Spotted the massive, gaping flaw in the argument yet?

It's 2012, if you make this argument then I am done with you. Linux is how old? How much of the internet runs on it?

Done.

Edit: Wow, really? Why is this still a necessary argument?

The linux kernel is utterly free. Yet it's still developed. It's still a state of the art product. And people still make money off of linux and linux-based products.

Do I honestly have to connect the dots here?

Spoilers: if you can't or don't want to charge for the code directly then maybe you find some alternate way to charge for something else or you use another form of supporting development.

The analogy to the creation of music and movies should be so frelling obvious I shouldn't even need to make it.

There are very few viable, large-scale open source projects that are run on developer free time alone.

(we all know GTK is a labor of love, 'cause you couldn't expect people to pay for it.)

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

Just because there is some open source code doesn't mean that there is an "optimal" level of it. In other words, maybe due to the relative lack of funding, there's a lot less open source than there could be if there was a better financial feedback loop between people getting value from the software and those developing it.

This isn't just something I'm making up - I've spent a lot of time around open source, and seen a lot of good people who could have done lots more if they had had more time to dedicate to working on the code, rather than working a "day job".

Just because you're not paying for these products directly, doesn't mean someone else isn't.

How many closed-source, for profit software projects were rescued after the supporting company went under? (I am intentionally conflating closed-source and for profit as the majority of financed projects are closed source).

What you have to consider here is the rate of progress, as well as the length of development time. Open source projects have essentially infinite development time, whereas closed-source, for profit projects have a finite development time (whenever the company decides further development isn't worth it anymore)+. However, open source projects tend to have a slower rate of progress versus financed projects.

After 6 months or 1 year, sure, the financed project will probably be ahead. How about the 5 year mark? 10 year? It becomes much less clear which project will have accumulated more man-hours.

+very rarely, closed-source projects are released as open source (e.g. Doom 3), but I think we can all agree that that is the exception to the norm

Well, if we compare to the list in the parent, it's much more. At least Firefox, Blender, Rails qualify. These were products that had no future in closed-source form. If they had, it would have been financial madness to open source them.

Linux is used everywhere, but it's also paid for. If it weren't paid for, it wouldn't be used everywhere.

- Independent bands who sign corporate contracts--see The Roots. - Major labels who create teen brands like Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez. They don't care if you steal the music as long as you buy the t-shirt, buy the book, see the movie, come to the show, etc. - Sync licenses. More and more mid-level bands are depending on getting their songs into movies, commercials, tv shows, etc. to bring in revenue. This is another form of corporate funding.

Linux is probably an exception, and not the rule, and it is such an exception that large companies are willing to subsidize it. I've been looking for some good sound editing software, and the only solution I could find that was good at altering tempo without creating weird artifacts was closed-source and proprietary. I've also rarely played any open-source games that were as good as the closed-source ones.

The point is, if someone does something that creates value, they should get compensated somehow. Asking musicians to produce music for nothing more than the sheer joy of it is exploiting them, and impolite, besides. If someone gives you value, you ought to give value back. I don't agree that the RIAA's way of getting back that value is correct, but that doesn't mean that copyright is a bad idea.

We might not get epic movies... or we might, if CGI continues to dwindle in cost. We probably won't get as much pop/dance music... but we might.

There won't be as many huge star winners, that's all that can really be said to be likely.

Don't fall for their mental trap: questioning copyright doesn't mean that: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pira...

besides. If someone gives you value, you ought to give value back.

And people shouldn't be dicks, doesn't mean we should make it a crime. Morality != Law.

MongoDB, Wordpress (and all other blogging frameworks), MySQL, the list keeps going... they are out there for free because the creators figured out a way for it to be free why still getting paid (service contracts in most cases).. Being free didn't even reduce their quality (it probably enhanced it)...

Open source ain't communism, nor is it doomed to failure. Even if you bind your hands to make it legally impossible for you to control the distribution of your work that doesn't mean that you can't make money off of it or that you must stop working.

You're focusing on one very small part of the software industry and ignoring the rest.

I'm focusing on a "very small part of the software industry" which creates the software which runs the vast majority of web servers. Oh, and every android phone too.

All I'm saying is that if you can't accept that there is "another way" of making stuff, even hugely important stuff, then you simply have not been paying attention.

The argument that failing to charge for every single copy of software/music/books/movies must necessarily translate to a diminution of those works has been made time and time again, but there are so many counter examples today that it's patently ridiculous to make it yet again.

Do you have a better argument to make or are you going to stick with this one?

Because honestly I would imagine that reusing the same old tired FUD that companies like MS have tried to use to scare people away from using Linux or Apache back in the mid-90s would have a limited shelf-life.

I have done open source development for over 10 years (I was developer #3 on one of the open-source projects you mentioned), have used Linux for about 15 years, and use it every day at my job working at the company that develops the Android code that you mention. That you would question my open source credential is... amusing.

I believe in open source too (and have spent a significant portion of my life developing it). That doesn't mean that I'm naive enough to think that you can take away the licensing-based revenue from the for-pay software industry and continue to get just as much software.

So my answer to your question of "do you think they would be making as much money without copyright" is that they would be making much more without copyright.

Now, there would always be people who want to have that music recorded, so it would still flow.

The argument is that there would be less computer code, not no computer code. Saying that one specific project would still exist is not a counterexample.

Consider the costs of production and distribution.

Production. Frank McCourt's memoirs were the end result of a life of telling stories socially and on stage. People who heard him tell the stories would say "you should write a book". Today his listeners wold have videoed his performances with a camera phone, posted them on YouTube, and he would be a viral star before he knew it.

Distribution. Suppose I have a head mounted camera that simply records everything I see — it's part of version 5 of the android glasses google is working on. Then along comes a third party and releases an app that simply recognizes anything I look at that's a printed page and captures it. If I read a book, I have an digital image of its pages and an OCRed text for indexing.

The cooking smells analogy is actually more accurate than the writer realizes, because all this technology makes production easier too.

no one thinks that not being able to charge money = no apps. the argument is over whether not being able to charge money = less apps.

Besides, even if its perfectly legal to copy apps (or music or movies) and distribute them however you like, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't monetize them. It doesn't even mean that you have to completely give up the pay-for-app model either - people will still be willing to pay for something they really like (I bought a CD online direct off a musician a few months back despite already having the mp3's and I've never even opened the CD!), but obviously a lot fewer people than now. Perhaps a pay what you want model would work. This can be offset in other ways - paid support, physical merchandise (printed documentation perhaps) and kickstarter-style "I'll finish the app for $X" are just a few ideas.

I'm not saying that this would definitely be sustainable, because I don't know, but I do see some potential there and either way, people will still make apps, music and movies regardless (though it will be less[1]).

I wonder is B2B sustainable on support contracts and custom work?

[1] Maybe hobbies of the future will revolve more around the production of (free) content and less about the consumption of (free or otherwise) content? Evolution and adaptation of human behavior?

If nobody could get paid for writing code, there would be less of it. No question.

However, your original assumption does not flow from the premise--just because selling software becomes impossible does not mean programmers won't get paid. I recall reading somewhere (too lazy to find the source) that the majority of programmers work on bespoke, in-house software rather than consumer-facing proprietary software. Even if it is not a majority, it still shows that there are viable ways for programmers to get paid outside creating scarcity with copyright.

Just because people contributing to the kernel get paid does not mean they would not get paid without copyright. Companies like Google and Red Hat do not really rely on copyright for money.

> What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations ... there’d be less of it

the claim here is that if you disallowed charging for software, there would be less software.

> Linux is how old? How much of the internet runs on it?

great, linux exists and is awesome. nobody disputes that. this fact does not contradict the claim in question.

the existent / awesomeness of linux contradicts claims such as: "people who don't get paid will not create things" and "unpaid creators cannot create great things". however, the original claim is none of those statements. the original claim is merely that when you don't let people charge for software, fewer people will write it.

> Do I honestly have to connect the dots here?

i honestly have no idea what you think the connection between the dots is.

IBM: sells tons of proprietary software.

Redhat: genuine open source deal. Legit example.

Government: money comes from taxes. I don't think I fancy a world where information goods are mostly paid for through taxes.

Google: makes most of their money from the proprietary bits of their software.

It's pretty difficult to charge for goods that are not scarce.

This has important implications in terms of the ability to spread the costs around. With proprietary software, it's possible to do so: charge 100 people $10 instead of charging one person $500 and letting the other 99 people copy it for free. You make more money, and in some cases, the market will clear when it wouldn't for the single-payer model.

I think this actually shows up fairly clearly in what's open source and what isn't: stuff that would be a one-off consulting job in any case may or may not be, stuff that's more consumer-oriented is more often proprietary, and stuff that's used by lots of developers as infrustructure is quite often open source.

I guess you don't know much about either Linux or business. Let me give you an example. Red Hat pays people to work on Linux, because that increases the market for people who will buy Linux support. IBM pays people to work on Linux, because that increases the market for people who will buy servers. Linux even only has a GUI because a bunch of old Unix companies sat down and formed the X consortium and paid people to write it, which they did because a common GUI would mean more software got written for Unix in general.

So go and head and make your point but do it with a Linux made ONLY of hobbyist code. If you can even compile such a thing (don't forget Cygnus funded a lot of GCC development so they could sell embedded hardware!).

How many of the sites on the internet are open source though? A quick glance through the top 100 according to Alexa gives me 2 or 3 (wordpress and wikipedia, and really wordpress is more about the content, which is not open source, generally speaking.)

Only most lines of linux code are written by people who are paid for doing so. If it wasn't for companies that put money into linux development linux would be a lot less useful.

This sums up why I disagree with the author. People have been playing and composing music way before "selling records" was the way to make money. Just like people don't contribute to open source "for the joy of it".

Very serious business is being done around open source, and the same could happen around the music industry. I personally wouldn't mind settling for an industry where artists get paid for their performances (getting paid for the "actual" hours put in, not just a one-off recording session decades ago that's making them fat millionaires), using their records as promotional tools. Parallel business would develop, they would charge for packaging, interviews, talks, God-knows-what. Let the next generations be creative.

The industry may not seem as lucrative as it may sound today, but frankly I could do without the MBA consultant in a suit. Cut off his salary and most of the middle men and you're good to go. Despite what the article says, the cost of producing and publishing new material isn't that high. My closest friend took a couple months off to record a home made 6 song album. With an iMac and some amateur equipment. The result is simply bluffing. Even a small team on a low budget can definitely invest this money as part of their promotion campaign.

The masses however seem to prefer commercial films, music and software.

I would argue that this is more of a danger to Big Content's bottom line. There are only 24 hours in a day. Youtube and reddit compete directly with Universal, Sony, and the New York Times for people's attention.

The fact is that entertaining videos and music are not only easier to distribute than ever, but also easier to produce. You don't need a degree or the backing of a large corporation to be funny, insightful or clever. IMO there is a lot of noise about piracy which masks this even larger "problem" for traditional media.

...or are trying to win the piracy/IP battle enough that it gives them a credible position from which to attack the populist works that remix what they perceive to be their IP.

Especially if, for example, they've succeeded in making faceless/nameless/processless takedowns possible--a pretty solid weapon against populist entertainment.

We recently gave up casual TV and movies cold-turkey. Frankly, the studios and networks just couldn't figure out how to target us properly. I'm not going to pay $120 / mo. to get my favorite channels (eg. Science and NatGeo) just because ESPN has Comcast by the balls. Similar arguments for movies.

FWIW, I don't use TPB either. But I can imagine the appeal of choice, freedom, and having archival copies of the bits locally.

Well, all of the music available on iTunes, Amazon, and the Pirate Bay has already been produced, it just needs to be distributed.

If I want to pay for music to be produced, I use Kickstarter. (Or go to concerts, since playing a song live could be considered a new production)

It's a historical accident that we use charging for distribution of music to pay off debts incurred while producing the music.

Of course, paying 99cents to have my phone download a song in the background so I can play it in the next five minutes is worth it to me - cheaper than a cup of coffee, and I don't have to do any work. So the old system of charging for distribution isn't totally dead.

I'm not sure it's possible to actually curate a comprehensive MP3 catalog without active cooperation from the musicians, at some level. But, if the Pirate Bay surprised me and made a fast way to search and download music that was as easy as iTunes or Amazon MP3, and they had a library of songs that was at least as comprehensive as the for-pay versions, then I might decide that the hassle of keeping my billing info up to date in the other databases was more trouble than changing to the Pirate App. I'm not sure. The actual 99cent charge is so close to free that it doesn't factor into my decision.

But that's theoretical. Right now, the musicians get a few cents, Apple and Amazon get legitimacy and a little bit more of my money.

My few cents per mp3 doesn't add up to much. When I actually want to support an artist, I use Kickstarter, or I buy some merch, or click a donate button.

It's already being done; it's just not public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What.cd

Just because it has already been produced, doesn't mean that it has already been paid for. The studio and the session musicians have probably been paid, but the artist should be compensated on a scale commensurate with the popularity of the work and that needs to be measured across whatever timescale people are still buying or downloading it.

If I want to pay for software to be produced, I use kickstarter.

Now I can download AutoCAD, Illustrator and Photoshop guilt free.

I happen to use the GIMP, Inkscape, and FreeCAD for free, and I don't feel guilty about that.

But then ... tell me ... for what do we need the pirate bay?

The problem I have with this article is the association of investment with a 'right' to recoup that investment. There is no inherent right to recoup investment money of this type. NONE! It doesn't matter how hard something is to produce, there is no inherent right to make a profit based on that effort. People paint, write, sing and act all the time without compensation of any kind.

The argument that creators must be compensated to keep creating is a bit of a straw man. The idea that someone can spend some time writing or making music and then deserves compensation seems to be strongly held, but the ones who vastly profit from the copyright law are not the creators. Disney, for instance, has been dead a very long time, but his company defends copyright extension into perpetuity.

Right now, there are far more people unable to create because of copyright/patent law than there are people getting compensated for their creations.

Because they choose not to exercise their right to profit from it?

Markets already provide a "pay-what-you-want" model, it just happens that not everyone is willing to accept what you want to pay.

Selling capital goods is very different than selling digital copies of something. There is a limited amount of corn in the world, you can purchase it at the going rate generally set by the supply and demand. In digital goods, the supply is unlimited, there are no natural market forces.

Apple heavily protects its products with patents and copyright where it can. You cannot take an ipad design and improve upon that design without cutting a deal with Apple. I think that strongly supports the case that the few (Apple) benefit from the current system while the many (anyone who thinks they could enhance the design of ipad) do not.

There are, however, a few open and free items of software, Linux, MySQL, Apache, Firefox to name a few. Arguably, depending on what you want to do, there isn't even a better closed alternative (yes, yes, substitute whatever SQL package you prefer for MySQL).

I personally have a cable provider (so I pay for the minimal tv package to get internet), a netflix account, Amazon Prime, see the occasional movie in the theater, etc.

When people talk about copyright though, I generally see some stuffed suit making a bonus, not a bunch of creative people.

Markets are not pay-what-you-want, because pay-what-you-want implies $0 is an acceptable price. At least that's how I was using the term. Apple will not accept $0 for an iPad. If you don't accept their price, you don't get the iPad. That's why people buy it.

Copying media lets you get it even if you don't accept the price. Which means the only reason to pay is because you want to.

My contention is that making people pay in order to enjoy a product is often what provides the money necessary to exercise creativity. The iPad could be improved by an individual working alone with their own funds, but it never could have been created that way. Without profits from previous products, the creative people at Apple who designed the iPad never would have had the resources to do so. We have iPads today precisely because Apple is closed.

What is the next innovation in personal computing? Who will come up with it? Will it be Apple or someone on Kickstarter? My money is on Apple. Even if it is someone on Kickstarter, will they be able to raise the probably millions of dollars necessary to make a viable consumer product? Unlikely.

A system in which producers pay upfront and then recoup costs is actually better for consumers. You get to see the finished product before deciding whether or not to spend your money. If the finished product sucks, only the producer loses. If the finished product of a Kickstarter project sucks, everyone who contributed loses.

How many iterations do you think it took Apple to perfect the iPad? Each of those would have to have been separately funded on Kickstarter for that system to produce the iPad. I doubt even the costs of one iteration could be raised.

But when you cut off the ability to recoup production costs, you cut off the incentive to pay upfront production costs. Which cuts off the funding to creative people who are doing important work.

The problem with only being able to collect voluntary payments (pay-what-you-want, Kickstarter, etc.) is that people don't necessary know they want something until it's done. The 1st iteration iPad probably sucked. So why would people fund it? If Apple builds an iPad, it only takes a few people's shared vision to make it happen. If a Kickstarter project wants to build something as innovative, it will required the shared vision of everyone contributing. You'll have to convince thousands of people that it's worth funding numerous iterations at thousands, or possibly even millions, of dollars, in the hopes that the final product will be good. I just don't see this happening.

I didn't say we should arbitrarily limit the amount of profit one can make by investing capital, but the current copyright law and patent law is very stifling to innovation.

Apple employs some people, sure. Monopolies (not implying apple is a monopoly to be hit by anti-trust laws, btw, but copyright and patent are monopoly powers) are very, very profitable for the few people that hold them.

I don't have my copy of Wealth of Nations in front of me (out of copyright, but I purchased the penguin classics paperback anyways, go figure), but Adam Smith made a very compelling argument that things like entertainment are not acretive to the capital of a country. At the time of publication (1776), Smith noted actors and musicians expected no more compensation than what they received for peformances. They produced no lasting product that could be added to the 'capital' of the company. Recordings you might say add this value because of copyright, but if you cannot sell your copy that would mean it's not a capital good.

So, yes, creative works existed before the current distribution model.

I'm not arguing people cannot profit from their works, far be it. I'm arguing that the current model for profit favors a very few at the expense of very many, and does not meet the needs of either creators or consumers as well as it does the distributors!

Movies are perhaps the most dependent on the current model, as yes, it takes significant capital to make most movies. However, is it truly more creative to see the 3D version of Star Wars Episode I? Or would it be better to see "Star Wars Episode I: As written By Kickstarter Member XYZ". I'm fairly certain Option B would be more creative at this point. Lucas and everyone involved with Star Wars has already made plenty of money, but you can't expand on those works just because you have a great idea, you'd need Lucas' permission.

Anyways, copyright/patents are a very complex thing right now. I can't tell you exactly how the Ipad came to be (although it wasn't the first tablet), so I can't really say if Apple had the best idea, or just the right polish at the right time. All the patent infringement lawsuits surrounding the ipad seem to support my view that they stifle innovation more than they support the "It required this closed model" argument, if you ask me. Apple is almost assuredly infringing a lot of patents (which many may be invalid), and I would argue they are really so successful because they have deep enough pockets to fight all those legal wars.

I could write a lot and end up saying very little, it is very hard for me to boil down all my thoughts on copyright and patents into a HN comment.

Is it just pay-what-you-want? Because I'm not sure that's any more "alive".

Copyright is simply one means of accomplishing the end goal of paying creators, and certainly not the only one. I'd like to hear an argument in favor of copyright-exactly-as-it-is that doesn't involve this logical fallacy.

That doesn't mean that there isn't some better system out there, but I think the burden is on the copyright-dissenters to develop a theoretically sound alternative and implementation plan. Stallman's work in this area is incredible and inspiring, but there isn't, so far, nearly as much theory or evidence on that side (despite the work of Benkler et al.).

Meanwhile, low protectionists--like most people here, myself included--are frequently going to assume a version of the current system stays in place, while proposing tweaking some of the knobs (types of content covered, expiration, penalties, enforcement mechanisms, etc.).

I think the solution is more to push for it to become registration based and offer companies a way to extend the copyright for a fee that increases exponentially with time. Lets say the first 10 years is free everything after starts to cost you more and more.

That way I feel that you let things like orphan works be preserved and used even if they are not longer worth enough money to keep under copyright and publish.

Also have the database of what is under copyright be available to everyone so that right holders can be located and licensing can be made easier. These records can be maintain with the money obtain from copyrighting fees.

And also, fix issues with fair use such as breaking DRM being made not illegal.

"Tijl was visiting the market, and noticed a food stand where a butcher was roasting chickens over a fire, spreading a delicious smell.

Tijl stood a while next to the barbecue, sniffing the exquisite smells. Then the butcher noticed him just standing there, sniffing, and not buying anything.

The butcher said: "Hey, you're enjoying the smell of my grilled chickens, not buying anything, you know what? You should pay me for the cooking smells of these chickens instead!"

Upon which Tijl produced his wallet, made tinkling noises with the coins, and replied: "I pay for the smell of these chickens with the sound of my coins!". Faced with such impertinence, the butcher got angry and chased a laughing Tijl away."

Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value.

pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to see the movie. You could charge for an album when doing so was the only way to hear music on your terms.

That is no longer the case. Scarcity, as far as arrangements of bits is concerned, is over. Period. You can complain about it, you can legislate about it, you can gnash your teeth and prostrate yourself and offer blood sacrifices to your preferred god, but nothing will change this basic fact. If the content industry wishes to persist in this new reality, it will have to adapt to it. That means a business model that is not based on the economics of scarcity.

That does not mean, as the author seems to believe and the content industry threatens, that there will be no money to pay for new content. It means the economic model will have to shift away from one of necessity, to one of value-add.

There is no shortage of cleaning labour. Anyone can pick up a feather duster and go to town. Yet, we have professional cleaners. Why? Because there is an opportunity cost to cleaning. An hour you spend cleaning is an hour that you can't spend doing something else. Too, there is value-add. Perhaps the professional cleans better than you do. Perhaps they clean faster, or clean when you're not home. There is convenience and status involved in having someone clean for you.

All of this adds value to cleaning labour, making it so people can charge for it. Similarly, the content industry can focus on modes of distribution which add value to the content, which is not scarce. The content industry currently pretends it is in the mining business, with large upfront costs to extract a valuable and rare resource then bring it to market. It isn't. It's in the bottled water business. Water's everywhere, and it's free. Yet people buy it bottled. They pay for the convenience, and perhaps they pay for the perceived quality as well.

Just as the water bottlers cannot stop people from getting water for free, so too can the content industry not stop free content. They can only offer it in a better, more convenient form.

Amazon does this incredibly well. I used to download ebook torrents, and read them on my laptop. It sucked, and I stopped. Then I got my Kindle, and started again. It still sucked. The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the metadata was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never sort properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazon.

It was amazing. I got the book I wanted, instantly, in a fantastic format, for cheap. It was a better service than bittorrent, and I paid for it. Gladly. Now, I get all my ebooks this way and I wouldn't think of going back. Certainly, the publishers are pissed at Amazon, but that's because Amazon is rendering them obsolete. So too are studios pissed at Netflix. What they fail to grasp is that Netflix is not the problem, they're just a company that adapted where the studios have not.

There's no going back. The content industry can stamp its feet and huff and puff and sulk all they want, but the genie's out of the bottle.

Time to adapt or die.

> Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value.

What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say hypothetically in the future stealing a car becomes easy and without consequence (even though it's still illegal) does that mean there is no market value for cars? Of course it doesn't. It shows that people care more about saving money

If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music, the only reason they don't now is because stealing it is consequence free.

The convenience argument is also (for want of a better phrase) complete and utter bullshit. I can switch to itunes right now, type in a search term, hit purchase and have the song on my hard drive (and iphone and any other device I have connected to my itunes account) within 10 seconds. Hell, I'll open my screen recording program now and record me proving this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2wzb0-4Pg

People pirate music because it's free, consequence free (the reason they don't steal cars is consequence) and everyone spends all day every day justifying it. It's not a matter of convenience, people go to more effort pirating than they would purchasing (except for cases where the music is not available commercially, but those instances are "rare" and not a worthy consideration for the sake of this argument).

Please don't conflate tangible goods with intangible goods. Intangible goods are patterns. You can't steal a pattern, because a pattern can't be "owned" in any sense that a physical object can.

Now, you can have rights to a pattern and that right stops others from exploiting that pattern commercially, but you don't own the pattern. Even our current laws recognize this. After all, your right will expire, but if you own a car, you own it forever and without limits.

So enough with this "theft" bullshit.

The only reason this is true is that the laws say it is. Same as with those patterns of yours -- the laws could easily be changed so that you own the pattern always and forever. It's quite pointless to argue about the shoulds of the situation based on current law.

When we're talking about incentives for production and utility, it actually makes quite a bit of sense to conflate cars and music. They have many similar properties. On the consumption side, you do have to consider the added utility of making the music free, though, because some people will be able to consume it who otherwise wouldn't have paid.

I disagree. I think it's part of the current social code/contract, not just the law. In fact, the RIAA/MPAA ads say exactly that - "you wouldn't steal a car" - because they know people find property (particularly personal property) to be something we have a right to.

Copyright, on the other hand, is only unquestionable by the law.

Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same. Laws are indirectly derived from the social code, so just move my statement up a level. You still can't answer the question of how the social code ought to view bits from how it currently views them.

Sometimes the social code is wrong, and those who believe that copyright piracy is bad for society are making the case that this is one of those times. Simply observing the current state of the social code in no way counters those arguments -- although some of them can be countered other ways.

That's the thing: I don't believe they are. 46% (70% for young adults) of the US citizens admit to have committed copyright infringement. Almost no one agrees with large fines or with cutting off the connection for infringers.

I think there's a big disconnect between the social code and the law.

So too must the public attitude towards filesharing define our laws surrounding it. The majority of people have, without caveat, expressed through their actions their belief that filesharing is, and should be, a normal and accepted part of society. This may rankle those whose paychecks are predicated upon the status quo, but it doesn't affect our shifting morals. We are a people who accept and embrace "copyright infringement". It is only once this reality is accepted that the content industry may move forwards.

The important question is, if you take the root beliefs and walk back up the tree, do all of the beliefs come to an overall support of free copying? Then you do that in aggregate for society, taking into account uncomfortable truths about the economics of music production and advertising where necessary and on a level individuals won't when they derive their inevitable personal free-riding preferences. Going from high level feeling to high level feeling ("I like file sharing" -> "file sharing is right") does not work. Almost everyone says that they would prefer to pay less tax too.

To put it another way, there are plenty of things people would do if they could get away with it. Not paying taxes, driving as fast as they want, tossing cigarette butts wherever, etc. Your exact argumentation could be used to say, "Society's views about these activities need to change," but that's not actually the case. All you are observing is that people will take advantage of situations where they can get away with something, even if it's not ultimately good for society as a whole. In no way do I accept the norms that you're deriving from this. Rather, I should say that I don't accept the way you are deriving them. My personal jury is still out on whether I think filesharing is a problem that needs to be addressed more or less forcefully.

It sounds like you have strong opinions on the topic -- I'd love to hear more about how you think people justify copyright infringement.

People don't justify anything. By saying that something needs to be justified, you are suggesting that this is a moral issue? It's wrong for me to copy patterns of bytes? If so, then I've been a sinner since I was 10. Remember those 5 1/4 floppies, BBSes, IRC, etc? Yeah.

Copyright law was designed with businesses in mind, not individuals. Fair use should be expanded to encompass all personal use of patented or copyrighted material. Restrictions should only apply to commercial application.

Speaking of business ...

Did I mention I create digital works every day? That's what I do. I create software. My work can easily be copied ... and if it was, I wouldn't blame anyone but myself. Actually, I wouldn't even blame myself. Because my rampant "piracy" as a kid made me realize something. There is no value in software. There is only value in service. The software I write is merely a tool that I use to render a service and even if you copied it, you would only be left with a tool. I'm the final part of the equation and I can't be copied. That's the right way to do software.

What people don't mention is that the software industry was first. Before music, before movies, before books, before any of that ... the software industry was forced to change, more than that, it was born changed, because digital "piracy" was born with the software industry.

But I still think the ideal in software should be for a tool that just works and is intuitive enough to not require training. There are a lot of tricky problem domains where that's unlikely to ever happen. Such is often the case with ideals.

> There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service.

And then assume I meant something else.

> But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it.

Shame on you, sir.

> I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.

I think this is very much the wrong way to have a civilized discussion, despite your wit.

For what it's worth, I don't agree you should be downvoted. But you also have made it hard to have an actual discussion by casting everything as right/wrong type of situation and then clearly dictating what is right or wrong. That really makes it hard to have a civilized discussion because there's no seeking of understanding, just refutation.

No you don't; the car must be titled, road-legal, emissions tested, insured, and you must be licensed to drive. Those are some of the limits on owning and using a car. Physical possession doesn't constitute a natural right.

More generally, you shouldn't pretend like you can divine human law from physical constraints. Human law serves humans. Property law serves humans. Laws might want to take into account the nature of intellectual property as bits, or they might not, depending on what is practical and desirable; but the bits are an implementation detail.

That is not true. All of those things are necessary to use a car, not to own one.

Also, you mentioned earlier that mere possession does not imply rightful ownership. I totally agree, as would anyone who has been the victim of theft.

> And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it.

He says the opposite of this. Redthrowaway on free vs. paid content:

  The formatting was wrong, it was inconvenient, and the metadata
  was filled with crap from the rippers that meant it would never
  sort properly. So I bought an ebook from Amazon. 

What are you saying? Are you advocating for harsher consequences and more enforcement of existing law or more DRM? It's unusual to see so many luddites on HN. Personally, I'd prefer to see modernization of IP laws.

That's a tired and no longer relevant point. His point is that people will pay for the convenience of acquiring media, and then presents an example of when it was convenient to him (purchasing an ebook when the pirated version was sub par quality). However, as I showed in my video example, iTunes (and many other companies) have already addressed this issue, they have solved the convenience part and people still pirate, which shows (to me at least and I would hope everyone else) the issue is NOT acquisition of content or convenience, it's saving money.

Also no I don't think people should be punished more harshly for media piracy, I don't ever want to try and comment on the proper legal approach because I don't understand enough about the law to do it properly, but my basic thoughts on media piracy have been previously outlined here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3694764

Piracy happens in most cases because it's FREE, this is the #1 reason, the fact that Spotify etc. are finding success should be the absolute proof: Spotify is free (or cheaper, if you pay for a subscription) than purchasing music, that's why people use it. Convenience is not a valid or relevant reason for (most) media piracy any more. There are some cases (such as acquiring the entire discography of an artist or group, which can't be done easily through any pre-existing product) which makes piracy more convenient, but the common use case of media acquisition (a single song or an artists latest album) is not part of the convenience.

As for prices, yes, iTunes is also much too expensive for many things — when I can buy a physical copy and have it shipped crosscountry to my house for a fraction of the cost of iTunes' lousy crippleware, something is wrong — but that seems beside the point. Yes, a lot of piracy happens because it's free. Most of that piracy doesn't really seem to be replacing sales and so isn't really relevant from an economic standpoint. Those people just want something for free. It seems like the point where piracy really becomes a problem is when it's the superior option even for people who could easily afford to buy your wares.

iTunes still isn't the most convenient source for many things. My one experience with iTunes was trying to buy an album from a French musician. I spent several hours creating a fake French account with a legitimate French address and tracking down a French iTunes gift card. I had to give up, because the artist didn't take the time to manually check all 300 locales to include his album in.

You consider that 'solved'? The artist never got the money I was actively trying to give him.

This is the utilitarian, simplistic, convenient and completely false view. People are definitely NOT perfectly rational beings working towards their maximal, personal profit. This is why, BTW, libertarianism is a silly, childish pipe dream.

Coming back to the subject, people are perfectly aware that taking someone else's physical good may harm this person directly, that's why it's always carefully regulated by many told and untold rules. Even the most small, primitive societies have mechanisms for goods exchange and appropriation.

Digital goods aren't goods, they're information; when they're shared, the originator keeps them. Nobody never sold "information", only convenient, easy or practical access to it. People never bought "music" in the form of CDs, they bought CDs as the way to listen to the music they wanted.

I disagree with this completely. There's a tremendous desire for oxygen. Literally every human being needs it nearly every second of their life. However, it has no market value because it's freely available wherever you go. You're basically saying that price should be determined solely by demand, regardless of supply. You're ignoring fully half of economic theory.

Yes, there is a huge demand for digital copies of music and video, but there's also an infinite supply of them.

I look forward to that day so we can all have awesome hybrid vehicles that run on garbage. I suspect people will also be able to make awesome mashups so I can get an EV Jeep pickup or a 2012 convertible beetle.

I think you've missed the parent's point. We have left the world where pirating is impossible. The question is how to deal with it. Thinking in unrealistic hypotheticals does little to inform the debate.

It's more important to think about utility, because that can help us answer the question of whether the government and laws should be used to create market value where there is none by trying to make a good excludable.

Are you saying that 46% of US citizens* would steal a car if it was consequence free? Because I'd like to see some evidence of that.

* The number who have said to have committed copyright infringement.

And then, after they do that, they will spend countless hours writing message board posts on fora all over the Internet about how their speeding tickets are elaborate scams set by the government to raise revenue. Their justifications are almost as elaborate and refined as those of music pirates.

(I'm not on a high-horse here; I speed too.)

"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.

That's still just an assertion.

> an even greater majority of American drivers will disobey road safety laws (most commonly the speed limit) which are statistically shown to mitigate traffic fatalities.

And that's far from obvious, actually, especially when it comes to speed limits which you single out. See for example this analysis from the Cato Institute:

> Despite the fact that 33 states raised their speed limits immediately after the repeal of the mandatory federal speed limit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last October that "the traffic death rate dropped to a record low level in 1997." Moreover, the average fatality rate even fell in the states that raised their speed limits.

http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/speed-doesn...

But stealing a car always has consequences: someone has one car less. Saying that people would steal cars if the stolen cars didn't disappear from their owners is illogical.

On the other hand, disobeying road safety laws doesn't in fact have consequences most of the time: people rarely get hurt. And it has been demonstrated that people are terrible at evaluating odds. So the situation is far from analogous.

"Everyone does it, so it shouldn't be illegal" is --- and this is so obvious I don't even have to provide the most vivid examples --- historically a very dumb argument.

It's not my argument. I was just questioning parent's claim about stealing cars.

This is not at all the same thing as being willing to steal somebody else's car just because you know you won't get caught. In that case, you know that you are creating immediate harm to that person. People weigh that differently from a vague chance of killing an abstract person.

Another way to ask the question is to say "What are the consequences of stealing a car from your neighbour?" and I would say the answers would be "Legal (theft), moral (I have taken someone else's car) and financial (I have saved money on a car)". If stealing a car was consequence free then none of these would matter.

Then the questions I have are; why is copyright infringement free from moral consequences while car stealing isn't?

The moral consequences differ because the consequences differ.

But they aren't depriving me of my tobacco. The two are different, which is why the morality of the two are different. Nobody denies that being able to get the police to enforce a monopoly has value, but it's not the same kind of value as the ability to enjoy smething for its intrnsic value to the owner.

Different kinds of value, therefore different kinds of morality. I'd say that the right to monopolize bits has nothing to do with the bits and everything to do with taxation or rent-seeking.

I would also think that the relative value of the items makes a difference ethically. Assuming a song has a value on the market of $1 and a car has a going price of $10,000, the car is four orders of magnitude more expensive. Imagine if only one person could own a song at a time, and that song was valued the same as a car. I don't think you would see the rates of copyright infringement that you see today. For this same reason, I disagree that if car theft became consequence-free, many people would do it. The moral consequence is derived from the value of the object you are depriving someone of; a car is far more valuable than a song. Additionally, there's the ethical consequence of depriving someone of transportation, while taking a song does not really have any effects on a person's quality of life.

People will do all sorts of crazy things if the system allows them to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

I do think that's incorrect, but there's a broader picture issue that makes this irrelevant: Why does it even matter?

You're misunderstanding the original argument. Of course it's possible to make some money for selling something that is free. Specially if you convince people that it's not free, and that you'll go to jail if you do otherwise. But what they mean with "there's no market value", is that it doesn't create any new value to the economy. It's just money changing hands. If you ask me for 5 bucks and I say "yes, of course, no need to pay me back", we didn't just magically create value in the economy because I payed you 5 bucks for nothing. The value in the economy is the same, that's just money changing hands.

If I pay money for a copy of a song, that's just money changing hands. It didn't add any new value to the economy. If I didn't pay money for that copy of the song. The song would still be there. No change in value.

Unless, of course, if you make the argument that music would cease to exist if we start sharing it for free. Which I would honestly rather not get into.

so basically $10 per CD, everyone CAN AFFORD a wall full of CDs, lets say 10,000 of them, but they choose to steal instead? OK.

As for convenience, I may find it more convenient to download music from TPB or a college FTP than from iTunes, because I don't want to deal with their installer or give away my billing info. Convenience is an utterly subjective measure.

(also, your car analogy is shitty and bad and you should feel shitty and bad)

Of course - because once they have your billing info, they can actually bill you and your bank account will decrease by the cost of the CD.

So you pretty much proved his point - you just don't want to pay for something you can steal.

For every band you've heard of and hated, there are several you've never heard of, but probably would enjoy.

> keep a day job

"Producing less of it" because they can't earn enough to do it full time. There would be more people in that boat if, in my thought experiment, they earned absolutely nothing from their content. I don't think we'd actually ever reach that point, but just think about it as a 'what if'.

Also: some bands sell CDs, some give them away, lately fewer are selling, but instead are giving away passes at download sites. Even those that sell the CDs give away at least half if not more of them, because they would rather people listen to them and come back for the next show, and tell their friends, making $3-10 per person per show, than make $10 on the CD one time.

Now, how about authors?

As for authors, I wasn't talking about them, and I'm not going to play strawman games with you.

Authors are producers of 'information goods' too, and I hardly think such a large category of people constitutes a 'strawman'. It's an issue that to them is very real - musicians can sort of fall back on performances, but authors can't.

How many artists produce one-hit-wonders and then do basically nothing else, living off of payments? How many other artists produce more in their free time (Zappa, Waits, Infected Mushroom) then others do in their career (Chinese Democracy lol).

I would like to see copyright shortened to 2-5 years for exclusive distribution rights. I would like to see attribution requirements extended to say, 100 years. If you want to use the work, fine, but make sure you mention your work's pedigree. (altho at some point, its going to be either so known and part of the cultural zeitgeist that you don't need it and attribution requirements become a burden, or it won't matter, hence the 100 years). I would like to see unauthorized distribution fines go down to something reasonable, say 200% of the nominal cost at time of distribution + any profits made, and a reasonable fine on top of it (say $100). Since most people distribute for free, we should treat file sharing the same as a speeding ticket not a life changer - the fine system keeps the worst of the offenders relatively at bay. (it is bullshit position to think we should stop every last one of them every last time)

As for business models that work: Why do we need to know up front? Seriously, this here is a disingenuous argument. Instead, do like the tech industry does: stop propping up a bad business model with laws, and let the giants fade as better models come along and take their place. As the big companies decline or innovate, new ones will come along and mostly fail, but at some point, one will figure it out. I once heard someone say "silicon valley is just a big monte carlo simulation of business models". So lets just do that.

> giving away CDs at shows to keep people coming to the next show

No band in the world does this. They SELL CDs at shows, because it's one of the few ways they can generate enough cash flow to buy gas and food.

Basically my point is, they won't decline the money, but they still want their name out there bad enough to make the trade-off. Particularly when it's download coupons rather than CDs (which have an up-front cost). Similarly all the recoding studios in my town are booked up solid, and the better dozen or so sound engineers are never hurting for work. (And this is a pretty small town, 200K pop in the greater metro area).

No, and that kind of comment is not welcome here, either.

Information goods most certainly are scarce if you look at the effort it takes to make a song, a movie, a complex piece of software. That time and effort is not free. 'Dreamed up' is a lot different from 'sat down and worked hard on it for months'.

Come on now, you've been here long enough to know that's not how HN works. It's about basic respect towards others--not just to the poster, but to all of us here on HN. As a developer (and someone who runs a development shop?) you know that developer time is important. A comment is 10 seconds to write but will be broadcast on a site like HN to be read by many over many cumulative hours. Say those things which are worth saying to 100k hackers, not those things which are not worth saying to one.

You run a C-based dev shop out of Houston. I run a C-based dev shop out of Austin. The probability of us doing business together IRL is unusually high. Now when we meet, I'm always going to be thinking of you as that guy who gets into flamewars and insults others, instead of the guy who writes beautifully-commented crypto POSIX code.

I can go to great lengths to explain that the copyright/IP battle is uphill, and that every talking point parroted blindly and every baseless assertion made without logic is just more deadweight we have to work against, and that the (relative few) people trying to work for a better future can't afford to treat unsubstantiated remarks with anything less than full-on ridicule and insult. That's all well and good.

But, really, this is about respect, and regardless of how I feel on the topic, I crossed a line in what is otherwise a place of civil discourse (and the occasional lighthearted troll).

Thanks for calling me out on that.

Please try to avoid this.

In a comment starting with such question and attitude you'll very rarely find anything worthwhile...

>How many songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published? How many love poems are written and not saved? Content is far, far from scarce.

So, songs/stories "dreamed but never published" and poems "not saved" mean that content is ...far from scarce?

For one, "not published stories" are as good as NO stories at all, with regards to scarcity.

Second, we are not talking about every BS story everyone thought up at some point as content.

We talk about actual worthwhile content. Most of it is done professionally. Or, if you want to avoid the quality judgement, most of the content people WANT and DO consume, is done professionally.

If the creators weren't compensated there would be less of that content. And , surely, not of equal budget and scale. You can't record "The Wall" or film "The Matrix" without getting paid. Except maybe for some talented multi-millionaire, doing it out of passion. Not many of those around.

I don't think many would take an interest in "songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published".

The person I was replying to was trying to contend that content is scarce. I showed that, no, it indeed is not. Had they put in your caveat that undistributed content might as well not exist, I would've cheerfully argued and perhaps ceded the point. But, their statement, as given? Wrong.

Also, you claim (as does everyone else in this debate, it would seem) that creators must be compensated or less content will result. You cannot prove this, or if you can, you have not shown a reasoning chain that results in it. Use logic.

EDIT: Downvote away, but for chrissakes at least provide your reasoning. What is this, reddit?

It would be better if you spend some time to understand what they MEANT with by "content" in their statement, instead of attacking their statement "as given", i.e with only considering the more basic meaning of the word content.

Also: it's not just that "undistributed content might as well not exist", it's also that content not done to a level the public wants "might as well not exist". Even if you distribute (say, online, on YouTube) your "movie" made with a camcorder, it doesn't mean it will replace an actual, budgeted movie, for the majority of people.

>Also, you claim (as does everyone else in this debate, it would seem) that creators must be compensated or less content will result. You cannot prove this, or if you can, you have not shown a reasoning chain that results in it. Use logic.

Why don't YOU use logic? I don't have to "prove" anything, it's obvious.

1) People produce content for two reasons: for free and because they are paid to do so.

If they are not paid, the second reason ceases to exist. (If you don't believe that some of the professional content creators would not produce stuff if there were no money involved, talk to some of them). A lot of content is not produced "out of passion" at all, but solely for money. Justin Bieber songs, hollywood blockbuster, etc.

2) Content creation costs money. If content is not paid, expensive content will not be produced by anyone, even those that do it out of passion. A money, which can get to $100 million budget easily, is expensive content.

3) Content creation takes time. If professional creators cannot do it as a full time job, they will work some other full time job, and if they still feel the urge to do it out of passion, they would do it on their spare time. Again, volume will drop.

I can make a lot of things abundant, for a time, with similar violations. But that doesn't mean those are right, or an intelligent way to get along with other people. No one but the strongest and sneakiest have an interest in the economy of what you can get away with.

This has a few advantages - the utility of music is generally unknown at the time of its production. Popularity, especially, adds utility to a piece of music and is very difficult to predict in advance. In fact, I think popularity dominates the utility that many content consumers derive from music. Sometimes auteurs manage to produce something that defies your expectations and gives you much more utility than you thought it would have.

If you retain the right to seek rents on content you've produced, you're able to charge what's appropriate to the utility that consumers currently derive from your music, rather than what they'd have expected to when you made it (nothing, if they'd never heard of you!). If you can't seek rent on the products of your labor, then you have to get compensated for it directly. Currently, musicians do this mostly via live performance, but I suppose holding content for ransom via some sort of kickstarter-analogue might be a viable way forward.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that there's less money in that sort of thing than rent-seeking, but I'm certainly not an expert. If there's less money in it, then there will be less high-quality content. I've thought about it, and I think I'm okay with that. If the market for recorded music contracts due to digital sharing, I think I'll live, and I'd prefer digital sharing to remain possible.

It's unfortunate for musicians, but I guess I'm just a callous soul.

If something wasn't scarce--e.g. information sans copyright--then anybody could get it without paying. This is a practical reality that copyright attempts to change by legal means; the argument is that the legal means impose a larger cost than benefit on society.

You could probably shoplift all the bottled water you can carry, every day, and you still would not deprive another customer. 7/11 would simply keep shipping in more water so they would have product to sell. (Of course they would also get some cops in there to try and stop you!)

Eventually, if they're not making enough money due to all the shoplifting, they might stop carrying bottled water. But that won't be because they ran out of supply; it will be because it's no longer profitable to do so. This is analogous to a movie studio deciding not to make or distribute certain kinds of movies anymore because it is no longer profitable for them.

What about the store? Surely you're depriving them of the bottle of water, right? Again, not really. The store does not actually want to possess so many bottles of water--what they want is to make money by selling bottles of water. And if you look at the economics of the transaction, that's primarily what you're depriving them of. Let's say a bottle of water is priced at $1.50. 7/11, who buys in bulk and then marks up, probably paid $0.50 or less for that same bottle. Thus when you steal it, 66% of the harm is in foregone revenue! Only 33% of the harm is loss of property value. Again, this is analogous to copyright infringement, where the primary harm is foregone revenue, not deprivation of property.

And your are misunderstanding even more basic economics: being able to take something (or a copy of it) without paying, doesn't mean it doesn't have value either.

Value is where there are people willing to pay.

And people ARE willing to pay for music and movies.

So, the problem is not that the content has no value, but rather that the payment step can be bypassed very easily.

But bypassing payment easily != the thing has no value.

This very much follows economics.

(and stop conflating utility with market value...argh....)

We're talking about monetary value -- i.e the ability of the item to generate money.

No, just demand.

You can simulate scarcity with access provision. Else you don't get to have an economy in the digital age.

People talk like this is something new, but it's not. Sun Records made Elvis's singles. Nothing even in that analog era prevented ANY OTHER COMPANY to reproduce and sell the same singles and not give Elvis a penny. Nothing, that is, except the copyright law.

This also holds for software licenses. If digital copying means "forget about copyright law" (a prerequisite to declare that "scarcity is finished") then why should anyone respect the GPL license any more than Metallica's copyright?

You can't simulate scarcity with access provision. We've solved that. We wouldn't be having this same stupid tired runaround if access provision worked or could be made to work without being repugnant.

As for the Elvis singles, those were physical goods, housed in physical places, with physical companies. This is vastly different from people giving away byte patterns to one another--and the sooner this is accepted, the sooner we can all productively talk about it.

As for your GPL license...

I'm willing to wager that, shock, there are a lot of companies that use in-house tools having modified GPL source without publishing their changes. I'm willing to wager even more that in developing nations there are lots of IP violations of that nature occurring.

Your law means nothing if it cannot be enforced.

In short, I can modify the GPL source of an application all I like if it's an "in-house tool", and I am not required to resubmit my changes. It's only if I attempt to sell it or redistribute the application in some way that I am required to.

That is not an IP violation.

The reason that point is important is because regardless of the value derived by the end user, it is the ability to extract value that counts for the producer. And when smell cannot be rationed, or music supply cannot be controlled, you change your model.

The author's point on this is that there's already a paying customer who covers the cost of producing the smell (by buying the meal).

Which just goes to show you can't push a metaphor too far. I still agree more with PG's conclusion. It really is a strawman to claim that copyright is the only way to pay creators.

There's already a paying customer who receives meal: local distributors who the content is licensed to. They get exclusive rights to the content (meal).

Now, internet services receive smells: non-exclusive rights which are valid in some countries and not others, like cheese with holes.

Now there's this huge problem where I can't go to 99% of internet services and pay for music because they don't want my money because I live in a wrong country. This is what we'd call "smell", and while I would pay for "meal" (ability to use any music service in the world according to its pricing and model), I'm only offered "smell" (the suggestion to go elsewhere and figure a way to actually pay for stuff).

And this smell, I won't buy.

Land used to make no sense to sell. Shit changes it now makes sense. Copies of music doesn't really make sense anymore either.

Hype (which is great) for example. Can he really tell his investors that people downloading it from TPB is no problem? In theory his thesis is fine, in reality not so much.

Whether or not there is some truth in the philosophical view that "illegal copying is theft", the reality is that the characteristics that make it easy to copy digital works makes it really difficulty to maintain a business model that relies on everyone paying for the bits they copy... as difficult as charging for smells.

What he hits on is that there is no scarcity anymore. Media is reproduced and shared freely and instantly, because that is the nature of the internet. The 'pipes' (expensive, physical means of distribution) the recording industry pumped music through for decades have now dissappeared and have been replaced with an open environment. Anything that tries to close that environment is just trying to create artificial scarcity.

It's true that media costs money to produce. And the publishers can still charge for it, if they make the distribution model convenient (or not). But that is still a one time cost which promotes the artist. And let's not act like artists are going to just stop making media if they don't think publishers are going to give them a big payday. They aren't. The more likely scenario is that the distribution will shift to being handled by the artists and that money will be made through concerts and merchandise. Downloaded music will be paid for sometimes, but mostly used for advertisement.

Here's the thing: production needs to change. If production is too expensive to justify digital revenue streams, then either we need to get creative about revenue streams or we need to rethink the cost side of the business. I'm less concerned with whether we feel this is "right" or "wrong," as such concerns are largely irrelevant. Arguments about right and wrong are distractions, and they offer us little in the way of practicality.

What's relevant is that a shift has occurred in the marketplace, and now the players in the market needs to adapt to it. Adaptation isn't going to be easy, and the status quo will need to undergo a painful transition. But we need to adapt, one way or the other.

Hoping the genie gets sucked back into the bottle is not a business strategy. But rethinking the revenue and/or cost sides of the business is.

There's nothing wrong with writing a prescriptive essay; it doesn't make it in any sense weaker. But it is prescriptive, and Rob's argument here is specifically with the prescriptive part of the argument--in other words, he argues that music is not so much like smells that it supports the overall prescription pg is making.

The original blog didn't claim pg was encouraging piracy directly, so my post was a bit off topic, but I wrote it because I found when discussing this essay/talk with others, many tend to draw that conclusion.

The examples that PG points to are all examples of massive societal and social change (moving to the moon, changing from hunter gathering, and in a comment he nodded to the abolition of slavery). These were situations where we did have a fundamental shift in what our society believed was property. This simply hasn't happened here. Citizens still believe that an idea is yours, that creative works have value and belong to the person who creates them. We desire to protect that.

Where it has all gone wrong is our laws and the industries. Perhaps the value of this property has decreased and the law still protects the ability of the media giants to price beyond that value. That's not working for citizens. Citizens are being held to licenses and contracts they haven't read and don't understand. They can't trade an ebook from their device to their spouse's. When I switch between android and iphone do I no longer own angry birds? The real problem is that the legislature isn't working for us to protect these property rights in a way that makes sense for us as the citizens who made the property a right in the first place. Could this be keeping the market from adjusting to valid pressures?

If I was in the music industry, my line of reasoning would be thus

1. Can I prevent people from downloading my stuff illegally? (My guess is this very unlikely regardless of lawsuits, drm, etc)

2. Given that some people WILL obtain my goods without having paid for it, how can I still make money from the cheap bastards? (My guess is this will probably involve using assets that I can exert monopoly control to access e.g. live interactions, licensing, early access to stuff, etc)

3. How can I ensure the folks who would still pay for my goods are not tempted to defect and join the pirates? Here's where you make sure your distribution strategy is much better than the pirate experience (It probably wouldn't hurt to help to make the pirate experience suck a little bit by seeding torrents with crappy versions of your goods and hampering companies who want to improve the pirate experience).

I would probably focus more on the 2nd step simply because the 1st and 3rd are just band-aids and can only take you so far. This point of view probably pisses some people off but like everything else, it's not personal, just business

Musicians can help the pledge process along by releasing low-quality or partial files, and releasing the full files once pledge targets are reached.

There's a game theory argument that this won't work, but million-dollar pledges on Kickstarter pretty much prove that it works just fine in the real world.

Similarly, the recording people have regularly paid big bux to radio station to freely distribute the music. The exposure gets a song popular, hence more sales. Yet, instead of looking at an even greater chance for big exposure, the industry is looking to clamp down on it. Granted, it involves changing the product from the recorded music to something else surrounding that. Still, this I felt was the main point of the analogy, rather than "derp music is just air", like the author suggests.

I will be glad to see the "big music" bubble burst and all these companies go out of business. I find myself hoping the execs stay jobless and penniless for long after they do. I'm not worried about the lower echelon people, skilled talent will find a way to earn their living either in a small scene, specialized way, or in a different industry.

It depends on what you mean by "being heard". Some people think the only acceptable business model for music is for musicians to perform live. If we were to follow this line of thought, what's the difference between listening to music outside the concert grounds and listening to music stored on a digital device? In neither case are you participating in the live performance. In neither case have you reduced the artist's net worth by a single penny, provided that you never intended to attend the live performance anyway.

> What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of it.

And maybe that would be a good thing, as some other commenters have already suggested. Maybe it's not a morally acceptable business model to charge money for making copies of existing code. More companies should be charging money for the value-added services they offer, like making it easier for us to access music and apps, and offering subscriptions. If you don't want people to copy your code without paying, don't release it publicly in the first place, and only release it to people who sign NDAs. That's how business secrets work, right?

I'm not sure if I want to agree 100% with these lines of thought, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Edit: Added paragraph.

All the interest and investment in new distribution services is basically looking to be part of RIAA 2.0 - continuing profitable distribution channels based on consumer laziness. The goal of the record industry has never been to compensate artists, and the decreasing prevalence of big-name acts means there's even fewer lucky ones with the power to demand so. Meanwhile, the pirate side has accepted that distribution is free and is trying to usher in the future so sustainable artist-beneficial (whatever that turns out to mean) structures can be created. Oink was responsible for my going to many shows, while the risk of being hassled over torrenting (I've become more risk-adverse) has resulted in me knowing very few bands on the concert listings.

Wait. Let me guess... because they invested, so they deserve to profit right?

So somebody please explain to me why the media industries are different. If anybody thinks music is free please go price out studio time before replying.

I have to pay for my own woodworking tools and computers, but I don't expect people to subsidize me in my hobby. And if I decided to go pro--which in the case of computers I have--I would make sure I only make things the market wants, and not take on shitty contracts signing away future sale equity until some vaguely defined point in the future.

And the other day, I turned on a $20 tape recorder.

Perhaps you should expand your ideas of what constitutes publishable music.

Edit: And perhaps you should expand on why YC deserves value from its investments and other industries do not. That's more important than either of our snarkiness.

I would never make the argument that musicians shouldn't get payed and payed well for their work, but for the copyright holders to dictate how, where, and under what circumstances I listen to music that I've payed is the problem with copyright law.

I should have to pay for music. I shouldn't have to pay for the same song four different ways so I can listen to it in my car, on my Ipod, computer, and home stereo.

The problem is the distribution companies. When artists wise up and realize they don't need record labels or movie studios anymore, we'll all be paying for DRM free content - and the artists will get rich.

This is why we have lobbyists for these big companies trying to avoid extinction.

(also the smells equivalent in music would be more like trying to charge people who happen to overhear music while going about some other activity)

I suppose that amounts to a freedom to piracy. But that doesn't mean piracy is somehow right, or even intended. It's an injustice, of individuals, persisting in the space needed to maintain a free society.

Nor am I much impressed by the argument that with so many people pirating, it must actually be moral. Probably most of them think it's moral, given that they take their norms from the people around them. And the offenses are largely minor. But I think the steps from principle to copyright are pretty clear, and I don't see how anyone concludes that it's actually right.

It's like littering: no one actually thinks it's okay, but they do it because it's convenient, they won't get caught and it isn't a big deal. The consequences of those calculations are obvious.

1. The artist actually gets even more of a shit deal with digital distribution than they did with physical media. You are supporting the machine, not the musician.

2. The cost of developing a quality recording has plummeted dramatically, the only substantive cost remaining is the advertising. The exception might be for faux artists like Rihanna that hire top notch songwriters to pen hits, but for lesser known musicians, mp3 distribution has been shown in studies to have a positive impact.

3. mp3s can function as the advertising medium itself. The money can be made elsewhere like endorsements, or touring. Live music can never be "stolen".

This response was flimsy.

    > This is a flawed analogy. Cooking smells are a
    > positive externality – they’re generated as a
    > by-product of providing a service to paying patrons.
    > But commercially released music is produced
    > specifically for the purpose of being heard, and
    > paid for (whether by the buyer, or by a royalty
    > from a radio station). 

That's similar to the situation we have with commercial music venues. The government extends property rights to things that are both (1) not property and which (2) have a very different dynamic to property. And then dedicate operators set up to harvest that.

The people producing cooking smells wouldn't be restaurants producing food innovation. The restaurants themselves wouldn't have time to spend chasing after fiddly smell licensing arrangements, and paying up lawyers to go chasing after freeloaders. They're too busy running actual restaurants. Just as it is where the people producing music aren't themselves the music artists, and except for a tiny (although highly visible) fraction, music artists (even world class music artists) do not benefit from copyright protection.

The article goes on to claim that music costs money to produce - ludicrous. You can put a microphone under a jazz musician and then publish it on the internet and it's first class music. You can take a laptop into a symphone orchestra concert and record it. Recording and distributing things is so free of cost that the commercial music industry has to go out of its way to find mechanisms to shut down the people who do it, and to get the government to protect it.

I'm in the privacy of my room. Someone is broadcasting radio into my space. Why the hell shouldn't I flip some magnetic signals and bottle it, and give it to my friends if I want to? Or sell it? It's my damn room and media.

It significantly impedes our freedom. It makes us criminals in our own homes. And it doesn't delivery to the people whos interest it is justified by. It creates a sea of lobbyists who need to extend the policy further and further into our lives just so they can stay in the same place. It is indefensible, disgusting policy failure on a grand scale.

It's important to stress that intellectual property innovation occurs because people have a problem to solve. I wrote a franchise system for an events company because - surprise surprise - they had a franchise, and wanted software to better run it.

Mendellsohn wrote the Scottish symphony because he was inspired to do so. Orchestras perform works because people come to their concerts to experience the sound and atmosphere and variation, despite having high quality recordings at home. IBM funds linux because it wants an operating system capability for its servers.

However, the mamoth presence of things that leverage copyright in the market and in our lives distorts our perspective. Because of its legal advantages and the privilege it pushes focus away from artists, and leads to crazy circular logic of the sort shown in this article. You could simplify many of the points as, "The world is this way, therefore the world must be this way."

There was a time hundreds of years ago when the church had a monopoly on education. They would have tried to claim that without strong privilege, education would not happen. It's a lie.

IP law is holding us back, but you need to use your brain to see past the world we live in to the opportunities we're missing out of because of all these protected gangsters who dominate the channels.

Near the end I see bold text,

"What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations?"

You can charge for your creation. Steam has mechanisms for getting people to buy from them, and to make it difficult for people to run steam software they haven't paid for. Good for them.

But you shouldn't have the right to get the government to annoint business models for you, or to be your enforcer. Copyright and patents are not property, and they should be described that way or treated that way in law.

    > What he's talking about is the fact that it might
    > take an artist over a month to create a two-and-
    > a-half-minute song.

But let's expand, because I can raise Jade Ewen now.

The only musicians who benefit from copyright in a significant way are a few that get hand-picked as front-men by the gansters who run the music industry. These are the ones they can point to.

Consider Ms Ewen. Successful artist, national treasure who performed well in Eurovision for the UK, one of the handful of music artists from the billion around the world who probably makes something a sliver over minimum wage from leveraging copyright. Her record label (who make the real money) tell her to move her life to Los Angeles without telling her what she'll be doing there. http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=4373&_t=jade_had_n...

Her company would have had a choice of twenty girls with excellent looks and high quality vocals when they decided to pick her as their next star. They have some brand invested in her, but they can replace her when they like. They already started the process when they pushed her into the sugarbabes.

She is cattle to them.

But she puts a smile on it in the end, because she has no options.

All those kids who sign on to those talent shows are. They have to sign away their rights to the sponsoring organisations just to get in.

I'm on the lookout for a news story to demonstrate a culture of mates agreements between studios and compliant "managers". It will reveal itself in time.

Copyright law creates structures suitable for a ganster class of copyright interests. It does not serve artists.

It's easier to see the problem in publishing or the game industry than in music, since musicians can make money from performances. Taking your example of Mendelssohn, he made his money from holding concerts and getting stipends from German monarchs. Authors and game designers can't hold performances, so the only way they can make money is by actually selling copies of their work, which requires intellectual property rights, or by hoping to attract a rich sponsor. If Amazon could sell books without having to give any royalties to the copyright holders, they would.

The idea that copyright only benefits the select few in the music industry isn't true, either. Labels often get caught plagiarizing songs that were written by small artists and handing them to big-name artists that they have under contract. With copyright, the smaller artists have an uphill battle. Without copyright, they have no weapons whatsoever.

    > The claim in the article isn't that nobody would
    > write and perform music without copyright, but that
    > there would be less of it, and that it would be of
    > lower quality. 

    > Authors and game designers

    > so the only way they can make money is by
    > actually selling copies of their work, which
    > requires intellectual property rights

People can also make money by publishing something, and then getting a job teaching (or some other expert capacity) in the field.

    > The idea that copyright only benefits the
    > select few in the music industry isn't true,
    > either. Labels often get caught plagiarizing songs
    > that were written by small artists and handing them
    > to big-name artists that they have under contract.
    > With copyright, the smaller artists have an uphill
    > battle. Without copyright, they have no weapons
    > whatsoever.

Given the absolute absence of evidence, the default needs to be no copyright, because copyright intrudes on our freedom. To be enforced, it's necessary to reach further and further into the privacy of people's lives and homes, and that is incompatible with the spirit of live-and-let live that is the foundation of free society.