
Piracy is not a problem; SOPA is not a solution - macco
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/piracy_not_problem_sopa_not_solution
======
earbitscom
I still don't understand this mindset.

If one author wants to make the "new market" work for them by giving things
away or taking donations, they can do that. If that's the market you like to
shop in, then donate or take freely.

But if another author wants you to pay a specific price for their work when
you want a copy, and you don't like the price, then you let them know that by
not getting a copy. If your reason for not paying is because you don't like
their publisher, then you let them know by not getting a copy. Lo and behold,
the market will work itself out.

Where does the mindset come from that you're still entitled to those things
you're not willing to pay for? Or that your right to have them is more
important than the rights of the people who made them? This is to say nothing
about overreaching solutions - this guy is saying who cares about the
_particular_ solution, any one of them will require me to pay for things I
want!

~~~
bambax
Ideas and the work of the mind are in the public domain; they belong to the
public. If you come up with an original idea, even if this original idea cost
you a year's work, this original idea that you and you alone built, belongs to
everyone.

Now, in order to encourage people to work on original ideas, it was decided to
give to authors a right to their own work, for a limited time.

This "right" is taken from the public domain (ie, the public). The
justification is that by helping struggling authors, it lets them coming up
with more original ideas, and therefore benefits the public.

The deal is this: the public gives a piece of their own property to authors,
in exchange for more work from those same authors.

This system has grown out of proportion with its original intents. (The minute
dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system should have been
considered broken).

So, although it's currently illegal, and I don't approve of "piracy", it's not
illegitimate to consider that if someone says something, I have a right to
know what they're saying (especially if that doesn't cost them anything to let
me hear it).

You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone
doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should
refrain from writing anything.

~~~
earbitscom
> _The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system
> should have been considered broken_

The system was created to encourage people to invest in the creation of new
ideas and products. It's not always just an investment of time, which means
you have to make it property that can be owned, traded and sold, with a known
term. In your system where copyright dies with the author, the interests of
others who might invest in a project or stand to gain from it (like a
creator's children) are not looked after. By this mindset, everything Steve
Jobs helped to create would now be free for "the public" to do with as they
wish, and I imagine a lot of people would have stopped funding Steve's ideas
when they found out he was sick.

> _You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone
> doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should
> refrain from writing anything._

I could, but it makes no sense to me to tell people who want to be compensated
for making something valuable to stop doing it so that we can make whatever
remaining works there are public domain.

~~~
bambax
> _it makes no sense to me to tell people who want to be compensated for
> making something valuable to stop doing it so that we can make whatever
> remaining works there are public domain_

It would be an interesting experiment, but I don't think people would stop
putting out original ideas if they were to stop being compensated for it.
People produce original ideas and original works of art because that's what
they do, not because they hope to become very rich doing so. (And it could be
argued that the best works of mankind have been produced before copyright was
invented.)

The point of copyright was to prevent authors from starving; I think we're
well past that point.

(There's a secondary argument in favor of copyright that's often aired by
movie studios and the like, that it costs a lot of money to produce works of
art, and that if there were no copyright then there would be no economic
rationale to create new things.

I think that argument is flawed in principle ("so what? do we need expensive
works of art so badly that we're prepared to alienate our freedom for having
them?"), but more interestingly, it's also becoming false in practice: it used
to cost a lot of money to produce a music album, or even simply to print a
book; it will eventually be cheap to produce a movie.)

My general point is that copyright was an interesting idea that has gone much
too far; we're not getting our money's worth and we should push back (i.e.,
make it much shorter).

~~~
davidw
> My general point is that copyright was an interesting idea that has gone
> much too far; we're not getting our money's worth and we should push back
> (i.e., make it much shorter).

That's a fair point, and one that I agree with, but it _is_ a compromise: if
there were _no_ legal protection for "intellectual property", the only people
who could afford to produce it would be independently wealthy "amateurs". I'm
not sure that that is an optimal state of affairs either.

------
Erwin
Let's pretend that some terrible remote exploit appears tomorrow, that allows
anyone to get out the complete source of every SaaS server side app, which is
the most prevalent setup here at HN startups. No harm is done to the server,
no private user data escapes. No significant extra resources are used on
copying the data.

What was previously impervious to copyright infringement, can now be easily
copied. Illegal of course, but so is copyright infringement according to
current laws.

You were just planning on selling the company for $5 million. But now, an
exact copy is available on a site outside of your legal reach. They are able
to do everything you do.

Will your potential buyer still offer you $5 million? Would you say that your
pirate wasn't going to buy your company anyway and couldn't afford it, so he
does you no harm? Your product was proprietary and hoarding data of users, he
claims to be open and free. He claims that you are your code and ideas should
belong to everyone, and you already got enough money from your first $2
million investment; asking for more would be greedy.

To me it seems that the only difference is that cracking a SaaS app is
generally not technically possible, while removing the DRM on an installed app
and then redistributing it is easy.

~~~
loup-vaillant
You've just demonstrated that our society is insane (at least in this case).

If we were not crazy, what harm could such a copy possibly do ? None. You
effectively (though unwillingly) donated your knowledge to the world. You
deserve even more than if you kept your code secret.

But.

By "donating", you lost leverage. You can no longer threaten people with not
giving them what they want if they don't pay you.

This is by the way the problem with basically everything: making something
abundant will add actual value, while at the same time _destroying_ market
value. It is most visible with Free Software, (vs Proprietary Software), but
applies to anything. Say for instance that we could copy food the way we copy
software.

Conclusion: our society in general (and the market in particular), is very
poor at valuing things in the face of abundance. Somehow it needs scarcity.
Paraphrasing _In Time_ , "For a few to be wealthy, many must starve". I don't
have a solution, but this is nuts.

~~~
earbitscom
Nuts is saying that an artist trying to extract value from things they create
is "threatening people". God forbid you be "threatened" with not having a copy
of the latest Coldplay album. The fact that you liken it to starving, indeed,
indicates our society may have slipped into the grips of insanity.

------
TomOfTTB
Well first his metaphor doesn't really hold weight. Selling a Used Book is a
one-to-one transaction in which the receiver is getting a less than perfect
copy. Putting an e-book on a p2p network is a one-to-many transaction that
transmits a perfect copy each time.

But that doesn't necessarily invalidate his overall point.

As far as his larger point is concerned I don't think I can say he's right or
wrong. What I can say is he's not really looking at the deeper issues.

The real issue behind piracy is societal values. Those who advocate this
opinion are basically saying people only have the right to profit from their
creations to recover their costs. Beyond that the content belongs to society.
That's the only justification for piracy (since you're arguing the cost of
distribution is so low the user doesn't need to be compensated for it)

You can dress that up with arguments about fans loving artists and giving them
additional revenue streams but since those additional revenue streams are
separate transactions that may or may not occur you can't use them as
justification for not paying an artist initially for his/her creation.

Beyond that there's the issue of choice. Even if all the pro-piracy arguments
are true there will be some artists who simply don't want their work pirated.
Even if it's irrational (look at artists like AC/DC who still refuse to sell
their music digitally). By imposing piracy on those artists you're again
saying their art belongs to society once created.

So that brings us back to the question of societal values. Do we as a society
believe content should belong to the entire society upon creation or does it
belong to the creator who can choose to distribute it in the way they see fit
(even if that means handing it over to a record company or some other
corporate entity)?

~~~
narag
_The real issue behind piracy is societal values._

I disagree. Every time the discussion is going that way, I feel we're
hopelessly lost.

There is very little Ethics debate on the industry behaviour: suing their
customers, exploiting authors, and lobbying for draconian laws instead of
using new business models. Hey, they are companies, they're just looking for
their shareholders' interest! That's legitimate! It seems Ethics only apply to
consumers.

Call to ethics is the last refuge of inapplicable laws.

------
darrikmazey
In so much of this discussion, people seem to get distracted arguing whether
pirating media is morally reprehensible or not. This is irrelevant to whether
SOPA is a good solution to the alleged problem. I perceive two separate
debates: whether piracy is a "problem" and whether SOPA solves that "problem."

SOPA is simply an industry of middlemen asking a heavier hand to come down and
reinforce a business model the market has allowed to decline. Whether that is
because customers demand better options and are not being satisfied or not is
largely immaterial. The so-called act of piracy is already illegal, and what
is being asked for is not legal recourse for this (that already exists) but a
course of action immune from repudiation and challenge. It is a unilateral
action without oversight or representation, and for this reason it is contrary
to the foundation of the Constitution. Typically, the more egregious offenses
carry the stiffest penalties, but all allow for some sort of defense and
reasonable trial. If society has deemed that this is a more serious offense
than previously evaluated, legislation increasing the penalty can be enacted,
but legislation removing one's ability to defend oneself prior to punishment
being enacted is unthinkable.

Private entities are being legislatively appointed to enforce public law, and
this is unacceptable. It is a conflict of interest, as the public has no means
to remove from "office" those serving the public in this manner. In all other
aspects of public law, one has a vote somewhere in the chain to reconcile
abuse of power. We can not vote on a private company whose enforcement of the
law becomes corrupt, save economically, and economically our vote is severely
disadvantaged.

------
wnoise
I say this as a copyright minimalist: the comparison to used bookstores is a
bit disingenuous, for two reasons.

The fact that used bookstores exist, and that you can sell old books means
that a new book is worth not just the value derived from reading it, but also
the price you can get from selling it when you are done. In theory this
reflected in a slightly higher initial price of purchase. (Not all readers
will sell, of course, but some will, and the ability to do so should matter on
the margin.)

The used book is also a substitute for a new book. Buying a used book
increases the price, driving people who would buy the used version to buy the
new one instead and at equilibrium raises the prices for the new version as
well. In theory, of course.

~~~
AlisdairO
Not just that, but only one person can have the book at any one time - unlike
our current piracy system where one copy can spawn effectively infinite sub-
copies. This means that when a given number of people want to read a book (and
particularly if they want to read it in some relatively short period after the
book's release), you need to have a substantial number of new book sales to
support all those people. This isn't a requirement with modern-day piracy.

------
ecaradec
The copyright issue is at an edge of what allows the the market to work.

Until the internet, maximizing profit and maximizing value was more or less
the same thing. That's not true anymore : when I copy something I'm actually
creating value while destroying profit. The only way to do maintain profit is
to create scarcity and define prices artificially as the most people would pay
for it.

The ability to create copy of things at no cost is a kind of a miracle when
you look at it. The issue is that the market doesn't seem to work well with
limitless resources. Totally fixing piracy would require a market that can
work for unlimited resources, but we have nothing of that kind yet ; it could
be something like wuffies (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom ). Read it if you
want to experiment what a society with limitless resources could look like.

Not saying that this is the solution still.

~~~
cechner
This so succinctly describes the problem that I created an account just to
upvote you.

These laws are essentially fabricating scarcity - the medium has /solved/ the
distribution problem, so of course anyone with an interest in monopolising
distribution would try to stymie it.

This reminds me tangentially of software developers - especially iOS devs (of
which I am one) - who get upset when their apps are cloned. It only seems
unfair to those devs because they refuse to evolve with the available
technology. You just don't make profits in the same way anymore. You want to
take advantage of simple free distribution, but of course you don't want it to
be TOO free!

I will now go out and buy that book...

------
_rknLA
You're also missing the part where someone had to purchase the book new in
order for it to arrive at the used book store.

Now, I understand that even a used book can be sold back to a used book store,
so the cycle might happen a few times, but in most cases, someone had to
purchase that book new before selling it to the bookstore.

TomOfTTB's point about societal values is a good one if people who pirate
content are actually trying to morally justify their actions, but I'm not
really convinced that they are.

I do think, though, that if the industries backing SOPA put as many resources
as they have towards suing customers and lobbying congress towards making new
products and innovating the technology in their respective spaces that there
actually _wouldn't_ be a problem.

But then, I still firmly believe that the reason people pirate content is
because it's easier and more convenient than the "store" options. (DRM,
transferability, etc)

------
bitwize
IT DOESN'T MATTER.

It doesn't matter how shitty the major labels treat musicians, or whether they
get paid or not. To a musician, signing with a major label means you've "made
it". If your shit gets leaked out there onto the internet, major labels will
lose interest in you. They won't put up the money to promote you and won't
sign you if you are perceived as a risk. There goes your career. There goes
your opportunity to make a living off your music.

Every small-time musician I've talked to has expressed favor for stronger
copyright controls, both in the form of legislation and technical measures
like DRM. I bet the band you see playing gigs in your local dive bar are all
SOPA supporters. If it means the difference between where they are now and
playing the Hollywood Bowl, they'll support it.

~~~
cechner
> If your shit gets leaked out there onto the internet, major labels will lose
> interest in you

I really don't think that becoming popular on the Internet would make you less
appealing to a label. (I hope I'm not mangling your intended meaning too
much.)

> Every small-time musician I've talked to has expressed favor for stronger
> copyright controls

I know many 'small time musicians' and not one of them is in favour of
stronger copyright controls. In fact they spend a lot of their time trying to
get their names out by any means possible. This is one of the main things
MySpace is still used for, I believe - the free distribution of indy music.

Music LABELS on the other hand, love controlling distribution because that's
pretty much the main thing they do. They also love to make people think that
the musicians beholden to them think this way as well.

edit to add disclaimer: I don't know anyone who is signed to a label.

------
yason
Producing and distributing content ought to be decoupled. Distributors don't
create content and content creators don't know how to work distribution.

Ideally, I pay the author for the book, album, movie or software and he'll
then let me get my copy wherever I deem it's best available in the format I
need it.

