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Comment by WendyTheWillow | Hacker News Reader

Except that is not the alternative, is it? Couldn’t you just not watch the show?

But I paid to be able to watch the show. Sony made a deliberate action to deprive me of that ability, should I not be made whole?

Maybe, but that’s not for you to arbitrarily decide on your own.

So, instead of "arbitrarily" deciding that on their own... how should they decide that "properly"?

By officially asking for new Terms of Service maybe?

Probably a multi-year class action suit where everyone who got screwed over eventually gets $0.79 for their troubles while lawyers on both sides get a fat payday for creating exactly nothing. That’s what this precious “social contract” gets you, and I piss on it.

Law suit, but generally arbitration of some kind (the conceptual kind, not the legal term). Part of the social contract is that we don't resolve our own disputes beyond a certain level of seriousness, we allow neutral third parties to do so. Otherwise we'd have fights in the streets and mob justice.

> we allow neutral third parties to do so.

That hasn't been working out so well lately, thus the whole "alternative methods" thing being pretty popular in some circles these days.

It works a hell of a lot better than "alternative methods" from a moral standpoint, however. The reality is that people have just become more okay hurting others.

Nah. Violence is the underlying motivation behind a lot of the world. Whether implied from people not following "the process" (your social contract), or people working around process that aren't working for them (corruption, etc).

There's no better moral standpoint in either, it's always a case by case basis.

So to be clear, your argument in favor of vigilantism being moral (which you call violence despite it not being so) is that it's effective?

Heh Heh Heh

Perhaps you need to re-read things a bit? :)

So yes? Or no? Clarify.

Neither of those answers. Please actually read and think about what I wrote a few comments back. :)

I did and sorry, it honestly seems like you've never considered any of this before whenever you wrote what you did, and generally have zero clue what you're talking about.

> and generally have zero clue what you're talking about.

Heh Heh Heh

Guess that's what we're both thinking about the other person then. No worries. ;)

"just be rich"

Why are companies allowed to arbitrarily break the contract by removing something you paid for, but you aren't?

I think they mean, you could have neither bought nor pirated the content, knowing that the terms Discovery is offering are very one-sided (I am presuimg the license agreement explicitly stipulated that they were allowed to do what they did).

Either way, when one party breaks their contract, you sue them in a court of law. You don't seek remedies on your own.

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