Please don't conflate tangible goods with intangible goods. Intangible goods are patterns. You can't steal a pattern, because a pattern can't be "owned" in any sense that a physical object can.
Now, you can have rights to a pattern and that right stops others from exploiting that pattern commercially, but you don't own the pattern. Even our current laws recognize this. After all, your right will expire, but if you own a car, you own it forever and without limits.
So enough with this "theft" bullshit.
The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is. Same as with those patterns of yours -- the laws could easily be changed so that you own the pattern always and forever. It's quite pointless to argue about the shoulds of the situation based on current law.
When we're talking about incentives for production and utility, it actually makes quite a bit of sense to conflate cars and music. They have many similar properties. On the consumption side, you do have to consider the added utility of making the music free, though, because some people will be able to consume it who otherwise wouldn't have paid.
I disagree. I think it's part of the current social code/contract, not just the law. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA ads say exactly that - "you wouldn't steal a car" - because they know people find property (particularly personal property) to be something we have a right to.
Copyright, on the other hand, is only unquestionable by the law.
Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same. Laws are indirectly derived from the social code, so just move my statement up a level. You still can't answer the question of how the social code ought to view bits from how it currently views them.
Sometimes the social code is wrong, and those who believe that copyright piracy is bad for society are making the case that this is one of those times. Simply observing the current state of the social code in no way counters those arguments -- although some of them can be countered other ways.
That's the thing: I don't believe they are. 46% (70% for young adults) of the US citizens admit to have committed copyright infringement. Almost no one agrees with large fines or with cutting off the connection for infringers.
I think there's a big disconnect between the social code and the law.
So too must the public attitude towards filesharing define our laws surrounding it. The majority of people have, without caveat, expressed through their actions their belief that filesharing is, and should be, a normal and accepted part of society. This may rankle those whose paychecks are predicated upon the status quo, but it doesn't affect our shifting morals. We are a people who accept and embrace "copyright infringement". It is only once this reality is accepted that the content industry may move forwards.
The important question is, if you take the root beliefs and walk back up the tree, do all of the beliefs come to an overall support of free copying? Then you do that in aggregate for society, taking into account uncomfortable truths about the economics of music production and advertising where necessary and on a level individuals won't when they derive their inevitable personal free-riding preferences. Going from high level feeling to high level feeling ("I like file sharing" -> "file sharing is right") does not work. Almost everyone says that they would prefer to pay less tax too.
To put it another way, there are plenty of things people would do if they could get away with it. Not paying taxes, driving as fast as they want, tossing cigarette butts wherever, etc. Your exact argumentation could be used to say, "Society's views about these activities need to change," but that's not actually the case. All you are observing is that people will take advantage of situations where they can get away with something, even if it's not ultimately good for society as a whole. In no way do I accept the norms that you're deriving from this. Rather, I should say that I don't accept the way you are deriving them. My personal jury is still out on whether I think filesharing is a problem that needs to be addressed more or less forcefully.
It sounds like you have strong opinions on the topic -- I'd love to hear more about how you think people justify copyright infringement.
People don't justify anything. By saying that something needs to be justified, you are suggesting that this is a moral issue? It's wrong for me to copy patterns of bytes? If so, then I've been a sinner since I was 10. Remember those 5 1/4 floppies, BBSes, IRC, etc? Yeah.
Copyright law was designed with businesses in mind, not individuals. Fair use should be expanded to encompass all personal use of patented or copyrighted material. Restrictions should only apply to commercial application.
Speaking of business ...
Did I mention I create digital works every day? That's what I do. I create software. My work can easily be copied ... and if it was, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself. Actually, I wouldn't even blame myself. Because my rampant "piracy" as a kid made me realize something. There is no value in software. There is only value in service. The software I write is merely a tool that I use to render a service and even if you copied it, you would only be left with a tool. I'm the final part of the equation and I can't be copied. That's the right way to do software.
What people don't mention is that the software industry was first. Before music, before movies, before books, before any of that ... the software industry was forced to change, more than that, it was born changed, because digital "piracy" was born with the software industry.
But I still think the ideal in software should be for a tool that just works and is intuitive enough to not require training. There are a lot of tricky problem domains where that's unlikely to ever happen. Such is often the case with ideals.
> There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service.
And then assume I meant something else.
> But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it.
Shame on you, sir.
> I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.
I think this is very much the wrong way to have a civilized discussion, despite your wit.
For what it's worth, I don't agree you should be downvoted. But you also have made it hard to have an actual discussion by casting everything as right/wrong type of situation and then clearly dictating what is right or wrong. That really makes it hard to have a civilized discussion because there's no seeking of understanding, just refutation.
No you don't; the car must be titled, road-legal, emissions tested, insured, and you must be licensed to drive. Those are some of the limits on owning and using a car. Physical possession doesn't constitute a natural right.
More generally, you shouldn't pretend like you can divine human law from physical constraints. Human law serves humans. Property law serves humans. Laws might want to take into account the nature of intellectual property as bits, or they might not, depending on what is practical and desirable; but the bits are an implementation detail.
That is not true. All of those things are necessary to use a car, not to own one.
Actually, you made my point for me. The point is society limits the way people can use property for practical reasons. There's no reason you can't do that on intellectual property because "omg it's made of bits".
Also, you mentioned earlier that mere possession does not imply rightful ownership. I totally agree, as would anyone who has been the victim of theft.
> And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it.
He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content:
The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the metadata
was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never
sort properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazon.
What are you saying? Are you advocating for harsher consequences and more enforcement of existing law or more DRM? It's unusual to see so many luddites on HN. Personally, I'd prefer to see modernization of IP laws.
That's a tired and no longer relevant point. His point is that people will pay for the convenience of acquiring media, and then presents an example of when it was convenient to him (purchasing an ebook when the pirated version was sub par quality). However, as I showed in my video example, iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate, which shows (to me at least and I would hope everyone else) the issue is NOT acquisition of content or convenience, it's saving money.
Also no I don't think people should be punished more harshly for media piracy, I don't ever want to try and comment on the proper legal approach because I don't understand enough about the law to do it properly, but my basic thoughts on media piracy have been previously outlined here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694764
Piracy happens in most cases because it's FREE, this is the #1 reason, the fact that Spotify etc. are finding success should be the absolute proof: Spotify is free (or cheaper, if you pay for a subscription) than purchasing music, that's why people use it. Convenience is not a valid or relevant reason for (most) media piracy any more. There are some cases (such as acquiring the entire discography of an artist or group, which can't be done easily through any pre-existing product) which makes piracy more convenient, but the common use case of media acquisition (a single song or an artists latest album) is not part of the convenience.
As for prices, yes, iTunes is also much too expensive for many things — when I can buy a physical copy and have it shipped crosscountry to my house for a fraction of the cost of iTunes' lousy crippleware, something is wrong — but that seems beside the point. Yes, a lot of piracy happens because it's free. Most of that piracy doesn't really seem to be replacing sales and so isn't really relevant from an economic standpoint. Those people just want something for free. It seems like the point where piracy really becomes a problem is when it's the superior option even for people who could easily afford to buy your wares.
iTunes still isn't the most convenient source for many things. My one experience with iTunes was trying to buy an album from a French musician. I spent several hours creating a fake French account with a legitimate French address and tracking down a French iTunes gift card. I had to give up, because the artist didn't take the time to manually check all 300 locales to include his album in.
You consider that 'solved'? The artist never got the money I was actively trying to give him.
This is the utilitarian, simplistic, convenient and completely false view. People are definitely NOT perfectly rational beings working towards their maximal, personal profit. This is why, BTW, libertarianism is a silly, childish pipe dream.
Coming back to the subject, people are perfectly aware that taking someone else's physical good may harm this person directly, that's why it's always carefully regulated by many told and untold rules. Even the most small, primitive societies have mechanisms for goods exchange and appropriation.
Digital goods aren't goods, they're information; when they're shared, the originator keeps them. Nobody never sold "information", only convenient, easy or practical access to it. People never bought "music" in the form of CDs, they bought CDs as the way to listen to the music they wanted.
I disagree with this completely. There's a tremendous desire for oxygen. Literally every human being needs it nearly every second of their life. However, it has no market value because it's freely available wherever you go. You're basically saying that price should be determined solely by demand, regardless of supply. You're ignoring fully half of economic theory.
Yes, there is a huge demand for digital copies of music and video, but there's also an infinite supply of them.
I look forward to that day so we can all have awesome hybrid vehicles that run on garbage. I suspect people will also be able to make awesome mashups so I can get an EV Jeep pickup or a 2012 convertible beetle.
I think you've missed the parent's point. We have left the world where pirating is impossible. The question is how to deal with it. Thinking in unrealistic hypotheticals does little to inform the debate.
It's more important to think about utility, because that can help us answer the question of whether the government and laws should be used to create market value where there is none by trying to make a good excludable.
Are you saying that 46% of US citizens* would steal a car if it was consequence free? Because I'd like to see some evidence of that.
* The number who have said to have committed copyright infringement.
And then, after they do that, they will spend countless hours writing message board posts on fora all over the Internet about how their speeding tickets are elaborate scams set by the government to raise revenue. Their justifications are almost as elaborate and refined as those of music pirates.
(I'm not on a high-horse here; I speed too.)
"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.
That's still just an assertion.
> an even greater majority of American drivers will disobey road safety laws (most commonly the speed limit) which are statistically shown to mitigate traffic fatalities.
And that's far from obvious, actually, especially when it comes to speed limits which you single out. See for example this analysis from the Cato Institute:
> Despite the fact that 33 states raised their speed limits immediately after the repeal of the mandatory federal speed limit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last October that "the traffic death rate dropped to a record low level in 1997." Moreover, the average fatality rate even fell in the states that raised their speed limits.
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/speed-doesn...
But stealing a car always has consequences: someone has one car less. Saying that people would steal cars if the stolen cars didn't disappear from their owners is illogical.
On the other hand, disobeying road safety laws doesn't in fact have consequences most of the time: people rarely get hurt. And it has been demonstrated that people are terrible at evaluating odds. So the situation is far from analogous.
"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.
It's not my argument. I was just questioning parent's claim about stealing cars.
This is not at all the same thing as being willing to steal somebody else's car just because you know you won't get caught. In that case, you know that you are creating immediate harm to that person. People weigh that differently from a vague chance of killing an abstract person.
Another way to ask the question is to say "What are the consequences of stealing a car from your neighbour?" and I would say the answers would be "Legal (theft), moral (I have taken someone else's car) and financial (I have saved money on a car)". If stealing a car was consequence free then none of these would matter.
Then the questions I have are; why is copyright infringement free from moral consequences while car stealing isn't?
The moral consequences differ because the consequences differ.
But they aren't depriving me of my tobacco. The two are different, which is why the morality of the two are different. Nobody denies that being able to get the police to enforce a monopoly has value, but it's not the same kind of value as the ability to enjoy smething for its intrnsic value to the owner.
Different kinds of value, therefore different kinds of morality. I'd say that the right to monopolize bits has nothing to do with the bits and everything to do with taxation or rent-seeking.
I would also think that the relative value of the items makes a difference ethically. Assuming a song has a value on the market of $1 and a car has a going price of $10,000, the car is four orders of magnitude more expensive. Imagine if only one person could own a song at a time, and that song was valued the same as a car. I don't think you would see the rates of copyright infringement that you see today. For this same reason, I disagree that if car theft became consequence-free, many people would do it. The moral consequence is derived from the value of the object you are depriving someone of; a car is far more valuable than a song. Additionally, there's the ethical consequence of depriving someone of transportation, while taking a song does not really have any effects on a person's quality of life.
People will do all sorts of crazy things if the system allows them to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
I do think that's incorrect, but there's a broader picture issue that makes this irrelevant: Why does it even matter?
You're misunderstanding the original argument. Of course it's possible to make some money for selling something that is free. Specially if you convince people that it's not free, and that you'll go to jail if you do otherwise. But what they mean with "there's no market value", is that it doesn't create any new value to the economy. It's just money changing hands. If you ask me for 5 bucks and I say "yes, of course, no need to pay me back", we didn't just magically create value in the economy because I payed you 5 bucks for nothing. The value in the economy is the same, that's just money changing hands.
If I pay money for a copy of a song, that's just money changing hands. It didn't add any new value to the economy. If I didn't pay money for that copy of the song. The song would still be there. No change in value.
Unless, of course, if you make the argument that music would cease to exist if we start sharing it for free. Which I would honestly rather not get into.
so basically $10 per CD, everyone CAN AFFORD a wall full of CDs, lets say 10,000 of them, but they choose to steal instead? OK.
As for convenience, I may find it more convenient to download music from TPB or a college FTP than from iTunes, because I don't want to deal with their installer or give away my billing info. Convenience is an utterly subjective measure.
(also, your car analogy is shitty and bad and you should feel shitty and bad)
Of course - because once they have your billing info, they can actually bill you and your bank account will decrease by the cost of the CD.
So you pretty much proved his point - you just don't want to pay for something you can steal.
> Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value.
What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say hypothetically in the future stealing a car becomes easy and without consequence (even though it's still illegal) does that mean there is no market value for cars? Of course it doesn't. It shows that people care more about saving money
If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music, the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.
The convenience argument is also (for want of a better phrase) complete and utter bullshit. I can switch to itunes right now, type in a search term, hit purchase and have the song on my hard drive (and iphone and any other device I have connected to my itunes account) within 10 seconds. Hell, I'll open my screen recording program now and record me proving this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2wzb0-4Pg
People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it. It's not a matter of convenience, people go to more effort pirating than they would purchasing (except for cases where the music is not available commercially, but those instances are "rare" and not a worthy consideration for the sake of this argument).