Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cageface 5432 days ago
Guess what, by violating copyright you're enabling the very people that seem to outrage you so. If you really cared so much about this, you'd put your time and money where your mouth is and support the people working outside copyright.

More likely, you're just another pirate stealing food from the dinner table, all the while complaining how bad it tastes and how small the portions are.
1 comments
muuh-gnu 5432 days ago
> you're just another pirate stealing

Keep talking yourself into it, and keep calling people with different political opinions names, if it makes you more easily cope with the undemocratic authoritative nature of today's copyright.

link
cageface 5432 days ago
In what way is it undemocratic? If you're talking about the continual extension of copyright terms to prevent older works from falling into the public domain I agree. Copyright is also the bedrock of the GPL.
link
muuh-gnu 5432 days ago
> In what way is it undemocratic?

I wrote about this in my original post, you can read it there. Copyright is a new, unnatural form of "property" and only a minority has such a kind of property and it is enforced against the majority. But the majority was never asked whether they want this new type of property to be enforced against them, it has just been postulated as "beneficial" a few centuries ago and then enforced. No one, never ever on this planet has ever voted about it, it has since it's beginnings been enforced top down, and never legitimated bottom up.

You cant just go out and define a new type of property which resides inside others people communication and then enforce it by monitoring their communication, without ever asking them about it in the first place. Of course, you can do it, but then its an authoritative, not democratic feature. But do not expect those of us who believe in democracy to feel morally obliged to obey somebodys profit-oriented authoritative laws.

link
cageface 5432 days ago
You could say the same things about any kind of property. Did we ever have a formal, democratic vote on land ownership?

As more and more people transition to work producing only digital information, do you really think that protections for that work are going to become less popular?

link
muuh-gnu 5431 days ago
> do you really think that protections for that work are going to become less popular?

I dont know. What I do know is that the majority of my peers does _not_ support IP in its current form...

> Did we ever have a formal, democratic vote on land ownership?

...while the majority of my peers _does_ support the notion of ownership of physical items. I also personally do not know anybody who doesnt, so the motivation to push for a vote on something where the result is "obvious" is relatively low, but I of course wouldn't oppose it.

> You could say the same things about any kind of property.

So you in principle do agree that the public should be more directly involved in the creation of laws which it is required to abide by.

The whole concept of trial by jury of peers implies that the peers had a role in the creating of the law, and that they do not merely decide whether a law created by a authoritative, undemocratic body, which the majority of them might not even agree with, has been disobeyed.

link