[johnfn]

It's funny to me that even on a community like HN, suggesting rights for content creators gets you downvoted immediately without explanation. As a content creator myself, I side very strongly with you. Well, I don't think we should be jailing the Pirate Bay guys - that's quite extreme - but we definitely shouldn't be idolozing them either, as we often do.

To be honest, all the people who try to moralize piracy be saying "oh content creators never would have made any money off things that were torrented anyways" or today's rationalization du jour remind me of slave owners that came up with post-hoc rationalizations for why slavery was totally fine. I'M NOT COMPARING FILESHARING TO SLAVERY. I'm just saying that in both cases, people made whatever decision they wanted to make and screw whoever it effected, and then once they had done that they scrambled to come up with some reason why it was actually okay.

I find myself wishing for a karmic equalization such that everyone who espouses those rationalizations could feel the pain that I - like every content creator - has to bear for them. I know it will never happen, but it's an idealistic dream of mine.

[lettergram]

I don't believe most people think content creator's shouldn't get paid.

My circle of friends have quite a few people who download stuff illegally. However, most just want to try it out / watch it and if they like it they'll pay money for it. The problem with content creation, is your content can suck.

I think my favorite example of someone creating content and essentially letting it be copied (but asking everyone not to) is Louis C.K. [1] He made his stuff easy to download (hell I bought it), priced it reasonably, and asked everyone to please pay.

I actually saw the comedy show first through a friend. I paid him because it was good, and I wanted more content.

In the reverse case, I'm gambling that the content is not only good and worth my time to watch / read / look at, but that it's worth the $X I am being charged. I can see why people don't like this method, and why people download pirated software, movies, TV shows, etc.

Edit: FYI I create a lot of content. Blogs, youtube videos, software. I find the Warren Buffet approach of giving everyone a fair deal, with a terms sheet that's readable works best.

One thing I personally would love to see more of is a full or partial refund policy for every piece of content I buy. I guarantee 99% of people wont use it, but when a movie really sucks or a game doesn't live up to what's promised, you can get your money back. It incentivizes honesty, and it'll help you similar to how it helps stores like LL Bean (where it actually gets more people to buy your product(s)).

[1] https://louisck.net/news/a-statement-from-louis-c-k

[johnfn]

> I don't believe most people think content creator's shouldn't get paid.

Of course not. For most, it's a clear case of cognitive dissonance. People say things like torrenting should be legal because information wants to be free and copying is different than stealing and you know all the rest. Then you ask them if content creators should get paid and they say of course. Then you ask them how, and you get blank stares.

They haven't thought that far. Maybe they say "it's not my job to figure it out, the content creators should do that." Interesting. Have you considered the fact that maybe it's not as simple as it seems? That maybe a single indie content creator like you or me will very poissbly NOT be able to solve this incredibly difficult problem that is LITERALLY DESTROYING ENTIRE INDUSTRIES AS WE STAND DEBATING WHETHER IT'S POSSIBLE? That, for example, journalism has got their smartest minds working on it, and nothing workable is popping out? And so god help an indie like me who doesn't have a fraction of a fraction of the clout of, say, the WSJ?

I mean, your Louis C. K. example is fine, but I'm sure you realize that not everyone in the world is Louis CK. That not everyone has his reach and his reputation, and those are both huge contributing factors to the success of his campaign?

[pjc50]

> LITERALLY DESTROYING ENTIRE INDUSTRIES AS WE STAND

HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC!

This is why pro-copyright arguments get downvoted, we've heard the hyperbole for decades and got fed up with it.

Journalism has a lot of problems, but I don't think actual copyright infringement is at the root of them, it's more a combination of unbundling classified ads etc. and the nasty realisation that lots of the public doesn't actually want accurate news so much as confirmation of their prejudices.

[johnfn]

You've confused my argument. I'm not trying to be rude, but maybe you should read it again? Let me see if I can explain it better.

First, the fact that people refuse to pay for journalism online is very truly killing journalism online. There was nothing hyperbolic about what I said in GP, and there's nothing hyperbolic about this statement now. This is, I think, indisputable.

What I'm arguing is that people pervasively and stubbornly refuse to pay for things online, but then then turn around and say "content creators should solve the problem that I don't want to pay for things online." It doesn't cross their mind that this is a massive problem that is crushing entire industries, and Joe "I have an online indie band" Schmoe might not be able to reconcile it himself.

[stonith]

If the reputable publishers banded together and created a single platform that I paid for, where my payment was weighted towards the sites that I actually read articles from, then maybe they wouldn't be in so much trouble. Instead they each create their own platform and ask for a price that simply doesn't represent the value they provide, then bitch that nobody's taking them up on the offer.

Spotify works because they have large enough catalogues that I don't need to also have an Apple Music and a Google Play Music subscription, whereas the New York Times is basically just a donation since I'm inevitably going to have to go elsewhere for other journalism even in the same categories as they report on.

For the case of video, Disney + co have been attacking consumer rights for nearly a century via lobbying and as a result I don't care if they all go out of business. Fuck them for making copyright the 70+ year joke it is today.

[chongli]

There's lots of 'Joe Schmoe' indie musicians on YouTube who successfully monetize via Patreon, Bandcamp, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and video game soundtracks. Sure, few or none of them are seeing the success of somebody like Beyonce or Justin Bieber, but if that's your standard then you'll have a hard time convincing anybody.

As for journalism, others have made most of the points about its many problems. I just want to add that I'd like to see a major effort towards non-profit investigative journalism. It's pretty clear now that journalism is a commons so it's high time we treated it like one and worked to manage it the way we manage clean drinking water or wilderness preserves.

[anigbrowl]

It's not hyperbole. Piracy has wrecked the low-budget movie industry, for one. You just don't want to take responsibility for the externalities that follow from your choices.

[mbrock]

Torrenting should be legal because criminalizing decentralized network technology fucks up the internet and requires the government to spy on all traffic.

This kind of argument is quite similar to why drugs should be legal even if their effects are bad -- the effects of prohibition are simply worse, and immoral.

"Information wants to be free" is not a crazy hippie idea, it's just the fact that it's extremely difficult (or basically tyrannical) to stop information from flowing once you have internet.

Should content creators be paid? They should be paid whatever they convince someone to pay them. Indeed it's not my job to figure it out. Maybe selling consumer download access to digital audio is not a viable business model in the presence of hard-to-stop piracy; well then, sell something else.

[anigbrowl]

'torrenting should be legal but content creators should work in the free market, eh?

I sincerely hope someone invents a protocol that will allow me to torrent a few cents out of your bank account every day. OK, that will be inconvenient for you but hey, that's not my problem. Money is just a social construct anyway so it's not like your loss actually matters in the overall scheme of things.

[mbrock]

If money worked like MP3 files, being infinitely copyable in a non-zero sum way, it would indeed be hard to stop people from copying "my" money. Since that's not how it works, banks already successfully protect our accounts. These problems are qualitatively very different.

[anigbrowl]

Surely you are aware that money is not grounded in physical objects but in notional promises and contractual relations. I certainly support the use of any software that enriches me at your expense, since you seem willing to do the same to me.

The flaw in your argument is that you think because mp3 files are copyable that technical reality obviates any moral right of content creator in deciding who they sell to and under what conditions. Since you don't think that content creators should be able to contractually or legally bind people from making copies, why should I care about your equally notional property interest? If you feel somehow diminished by my helping myself to your property, well just make more and sell it or something. It's not my problem.

[s73ver]

If it's not your job to figure it out, why do you feel entitled to their content without paying?

[cr0sh]

One could also ask "why do you feel entitled to their money for the content"?

Honestly, some of the best content I have ever gotten was (in essence) "gifted" to me by the creator; whether as a free download, or perhaps directly given to me in some fashion. I enjoyed it so much so, that I felt compelled to gift them a monetary amount back, along with some kind words of thanks and encouragement for them to continue creating.

I much prefer this kind of reciprocal exchange, than what is currently the default case. Certainly, there are going to be those who take the gift, and never give back.

But they likely would have done that anyhow, regardless of the system in place, as we see today (outside of draconian DRM schemes and whatnot - for the majority of that, I've just simply not purchased those items, even though I do want them - are they somehow still entitled to my money?)

[s73ver]

"One could also ask "why do you feel entitled to their money for the content"?"

No, you absolutely could not. The content is the result of their hard work. You could no more say that than I could say that I'm entitled to having you paint my house without paying you.

"Honestly, some of the best content I have ever gotten was (in essence) "gifted" to me by the creator; whether as a free download, or perhaps directly given to me in some fashion. I enjoyed it so much so, that I felt compelled to gift them a monetary amount back, along with some kind words of thanks and encouragement for them to continue creating."

That is the creator's choice to do that. But not every creator wants to do that. In those cases, you should not take their hard work without paying for it.

"I've just simply not purchased those items, even though I do want them - are they somehow still entitled to my money?"

No, but no one is saying that. In fact, people are saying that is the proper way to go. Yet, many here are saying that they are still entitled to the work despite not paying for it. I find it extremely disingenuous that you would try to say that, though.

[mbrock]

That's an interesting question to ask the vast hordes of people around the world who partake in torrents -- applied ethics research.

When I used to torrent stuff, it was mostly because I was a kid with no money to spend. I'm glad my family wasn't sued for a hundred thousand dollars or whatever!

[lettergram]

I ask people regularly to pay for a service that I provide for free:

https://easy-a.net/

The only thing I provide for paying me are some nice graphs and insight(s) (predict end of semester grades for the given student/user) if they pay me $20 / year. That's from college students... and I have plenty paying me.

All the data was gathered from a FOIA request which I make publically available. The only private data is what users enter about themselves.

[wfo]

You should try to present an argument against the position of your opponents in good faith, against the best version of their argument. Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean they are experiencing "cognitive dissonance". Armchair psychoanalyzing millions of people across the Internet and accusing them of some mental dysfunction because they dared to disagree with you does not paint your argument in a good light.

You seem so upset about entire industries being destroyed -- last I heard industries were fine. Movies are being made and are making money. Music is proliferating everywhere and people are managing to make money. Artists are being screwed out of their money as they have been since decades before the Internet existed. Games, one of the most pirated things in the world are a huge booming industry. Journalism is not dying because of piracy -- has anyone ever pirated a newspaper or magazine? Illegal torrents of copies of the New York Times? What? Histrionics and caps lock don't particularly help your case, explain what you are talking about.

It's certainly possible that the market is simply not an effective driver for artistic creation, especially in a world where art can be copy pasted trivially -- in the past, art has been mostly funded by the state or by wealthy individuals and patrons. Perhaps that model is better.

It's also possible that the "cure" of locking down the Internet, mass surveillance to identify pirates, designing DRM so that machines work against their owners' interests and no longer obey the user is worse than the "disease" of piracy.

[johnfn]

I think our first disagreement comes over the meaning of cognitive dissonance itself. I don't believe it to be a mental disorder- just that you're holding 2 conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. I'm well aware that I often do that, as so others. There's nothing horribly wrong with it, other than of course that you should realize you're doing it and stop.

Maybe you could turn your statements about good faith first on me and assume that I'm not accusing everyone who disagrees with me of having a mental disorder. That would be rather extreme. :)

In fact, it's rather surprising to me that you write about good faith but take my own argument in such poor faith!

As for dying industries, I was referring to journalism and you are the second person to miss that so I am willing to believe I did a poor job explaining. I think I clarified well here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14107993

[wfo]

The bad faith I was referring to was the multiple-paragraph long rant that takes place entirely in your perception of the internal thought process of the people that disagree with you. Let them speak for themselves, they're perfectly capable of it.

I agree journalism is dying and I agree it is relevant to this discussion tangentially: journalism is dying purely because capitalism cannot sustain it anymore. It needs to be propped up by government funding or charity or it will die.

The market is a horribly ineffective as a funding source for quality journalism.

The market is also a horribly ineffective as a funding source for any kind of art that isn't completely mainstream.

If you ask a Libertarian, that means that good journalism and art aren't worth anything and deserve to wither away.

In my view, they both need to be propped up by the government to survive. The record industry has found a way to get the government to force people to give them money with IP laws, etc. Journalism hasn't found a way to do that yet so it's just charity for now.

Government subsidies for art and journalism is probably where we should be heading, instead of a punishment regime that requires DRM and surveillance and ruins lives all to benefit the tiny group of ultrawealthy capitalist IP rightsholders who give crumbs to the people who create their content.

Everyone thinks content creators should get paid. It is so universally accepted that saying it is almost like saying nothing at all. But which content creators? How much? By what mechanism? What about the people who hold the copyrights, who are often not content creators at all? Under our current scheme, they are the ones who get paid, and content creators by default get nothing; content rightsholders get paid. It is a happy coincidence that sometimes rightsholders and creators coincide.

[ionised]

> LITERALLY DESTROYING ENTIRE INDUSTRIES AS WE STAND DEBATING WHETHER IT'S POSSIBLE?

Except that's not true. Never has been. This kind of hyperbole just makes people switch off and stop listening.

[freeflight]

>They haven't thought that far.

Sorry, but that's not just a false claim it's straight up dishonest. Peter Sunde also started Flattr, the pirate party and the CCC have been trying to popularize concepts like culture coins for years, just because you don't know about these things does not mean they don't exist/nobody is thinking about better solutions.

Say what you want, modern copyright-law is simply broken and needs to be rebuild from the ground up to account for our modern digitally driven economies.

[johnfn]

It's not dishonest, it's representative of the actual situation. You don't even have to look very far: there are people IN THIS ACTUAL THREAD who admit they haven't thought about it and don't need to.

I wasn't saying "literally no one has tried to think this through", I was saying "a random guy off the street has not thought this through."

[freeflight]

>It's not dishonest, it's representative of the actual situation.

If you claim "they" don't even "think that far", while there are plenty of examples of "them" thinking further, then there's nothing representative at all about your statement. Copyright reform was, and still is, the platform the pirate party is running for all over the world.

The random guy off the street also does not think about solving energy problems for the world, as such random guy off the street can be hardly a measure for anything at all.

[anigbrowl]

Yeah, it does need to be rebuilt. but I have seen hardly anyone putting in any effort to do that, while lots and lots of people just help themselves to cultural output and excuse the resulting lack of revenue by saying 'lol copyright is broken.'

Maybe next time try offering some new solutions before wrecking entire industries that you know nothing about and didn't take the time to understand, instead choosing to characterize them as part fo some monolithic Big Media that you feel OK about hating.

[freeflight]

>I have seen hardly anyone putting in any effort to do that

Because the only people in any position to actually do anything about that are not willing to do anything about it.

But there are also plenty of examples for when the effort paid off in very big ways, like iTunes, Steam and the now thriving VoD business.

>before wrecking entire industries that you know nothing about and didn't take the time to understand

Like what? You offer nothing but dramatics while ignoring the actual realities. What industries got actually "wrecked"? And what industries profited immensely by appealing to customers demands, instead of trying to dictate to customers what they are supposed to "want"?

iTunes was a success because Apple took cues from what made music piracy so sucessfull. They took note of customers not wanting to be forced to buy overpriced full albums if they just want a single song, they took note of the ease of use.

Same story with Steam: Ease of use and massive discounts, lessons taken straight from the piracy scene and applied for business success.

VoD is going the same route right now but guess what mostly hampers the business from global expansion? Copyrights and the whole legal rattail that comes with it. Why does my German Prime subscription not give me access to Prime content on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk? Why do so few Blu-Rays have a proper selection of different subtitles/dubs on them? As long as "buying the real thing" ends up being more of a hassle than just pirating it, that long pirating will, of course, stay the more popular choice.

>the resulting lack of revenue by saying 'lol copyright is broken.'

Try to imagine the "lack of revenue" that would exist without iTunes and Steam existing, that's actual measurable revenue and not fairy tale "nobody buys my product, can't be because it sucks, must be piracy!" revenue.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I have absolutely no problem with paying content creators. Torrenting makes me very uneasy when it's distributing cracks and work by small scale creatives who will be - sometimes have been - forced to give up because of piracy.

That's not a win. It simply isn't. No matter how you look at it or rationalise it, there is no way to make it a good thing.

Unfortunately the existing corporates are also very bad at paying content creators.

In fact they're criminally bad. Knowingly, deliberately, fraudulently bad. (See "Hollywood Accounting.")

Torrenting could have fixed this by providing a second informal distribution channel. The big torrent sites - which were making huge amounts of money at their peak - could have fixed it by becoming the new investors and incubators of talent.

They could have become the new music and film industry. They could have taken down Hollywood by offering real decentralised competition to the entire business process.

Instead a load of college kids and the odd activist said "Fuck that - I want my free music and movies" and that was as far as it went.

Now we're back with creatives earning less than they were before torrenting started, partly because torrenting set the bar so low it made the ridiculous streamimg deals offered by Spotify etc look a serious business proposition.

The reality is that most of the rhetoric around free/open stuff is bullshit. None of it works as well as it's claimed to, and some of it is actively destructive.

I really don't have a problem with alternative models of creation, contribution, and reward. But inventing new models that actually generate and reward high quality content would require dealing with reality, not just indulging in rhetoric and self-justification.

There doesn't seem to be much chance of that happening any time soon.

[Dylan16807]

You're not describing cognitive dissonance. There's nothing inherently incompatible between free sharing and paid creators. It's hard, of course, but most economic issues are hard.

[johnfn]

I'd argue that an irreconcilable world view - or at least one that you are not capable of reconciling - is cognitive dissonance.

If you CAN reconcile it, you don't have congnitive dissonance. But most people don't get that far.

[Dylan16807]

If your standard of avoiding cognitive dissonance requires being an economist, it's too high.

It's enough to have a reasonable justification to say that it can be reconciled. There's no need to force the person to do that reconciliation.

[johnfn]

What I'm saying is that in some cases I do believe it to be irreconcileable.

[edem]

Exactly my point. I see this every day when I see the nth installment of Call of Duty and it is simply a steaming pile of crap. Who wants to pay for something he can't even try and there is a decent chance of it being crap?

[benwad]

There are demos, reviews, and about a million voices on the Internet saying the new Call of Duty is crap. If you then go out and buy it then you should accept the risk it might be crap.

[cr0sh]

> There are demos, reviews, and about a million voices on the Internet

...because none of this could ever be wrong.

/didn't the US have an election recently or something...?

[Analemma_]

> I don't believe most people think content creator's shouldn't get paid.

I believe most people say they don't think content creators shouldn't get paid, but their revealed preference indicates otherwise.

[lettergram]

To the contrary, I believe places such as:

https://www.railstutorial.org/book

Or the Louis CK example highlight that people are willing and happy to pay. They just don't want it prices super high or be unable to check it out first.

[wfo]

You're going to need a stronger argument than "I know what's in your head better than you do" if you want to accuse wide swaths of people you've never met of lying.

[s73ver]

Actions speak louder than words.

[Dylan16807]

Their actions only apply to the 1-2 ways any particular item is generally sold today. That doesn't generalize to "creators getting paid" as a class.

[anigbrowl]

I don't believe most people think about anything other than themselves, which is what they've been trained to do and which neatly explains the popularity of piracy and the dearth of actual support for the arts..

[s73ver]

Loius C.K. got to do that because he had already made a name for himself. Louis C.K. couldn't do that if he wasn't already famous.

And while you say your circle of friends just pirates to "try it", most people that I've heard that reasoning from inevitably find some reason to not pay at all. "Oh, I ended up finishing the game. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be, so I'm just not going to pay."

[chongli]

What rights do you believe content creators should have? Most discussions I've seen suggest content creators ought to have fewer rights, not more rights.

The absurd lengths of time for copyright come to mind. This idea that the family of an author, for example, ought to be entitled to royalties from book sales for many years after the author's death... That's a right enjoyed by no other profession or trade or job. It puts authors in a category with land owners and capitalists.

Personally, I think we should be seeking to reduce the amount of rent-seeking in our society, not increase it. That we glorify so many creators as celebrities and obsess over every minor detail of their lives makes my position an unpopular one, however.

[tertius]

> That's a right enjoyed by no other profession or trade or job. It puts authors in a category with land owners and capitalists.

So children of the rich who own stocks cannot inherit those stocks?

> It puts authors in a category with land owners and capitalists.

Oh, ownership. What a terrible idea!

[anigbrowl]

Maybe educate yourself on the existing arguments instead of expecting other people to do it for you?

[shrimp_emoji]

>"oh content creators never would have made any money anyways"

Are you referring to the "lost sale fallacy"? That's one argument, but another is that the content creators DO make money anyways.

Particularly, if you make your content affordable (see textbook prices) and usable in whatever way I want (e.g., I can't play iTunes shows in MPC and have to rely on the platform I bought them on), my incentive to pirate your content goes down dramatically.

Doing the latter is absurd, though; how do you protect your content from being shared? I don't know either.

I guess I'll pirate decrypted copies of it. It IS "wrong", I don't pretend otherwise, but it's cutting the Gordian knot of unfavorable economic paradigms. Kind of like slavery. Except way less worse. See lost sale fallacy.

[baddox]

I think the best example is Steam. A common sentiment online is "I don't pirate games any more because Steam makes it so easy to buy them, plus there are often incredible sales." I share this sentiment.

A large part of Steam's success is that they built a better product than the one offered by piracy. That's worth paying for.

Granted, this isn't a cure-all. I'm sure some people still pirate games, and it's probably impossible to estimate how many represent "lost sales." Moreover, games are one of the trickier things to pirate, often requiring some technical knowledge (using disk images, keygens, cracks, etc.). Music is obviously much easier to pirate.

[Insanity]

I completely agree. Steam was the reason I stopped pirating. For music, spotify did the trick :-)

[anigbrowl]

How are artists doing under Spotify? Oh wait, that's not your problem.

[ionised]

You're right, it's not his problem.

[Insanity]

Are they doing better when people are pirating? The bands that I like, I buy the album from anyway just to support them. But for music that I listen to every now and then - they would not get me to buy their album. So they actually would either make no money from me, or a bit through spotify.

[baddox]

How are artists doing with traditional album sales (digital or physical)? As far as I can tell, music sales have basically always been A) you're a huge artist and make lots of money or B) you're not huge and you can only make money touring.

[diminoten]

It just feels like you're holding the content creator hostage with your threats to steal their work if they don't do what you tell them to (price their content "reasonably").

If I want to charge $600 for my book, I should be allowed to do that, just like you're allowed to not buy my book. I don't see an effective moral framework that would allow someone to only obey personal property rights if they thought the rights were "reasonable".

Edit: I've said some unpopular things on HN today, so I'm now being rate limited in my responses. Here's my response to one comment:

> Copying your book does not prevent you from attempting to ask for compensation or from attempting to sell it

Yes, it absolutely does. You're working in the world of "is" not "ought". This is firmly an "ought" conversation. You "ought" not copy my book, because as part of me giving it to you in exchange for money, I asked you not to do that, and you agreed.

> but you are competing in a market where your product only carries as much value as your customers perceive it to hold, and not what you declare it to be.

This is only true if people are willing to take my product without compensating me at all, which is exactly what I said originally is "holding the content creator hostage".

If you don't pay my (possibly absurd) price, you don't get my work, period. There is no working moral framework in which you get to decide if you deserve to steal my work or not.

[dleslie]

Digital works are ephemeral. There is nothing to own that is not a fantasy wrought of the agreement to abide by certain rules; if your customers do not agree, then you must convince them to or adjust your attempts at compensation accordingly.

Copying your book does not prevent you from attempting to ask for compensation or from attempting to sell it; but you are competing in a market where your product only carries as much value as your customers perceive it to hold, and not what you declare it to be.

[wfo]

Ownership /in general/ is an ephemeral fantasy that does not "exist" per se and is socially constructed. You "own" a piece of property only by virtue of the fact that the law decides nobody else can step on it.

[Dylan16807]

You don't really need society to enable ownership of physical objects.

[anigbrowl]

Yes you do. Otherwise I can just come along and take your stuff because I feel like it, and if you object I'll beat you up.

[dleslie]

Non-ephemeral objects can be scarce and intrinsically unique, whereas digital information is made so artificially, at best. Digital works have no intrinsic material value.

[mikebos]

There is nothing wrong with slapping an absurd price on a license or item. What is wrong is the legal framework that allows it for years after your death to slap a price on it. The reason it's wrong is that copyright was meant to balance the right's between consumer and creator. In the old days you had to perform or sell an item, no licenses.

[s73ver]

So after you die, I should be able to just take your car, right?

[cookiecaper]

>If I want to charge $600 for my book, I should be allowed to do that, just like you're allowed to not buy my book.

Absolutely, and I think most people recognize that piracy is morally dubious at some level, but that it's more along the lines of speeding than grand theft.

In fact, that model may be a good compromise. Instead of getting hauled to court and slapped with a multi-million dollar judgment for using filesharing software, or literally sent to jail, you get a $100 ticket for it. That sounds a lot better, doesn't it?

>I don't see an effective moral framework that would allow someone to only obey personal property rights if they thought the rights were "reasonable".

Intellectual property is not personal property.

Personal property is an object or parcel that you can possess and pass down. There is one unit of it. You can protect it and stop people from taking it. It's a real physical thing that can't be trivially copied or spread.

IP is a time-limited government-granted monopoly on thoughts ("intellect"), and it's much more dangerous and treacherous than we give it credit for.

These are limitations on how people communicate, discuss, and share -- they are limits on speech. It's funny that we're so sensitive about censorship of political and religious speech in the U.S. and then so flippant about the extreme censorship in place on the use of cultural icons. You must not represent Mickey Mouse on terms that may upset or threaten The Walt Disney Company, or they will bare down on you with overwhelming force [0] -- in the case of TPB, Disney and its cohorts called on their proxies in the USG to threaten international economic sanctions if the speech, which didn't even originate from TPB (they merely indexed it), wasn't controlled to allow them to make more money. [1] That's insane.

Kim Dotcom is another case where an international incident was caused on behalf of the copyright lobby. It's clear that they don't care what the law is in your country -- they can and will use military force to get you to stop speaking in a way that they feel threatens their profit. Why are we just casually ignoring this disgusting hijacking of our government by BigCorps?

Copyright and patents have a purpose, but they are easily abused and need to be carefully monitored. We have let them go completely out of control.

Before 1976, works were copyrighted for 28 years. I personally think that's a little long, but it's not horrifically unreasonable. There was an option to file an extension and double the term for up to 56 years of coverage.

That has been retroactively multiplied by about 2.5x since, with copyright now lasting 2 full lifetimes by default (life of author + 70 years). If you make something at age 25 and live until 80, that's an absurd 130 years of copyright protection. And that's by no means an atypical case.

Additionally, fair use is a nearly impossible defense for anyone who's not a megacorp, so it doesn't really help, and since software is a fundamental part of the functionality of most durable goods we possess, copyright's aggressive, near-eternal monopolistic protections have legally boxed people out of their own belongings. (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14074894)

Copyright is out of control, and the only reason people tolerate it is because they don't understand how deep it goes, and I'm sure that has nothing to do with big media companies controlling the political dialogue for the last 100 years...

[0] http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1989-04-08/news/89040900...

[1] https://torrentfreak.com/sweden-threatened-with-trade-sancti...

[3pt14159]

I'm only happy that there is filesharing because the industry still hasn't figured out how to get me to pay without friction sometimes. Americans have it much easier than those of us in the rest of the world (even in Canada!) and frequently the only way of getting a movie at all, let alone with subtitles in the language that you need it in, is to pirate.

Once someone API-ifies licensing so content creators are easily paid, works easily translated (with a reasonable cut going to the translator!), without any close source blobs to render the content, then of course I'll pick up the pitchforks against TPB, but in the mean time the industry is a mess. My girfriend and I pay for Netflix and Apple music and the occasional film, and HBO, and I pay $40 a month in support on Patreon, but it's death with a thousand cuts right now and TPB is a nice safety valve.

[pembrook]

I would love to see the HN community response if suddenly SaaS start-ups could be easily pirated or app pirating becomes as easy as streaming a movie. How many would feel the same way when it involves 2,000 hours of their own work coding and marketing the product being pirated?

The internet's culture of normalized piracy and stealing is part of the reason why we can't get anybody to pay even $1 for something on the internet while they will happily hop over to Starbucks every morning and drop $6.50

Hence why intrusive bloated dystopian advertising is the only way to stay afloat for most sites. Would you rather pay directly for someone's work you like or sell your privacy/attention to get it for "free?" I see the world heading in the direction of the latter. A dystopian future indeed.

[cookiecaper]

What happened with The Pirate Bay was a travesty. The issue doesn't even go to the root of copyright law, it just shows that the USG is more than willing to throw its weight around for the benefit of the rich and powerful in Hollywood.

TPB was perfectly legal within the jurisdiction in which they operated. Rather than change the law, Sweden mounted a farcical prosecution after the US threatened sanctions if they didn't address the matter.

TPB hosted no media on its own; it was a torrent site, and linked to torrent files that contained the hashes of files and a link out to a tracker that matched people who possessed those hashes with others. If you want to make that illegal, that has far-reaching complications for all kind of online services. That's why instead of making it illegal, they just said "This is pissing off some rich people, so you're going to jail."

Most people support copyright in principle. It's the draconian extent to which modern copyright law has been stretched, again solely for the benefit of copyright holders and at the expense of the public that upsets people.

[pbhjpbhj]

We don't have a DVD player that works with all our discs, some copy prevention systems screw it up. So i download the movies.

The torrent search site I used was closed, turns out Google works just as well (possibly better) with all the meta-data needed being hosted on Google servers (ie via "cache").

People have been extradited from UK to USA for giving the same information you can get from a Google search. It's mind blowing that we still want any of the companies that support that status quo to still exist.

We need places like TPB to pressure for and raise issues of over-reach in copyright because the governments are refusing to stand up to media conglomerates (arguably for selfish financial reasons).

[pjc50]

> suggesting rights for content creators

Unfortunately this is pretty much a zero-sum game: this means taking rights off other people, potentially including huge fines or jail time.

And lots of people feel that they have no voice in whether their rights get taken away - and not just the "right to run a piracy website", but the right to repair their tractors, rip MP3s, have open-source software and so on. The heavy-handedness of the copyright industry has made a lot of permanent enemies.

[reitanqild]

I'm happy to pay. Sometimes I try to pay but there is no option.

I either have to be American or at least willing to lie about it and fake my ip address using a vpn to get access to plain old movies.

Now, I don't use pirate bay or other pirated content.[0]

But between geo limits and poor service I certainly can understand why they are popular.

[0]: ok, once I downloaded a windows installation media for a version that we legally had bought but for some reason could not get from MS. Didn't use it anyway though as we were to risk adverse.

[CriticalSection]

> rights for content creators

I scratch my head when I hear talk of this, because the past century and a half has been a steady march in western economy and politics against rights for the original creators of wealth and content. Negligible rights for the original creators of wealth and content are the economic (and political and social) basis of the USA, and western Europe, and now the world. The only people who've talked like this have been communists, and I suppose anarchists.

I mean this is obvious on the face of it. Who has all the rights in writing at a small startup, the angels and VCs, or the first hire? Before the first hire even comes on board, their first act will be to sign a paper giving away what little rights they had to the content they will be creating.

Mainstream economic thought, from left Keynesianism to right wing schools say commodities are given value by their marginal utility ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value ). Your idea that creation or labor from creation has some moral value is an idea only espoused in the last century by communists ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value ).

It's not just you, I've seen the RIAA and MPAA make similar arguments, and I shake my head, because they're making the same arguments Lenin and Stalin made. By that I mean with regards to the words like "creator" and mention of the work done to create the content. Not that I make a judgement either way, but it seems to pass without notice how extremely radical your claim is, as it is economically way to the left of say, Paul Krugman's New York Times columns.

The strange thing is that these old Marxist arguments are trotted out about something that is no longer not exactly a commodity. Because commodities are produced, and basically used once, whereas this content is created, and with the push of a button, at costs approaching free, it can be duplicated and distributed one billion times. So in some senses it is no longer a commodity. So just as it loses the properties of a commodity, these old arguments from 150 years ago about commodities come back.

[Svenskunganka]

People don't torrent because they want free stuff, people torrent because the legal alternatives are shit. Take Netflix for example, any non-US citizen who actually pay equally much as a US-citizen gets treated with geo-blocking, geo-restriction and generally just discriminated against because so many content creators are either stupid and gives away their copyright to a studio for... I don't even know what, greed perhaps, or they are stuck in an old-school mindset from VHS-era that doesn't play well with the internet.

And for those that don't believe me, just look at Spotify. The day Spotify was released was the day music torrenting was defeated. You just have to offer your customers a deal they can't say no to.

Game piracy and video piracy is still high. That's because these industries hasn't evolved with the internet like music has. Games are doing fine, thanks to Steam, but there are cases like Battlefield 1 for example. If you would want everything in that game, you'd have to pay $140 + $20 / month (Game + DLCs + Premium). How about I just pay $20-30/month for Steam and I can play all games in their library and the money gets split between games depending on how much I play them?

Hollywood is shit, Netflix is trying but the copyright holders are being stupid. They expect that regular people are going to subscribe to 6 different services just because they can't play ball with each other, only to get geo-restricted and even lower quality than what torrents offer. The result is people pirating and the copyright holders pouring billions into anti-piracy (extortion) companies, probably making less money than if they'd play ball.

[s73ver]

"Game piracy and video piracy is still high. That's because these industries hasn't evolved with the internet like music has. Games are doing fine, thanks to Steam, but there are cases like Battlefield 1 for example. If you would want everything in that game, you'd have to pay $140 + $20 / month (Game + DLCs + Premium). How about I just pay $20-30/month for Steam and I can play all games in their library and the money gets split between games depending on how much I play them?"

They can charge that because people will pay it. If you're not willing to pay it, that's fine, but that means you don't get everything. Which is just like everything else in life.

I'm sorry, but you're just not entitled to games. If you don't like the pricing, that's fair, but don't pretend that gives you some kind of license to just take it anyway.

[cr0sh]

I tend to wonder about entities like Steam (well, Valve) and Spotify - and their customer base.

I wonder "What will happen when one of these companies goes away?" (ie, go out of business or such)

You may think "well, that could never happen" - and you'd be right there next door to the pioneer on the prairie, standing at the railway station waiting for his shipment of a plow direct from Sears.

...been paying attention to what is happening with Sears lately?

Or what about Radio Shack?

Companies come and go - and usually when they go, if they are a company publishing or selling IP in some manner, that IP goes away with them, or it becomes "locked away" (technically) because the owners of the IP (that is, those who may have bought it in the fire-sale when the company tanked, or afterward) don't know what to do with it (or even that it may be worth something) - and so it sits (and maybe, just maybe, one day we'll see it again - but in most cases, its gone forever).

I can point to any number of distributors of music, magazines, and books where it is impossible to get a copy of what they distributed; if you're lucky, archive.org may have a copy - but in many cases, those copies are long lost (ever seen the magazine called "Horseless Carriage"? It was one of the early precursors to magazines like "Car and Driver" today, covering a new-fangled invention. Good luck finding all of the issues which were published. Good luck finding the proofs or whatever was used back then, either. All of that IP, which many would love a copy of - myself included - gone, with the exception a what you can still find that has been scanned in).

One of these days, Valve or Spotify will go under. Will you still be able to play your music catalog? Will you be able to pass it down to your heirs when you pass away? What about your games that you "bought"? Will you still be able to play them (what happens when the servers go away?) or pass them or...

No - it hasn't happened yet, and probably won't happen tomorrow. But I expect to see it happen, sometime. The results probably will get ugly.

[lucideer]

> all the people who try to moralize piracy be saying "<insert strawman>" or today's rationalization du jour

To explain your logical fallacy: The rationalisations haven't ever changed, they are not "du jour", and they have never included your one quoted example. The fact you've quoted an invented example that is easily falsifiable doesn't automatically discount other, valid rationalisations.

> the pain that I - like every content creator - has to bear for them

And this is the crux of the primary valid rationalisation. I don't believe the pain is causally attributable to piracy. I could be wrong, this is my subjective stance, but it is not only far from easily discountable, it's been continuously confirmed by research. There's even been repeated correlations shown with improvements of content-creators' lot as a result of piracy.[0][1]

It is of course understandable for content-creators to be frustrated by piracy. Content-creators do genuinely struggle to make a reasonable living from their work, and the media tells us it's piracy's fault. Who are we to argue?

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pi...

[1] https://gigaom.com/2009/11/02/419-research-p2p-filesharing-n...

[johnfn]

I hate to do this but I don't have the energy to give you a full response. Arguing against all of HN simultaneously on this topic has been exhausting. :P

I will say that if you've never heard the example argument I gave, that just means you haven't been arguing against proponents of piracy long enough. I see it trotted out often - in fact it may be one of the most popular arguments.

(To be clear, the argument I was paraphrasing was "anyone who torrents wouldn't have bought your stuff, so it's fine.")

And yes, I've heard the "but piracy is actually GOOD for business don't you see" arguments over and over too. And it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that these sort of studies take exactly the form and shape of what you'd expect the post hoc rationalizations to look like. And please don't say "but it's a study, that means it's true and accurate." Correlative studies can basically be made to prove anything. Until I see a double blind replicated study I will remain unconvinced.

Anyways, like I said, sorry I can't go deeper here. I'm pretty exhausted by all this and will probably move to talk about aomething less contentious on HN. Like how great TypeScript is or something. :)

[lucideer]

I don't really know if piracy is good for business, but I don't believe it's bad for it. At worst, its net effect is innocuous for content-creators.

Your example expanded with more context is something I've heard - I wouldn't fully agree with that rationalisation, but to expand further I would say that torrentors who would have otherwise bought your content often will anyway, and often wouldn't have if it hadn't been torrentable (not so much because there's a culture of sampling before buying - there is but it's rare - but more because torrent sites are far superior even to Spotify as discovery platforms, which is the best that's come out of the industry to date).

Add to that the balancing nature of a network where exposure is not governed directly by economics, and you see discovery naturally decreased for Beyoncé and U2 relative to <insert any genuinely struggling content creator>.

Typescript is great.

[wfo]

The downvote, at least from me, was because:

1) Suggesting that posting/reading an interview with someone with radical views is "glorifying" them. How dare we listen to the opinions of others?

2) The post implicitly accepts the fact that the culture on HN does not particularly consider Sonde to be a "criminal" but simultaneously calls him one one without argument -- it is nothing more than a nasty smear.

3) Suggesting the current online culture is not "respectful" of content-creators, a point which I think is patently false and is again made without reason, explanation, argument or support.

I think the move you and your parent have made which I find disturbing is to call these people "content creators". As if "content" is some commodity that should be bought and sold like pounds of steel or rice. Your phrasing pre-assumes your position; most of the time people are thinking specifically about "artists". And what they produce is not something bland, generic, and revenue-driven like "content", it's art.

Many artists don't care if you pirate their work and are happy to say so. Most artists broadcast their art on public airwaves for free for anyone to listen to or watch and are delighted to do it. So delighted that paying for the privilege was so common it had to be made illegal. Art is generated in the context of culture, and culture is a common societal good. Art created in our culture in some sense belongs to us all. The beatles albums, in my view, belong to the public after this long. It is disgusting someone should be able to "own" art that is central to our common cultural history and extract rent from people who want to enjoy it. Especially when the "owner" is just a wealthy capitalist who has decided they want to own thoughts and art, not an actual artist who had anything to do with creating it.

I think as a society we should allow artists a reasonable period where they can, in good faith (which is rarely realized because of the way almost all contracts work to brutally exploit non-savvy artists), make money from their art, but after a decent period of time it no longer belongs to them. It belongs to the public. It certainly should not be sold and traded like a commodity. That's the artistic version of patent trolling -- buying intellectual property rights with the sole purpose of sucking money out of them and stifling art/culture/creation, and it should be illegal.

[smokeyj]

> I'M NOT COMPARING FILESHARING TO SLAVERY. I'm just saying that in both cases

Yeah okay.

Reminds me of a line from Silicon Valley.

"Did you just compare the treatment of billionaires in America today to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany?"

"Absolutely. One could argue that billionaires are actually treated worse. And we didn't even do anything wrong!"

[johnfn]

Somehow I knew that even if I put in a line in all caps, someone would still think I was comparing filesharing to slavery. :P

[dang]

Please don't put lines in all caps: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[johnfn]

Alright, but don't you understand what's going on here? If I don't emphasize that line, I'm going to inevitably get comments like "you're comparing filesharing to slavery which illegitimizes your entire argument." In the exact same way that GP did anyways, and in the same way that when I later said that saying that industries were dying illegitimized my argument because I didn't make it clear enough which industries those were.

When people jump to using all caps, it's not because they love all caps. It's because the formatting provided to them by the platform isn't good enough to articulate their ideas clearly.

I need more formatting options!

[dang]

The guidelines helpfully suggest which formatting option to use instead. Really though, if you have this conundrum, it's probably time to reconsider your slavery comparison.

[johnfn]

But I'm not comparing filesharing to slavery.

You see? Even you missed that point. And it was in all caps. You think that italics would have helped? :P

Maybe I just shouldn't even make reference to slavery at all. No matter how tangentially related the reference is. It's like an inverse Godwin's law where you try to say something like "this one guy, who was incidentally Hitler's friend, said something that refutes your point..." and your interlocutor automatically claims Godwin's law.

[anigbrowl]

Yeah I don't think of the Pirate Bay people as criminals either, but most of the people who use the service just want something for nothing and I too am sick of the bullshit rationalizations from people helping themselves to the labor of artists without being willing to pay for it, going back these many years. Most pirates are abusive people, plain and simple.