Wow. His simple tone belies the brilliance in his writing here. I seriously doubt he just spent 5 minutes scribbling this out as an afterthought. He gets a few key ideas across:

- he doesn't understand torrenting and so is helpless against it

- he cares about his viewers more than taking advice about DRM

- the video is owned solely by him and not some soulless corporation, and you're directly hurting him by torrenting

- you'll destroy his faith in mankind if you torrent

- five dollars is nothing compared to all that!

All of which combines to make you feel like a huge asshole for even considering pirate bay - in the nicest possible way. This type of thing makes a lot more sense than DRM in his case, and I bet it's a lot more effective too.

This is especially seen in the alert you get after clicking the 'What is this?' button.

"It's nothing, I just wanted to say hi! Hope everything is going well for you!"

I like this self-referential bit on the Terms and Conditions page (in the Disclaimers section):

https://buy.louisck.net/terms-and-conditions

"WE DO NO PROMISE THAT THE SITE OR ANY CONTENT, SERVICE OR FEATURE OF THE SITE WILL BE ERROR-FREE"

Indeed. But I am curious what would happen if a lot more people did this. Would such an appeal lose effectiveness?

Definitely. The only reason I bought it was to support DRM free content, not because I was actually particularly interested in it. If this was standard practice I would not just be buying for the novelty. That said, I definitely think it is possible to build a scalable system that works, it just needs some innovation.

The answer to that is complex, but worth considering what happens without it. A perfect example would be the Bill Hicks guest appearance on David Letterman that was not allowed to air because the material was considered too sensitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkptz2YfZik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf340K_Ed0o&feature=relat...

I fullheartedly support comedy as a form of free speech that should not be influenced by sponsorship.

Remember: Nothing is free. If something is "free", that's because it's you that's being sold.

I agree, he obviously understands the entire issue much much better than most artists.

Damn, I would've bought it if not for requiring PayPal. I don't have an account or want one.

You haven't needed a PayPal account to pay through PayPal since at least 2005. Unless the merchant disables "Account Optional", it's just a run-of-the-mill credit card payment form with an option to log in to the side.

But PayPal makes it as inconvenient as possible for non-members. The form is extremely long and if I recall correctly, doesn't work with Safaris Auto-Fill feature.

Holy shit. Typing in your address is hard work. Fuck that guy, who does he think he is, asking me to use PayPal to buy his shit? What an asshole.

"Extremely long"?

- Credit card number/expiration/code

- Billing address

- Name, e-mail and phone

That's all it asks. That's exactly what everyone else asks for. The merchant can even pre-fill all these fields but the card info before sending the buyer to PayPal if they filled them out on the merchant's website already.

It's especially weak to make such a complaint based on your "recollection" while you're two pages away from the actual payment form for Louis' show.

First world problems, huh?

You don't need an account, you can just use PayPal as a CC processor.

You appear to be right. My mistake.

From the link: "And just to be clear, you don't have to join PayPal to do this. You can do it as a one-time thing."

Why is he down-voted?

He didn't want to join paypal, fair enough.

He didn't know he could pay with paypal without joining it, now he knows it.

Other HN-ers might see this post, realize they don't need paypal, and go back to buy the video.

IMO this shouldn't be down-voted.

p.s. I know I could have just upvoted it instead of writing this useless post (Which I'd understand if you downvote me by the way), but I thought my point would be clearer with a message rather than a battle of upvote/downvote.

It's not worth complaining about a couple of karma points when I have thousands. And to be fair they downvoted me before I realized my mistake.

I'm not familiar with this artist, but I wanted to see it out of simple curiosity because he seems to be an artist who puts fans ahead of profits. People like that usually produce high-quality work.

Oh, it's not about the karma. Downvoting is more a message saying to everyone: "This is not a good post".

Because about 50 words after "pay with paypal" is a separate two-sentence paragraph dedicated to saying "you don't have to make a paypal account".

In this email purportedly from Louis in 2009, he sternly but politely asks someone to take down their bootleg taping of his routine:

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86011/comedian-louis-ck-asks-mi...

>>HI. I’m Louis CK. Can you please take this down? This show is a work in progress and was not intended to be passed around the internet. I have absolutely no problem, personally, with file sharing, and if you take everythign [sic] I have on the market on DVD, CD, and put it up for free downloading, I don’t care. But this is an artistic and personal request. Please take this torrent down. thanks. LCK

Clearly, the reason is that he's not happy with an unfinished version of his work floating around.

That isn't a copyright thing though, that is a standup thing.

Right, sorry if I implied otherwise. My intent was to show that he's not an asshole in these matters (I guess I should've excerpted more of the post).

From Twitter:

I'm going to be doing an IAMA on Reddit, Monday around 1230pmEST I don't know what IAMA or Reddit are, but I'll be doing that.

awesome bunch of geeky-openness from ck.

I'm a huge fan, but professing total ignorance of all things technology reminds me of being in the fourth grade. Luckily for him doing an IAMA on Reddit doesn't involve performing sex acts on a donkey. Seriously, either he's become one of America's most successful standups in spite of his complete naivete, or he's a lot more shrewd than he's making out.

Actually, if I remember correctly from his interview on the WTF podcast, his father is a programmer and Louis was always pretty technologically adept. E.g. he edits his TV show himself on his MacBook.

Not his father, his mother.

Professing total ignorance of all things technology != professing ignorance of Reddit and torrents.

It takes less than 30 seconds to understand what a torrent or Reddit is. Or does CK not know how to find and understand (read) basic information?

You're taking this way too seriously. Comedians claim ignorance all the time to sound funny. It doesn't mea. They are real ignorant or stupid.

Too bad his comedy doesn't translate over text.

Personal respect for the artist notwithstanding, this is not a replicable model for others. He makes it up in volume.

This is not a general solution.

why not? He already got paid a significant sum by the ticketholders at beacon theater, so all he has to recoup is the cost of producing the special, which he did largely himself.

The marginal cost of distributing an additional copy of his work is minimal, and his pricing reflects that, and makes people more likely to pay for it rather than steal it.

Can you elaborate on why you don't think this is a general solution?

It's completely a generalizable solution. From upstart standups who tape their open night sets for YouTube to seasoned comics with tv shows and HBO specials like Louis CK and David Cross (who similarly self-produced his last special "Bigger and Blackerer" by asking his buddy to tape 2 of his sets, though he didn't self distribute), this model absolutely works.

Louie's just doing for comedy what have been doing for years, recording the concert and selling it at the end of the night or online for more than they'd have made otherwise through traditional distribution deals.

i'm guessing it's because of this monetization model wouldn't work for everyone, and so it's not a solution in any which way to the copyright problem.

This works for him because you, and i, know and (probably) appreciate his humor, and he's going to make some money from it.

It's not going to work for someone who's not quite as good, and rely more on having that product actively sold to you ...

Even then, you're looking at similar economics. HBO is willing to pay you $X for your special because you have an audience that is worth (at least) $X to them.

For a lesser known artist or comedian, you lose the power of the distribution channel, but you gain in margins. The opportunity for cross-promotion in the form of an opening act is still alive and well, and I don't see why it can't continue in a digital form.

I'd argue that if someone isn't 'quite as good', then they don't deserve anyone's money. The biggest problem with the music/movie/entertainment industry today is that all of the backing is behind 'sellable' artists, not talented ones. Take all that promotion and marketing and brainwashing away, and you have a group of entertainers being judged on their true merits. I think thats fair - I don't really understand how anyone else wouldn't.

Louis CK spent nearly 15 years in the wild as a hack comedian before he found his voice, according to his own commentary. We wouldn't have his excellence now if it weren't for him being able to keep himself fed through his work while not 'quite as good'.

You're missing my point, completely. Louis CK deserves his place today precisely because he spent 15 years struggling. In my comment above, I took issue with a plethora of entertainers out there today who _didn't_ have to struggle, who leveraged sex, image and brand names to get to where they were. It is this harsh reality that makes so many artists give up while they're not quite as good, so I applaud Louis CK for being one of the few who weathered the storm and eventually found their place. They deserve their success more than most who have it.

You're missing my point: if there was no money if you had less than stellar talent, we wouldn't have most of our stellar talent. If there was no money for Louis CK when he was in his crap phase, he couldn't have stuck at it long enough to 'get it' and go stellar.

When I said you were missing my point, I wasn't saying your opinion is wrong. You're actually pointing out another injustice altogether, rather than disagreeing with me. Look back to my original comment. I took issue with the Justin Biebers of the world getting too much of the pie. You took issue with the Louis CKs of the world getting too little. We don't have conflicting opinions here, and they don't need to be mutually exclusive.

Someone (you or another user) is down-modding my comments, and i can't really understand why. I feel they contribute to the discussion (a feeling confirmed by the simple fact that you've engaged with and responded to them). Judging by your profile, it seems like you too are against the idea of down-modding simply because you disagree with an opinion. If you are the one down-modding me, I'd consider that both hypocritical and shameful, but I'm not one to jump to conclusions, and will happily give you the benefit of the doubt.

Fair enough.

On the downmodding thing, the only thing to do is thicken your skin. The moderation system here is bloody stupid, inferior to moderation systems from 10 years ago. I'll not rehash my further arguments against it, you've already found them :)

It is not a replicable model to assume your work will not be reproduced online and to assume you can politely ask someone to remove it if it has been.

absolutely brilliant!