Item — HN Reader

> You disagree with the notion, that people that produce content should be paid for it?

Nobody disagrees with that.

The fact is copyright exists to create artificial scarcity. "Content", once produced, is not scarce in any way; that's why the scarcity is artificial. These laws exist to force everybody to pretend that isn't how things work. It's fundamentally dishonest. It is trivial to copy and distribute "content". People have been doing it since computers were a thing and ironically they do it better than the copyright owners themselves.

It's up to the industry to find some other way to pay people. I don't really care how they're going to do it, and frankly it's nobody else's problem but their own. Instead of concentrating on a new business model, they keep embarrassing themselves with endless anti-piracy measures that do nothing but make the DRM-free copy look better than the original.

3 comments

"> You disagree with the notion, that people that produce content should be paid for it?

Nobody disagrees with that."

From your post above and your clarification below, it seems like you believe:

1. People that produce content should be paid for it.

2. The burden is on content producers to find a way to get paid and, if they don't find one, then so be it.

Those are both reasonable positions, but I don't understand how you can hold both at the same time, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by 'should' in the first statement. Do you mean:

A) 'Should', as in 'this is the outcome we (society) want, and so we are willing to use the resources at our disposal (e.g. the legal system) to make it so, if it doesn't happen on its own', OR

B) "I hope they'll get paid", OR

C) 'I expect they'll get paid', OR

D) Something else?

I mostly agree with A. I don't agree with the "if it doesn't happen on its own" part. If they can't make it work on their own, is it really meant to be? Should we keep making laws to support business models that worked before but don't work anymore?

When physical records were created, an industry naturally formed around them. The objective was to record good content, make copies and sell them. These copies were actually scarce. They had to be manufactured. Copying content wasn't trivial; you'd actually need to run a counterfeiting enterprise in order to do it. In that context, I'd even say copyright law sounded reasonable. It allowed the law to target and punish those counterfeiters.

Computers changed that. Now nearly everyone can suddenly become a criminal for downloading some music from sites as big as YouTube. What if 82% of a country's population engages in copyright infringement? I think it's a sign that these laws are out of touch with reality.

Instead of forcing everyone to pretend copies are still scarce, let the industry die instead. Let them go bankrupt. They should be forced to adapt by figuring out how to make money despite all the copying. If that means they'll make less money than before, then so be it.

I say A). It's the same why we have labor law, property law, ... It's vital for the society to have creative people to produce entertainment for masses (or for a few). It makes a whole.

That's a bit harsh, don't you think? Just because something is easy to copy doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Creators should be paid for their work no matter how simple is to copy. If they are the first one who created it and someone else benefits, then they deserve to be compensated.

My best solution would be something along these lines https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913535

> That's a bit harsh, don't you think?

No.

Given the chance, these people would turn all the computers we use and love into locked-down content consumption machines. I think it is safe to assume this agenda is against the interests of everyone on hacker news. In fact, if copyright holders got their way, it would be impossible to be a hacker.

The only way to stop copyright infringement is to destroy computing as we know it. That is their end game. They want to take control of the user's computer and actively prevent them from doing things they don't like. This battle for copyright is similar to the battle against encryption: corporations and governments don't want you to have any control because it allows you to subvert them.

> Just because something is easy to copy doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

I didn't say it had no value. I said it wasn't scarce.

> Creators should be paid for their work no matter how simple is to copy. > If they are the first one who created it and someone else benefits, then they deserve to be compensated.

Then, for all our sakes, I hope they can figure out how to get paid regardless of how many copies are out there.

It’s not harsh. Although I disagree with his solution- we need copy right, but copy-rights have been terrible for us.

However - Have people (on HN) forgotten how the content companies enforce copy right ? The RiAa/MPAA?

Copy rights were to help creators earn return on their creation. Today copy rights extend far beyond the natural life of the creator and are constantly being extended to favor corporations/owners, at the expense of the commons.

The lotr will never enter the public domain. And Disney is one of the greatest problems in this field. (And now they own Fox!)

Packet sniffing was created for the *AAs. Massive invasions of privacy and the initial subversion of the internet traces to their doorstep.

Copy right was one of the first fights of the collective group of people who landed up on /. And HN

>Copy rights were to help creators earn return on their creation. Today copy rights extend far beyond the natural life of the creator and are constantly being extended to favor corporations/owners, at the expense of the commons.

Just playing devils advocate: if most copyright nowadays belong to corporations, and corporations are immortal entities, perhaps eternal copyright makes sense? Not saying that's a good thing.

> Packet sniffing was created for the AAs

I'm pretty sure tcpdump predates Napster and any involvement of the AAs in the workings of the Internet...

Nope - as I recall that was the ISPs defense “we don’t know what people are sharing since we can’t look into packets”

The first version of tcpdump dates from '88[0]. And I'm not sure it was even the first sniffer out there, quite likely not.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpdump

Pay doesn’t come from value. In fact markets work very hard to destroy any surplus value above costs. It’s kind of their main feature, find a cheaper way to provide the same value and _lower the price_.

Economics only focuses on balancing limited resources between competing interests and has generally nothing useful to say wrt actual value.

What is wrong with artificial rights? Aren’t a lot of rights already artificial? You can also argue that property rights are artificial: if someone points a tank at you then you will have to give up all your property, so property right pretends like that isn’t reality and is dishonest. But I’d say it is a good thing that people aren’t allowed to point a tank at me.

I don't believe in those rights either. They're just as artificial as copyright to me. Criminals and even the government itself violate property rights on a daily basis.

The low level concept that enables society's rules is violence and the threat of it.