Hacker News Reader

Comment by lotsoweiners | Hacker News Reader

Because normal people don’t care about “human cultural output” or “societal value” and think people who use those kinds of terms sound like blowhards. The rest of us just want reasonably cheap, convenient entertainment. Artists and others in the music biz want to get paid. Nothing here that is very hard to understand.

View on HN

This point would work better if the vast majority of artists actually were paid well.

Normal people do like free stuff it turns out. And typically not going to pay when it's ancient anyway. Instead of going without, they could give it a try. They'd like that too—if they knew it was possible and even encouraged.

Can you please add a link to your free art, movie, album, musical, and/or poem. Or do you only supply links to other peoples said art?

Some people like creating enough that they'll even do it for free, as a hobby, sometimes in addition to doing in professionally and getting paid good money for it. Sometimes it's drawings, sometimes it's music, sometimes it's software on www.github.com.

But I'm not sure the point of asking people to link their own free work in context, how would that change the discussion? Is the proposal to gatekeep who can access the Internet Archive and share links to other people's art on whether they're enough of an artist themselves?

If you think it's wrong for people to archive old art that's not sold anymore, it seems to me that should hold regardless of whether the archivist has a Devianart and a Bandcamp account of their own

"some people" like creating art for free. They presumably would be people who do not need to create art for money, ergo?

(typo)

I'm not really sure I understand why I should suppose that. I've seen people in every category, who started with a passion and did or did not turn it into a job, and did or did find the time to keep making art for the love of it

You can do art for money or not, I just don't see how you're trying to relate this to archival of music that is no longer sold, whose authors aren't around anymore. I get the impression you're trying to ask people who archive art whether they make art themselves, but I fail to see the point. Very possibly they do, but then so what?

'You can do art for money or not', does not compute in the poverty stricken corners of this planet. A staggeringly blasé remark.

US Copyright laws, that tend to circle the globe, are obnoxious, favoring the already wealthy or established entities to make creativity an unfair business. I look forward to the change.

I am not advocating a blanket position on 'art', or any human endeavour, for that matter. But it would be amiss to not at least mention wider implications to society and culture as a whole.

Sure, but at some point it's a debate of high-contextualisation versus low. We can commiserate about the poverty stricken corners of the planet. And I'm happy to recomend global health charities. It's taking effort not to.

But what's that have to do with the much more specific legal situation the Internet Archive is in, with old archived works of audio?

How? Firstly, do not commiserate poverty. I think you might mean something else. I hope.

Not sure what you mean by 'high contextualisation'.

I put ballet dancers on a par with accountants, scientists, and (above) politicians. Not above scientists et al, you mind, on a par.

The question specific to IA being pursued and my role here is to do with questioning the somewhat regimented reaction on this forum. I have already said 'context' is critical. And blanket change never works, evolution, not revolution. There are considered views that aught to be seen by people other than the converted.

>I have already said 'context' is critical

That's what I mean by high-contextualisation!

There are discussion cultures where it's okay to talk about just a thing in isolation with the understanding that we're putting context aside (low-context), and there are cultures where it's important to be very explicit about the context (high-contextualisation)

Both can be completely okay, but it's something to be aware of when someone wants to discuss a specific point, and someone else thinks the context is more important. Otherwise we're just talking past each other.

Thank you. On a public forum I/we know how conversations quickly become diluted/inflated/twisted and often for the most innocuous reasons. As I follow the IA story, a subject that has been around many many time before, I wonder why they have chosen to highlight this one, as presumably they are challenged on a regular basis.

Copyright is not and should not be a welfare system. If you want to help people out of poverty, please do so without restricting what other people can do in private.

A truly tone deaf suggestion.

Nope, just one you don't like.

You missed the part where we are talking about ancient work and dead people. Think—Hitchcock movies.

My personal software is floss BTW.

I don't like answering questions with questions but how would you know it is mine? How do you firmly tie the license to the art work? How do you tie parts of a remix to different licenses? How do the songs on my security camera work? How do we record the licenses onto the security footage? Can we play security camera footage at someones funeral? If not, how do we obtain the license so that we may pay the right conglomerate?

I'm always happy to drop links to my free (beer) books, no SEO, DRM, ads, or tracking. Simply knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

But it's kinda OT on this thread and feels too much like blatant self-promotion, so I'll refrain. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com