Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> the appearance of some works in various places on the map is equivalent to their vast abundance.

As I said, historians know that some popular works not only appeared across the map quickly, they were commercially sold in the marketplace such that the educated class was able to purchase their own copies of prominent recent works with, of course, no money going back to the creator. Again, I don’t think your definition of “abundance” is good faith.

With regard to your last point, why should the artists’ desire for compensation outweigh the desire of audiences to consume the media for free, or other artists’ desire to rework prior art for free? This is a moral debate that is quite culturally dependent, and though you want to claim that your views are the right ones, that just won’t fly on a forum as international as HN. Many posters on HN grew up with pirated DVD and cassette/CD stands at the market (some might even still have them where they live), or in their countries Bittorrent or now pirate streaming sites are things used by ordinary people.




Ok, I'd like to call you on that and provide actual numbers. I found this:

Before the invention of printing, the number of manuscript books in Europe could be counted in thousands. By 1500, after only 50 years of printing, there were more than 9,000,000 books. https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/The-medieval-boo...

Which illustrates what the difference in scale I'm talking about.

> why should the artists’ desire for compensation outweigh the desire of audiences to consume the media for free

Because if you disincentivize the artist there are no media to consume. Why should your desire to consume for free deprive me from consuming at all if there is no artist willing to accept such conditions ?




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: