could support such a thing. But I also think GGP needs to come up with something better than "no criminal punishment for interfering with another's profit" to support it. That cuts far too wide to be plausible, I think. Why not this more narrow and, I think, more obvious claim? Prison is disproportionate to the harm caused by copyright infringement.

> That's why some propose a general copyright levy, or a "culture tax" that gets redistributed to producers.

Except then you have to have a great big state bureaucracy to arbitrarily allocate tax funds.

No, the correct solution is still free information - but all it takes is a change of perspective and mindset on the parts of content creators.

You have a valuable, scarce, useful asset. It is not the infinitely reproducible digital information at the end of the process that you use a legal framework to restrict distribution of. People want that, but information is no longer scarce, and to try to restrict it is unethical.

The valuable resource you have is your creativity. Your ability to produce that digital information is a scarce resource that few possess. The current model that most creators pursue is that an investor of some sort seeks to take advantage of the arbitrage the artificial implications that copyright imparts upon free markets to profit off the perpetual legal ownership of information, and pays you either a fixed salary or a fraction of the returns to actually produce the work, in exchange for the up front funding.

Kickstarter, patreon, gittip, etc are demonstrating the ability for consumers of information to also pay the scarce resource - the creation - themselves. And it would make a lot more sense for consumers to just pay for the culture they want to be made directly, and then everyone can experience it - rather than having some state institution doing it.

No, those current platforms are not appropriate to replace copyright. Of course they are not. They exist under copyright. We cannot conceive of what it would look like to have a legitimate free culture patronage service because one cannot exist right now. But I wrote this post and a bunch of others and keep debating the topic because I fundamentally have faith it would work, and that the ongoing cultural death of western civilization since the advent of perpetual copyright is much more detrimental to society than the free availability of Jersey Shore.

I am distinguishing between financial interests and financial prospects. Financial interests are a form of property: shares in companies, contractually entitled benefits, etc.

Financial prospects are things like next year's record sales. "Past performance does not necessarily predict future results" and all that.

Business models exist to help predict the future. That's why their called business models and not business facts. To imprison someone because she didn't fall in line with your plans for the future is a terrible thing to do.

Contrast this with actual theft of real money. It was yours, now you don't have it. That's harming your financial interests and violating your inalienable rights to property and the freedom to use it at your own discretion.

Depriving someone of profit isn't a crime though. If I choose not to buy your product, I am depriving you of that profit. If I make a better product and consumers choose mine over yours, I'm depriving you of profit. Neither of these things is or should be illegal.

>The thing being harmed here is a business model.

But everything is a "business model." If you get paid for work performed, that's a "business model". Should I be free to upset that business model? Can I talk to someone's employer and convince them to pay me 20% of someone's salary without their permission?

Rihanna shows up for an event, a promoter promised her 50,000 for showing up and singing 60 seconds of a song and signing a few autographs. Can this promoter turn around and say, sorry, I was kidding, I don't have money for you, it was just entertainment, here's your cab and airfare?

We can reduce things till they lose some of their properties and our arguments appear reasonable, but most people will disagree with that reduction, I think.

I'm not arguing against business models as a concept. I'm arguing that any particular business model does not overrule the natural rights to speech, privacy, and property (arguably, legal DRM cartels violate my right to own and modify my own property).

All your examples involve fraud, so they don't really apply here. If I promised to pay someone for work and didn't pay them, I deserve to lose a lawsuit and be forced to make restitution. In certain circumstances, the fraud is criminal and I deserve jail time for preying on the vulnerable or uninformed.

There may be counterexamples worth addressing, though. Can someone can come up with one? They probably involve at least the threat of tangible harm in some form. And arguably, there are already laws against those things, such as your fraud examples.

>arguably, legal DRM cartels violate my right to own and modify my own property

I think DRM is more analogous to leasing. I don't like DRM, there being alternatives I'd go with the unDRMed product/service. But it's up to us the consumers to say, yeah, I'll make that deal or no, I won't make that deal because it's unfair to me. We could also call for legislation to make DRM unattractive to DR holders as well -but unilateral action is not the solution.

>All your examples involve fraud, so they don't really apply here.

True, but if an artist or distributor in essence "says" I'll exchange music with you for compensation but you don't hold your end of the understanding, that's arguably fraud. In the Rihanna example, let's say the promoter says, in lieu of cash, I'm giving you exposure which I think is equivalent to 50,000 that does not absolve the promoter? She expected cash, not exposure to an audience who might represent future sales.

Making money from media is NOT a legal right. You don't have a right to profit.

You have the right to attempt to profit from it and exclude others from doing the same with your work.

That's all copyright provides. A limited right to an opportunity to make money, granted to you by society so you can make more of that work if society (by proxy of "The Market") deems your works as successful.

This right is granted to you because it's considered beneficial to society as a whole, because it incentivizes you to create more and ultimately have all the things you produced released into the public domain once your limited right expires.

So you're not getting the right to copyright because it's a natural right, you're getting it as part of a contract with society. The question is whether that contract is worth it to restrict speech, to have all the side-effects of the DMCA, to put people in prison, to slap families who pirated a few songs with 200k$ fines etc.

Let's say some people are questioning the tradeoff being made, at least in its current state.

> Making money from media is NOT a legal right. You don't have a right to profit.

> You have the right to attempt to profit from it and exclude others from doing the same with your work.

I think this is a distinction without a difference when the context is whether someone can interfere with your "attempt" to profit by violating your right to exclude others.

The context is that it's just a legal right and not a human one. It's one that society constructed for a purpose and then got extended further and further over time for commercial purposes.

People's moral compass does not always align with what's legal and at some point they may simply start ignoring the law.

Which is what's happening with copyright.

> Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right.

I don't know why you claim this is some sort of absolute fact. Whether "human rights" are made up or inherent, it seems plausible to me that being able to take ownership of creative works could be a natural right the same as having ownership of physical property would be.

I've explained it elsewhere, but a business model is a projection of future results, it's not actual property. I think the burden of proof is on the claimant when someone says that protecting business models is more important than protecting freedom of speech (sharing documents), freedom of privacy (no combing through my documents), or the freedom of movement (not being in prison).

As far as a critique on whether human right exist or what they are if they do, that's way out of scope for this topic. But I'll say that it's hard to have any morality without some concept of human rights, whether that term is used or not.

I didn't say a business model was property. I said that intellectual property is plausibly property or something that people could have a right to. In fact, since copyright as intellectual property is a virtually infinite, highly-dimensional landscape, it should arguably have more absolutist protection than physical property, because monopolizing a unit of intellectual property won't prevent other people from getting their own.

And real property ownership interferes with freedom to travel the same way that copyright property interferes with freedom to send arbitrary bit sequences, only moreso. All of that was claimed and defended by violence too, so if you're going to make an argument along those lines you're going to have to find something that distinguishes copyright property from real property. From what I can see copyright seems like a much more benign form of ownership.

> But I'll say that it's hard to have any morality without some concept of human rights, whether that term is used or not.

No it isn't. You could just go pure utilitarian, or you could say people have no intrinsic rights but we should be nice to them anyways.

What makes entertainment so special? How is a hollywood movie different from any other product, like your laptop, smartphone, or even your web-app you charge money for?

> even your web-app you charge money for?

Great example! With AWS the incremental cost of supporting each additional user approaches $0. So it's okay for people to use your $10/month web app, paying you the $0.05 or whatever covers their AWS costs? After all, as long as your hosting costs are covered, you're not any worse off, you've just lost the opportunity to make a sale.

The rightful owners of stolen physical property lose their possessions. The owners of copied data aren't deprived of their data.

Using a web-app without permission usually falls under contract violation or fraud. Maybe trespassing in some exotic cases.

Preventing the scraping the data from a web app (actually a political issue in Spain and Germany right now) shouldn't be more important than basic human rights like the freedom of speech. Nobody has the right to ownership of facts, for example.

>It tilted people's brains into knowing that tomorrow, their favorite TV show must be downloaded somewhere else.

Not sure how I feel about this. Regardless of how things have played out, I don't think people should expect free TV shows especially in the day and age of PVR/DVR/TIVO etc. I still think creators should be credited/paid for their work.

EDIT - To expand, I think you can disagree with the cable companies and how they distribute programs (large packages of channels you want and some you don't) but I don't think you can disagree that the actors, cameramen, writers, riggers etc shouldn't be paid for their work.

They should be paid for their work. They (their bosses at least) shouldn't have the power to cripple technology, limit the free flow of information, or throw people in jail to get paid.

Again, we're talking about entertainment. The people working on these works are doing really cool things, but they don't have a right to get paid to do cool things. On the other hand, people should have the right to copy arbitrary bits from point A to point B. If for no other reason than freedom of speech and freedom of privacy.

I agree that torrent technology should be allowed. The Pirate Bay allowed for that and likely should be able to exist, however let's call a spade a spade. Many of the material on torrent sites is copyrighted material, the founder in his piece says people can't download their TV show tomorrow, acknowledging the fact that copyrighted material drives the site.

Yeah, it's copyright infringement, and there's a lot of wink, wink, nudge, nudge going on that adds up to dishonesty if not outright lying. I don't claim otherwise.

I just don't think copyright is an inalienable right like freedom of speech is. And being duplicitous should make you unreliable or scummy, not criminal. Barring actual fraud, of course, and I don't think all this winking adds up to fraud.

I'm trying to figure out how you distinguish something like pirating a movie versus if I were to torrent your diary (assuming it did not involve breaking and entering your home, or whatever. Let's say you left it on a table and I copied it when you were in the bathroom). I'm assuming you would assert some control over those words. But when you object, I can say, "Well, look, you aren't losing anything, so nothing wrong really occurred here. You aren't deprived of your data."

So ok, instead of a diary, now let's say you work with a couple guys on a piece of fiction and someone 'releases' it before it's done. Why is that different? So ok, now I get together with 1,000 people and make a $180M movie. How is that different? At what point of these examples does a piece of information go from being OK to secure (diary) to not? (a movie)

I think your implying that every download is a lost sale, it doesn't work like that.

I agree that some people wouldn't watch the show if they couldn't download it, but why do they have that right to get it for free? I understand that torrent technology is great, but TPB founder is using downloading TV shows as an example of how things will change.

As I said in a comment below, you too have it backwards. It's not about the "right of the people to download shit for free". It's about the right of the corporations to go to hell and beyond to justify a few bucks; putting people in jail and corrupting the judicial and political system in the process... for what is essentially a harmless offence.

I think the level of penalty related to torrents and downloading copyrighter material is a matter of opinion. I don't know enough to say jail time is too harsh/not enough.

"Harmless offence"? Really? Maybe harmless in the fact that no one died, but it's not harmless that people's work is being stolen. What if people stole your work? I don't think you can point to the rich people in Hollywood and say "They have enough money already, they can afford to lose some people to torrents" because for every rich actor/screenwriter/producer, there are 100 other entertainment workers that don't make $100,000 per episode.

So, when a movie has made $100 million and I buy a download for $5, how much of that goes to the ordinary workers (not rights holders, not first rank actors)? I'm going with none. Once the show breaks even the people who worked on it have been paid their wages. There's no argument of loss of income to make. Sure you can argue the rights holders deserve their extra millions (or cents) but your argument on loss of wages is void then.

So I torrent a movie, Avatar say, and now I should go to jail for several years and pay a fine that bankrupts me?

Whilst if I take a packet of cigarettes from a shop - about the same sales value - I get a fine of $20 and maybe if I'm really unlucky a night in a cell.

This is a complete disparity of punishment. The only reason for it to be like this is media interests owning the political process to such an extent that they can buy preferential treatment before the law.

And what's worse, is that the shop owner will get nothing, no police will help with their loss despite it being a physical good. Whilst for the movie rights holder, despite the actual loss being virtually zero (if not actually negative as sales can follow directly from the action) they get massive aid from the legal system and incomprehensibly large punishments on their behalf. Copyright infringement should by rights be a tort too.

Residuals (ongoing income from films/tv) go to much of the crew. Above the line people get residuals in the form of direct payments. Below the line people get them in the form of payments to their unions to sustain benefits, such as insurance and retirement funds.

So there's a real loss even in that case.

*Above the line defined here- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_line_(filmmaking)

When I go on Pirate Bay and type "Metallica", I get a bunch of songs and downloading and playing them is illegal (in some countries).

When I go on YouTube and type "Metallica", I get the same thing on completely unofficial channels and it's so legal that I can relink it to you here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqtaKkvCFaQ

The end result is the exact same thing: A non-paying user listened to an unofficial source for a song. Don't even try to argue that it's harmful because it's not. Don't even try to argue that one warrants jail time while the other does not... because you will be wrong, and this is not a subjective issue anymore.

YouTube has allowed for content producers to leverage those eyeballs and get people paid for their work. What actually needs to be talked about is solutions like YouTube and Spotify for content producers.

And all of this is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make... it's still not about the "right to download". It's about the right of the corporations to abuse and corrupt the system the way they do.

> The end result is the exact same thing: A non-paying user listened to an unofficial source for a song.

YouTube has functionality for content owners to identify their content being distributed unofficially on YouTube and either choose to permit and monetize it (via advertising) or choose to forbid it and have the content removed.

I'm well aware and this is what I was talking about... but from a user's point of view, the end result is the same. So let's stop talking about whether or not jail time is right.

I'd agree with you if data didn't show that people pirating media buy more than anyone else.

What really hurts margins? Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon.

> I still think creators should be credited/paid for their work.

This has nothing to do with:

> I don't think people should expect free TV shows

The information was created. The actual creators in most cases were paid, on a salary, by a company. They did get their money. The company funding them just expects perpetual returns using the copyright framework of the host countries legal system. It is an artificial investment industry, but that is how it works for probably 99% of sold copyright works by volume.

Just remember, while copyright imparts a false scarcity upon (through modern technology) non-scarce information, there is a scarce good involved, the time and effort of skilled creators, and that like in every other industry ever you can bill for that as much as any other skill, regardless of who is paying you to do it.

I think if you're doing something illegal, you should assume that you are putting yourself in danger. TPB is like walking down a dark hallway to score some drugs. There are loose women, people trying to scam you, and people trying to lead you astray.

What's with people assuming TPB is only for porn and movies?

There are SO MANY THINGS that can be found on TPB: books, code, courses, videos. I don't understand why people on HN only focus on one thing.

Shouldn't information be freely accessible? Why should poor people or people that live in certain places not be able to access a book about, let's say, nanoparticular physics? Why can't these people watch Ironman and observe foreign values?

I personnally don't really care that TPB is down, too bad for plebs.

- Written from my Samsung Galaxy S3, cause I'm American, and am worth more than plebs.

PS: Sometimes, people piss me off from all their selfishness.

You do understand that the Malware has nothing to do with the website? and by that I mean that it's an adnetwork that controls what adverts that are displayed, and that many many adnetworks have been used to malvertise.

TPB chose the types of ads they are willing to display. I consider spyware and malware the exact same thing. TPB isn't a victim of the ad networks. They hired them to put up those misleading spyware and malware ads.

Well, it's TPB. They might not have had much of a choice about what ad networks they were allowed to participate in. I mean, if you're running an ad network, you need to appear respectable to get respectable clients. In that case, running ads on a torrent site is the exact opposite of what you want to do.

Most companies are not going to want to be associated with TPB, so most ad networks are not going to want to assocaite with TPB. So, the bottom of the barrel, scummiest ad networks are going to be what it would have to use to keep the lights on.

Just my two cents though.

You seem very caught up with the Malware and Adverts, why don't you just use adblock on those websites if you don't find it acceptable.

given http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-foreve... I doubt he's the one who put up all the porn/malware ads

You sure talk a lot about how he was putting malware into people's computer through ads, when he himself said he's glad TPB is gone mostly because of how horrible its ads were[1].

You have a point (to the extent that it can be a point - it's just not really worth talking about anymore): downloading entertainment is not a human right. You make a very poor case of arguing that point.

But I don't think anyone really argues that "downloading movies" is a human right (and those that do are full of it). The problem is very much in reverse. The problem is the lengths that Hollywood and music studios will go to PREVENT people from doing those things. And the only defense is that those things are "morally dubious", and yet a lot of people do it. Hell, it's common knowledge that Spotify did it to get their business started.

So you're arguing the wrong problem. Now you tell me, is it a "right" for those companies to go above and beyond everything to prosecute and intimidate people who want entertainment they provide but are not willing to pay for it? Keeping in mind that: - Said people are not directly costing the companies anything - It's impossible to know whether said people would have paid for the content otherwise - It's impossible to know whether said people would have even known about the content were it not for illegally acquiring it

The following is my subjective opinion: You are a fool if you're angry about piracy on your pet project. You should be glad people go out and look for it. You have an audience.

That audience may not be entirely composed of people willing to pay for your work, but looking for such an audience is not a viable business plan. What you're getting is free advertising. What you're seeing on torrent sites is the very primitive equivalent of what happens on, for example, YouTube where you have channels and networks making more than they can ever dream off ads and sales just because they have the ability to reach so many people at such convenience.

Ears and eyeballs can directly translate to wallets, given the means. But instead of Hollywood/RIAA solving that problem, we have them prosecuting potential fans. We have them shutting down audiences by raiding sites that are full of actual fans. We have them corrupting judicial and political systems one after the other. We have them influencing international treaties and agreements, taking us all for brainless cashcows.

Fuck that.

[1]: http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-foreve...

> You are a fool if you're angry about piracy on your pet project.

I'll tell my employees that as our company folds from lack of revenue. I'll tell my wife that as we apply for food stamps. I'll tell the that to the next person interviewing me for a job because people didn't want to pay for the value I provided.

> people didn't want to pay for the value I provided

Well, that simply sounds like a failed product, no? Not everything is successful. Given finite resources (human labor in this case) not everything can be successful.

Just because some people would take it for free does not mean they would take it at the cost it takes to make the product profitable.

The infuriating part is that the people that don't think the software is worth the value they would pay then also feel entitled enough to pay nothing and use it anyway. Don't want to use my software because you don't think it's worth the cost? That's fine, but you don't get to act high and mighty about using it without paying for it.

While I can understand the frustration it's not really lost sales, it's just purchases that never would have been made in the first place.

It's the same with music piracy. Sure, one might buy 1 CD. Even 10 CDs. But very few people would buy those 20GB+ of worth of music they hoard on their harddrives. It's something they take for free but would never pay for.

The difference with music is that you can make a partial purchase because the product is sliced into small enough pieces. I may have the whole discography of a band spanning decades, but I only buy one or two of their albums. At least they still get some money that way, so maybe they don't have to feel the same frustration that you do.

In that sense piracy enables some sort of involuntary "set your own price" scheme. But that only works if the product can be sliced down into small enough units enabling the consumers to set their own price.

For software this is more difficult, but not impossible. For example adobe products or microsoft office get pirated in private environments but paid for in commercial settings. The private copies serve to entrench the product in the market, even if they don't generate a direct profit by themselves. So even there is a difference between what people are willing to pay and the retail price of the products.

>While I can understand the frustration it's not really lost sales, it's just purchases that never would have been made in the first place.

This is really splitting hairs. Yes, I acknowledge that it wasn't _just_ piracy that caused the company to shut its doors. But to say that I can't be frustrated about people using the results of my work for free? In what other industry is it acceptable to say, "Yes, we like your product, but no, we're not going to pay, and if you try to make us pay we're going to throw our toys out of the pram about how evil the software developers are!" That's taking it to a whole new level, and that's really the point I was responding to.

That job interview would be your epiphany. That nobody paid for it because you didn't really provide any value at all. Welcome to the real world, where your actions are most likely insignificant and valueless, except for you.

Has there ever really been a documented case of people being driven to poverty as a direct result of their content being put on file sharing networks? It's a very common piece of emotional demagoguery that I see, but I've never seen any sources that substantiate it.

Because Hollywood is just barely scraping by from the lack of revenue....

Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price...

This is about movies and music at large. Software piracy is a solved problem. In games, the majority of people now use Steam and nobody really cares about the few that look for it on random torrent websites or some such because: 1. They are a much more likely source of malware (you don't just play files, you run executables). 2. Games that care have adopted an online-only DRM model (which has its own problems but that's a story for another thread) 3. A lot of games have an audience comprised entirely of non-paying customers (children without credit cards). Parents are not expected to pirate, and if kids do then no harm done.

In office software, Photoshop and MS Office are the two big names in piracy and both MS and Adobe silently encourage piracy on their products to enforce lock in. And while that sounds scummy when I put it like that, it is an excellent demonstration of what I was mentioning earlier: You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets.

So please, give me a break, your company did not go under because of piracy. And Hollywood/the RIAA have more digits in their bank accounts than total employees.

>Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price.

That may be, but that doesn't mean that people have the right to unilaterally decide that the price should be zero against the wishes of the seller. They may have the technical ability to do so, but that does not make it moral or ethical to do so in the most general case. I'd like to have a lower electrical bill. Electricity is a non-tangible good, like bits. Does that mean that I should be able to tell the electric company to shove off just because I think they charge too much for electricity? Why is that any different?

If my software fails because nobody wants it at the price it's at then that's a signal that I should lower prices. If my software fails because a large group decides to void the social contract and get my software for free because they disagree with their pricing then I have every right to get angry about it. The software I produce took time and money to produce. It's okay if you don't want to pay for it. Then don't use it. You don't get to have all of the benefit for none of the cost. That's the part that's the most infuriating.

>Software piracy is a solved problem.

How do you make that logical jump?

>You have eyeballs/ears which you can easily turn into wallets.

Not if people are used to and can continue to get the software for free. That relies upon the generosity of some other person down the line to actually pay for the software. Some companies may choose to make that decision. Good for them! But the assumption that all companies will or must or otherwise be ethically or morally bankrupt is a bad one. I'd love to spend all of my time building software for others and let them pay what they want for it, but I have to eat and have a family to support.

Software piracy doesn't hurt big shops or new developers as much as it hurts the smaller guys. Big shops price it into their software costs, and as you said, industry standard software (Office, Photoshop) rely upon it to bring in new users because their target market is saturated. New developers are just happy to get their name out there in many cases - it's a cost of doing business that they can afford.

The small shops in the middle get it the worst. Not enough name recognition to be an industry leader yet enough people that feel entitled to their software for free. The vast majority of them can't win and fold. Is that what meritocracy is? Subject to the whims of an entitled core of freeloaders?

>> Let's forget for a moment that ...

Good thing I said "let's forget that", huh?

> How do you make that logical jump?

Please keep reading?

> The small shops in the middle get it the worst.

Those small shops you keep mentioning, they don't exist anymore. There was a very small decade during which they did exist... shareware shops. Those were really crap. Boy I'm glad they're gone. You know what replaced them? Web apps shops (online-only, no piracy there) and mobile apps shops (where piracy has a much, much higher barrier of entry and is comparatively non-existant).

So as I said, software piracy is more or less a solved problem.

>Web apps shops (online-only, no piracy there) and mobile apps shops (where piracy has a much, much higher barrier of entry and is comparatively non-existant).

Well thank goodness you're here to solve all the world's ills! Believe it or not, there are still significant numbers of people that either aren't connected or use software in a situation where they're not connected to the net. That totally screws the usefulness of webapps.

Nice cynicism, but this is about companies and the effect piracy has on them... not about whether or not web apps are useful for people without internet.

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