Comment by BearGoesChirp
7 years ago
Say I buy the music for $.99, and then put it on my own service where I sell copies for $.09. And say people use my service because I've made it very simple or that I'm using a business model that people prefer to either freely downloading it or paying full price. Should this be allowed?
I do not consider piracy theft, but I do consider there to be economic issues that must be handled. If the creators aren't compensated, there are limits that wind up occurring. For music, because of factors such as the ability to be compensated through concerts and through fame (fame can't directly pay your rent, but I think it still counts as compensation because of the impact of having high fame), it is possible for people to still make money. But in other medias this may not be possible. Look at movies, if we allowed infinite copying how would we get the budget to create the expensive movies currently created? Imagine if a theater only had to make a copy and could continue to show the movie and make profits without giving any back to the creator.
If you look at indie video games, you see a truce of sorts. Most indie games have little protection, but many people still buy them even though they could copy them. Some do this because they want to support people who aren't developing game with always online DRM or similar techniques. But is this model sustainable? What happens if people begin feeling entitled to such an extent that the producers aren't able to sustain their livelihoods?
And I'm not sure my personal experiences are relevant or not, but I'm someone who use to pirate computer games back when I was a broken college student but who started buying all my games once I had a steady income.
In a world where copying music is essentially free (not 0.99$ as you say), you are free to sell copies for whatever amount. Good luck with that. Perhaps by adding side value it'll work.
Video games are a good example of something that works: the marginal cost, and actual copy-proof value of many games are updates and content. See World of Warcraft. Pay to play.
At least you are paying for something that actually costs money (again: a download is essentially free to the seller).
>Good luck with that. Perhaps by adding side value it'll work.
The issue is why do I get to sell someone else's work? And even if we did allow it, this would quickly lead to content producers not being able to continue to produce.
Imagine for a second if Steam could just take any video games and sell them keeping 100% of the profit. How would that impact production of video games?
>See World of Warcraft. Pay to play.
So create a market where only always online games are ever made? That doesn't seem a step backwards?
In what world is piracy not theft? That is the literal definition of the word.
If piracy and theft were identical, there wouldn't need to be a separate word. Theft deprives the owner of their property. Piracy is creating an unsanctioned copy of their property.
"A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened."
I think he was referring to "piracy" in the sense of pirates on pirate ships. Piracy is literally theft in its original sense.
The question now is if modern day software piracy and similar intellectual property copying is theft. If it isn't then perhaps "piracy" is a bad term for it?
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Comments like this violate the HN guidelines by taking threads on generic ideological tangents. It's easy to do that without meaning to, so would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take care not to in the future?