Do the other details matter? That Amazon had to recall the book and refunded customers? Not to me. They simply could not have "recalled" all books if they had been physically sold.
They are holding a loaded weapon pointing at our e-books. The circumstances that make them fire it are not as important as the bizarre fact that they have this loaded weapon in the first place.
Yes, the details matter.
The FSF is once again using aggrandizing to present their case. Amazon did not go in without cause and revoke the book. There was a specific reason they did so, and they did refund the customers' money. There was no back door in to the Kindle, it was all done through the account management services. The way the FSF is presenting it is intentionally done to make Amazon appear malicious, when the reality is it what a mistake on their part and they corrected it.
This is typical of Stallman and his organization. They have good points, but the presentation of them is over the top to the point where people just stop caring.
How is it over the top? Is any of what they say false? That Amazon are able to remove a book from your reader is exactly the kind of contrast to physical books that the list intended to point out, regardless of their reason for doing so or the fact that they refunded their customers. The effect of these differences is that less power is in the hands of consumers, regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise or how they mitigated it.
I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics.
When one's philosophy is that the Four Freedoms strictly trump any convenience in any context, you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. That's not evil; it's the nature of progress (along the same lines as accepting that you might have to pay taxes---in essence, give up your own hard-earned possessions to a collective over which you have minimal power to decree how those possessions will be used---to live in a place where you don't have to arm yourself against bandits or maintain your own roads, etc.). Hell, if you don't like the way Amazon is administering its chunk of the cloud, it's a lot easier to leave Amazon than to leave a country.
> Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1%
They're usually not willing, just feel helpless and like they don't have a choice. They don't know they have a choice. They are also frequently unaware of what Amazon can do:
> I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics.
I don't mean to say that these effects are irrelevant in any general sense, I am saying that in the context of listing disadvantages of Amazon e-books, it's relevant to mention that the contract that their customers have with them allows them to delete their books at their discretion, and that they have been doing so. I certainly don't see how they went "over the top" by just mentioning it.
> [...] you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them.
Just in the interest of not being extremely vague about what exactly those benefits are, let's look at the case in point. Amazon pulled two books from customers that had paid for them, from what I understand over a rights dispute. The books were not only "in the cloud", but had already been retrieved and stored on the customers' devices for consumption, and Amazon went out of their way to delete them from the devices as well, using a backdoor. What exactly was the collective benefit of the cloud in this case? How did the shared, administered, cloud-based technologies empower the users in this instance, if we take "users" in this case to mean the affected customers? Is a deliberate backdoor into your device an inevitable aspect of cloud based technologies?
Who did benefit from the action? The winners in this were probably Amazon and the claimant in the dispute. It certainly wasn't the customers. If it was your intention to address the case in point in the above quote, I think that you are conflating "cloud-based technologies" with a generally shitty customer rights, as if the two need to go hand in hand. Meanwhile, tons of people are using "cloud-based technologies" illegally to download books in without agreements and format and device lock-downs that completely screw them over at the whim of the distributor.
> Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund.
Some are not, or may not be if they had the effects detrimental to their rights listed to them.
> That's not evil; it's the nature of progress
What do you mean by progress here? In the most general sense of the word this is a rather meaningless conclusion. I don't see how the tax analogy explains it. When I pay taxes, I do it for the benefit of society. The money I pay actually go towards infrastructure and welfare. When Amazon removes a book from my library, how does it benefit society? Would Amazon go bankrupt if they did not do these things?
Another way is that building the loaded weapon was a prerequisite for their capacity to offer the world's largest library of commercially-viable ebook content, and without that "bizarre fact," the content simply wouldn't be available to anyone electronically because of the legal wrangling necessary to get it into publicly-accessible electronic format.
These manacles are always sold to the public as "for your own" or "for your own protection" as if they were an inevitable fait accompli of how things should proceed. Very Machiavellian, very gangsterish. We have evidence of these libraries growing without these restrictions, so we know it's simply a lie that we need these restrictions.
They grow faster with the restrictions. Digital music was doable, but wasn't easy until Apple did the business work necessary to make the iTunes Music Store possible. eBook access to the latest publications on day-of publication across fiction and nonfiction was functionally a non-starter until Amazon did the business work necessary to make the Kindle Store possible. Their competition who didn't want to play by the rules of the restrictions the content owners wanted were plowed under by the volume and convenience generated by successful business partnerships.
It's inconvenient for those who prefer a world without business-driven constraints that the processes that create those constraints also create massive convenience. But they do, and the world is full of potential customers who want that convenience. Because the alternative of a marketplace where they can pay someone (and play by that someone's terms of service) to do the work for them is to learn to do that work themselves, and that's not what people want to specialize in.
Adding more details (the book's publisher did not have rights to sell that edition; customers were refunded) does not change the key message being communicated: Amazon removed books that had been purchased in good faith from Kindles without the purchasers' involvement or consent.
That's something Amazon could do (and still can) that would not be possible to do with paper books or ebooks that were not purchased through Kindles or other devices that are not directly connected to the Internet. Not without some sort of massive intrusive recall effort anyway.
Having said that, this article is quite straw-manny. I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily. For books that I purchase, I still need to do so electronically, and that usually requires identification (through PayPal or credit card). I have no problems with ebooks in general, though; not every ebook format or reader grants the same access to the vendor, and it's not that difficult to vote with your feet.
> I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily.
I don't think you're "fairly typical" in this regard, nor is most of the HN user base. Most people are doing what Amazon publishes as "most convenient", which is internet-enabled e-readers with all of Amazon's restrictions.
Very true. The same is also true in other situations where the dominant player creates a "walled garden"[1] over which they have complete control, as with Apple (although in that regard, I expect much of the HN user base is happy to be subjected to the joys of that particular walled garden).
> The same is also true in other situations where the dominant player creates a "walled garden"[1] over which they have complete control, as with Apple
It's somewhat unclear what you mean, especially with apple having added sideloading support in Xcode 7/iOS9.
Wow. E-books such as non-DRM'ed ePub are great sharing and accessibility tool. I can't quite decide whether this conflating of e-books with the Amazon Kindle store is stupid or dishonest. The Kindle format/store is only "typical" in that Amazon is a major bookseller. There is nothing preventing every benefit listed there of printed books with ePub, and even people who are blind can access them too.
"printed books …(stuff that applies to printed books) ..Contrast that with Amazon e-books (fairly typical).. (stuff that applies to kindle ebooks and other DRM restricted formats):"
Its fairly typical in that Amazon is the biggest retailer, a trend setter and other retailers and tech providers follow their lead putting out similar stuff.
I don't perfectly agree with the Free Software Foundation at a high level, but I think this comparison is pretty fair. If you compare in most people's physical and legally obtained digital book collections, this is what you will find. The ebooks don't come with the same rights.
EDIT: To be more clear, it says "We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom." But every single benefit it notes of printed books is also true of non-DRM'ed ePub book, except that non-DRM'ed ePubs respect your freedom even more—your freedom to freely copy and distribute it, your freedom to have it displayed by a screenreader or braille device.
If you want more free e-books, just go to m.gutenberg.org, find one, and open it in your app of choice.
I don't disagree with this and neither does the article.
It is however true that in the practice, in the wild, ebooks mostly do have DRM. Hence, it's a problem with e-books to the the extent that it is a problem.
Exactly. And yet the message of the page is that it is e-books that are the threat. "The Dangers of E-Books". "Join our mailing list about the dangers of e-books". "We must reject e-books..."
I am against DRM in general, but I don't really understand the whole "free" software movement. Whenever I see the FSF (Stallman et al) deriding any and all software that isn't open source and licensed for free use by anyone for any purpose, it just seems ridiculously naive to me. Does their ideal world really have zero commercial closed-source software? How do software developers get paid in that world? And why stop at software? Do they eat food from restaraunts that don't publish their exact recipes? Do they pay for commercial transportation (buses, airplanes, etc.) that restrict your destinations to pre-set terminals? Why does software get this special "it's evil if it's not open and free" treatment but nothing else? I find it truly bizarre.
I believe this is a pretty naive analysis. If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.
On a reader - if you're counting the cost of electricity, let's count the cost of shipping entire forests of paper around the world, first to paper mills, then to print factories, then to bookshops and libraries.
And the cost of travel to and from a lending library for every reader.
And why not also include the cost of lighting to read the book? (I can read my Kobo in the dark because it has a very low energy backlight. My eyes don't work so well with the lights off, so I've never been able to do that with paper.)
I wonder how many people here understand that giant warehouses full of overstocked print are regularly shipped back from stores and pulped. Does everyone understand how much space and weight a million copies of a failed bestseller takes up? Does everyone know that paper books are always sold sale-or-return, so if they don't go out the front door they go out the back door onto a truck, with the covers stripped so they can't be resold?
The original article is factually wrong in significant ways.
Not all ebooks are sold by Amazon, not all ebooks have DRM, and not all ebooks that start with DRM continue to have DRM.
At this point, arguing against digital publishing because Amazon is like arguing against the printing press because the medieval Catholic church was fond of censorship and burning.
Would it? If all books were available in DRM-free formats, you could replace an entire building with a single computer and some offsite backups. The energy use for lighting, air conditioning, elevators, and everything else that goes into running a library is non-negligible. Not to mention the embodied energy of all the materials for building and maintaining a large structure for 100 years.
That's not to say I'd support replacing libraries with an ebook lending system; they serve important functions beyond book lending, and I like paper books anyway. But I wouldn't claim that they're low energy.
If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.
I'm not so sure. The longer a book is in existence, the more expensive it is to maintain. Over time, books fall prey to dust, mites, mold, acids used to treat the paper. As books wear out, you upgrade to newer printings. Very similar things happen to computer files; bit rot, format support, etc.
From an energy standpoint, there's a lot more up front energy needed to produce a book than an e-book. After it's created and read, an e-book sits on a hard drive or a flash drive, unused, and thus uses little to no energy for storage. Physical books, on the other hand, require dusting and cleaning, which requires energy in the form of a fed human being and/or a vacuum cleaner.
In in depth comparison between the two types of libraries would be very interesting. Even after typing all of that, I'm not sure which one would come out on top.
> If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.
I suspect that the energy cost of maintaining a paper book at a decent temperature for a decade would be orders of magnitude worse than the energy cost of backing up an ebook for a decade.
My concern is that after a decade, all mirrors of the ebook might disappear.
So where do you buy general interest non-DRM ePubs these days? I used to buy from Barnes & Noble when it was easy to remove the DRM. They've made it much more difficult, so I don't buy from them anymore.
P.G. Wodehouse is a good example of an author I like to buy as ePub.
Kobo has some, but doesn't make them easy to find. It's a note on the bottom of each store page instead of something you can search by. I have no idea why; if I could find the good books with no DRM I'd have spent way more money there.
Recently discovered that Brandon Sanderson's books are among the DRM free (Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, others), which is a great set of reads for fantasy fans.
On one hand, I understand the dangers from a philosophical viewpoint. On the other, I don't care what Amazon considers their rights or licenses with my Kindle.
I'm going to read what I want to read, when I want to read it, on my Kindle, whether Amazon wants me to or considers me to have a license or not. Basically: I don't care what the EULA states for my Kindle.
It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
If it ever came to the point of Amazon disabling Kindles for sharing this viewpoint, then I'm sure there would be a groundswell of support for an open-source OS for the Kindle and we'd all get coding. In the end, I'm not all that scared.
I'm in the same boat, it's just too convenient to read from a Kindle compared to having to hold a paperback while laying in bed. These rules that Amazon imposes on ebooks doesn't really affect me, I purchase the books and I get to read them, that's it.
People just use callibre or other software to read anything they damn want on their kindles.
When it stops being possible people won't buy kindles.
As gog.com and CD Projekt RED shown - it's perfectly possible to make a living selling non-DRMed games (when their servers failed last tuesday people still bought the Witcher 3 expansion in gog, and then downloaded it from torrents), so I don't see how it's impossible to do with ebooks.
> if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
Right, except you don't have the right to do that. You have no carte blanche entitlement to access media or entertainment. If the executives at HBO figure that, financially speaking, it's in their best interest to keep new Game of Thrones episodes accessible to cable customers only, you have the right to not buy it and be frustrated at that and protest it until eventually enough people protest for HBO to budge.
What you don't have the right to do is then to circumvent the legal and technological system set up for you to purchase Game of Thrones and access it for free, which, yes, is fucking theft. I can hear the scoffing through TCP/IP.
And you're not just harming the company, you're not just harming the already rich suits at HBO. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. People figure getting their music for free is a more rational individual choice than paying $16 for a CD. Everyone then makes the decision to get their media for free. Who cares about those stupid record labels, anyways?
Suddenly, smaller markets around the world have their industry gutted by piracy, smaller labels have to shut down, bigger labels have to fire hundreds of less successful artists that they used to be able to support from the money they made on the more successful artists, the more successful artists have to stop relying on royalties from album sales and have to whore themselves out doing nonstop touring year-round for money. Thank God it's physically impossible to "pirate" concert tickets.
I know we're going on a tangent here, but people often falsely conflate open-source access to information and piracy into this one big, happy revolution against the evil gatekeepers and their evil transactions that involve my money. No. Piracy is just fucking theft, period.
Tell that to the cable companies and radio stations that got their start the same way. Nearly every major media distribution channel in this country at least was founded on piracy. [Source: http://goo.gl/fN62uy]
Furthermore, let's not say that copying an ebook is the moral equivalent of storming a vessel, murdering and raping everyone onboard, plundering the remains and then sinking the thing into the sea. Let's just agree that those two are separate things.
I'm not saying piracy has had no part in a positive change in society. I know that, without Napster, stuff like iTunes and Spotify couldn't exist. I know that Spotify itself started out with a repository of pirated music. I know that many cable companies and radio stations just started off by illegally rebroadcasting other networks' content.
The recurring pattern is that these people committing acts of piracy had a larger goal/conclusion in mind. They often ended up legally servicing and selling media and entertainment on a far larger scale than they ever illegally stole it. These people didn't have the resources and content to go about their business otherwise, and saw fit to commit acts of theft in the short-term to convince people that the core of their structure was worth getting access to content legally. The vast majority of pirates don't have such ambitions. They just want free movies.
Agreed; I'd also dispute that the existence of early pirates gated the creation of other later (legitimate) businesses. The pirates might have shown folks what was possible, a little earlier than would otherwise have happened. But they did not possess any superior imagination or initiative. It would have happened in a different way.
> The recurring pattern is that these people committing acts of piracy had a larger goal/conclusion in mind.
So an action by the likes of a nascent Spotify, cable company, or radio station (or whomever) is OK as long as the long-term ends justify the short-term means?
> The vast majority of pirates don't have such ambitions. They just want free movies.
How do you know what they want? Can you read each of their minds?
Exactly. Let's not conflate sharing (making exact copies) with theft or the real meaning of piracy. It's copyright infringement, and we should be promoting works that fight against the copyright regime using Creative Commons licensing and other such free culture licenses. At at the very least we should reject DRM.
For better or for worse, the 'real' meaning of words is what people intend them to mean when they use them. Piracy currently means copyright infringement.
Language is not fixed, the meanings of words shift all the time.
And the word "piracy" has been applied to unauthorized copying of books since at least 1735. I own an old copy of the London Magazine that contains the usage.
If you read this, you are a thief, you just stolen that information from me. Do you agree?
Arguing about labels is stupid, but so is misusing a word for financial gain.
I wonder if WB and Sony are OK with piracy as long as I return the "stolen" thing afterwards.
But seriously, even if piracy is theft, it's a different kind of theft, so arguing "oiracy is theft, theft is bad, therefore piracy is bad" is still a bad argument. It would be the best, if everybody focused on the actual matter at hand instead of pointless arguments by associacion.
Digital goods are fundamentally non-excludable and non-rivalrous (sometimes anti-rivalrous, as with software). Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply. At worst it would be free-riding, which has different implications.
The idea that theft has to include rivalrous good is a strawman. You are just taking the difference between theft you don't like and pirating and then saying that difference is hugely important.
> Whoever transports, transmits, or transfers in interstate or foreign commerce any goods, wares, merchandise, securities or money, of the value of $5,000 or more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud; or ....
So the people trying to get through the not stealing it is copying due to a technical definition of theft are wrong. Stealing is having a copy that you didn't get permission to take.
My other ethics brain is wondering how NOT taking property but a copy seems to also allow sneaking into a movie theater, concert or sporting event to watch something. You are neither taking anything or even copying you are just watching. Is this also not theft?
In which case properly delineating what "asking for permission" is becomes increasingly intractable. I have all sorts of images in my thumbnail cache that my browser has downloaded which nominally I do not have permission to keep, but are unavoidable artifacts of using the web via a graphical browser. Indeed, the lines of what is and is not implicit consent are very blurred. Not to mention that merely not being supposed to have something under a set of terms says nothing of the legitimacy of said terms.
A lot of companies have provisions in their EULAs to allow for copies stored in RAM or by the browsers, e.g. http://storedvalue.com/en-US/terms-and-conditions and I believe streaming services are doing that as well since going to the monitor will require making copies and transforms of the data from the network. It's all pretty funny until someone gets sued.
Yes this is the cause of many crazy Internet stories of Instagram or FaceBook now own your photos.
Photos on a public web page are implicitly giving you permission to view the photo and the technology need you to have a local copy for viewing. That does not mean you can grab the photos from say National Geographic and re bundle them put them on you website surrounded by adds. They are not giving you permission to do anything but view the pictures.
You are correct, it's not theft. It's counterfeiting, which is worse. If you steal a TV, it can be counted as a loss and the TV manufacturer can still sell TVs with little to no problems.
If enough people pirate, it changes the perceived value of a digital good to $0 or near $0 and will eventually put the person out of business. The big businesses can handle it just fine. The small companies are the ones you are hurting.
The app store, while not pirating, is a good example of this. Apps are no 99 cents. If you try to make an app more expensive than this, people generally will complain or not buy it at all. Why? Because the perceived value of an app is 99 cents.
"Piracy" isn't counterfeit because pirates have no intention of defrauding or deceiving anyone (you're confusing them with bootleggers). Nor is the media they offer in any way a forgery. It's the authentic product, perhaps undergoing augmentation (i.e. to disable copy protection) or some lossy compression when transcoding video or audio. These are not equivalent to forgery.
Anecdotal evidence here, but I have a successful app on Google Play (which is commonly viewed as a less-willing-to-pay audience) at 5$+, despite the fact that the app is FOSS and you can download the binary from the home page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid....
People often use this very semantic, very pedantic difference and expand it to make it a difference in practical effect. Piracy and theft have the same practical effect : you're accessing a consumable good without paying the requisite cost, your individual crime may not have a large effect on the ability of the seller to provide for that good, but, on the large scale, if everyone committed your crime, you would severely affect the seller's ability to both 1. provide for him/her/their-self and 2. provide that good to the people. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, piracy is theft.
I am a lawyer...I know these definitions pretty well, so Ill chime in.
Let's take George Bernard's famous quote: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” According to your definition, one could not engage in theft of an idea, because one could never be deprived of an idea like with the taking of an apple.
However, let's look at the actual legal definition of theft: The actus reus (act) of theft is usually defined as an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another's property which must be accompanied by a mens rea (mental state/intent) of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use.
You limited the definition of theft to only include when one's mental state intends to deprive someone. The actual definition is not limited though, but alternatively includes when the taking was done dishonestly. Therefore, if someone takes something not belonging to them, and does so dishonestly that in fact is theft. Since I foresee the definition of dishonesty being the next issue here, that has been defined in case law, but generally where the person intended to take property they did not have a legal right to take.
...and pursuing that line of argument right to the end, "intent to permanently deprive the owner...of that property". Clearly that part means, ideas are exempt from the possibility of theft, under the law?
>Clearly that part means, ideas are exempt from the possibility of theft, under the law?
Lets try again, because while I used "idea" in the Bernard quote to demonstrate how non-physical can be taken without depriving the owner, GP was talking about more than an idea, but a digital good:
Act:
An unlawful taking (idea or physical good)
Intent:
1. Dishonesty; (idea or physical good) OR
2. To permanently deprive (physical good only)
You would be right if the intent was only (2) with intent to permanently deprive as the argument, but that is not the case, it is OR (1) taking dishonestly.
Lets remove "ideas" and put it into perspective with a "good", for clarity. I steal your car and chop it up and sell for parts (a unlawful taking with intent to permanently deprive = theft); alternatively, I steal your car at night, go joyriding and return it in the morning before you even know (unlawful taking without intent to permanently deprive...would you say that is not theft? If so you would be wrong even though I never intended to permanently deprive, because it is an unlawful taking and my intent was dishonest = theft)
Thanks, I carefully re-read and see that now. (Why I'm not a lawyer I guess!)
So, legal mental state must be a particular (non-intuitive) thing, because if the other posters on this thread think its not dishonest, then they're clear of any wrongdoing re: digital piracy. Right?
> Since I foresee the definition of dishonesty being the next issue here, that has been defined in case law, but generally where the person intended to take property they did not have a legal right to take.
Intent is a legal term of art and not purely subjective mental state pursuant to the natural definition - so in this context it is fair to say mental state is non-intuitive.
Another example...if you throw your car keys at me and tell me I can take your car for the night, but unbeknownst to me it wasn't your car at all, then I would not have the mental state required to be convicted of theft because while I committed the act (unlawful taking) I did not have the mental state required (dishonesty in the taking or intent to permanently deprive). That would be true lack of intent, whereas, in your example there would be intent to take a digital good, but a moral objection/indifference to the law.
I recall in law school a student once told our Con Law professor, "I don't believe in Judges being appointed to the bench" and supported his position with 5-10 minutes of very strong arguments against the concept, at the end of the diatribe our Con Law professor simple said, "whether you believe in appointed Judges or not, I assure you they exist". The same would be true of laws, whether you believe in/support them or not, that does not negate their existence or ones intent of committing the act, to be distinguished from where one truly did not intend for the act to occur.
>I steal your car at night, go joyriding and return it in the morning before you even know (unlawful taking without intent to permanently deprive...would you say that is not theft?
I would say that is not theft. According to my lay-person's understanding of the law, what you've described is called criminal conversion.
I also remain unconvinced of your notion that copyright infringement is theft.
I am very familiar with the Dowling case. However, I assure you the definition of theft does not come from a case from 1985, the common law definition has been around quite a bit longer than 1985. There were a few issues on appeal, but most likely what you and GP are referncing has nothing to do with theft but a conviction under 18 USC 2314 which was over turned because the counterfeit goods in question being transported across state lines were not physical goods, and the court found there must have been a physical taking. This is not about theft, this is about 18 U.S. Code § 2314 - Transportation of stolen goods, securities, moneys, fraudulent State tax stamps, or articles used in counterfeiting, and under that very specific law of transporting goods, not theft, there has to be a physical taking.
Terms such as "theft" and "steal" and similar words have meanings in English beyond the literal violation of a law. Some examples of stealing as correctly used in English:
• Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart.
• An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show.
• An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula.
• When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen".
• A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.
>Right, except you don't have the right to do that.
You say they don't. They say they do. The law may agree with you right now, but then there are places where the law still allows for slaves, so I wouldn't put any weight in what the law says.
I don't agree with laws - they are nothing but opinions backed by guns - therefore I don't need to respect any law in any part of the world - I need only respect reasoned arguments that I can agree with.
Respecting laws is no different from accepting bullying. I respect murder and rape laws not because they are laws but because the arguments against killing win over those for killing, and the arguments against rape win over those for rape.
But the arguments against piracy lose to the arguments for piracy.
This is correct. Laws only have significance in so far as those subjected to them have agreed to a consensus, and if there is sufficient investment in enforcing these laws.
I'm sure that Jack the ripper thought those murder laws very stupid indeed and that he very much disagreed with the arguments against murdering prostitutes. According to your argument, would it be fine for him to kill, seeing as "laws are nothing but opinions backed by guns"?
It's not about what someone thinks. It's about arguments and principles that can be applied universally.
> he very much disagreed
It's not about disagreeing with arguments. It's about refuting arguments to show them wrong.
I am less sure than you are that Jack the Ripper has ever produced refutations to the universalized principled arguments against the initiation of force that so many have written about through the ages.
According to my argument, it would be fine to use lethal force against Jack the Ripper initiating violence, since it is morally OK to use violence for self-defense (according to universal arguments, meaning that all participants can abide by this principle without contradictions arising).
Without wanting to sound condescending, the difference between what I am saying and what you think I said is that you think I am considering the ego of the persons involved. What Jack the Ripper's ego "thinks" and "agrees with" is irrelevant. What is relevant is facts that don't involve the ego - namely, did Jack the Ripper produce a universalized principled argument to justify his actions? The answer, so far as I know, is no.
It's not about what an ego thinks, it's about whether an argument exists.
Well here's a universalized principled argument against piracy:
Given that a content creator is only able to sustainably (i.e. without going broke) create content provided that they have an income,
and given that creating content takes enough time that it is infeasible to both create content and earn income from another source at the same time,
then a content creator must be able to earn income from their content if they are going to create it sustainably.
Given that consumers want content from content creators whose content they have enjoyed in the past,
and given that a content creator must be able to earn income from their content if they are going to create it sustainably,
content creators should be able to earn income from their content
Given that when a person pirates (or otherwise obtains for free) content the content creator earns no income from their content
if everybody were to pirate content, content creators would earn no income from their content
Given that if everybody were to pirate content, content creators would earn no income from their content
and given that content creators should be able to earn income from their content
then not everybody should pirate content
Given that if not everybody should perform an action then nobody should perform the action,
and if not everybody should pirate content
then nobody should pirate content.
Hi, bweitzman. Thanks for engaging the argument. I will name your "Given" arguments 1 through 5.
Argument 1 is strictly correct and the conclusion thus valid: a creator must earn income from their content if they want to continue being a creator.
Argument 2 is also correct, and I'd say it supports argument 1, because it is its inverse: if a creator wants to continue being a creator they must be able earn income from their content. I inserted italics to emphasize that 1 and 2 are not circular though they may appear so.
Argument 3 argues two things: first, that when a person pirates, the creator earns no income - this is strictly true and part of the definition of pirating ("not paying"); second, that if everyone pirated content, creators would earn no income from their content. Let's pause here.
Argument number 3 is conflating two slightly different usages of the phrase "earn income from content". In the first half of the argument (the correct part), this phrase means "earn income from the content in the transaction that would have taken place". That's why it's correct, because no money is earned by the creator from the act of pirating. But in the second half, that phrase means "earn income from their content at all in any way".
Let's slow down. If you were arguing "if everyone pirated, creators would earn no income from their content in those pirating transactions", well, that would just be the same argument that was made in the first half, and this would be circular. That's why the argument must be trying to argue this, in long form:
Given that when a person pirates, the creator earns no income from that pirate for that content, then if everyone pirates, the creator would earn no income from anyone in any way for that content".
Okay. Now that I have highlighted the issue I see with the argument, I will present some examples to illustrate why this more detailed version of argument 3 is wrong.
It is wrong because all universals are wrong if one counter-example can be found; and many counter-examples can be found for argument 3; for instance, there are many independent journalists and critics online that put their content up for free (acknowledging they can't control information) but still sell a book version of it, or DVD compilations of it. This is a valid counter-example because here, these creators give away for free the content they produce, but then sell the same content in a more convenient way for the buyer, and make money this way. That means they are making money from the same content that was pirated ("not paid for"[1]) but in another way.
I could make other examples of bands that put their music online for free and earn income from that same music by charging for concert tickets (again, another way of earning income from the same content that is "pirated" or given away).
But I think this is enough to explain that argument 3 is invalid because it is stuffing two different meanings into the same phrase "earn income from content". If you are able to fix this and turn argument 3 into a valid argument, I would be curious to see that, and you would be advancing the discussion.
Arguments 4 and 5 are cogent but invalid because they rely on argument 3 which I believe I have demonstrated to be invalid.
>It's not about what an ego thinks, it's about whether an argument exists.
I find it extremely ironic that you are making that point. What you are doing is precisely declaring a law about a complex and controversial issue to be invalid because there is an "universal and absolute argument" (aka, you think so) against that law. That's not how things work. Why would the things Jack the ripper thinks and agrees with be irrelevant and yours be "universalized arguments" that everyone must accept?
EDIT:
>According to my argument, it would be fine to use lethal force against Jack the Ripper initiating violence
Precisely. According to your argument. Not a universal truth.
> Why would the things Jack the ripper thinks and agrees with be irrelevant and yours be "universalized arguments" that everyone must accept?
Because I can prove through propositional logic that "my" arguments can be universalized without contradictions, which proves that they are correct.
It's not that I think there is a universal and absolute argument. It's that I have proven these things myself with pen and paper and rules such as Modus Ponens, De Morgan, etc. Not just me, many before me. Do mathematicians think pi is irrational? No, they've proven it is. Do philosophers think that if all humans are mortal and Socrates is a human, that therefore Socrates is mortal? So, they've proven it is.
Maybe you are not aware that there is a method to this. I learned this from Irving Copi, his logic books are famous for teaching these concepts solidly. I'd recommend you peruse his work so you can understand what bweitzman and I are doing here.
>> According to my argument, it would be fine to use lethal force against Jack the Ripper initiating violence
> Precisely. According to your argument. Not a universal truth.
I say "my" argument because I am making it now, not because I was the first to make it. Others before me have proven that "anyone should be able to initiate force" is self-contradictory (see sketch of proof in [1]). This much is trivial. What is less trivial is the work done to prove that "anyone should be able to use force against the initiation of force". If you want to read the proof for this, the book is called Universally Preferable Behavior by Stefan Molyneux.
[1] Proof by ad absurdum: If anyone is should be able to initiate force, then I should be able to initiate force towards someone so as to strip them of their ability to initiate force. This leads to a contradiction: if everyone is able to initiate force, then some will not be able to initiate force. This contradiction means that the idea that anyone should be able to initiate force cannot be universalized.
To the victims or their loved ones: no, but it wouldn't have been fine even had it be legal back then. The law had nothing to do with if they thought it was fine or not.
To me: I wasn't there back then, my opinion back then didn't exist either way.
To put it simply, that what Jack did was wrong has nothing to do with it being illegal.
If I follow a law depends on a cost/benefit analysis of breaking the law and how I morally feel about the action. Most laws I never desire to break, so it is not a problem. For those I do, it is a matter of what is the chance of being caught and the penalty, and if I find moral issue with doing that action. Every time you choose to go 58 in a 55, you are doing the same thing.
The thing that just boils my blood is people talking about how they are entitled to pirate content because content creators don't make it available in the way they want it. If you want to pirate stuff, that's your business. Just don't try to justify it.
Do I follow the law so I don't get in trouble? Yes.
Do I use the law to decide what rights people have? No.
The law is only relevant because there are people who choose to enforce it with violence, it has no place among a discussion of morals, ethics, or rights.
No, saying "X is illegal/legal therefore it is immoral/moral" is a logical fallacy. As the above user said: In some places, slavery in some places is legal, and by your logic it is therefore moral; however, we all agree that slavery is immoral (apart from the places it's legal, that is), QED your logic is flawed. Argumentum ad Absurdum.
What the above user is saying, is: Suppose congress passed a law saying "X is illegal". Does that mean that X is immoral? The answer is clearly no, because congress passes all sorts of idiotic/insane laws.
I never said "X is illegal/legal therefore it is immoral/moral", and I don't agree with that sentiment.
consider:
x ∈ X
x ∈ I
X ⊆ L
Y ⊆ L
therefore ∀ y ∈ Y, y ∈ I
or even just ∃ y ∈ Y, y ∈ I
that doesn't make any sense.
That's basically what Lawtonfogle was saying, where X is some other country's laws, Y is our country's laws, L is the set of all laws, and I is the set of immoral laws. The fact that slavery is legal somewhere else only proves that's it's possible for a bad law to exist. Doesn't mean that we have bad laws in our own countries (which of course we do, however)
If you want to get to the truth of something, you might want to entertain alternative viewpoints. Just because you are emotional about it doesn't make you right. Now you can choose to ignore what's happened in the last few decades and continue on with your stubborn view, but chances are you'll turn out to be wrong. If you want to have a more nuanced view of things, here's some reading for you: http://paulgraham.com/property.html
Not exactly - after the perfume is sold, the person wearing the perfume gives out the smell for free, and nobody tries to charge people for smelling the worn smell.
Obviously the bottle of concentrated smell costs money, though.
yes and no. When a person buys perfume, they don't care about the actual chemical makeup of whatever liquid is in the bottle, they care about the scent (and possibly brand associations). I would call that paying for the smell. The smell happens to come with an implied license for distributing it in small quantities in public :)
Actually, piracy is the act of forcefully commandeering another's maritime vessel; theft is the legal act of taking & depriving another of property, and I'm really not sure what "fucking" has to do with it at all.
Piracy is the correcting hand of the free market, where obtaining things for free is easier and less byzantine than by paid channels. Psychological research has proven time and time again that most people are willing to pay, but unwilling to have their personal rights trampled by draconian licensing and DRM.
Luckily your opinions, however misinformed, are irrelevant because anyone who understands this will never give up the fight. We understand how international trade deals and copyright law are being used offensively against the public, and we will not relinquish control over the devices we've rightfully purchased.
I'd suggest you get used to it. We're here to stay.
> Piracy is the correcting hand of the free market, where obtaining things for free is easier and less byzantine than by paid channels. Psychological research has proven time and time again that most people are willing to pay, but unwilling to have their personal rights trampled by draconian licensing and DRM.
No, the (ethical) correcting hand of the free market is not buying things, not deciding you are entitled to any entertainment content anyone produces.
> Luckily your opinions, however misinformed, are irrelevant because anyone who understands this will never give up the fight. We understand how international trade deals and copyright law are being used offensively against the public, and we will not relinquish control over the devices we've rightfully purchased.
Yes, if you rightfully purchase something, then I'll agree you have every right to skirt DRM if it is not letting you use what you purchased. But just stealing it outright is exactly how we've ended up with things like TPP and the DMCA, or Hollywood's relatively recent trend of spit-firing bad movies so they'll at least make something in the box office.
I'm truly confused by your message, because your latter statement sounds as if you are in agreement?
No one (intelligent) is trying to make a moral argument for 'piracy' or media entitlement, but rather saying that there do exist circumstances where the letter of the law deserves to be ignored as it runs contradictory to the spirit.
The spirit of copyright law is to ensure rights-holders are fairly compensated, and the unfortunate confluence of many complex factors has precluded this.
Rights-holders are understandably scared of technology's ability to level the playing field (by increasing access and decreasing their exclusivity advantage), and thus far most have chosen the historically-impotent strategy of hardline enforcement over adapting services and creating new revenue streams. What bothers me is that they hold the artists out to the public and say "look at this poor starving fella," meanwhile no one has any idea that their new streaming-media licensing agreement entitles artists to ~2-5% of the total earnings generated.
I'm particularly sensitive to this issue because I work in ad-tech. People (myself ironically included) love ad blockers, and I'd argue it's for good reason. Unless the implicit contract between those monetizing and those consuming is respected, everyone loses in the arms race that follows. In our industry it's been adapt-or-die (create products that don't hurt the user's experience), and that's the way it should be. Thankfully nobody is lobbying in congress to stipulate how you may use your eyeballs.
Hollywood and Telecom have historically received unprecedented favoritism in this country, and it's possible we're all on the verge of paying the price. It will only continue to encroach upon our individual rights as society becomes increasingly digital.
I don't think anyone is entitled to anything for free, but I'm a realist and a pragmatist. I will reverse engineer and circumvent the things people say I can't until the day I die :)
My mistake! I thought by "piracy" being a corrective market force you meant "this has DRM, so I'll just not pay for it and download it somewhere else", not "this has DRM, but my [media player] isn't compatible, so I'll pay it and download it somewhere else." The second is a key part of my own content-consumption strategy ;)
> No one (intelligent) is trying to make a moral argument for 'piracy' or media entitlement
Alas, I've seen quite a few people in this thread make just that argument, and the unfortunate part is that many seem to be quite intelligent.
> I don't think anyone is entitled to anything for free, but I'm a realist and a pragmatist. I will reverse engineer and circumvent the things people say I can't until the day I die :)
The idea that illegally downloading or distributing copyrighted content is a fight against copyright laws is about as ludicrous as murderers fighting against all those killing laws.
Everyone should take note of the proper way to fight encroaching copyright law:
If you are a programmer, security researcher, artist, or entrepreneur you can make a difference.
1. As an individual: if you understand the methods, contribute to open-source tools that allow individuals to exercise their rights. https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools (one example)
Artists: Use self-publishing platforms (gumroad, bandcamp, even spotify...) and self-incorporate. Discriminate against giving your business to companies that don't support open, sane protocols. Don't let them exert their power against the populace through backdoor trade deals.
Entrepreneurs: Create new content delivery and streaming platforms that force the transition to digital--rightsholders like to claim that piracy is responsible for their failed economics, though the truth is that they had an artificial market advantage of scarcity. User-generated content has bloomed with the advent of digital, and more consumer choice is a death knell to the traditional monopoly.
2. As a cause: support the EFF, and any politician looking to work with the FCC who understands this issue is deeper than "restricting content," and could undermine the rights of property and security of ownership. Do not trust anyone who does not comprehend the societal implications of critical infrastructure being "security through obscurity." http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001303221
The security of your laptop, the concept of personal ownership, and your right not to be digitally inspected at over 40 international borders is at stake.
>[something semantic and pedantic about maritime vessels vs taking other's property]
Piracy, or copyright infringement, or whatever the fuck you want to call it, and theft have the same practical effect : you're accessing a consumable good without paying the requisite cost, your individual crime may not have a large effect on the ability of the seller to provide for that good, but, on the large scale, if everyone committed your crime, you would severely affect the seller's ability to both 1. provide for him/her/their-self and 2. provide that good to the people. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, piracy is theft in cause & effect, if not in literal, philosophical definition.
I said it in my first post. If paid channels are byzantine and draconian, don't pay. You still don't have a right to the content. Just don't buy it. That's "fight" enough. That's "protest" enough.
>[some extremely condescending and pretentious teenage bullshit about "not giving up the fight"]
No, buddy, you're not on some morally righteous journey to freedom. Ironically enough, the DRM, DMCA, and the Gestapo-ification of the MPAA and RIAA only exist because of people like you. The executives and middlemen (i.e.: cable networks, record labels, publishers) hate piracy because it severely harms their bottom line, the artists hate piracy because it harms their livelihood, the consumers hate piracy because it leads to annoying DRM and other counterpiracy measures that end up harming paying consumers most. The only people that are lifting their fists in the air with you are, bingo, other pirates.
You know what else has the same effect on the seller? Buying a $thing and having friends over to view it, or lending it to them.
That has the "same practical effect", yet the folks who like to moralize about copyright don't seem to have as much of an issue with that. (Though I'm sure the content industry would find a way to charge for this completely legitimate use if they could)
You still don't have a right to the content.
I place precisely zero value on your opinion on this matter because you lost most of this fight the moment the copy command was invented, and the idiocy behind the content industry lost the rest. This includes greatly exaggerated "losses", suing of computer-illiterate elderly people and network printers, perversion of the copyright system from something beneficial for the arts to a means of cultural control and profit above all else.
We're people, we can change the law however we see fit. I suggest it's time that we push this pendulum back in the other direction, and then snap it off.
> you're accessing a consumable good without paying the requisite cost
"Consumable" would imply that the good is "Consumed". The traditional definition of consumption is that the good can't be consumed more than once. This definition has been altered in the digital age, but I think that's where the confusion arises.
A digital, infinitely copy-able good isn't really "consumed", as the copying doesn't actually reduce the original in any way, shape or form.
I'm afraid you're misinformed, but for socially-conscious individuals (ie, they don't support a scorched-earth, ends-justify-the-means policy to get that $250,000* from your nephew for torrenting Inside Out) I'm including my comment below.
If you are a programmer, security researcher, artist, or entrepreneur you can make a difference.
1. As an individual: if you understand the methods, contribute to open-source tools that allow individuals to exercise their rights. https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools (one example)
Artists: Use self-publishing platforms (gumroad, bandcamp, even spotify...) and self-incorporate. Discriminate against giving your business to companies that don't support open, sane protocols. Don't let them exert their power against the populace through backdoor trade deals.
Entrepreneurs: Create new content delivery and streaming platforms that force the transition to digital--rightsholders like to claim that piracy is responsible for their failed economics, though the truth is that they had an artificial market advantage of scarcity. User-generated content has bloomed with the advent of digital, and more consumer choice is a death knell to the traditional monopoly.
2. As a cause: support the EFF, and any politician looking to work with the FCC who understands this issue is deeper than "restricting content," and could undermine the rights of property and security of ownership. Do not trust anyone who does not comprehend the societal implications of critical infrastructure being "security through obscurity." http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001303221
The security of your laptop, the concept of personal ownership, and your right not to be digitally inspected at over 40 international borders is at stake.
* figure revised to more accurately reflect the reality of the american justice system.
Right, except you don't have the right to do that.
Which means nothing. Whether people have the right to or not, they can do it with absolutely no personal repercussions, so they do. Lecturing and ranting and wishing things were different isn't going to change that.
I know, it just ticks me off when people act like they're on some fucking morally righteous journey of freedom against the evil companies, and not just finding a sleazy way to get free movies like every other broke college kid.
Has it ever occurred you to that the majority of modern Western culture hasn't been grassroots for a very long time, and instead is largely a product manufactured by an industry? Denying people access to it because of constraints like income or geographical proximity is to make them culturally illiterate, and it goes well beyond "free movies".
> Right, except you don't have the right to do that.
That's true, but since when does that matter? The government doesn't have the right to do a bunch of things they do. So what?
> Suddenly, smaller markets around the world have their industry gutted by piracy, smaller labels have to shut down, bigger labels have to fire hundreds of less successful artists [...]
Similar and worse things happen when you increase the minimum wage. Why should I stop illegally downloading mp3 files by listening to your side's argument if you side usually will stop listening when I make the same arguments about increasing the minimum wage?
That's the beauty of this. By downloading mp3 files I'm actually getting back at everyone that doesn't care to learn economics enough to be against the minimum wage.
>Suddenly, smaller markets around the world have their industry gutted by piracy, smaller labels have to shut down, bigger labels have to fire hundreds of less successful artists that they used to be able to support from the money they made on the more successful artists, the more successful artists have to stop relying on royalties from album sales and have to whore themselves out doing nonstop touring year-round for money.
There is no evidence whatsoever for that end-of-world scenario of yours.
In 1999 if you bought a CD and scratched it, your choices were buy another CD at full price or not listen to the music that you "bought the rights for". If we were buying rights the whole time then we should have been able to take scratched CDs to the record store and got a new copy for free or deeply discounted. Record companies/Hollywood didn't start claiming this rights crap until Shawn popularized separating content from physical media. If piracy is "just fucking theft" then every broken CD, tape, ... that record companies refused to replace is theft as well
Your approach only works when the methods to work around these digital controls are easy and functional. If Amazon and those that advocate for strong DRM strengthened methods either technological or legal to pursue you and/or the tools that circumvent protection - you'd care.
Personally I only read non-DRMed e-books. I usually make sure I get them in non-DRM PDF format. A couple of times I have accidentally bought DRM PDF e-books (e.g. from google books) and returned them ASAP. I generally use good reader on iOS to read my e-books. Certainly not free in the RMS sense, but at least I have them in a format that allows me to choose my reader.
Note that I'm not criticizing your use of e-books, just presenting an alternative.
I do the same. And I rip the DRM off my Kindle books. I'm not putting them on a torrent site, but I'll send one to my girlfriend if I think she'd like it, because well, that's how you treat books.
If Amazon cares enough to try to shut down the decryption with better technology, I'll stop buying Kindle books and I guess we'll both be a little bit poorer for it. That's their call though. I'll worry about it when I have to.
I don't generally pirate things. I can't say I never do, but it's very rare, and I don't believe I'm in the right for doing so. But with ebooks, I'm paying Amazon for the book, and while I recognize the truth is that content creators and publishers have the right control distribution of their work, in practice I'm only willing to recognize those rights when they're not wholly unreasonable. HBO wanting me to pay for Game of Thrones is reasonable. Wanting to charge me as a commercial broadcaster if I have a watch party at my house isn't, and I feel like my treatment of ebooks is morally fine. It's an arbitrary line, I recognize, but it's one I'm currently fine with.
For the longest time, ebooks and physical books were priced about the same by the publishers - even though the revenue structure was different (wholesale vs agency). What they forgot was, because of the reasons above, these products are not equivalent. You can resell, lend, etc a physical book whereas you can't an ebook. The consumer gets that an ebook is intrinsically less valuable (well most consumers; the convenience of not using up physical space or taking up weight with ebooks is a value add for many, but that may depend on price too).
It's even worse when the digital version is more expensive than the physical book. $4 delivered for a real older book or $8 for the digital version? Why? The physical book is far more valuable; rather than simply recommending it, I can give it away.
Since the publishers won the rights to set their own prices on Amazon, the Kindle version has started to become $2-5 MORE expensive. There's two book groups I'm in right now where the current book they're reading is more expensive for the digital copy than for a brand new paperback. I refuse to pay more. Sometimes I might be willing to pay the same, but NOT more.
In comparison, The Martian was only $2 for the Kindle version because that guy originally posted his book for only a dollar (or something), and I bought it immediately and told everyone I knew about how cheap it was (the book was good enough I'd have been happy to have paid $10 for it, though).
> It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
In a civilized society, respect for the law must trump our endless appetite for convenient entertainment. There are causes that merit civil disobedience, but this isn't one of them. If we can't consume some piece of entertainment legally, then we should just pass on it; there's always something else we can enjoy instead.
Because you'd prefer that other people not casually erect their own legal structure where your interests are concerned.
The law exists, among other reasons, to save us the N! negotiation of appropriate barriers. In that way, taking some aliquot of entertainment is not different from sleeping on your porch. Or in your living room.
Slavish adherence to the law regardless of its nuance is not noble, it does not contribute to some greater whole, it is mere obedience, nothing more.
"Speed Limit 65" on major highways is a law too, and one that has roughly as much respect among the people as copyright law. And we're a more efficient society for ignoring it.
On the other hand, if laws are to be effective without requiring excessive resources or undesirable technological measures (e.g. DRM) for enforcement, then breaking laws shouldn't be something we do lightly or merely for personal pleasure. Civil disobedience should probably be something that one does only after much soul searching -- something that keeps one up at night.
You treat the law as if it was a whole body rather than a bunch of individual things.
Willfully choosing to ignore the speed limit has no impact on the rest of the law - that law is ignored because it is widely seen to be broken, inefficient, and nothing more than a vehicle for unjust profit.
Coincidentally, the same negative descriptors apply to copyright in 2015.
This is not D&D, we do not have character alignments. I am not giving up some imaginary karma and slighting the deity/concept of Justice and Good Order by choosing to ignore a subset of non-beneficial laws.
I think the problem the OP is pointing to is exactly where one draws the line between "this law is broken, backwards or wrong" and "breaking this law gets me what I want at zero cost with little chance of penalty."
Actually walking out of a store with a physical copy of a book (or a CD or a movie) is something most people would agree is theft, but making a digital copy of the same book or CD or movie without paying for it is... something else. By this point anyone on HN can enumerate the salient differences, which all revolve around digital copies having zero marginal cost.
The problem is that we too often ignore the salient similarities. The reason you want this particular book or CD or movie has nothing to do with the marginal cost of that particular copy. The bulk of the value always lay in the creative work; in digital media, all of the value lies in the creative work. If I want to sell you a novel and you don't like the price I've set, you'd never think that justifies walking out of the store without paying for a physical copy. Why does it justify you making a digital copy without paying for it?
DRM is a terrible "solution" to this problem, but I think its worst feature may be that its existence obscures the actual value of creative works by focusing attention back on the medium. My hypothetical novel's value, or lack thereof, ultimately has nothing to do with whether it's a trade paperback or an EPUB file. The principle of "you give me money in exchange for my work" remains the same even if my work is not fixed in a physical, tangible form.
Probably no way to say this that doesn't sound overly snarky, but:
If we're talking about justification rather than law, the question can easily be turned around to become "What gives you the right to prevent me from making a digital copy?" Because you made the thing? More likely than not, I'll pay you if your work is any good.
Content producers seem to want to make the jump from physical to digital to gain its benefits without their customers realizing those same benefits, such as the ability to try before buying, or format shifting, etc. They treat this relationship as inherently adversarial in nature, and that's even before DRM gets added to the mix.
If your work is good, I will pay you. You lost the ability to control whether that happens before or after I've sampled the work, and you can thank decades of bad business practices for the justification for that.
But that's what happens anyway isn't it? Disney kept getting the law changed to protect their fictional mouse character. The MAFIAA got their terrible DMCA. And so on...
The question is - how can you fight it? If the plebes could get laws made in their interest, they would. But they can't, so some of them do the next best thing - break the law. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Might makes right is the ultimate rule here. If nobody can stop you from doing what you want, then it's OK. That's just how the world works.
There are entire classes of information use which are exceptionally poorly served by the present pay-as-you-go (if and only if it's available, for your platform) model: the poor, children, researchers, the unwired or poorly wired, those in poor countries (see up-thread comment), and more.
There's an exceptionally strong argument for a simple access fee or tax (built into broadband service provision or income tax, preferably scaled to wealth), for which you have all-you-can-eat access to content, with authors paid based on a pro-rated basis of usage of their works, based on some cost-of-production scale (algorithmic computer-generated music really shouldn't be rewarded on the same basis as high-calibre investigative journalism or technical research). Possibly even taking the concept of payment for work out of the equation and providing some number of professional slots rewarded on a sliding scale based on measures of talent or quality. After all, what matters in producing considerable content is occupational stability in doing so. Periodic (annual? More or less frequent?) assessments could be made to compensation, number of openings, etc. Yes, it's complex, but then, information goods are too.
Oh, and that argument's compelling enough for Amazon to consider it. Don't buy their DRM'd crap myself, but those I know are being offered $10/mo all-you-can-eat access. O'Reilly's Safari service has had a similar offering for years (though at a different price-point as I recall).
Following links on the RMS article here, I find he's made a suggestion for online content sharing payment quite similar to one I'd independently arrived at. Also Paul Hunt's (Pirate Party UK) broadband tax proposal.
>In a civilized society, respect for the law must trump our endless appetite for convenient entertainment.
Respect for the law because is a rot that must be removed from society. Respecting a law just because it exists is to shackle our morals and common sense to what those in charge of the law dictate.
>There are causes that merit civil disobedience, but this isn't one of them.
The notion of civil disobedience, especially that of 'to do it, you must break the law and willingly submit yourself to punishment' is another rot. As for actual disobedience, the privatization of our collective culture to an extent that far surpasses rewarding primary contributors is a cause for general disobedience.
Also to note, your paying for movie ticket actually has no end effect because at the end of the day ever movie is a financial disaster. At least for mainstream Hollywood.
>In a civilized society, respect for the law must trump our endless appetite for convenient entertainment.
You assume all pirating is for entertainment. In a civilized society - should the poor not have access to expensive research papers, books, and the right to self-education through these materials? Are those things that are reserved only for those who can afford it? Is that really a civilized society? One that ignores the poor in an every-increasing demand for individual wealth rather than communal wealth?
There is a coffee shop where I live where you can "purchase" a coffee. The payment is whatever you feel the coffee is worth. Most people will pay $4-6 like any other coffee shop. Some people will feel generous or can afford to pay more. It's popular among the homeless and poor, because they can enjoy coffee and if they can only afford to give $0.50 they give $0.50, if they can't afford giving anything - the coffee is free.
I think that's more civilized than denying the poor the ability to enjoy coffee simply because they aren't in a position to pay for it. I argue this would only fail in uncivilized places where everyone is abusive of the generosity and the affluent and wealthy are not generous with their wealth causing the coffee shop to quickly go out of business.
But this depends on how "civilized" is to be defined.
> It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
I'm with you, up until here. If I buy some content (e-book, movie, TV show, etc.), and then DRM malfunctions or is senselessly restrictive (client doesn't exist for some platform, etc.), I feel it is justifiable to "pirate" the content which I paid for. Particularly in the case of malfunctioning DRM (which is unfortunately common for PC games these days), it is the provider who failed to hold up their end of the bargain (whatever their EULA may say).
But of all the things studios do, deciding where to sell or not sell content is something that they actually have every right to do. We are entitled to content we paid for, but are not entitled to content just because it exists. If HBO doesn't want to release Game of Thrones during the season to Amazon, etc. because they want people to watch it on their network, what right do I have to steal it because I don't want to pay for cable?
So you deserve a particular piece of entertainment because it exists and you pay someone else for an internet connection? What exactly are your criterion for the thinness of the straw before you feel justified in routing around it? It sounds like a moving target to me.
Essentially, as long as I am able to pay a decent price for content without them telling me how I can consume it, I'll do it.
If the price is too high I'll wait until it comes down and not pirate it (see: waiting for a game to be cheaper during a Steam sale).
If the company tries to control how I consume the content in a way that is illogical or very inconvenient, I'll get it by other means or just avoid it altogether. Examples:
1. Rick and Morty is not on Netflix, so I'll watch it on Popcorn Time.
2. Rockstar games have horrendous DRM attached, even with Steam, so I just avoid them altogether. I purchased the GTA bundle and GTA IV simply does not work due to DRM. EA and Ubisoft are the same in this boat for me.
3. Apple requires the use of Safari to view their live streams, for no valid technical reason. So, I don't listen or pay attention to anything during their keynotes. At the office, headphones go on. From my perspective, they don't want me as a customer anyway, so there's no point in giving them any mindshare.
> 1. Rick and Morty is not on Netflix, so I'll watch it on Popcorn Time.
So you pay Netflix, but Netflix didn't pay Comedy Central for Rick and Morty. So why does Comedy Central get penalized because they didn't make a deal with a content provider you consider convenient? Also, in this particular case, you can watch it for free (legally) here[1] (please do, it would be a shame for such a good show to get cancelled because they think nobody is watching).
> 2. Rockstar games have horrendous DRM attached, even with Steam, so I just avoid them altogether. I purchased the GTA bundle and GTA IV simply does not work due to DRM. EA and Ubisoft are the same in this boat for me.
I feel your pain. However, my approach is to pay for the games, and then download cracks when the DRM (inevitably) malfunctions. It is some small inconvenience, but I think it is far more fair than paying nothing at all. Also, going that route ensures that game companies will (1) make the DRM even worse in a vain attempt to make it "uncrackable" (2) give up on PC games that aren't entirely online based. Though I think it may be too late already.
I bet he's paid Comedy Central for thousands of things that he never even asked for if he's ever had a cable bill.
Look at the big picture. We live in a society full of corruption and greed; people are naturally going to "steal" from the big greedy corporations who constantly use their advantage to turn the screws and make society pay for their faulty business plans.
Why don't Comedy Central and Netflix have an agreement?
Secondarily, thank you for pasting that link. I didn't realize it was available to watch for free directly. I'll watch the ones that are open to me there then.
Whether they like it or not, they're competing with free. The poster stated they prefer to pay for convenient services, but they have no qualms about free and convenient when they find the paid product is more inconvenient than the free product.
This is what 'content producers' are competing against. You may not like it, but that's reality.
I have no doubt it is reality, and that my comment would do nothing to change it, but that doesn't mean I'll think it's right or not say anything. Brick walls were made to be punched.
Releasing movies and TV shows simultaneously around the world would cut piracy a lot. That's one pretty clear criteria: the content is sold in a digital format somewhere but not in your home country.
Take the Sherlock TV series for example: who wants to wait for two years for a new season, and then an additional two months for it to arrive in your particular country? In Finland the series is shown on a state-funded channel who don't even get any money from you watching the show on their channel.
>We are entitled to content we paid for, but are not entitled to content just because it exists.
To play the devil's advocate. Why not though? The "because it's illegal" I can understand.
But if one's to argue it's also "immoral", then this pressuposses a whole complicated ethics based on a human invention like "copyright", which I'm not sure why people need to respect.
At bottom, its not about respecting 'copyright'. Its about respecting authors. There's a system in place so they can dedicate some part of their lives to creation, and get compensated for that. To flout that system because complex moralizing disrespects authors, right at home where it hurts - their compensation.
I'd say the blame is on their editors for not caring enough for the authors to try selling their work wherever possible. If I can't buy their work, I won't, so they won't see any money from me. Whether I saw their work - from the authors' point of view - is irrelevant.
I'd say that might go under 'complex moralizing'. Their work is available; it may take more than a google or a click to obtain. Too much work to walk down to the store? That is what I meant by disrespecting the author.
I suspect much pirating is rooted in entitlement, and the moralizing comes after.
Just this morning I was talking with TeMPOraL and we were recalling how the software market looked like in Poland in the nineties (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397694). My "walk down to the store" then would have to be to another country, a thousand kilometers or so; through two or three national borders. It's not that I didn't want to pay with what little money I had, it's just that there was no one who wanted to take my money (besides "pirates", of course).
This is the context for my statement above. Of course, it's rarely that bad nowadays, but it still happens. And how hard getting the content has to be for you to consider it not available? There being physically not one "legal" copy of Windows in the entire country (been there)? Is it enough for the nearest place offering content to be a thousand kilometers away? 500km? 200km? (and no, nobody wanted to even ship it via snail mail, because uncertain laws and such).
As for entitlement... well, that's trickier and I don't want to go there. I can only say that both sides of this argument have interesting and convincing arguments.
Because it's illegal is (IMHO) not a reason at all, on its own. I'll also agree that copyright is not an intrinsically moral concept, like material theft. However, I think copyright (in some form, not necessarily in the way it is practiced today) is a key piece of positive law. Absent of copyright, there is no reason to pay anyone for any easily duplicatable product, except out of the goodness of one's heart. Now, if those producing the content didn't need money (e.g. some sort of post-scarcity society) then I would see any kind of copyright as pointlessly restrictive, except maybe for some claim of (non rights reserving) authorship.
The sad fact is that we don't live in such a world, so some form of compensation for authors is necessary, if you want them to keep doing what they are doing. Copyright isn't the only model, but I don't see any practical way to pivot back to a patronage model, especially for content which isn't considered high art. So, I don't think it is fair that one should be paid for making cars, but not be paid for making software, since both consume money to produce. The fact that software doesn't consume (much) money to produce more units after one is produced means that the model of compensation may be different, but I don't think it means there should be no compensation at all. It is easy to go too far in the other direction (e.g. the behavior of record companies and movie studios, who exploit the real authors), but I don't think that invalidates the concept entirely.
>Because it's illegal is (IMHO) not a reason at all, on its own. I'll also agree that copyright is not an intrinsically moral concept, like material theft. However, I think copyright (in some form, not necessarily in the way it is practiced today) is a key piece of positive law. Absent of copyright, there is no reason to pay anyone for any easily duplicatable product, except out of the goodness of one's heart.
So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it. From my point of view, that would be progress. Of course some people would lament not having Transformers 3 -- but then again, some people would lament anything and everything, including bad things. The key question is: is it better in aggregate?
Now, for other stuff, like software, that might indeed be an issue. I'm assuming here that "pro" software is a good thing (more features, higher quality), where "pro art" is a bad thing (more commercialized crap).
Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the members of a 4 letter content producer organizations, or the over-expansion of copyright they push. My point is that copyright in some shape or form is important for less scummy players in the content business.
For example, the direction Patreon and Kickstarter are taking the indie media scene is very encouraging, but these little fish would be even more screwed if copyright completely evaporated.
>So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it.
It's possible to be passionate about your craft and spend money on it and want to make money at it. I would be willing to bet that most of the people who worked on Transformers 3 were actually quite passionate. Then again, so are Uwe Boll and Stephanie Meyer. Mainstream familiarity breeds contempt in hispters and elitists but it's not necessarily the case that there is an inverse relationship between the scale of distribution and artistic quality. You can find good, high budget commercial fare as well as plenty of garbage on the indie side of any creative industry.
Making an exemption for software development doesn't really make sense either. Surely, if artists need to starve for the sake of their work then programmers do as well?
I don't know, perhaps ones wife has some boudoir photos taken. Just that they exist would entitle anyone to the right to view them, if they could get them? Moreover, say her husband does things to restrict said access, would people really say that that is immoral?
That doesn't seem quite right to me.
Does the content creator (since there would be no 'owner' without copyright) have any say over the use or distribution? I think of all those rock stars that have had politicians misappropriate their songs and then asked them to stop using them over the years. I wonder what that felt like, you wrote this hit song that was powerful and evoked emotion and then someone you are ideologically opposed to tried to use it for their purpose.
>Just that they exist would entitle anyone to the right to view them, if they could get them?
You've got the "rights" the wrong way around - it's not that people have the right to see the boudoir photos, it's that people have the right to copy photos they own, and the husband/wife are not allowed to infringe on that right.
Basically, it's not "thou shalt not kill", rather than "right to life", although people implicitly do have the right to copy.
The exception being, obviously, copyright - which is a temporary state-sanctioned monopoly on the right to copy your works (in other words, you're temporarily the sole holder of the copy right), for the sake of producing more artistic works for the general public.
In my whole life pirate content was present, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I live in a third world country, with poor access to outside culture, and the culture present here is not that interesting to me (example: the most popular music genres, bands and groups all talk about extremely pornographic sex, and has heavy percussion emphasis, with little or no melody, the biggest national party is focused on that same music genres and debauchery).
When I was a kid, the ONLY way to get computer stuff, was pirate it, sometimes some shareware software was for sale for about 10 USD (yep, I paid 10 USD on a SHAREWARE copy of Wolf 3D, having only the first episode), even to get pirated stuff sometimes was extremely hard (to get a copy of Doom 1 and 2, my dad made some engineering services do Kia motors, and agreed to give them a discount if their CEO, that was a known Doom player, gave us a copy, the guy gave my dad a box with about 20 floppies or something).
So, just because I was born here, I have no right to have foreign culture? Because I was born here, I am supposed to settle for a culture about percussion music, debauched promiscuous sex and soccer?
I have no right to coding books? Research papers? European music of all genres (from french eletronica to austrian classical)? I can't see excellent TV series from UK (like Sherlock) and instead must settle for local TV programs with melodramatic plots that praise villains that are adulterous swindlers and con artists?
I seriously don't understand people that think that culture, knowledge and information is not a right, that think that poor people, or people from distant places must resign themselves to remain ignorant.
My ire was directed at those who (like the author of the post I responded to) pirate things just because of minor inconvenience (e.g. not available on Netflix). In the case where there is no way for you to get the content otherwise, we're talking about a very different situation. As far as I can see, if the content provider makes it impossible for you to access the content legally, then it doesn't make much of a difference to them if you pirate it or not. That is one huge disparity between a good which is easily duplicated and something which is not that I'll agree with.
We have similar problems in Canada. Shows which are available to everyone else in the world are not available to us, even though we would gladly pay for them. So, Popcorn Time it is.
Although to a lesser extent (it used to be much worse 10 years ago), that's what it often looks like in Poland - and today's Poland can hardly be called a third world country. One particular example of such content unavailability I've recently experienced was when I tried to order an album of a German (!) artist some time after it's been published. I'd heard a few samples on Soundcloud some time before and I loved them to the extent, that I was desperate to get it when it's ready. And I couldn't. The album was available in all of the western Europe and the USA, but when I tried to order it from any source (be it Amazon, iTunes and a few more digital stores), I was just presented a message explaining to me that they do not sell music in my region. Another example is that there is quite a high percentage of music normally available on Spotify or Apple Music that is disabled in my country. Why? Because.
I have been paying more than $100 a month to a cable company for a long time. So, I feel entitled to watch whatever I want, wherever I want because if I haven't already paid for it, I probably will soon.
Absolutely. I've had the "premium" level subscription for at least over a decade, which includes all of the content producers and all of the movies (and music). I've paid roughly $12k to $16k to these bloodsucking corporations in that time and I continue to pay even though I can only take advantage of a small percentage of what I'm paying for via Cable. So I really feel like I'm entitled to watch and listen to what I want to, how and when I want to.
> So I really feel like I'm entitled to watch and listen to what I want to, how and when I want to.
Did the cable company lie to you and say that their contract covered indefinite access to their content after termination of their service? Because if they did, you probably have some serious grounds for a lawsuit. If not, how would you feel if your employer decided he paid you for years, so he is justified in just stopping.
Ah, but I forgot! You're dealing with a corporation, which means that you can m̶o̶r̶a̶l̶i̶z̶e̶ justify doing anything when they are involved. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I do what I want to primarily because I can. And I'm not going to feel bad about that. Just because a law or contract exists does not make it good or right or moral to me. Look at the world we live in - Might makes Right is the ultimate law in this world. Corporations, governments (all just people really) do what they want and if nobody stops them, then I guess it's fine. That's why it's fine for me to do what I want.
Secondly, I don't care about your moral code or your justifications, I care about mine - but I guarantee you that you personally don't live by the letter of the law or every contract you've ever signed. So, why should anyone listen to you? There are no absolutes and your laws and contracts are basically for people who wish follow them, but they're not for me because I don't live in a fantasy world where everything is perfect and everybody follows the rules.
>We are entitled to content we paid for, but are not entitled to content just because it exists.
Sorry, what? We absolutely do, if we're willing to pay. The point of copyright is to provide a monetary incentive for authors/makers of works to go make their works, via a temporary state-sanctioned monopoly. If they then take their state-sanctioned monopoly and refuse to sell to certain locations...
Well, that's not what the state granted their monopoly for. They have no right to do that.
Again: The purpose of copyright is generating more artistic works, and if they aren't interested in extracting profits via selling their works in a specific country, then what's the point of restricting the right to copy the work in that country in the first place?
It violates the point of copyright, not to mention anti-trust laws.
Just buy the paperback or get it from the library. Actual books are great and have no ethical concerns unlike the ones the FSF has raised on e-books. Kindles are cool technology but a paper back is still better for actually reading. Libraries are fantastic and I still like physical books stores as well. If you "want to read what you want" the path is clear, read actual books.
>I'm going to read what I want to read, when I want to read it, on my Kindle, whether Amazon wants me to or considers me to have a license or not. Basically: I don't care what the EULA states for my Kindle. It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
Then again, if this lands you in jail, or without internet access for downloading pirated material ("tree strikes laws" etc) then you'd do care.
So, not caring might be a short-term option, but it's not a long term political stance.
Not just because of the off-chance of being hit with a lawsuit as mentioned, but mainly because this leads to even more powerful DRM (it's not impossible: there are programs that are considered virtually "uncrackable" and indeed haven't been cracked for 5-6 years, despite popular demand, usually constly pro applications using some dongle or internet based security scheme), more restrictions for legitimate users (who, for example, won't jailbreak their devices), etc.
Amazon is only one of many counterparties with which you should be concerned.
Access and transferability are only two rights specified.
Anonymity, open formats, and freedom from arbitrary withdrawal of the book (Amazon famously exercised this capability on 1984 of all titles) are other factors.
And don't underestimate power of law. The computer software industry has long used rampant piracy of their products, often tacitly encouraged, as a lever to squeeze users for as much revenue as possible, under colour of law. That's only one of several such applications of this particular lever.
RMS has been, and continues to be, highly prescient on virtually all areas of free access to information, software or otherwise.
But did RMS offered some technological solutions regarding solving those pain points? The article sounds as if Amazon was the culprit here, but imho Amazon needs to comply with what publishers wants, and also to protect copyright rights of the authors.
I don't think the focus of this article is us, the technology savvy. I think the danger is for the common reader, who doesn't know the difference between .MOBI or .EPUB and wouldn't know how to circumvent DRM on an Amazon book to keep it. There's still the risk that these systems will become more sophisticated that even mid-level savvy folks give up. Do we know the implications of TPP w/r/t ebooks?
But I think it's important that we maintain the community to circumvents copyright. Copyright, the way it is implemented today, is anti-cultural. If we have any hope of harvesting our incredible digital archiving ability, we must maintain ways to keep content free of DRM. But it's up to us - no one will do it for us.
I don't understand the pirate right that its not okay to control distribution of an item. I understand the argument against DRM and definitely feel that when I purchase I should of have full ownership of that product. Distribution, however, is a completely different argument. Scarcity is something companies have consistently used to control values of products. Should movie publishers not be allowed to keep movie in theaters before a DvD release. Or gaming companies not allow early access to pre orders?
>Scarcity is something companies have consistently used to control values of products.
Manufactured scarcity is not something I approve of. So to answer the questions that follow: No and no.
I don't approve of manufactured scarcity of "more important things" like food/water/electricity - why would I approve of it for entertainment and other trivial things? It being "non-essential" doesn't give them moral justification, in my opinion.
There are e-book publishers who offer tech books with zero restrictions beyond basic copyright requirements applicable to physical books. Immediate access and freedom to make copies or even resell. What's not to like? People can make up their own mind about Amazon from whom I buy hardbacks. I wouldn't touch their e-format but I'm not that someone else for whom the formula fits.
I own several kindle devices, have never purchased an ebook through Amazon, and do not connect any of them to the internet for any reason. It's a battery hog, and I have no desire to buy books directly from the device, and if i need to access the web, i have a plethora of other devices capable and at hand.
Furthermore, I don't allow myself to restricted to DRM'd books. In the event I was unable to acquire a book in a non-DRM'd format, I'd purchase the book (using a prepaid credit card, as i do with all my internet transactions) and strip the DRM. If it was unavailable in that manner, then I would purchase a physical copy of the book. But that is not a deterrent for me. I own a few ebooks that don't exist in physical form (at least not for mass market to my knowledge) and I own a few physical books that do not exist in digital format (once again, to my knowledge). Neither will kill the other, they can both co-exist happily, and in my case, they do. I carry my kindle keyboard everywhere and often time have at least 2-3 paperback books on me as well. As a matter of fact, I am currently reading a book on my kindle, another in paperback form and a third is being read to me on Audible. Not all at the same time mind you, but concurrently.
A bit over the top. Yes, utilizing Amazons devices gives them full power over the content on your device but why do we need to suggest that E-books have to deliver on the same business model as print books?. There are benefits to e-books that regular books don't offer so just ask yourself if the tradeoff is worth it. I'm certain Amazon, in general, does not want to be in the business of removing books from peoples devices.
Basically. "A bit over the top" could very well be the byline of gnu.org/philosophy. They are the impractical philosophical anchor at one end of a line of conversation; if the world worked the way the philosophy described, everyone would be a bit technologically poorer (but "freer", at least).
How exactly would we be technologically poorer in this case? Would Amazon / B&N / Apple / any ebook distributor suddenly lose their impetus to develop ebook-reading tech / devices?
Maybe they wouldn't lose their impetus, but they might lose their ability to sell the idea of e-books to publishers.
The major stores sell DRM-free music now, but do you think that Apple would have been able to get music publishers on board if the iTMS had no copy protection on day one?
The major difference between the ebooks and paper books is that if you share a paper book with someone, you lose it from the moment you lend it out, until you get it back. But sharing an e-book is much painless and convenient, thus can easily abused.
Just pirate your ebooks online or buy hard copy if you're uncomfortable with Amazon's tomfoolery. Or, "borrow" them via Amazon, then rip the DRM out with some pirate jag.
Technologically, DRM is a solved problem, and has been for years-- just check out the Pirate Bay.
Notice how I've mentioned the word "pirate" so many times? This is the result of finding a practical solution to the problems that Amazon has created. This costs them money, directly, as I could just as easily be buying books from them rather than using them to scout books then finding the pirated version.
Is e-book DRM even remotely effective? It seems like with something like the Kindle web reader, it would be trivial to write a script that took screenshots of every page of the book, and optionally applied OCR.
Of course, this could also be done with the physical devices and an appropriate machine to press the buttons. The "Analog Hole" is quite present in books, which can be reproduced with no loss of quality.
I actually wonder if the Kindle DRM is more a way of appeasing publishers than something that was actually intended to be effective.
It's similar to e.g. steam or appstore DRM: relatively easy to trivial to bypass (or you can access the content with bypassed/removed DRM easily enough) but the system is convenient enough that most won't care to do so unless and until it's being repeatedly and widely (ab)used by the keys authority.
It won't hinder the motivated and technologically inclined but they're a small minority, meanwhile the scheme spreads, and if/once devices or accounts get killed it's too late.
The Stallman "cube root" thing is adorable and quotable but wasn't the right curve then, and certainly isn't the right curve now.
Love the guy, disagree with many his methods, but love the results he seeks to achieve. But like licensing, he seems willfully ignorant of outliers and is increasingly guilty of oversimplification. And more so as he ages.
He's also obsessing on Amazon, and not entirely for reasons that immediately make sense. Prior discussion:
This is one of those things where the FSF has the completely correct idea, but has accidentally pointed their finger at the wrong culprit. The problem here is not e-books, it's DRM. The article even says as much at the bottom. I completely agree with the whole point of this article but wish it had used this case as a further tie-in to the various other articles asserting DRM's horrible. I think that the use of the specific case with specific examples to draw into a larger argument is often more effective than continuing to just point the finger at the single instance of the problem.
The FSF advocates against DRM in general as a major part of their campaigns work. Not sure why you'd suggest they are only pointing at a single instance of the problem.
My point was that this particular article doesn't tie-in with the others and instead focuses on this specific case rather than taking this case as an instance of the larger problem and driving the issues with the larger problem home.
(Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been either, doh!)
> The problem here is not e-books, it's DRM. The article even says as much at the bottom.
So… how did the FSF point their fingers at the wrong culprit when they state black on white that the problem is DRMs but that ebooks are not intrinsically problematic?
The title and major thrust of the article is that ebooks are generally bad. The real point only made at the end though is that they aren't, they're only bad when corporations and DRM are in-control.
Imho, if they had been clearer from the get-go that the problem is DRM, not ebooks in-general, it would be much more powerful.
This is actually true only for the US market and possibly the UK one. In other countries it's vastly different. Of the hundred+ books I have on my reader only three or four are coming from Amazon.
Yesterday I wanted to share a sentence of text from an ebook with two friends on Google Hangouts. I clicked the 'share' button in Nook Reader and chose 'Hangouts' as the destination. It pasted a URL pointing to a barnes and noble site with some ID appended. This is not what I want to happen.
I ended up screenshotting the page, cropping it, and pasting the image onto chat. It might have been easier to type the whole thing out (though I'm not great at typing on mobile).
This annoyance alone has spurred me to look again at keeping my own catalog of DRM-free files in Calibre and using a reader that doesn't do this sort of thing.
Any advice on 'flow' to make this sort of approach easy is welcome (apart from the DRM bit, that's off-topic).
Put your calibre library in Dropbox or Google Drive. Get Calibre Cloud Pro to have a good-looking, easily searchable library on your device (you download from there as needed). Use Moon+ or some other reader to read the books. Calibre also has a server function (which Moon+ supports), but not everybody has a public IP to access their books everywhere.
These are all Android, but there's probably some equivalent on iOS. You will want to convert all your ebooks to a format that your reader supports, such as epub. There are extensions for Calibre that will strip DRM if you're into that.
Amazon allows and enables DRM on their ecosystem. They provide no easy way to search only for books unencumbered by DRM. As the largest seller of ebooks, therefore the largest promoter of DRM-crippled ebooks, they are a perfectly legitimate target for criticism.
Keep in mind, you as a reader are not the customer of publishers. Distribution companies are. They are who can meaningfully exercise the pressure to affect the market, not you.
"They provide no easy way to search only for books unencumbered by DRM."
Did you read what I wrote above? Go to Amazon. Select Kindle Store. Enter "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" in the search box.
I can't imagine possibly wanting to search for books based on that (I search for books by author or subject, myself), but it's incorrect to say you can't easily do it if that's your thing.
"Keep in mind, you as a reader are not the customer of publishers. "
No, as a reader, I am absolutely the customer of indie authors and publishers, who are the same ones that don't, as a rule, use DRM.
Blaming Amazon is totally pointing the finger at the culprit:
Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility!
"Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility!"
Sorry, that is not correct.
I've got several indie books on Amazon, none with DRM, and Amazon has never "threatened" me with anything. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. All of them have text to speech enabled.
Here's a link to an O'Reilly book (not one of mine). Check for yourself that "simultaneous device usage" is "unlimited" (i.e., no DRM) and that "text-to-speech" is "enabled".
I own a Kindle Voyage and read heavily on it and yet I can get behind this FSF campaign with all my heart.
1. There is no reason Amazon/publishers can't distribute DRM free books which I can backup and share (within reason, not putting for torrent).
2. It is amazing how badly Kindle supports other languages. I was trying to read a book written in Hindi on it and it was meh. Page turning is slow, font rendering is awful. Are we ready for a world where literature means English literature?
I agree to some points but still, pdfs/ebooks will help distributing books to more people making information more available. And with these arguments, are libraries bad? Considering you need to identify yourself and they are in charge for choosing which books you're can to read, and which ones you can't.
You can export as various formats and it is still 100% readable on Kindle (I have experience with both apps and a few devices). It doesn't mangle anything. Not who you replied to, but I've been using this exact setup to protect my e-book collection for a long time and couldn't be happier.
This comment is probably going to be unpopular with this audience, but there is a really good argument to be made for DRM in the e-book space.
When selling a physical book there is a real barrier to propagation of the entire work in the form of a prohibitive cost or effort for the average person to produce unauthorized copies.
In an era where even little kids know how to do a copy and paste this is definitely not the case with e-books. An author who releases his/her e-book without DRM would be, for all practical purposes giving it away to the vast majority of the reading audience.
Maybe the future of both books and music are that recorded and written works will be freely given as promotion for other more lucrative efforts (like concerts, seminars, and so forth) but as long as the publishing industry and authors rely on the sales of books/e-books for the majority of their income, DRM is here to stay.
This is plainly not true. O'Reilly sells their books DRM-free to a very technical audience. In the US, at least, music that is purchased() today is sold without DRM.
DRM is user hostile and not required to make money.
() purchased does not include Spotify, Apple Music, etc. of course, because those are specifically renting the music.
That may be the case if it weren't for the fact that DRM both completely destroys fair use (I should be able to move my Amazon/Audible purchased books to any device I want), and is completely ineffectual at its stated goal, stopping copyright infringement.
It's ineffectual at completly stopping copying, but it's far from completely ineffectual. The average person doesn't have a good tracker and doesn't know how to use calibre. They could learn / be taught but it's a pain. Easier to just pay. It's not all or nothing.
If you prevent 70% of copying, that's a huge win.
I'm not sure drm is actually worth it, music has shown its not needed in that industry. But that industry had piracy catch on in a way that no other had. My mom can't pirate anything except for mp3s. The napster legacy.
I've thought about getting the amazon kindle a few times. I really can't make myself do it though. It would be nice to have on airplane trips, as I normally only read tech manuals/programming books, but the fact that there is no "used book" market for the kindle is what drove me away. I'd rather pay $5-$10 for a used tech book then buy the E version for $15-$30. Sure I could get online and bootleg an ebook version but that is not really right either.
The vast, vast majority of e-books in the world do not come with DRM nor are related in any way to Amazon. (They also infringe on copyright, but that's another issue.)
YES. Ebooks are a great idea, but definitely not in the way currently implemented. I hate the idea that XYZ Corp., can start streaming ads into my books or have detailed analytics of which lines I read/skipped/copied/researched just because I bought it from them. It's really convenient: they control the format, hence they control the software to (legally) read it, hence that software can behave pretty much any way it likes!
It's even further horrible when you consider a future when books will only be available in one format, that too by XYZ Megacorp ONLY. I don't want the world I inhabit waltzing into that future. Thank GNU that GNU exists.
From the comment in the thread it seems people are not aware of Kobo readers… They are great hardware-wise and the default format is standard epub. You can find everything in this format, create your own books with tools like Sigil, convert from other formats with Calibre, etc.
Please stop conflating ebooks with the crappy format of one vendor.
I would like to add three other dangers of e-books.
First, that a central authority could reach out and change all copies of an extant work. Not delete it, but selectively change it. The Information Ministry never had it so good!
Second, and this is true especially for kids, I think e-books are psychologically problematic. A physical book has fewer degrees-of-freedom, and that's good because the content has nearly infinite-degrees-of-freedom. The way the device works is no mystery to kids, and once you've read it you put it on the shelf (or give it away). With e-books, you always have your whole library right there, and focus becomes an act of will instead of the default.
Third, and this is true especially for thoughtful books, you can't read an e-book with a pen. I shudder to think about reading Marcus Aurelius _Meditations_ without pen in hand!
As an added bonus, books trap carbon! So the more books we have, the better off our environment!
Consider that a sufficiently talented programmer constructing a very powerful piece of malware could, in fact, alter every copy of something everywhere, simultaneously, no matter what it's format.
And they wouldn't have to be 100% successful, they'd only need to affect enough copies to sow doubt into people minds about which is the authentic copy.
My point applies to all digital media, for the simple reason that computers are remarkable in their ability to modify the state of very small things.
Personally I hate marking up physical books, so the Kindle with its highlighting feature (that saves your selections on their server and allows exporting to text file) has been a great boon for me, and I prefer Kindle for thoughtful books now.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] threadTell the whole story, guys. Framing it just this way is dishonest.
They are holding a loaded weapon pointing at our e-books. The circumstances that make them fire it are not as important as the bizarre fact that they have this loaded weapon in the first place.
This is typical of Stallman and his organization. They have good points, but the presentation of them is over the top to the point where people just stop caring.
When one's philosophy is that the Four Freedoms strictly trump any convenience in any context, you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. That's not evil; it's the nature of progress (along the same lines as accepting that you might have to pay taxes---in essence, give up your own hard-earned possessions to a collective over which you have minimal power to decree how those possessions will be used---to live in a place where you don't have to arm yourself against bandits or maintain your own roads, etc.). Hell, if you don't like the way Amazon is administering its chunk of the cloud, it's a lot easier to leave Amazon than to leave a country.
The fact that they have that ability in the first place is. That is not a thing that they should have the ability to do. Full stop, end of story.
They're usually not willing, just feel helpless and like they don't have a choice. They don't know they have a choice. They are also frequently unaware of what Amazon can do:
https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/
I don't mean to say that these effects are irrelevant in any general sense, I am saying that in the context of listing disadvantages of Amazon e-books, it's relevant to mention that the contract that their customers have with them allows them to delete their books at their discretion, and that they have been doing so. I certainly don't see how they went "over the top" by just mentioning it.
> [...] you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them.
Just in the interest of not being extremely vague about what exactly those benefits are, let's look at the case in point. Amazon pulled two books from customers that had paid for them, from what I understand over a rights dispute. The books were not only "in the cloud", but had already been retrieved and stored on the customers' devices for consumption, and Amazon went out of their way to delete them from the devices as well, using a backdoor. What exactly was the collective benefit of the cloud in this case? How did the shared, administered, cloud-based technologies empower the users in this instance, if we take "users" in this case to mean the affected customers? Is a deliberate backdoor into your device an inevitable aspect of cloud based technologies?
Who did benefit from the action? The winners in this were probably Amazon and the claimant in the dispute. It certainly wasn't the customers. If it was your intention to address the case in point in the above quote, I think that you are conflating "cloud-based technologies" with a generally shitty customer rights, as if the two need to go hand in hand. Meanwhile, tons of people are using "cloud-based technologies" illegally to download books in without agreements and format and device lock-downs that completely screw them over at the whim of the distributor.
> Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund.
Some are not, or may not be if they had the effects detrimental to their rights listed to them.
> That's not evil; it's the nature of progress
What do you mean by progress here? In the most general sense of the word this is a rather meaningless conclusion. I don't see how the tax analogy explains it. When I pay taxes, I do it for the benefit of society. The money I pay actually go towards infrastructure and welfare. When Amazon removes a book from my library, how does it benefit society? Would Amazon go bankrupt if they did not do these things?
Another way is that building the loaded weapon was a prerequisite for their capacity to offer the world's largest library of commercially-viable ebook content, and without that "bizarre fact," the content simply wouldn't be available to anyone electronically because of the legal wrangling necessary to get it into publicly-accessible electronic format.
The ends do not justify these means.
It's inconvenient for those who prefer a world without business-driven constraints that the processes that create those constraints also create massive convenience. But they do, and the world is full of potential customers who want that convenience. Because the alternative of a marketplace where they can pay someone (and play by that someone's terms of service) to do the work for them is to learn to do that work themselves, and that's not what people want to specialize in.
That's something Amazon could do (and still can) that would not be possible to do with paper books or ebooks that were not purchased through Kindles or other devices that are not directly connected to the Internet. Not without some sort of massive intrusive recall effort anyway.
Having said that, this article is quite straw-manny. I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily. For books that I purchase, I still need to do so electronically, and that usually requires identification (through PayPal or credit card). I have no problems with ebooks in general, though; not every ebook format or reader grants the same access to the vendor, and it's not that difficult to vote with your feet.
I don't think you're "fairly typical" in this regard, nor is most of the HN user base. Most people are doing what Amazon publishes as "most convenient", which is internet-enabled e-readers with all of Amazon's restrictions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform
It's somewhat unclear what you mean, especially with apple having added sideloading support in Xcode 7/iOS9.
"printed books …(stuff that applies to printed books) ..Contrast that with Amazon e-books (fairly typical).. (stuff that applies to kindle ebooks and other DRM restricted formats):"
Its fairly typical in that Amazon is the biggest retailer, a trend setter and other retailers and tech providers follow their lead putting out similar stuff.
I don't perfectly agree with the Free Software Foundation at a high level, but I think this comparison is pretty fair. If you compare in most people's physical and legally obtained digital book collections, this is what you will find. The ebooks don't come with the same rights.
EDIT: To be more clear, it says "We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom." But every single benefit it notes of printed books is also true of non-DRM'ed ePub book, except that non-DRM'ed ePubs respect your freedom even more—your freedom to freely copy and distribute it, your freedom to have it displayed by a screenreader or braille device.
If you want more free e-books, just go to m.gutenberg.org, find one, and open it in your app of choice.
It is however true that in the practice, in the wild, ebooks mostly do have DRM. Hence, it's a problem with e-books to the the extent that it is a problem.
DRM is the enemy, not e-books.
I would guess the campaign is pretty US-centric, as I think in Europe Kobo readers are more typical.
It's free as in free to use, copy, alter and redistribute.
You can still charge for it.
There are several advantages of ebooks over paper books:
* Less environmentally harmful * Take up less space * Easier to copy, I can send 1 subversive ebook to 1,000 people.
I believe this is a pretty naive analysis. If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.
On a reader - if you're counting the cost of electricity, let's count the cost of shipping entire forests of paper around the world, first to paper mills, then to print factories, then to bookshops and libraries.
And the cost of travel to and from a lending library for every reader.
And why not also include the cost of lighting to read the book? (I can read my Kobo in the dark because it has a very low energy backlight. My eyes don't work so well with the lights off, so I've never been able to do that with paper.)
I wonder how many people here understand that giant warehouses full of overstocked print are regularly shipped back from stores and pulped. Does everyone understand how much space and weight a million copies of a failed bestseller takes up? Does everyone know that paper books are always sold sale-or-return, so if they don't go out the front door they go out the back door onto a truck, with the covers stripped so they can't be resold?
The original article is factually wrong in significant ways.
Not all ebooks are sold by Amazon, not all ebooks have DRM, and not all ebooks that start with DRM continue to have DRM.
At this point, arguing against digital publishing because Amazon is like arguing against the printing press because the medieval Catholic church was fond of censorship and burning.
That's not to say I'd support replacing libraries with an ebook lending system; they serve important functions beyond book lending, and I like paper books anyway. But I wouldn't claim that they're low energy.
I'm not so sure. The longer a book is in existence, the more expensive it is to maintain. Over time, books fall prey to dust, mites, mold, acids used to treat the paper. As books wear out, you upgrade to newer printings. Very similar things happen to computer files; bit rot, format support, etc.
From an energy standpoint, there's a lot more up front energy needed to produce a book than an e-book. After it's created and read, an e-book sits on a hard drive or a flash drive, unused, and thus uses little to no energy for storage. Physical books, on the other hand, require dusting and cleaning, which requires energy in the form of a fed human being and/or a vacuum cleaner.
In in depth comparison between the two types of libraries would be very interesting. Even after typing all of that, I'm not sure which one would come out on top.
I suspect that the energy cost of maintaining a paper book at a decent temperature for a decade would be orders of magnitude worse than the energy cost of backing up an ebook for a decade.
My concern is that after a decade, all mirrors of the ebook might disappear.
P.G. Wodehouse is a good example of an author I like to buy as ePub.
Recently discovered that Brandon Sanderson's books are among the DRM free (Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, others), which is a great set of reads for fantasy fans.
I'm going to read what I want to read, when I want to read it, on my Kindle, whether Amazon wants me to or considers me to have a license or not. Basically: I don't care what the EULA states for my Kindle.
It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss.
If it ever came to the point of Amazon disabling Kindles for sharing this viewpoint, then I'm sure there would be a groundswell of support for an open-source OS for the Kindle and we'd all get coding. In the end, I'm not all that scared.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
When it stops being possible people won't buy kindles.
As gog.com and CD Projekt RED shown - it's perfectly possible to make a living selling non-DRMed games (when their servers failed last tuesday people still bought the Witcher 3 expansion in gog, and then downloaded it from torrents), so I don't see how it's impossible to do with ebooks.
Right, except you don't have the right to do that. You have no carte blanche entitlement to access media or entertainment. If the executives at HBO figure that, financially speaking, it's in their best interest to keep new Game of Thrones episodes accessible to cable customers only, you have the right to not buy it and be frustrated at that and protest it until eventually enough people protest for HBO to budge.
What you don't have the right to do is then to circumvent the legal and technological system set up for you to purchase Game of Thrones and access it for free, which, yes, is fucking theft. I can hear the scoffing through TCP/IP.
And you're not just harming the company, you're not just harming the already rich suits at HBO. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. People figure getting their music for free is a more rational individual choice than paying $16 for a CD. Everyone then makes the decision to get their media for free. Who cares about those stupid record labels, anyways?
Suddenly, smaller markets around the world have their industry gutted by piracy, smaller labels have to shut down, bigger labels have to fire hundreds of less successful artists that they used to be able to support from the money they made on the more successful artists, the more successful artists have to stop relying on royalties from album sales and have to whore themselves out doing nonstop touring year-round for money. Thank God it's physically impossible to "pirate" concert tickets.
I know we're going on a tangent here, but people often falsely conflate open-source access to information and piracy into this one big, happy revolution against the evil gatekeepers and their evil transactions that involve my money. No. Piracy is just fucking theft, period.
Tell that to the cable companies and radio stations that got their start the same way. Nearly every major media distribution channel in this country at least was founded on piracy. [Source: http://goo.gl/fN62uy]
The recurring pattern is that these people committing acts of piracy had a larger goal/conclusion in mind. They often ended up legally servicing and selling media and entertainment on a far larger scale than they ever illegally stole it. These people didn't have the resources and content to go about their business otherwise, and saw fit to commit acts of theft in the short-term to convince people that the core of their structure was worth getting access to content legally. The vast majority of pirates don't have such ambitions. They just want free movies.
So an action by the likes of a nascent Spotify, cable company, or radio station (or whomever) is OK as long as the long-term ends justify the short-term means?
> The vast majority of pirates don't have such ambitions. They just want free movies.
How do you know what they want? Can you read each of their minds?
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy
Language is not fixed, the meanings of words shift all the time.
If you read this, you are a thief, you just stolen that information from me. Do you agree?
Arguing about labels is stupid, but so is misusing a word for financial gain.
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If you read this, you are a thief, you just stolen that information from me. Do you agree? Arguing about labels is stupid, but so is misusing a word for financial gain.
But seriously, even if piracy is theft, it's a different kind of theft, so arguing "oiracy is theft, theft is bad, therefore piracy is bad" is still a bad argument. It would be the best, if everybody focused on the actual matter at hand instead of pointless arguments by associacion.
No, you don't get to redefine a word because you feel like it. "Piracy" is often wrong, but it is not theft (the owner is not deprived of the item).
If you take a copy of an item you would have purchased you just took the income.
> Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply
Face it, you're a fringe view.
The code is:
> Whoever transports, transmits, or transfers in interstate or foreign commerce any goods, wares, merchandise, securities or money, of the value of $5,000 or more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud; or ....
The semantics of "theft" absolutely do apply
Definition of theft: the act or crime of stealing.
Definition of steal: to take (something that you are not supposed to have) without asking for permission. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing
So the people trying to get through the not stealing it is copying due to a technical definition of theft are wrong. Stealing is having a copy that you didn't get permission to take.
My other ethics brain is wondering how NOT taking property but a copy seems to also allow sneaking into a movie theater, concert or sporting event to watch something. You are neither taking anything or even copying you are just watching. Is this also not theft?
Photos on a public web page are implicitly giving you permission to view the photo and the technology need you to have a local copy for viewing. That does not mean you can grab the photos from say National Geographic and re bundle them put them on you website surrounded by adds. They are not giving you permission to do anything but view the pictures.
If enough people pirate, it changes the perceived value of a digital good to $0 or near $0 and will eventually put the person out of business. The big businesses can handle it just fine. The small companies are the ones you are hurting.
The app store, while not pirating, is a good example of this. Apps are no 99 cents. If you try to make an app more expensive than this, people generally will complain or not buy it at all. Why? Because the perceived value of an app is 99 cents.
It's very similar to the principals of currency.
Anecdotal evidence here, but I have a successful app on Google Play (which is commonly viewed as a less-willing-to-pay audience) at 5$+, despite the fact that the app is FOSS and you can download the binary from the home page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid....
Let's take George Bernard's famous quote: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” According to your definition, one could not engage in theft of an idea, because one could never be deprived of an idea like with the taking of an apple.
However, let's look at the actual legal definition of theft: The actus reus (act) of theft is usually defined as an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another's property which must be accompanied by a mens rea (mental state/intent) of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use.
You limited the definition of theft to only include when one's mental state intends to deprive someone. The actual definition is not limited though, but alternatively includes when the taking was done dishonestly. Therefore, if someone takes something not belonging to them, and does so dishonestly that in fact is theft. Since I foresee the definition of dishonesty being the next issue here, that has been defined in case law, but generally where the person intended to take property they did not have a legal right to take.
Lets try again, because while I used "idea" in the Bernard quote to demonstrate how non-physical can be taken without depriving the owner, GP was talking about more than an idea, but a digital good:
Act: An unlawful taking (idea or physical good)
Intent: 1. Dishonesty; (idea or physical good) OR 2. To permanently deprive (physical good only)
You would be right if the intent was only (2) with intent to permanently deprive as the argument, but that is not the case, it is OR (1) taking dishonestly.
Lets remove "ideas" and put it into perspective with a "good", for clarity. I steal your car and chop it up and sell for parts (a unlawful taking with intent to permanently deprive = theft); alternatively, I steal your car at night, go joyriding and return it in the morning before you even know (unlawful taking without intent to permanently deprive...would you say that is not theft? If so you would be wrong even though I never intended to permanently deprive, because it is an unlawful taking and my intent was dishonest = theft)
So, legal mental state must be a particular (non-intuitive) thing, because if the other posters on this thread think its not dishonest, then they're clear of any wrongdoing re: digital piracy. Right?
> Since I foresee the definition of dishonesty being the next issue here, that has been defined in case law, but generally where the person intended to take property they did not have a legal right to take.
Intent is a legal term of art and not purely subjective mental state pursuant to the natural definition - so in this context it is fair to say mental state is non-intuitive.
Another example...if you throw your car keys at me and tell me I can take your car for the night, but unbeknownst to me it wasn't your car at all, then I would not have the mental state required to be convicted of theft because while I committed the act (unlawful taking) I did not have the mental state required (dishonesty in the taking or intent to permanently deprive). That would be true lack of intent, whereas, in your example there would be intent to take a digital good, but a moral objection/indifference to the law.
I recall in law school a student once told our Con Law professor, "I don't believe in Judges being appointed to the bench" and supported his position with 5-10 minutes of very strong arguments against the concept, at the end of the diatribe our Con Law professor simple said, "whether you believe in appointed Judges or not, I assure you they exist". The same would be true of laws, whether you believe in/support them or not, that does not negate their existence or ones intent of committing the act, to be distinguished from where one truly did not intend for the act to occur.
I would say that is not theft. According to my lay-person's understanding of the law, what you've described is called criminal conversion.
I also remain unconvinced of your notion that copyright infringement is theft.
As a lawyer, I'm surprised you are not familiar with the Dowling case, which is where that definition comes from. It wasn't pulled out of GP's ass.
• Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart.
• An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show.
• An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula.
• When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen".
• A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.
You say they don't. They say they do. The law may agree with you right now, but then there are places where the law still allows for slaves, so I wouldn't put any weight in what the law says.
>Piracy is just fucking theft, period.
No it isn't. Exclamation mark. ! > .
I don't agree with the law in other parts of the world, therefor I don't need to respect the law in the part of the world where I live?
Respecting laws is no different from accepting bullying. I respect murder and rape laws not because they are laws but because the arguments against killing win over those for killing, and the arguments against rape win over those for rape.
But the arguments against piracy lose to the arguments for piracy.
It's not about what someone thinks. It's about arguments and principles that can be applied universally.
> he very much disagreed
It's not about disagreeing with arguments. It's about refuting arguments to show them wrong.
I am less sure than you are that Jack the Ripper has ever produced refutations to the universalized principled arguments against the initiation of force that so many have written about through the ages.
According to my argument, it would be fine to use lethal force against Jack the Ripper initiating violence, since it is morally OK to use violence for self-defense (according to universal arguments, meaning that all participants can abide by this principle without contradictions arising).
Without wanting to sound condescending, the difference between what I am saying and what you think I said is that you think I am considering the ego of the persons involved. What Jack the Ripper's ego "thinks" and "agrees with" is irrelevant. What is relevant is facts that don't involve the ego - namely, did Jack the Ripper produce a universalized principled argument to justify his actions? The answer, so far as I know, is no.
It's not about what an ego thinks, it's about whether an argument exists.
Given that a content creator is only able to sustainably (i.e. without going broke) create content provided that they have an income, and given that creating content takes enough time that it is infeasible to both create content and earn income from another source at the same time, then a content creator must be able to earn income from their content if they are going to create it sustainably.
Given that consumers want content from content creators whose content they have enjoyed in the past, and given that a content creator must be able to earn income from their content if they are going to create it sustainably, content creators should be able to earn income from their content
Given that when a person pirates (or otherwise obtains for free) content the content creator earns no income from their content if everybody were to pirate content, content creators would earn no income from their content
Given that if everybody were to pirate content, content creators would earn no income from their content and given that content creators should be able to earn income from their content then not everybody should pirate content
Given that if not everybody should perform an action then nobody should perform the action, and if not everybody should pirate content then nobody should pirate content.
Argument 1 is strictly correct and the conclusion thus valid: a creator must earn income from their content if they want to continue being a creator.
Argument 2 is also correct, and I'd say it supports argument 1, because it is its inverse: if a creator wants to continue being a creator they must be able earn income from their content. I inserted italics to emphasize that 1 and 2 are not circular though they may appear so.
Argument 3 argues two things: first, that when a person pirates, the creator earns no income - this is strictly true and part of the definition of pirating ("not paying"); second, that if everyone pirated content, creators would earn no income from their content. Let's pause here.
Argument number 3 is conflating two slightly different usages of the phrase "earn income from content". In the first half of the argument (the correct part), this phrase means "earn income from the content in the transaction that would have taken place". That's why it's correct, because no money is earned by the creator from the act of pirating. But in the second half, that phrase means "earn income from their content at all in any way".
Let's slow down. If you were arguing "if everyone pirated, creators would earn no income from their content in those pirating transactions", well, that would just be the same argument that was made in the first half, and this would be circular. That's why the argument must be trying to argue this, in long form:
Given that when a person pirates, the creator earns no income from that pirate for that content, then if everyone pirates, the creator would earn no income from anyone in any way for that content".
Okay. Now that I have highlighted the issue I see with the argument, I will present some examples to illustrate why this more detailed version of argument 3 is wrong.
It is wrong because all universals are wrong if one counter-example can be found; and many counter-examples can be found for argument 3; for instance, there are many independent journalists and critics online that put their content up for free (acknowledging they can't control information) but still sell a book version of it, or DVD compilations of it. This is a valid counter-example because here, these creators give away for free the content they produce, but then sell the same content in a more convenient way for the buyer, and make money this way. That means they are making money from the same content that was pirated ("not paid for"[1]) but in another way.
I could make other examples of bands that put their music online for free and earn income from that same music by charging for concert tickets (again, another way of earning income from the same content that is "pirated" or given away).
But I think this is enough to explain that argument 3 is invalid because it is stuffing two different meanings into the same phrase "earn income from content". If you are able to fix this and turn argument 3 into a valid argument, I would be curious to see that, and you would be advancing the discussion.
Arguments 4 and 5 are cogent but invalid because they rely on argument 3 which I believe I have demonstrated to be invalid.
Thank you for the challenge!
I find it extremely ironic that you are making that point. What you are doing is precisely declaring a law about a complex and controversial issue to be invalid because there is an "universal and absolute argument" (aka, you think so) against that law. That's not how things work. Why would the things Jack the ripper thinks and agrees with be irrelevant and yours be "universalized arguments" that everyone must accept?
EDIT:
>According to my argument, it would be fine to use lethal force against Jack the Ripper initiating violence
Precisely. According to your argument. Not a universal truth.
Because I can prove through propositional logic that "my" arguments can be universalized without contradictions, which proves that they are correct.
It's not that I think there is a universal and absolute argument. It's that I have proven these things myself with pen and paper and rules such as Modus Ponens, De Morgan, etc. Not just me, many before me. Do mathematicians think pi is irrational? No, they've proven it is. Do philosophers think that if all humans are mortal and Socrates is a human, that therefore Socrates is mortal? So, they've proven it is.
Maybe you are not aware that there is a method to this. I learned this from Irving Copi, his logic books are famous for teaching these concepts solidly. I'd recommend you peruse his work so you can understand what bweitzman and I are doing here.
>> According to my argument, it would be fine to use lethal force against Jack the Ripper initiating violence
> Precisely. According to your argument. Not a universal truth.
I say "my" argument because I am making it now, not because I was the first to make it. Others before me have proven that "anyone should be able to initiate force" is self-contradictory (see sketch of proof in [1]). This much is trivial. What is less trivial is the work done to prove that "anyone should be able to use force against the initiation of force". If you want to read the proof for this, the book is called Universally Preferable Behavior by Stefan Molyneux.
[1] Proof by ad absurdum: If anyone is should be able to initiate force, then I should be able to initiate force towards someone so as to strip them of their ability to initiate force. This leads to a contradiction: if everyone is able to initiate force, then some will not be able to initiate force. This contradiction means that the idea that anyone should be able to initiate force cannot be universalized.
According to what/whom?
The law: no, that was illegal.
Reality: reality never stopped Jack.
To the victims or their loved ones: no, but it wouldn't have been fine even had it be legal back then. The law had nothing to do with if they thought it was fine or not.
To me: I wasn't there back then, my opinion back then didn't exist either way.
To put it simply, that what Jack did was wrong has nothing to do with it being illegal.
Anyways, I'm not saying that the conclusion is wrong, just the argument
The thing that just boils my blood is people talking about how they are entitled to pirate content because content creators don't make it available in the way they want it. If you want to pirate stuff, that's your business. Just don't try to justify it.
Do I follow the law so I don't get in trouble? Yes.
Do I use the law to decide what rights people have? No.
The law is only relevant because there are people who choose to enforce it with violence, it has no place among a discussion of morals, ethics, or rights.
What the above user is saying, is: Suppose congress passed a law saying "X is illegal". Does that mean that X is immoral? The answer is clearly no, because congress passes all sorts of idiotic/insane laws.
consider:
x ∈ X x ∈ I X ⊆ L Y ⊆ L therefore ∀ y ∈ Y, y ∈ I or even just ∃ y ∈ Y, y ∈ I
that doesn't make any sense.
That's basically what Lawtonfogle was saying, where X is some other country's laws, Y is our country's laws, L is the set of all laws, and I is the set of immoral laws. The fact that slavery is legal somewhere else only proves that's it's possible for a bad law to exist. Doesn't mean that we have bad laws in our own countries (which of course we do, however)
Obviously the bottle of concentrated smell costs money, though.
Piracy is the correcting hand of the free market, where obtaining things for free is easier and less byzantine than by paid channels. Psychological research has proven time and time again that most people are willing to pay, but unwilling to have their personal rights trampled by draconian licensing and DRM.
Luckily your opinions, however misinformed, are irrelevant because anyone who understands this will never give up the fight. We understand how international trade deals and copyright law are being used offensively against the public, and we will not relinquish control over the devices we've rightfully purchased.
I'd suggest you get used to it. We're here to stay.
No, the (ethical) correcting hand of the free market is not buying things, not deciding you are entitled to any entertainment content anyone produces.
> Luckily your opinions, however misinformed, are irrelevant because anyone who understands this will never give up the fight. We understand how international trade deals and copyright law are being used offensively against the public, and we will not relinquish control over the devices we've rightfully purchased.
Yes, if you rightfully purchase something, then I'll agree you have every right to skirt DRM if it is not letting you use what you purchased. But just stealing it outright is exactly how we've ended up with things like TPP and the DMCA, or Hollywood's relatively recent trend of spit-firing bad movies so they'll at least make something in the box office.
No one (intelligent) is trying to make a moral argument for 'piracy' or media entitlement, but rather saying that there do exist circumstances where the letter of the law deserves to be ignored as it runs contradictory to the spirit.
The spirit of copyright law is to ensure rights-holders are fairly compensated, and the unfortunate confluence of many complex factors has precluded this.
Rights-holders are understandably scared of technology's ability to level the playing field (by increasing access and decreasing their exclusivity advantage), and thus far most have chosen the historically-impotent strategy of hardline enforcement over adapting services and creating new revenue streams. What bothers me is that they hold the artists out to the public and say "look at this poor starving fella," meanwhile no one has any idea that their new streaming-media licensing agreement entitles artists to ~2-5% of the total earnings generated.
I'm particularly sensitive to this issue because I work in ad-tech. People (myself ironically included) love ad blockers, and I'd argue it's for good reason. Unless the implicit contract between those monetizing and those consuming is respected, everyone loses in the arms race that follows. In our industry it's been adapt-or-die (create products that don't hurt the user's experience), and that's the way it should be. Thankfully nobody is lobbying in congress to stipulate how you may use your eyeballs.
Hollywood and Telecom have historically received unprecedented favoritism in this country, and it's possible we're all on the verge of paying the price. It will only continue to encroach upon our individual rights as society becomes increasingly digital.
I don't think anyone is entitled to anything for free, but I'm a realist and a pragmatist. I will reverse engineer and circumvent the things people say I can't until the day I die :)
> No one (intelligent) is trying to make a moral argument for 'piracy' or media entitlement
Alas, I've seen quite a few people in this thread make just that argument, and the unfortunate part is that many seem to be quite intelligent.
> I don't think anyone is entitled to anything for free, but I'm a realist and a pragmatist. I will reverse engineer and circumvent the things people say I can't until the day I die :)
Amen!
Everyone should take note of the proper way to fight encroaching copyright law:
If you are a programmer, security researcher, artist, or entrepreneur you can make a difference.
1. As an individual: if you understand the methods, contribute to open-source tools that allow individuals to exercise their rights. https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools (one example)
Artists: Use self-publishing platforms (gumroad, bandcamp, even spotify...) and self-incorporate. Discriminate against giving your business to companies that don't support open, sane protocols. Don't let them exert their power against the populace through backdoor trade deals.
Entrepreneurs: Create new content delivery and streaming platforms that force the transition to digital--rightsholders like to claim that piracy is responsible for their failed economics, though the truth is that they had an artificial market advantage of scarcity. User-generated content has bloomed with the advent of digital, and more consumer choice is a death knell to the traditional monopoly.
2. As a cause: support the EFF, and any politician looking to work with the FCC who understands this issue is deeper than "restricting content," and could undermine the rights of property and security of ownership. Do not trust anyone who does not comprehend the societal implications of critical infrastructure being "security through obscurity." http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001303221
The security of your laptop, the concept of personal ownership, and your right not to be digitally inspected at over 40 international borders is at stake.
Piracy, or copyright infringement, or whatever the fuck you want to call it, and theft have the same practical effect : you're accessing a consumable good without paying the requisite cost, your individual crime may not have a large effect on the ability of the seller to provide for that good, but, on the large scale, if everyone committed your crime, you would severely affect the seller's ability to both 1. provide for him/her/their-self and 2. provide that good to the people. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, piracy is theft in cause & effect, if not in literal, philosophical definition.
I said it in my first post. If paid channels are byzantine and draconian, don't pay. You still don't have a right to the content. Just don't buy it. That's "fight" enough. That's "protest" enough.
>[some extremely condescending and pretentious teenage bullshit about "not giving up the fight"]
No, buddy, you're not on some morally righteous journey to freedom. Ironically enough, the DRM, DMCA, and the Gestapo-ification of the MPAA and RIAA only exist because of people like you. The executives and middlemen (i.e.: cable networks, record labels, publishers) hate piracy because it severely harms their bottom line, the artists hate piracy because it harms their livelihood, the consumers hate piracy because it leads to annoying DRM and other counterpiracy measures that end up harming paying consumers most. The only people that are lifting their fists in the air with you are, bingo, other pirates.
That has the "same practical effect", yet the folks who like to moralize about copyright don't seem to have as much of an issue with that. (Though I'm sure the content industry would find a way to charge for this completely legitimate use if they could)
You still don't have a right to the content.
I place precisely zero value on your opinion on this matter because you lost most of this fight the moment the copy command was invented, and the idiocy behind the content industry lost the rest. This includes greatly exaggerated "losses", suing of computer-illiterate elderly people and network printers, perversion of the copyright system from something beneficial for the arts to a means of cultural control and profit above all else.
We're people, we can change the law however we see fit. I suggest it's time that we push this pendulum back in the other direction, and then snap it off.
"Consumable" would imply that the good is "Consumed". The traditional definition of consumption is that the good can't be consumed more than once. This definition has been altered in the digital age, but I think that's where the confusion arises.
A digital, infinitely copy-able good isn't really "consumed", as the copying doesn't actually reduce the original in any way, shape or form.
Perhaps "Observed" would be a better term?
If you are a programmer, security researcher, artist, or entrepreneur you can make a difference.
1. As an individual: if you understand the methods, contribute to open-source tools that allow individuals to exercise their rights. https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools (one example)
Artists: Use self-publishing platforms (gumroad, bandcamp, even spotify...) and self-incorporate. Discriminate against giving your business to companies that don't support open, sane protocols. Don't let them exert their power against the populace through backdoor trade deals.
Entrepreneurs: Create new content delivery and streaming platforms that force the transition to digital--rightsholders like to claim that piracy is responsible for their failed economics, though the truth is that they had an artificial market advantage of scarcity. User-generated content has bloomed with the advent of digital, and more consumer choice is a death knell to the traditional monopoly.
2. As a cause: support the EFF, and any politician looking to work with the FCC who understands this issue is deeper than "restricting content," and could undermine the rights of property and security of ownership. Do not trust anyone who does not comprehend the societal implications of critical infrastructure being "security through obscurity." http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001303221
The security of your laptop, the concept of personal ownership, and your right not to be digitally inspected at over 40 international borders is at stake.
* figure revised to more accurately reflect the reality of the american justice system.
Which means nothing. Whether people have the right to or not, they can do it with absolutely no personal repercussions, so they do. Lecturing and ranting and wishing things were different isn't going to change that.
That's true, but since when does that matter? The government doesn't have the right to do a bunch of things they do. So what?
> Suddenly, smaller markets around the world have their industry gutted by piracy, smaller labels have to shut down, bigger labels have to fire hundreds of less successful artists [...]
Similar and worse things happen when you increase the minimum wage. Why should I stop illegally downloading mp3 files by listening to your side's argument if you side usually will stop listening when I make the same arguments about increasing the minimum wage?
That's the beauty of this. By downloading mp3 files I'm actually getting back at everyone that doesn't care to learn economics enough to be against the minimum wage.
There is no evidence whatsoever for that end-of-world scenario of yours.
Why are "piracy=theft" people always angry?
Note that I'm not criticizing your use of e-books, just presenting an alternative.
If Amazon cares enough to try to shut down the decryption with better technology, I'll stop buying Kindle books and I guess we'll both be a little bit poorer for it. That's their call though. I'll worry about it when I have to.
I don't generally pirate things. I can't say I never do, but it's very rare, and I don't believe I'm in the right for doing so. But with ebooks, I'm paying Amazon for the book, and while I recognize the truth is that content creators and publishers have the right control distribution of their work, in practice I'm only willing to recognize those rights when they're not wholly unreasonable. HBO wanting me to pay for Game of Thrones is reasonable. Wanting to charge me as a commercial broadcaster if I have a watch party at my house isn't, and I feel like my treatment of ebooks is morally fine. It's an arbitrary line, I recognize, but it's one I'm currently fine with.
In comparison, The Martian was only $2 for the Kindle version because that guy originally posted his book for only a dollar (or something), and I bought it immediately and told everyone I knew about how cheap it was (the book was good enough I'd have been happy to have paid $10 for it, though).
In a civilized society, respect for the law must trump our endless appetite for convenient entertainment. There are causes that merit civil disobedience, but this isn't one of them. If we can't consume some piece of entertainment legally, then we should just pass on it; there's always something else we can enjoy instead.
Why?
The law exists, among other reasons, to save us the N! negotiation of appropriate barriers. In that way, taking some aliquot of entertainment is not different from sleeping on your porch. Or in your living room.
Slavish adherence to the law regardless of its nuance is not noble, it does not contribute to some greater whole, it is mere obedience, nothing more.
"Speed Limit 65" on major highways is a law too, and one that has roughly as much respect among the people as copyright law. And we're a more efficient society for ignoring it.
Willfully choosing to ignore the speed limit has no impact on the rest of the law - that law is ignored because it is widely seen to be broken, inefficient, and nothing more than a vehicle for unjust profit.
Coincidentally, the same negative descriptors apply to copyright in 2015.
This is not D&D, we do not have character alignments. I am not giving up some imaginary karma and slighting the deity/concept of Justice and Good Order by choosing to ignore a subset of non-beneficial laws.
Actually walking out of a store with a physical copy of a book (or a CD or a movie) is something most people would agree is theft, but making a digital copy of the same book or CD or movie without paying for it is... something else. By this point anyone on HN can enumerate the salient differences, which all revolve around digital copies having zero marginal cost.
The problem is that we too often ignore the salient similarities. The reason you want this particular book or CD or movie has nothing to do with the marginal cost of that particular copy. The bulk of the value always lay in the creative work; in digital media, all of the value lies in the creative work. If I want to sell you a novel and you don't like the price I've set, you'd never think that justifies walking out of the store without paying for a physical copy. Why does it justify you making a digital copy without paying for it?
DRM is a terrible "solution" to this problem, but I think its worst feature may be that its existence obscures the actual value of creative works by focusing attention back on the medium. My hypothetical novel's value, or lack thereof, ultimately has nothing to do with whether it's a trade paperback or an EPUB file. The principle of "you give me money in exchange for my work" remains the same even if my work is not fixed in a physical, tangible form.
If we're talking about justification rather than law, the question can easily be turned around to become "What gives you the right to prevent me from making a digital copy?" Because you made the thing? More likely than not, I'll pay you if your work is any good.
Content producers seem to want to make the jump from physical to digital to gain its benefits without their customers realizing those same benefits, such as the ability to try before buying, or format shifting, etc. They treat this relationship as inherently adversarial in nature, and that's even before DRM gets added to the mix.
If your work is good, I will pay you. You lost the ability to control whether that happens before or after I've sampled the work, and you can thank decades of bad business practices for the justification for that.
The question is - how can you fight it? If the plebes could get laws made in their interest, they would. But they can't, so some of them do the next best thing - break the law. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Might makes right is the ultimate rule here. If nobody can stop you from doing what you want, then it's OK. That's just how the world works.
http://extent-of-regulation.dhwritings.com/
There's an exceptionally strong argument for a simple access fee or tax (built into broadband service provision or income tax, preferably scaled to wealth), for which you have all-you-can-eat access to content, with authors paid based on a pro-rated basis of usage of their works, based on some cost-of-production scale (algorithmic computer-generated music really shouldn't be rewarded on the same basis as high-calibre investigative journalism or technical research). Possibly even taking the concept of payment for work out of the equation and providing some number of professional slots rewarded on a sliding scale based on measures of talent or quality. After all, what matters in producing considerable content is occupational stability in doing so. Periodic (annual? More or less frequent?) assessments could be made to compensation, number of openings, etc. Yes, it's complex, but then, information goods are too.
Oh, and that argument's compelling enough for Amazon to consider it. Don't buy their DRM'd crap myself, but those I know are being offered $10/mo all-you-can-eat access. O'Reilly's Safari service has had a similar offering for years (though at a different price-point as I recall).
Seems a good idea whose time may well come.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3p0bp6/richard...
Respect for the law because is a rot that must be removed from society. Respecting a law just because it exists is to shackle our morals and common sense to what those in charge of the law dictate.
>There are causes that merit civil disobedience, but this isn't one of them.
The notion of civil disobedience, especially that of 'to do it, you must break the law and willingly submit yourself to punishment' is another rot. As for actual disobedience, the privatization of our collective culture to an extent that far surpasses rewarding primary contributors is a cause for general disobedience.
Also to note, your paying for movie ticket actually has no end effect because at the end of the day ever movie is a financial disaster. At least for mainstream Hollywood.
You assume all pirating is for entertainment. In a civilized society - should the poor not have access to expensive research papers, books, and the right to self-education through these materials? Are those things that are reserved only for those who can afford it? Is that really a civilized society? One that ignores the poor in an every-increasing demand for individual wealth rather than communal wealth?
There is a coffee shop where I live where you can "purchase" a coffee. The payment is whatever you feel the coffee is worth. Most people will pay $4-6 like any other coffee shop. Some people will feel generous or can afford to pay more. It's popular among the homeless and poor, because they can enjoy coffee and if they can only afford to give $0.50 they give $0.50, if they can't afford giving anything - the coffee is free.
I think that's more civilized than denying the poor the ability to enjoy coffee simply because they aren't in a position to pay for it. I argue this would only fail in uncivilized places where everyone is abusive of the generosity and the affluent and wealthy are not generous with their wealth causing the coffee shop to quickly go out of business.
But this depends on how "civilized" is to be defined.
I'm with you, up until here. If I buy some content (e-book, movie, TV show, etc.), and then DRM malfunctions or is senselessly restrictive (client doesn't exist for some platform, etc.), I feel it is justifiable to "pirate" the content which I paid for. Particularly in the case of malfunctioning DRM (which is unfortunately common for PC games these days), it is the provider who failed to hold up their end of the bargain (whatever their EULA may say).
But of all the things studios do, deciding where to sell or not sell content is something that they actually have every right to do. We are entitled to content we paid for, but are not entitled to content just because it exists. If HBO doesn't want to release Game of Thrones during the season to Amazon, etc. because they want people to watch it on their network, what right do I have to steal it because I don't want to pay for cable?
If the price is too high I'll wait until it comes down and not pirate it (see: waiting for a game to be cheaper during a Steam sale).
If the company tries to control how I consume the content in a way that is illogical or very inconvenient, I'll get it by other means or just avoid it altogether. Examples:
1. Rick and Morty is not on Netflix, so I'll watch it on Popcorn Time.
2. Rockstar games have horrendous DRM attached, even with Steam, so I just avoid them altogether. I purchased the GTA bundle and GTA IV simply does not work due to DRM. EA and Ubisoft are the same in this boat for me.
3. Apple requires the use of Safari to view their live streams, for no valid technical reason. So, I don't listen or pay attention to anything during their keynotes. At the office, headphones go on. From my perspective, they don't want me as a customer anyway, so there's no point in giving them any mindshare.
So you pay Netflix, but Netflix didn't pay Comedy Central for Rick and Morty. So why does Comedy Central get penalized because they didn't make a deal with a content provider you consider convenient? Also, in this particular case, you can watch it for free (legally) here[1] (please do, it would be a shame for such a good show to get cancelled because they think nobody is watching).
> 2. Rockstar games have horrendous DRM attached, even with Steam, so I just avoid them altogether. I purchased the GTA bundle and GTA IV simply does not work due to DRM. EA and Ubisoft are the same in this boat for me.
I feel your pain. However, my approach is to pay for the games, and then download cracks when the DRM (inevitably) malfunctions. It is some small inconvenience, but I think it is far more fair than paying nothing at all. Also, going that route ensures that game companies will (1) make the DRM even worse in a vain attempt to make it "uncrackable" (2) give up on PC games that aren't entirely online based. Though I think it may be too late already.
[1]: http://www.adultswim.com/videos/rick-and-morty/
Look at the big picture. We live in a society full of corruption and greed; people are naturally going to "steal" from the big greedy corporations who constantly use their advantage to turn the screws and make society pay for their faulty business plans.
Secondarily, thank you for pasting that link. I didn't realize it was available to watch for free directly. I'll watch the ones that are open to me there then.
This is what 'content producers' are competing against. You may not like it, but that's reality.
Take the Sherlock TV series for example: who wants to wait for two years for a new season, and then an additional two months for it to arrive in your particular country? In Finland the series is shown on a state-funded channel who don't even get any money from you watching the show on their channel.
To play the devil's advocate. Why not though? The "because it's illegal" I can understand.
But if one's to argue it's also "immoral", then this pressuposses a whole complicated ethics based on a human invention like "copyright", which I'm not sure why people need to respect.
I suspect much pirating is rooted in entitlement, and the moralizing comes after.
Sometimes no, it's not.
Just this morning I was talking with TeMPOraL and we were recalling how the software market looked like in Poland in the nineties (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397694). My "walk down to the store" then would have to be to another country, a thousand kilometers or so; through two or three national borders. It's not that I didn't want to pay with what little money I had, it's just that there was no one who wanted to take my money (besides "pirates", of course).
This is the context for my statement above. Of course, it's rarely that bad nowadays, but it still happens. And how hard getting the content has to be for you to consider it not available? There being physically not one "legal" copy of Windows in the entire country (been there)? Is it enough for the nearest place offering content to be a thousand kilometers away? 500km? 200km? (and no, nobody wanted to even ship it via snail mail, because uncertain laws and such).
As for entitlement... well, that's trickier and I don't want to go there. I can only say that both sides of this argument have interesting and convincing arguments.
The sad fact is that we don't live in such a world, so some form of compensation for authors is necessary, if you want them to keep doing what they are doing. Copyright isn't the only model, but I don't see any practical way to pivot back to a patronage model, especially for content which isn't considered high art. So, I don't think it is fair that one should be paid for making cars, but not be paid for making software, since both consume money to produce. The fact that software doesn't consume (much) money to produce more units after one is produced means that the model of compensation may be different, but I don't think it means there should be no compensation at all. It is easy to go too far in the other direction (e.g. the behavior of record companies and movie studios, who exploit the real authors), but I don't think that invalidates the concept entirely.
So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it. From my point of view, that would be progress. Of course some people would lament not having Transformers 3 -- but then again, some people would lament anything and everything, including bad things. The key question is: is it better in aggregate?
Now, for other stuff, like software, that might indeed be an issue. I'm assuming here that "pro" software is a good thing (more features, higher quality), where "pro art" is a bad thing (more commercialized crap).
That's how art happens even now.
For example, the direction Patreon and Kickstarter are taking the indie media scene is very encouraging, but these little fish would be even more screwed if copyright completely evaporated.
In a world where they hadn't been created, I would be strictly worse off. Even if I could enjoy low-budget "artsy" movies.
Probably in Hungarian without subtitles, for maximum authenticity.
It's possible to be passionate about your craft and spend money on it and want to make money at it. I would be willing to bet that most of the people who worked on Transformers 3 were actually quite passionate. Then again, so are Uwe Boll and Stephanie Meyer. Mainstream familiarity breeds contempt in hispters and elitists but it's not necessarily the case that there is an inverse relationship between the scale of distribution and artistic quality. You can find good, high budget commercial fare as well as plenty of garbage on the indie side of any creative industry.
Making an exemption for software development doesn't really make sense either. Surely, if artists need to starve for the sake of their work then programmers do as well?
That doesn't seem quite right to me.
Does the content creator (since there would be no 'owner' without copyright) have any say over the use or distribution? I think of all those rock stars that have had politicians misappropriate their songs and then asked them to stop using them over the years. I wonder what that felt like, you wrote this hit song that was powerful and evoked emotion and then someone you are ideologically opposed to tried to use it for their purpose.
You've got the "rights" the wrong way around - it's not that people have the right to see the boudoir photos, it's that people have the right to copy photos they own, and the husband/wife are not allowed to infringe on that right.
Basically, it's not "thou shalt not kill", rather than "right to life", although people implicitly do have the right to copy.
The exception being, obviously, copyright - which is a temporary state-sanctioned monopoly on the right to copy your works (in other words, you're temporarily the sole holder of the copy right), for the sake of producing more artistic works for the general public.
In my whole life pirate content was present, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I live in a third world country, with poor access to outside culture, and the culture present here is not that interesting to me (example: the most popular music genres, bands and groups all talk about extremely pornographic sex, and has heavy percussion emphasis, with little or no melody, the biggest national party is focused on that same music genres and debauchery).
When I was a kid, the ONLY way to get computer stuff, was pirate it, sometimes some shareware software was for sale for about 10 USD (yep, I paid 10 USD on a SHAREWARE copy of Wolf 3D, having only the first episode), even to get pirated stuff sometimes was extremely hard (to get a copy of Doom 1 and 2, my dad made some engineering services do Kia motors, and agreed to give them a discount if their CEO, that was a known Doom player, gave us a copy, the guy gave my dad a box with about 20 floppies or something).
So, just because I was born here, I have no right to have foreign culture? Because I was born here, I am supposed to settle for a culture about percussion music, debauched promiscuous sex and soccer?
I have no right to coding books? Research papers? European music of all genres (from french eletronica to austrian classical)? I can't see excellent TV series from UK (like Sherlock) and instead must settle for local TV programs with melodramatic plots that praise villains that are adulterous swindlers and con artists?
I seriously don't understand people that think that culture, knowledge and information is not a right, that think that poor people, or people from distant places must resign themselves to remain ignorant.
Did the cable company lie to you and say that their contract covered indefinite access to their content after termination of their service? Because if they did, you probably have some serious grounds for a lawsuit. If not, how would you feel if your employer decided he paid you for years, so he is justified in just stopping.
Ah, but I forgot! You're dealing with a corporation, which means that you can m̶o̶r̶a̶l̶i̶z̶e̶ justify doing anything when they are involved. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Secondly, I don't care about your moral code or your justifications, I care about mine - but I guarantee you that you personally don't live by the letter of the law or every contract you've ever signed. So, why should anyone listen to you? There are no absolutes and your laws and contracts are basically for people who wish follow them, but they're not for me because I don't live in a fantasy world where everything is perfect and everybody follows the rules.
Then you should've just said this from the start instead of trying to justify it by past spending.
And it's continued spending, not past spending...and my justification also reflects on the actions of my adversaries.
Sorry, what? We absolutely do, if we're willing to pay. The point of copyright is to provide a monetary incentive for authors/makers of works to go make their works, via a temporary state-sanctioned monopoly. If they then take their state-sanctioned monopoly and refuse to sell to certain locations...
Well, that's not what the state granted their monopoly for. They have no right to do that.
Again: The purpose of copyright is generating more artistic works, and if they aren't interested in extracting profits via selling their works in a specific country, then what's the point of restricting the right to copy the work in that country in the first place?
It violates the point of copyright, not to mention anti-trust laws.
Then again, if this lands you in jail, or without internet access for downloading pirated material ("tree strikes laws" etc) then you'd do care.
So, not caring might be a short-term option, but it's not a long term political stance.
Not just because of the off-chance of being hit with a lawsuit as mentioned, but mainly because this leads to even more powerful DRM (it's not impossible: there are programs that are considered virtually "uncrackable" and indeed haven't been cracked for 5-6 years, despite popular demand, usually constly pro applications using some dongle or internet based security scheme), more restrictions for legitimate users (who, for example, won't jailbreak their devices), etc.
Access and transferability are only two rights specified.
Anonymity, open formats, and freedom from arbitrary withdrawal of the book (Amazon famously exercised this capability on 1984 of all titles) are other factors.
And don't underestimate power of law. The computer software industry has long used rampant piracy of their products, often tacitly encouraged, as a lever to squeeze users for as much revenue as possible, under colour of law. That's only one of several such applications of this particular lever.
RMS has been, and continues to be, highly prescient on virtually all areas of free access to information, software or otherwise.
And yes, he does offer specific technical alternatives.
Amazon's been large enough to exert its will on publishers before.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/05/amazon-m...
But I think it's important that we maintain the community to circumvents copyright. Copyright, the way it is implemented today, is anti-cultural. If we have any hope of harvesting our incredible digital archiving ability, we must maintain ways to keep content free of DRM. But it's up to us - no one will do it for us.
Manufactured scarcity is not something I approve of. So to answer the questions that follow: No and no.
I don't approve of manufactured scarcity of "more important things" like food/water/electricity - why would I approve of it for entertainment and other trivial things? It being "non-essential" doesn't give them moral justification, in my opinion.
Just because they can doesn't mean they should.
Furthermore, I don't allow myself to restricted to DRM'd books. In the event I was unable to acquire a book in a non-DRM'd format, I'd purchase the book (using a prepaid credit card, as i do with all my internet transactions) and strip the DRM. If it was unavailable in that manner, then I would purchase a physical copy of the book. But that is not a deterrent for me. I own a few ebooks that don't exist in physical form (at least not for mass market to my knowledge) and I own a few physical books that do not exist in digital format (once again, to my knowledge). Neither will kill the other, they can both co-exist happily, and in my case, they do. I carry my kindle keyboard everywhere and often time have at least 2-3 paperback books on me as well. As a matter of fact, I am currently reading a book on my kindle, another in paperback form and a third is being read to me on Audible. Not all at the same time mind you, but concurrently.
The major stores sell DRM-free music now, but do you think that Apple would have been able to get music publishers on board if the iTMS had no copy protection on day one?
I find it strange to see the word "abuse" used when talking about sharing. Sharing is caring, after all, not abusing.
Technologically, DRM is a solved problem, and has been for years-- just check out the Pirate Bay.
Notice how I've mentioned the word "pirate" so many times? This is the result of finding a practical solution to the problems that Amazon has created. This costs them money, directly, as I could just as easily be buying books from them rather than using them to scout books then finding the pirated version.
Of course, this could also be done with the physical devices and an appropriate machine to press the buttons. The "Analog Hole" is quite present in books, which can be reproduced with no loss of quality.
I actually wonder if the Kindle DRM is more a way of appeasing publishers than something that was actually intended to be effective.
It's similar to e.g. steam or appstore DRM: relatively easy to trivial to bypass (or you can access the content with bypassed/removed DRM easily enough) but the system is convenient enough that most won't care to do so unless and until it's being repeatedly and widely (ab)used by the keys authority.
It won't hinder the motivated and technologically inclined but they're a small minority, meanwhile the scheme spreads, and if/once devices or accounts get killed it's too late.
Love the guy, disagree with many his methods, but love the results he seeks to achieve. But like licensing, he seems willfully ignorant of outliers and is increasingly guilty of oversimplification. And more so as he ages.
He's also obsessing on Amazon, and not entirely for reasons that immediately make sense. Prior discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355978
(Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been either, doh!)
So… how did the FSF point their fingers at the wrong culprit when they state black on white that the problem is DRMs but that ebooks are not intrinsically problematic?
Imho, if they had been clearer from the get-go that the problem is DRM, not ebooks in-general, it would be much more powerful.
Which is not wrong either given ebooks are generally from a DRM-using company (namely Amazon which has the vast majority of ebooks market share)
I ended up screenshotting the page, cropping it, and pasting the image onto chat. It might have been easier to type the whole thing out (though I'm not great at typing on mobile).
This annoyance alone has spurred me to look again at keeping my own catalog of DRM-free files in Calibre and using a reader that doesn't do this sort of thing.
Any advice on 'flow' to make this sort of approach easy is welcome (apart from the DRM bit, that's off-topic).
These are all Android, but there's probably some equivalent on iOS. You will want to convert all your ebooks to a format that your reader supports, such as epub. There are extensions for Calibre that will strip DRM if you're into that.
I think Tor is releasing everything DRM free right now, but I'd like to see any stuff from other publishers that is also DRM free.
It's also not true that Amazon pushes DRM. They include it as a gesture to the publishers. You can put a DRM-free ebook on Amazon if you choose so.
Absolutely, and many do so. You can spot the ones that don't have DRM by looking for "Simultaneous device usage: unlimited" in the description.
Most indie books and some major publishers (O'Reilly and Baen have been mentioned here) don't use DRM, even on Kindle.
Blaming Amazon for DRM is pointing the finger at the wrong party, IMO.
Keep in mind, you as a reader are not the customer of publishers. Distribution companies are. They are who can meaningfully exercise the pressure to affect the market, not you.
Did you read what I wrote above? Go to Amazon. Select Kindle Store. Enter "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" in the search box.
I can't imagine possibly wanting to search for books based on that (I search for books by author or subject, myself), but it's incorrect to say you can't easily do it if that's your thing.
"Keep in mind, you as a reader are not the customer of publishers. "
No, as a reader, I am absolutely the customer of indie authors and publishers, who are the same ones that don't, as a rule, use DRM.
Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility!
http://lexbrage.tumblr.com/post/13212628647/amazon-bragelonn... explains (in french) why Bragelonne (french publisher against DRMs) surrendered to having DRM on amazon.
Sorry, that is not correct.
I've got several indie books on Amazon, none with DRM, and Amazon has never "threatened" me with anything. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. All of them have text to speech enabled.
Here's a link to an O'Reilly book (not one of mine). Check for yourself that "simultaneous device usage" is "unlimited" (i.e., no DRM) and that "text-to-speech" is "enabled".
http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick-ebook...
1. There is no reason Amazon/publishers can't distribute DRM free books which I can backup and share (within reason, not putting for torrent).
2. It is amazing how badly Kindle supports other languages. I was trying to read a book written in Hindi on it and it was meh. Page turning is slow, font rendering is awful. Are we ready for a world where literature means English literature?
When selling a physical book there is a real barrier to propagation of the entire work in the form of a prohibitive cost or effort for the average person to produce unauthorized copies.
In an era where even little kids know how to do a copy and paste this is definitely not the case with e-books. An author who releases his/her e-book without DRM would be, for all practical purposes giving it away to the vast majority of the reading audience.
Maybe the future of both books and music are that recorded and written works will be freely given as promotion for other more lucrative efforts (like concerts, seminars, and so forth) but as long as the publishing industry and authors rely on the sales of books/e-books for the majority of their income, DRM is here to stay.
DRM is user hostile and not required to make money.
() purchased does not include Spotify, Apple Music, etc. of course, because those are specifically renting the music.
If you prevent 70% of copying, that's a huge win.
I'm not sure drm is actually worth it, music has shown its not needed in that industry. But that industry had piracy catch on in a way that no other had. My mom can't pirate anything except for mp3s. The napster legacy.
The vast, vast majority of e-books in the world do not come with DRM nor are related in any way to Amazon. (They also infringe on copyright, but that's another issue.)
It's even further horrible when you consider a future when books will only be available in one format, that too by XYZ Megacorp ONLY. I don't want the world I inhabit waltzing into that future. Thank GNU that GNU exists.
Please stop conflating ebooks with the crappy format of one vendor.
First, that a central authority could reach out and change all copies of an extant work. Not delete it, but selectively change it. The Information Ministry never had it so good!
Second, and this is true especially for kids, I think e-books are psychologically problematic. A physical book has fewer degrees-of-freedom, and that's good because the content has nearly infinite-degrees-of-freedom. The way the device works is no mystery to kids, and once you've read it you put it on the shelf (or give it away). With e-books, you always have your whole library right there, and focus becomes an act of will instead of the default.
Third, and this is true especially for thoughtful books, you can't read an e-book with a pen. I shudder to think about reading Marcus Aurelius _Meditations_ without pen in hand!
As an added bonus, books trap carbon! So the more books we have, the better off our environment!
And they wouldn't have to be 100% successful, they'd only need to affect enough copies to sow doubt into people minds about which is the authentic copy.
My point applies to all digital media, for the simple reason that computers are remarkable in their ability to modify the state of very small things.