If that's the case, why should the rest of us pay money for enforcement actions (in the form of taxes) and why should the rest of us allow a few Giant Immoral Corporations to distort our society and culture? Shouldn't our elected representatives patiently explain the economics to the crybaby corporations, and then politely tell them to go pound sand?

This is a control issue, plain and simple. The market for "content" is changing from a very cozy oligopoly to a one where no single firm or cartel has very much monopoly power. It's our sacred duty as Americans and Free Market Advocates to cause a transition to a market that can better serve the needs of consumers. Mercantilism in the form of "DRM" or "Intellectual Property" must not stand!

But, most people don't have that kind of commitment or discipline and the rest are just part of the movement because they want free stuff.

Voting with your wallet works when you can stop paying one company and go to its competitor. But if they all get together and decide that you have to do it their way or you're screwed, then guess what's going to happen? The majority will find the best way to procure what they need under the circumstances and the minority will fight to change the situation. It just happens that it in this particular situation the best way to procure what people need is not by choosing the least evil of the providers, but you have a choice to copy stuff for free, instead.

Let's make things clear: this doesn't make it legal to pirate stuff. On the other hand, "legal", "correct", "practical" and "optimal" are never the same thing. Just as no amount of arguing will change the fact that piracy is (still) illegal, no amount of arguing will change the fact that the industry needs to evolve.

Whenever we have discussions about companies violating the GNU and people say "just don't use GNU software", I say the same thing. But the funny thing is, the same people that are fine with pirating are against essentially the same thing with the GNU license. What a world we live in. I'm going to keep bringing up these points until they stick.

"Voting with your wallet works when you can stop paying one company and go to its competitor. But if they all get together and decide that you have to do it their way or you're screwed,"

You don't need music or movies to live. If they all decide to do it, just stop buying all together.

This isn't new. I saw this same "movement" 10 years ago with Napster and it's nothing more than an excuse to get movies, music, and software for free.

Music is so cheap. All of the original demands 10 years ago have been met. Guess what? piracy is worse than ever. It reminds me why you never negotiate with terrorists.

Correction: you don't need them to survive. They are, however, a part of everyone's lives nowadays. We all grew up listening to music and watching movies. It would require tremendous external pressure (such as war or plague) to change that. Maslow's Pyramid and all that jazz.

Music is so cheap. All of the original demands 10 years ago have been met. Guess what? piracy is worse than ever. It reminds me why you never negotiate with terrorists.

I'm not sure what demands were made 10 years ago, but I can tell you that I, as a customer, am far from satisfied. I want to be able to

1) buy digital music (MP3, OGG, I don't care) in an online store

2) access that store via HTTP(S) using my browser, not some proprietary bloatware

3) find a variety of songs in the store, have lots of stuff to choose

4) download that music to any device I have, as many times as I want

5) be able to play that music without being connected to the Internet

6) do all of the above regardless of the fact that I don't live in US, UK or Germany, to name a few favorite countries

When those conditions are met, you'll have people like me -- people who want to try buying the content instead of pirating -- try to switch to these new services. The piracy will start declining, albeit very, very slowly.

People have had a freaking decade to get used to getting stuff for free, because the industry refused to adapt. Worse, the industry is still resisting the change and refusing to evolve. These things have their own momentum and inertia. It would be extreme optimism to expect a change to happen overnight, once good alternatives are available. As things stand, it's beyond extreme optimism to expect that change -- it's completely ridiculous.

I don't buy it. Hiding behind a list of demands that must be met in order for you to be okay with actually financially compensating the people who financially backed, created, and then distributed said content is just posturing. At least, that's how it looks from the perspective of someone who a) doesn't pirate and b) doesn't buy media when the terms are not to his liking.

I've met a few people who pirate songs and then buy band merchandise in order to get proceeds to the band (more than otherwise, if I am to understand it correctly). Those guys are cool guys, and they back their moral rhetoric with their actions. Something tells me the majority of pirates are not like these guys, though (admittedly) I have no facts to back that up - just the anecdotal evidence of knowing quite a few pirates, most of whom, to put it bluntly, really don't give a fuck - they just want the content.

The issue is that sometimes when you pay for something you end up with an inferior product, for example being required to install additional software that you either don't like or may not even be available for your platform.

I think you can mitigate piracy a lot by simply providing a slightly better service. For example I know plenty of people who used to pirate most of their games but now they buy them on steam as soon as the price is reasonable to them.

Cynicism aside, the geographical requirement is reasonable. I still won't pirate even if it's not available here unless there is some way to pay for it (damn my parents and their persistent morals) but I do see the argument for 'There absolutely is no other way for me to get it.' It's nearly impossible to argue against that one, especially considering any geographical restrictions are likely arbitrary. Though I fail to see why anyone would restrict themselves from a potential market, especially if your content is digital.

There are also network effects at work, I remember when Napster first became popular (I was quite young at the time) and literally overnight everyone at school had gone from owning a handful of CDs and cassettes to having huge music collections.

People spent a lot of their time discussing the various artists they had discovered through Napster and you would have been considered pretty odd if you didn't have at least a couple of gigabytes of music. Not to mention that everybody suddenly had more disposable income to spend on other things. So whilst you could take a moral stance on it, you would most likely become an outcast to a certain extent. Besides, people tend to decide their morals based on what they see others do.

This can also work the other way though, as with my Steam example. As well as selling games in a convenient way they also provide tools you can use to find out what your friends are playing and join games with them. This means that adoption can spread around a peer group pretty quickly.

It would make more sense for the artist to sell me the tracks I want in a convenient way (direct download, no DRM, standard format, easy payment) rather than for them to distribute their music in a DRM format that I don't want and to have it pirated and then buying T shirts to somehow make up for it.

Oh yeah, I forgot - how much is buying a ticket to seeing them live worth? Full ticket retail price, or less?

EDIT: I'm going to add in that I'm also not going to bother replying anymore because you obviously think the downvote button is the 'nuh-uh!' button. How productive.

What does the band get from me buying a CD of theirs used? Is it substantially more quantifiable than talking about the band?

> I have nothing more to say about it - you obviously can't see the forest for the trees.

I'll admit I'm trolling with the questions, but it's hard not to when you're attempting to divide pirates into "cool people" and the other kind based on categories you yourself seem to not have thought out very well.

> EDIT: I'm going to add in that I'm also not going to bother replying anymore because you obviously think the downvote button is the 'nuh-uh!' button. How productive.

Hacker News doesn't let users downvote posts in immediate response to their posts (replies one deep). I upvoted your responses to me as a matter of personal policy. The only other post of yours in this entire thread I've voted on is http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3590726; I recall downvoting due to general flimsiness of your argument, particularly the irony of dismissing word-of-mouth arguments as hand-waving when yours were no stronger, and the ill thought out attempt to distinguish cool pirates from uncool pirates. Thanks for asking.

I would argue that the profit from first sale has already been made, and the terms of that distribution include the ability to resell. They've already made money off that CD, and you are paying the person who owned it originally for it now, not the band. Since they produced the CD, they agreed to these terms when they sold the physical media.

> I'll admit I'm trolling with the questions, but it's hard not to when you're attempting to divide pirates into "cool people" and the other kind based on categories you yourself seem to not have thought out very well.

I wasn't actually trying to imply group A is cool and group B is not, 'cool' was just the verbage I was using to indicate that I didn't really have a problem with what group A was doing, as they were following the spirit (if not the letter) of the law and were attempting to compensate the band for their efforts. I apologize if my poor choice of wording called you 'uncool' by accident. :-)

I will return the upvote for the civil reply.

First of all, I resent your assumptions and insinuations. Self-righteous rhetoric like that sounds appealing to the listener, but it doesn't really add any rational weight to your arguments. Contrary to what you imply, I do buy the music I like, whenever I can find an outlet that satisfies my conditions. I could just go on listening to that stuff on YouTube and even pirate it down do MP3 from there, but I try my best to find a way to buy it. Occasionally, I succeed in that. Does that make me one of those "cool guys" you're talking about? Or am I still one of those who "don't give a fuck", according to your admittedly anectodal evidence you used in your own moral rhetoric?

Anyway, yes, I feel justified pirating stuff that doesn't meet those demands, because -- contrary to what you claim -- those demands are not arbitrary. Almost all of those demands are there to protect my rights, the ones the industry insists on denying.

The demand #2 protects the same rights you enjoy when you drive the car of your own choosing on a road. Having to use a proprietary application to purchase a song is pretty much like being told you are allowed to drive only a Honda along the Route 66.

Demands #4 and #5 are there to ensure that I can listen to the songs I bought with my money, songs that I have a right to listen to, with as few restrictions as possible. I'm pretty sure someone could offer to sell you a hairdryer that works every day except on Fridays, but I'm also pretty sure you wouldn't buy it unless you had no other choice.

Demand #6 is there to cut through the arbitrary bullshit imposed by the industry. I could wrap my mind around export restrictions on crypto that used to be in place before, but applying similar logic to music should be unacceptable. It's as if you were granted the right to be called by your own name only in certain countries; in the rest, people will just have to point fingers at you.

I admit that demands #1 and #3 are just there to ensure a comfortable experience. Without them, things are perfectly fine, as long as I don't mind having to go buy useless physical media or finding it anywhere between hard and impossible to find music that I like in case my taste doesn't conform to that of the mainstream masses.

I'm aware that you could find flaws in most of the analogies I used above and that most of them boil down to "Yes, but these are not physical objects we talk about, it's digital stuff that can be copied endlessly, without degradation." See, that is why we're talking about evolution here and why the industry is shitting bricks. The only thing I can say on that topic is that it's not really my problem as a customer. People who ask me "how would you fix the problem, then?" are missing the point: it doesn't take a doctor to point out that someone is bleeding to death. Right now, things are bad and there's no reason not to point it out, even if you don't have a solution.

I believe my demands are reasonable. In the end, it doesn't matter much. This is, and has always been, a power struggle. It's naive to claim that this is about artists and paint it morally right or wrong. But let's pretend that it is, just for a moment. How come nobody applies to artists the same argument on which I called BS? How come nobody says "Well, then, artists should stop signing contracts with companies that keep pissing off all these people?" Why do you expect consumers to vote with their wallets -- when they can't, due to collusion in the industry -- but not the artists to vote with their feet?

If the answer is "pirates are breaking the law and the industry and artists are not", that's just legality. I've already said that piracy is illegal and nothing short of a change in laws will change that. It also used to be legal to deny rights to women and people of certain races. My point is that I feel that my rights and my freedom are being denied. Not essential, fundamental rights and freedoms. As a matter of fact, some of the rights I'm talking didn't even exist before technology enabled them to exist. That's no argument that invalidates those rights.

Think about it: we're the consumers, it's our money that the industry thrives on. Damn straight we have demands.

Besides, the reason artists sign contracts is the same reason game developers go work for companies like Ubisoft who then make their games use repressive DRM that they completely disagree with - that is the industry we have, and they'd rather be a part of it, making money and exercising their talents, than standing on the outside struggling to get by while they rage against the machine. It's not their fault the current institution is set up the way it is.

Also, I'm pretty sure if Honda sold a car that only worked on Route 66, people would just not buy it, but I feel the comparison doesn't completely do it all justice because we've long argued that physical goods are not equivalent to digital media, otherwise piracy would be stealing instead of... well, piracy.

Like I said before, I'm not arguing the legality here. I'm not sure what prevents the big shots in other industries colluding to treat their customers like crap, but I don't really care whether it's laws or something else.

You can see why I don't choose to be a part of this cycle.

Of course. That's your decision. I wasn't objecting to that. I was objecting to the tone of moral superiority and implied accusations.

Besides, the reason artists sign contracts is the same reason game developers go work for companies like Ubisoft who then make their games use repressive DRM that they completely disagree with - that is the industry we have, and they'd rather be a part of it, making money and exercising their talents, than standing on the outside struggling to get by while they rage against the machine.

Smells like a false dichotomy.

It's not their fault the current institution is set up the way it is.

Not my fault, either. Let's face it, both artists and pirates have choices and a wide variety of reasons and motivators behind the choices they actually make. Yet pirates are invariably branded as bad guys, parasites and criminals, while artists are generally perceived as having no other choice. Why? On the surface, it's because piracy is not legal. Scratch a little deeper and you'll see that the real reason is because it's easy to just shrug and say "that's the way things are".

Are there pirates who are mere parasites, who just want free stuff? Of course, there's a whole lot of them. Would all of them still be pirates, even if there was a really good, cheap alternative? My anecdotal experience of human nature makes me incline towards "No, a lot of them would buy their stuff without thinking twice." But that's just me, of course.

Thing is, what pisses me off is the way entertainment industry treats people who would like to spend money and be respected in return. And yet pirates are the bad guys, just because there are laws that need to change.

Also, I'm pretty sure if Honda sold a car that only worked on Route 66, people would just not buy it, but I feel the comparison doesn't completely do it all justice because we've long argued that physical goods are not equivalent to digital media, otherwise piracy would be stealing instead of... well, piracy.

Missed the point. The analogy was "Route 66 accepts only Honda", not "Honda can only run on Route 66" and the point of it was that such nonsense would not be acceptable, even if all of the car manufacturers got together with the government and made that kind of stuff legal.

Amazon also offers a pretty fair price. $0.99 isn't a lot (and it's even cheaper per song if you buy the album). If $0.99 is too much, then I suggest the person go get a better job rather than pirating songs and feeling an entitlement to someone else's work.

... and I don't need to download a 'special' piece of software to download an entire album at once (vs. requiring me to click on each individual track and download it separately)?

All the news I've read regarding streaming services (they have existed a lot less than 10 years, mind you) is that they are decreasing piracy. Do you have any other data points?

You probably have cause and effect reversed. I'd wager that one of the biggest reasons for their wanting an enforcement of the terms of the GNU license is to show the big companies what it feels like to be in a situation where your choice is limited to one of (a) stick to the terms, or (b) don't use

  > But the funny thing is, the same people that are fine
  > with pirating are against essentially the same thing
  > with the GNU license.

"The funny thing is" that I see claims like this all the time from both sides of the fence. "HN is just a bunch of Google apologists!" "HN is just a bunch of Google-haters!" etc...

Comparing them to music isn't really a good thing to do since you can't find a comparable substitute for Incubus's style and Brandon Boyd's voice, where as I can change out GCC compiler for Solaris Studio, Visual Studio, or ICC any day I want with minimal effort and precisely the same results.

They could be against it because it hinders sharing, not because it violates copyright.

But beyond all that, the whole "Piracy!" excuse doesn't take into account whether the proposed problem actually merits a solution, whether the proposed solution actually cures the problem, and whether the proposed solution causes more problems than it cures. "But, but, Piracy!" is just a way to whip up a confusing semantic fog around an issue, demonize a set of viewpoints, and use that demonization to pursue some kind of agenda that hardly anyone would go along with without the associated confusing and witchhunts. You're doing it yourself, subtly, by implying that I habitually "pirate" stuff, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Although I'm not a church-goer any more, I'm a citizen, and a taxpayer. I don't cuss, I obey the Law of the Sea, Canon Law, and the Laws of Thermodynamics. I do not advocate the violent overthrow of the government, and I have no conflicts of interest.