While it doesn't change the point of your comment, I saw a different ironic thing: how can people even think they can sell videos on-line and capture most of the viewers?

It's like The First and Only Iron Law of the Internet: if you post it, it will be copied and it will be distributed free. I understand that movie studios or record labels may be doing stuff the way they were always doing stuff, but an individual, especially a tech-minded one, expecting to earn money on selling videos in XXI century? Seriously? I mean, you can have any business model you like, but the real world is not obliged to comply.

So that's practical point - you don't get to set up a permanent passive income for yourself just because you publish a series of videos. Some people like to believe that (I've been personally convincing one such person recently to stop thinking along these lines and instead treat educational videos as a loss leader, and use those to sell webinars and/or personal tutoring instead). But I have also a general point to make:

In general, for some reason people imagine that just because they make something and start to sell it, they get to have full control over its life cycle. They don't, they never did. If you make a new widget, it'll get cloned by your competition. If you try to prevent it with $RANDOM_LEGAL_QUIRK, the Chinese will clone it anyway and good luck chasing them down. It's how it was since the dawn of time. And it's good, that's how stuff is supposed to work - this way new things join the shared wealth of humanity.

You're not entitled to capture all value from what you make. You get to only capture some. Expecting more is just plain, textbook greed.

And as a society, we should be nice enough to ensure you're capturing enough value for yourself.

> how can people even think they can sell videos on-line and capture most of the viewers?

It doesn't have to be most, it just has to be enough.

You'd be surprised at how many people are willing to simply pay for what they consume.

So what if it will be copied, as long as the fraction that is willing to pay is large enough it might be a very profitable venture.

Yes, exactly. But those who understand it don't usually complain about getting their videos copied - they seek ways to monetize it in some way. After all, they have proof the market is there; maybe not as wealthy and as willing to pay as they expected.

I don't think they're upset so much about the copying as they are that the copiers are re-selling the copies.

This is a somewhat new plot development here; I agree I've never before seen someone blatantly selling content like that, charging per piece of content. It used to be that people sold copyrighted content per megabyte, or you paid for faster transfer - and mostly it was sold as data, not as a particular type of work (i.e. you pay to download "a file", not "a course").

I feel that you are talking about pirates capturing a different section of the market. Well, in this case, the pirates are going after the exact same market (people willing to pay for legitimate content), and they are selling the original product.

It's a bit like if I work in the Rolex factory and just decide to set up Rolex outlets everywhere with the watches I've stolen from there.

It's a little bit of difference between freely copying to a few thousand of your closest, most personal friends on the internet, and setting up a business selling that content that you copied to third parties.

> It’s a price of doing business.

> But I had never seen a business actually profiting from piracy.

The author acknowledges that piracy is "normal", but is drawing the line at directly profiting. YouTube and Napster didn't charge consumers for pirated content.

> I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.

I hate "move fast break things" but this critique doesn't make any sense, hasn't this aphorism always been about breaking your own stuff and how that's okay as long as you're moving fast?

Perhaps a better one would be:

I guess disruption is great until it's your livelihood being disrupted.

YouTube absolutely makes money off of pirated content. They shows ads on top of it.

They also aren't making close to $20/view on a video, which is enough for even one viewer to pay for having that video reviewed by hand for infringement. Moreover, youtube has setup many systems in place to detect infringing materials. With the charges that Udemy has per copy, they should be paying people to review every video.. or have a $50 upload fee that covers that manual review process. That would kill a lot of the problem.

Youtube actually have quite a civilised policy on pirated content. They do make money on the ads but if you go to them and prove you are the copyright holder they divert the ad payout on pirated stuff to you rather than the poster. I've got a friend making quite a lot of money by having asserted legal copyright on some much pirated content. Udemy could perhaps offer to do something similar?

I agree, wrt youtube's current policies. I'm just stating that given the pricing model Udemy has in place, that a manual review process on every video would not be unreasonable, as compared to say youtube.

The normal excuse for piracy is "I would not have bought it anyway". I do buy a lot music but I also pirate, there is just no way for one to accumulate all those gigabytes of music collection without paying more money than what you make in a lifetime. I really wouldn't, and couldn't, have bought it anyway. Hence no loss for the creator.

Now on udemy people are still paying for it, that means they are ready to pay, and whatever they pay should in that case go to the correct rights holder. There is where the comparison with Napster doesn't hold.

Who is "you people"? People who pirate, or people in tech? What makes you think they're one and the same?

The parent is referring to the typical attitude that's normally on display here about piracy of music, books, movies, etc. It usually ranges from the dismissive to claims that it actually benefits artists to the occasional bit of "fuck the artists" truth. (That's more or less verbatim from one thread I saw.)

You'll also hear a lot of libertarian and/or fluffy pseudo-socialist arguments for abolishing IP law when this stuff comes up. Information wants to be free, man!

But when it pertains to a programmer, a developer, an academic, etc., I do often see a very different attitude on display. You can see it in this thread. One of the top replies right now is about how the OP probably has an actionable DMCA claim. I thought the DMCA was Satan...? I guess that's only if certain kinds of people use it.

I think it boils down to a kind of classism or cultural/vocational tribalism. Programmers and academics are members of our class/tribe, and their works are worthy of protection and compensation. But writers, actors, producers, musicians, etc. are not and they can go busk on street corners. I don't think most people realize they're doing this, but they are. They've just never stopped to reflect on it or to unpack this nonsense.

There are exceptions, but dig up any thread around here on Popcorn Time or The Pirate Bay and you will see what I mean. Variants of "IP law should not exist" or "fuck the artists" is 9:1 the dominant opinion, with people putting forward a different view often getting down voted to the lightest shades of grey.

I say this as someone who used to believe this stuff until I reflected on it and thought about the implications and learned a bit more about how the world actually works. Abolishing copyright will only benefit the big content aggregators and vertically integrated delivery/streaming services, who will now be able to monetize everything in any way they want without paying anyone for it. Artists will starve. Most will leave the profession. Music usually comes up in these threads but musicians won't be the most fucked -- at least musicians can tour. The most fucked profession will be writing. When was the last time you attended a paid recital of a novel by its author?

I think that trying to ding people for being intellectually inconsistent requires showing that the same people are the ones saying the inconsistent things. It's possible that different people are just drawn to commenting in different threads.

It also requires understanding the points people are making.

Everyone agrees that selling pirated content is wrong. Hell, most pirates would agree to that. You can say it's a shitty attitude to have, but it's a consistent one: "Piracy is OK as long as you don't resell what you pirate" is internally consistent, even if you think it's morally wrong.

Similarly, people seem to be consistently against plagiarism, which is apparently at issue here as well. Again, the stance "Piracy is OK but don't pass pirated works off as your own" is internally consistent, even if you think it's morally wrong.

There's a lot of room between a 14 year copyright with optional extension, and a requirement to register to what we have today (life + 70 years) with automatic copyright on creation. That only benefits distributers, not society at large.

I'm much more inclined to support something closer to original copyright. As to Trademark protections, some have gone too far (IOC for example). And patent protection on anything software driven is pretty stupid, as well as extension patents on medication, but I can see a place for patent law, in some places.

I can't speak for everyone who pirated music, but back in the day when I did, it was because a CD was $15 and I couldn't afford that shit for every single song I wanted. When iTunes first showed up I thought it was a good idea, but the music came with the DRM bullshit. Then later, Amazon MP3 came around: Reasonable prices for ala-carte tracks, no DRM. I haven't stolen a single song since.

Piracy by most people is a failure of the market to provide. Look at the most pirated content: movies, music, television. All of these have a common vein; traditionally these media are distributed in specific and timed ways, usually at different times around the world, at different prices and at different venues, and all of it for no real reason.

Why should a hardcore fan of Metallica have to wait another three weeks for their new CD just because he lives in a different country?

Why should someone who loves Peter Jackson's movies have to sit and watch his friends in the United States see the movie he can't for another four weeks because he doesn't live in the right spot?

It's all ancient, trivial nonsense and was treated as such. I heard this so many times from me and other people like me: I would totally pay for this, but I have no way of doing so. Such rigid controls on availability of easily pirated content breed piracy and make criminals out of people who otherwise would never have been.

You can't afford it? Don't buy it! The world doesn't owe you a fucking thing.

> The world doesn't owe you a fucking thing.

And neither it does to the ones who sell stuff.

I'm sorry that future comes in pieces and not exactly in order. That the means to make culture free came before the means to make creators not have to pay for the rent. That the draw people have to educate themselves, or to participate in the shared cultural experience is stronger than the arbitrary restrictions some people try to place.

I never said it did. I'm making the point that most piracy exists because it's an easy alternative to purchasing. I'd never smash a glass case and run with a CD, but when I could click Download on Kazaa? Sure, why not.

Now I do the same thing with Amazon, and my credit card gets billed a buck. The difference is negligible to me, the difference to the media company? Tons of bad PR and losing a shitload of potential sales because they still thought the album was the only way to distribute music.

Edit: Upon further thought, the "world" in question here gave me two options: Either buying the CD, or downloading the song, and at the time there was no middle ground there. I can still download songs but I don't do it, I buy them. If that is a sense of entitlement it's not a very good one.

Not exactly the smartest move if you're a business that cares about profit though.

Can't agree more or upvote this high enough. As a programmer working in an entertainment medium (video games), I can understand both of the (caricatured) sides you posit. Ultimately my sympathies rest with content creators whose experience of the "disruptive" forces of technology and contemporary startup culture is a net negative to their individual livelihoods and their profession more generally.

I'm all for technology moving fast, even breaking things. I just want those agents of disruption to spend as much time cleaning up the mess they create in the process.

Agree with everything here. I enjoy the startups sticking it to the entrenched, backwards industries but they have a nasty habit of leaving a lot of innocent people stuck in the crossfire.

Writing the kind of thorough examination of these issues your post deserves would be biting off way more than I could chew right now, so I'll just make some random remarks instead.

People pirating entertainment isn't exactly "the free market" in action, but it's close. The common denominator is people doing what they want to, when no one intervenes in their activities.

So if there's nothing to deter people from pirating movies, or to punish them for it, then they'll go ahead and pirate movies. The risk is really small, and the reward is (practically) instant gratification. Very few would pass that up.

On the one hand, I think IP laws shouldn't exist. They're not meant to benefit the creators anyway, but the entertainment industry BigCorps instead.

On the other hand, I think it's wrong, to a small extent, to pirate movies or music or anything else someone has created and put up for sale.

There's a deal available to you, and it's up to you whether you'll take it. You get something, the creator gets money, and both are more or less happy. But if you circumvent the deal by downloading the product instead, that's comparable to stealing without the creator actually losing the product.

Of course, the entertainment industry equates pirating with actual stealing, because it's more impactful that way. That's dishonest too.

But all in all, people will act according to incentives, and they will pursue their personal gain and the satisfaction of their wants and needs. Nothing's going to change that, so it's pointless to even try.

Ultimately IP laws do way more harm than good, and they're not meant to benefit us little guys anyway.

Think of all the patent lawsuits flying around in the US, or that piece of shit Martin Shkreli charging outrageous prices for drugs people need to survive, etc.

All of that follows from IP laws existing too. So it's not just about "creators" getting what they deserve, it's all the scummy other stuff too.

Besides, what anyone deserves for his creation, is whatever he can get people to voluntarily pay for it. Nothing more, nothing less. That's something to keep in mind too. If there's no market for someone's creation, that doesn't mean there should be legislation that makes people pay for it.

Alright, I guess that's enough rambling now.

Thanks for the thoughts. As with many others I'll offer to you that my entire post is not about piracy. I've lived with piracy of my stuff for the last 7 years. Part of doing business.

The point of my post was a business profiting from pirates. The people who make the choice to forego bittorrent and just post the pirated stuff for a profit. THAT... is my point.

> The people who make the choice to forego bittorrent and just post the pirated stuff for a profit. THAT... is my point.

Yeah, that's a scuzzy thing to do.

I did not notice Napster, Youtube or their users selling the content.

YouTube wasn't directly selling content, but they were selling ad impressions on top of the content. Is that substantially different?

That's fairly slippery ground. Let's imagine for a moment that youtube would not have any ads at all. That would not make the copyright infringement any less (they'd be running at an even more massive loss but that's besides the point).

But if they sold the content then it would be direct profiting from piracy and that's a pretty simple affair when it comes to the legal side of things as it allows a much more direct assessment of the damages. No longer can the defendant claim that 'those copies would not have been sold to the viewers' because those copies are sold to the viewers, so the other party has you over a barrel when it comes to proving 'lost income due to reduced sales'.

But whether or not they profited directly from the content or not is actually immaterial to whether or not copyright infringement occurred. It did and charging for access would not make a difference there, income from advertising is just as clearly profiting.

I suspect that if they had charged for the content that youtube would never have gotten as big as it did so clearly the fact that they infringed left, right and center on copyrights and did not charge for the access to that content (and still do...) was what made them successful.

So I'd say yes, it was substantially different, but not in a legal sense.

I don't think youtube would have been alive for both legal reasons (they'd have been hit much harder and earlier) and for reasons related to not being able to achieve the scale they did if they had charged for the content.

Google isn't selling the pirated content and cracked keys that are easily found with it, but they are selling ad impressions on top of them. That seems to me to be much less substantially different from YouTube's case than YouTube's is from Udemy's.

Also, this isn't just us, the law in fact does consider them substantially different, and specifically uses the word "directly": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640023

>Funny how the HN crowd gets riled up when it happens to programmers.

The author of the article doesn't care about run-of-the-mill torrenting. So I believe the average HN commenter doesn't get "riled up".

Quote from the article: >When I ran Tekpub it would take (typically) a day or two (sometimes just a few hours) for the torrents to hit. It’s a price of doing business.

The problem in this case is that people are willing to pay for the courses but don't know that they are actually pirating them and Udemy is directly profiting from this.

>Movies cost tens of millions to make and employ hundreds if not thousands. Tv shows are maybe an order of magnitude smaller, records maybe one more. Any of those media products blow these aggrieved programmers out of the water, impact wise.

This is just my personal opinion but I'm not interested in either of those. They have no "impact" on me.

>But the founders of YouTube -- who played this little copyright game like a fiddle -- are heroes in the Valley.

They are actually taking action against copyright infringement. You can even claim the ad revenue from your works that the pirates would receive. Udemy does no such thing, even though they have enough employees to check the courses at a reasonable rate by hand and enough money since they take a cut for every sold course.

>I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.

I don't mind getting my stuff "broken", whatever that is even supposed to mean. I want to receive their works for free in the same manner as I want them to receive my works for free. I don't see any inconsitency with that.

> Movies cost tens of millions to make and employ hundreds if not thousands.

Couldn't have put it better myself: movies are a pretty small part of the economy, despite the spectacle. Box office takings in the US in 2014 were only about $10B in total - that's really not that big an industry, and high tech in particular eats those numbers for breakfast (insubstantial things like Instagram get bought for $1B, for example). Even if you throw in licensing and merchandising, it doesn't move the needle all that much.

Some comparative examples from other industries - the NYC Port Authority budget for 2015 was about $8B in size; Lowe's hardware has about a $50B turnover annually; the University of Pittsburgh had $2B in revenue for 2014; John Deere had $40B in revenue in 2013. All of these are single-company examples from larger industries, but the numbers give some context to the actual economic oomph of Hollywood.

And not only that, but when you see a movie and see all those names scroll by at the end? Those folks aren't all in full-time jobs. It's not like a movie keeps all the employees in permanent full-time employment. Most of the money that movies make don't go to employing people, but to the profiteers at the top.

So, in short, movies don't make that much money in context, and aren't the wide-ranging employers you're painting them as. They do however make a lot of noise and have an unbelievable amount of political power, given their relative lack of economic might. We don't see Lowe's pressuring the government to enact treaties on their behalf...

> I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.

Ah, you're right. SV should enhance its integrity by adopting the moral values of Hollywood...

I think the attitude is that it's an act of civil disobedience when it's perceived to be stealing from a big corporation or business entity. When it's a little guy, then HN jumps to their defense. Well, unless the little guy is a musician, in which case, fuck them and their art which should be free. They need to figure out how to make money some other way.

Usually it's not "fuck the musician", but "fuck the middlemen who take most of his money anyway".

Imagine if iTunes (or Spotify etc.) allowed people to upload songs without a musician's permission and SELL them via iTunes.

This has happened before, and the content creators face the same struggle. The most egregious example that I know of is Benn Jordan, aka The Flashbulb, who claims that ITunes, Google, etc. have made over 6 figures from selling music that someone uploaded without his permission:

https://torrentfreak.com/artist-cant-get-pirated-music-off-i...

It really sucked for Benn, who openly releases his own music on torrents and is active on What.cd, because he notes in his blog that he threw down 50 grand to hire an orchestra for the album that got stolen (Arboreal).

Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, musicians do not earn the same sympathy as programmers for the same issue, at least not here on Hacker News.

Not to mention Facebook is crawling with copyright violations that it makes money off of.

I think it is slightly different since Udemy is charging so much to view the infringing content. People weren't mad because it was free to view videos on youtube... youtube wasn't making money from the pirated content, in fact they were losing money in bandwidth costs... in contrast, Udemy is charging $19 for this guy's class... very different.