I think that the crowd here is growing more pro-piracy of late. I've been in a number of lengthy arguments here about this issue in the past year arguing the 'morality' of piracy or how 'justified' it is because of whatever, whereas earlier discussions I've had on HN were all more academic in nature -- "If Hollywood can't figure out digital distribution, of course there will be more users who pirate."
Even worse, the entitlement is much greater, and nobody seems to care that it's wrong, so I end up getting drawn into a million "can't copy a car" type of arguments and "I can't legally purchase" rebuttals.
Worse than that, I've felt like I'm in the minority on how I feel about piracy and as such, have pretty much quit rehashing the same old arguments.
So, while I hate that you're going through the same nonsense I did, at least you can save yourself some frustration by not being baited into the same frustrating arguments that deliberately "miss the point".
It's not that "nobody cares that it's wrong", it's that they reasonably disagree with that: not everybody thinks it's wrong!
It seems the fact that copyright infringement is "wrong" is an axiom for you. Going from that position, I could see why the discussion seems poor: other people have different axioms! Of course, if people are arguing about something, treating it as an axiom is not productive.
Also, there are people who hold the exact opposite stance: it's not piracy that's wrong, it's copyright.
Take a look at the free software movement--not only do they believe you shouldn't legally limit people from distributing software, they actually go farther and believe you shouldn't even make it difficult to modify and reuse code! There are some very intelligent people in the FSF, and they've contributed immensely to the software world, all on the opposite premise: it's not infringement that's wrong, it's copyright.
Now, I could see how you would disagree with them. An unfortunate proportion of HN seems to--look at any thread about MIT/BSD licensing. But you shouldn't just dismiss their philosophy out of hand and implicitly believe that spreading information in spite of copyright is wrong.
Ultimately, it's not that "piracy" is justified, it's that it doesn't need to be justified in the first place. What needs to be justified is restricting distribution in the first place.
In the event that I make statements that seem impolite, let me preface by saying that I appreciate the response, the thought that went into it, and the neutral tone you've taken in your response to my admittedly off-the-cuff remark.
I am aware of, and understand the premise of the 'copyright is wrong' party, and I was perhaps remiss to have excluded it from my earlier response, but the point was more to give edw some reassurance that he isn't alone. He seemed genuine in his question, and as I took a long time to type my response, there weren't any like-responses when I started writing (I was in the middle of something.)
So, to the issue at hand, which is thankfully not the "can't copy a car" sort of tripe I'm used to dealing with... I suppose my biggest trouble with the 'copyright is wrong' argument is that it seems to argue from a point of 'morality', meaning that it "isn't right" to restrict information or, to coin the old phrase, "information wants to be free."
The only good reason I can imagine for that stance (and I'm happy to be informed otherwise) is that it deprives them of things. What I think is 'right' is to give the author of a work the ability to do with it what they will. If they choose to share it, then great for them. If they choose to share it without the ability to reproduce it, I'd suppose that was within their rights. Just as it is within my rights to build a fence and disallow people from knocking it down. Those who seek to encourage open source also make that choice, just the other way; But they've still chosen to have their work treated how they wish (or not, in the case of MIT/public domain licenses). Even in open source, the author's wishes are to be respected, and I don't fault them (or closed source products) for having made the choice that they have. It's their work, they should control it as much or as little as they like.
Whether or not copyright is right or wrong (and I am certainly not going to suggest that it's perfect, or even necessarily 'good',) the author of a work, even in open source, is effectively licensing their work, but with a particular set of constraints. If a company uses GPLv2 code and does not release the source, what is the expected reaction?
I think that the biggest issue for me is that (at least in the arguments I've had) the proponents of eliminating copyright feel that it will promote the arts, and that it will remove restrictions keeping artists from flourishing but, at least in every scenario I can think of, it also removes the ability of an artist to make a living from their work as well as they could otherwise. If artists can't afford to pay their rents on their art, then they'll either stop producing it altogether, or produce less of it. Perhaps that will be offset by the newly unencumbered artists doing covers of whatever the current hot song is, but that doesn't exactly promote new creation either, and leads to a losing proposition for originality in art.
Effectively, the distribution costs are so low at this point, and people can clone music / pictures / etc so quickly, that in the absence of a controlled distribution, it's quite possible that a new song could get 'link-jacked', and its creation could be attributed to a copier with better promotion skills, making promotion more important than originality, which takes us 360 to where we are, only perhaps worse.
Very well said. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to respond to all of your points, all of which are reasonable. (Also, I'm pathologically lazy.)
However, I would like to point you to a comment I made about the GPL[1]. Particularly, my argument is that the fact the GPL uses copyright is just an implementation detail--in a very real sense, it turns copyright on itself. The underlying premise is not that the creator should have absolute control over their work but rather that each consumer has certain rights which should not be taken away. If we think of proprietary software as x and public domain/BSD/MIT as 0 on a hypothetical "copyright control scale" then the GPL is akin to -x.
I don't dispute consumer rights, but those rights aren't obtainable without the author's permission.
If nothing requires the author's permission for redistribution, then where does the line stop? Should a person's private diary just be automatically published to the world? Can someone redistribute a recording of a song I was singing in the shower? Is my time in the shower video recordable, and public domain?
If I can't protect my own works, and/or keep them private, then what can I keep? Where are the boundaries? Why am I obligated to share every single thing that I come up with?
For what it's worth, I generally license code MIT, and I'm a proponent for free software, but with MIT, but I'm not so naive as to believe that no secrets ever need be kept, and even being a proponent of free software, should not be obligated to open source every thing that I ever do.
If only for the sake of my grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have to believe that people have some ownership over their creations.
The private diary issue is different - it's wrong to read someone's diary without their permission even if you don't disseminate the information. Same with trade secrets, there are separate protections for those.
But why is it wrong? If it's right for me to take someone's work and distribute it against their wishes, why is the diary different? Why would I respect the protections of privacy or trade secret if I don't respect the rights of authorship? I'm not trying to set up a non-sequitur, I'm genuinely trying to understand.
Also, while I understand that trade secrets are a different issue with copyright, the only tangible differences are that they are 1) secret, 2) have a bunch of requirements to protect and 3) generally lose trade secret status when 1 is no longer true.
It's wrong because it's trespassing or theft. It directly causes harm to someone to disseminate their private thoughts, whereas a literary or artistic work is intended to be distributed.
Trade secrets are really more about contract protection than any right of authorship - the third difference is the key one. Once a trade secret is out in the open it's no longer wrong to spread it further.
So, in a nutshell, if I intend to keep it private, I can keep it private forever, and anybody who treads on that is "wrong" to do so. But if I release something to the public, or some secret is bared to the public against my wishes, it is gone forever, and now belongs to the world at large.
And there's really no middle ground? There's no "I want to share this to you, but you can't have it," ???
If we can protect trade secrets though, then I should be able to come up with a song, and play it for a friend, but tell them to keep it secret. Make them sign an NDA even (that's how trade secrets are enforced after all). And THEN I can keep it, right?
So what's the difference between that and releasing a record, on the condition that you keep it secret? Why can't I do that?
Like I said, for me, the anti-copyright notion is too far a stretch. I get that copyright is perhaps broken, and it's certainly been skewed from its original intent, but I don't believe that getting rid of it altogether is the fix for that. I wouldn't support banning all airplane travel because a few have crashed, and I think that's what the anti-copyright extreme would basically have us do.
I wouldn't quite phrase it like that, but yes, in essence. It's wrong to break a promise --- your friend who released the song to the world was in the wrong --- but once it's out there it's not wrong to spread it further.
Even worse, the entitlement is much greater, and nobody seems to care that it's wrong, so I end up getting drawn into a million "can't copy a car" type of arguments and "I can't legally purchase" rebuttals.
Worse than that, I've felt like I'm in the minority on how I feel about piracy and as such, have pretty much quit rehashing the same old arguments.
So, while I hate that you're going through the same nonsense I did, at least you can save yourself some frustration by not being baited into the same frustrating arguments that deliberately "miss the point".