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Comment by mkoivuni | Hacker News Reader

The real reason anyone pirates is because they can get away with it. I'm sure if there was a digital way to steal a bottle of grey goose from a liquor store a lot more people would pirate grey goose and start making claims that the price is too high and it's too hard to get.

If you would go to jail for downloading Herbie Fully Loaded off of the pirate bay (just as surely as you would if you robbed a liquor store and then composed a blog post on "Why I rob liquor stores.") Piracy would be a moot point and would be confined to the fringes of society that are willing to commit theft.

In conclusion this is like saying it would be faster and easier to roofie a girl at a bar to get laid than it would be to take the time and money to buy her a drink and talk to her.

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No, no, no, no, no, no. First off, your analogy should be "if there was a digital way to replicate a bottle of grey goose without doing anything to the bottle at the liquor store", but that notwithstanding:

The things that "content creators" make are things from my culture. They are things taken out of society and ideas that everyone contributes to. (e.g. Disney exploiting the public domain, sampling, etc.)

The fact that "content creators" think they can have a monopoly on pieces of culture (effectively) forever is what's wrong, not these ludicrous analogies to stealing physical things.

Copyright was intended to promote the progress of science and useful arts. Making it impossible to remix, adapt, and contribute to the shared culture by locking everything up in infinitely-long copyright periods is doing the exact opposite of what was intended.

So, are you saying that content creators should not be able to sell their content at all? I would appreciate further explanation on the fact content creators whether it be a movie studio or a software developer are simply taking "your culture" and as such you should be able to reclaim it at no cost?

I do agree with your sentiment that IP law is inherently stifling and increasing futile, i.e. Apple v Android.

However, I fail to see the difference between someone who produces an item for sale in the form of something that can be captured in bits of data vs a more tangible object. Aren't both parties entitled to the ability to monetize(if they so desire) on the time and effort put into creation of their final product?

Copyright is generally interpreted that you can only copyright the part of a work that is original. So if you are granted a copyright for a work that includes unoriginal materials (which is virtually all works) you don't get a copyright on those parts of the work. For example if you write a song that uses familiar public domain motifs, you can get a copyright if you combine them or add to them in novel ways. You don't get a copyright on the pre-existing works.

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