

End Piracy, Not Liberty – Google - necenzurat
http://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

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humbledrone
Aren't so-called infographics supposed to make information easier to
understand? This, hell, I'm not going to call it an infographic, this,
"graphic," does the exact opposite. I downloaded the PDF and attempted to see
what it's trying to convey, and I gave up after zooming way in and still not
being able to read the text after waiting for what seemed like an eternity for
it to re-render.

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p0ss
No, how about we not end either?

Can anyone demonstrate to me that Piracy is actually such a huge problem?
These media corporations are making record profits, piracy is not killing
them, they are just being greedy.

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the-cakeboss
How is wanting to protect your IP ( whether or not you agree with the very
notion of IP ) being greedy?

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gojomo
At the founding of the US, copyright was for 14 years, with optional extension
to 28. Lobbying since then has extended it, in many cases, to over 100 years,
and via repeated extension, potentially to a de facto infinite term. That was
kind of greedy.

Every copyright holder has a mini-monopoly in the production (aka
reproduction) of their own content. It is a well-established result in
economics that a monopolist provides a price/quantity combination which
maximizes their own profits, but not the total welfare of both the producer
and consumer. (With competitive providers, under usual and fairly reasonable
assumptions, the price/quantity of a good traded trends towards a level
maximizing overall welfare.) So the very idea of "intellectual property" as
little monopolies-on-reproduction is in service of rightsholder greed,
maximizing their profits at the expense of others, often beyond necessary
creative costs or incentives.

Granting such monopolies may have been a necessary compromise when copying and
distribution was costly. A better system that maximizes returns for a larger
group should be possible today.

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dexy
Unfortunately, I've yet to hear a convincing alternative incentive scheme to
that of copyrights and patents. The necessity of copyright and patent law
varies widely from industry to industry, and the limited expertise (and
interest) of legislators keeps them from taking any bold steps adjust the law
to better fit the intricate needs of the people (ie, short/no patents in
industries that move quickly and communally, like software, and longer patents
for industries like pharmaceutical development, that are immensely costly and
provide limited network effects to the first mover (a drug's prices decline by
90% in the US when it goes off patent).

People view copyright as less essential than patents, but the truth of the
matter is that without copyright laws, there would be a significant decline in
the production of movies, music, games, and many other costly mediums. Without
copyright, I could legally create a competitor to netflix that paid studios
nothing and played every movie ever made on any device for close to nothing. I
could create a competitor to steam that distributed games and was every bit as
useful and integrated, and I'd pay nothing to developers. Even if you think
online piracy isn't as big of a problem as studios claim it is (and you'd be
very right), the laws that keep it illegal are all that stand between today
and a collapse of the content development ecosystem.

Even if copyright doesn't maximize for society's benefit because of the
monopoly it creates, every copyrighted work sold is a net plus to both the
consumer and the producer. Without any copyright framework, there's a
significant chance that the producer could never afford to make that
beneficial product in the first place. Even if you only eliminate prosecution
of people/entities that don't make any money from what they're doing and allow
non-profits like wikipedia to host full movies, you still irreparably break
the incentive system that exists today. Maybe we don't need new movies and
games, but people want them and as long as that's the case they'll want to
keep protecting them with copyright.

Maybe someday, systems more like kickstarter could replace copyright, but I
highly doubt it. They don't do nearly as good of a job.

That said, I'm all for much shorter terms for copyrights and the elimination
of software patents.

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literalusername
_…without copyright laws, there would be a significant decline in the
production of movies, music, games, and many other costly mediums._

I disagree. What were talking about here is art, and mankind has been
producing art since long before government-guarded IP. It isn't because IP
laws provide an incentive that we create things; we do it because it's human
nature. The ability to freely copy other people's work lowers the barrier to
entry, so eliminating IP laws would spur a creative renaissance. The only
downside is those big media companies would be forced to innovate.

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dexy
Would people still create cave paintings without copyright? Absolutely. Songs?
Yes. Books? Fewer, but probably yes. Multi-million dollar movies and games?
Absolutely not.

Art would still exist, but it would exist much differently than it does today.
Free copying does allow for more creative freedom in many respects, though I
would argue many of those benefits can already be had through current fair-use
practices, which are quite extensive.

I've often heard the argument thrown around that "the world could live without
another Transformers 2." I don't know if you fall into that camp, but many
people really enjoyed that movie. In aggregate they were willing to pay more
to see it than ~99.999% of individuals globally produce in a lifetime. If big-
budget movies, pop stars, and games cease to exist, other things will surely
take their place, but they won't be the same and most media will start to look
a lot more like youtube and less like hollywood. Most people probably don't
want that.

People need incentives to do things. Incentives are probably the second most
powerful force in the universe, after compounding interest :), and a lack of
them is why communism fails. People are not benevolent. They do derive utility
from things other than money, but money is able to coordinate the interests of
many individuals from disparate backgrounds under a common goal. Other things
can too, and the Linux OS I'm running right now is a testament to that, but
Linux can exist in a world with copyright while Transformers 2 most likely
cannot. At least not until everybody in the world is a lot richer and making
Transformers 2 is a lot easier.

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Anderkent
In a trade between freedom of information and Transformers 3 I will choose the
freedom.

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dexy
Freedom of information is only useful to those who can use it. Most people do
not gain much from free information, as they can't make money with it and
they're not interested in learning from it. They gain more from the
entertainment Transformers provides. In the world we on Hacker News live in,
freedom of information is much much more valuable than it is to the vast
majority of mankind. Because of its value to us, things like open source and
wikipedia exist, where people share things freely because everyone benefits so
much from that ecosystem. I'm commenting here right now because I benefit from
this ecosystem and want to do my part to keep it going. The beauty is, as I
said before, that this can all exist in spite of copyright. Louis C.K. can
make a ton of money without needing to use DRM or enforce his copyrights.
People can choose not to use the system, and do so to great success. But some
things require the system to exist, and those things don't need to be
sacrificed. Vote with your dollars not by pirating but by supporting content
that is open source, or that doesn't use DRM. Pirating more convinces the
powers that be that it's a growing problem, supporting content made by people
who aren't draconian hoarders of information will encourage more to be open
with their content.

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joelgrus
That's a nice sound bite, but "piracy" means "copying things". I've yet to see
a plan that both prevents people from copying things and preserves liberty.

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runamok
Seems like there _might_ be a way to do so that preserves due process, has the
burden of proof on the accuser and has penalties for abuses.

As far as I can tell DMCA takedown notices work fairly well in most cases.

The main issue is that the US doesn't have international juridiction and they
don't like that very much. The US puts a lot of pressure on foreign
governments to enforce our laws (I believe wikileaks recently leaked how the
US influenced a SOPA-like law in Spain.)

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orborde
Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477968>

