Comment by matheusmoreira
8 days ago
> Who the fuck pays for a triple A video game if it’s morally right to pirate things?
Yours truly.
I have been a proud Steam customer for over 20 years. I have licensed over 200 games on Steam alone. I own multiple video game consoles from multiple generations and have quite the collection of titles for them.
Not a single person can accuse me of not supporting creators.
> The fact of the matter is your “morality” here cannot sustain the industry.
The fact of the matter is the industry shouldn't be sustained. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create a product whose price trends toward zero due to infinite availability. When that obviously fails, they get upset and invoke copyright in order to distort reality until they're profitable.
The simple fact is creators need a new business model. And that business model is patronage. It's the labor of creation that's scarce and valuable, not the finished product. Therefore creators should be paid continuously for the act of creating itself, not the finished product.
Macaulay’s 1841 address is the most vigorous defense of copyright I've ever read:
https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...
And even he realized that copyright was a monopoly, tolerated only due to the fruits it bears.
He rejected alternatives such as patronage due to fear of suppression. Rich patrons would of course decline to fund works that they didn't like.
That concern no longer exists. We now have technology in the form of platforms like kickstarter and patreon which democratize funding and patronage, greatly reducing or eliminating the risk of suppression. There is no longer any need for copyright.
>Yours truly.
What is this? Did you drop the mic? Think about what you just admitted. It's morally right to pirate. So instead of doing the moral thing, you pay extra money for No fucking reason. Congratulations.
>Not a single person can accuse me of not supporting creators.
But people still can accuse you of being stupid. Not saying that you are stupid, but it's open season in this area. Make sure your arguments are legit.
>The fact of the matter is the industry shouldn't be sustained. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create a product whose price trends toward zero due to infinite availability. When that obviously fails, they get upset and invoke copyright in order to distort reality until they're profitable.
So get rid of the entire movie industry and gaming industry? Makes sense. How many billions of dollars and jobs just went down the drain?
>The simple fact is creators need a new business model. And that business model is patronage. It's the labor of creation that's scarce and valuable, not the finished product. Therefore creators should be paid continuously for the act of creating itself, not the finished product.
Holy shit. This makes total sense. But then why stop at creators? Why not make the entire economy based off of patronage? Right? If it makes sense for "creators" well everyone in the economy creates shit, so let's do it for everything.
You work for a company? Why is that company paying you? Your work should be OPEN source and free! You program right? So all you're doing is creating ideas. The company shouldn't pay you fuck shit, and the only people who can pay you are people who sign up as patrons.
Here's a genius idea. If you stand by your ideas so much, why don't you start executing on them right now! Go tell your boss, "Hey my work is public domain! you don't need to pay me a dime! but if you want to support me here's my patreon link! Thanks bud!"
Look. Honestly if you don't see how what I suggested makes zero sense and how what I just said completely applies to ALL creators then you're out of touch with reality and human psychology.
> So instead of doing the moral thing, you pay extra money for No fucking reason.
"No fucking reason" is false. I wrote about the reasons why I pay for games on Steam.
> But people still can accuse you of being stupid.
I'm okay with that.
> Make sure your arguments are legit.
Testing my world views is the reason why I come here.
> How many billions of dollars and jobs just went down the drain?
Not a factor. Jobs that depend on intolerable monopolies shouldn't exist in the first place. Society will adapt. It must.
> But then why stop at creators? Why not make the entire economy based off of patronage?
Because we're talking about artificial scarcity of ideas, not tangible goods which follow natural economic principles. None of this applies to car manufacturing or food production.
> Your work should be OPEN source and free! You program right? So all you're doing is creating ideas.
I don't even disagree with you. That's why I barely even bother with licensing. I just pick AGPLv3 to maximize freedom and leverage.
I'm more radical than Stallman in this area. Stallman believes in and relies on copyright. I don't.
> The company shouldn't pay you fuck shit, and the only people who can pay you are people who sign up as patrons.
It's not that easy.
I work on my own projects because I personally care about them. They are rarely aligned with and might even be opposed to company interests.
I get to do whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want. I also get to walk away at any point for any reason, including no reason.
I'm not an employee. I have no boss. I have no deadlines. I have no obligations to anyone, least of all corporations.
If companies want developers to work on their stuff on a regular basis, they have to pay for it. Why would anyone care otherwise?
> Here's a genius idea. If you stand by your ideas so much, why don't you start executing on them right now!
I don't work in the software industry. My aversion to intellectual property is one of the reasons why.
I do have a GitHub Sponsors. For about a year, I had exactly one sponsor. Now I have zero.
I am also opposed to advertising in general. I try very hard not to talk about my own projects unless it is socially acceptable to do so. Others have independently submitted my work here and on other sites. I was also invited to post about one of them on reddit once.
Well you’re an outlier. Your refusal to participate in society makes almost everyone on earth disagree with you.
You’re suffering from the blowback of your own choices. If society adopted your philosophies, then society would be the one suffering.
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