If you're a HN-er you should know the culture of HN is very old school and fringe mentality. E.g:
- Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life)
- Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)
- Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google
- People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)
>IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big.
It is? That's not my observation. In fact, music piracy seems to be all but dead, thanks to the streaming services. Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming; back in Netflix's heyday, it seemed like movie piracy was much smaller, because you could just pay $7/month to Netflix and watch whatever you wanted.
>People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible
No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead. Piracy is usually a PITA, and it's easy to subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music and listen to everything you want. Piracy is usually a service problem, not an economics problem.
> Movie piracy is not, and seems to be increasing (hard to say though), because of people getting frustrated with the fragmentation of streaming
I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind. when it's spread out, people are too lazy to sub/unsub to other $20 services as needed to watch content on demand. Someone that's a heavy enough power user to watch that much TV shouldn't mind paying $100+ to keep up. Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.
Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable. Because giving all your content away for rent isn't financially viable. But it's still too much for lazy consumers. So the entire thing collapses.
>No, most people want convenience. That's why music piracy is basically dead.
It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices. There definitely is a breaking point for many (past the ones who complain about every price hike on the internet but stay subscribed).
>Piracy is usually a service problem
Everytime I hear this, I simply need to point to the mobile industry to prove it wrong (or maybe right? Just not the way people think is "fair"). They fixed piracy by doing the classic Web dev action: Keep everything valuable on your server. The APK you pirate is worthless, as it is simply a thin client into their actual value.
>I feel that proves the point. When everything is all together for $20 people don't mind.
I think this proves my point, that it's a service problem. Put everything together in a single, easy-to-use service for a low price (like Netflix in 2012), and only the true die-hards will still bother with piracy. Ask them to subscribe to a whole bunch of services (with a high total cost) or try to figure out how to save money by strategically subscribing and unsubscribing to see the stuff they want, and have to deal with shows suddenly disappearing or moving to a competing service when they're half-finished watching them, and many will simply go back to torrenting because it's honestly easier than all that BS. But instead you think people are "lazy"... A lazy person doesn't do torrenting; it's really not that easy.
>Premium cable was way more expensive and restrictive back in the day.
Back then, 1) there weren't many alternatives. At the beginning of cable TV's reign, videotapes weren't even commonly available. And 2) back then, people had more disposable income because the cost-of-living was much, much lower (particularly housing). Technology is much better now too, so people expect to pay less.
>Meanwhile, all that conversation and none of these streaming services are even profitable.
Citation needed. Last I checked, Netflix is doing quite well, and even better after cracking down on the password-sharing.
>It's also why people completely raged when Netflix and GamePass increased prices.
Some people raged, but Netflix's subscriber count has increased and profits are up, so obviously those people either got over it, or were a small minority.
in all fairness, I'm sure Kagi is aware it's serving a niche right now. It's more a matter if that niche (maybe a few thousand consistent subscibers?) can support their infrastructure. You don't need to compete with Google to make a good living.
In case anyone just reads the headline, this is not a good result for the SEC. Judge reduced the fine from 2B to 125m (94%) and deemed retail sales of XRP was not a security.
SEC has been trying to label pretty much every crypto a security, and XRP is probably the closest thing to one, so if they couldn’t get this…
Also, it wasn't solely the 6 teens, it was also their parents and their communities at large outraged about what the teacher did and wanting his head on a spike (show a drawing of Muhammad). Not to forget the spark of the outrage, the girl who was skipping class and lied about what the teacher did, which instigated it all.
There was also that small Charlie Hebdo thing, and the Quran burning in Sweden, and countless other similar events over the years in Europe alone.
I was born and grew up in Indonesia, and the crap that was happening in Aceh, one of the only islands in Indonesia that practices Sharia law whereas the rest of the country is more secular, churns the stomach. I have no problems with Islam for the most part, but proponents of Sharia law are truly sociopathic monsters that have no place in the 21st century.
It's the same as the US's treatment of African Americans for decades; legally they have the same rights but the reality of how they get treated by their government is much different. Just pointing out "Aha! They are equal under law!" is misleading and tries to shut the issue down
You cannot call any criticism of Israel or its hold over US politics anti-semitic just because Israel happens to be Jewish majority. When people criticize the US they aren't automatically anti America, any other country holds the same.
US presidents always visit Israel and cater to it if they want to be elected, it has 0 to do with Judaism or the fact that Israel is founded on Jewish principles.
I believe the issue here is how much sway Israel has on the US and how rabid many US politicians are about Israel (to the point where many straight up accuse you of anti semitism if you just criticize the country or their policies)
Also issues like where you are not allowed to refuse to work with Israel if you are an arms manufacturer in the US (but you can refuse to work with the US military). I know that part of that is due to Israel being part of the FMS list but they are also the largest recipient on it...
If I watch a movie at a friend's house, do I have to somehow compensate the studio for the privilege? Did I rob those poor artists of residuals every time I rented a DVD from Netflix and Blockbuster before it? They after all rented me a physical artifact under the first sale doctrine. They didn't have to pay the studios anything for rentals. Their compensation to the studios ended at their original purchase of the DVD.
If renting DVDs or watching a movie at a friend's house doesn't magically rob artists of residuals, then neither does piracy. In each case I am not purchasing a movie yet I am able to watch it.
You are using the age old argument of “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway, so they won’t get anything from me either way”
This is just a roundabout way of excusing stealing. If the creator of something says “if you want to view my work, you must pay me a dollar”, then yes it is stealing (immoral) if you view it without paying. The context around it as to whether you would’ve watched it anyway is irrelevant.
Apply the same logic to literally any other item and your argument falls apart (I wouldn’t have bought that chocolate bar anyway so they’re not really losing money from me)
I would be curious to know what percentage of pirated movies are actually watched. I think a lot of people download things because they are available and might look interesting, but then never watch it. Does the steeling happen when the content is acquired or consumed? If someone isn’t going to watch it, even when it was free, did they steal anything?
With a chocolate bar there is a physical good that could have been sold to someone else, but instead a new one needs to be produced to sell to someone else. This isn’t the case with digital files.
It doesn't matter how many times you can sell the same item. If someone spent time and money producing something, no matter how small, and they dictate they want $x for you to own/consume it, then you are stealing if you don't give them $x for it.
In terms of "when" it's stolen re downloading vs watching, I would say when you download it personally as you now have access to the content without paying.
> If someone spent time and money producing something, no matter how small, and they dictate they want $x for you to own/consume it, then you are stealing if you don't give them $x for it.
Not quite. It's not stealing unless they are deprived of the original item (this is not to be confused with the money they think it is worth if they sell it or "sell" it). What is happening is copying, not stealing.
* It’s definitely not stealing in the legal sense of the term, which requires a party to be deprived of physical property that they own.
* It’s also not in the colloquial sense of the term, because if you call this stealing you’d also have apply the stealing label to blocking ads/trackers on the web, taking advantage of free trials for services without any intent of becoming a subscriber, or countless other activities that could be considered “depriving someone of revenue.”
In the US, we do in fact have a legal term for the crime at play here — but the term is copyright infringement, not “stealing” or “IP theft” or whatever other stupid label the content cartels want to apply to it.
> Yes that is quite literally also depriving them of revenue, and quite possibly their only source of revenue if they're a free website/app.
I think I made an error here by assuming that every reader of Hacker News would be at least somewhat pro-adblocking.
So since you appear not to be, let me ask you:
* Do you use any ad blocker at all? If yes, can you define precisely when ad blocking is stealing and when it is not?
* If I visit a random website with ads, and I don't have an adblocker, the ads on that site may be used to track me across other sites, build a profile of me to sell to data brokers, serve me malware, bog down my system resources with audio, video, crypto-miners, and other garbage, or a myriad of other undesirable things. Would you consider any of these things to be the website (or the ad network) stealing from me? At what point, if any, does the website's right to extract revenue from me end and my right to privacy/security begin?
Tracking - Tracking isn't stealing, that's a privacy question.
Building a Profile - I mean not stealing but also vague so not sure what's the point of trying to argue this one? Like if you keep going with this line of thinking you end up with "you looked at me funny which made me feel weird so you're stealing by stealing my joy". (Absurd example but trying to show how abstract arguments don't end up working) Then we would probably loop back to fallacy of composition.
Malware - Serving malware is a criminal act and you can block it, but you're also not usually going to CNN.com and expecting them to download a crypto miner on your hardware. You are, however, expecting advertisements, hence why you're using an adblocker.
Bogging down your resources/other garbage - I mean idk, case by case basis.
You keep trying to paint with broad strokes but that's not how these things usually work. In my original example, it works because it's a simple transaction the artist wanted. Pay me 1$ for my art and you can view it. They created it privately with the intent of selling, and by downloading it for free, you're breaking that intent and depriving them of potential revenue.
> Serving malware is a criminal act and you can block it, but you're also not usually going to CNN.com and expecting them to download a crypto miner on your hardware. You are, however, expecting advertisements, hence why you're using an adblocker.
I absolutely expect CNN, Google, and any other website to serve me malware. You can find many historical examples of the largest ad networks serving up malware on just about any site in existence. So that is actually the primary reason why I use adblockers, and blocking the visual noise is just a nice side effect.
How should I legally/ethically block this malware without using a broad ad blocker? AFAIK there's no way for me to know ahead of time when and on what site malware will be served.
I'm sorry if you think I'm painting in strokes that are too broad -- I'm trying to understand your viewpoint here. I would also like to be clear that I do think copyright infringement is a thing, and in your example of "pay me $1 and you can view my art," viewing the work and not paying is ethically dubious and probably could be considered copyright infringement in most jurisdictions. I just vehemently object to it being called "stealing" as you've done here.
> I absolutely expect CNN, Google, and any other website to serve me malware. You can find many historical examples of the largest ad networks serving up malware on just about any site in existence.
I would love to see a source of a large company like CNN knowingly serving malware in the guise of ads. I've never heard of that but I'm all ears; I feel like it would be big news if CNN knowingly put a crypto miner on your device.
> How should I legally/ethically block this malware without using a broad ad blocker?
I don't know but also now you're committing a fallacy known as "Irrelevant conclusion". Yes, there's a genuine question on how you can block malware without depriving website owners of their ad revenue, however it's irrelevant to the original argument of whether blocking ads is stealing (which we've somehow come to from a piracy argument but whatever). The argument becomes "Is blocking ads stealing when some of them give me malware", but that's separate from "Is blocking ads stealing".
Alternatively you might be trying to argue "but I block ads because some of them give me malware" which can be an appeal to pity[2], but I don't think you're trying to go that far.
Wow, aren't you the fallacy guy. Please, give me more fallacies! I should just change my username to fallaciousgoats.
How about this: I didn't use the word "knowingly" anywhere in my statement, and in fact I have no earthly idea whether the countless examples [1][2][3][4] of malware being served via ad networks on major websites was done knowingly. My guess is it wasn't?
So you've got the beginnings of a straw man fallacy here, questioning an argument that I never actually made.
If you'd like to learn more about why malware shows up on cross-site ad networks, there's a good quick read available at [5].
You're back at the start again though - if I wasn't going to buy it, then the vendor hasn't lost anything if I steal it. All that happens is I gain a free experience I would otherwise not have had.
Except because you now actually went out, downloaded/took it, and experienced it, it implies there was a non 0 interest in the work, therefore there is lost possible revenue since you might have eventually went and bought the work.
It's also possible I might not have bought the work. There's no sale until money changes hands.
If you run a store, and a customer shows interest in a product and physically touches it is he/she stealing if she chooses not to buy it? Let's say it's perfume, and the customer samples some of the perfume, then decides not to buy it. The customer has experienced it; if the customer doesn't buy the perfume, is that stealing?
You're using a false analogy. You're trying to make a parallel between not paying for an item/produced good and simply not giving someone money in an attempt to downplay not paying for created material.
A: "Not giving someone money for an item/produced good"
B: "Not giving someone money"
B can apply to a near infinite number of cases. A is one case that is "within" B. So... the root meaning is the same. If you call A stealing, you have to call B stealing, but that's ridiculous because, for example, each day, I literally don't give money to the entire world. According to your logic I would owe the whole world population the value of every item/produced good.
> Apply the same logic to literally any other item and your argument falls apart (I wouldn’t have bought that chocolate bar anyway so they’re not really losing money from me)
The rest of your argument notwithstanding, that's because stealing chocolate bars is zero sum, whereas copying films is not.
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What fallacy did I commit? Please, name the fallacy and explain why it's an example of that fallacy, so I can learn from my mistakes.
I simply took your argument, verbatim:
> If the creator of something says “if you want to view my work, you must pay me a dollar”, then yes it is stealing (immoral) if you view it without paying.
And showed how it is a ridiculous argument with a simple example. I created a comment, and said you must pay me $100 to read it. You didn't, so you stole from me, by your own argument.
It's called a false equivalence fallacy[1] and more specifically it's called the fallacy of composition[2]. I don't know why I'm taking the time to do this but I'm going to assume you're genuine with wanting to learn so:
Essentially the original argument I made is
1. Stealing (in this context) is depriving someone of their unearned revenue by duplicating or taking their work without their express consent and payment.
2. Stealing is wrong
3. Pirating is stealing
So, 4. Pirating is wrong
You took my comment and attempted to do this:
1. Stealing (in this context) is depriving someone of their unearned revenue by duplicating or taking their work without their express consent and payment.
2. Stealing is wrong
3. Reading my comment for free is stealing
So, 4. Reading my comment for free is wrong
Except step 3 is an invalid assertion since we are on a public forum with accounts created for the express purpose of reading and writing on said public forum for free. Your argument makes the assumption that because an action (using something for free) is wrong in one instance, it must be wrong in all instances.
I disagree with your characterization of my comment as an instance of false equivalence, primarily because you had to change/add more premises to your argument as part of your explanation. So in fact you're committing some fallacies in your reply, also. :)
Regardless, obviously my comment was tongue-in-cheek, and I do in fact grant a license to Hacker News to display my content for all to see per the terms of use. But I hoped my comment would help you think about the absurdity of your original argument and how you can arrive at some ridiculous situations without getting much more complex than a Hacker News comment.
For example: I create a webpage that says "By reading this page, you agree to pay me $1" and then include a Paypal or Stripe link just below that text. You visit the page, and you have a link right in front of you to pay me. Now are you stealing from me if you don't pay? It costs me money to host the page, and I hold the copyright on the content and I'm not posting it anywhere else.
> primarily because you had to change/add more premises to your argument as part of your explanation.
I did no such thing, I was putting the argument into logical form[1]. When you do that you express the original argument in specifically semantic terms. I've been saying the same thing since the beginning, piracy is stealing, and by stealing I mean experiencing their work without paying. Putting it into specific terms is not changing my meaning.
Also I hope you realize saying "fallacy" is not equivalent to trying to call bs on me. If you think I've actually committed a fallacy, go ahead and let me know what it is, and if you don't actually know any formal logic, then I'm sure ChatGPT will give you some good ideas.
In regards to your webpage example, websites have a common expectation of loading to the home page for viewing for free. If you have a website that was not explicit about the requirement for payment before the user went on it, then no it's not the same thing, and in fact there's not even a contract with going to a website so there's no legal basis for your example either.
Your arguments are getting less and less in the same vein of piracy
> I did no such thing, I was putting the argument into logical form[1]. When you do that you express the original argument in specifically semantic terms. I've been saying the same thing since the beginning, piracy is stealing, and by stealing I mean experiencing their work without paying. Putting it into specific terms is not changing my meaning.
I understand logical fallacies, and my point is that your original argument as stated way up the thread is materially different from the one you put into logical form. So you don't get to accuse me of a logical fallacy when you're referring to an argument that you haven't articulated yet.
> In regards to your webpage example, websites have a common expectation of loading to the home page for viewing for free. If you have a website that was not explicit about the requirement for payment before the user went on it, then no it's not the same thing, and in fact there's not even a contract with going to a website so there's no legal basis for your example either.
I'm not sure if you have specific legal experience in this area but all of these claims are questionable to me; my understanding is that most of these things have little if any legal precedent and are a grey area at best. I'd be interested to see sources for these claims, since as I said, I don't know too much about this.
> I understand logical fallacies, and my point is that your original argument as stated way up the thread is materially different from the one you put into logical form.
I mean it's literally not, I state the same thing but shortened further up.
>So you don't get to accuse me of a logical fallacy when you're referring to an argument that you haven't articulated yet.
Ok first off, no one is "accusing" anyone of anything, I'm pointing out a literal fallacy you made. If you're wearing a blue shirt and I point out you're wearing a blue shirt, I'm not accusing you of wearing a blue shirt. And I've articulated my argument many times, including in it's literal formal argument form.
>I'm not sure if you have specific legal experience in this area but all of these claims are questionable to me; my understanding is that most of these things have little if any legal precedent and are a grey area at best. I'd be interested to see sources for these claims, since as I said, I don't know too much about this.
Yeah I'm not going to go trolling through the internet to find examples of this (if there are any, I would wager there aren't since I don't think people would be dumb enough to perform the situation you tried to use as an example) for someone who clearly is just getting angry and not even arguing in good faith.
You're going on about how I'm accusing you and how my argument isn't the same, and you've said I committed a fallacy (which you never even articulated btw), so I don't think there's any point in furthering this conversation. Seems like a waste of time.
The irony here is from their post history they are a business owner that made 4m in profits last year. Guess it’s a moral imperative to steal from them eh?
- Flip phones are celebrated in some threads because people don't want smart phones (extreme minority in real life)
- Disabling JS and pushing sites to go back to just raw HTML CSS (with some even not understanding why we need JS, extreme minority irl. IRL site owners care about attracting customers and the things they want to do can't be done with raw HTML CSS much of the time)
- Kagi taking off. IRL most people still do and will continue to Google
- People acting like if ads were disabled forever the population would totally pay for things they like (IRL people don't, there's a reason piracy is big. People want the things they want for the cheapest cost possible)
HN is a very specific type of tech-centric bubble