Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheAmazingIdiot | Hacker News Reader

I used to pay for content: movies, games, and some music. I didn't spend all that much, but I did buy them.

Then, corrupted audio CDs were sold. My sister got bit by one. So we downloaded it where it wasn't sold as damaged: Suprnova.

During that time, stupidity was occurring with DVDs with rotating CSS keys and 'bad block filled with data'. I was downloading films I wanted to archive, but couldn't easily rip.

Games were not that bad, but soon became horrendous in terms of screw-user checks, up to the point of driver breaking installs of trash-ware and other nefarious garbage. I trusted the pirates more than the companies.

I've been burned enough times. Why pay for crap quality when free is better?

View on HN

Because the people that sweated and risked their livelihoods to produce these titles didn't actually offer them to you for free; instead, they were coerced into accepting free distribution when their work was illegally copied by companies that fund themselves by viagra and Adult Friend Finder ads.

Meanwhile, almost universally, the offerings nerds entitle themselves to are luxury goods that no person can claim an inherent right to access, so, not only are content producers and financiers coerced into having their return on investment redirected to porn ads and porn ad brokers, but that's happening solely to provide nerds with access to luxuries. Most of which they could trivially have afforded anyways.

But keep telling yourself piracy strikes some blow for justice. I don't know the statistics but I'd have to guess at least 80% of nerds like us pirate content every single week, and nobody wants to think of themselves as an asshole. Rationalize however you need to.

There's a third way here ... and that is to buy the content, keep your proof of purchase, and then download/rip/torrent the content in the manner that works best for you.

It's win win.

I can't buy the Blu-Rays as each episode is released, so I'm not sure how this is supposed to work.

You wait until they're available and purchase and watch them then.

Remember that these same companies are actively lobbying for oppressive laws behind closed doors, actively inserting malware into their installers, actively disabling and deleting content users still legitimately have a right to access, illegally invading sovereign nations (New Zealand / megaupload), actively working against artists (Hollywood Accounting), actively terrorizing 9-year-old girls, to name a few.

I don't pirate. However, "take the moral high road" is not a valid argument here. If you were telling the artists to "boycott the corrupt labels and take the moral high road," maybe you'd have some weight. For the fans, stick to the "what gives me the most bang for my buck."

Your license to the content, when you buy it, is tied to the medium you bought it on. You can buy the Blu-ray, watch the Blu-ray, but that doesn't give you a license to watch a downloaded copy.

True, but it does, at the very least, clear one's conscience a bit about downloading. I want to support the things I like. However, I hate many of the forms that they come on, and/or the venues in which they are presented.

For instance, I loathe my local theaters, but I love movies. I'll buy a ticket to the theater online, and then just pirate a copy of the movie so I can watch it in the comfort of my own home. Is it legal? Nay, but it does allow me to still support the content creators I like without having to deal with all the crap (unrelated to the core content) that I'd have to wade through otherwise.

It's my "moral" approach to piracy.

That's the worst you can do, because you are still breaking the law, while at the same time voting with your wallet for something that hurts you.

Either pay for it and use it as is, or don't.

If you don't like DRM than you must realize that the only way they'll backtrack on it is if their bottom line is seriously injured. If you have no problem with DRM and the status quo, than the pirating you mention doesn't make sense.

Also, if you want to reward content authors, reward them in cases where the distribution suits your needs. E.g. I never buy movies in digital format, but I go to the movie theaters like once every 2 weeks (I'm the opposite of you, going out for movies is something I like, but my local movie theaters are making an effort in pleasing their customers). I don't buy music, but I go to concerts. I only buy ebooks without DRM, etc...

UltraViolet is supposed to be fixing this. Many Blu-rays that I buy now come with UV licenses.

You can rant about "entitlement" all you wish, but the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution than the one currently in place.

Steam, iTunes, Netflix, and perhaps one day HBO branching off into their own content publishing business.

A season's worth Game of Thrones Blu-Rays costs what, $50?

To access a year's worth of premium cable content would cost ~$1000 to ~$1500.

"I don't know the statistics but I'd have to guess at least 80% of nerds like us pirate content every single week, and nobody wants to think of themselves as an asshole. Rationalize however you need to."

This is pretty much the antithesis of rationalizing. You're fine with the system in place. Others are dissatisfied with piracy and want to support the creators without the "luxury" of dropping more than a thousand bucks a year for the one or two great shows worth watching on television.

A season's worth of GoT Blu-Rays costs $50 1-2 years after the series has been released on HBO. Content is much more lucrative during its initial release window; it has a very definite time-value.

People aren't complaining and breaking the law to get access to GoT Blu-Rays (well, actually, yeah some of them are). They're doing it to get access to GoT episodes that aren't available anywhere but on pay TV, because HBO uses them as an incentive to get people to subscribe to pay TV, which, when you think about it, is the only way pay TV could possibly ever work.

You know, I made some socks for you to buy, to subsidize the production and distribution of my artisan bleu cheese. My cheese startup failed, you filthy pagan pirates, because you failed to buy my socks!

Come on. We're supposed to just suck it up when someone offers us something for sale? You're kidding, that's not how markets work. If HBO does something stupid, they get penalized for it in the market.

Beyond that, the debate here is about DRM. Institutionalizing DRM (legal mandates, DMCA style legal penalties for "reverse engineering") probably causes more damage to society as a whole than allowing some smaller monetary amount of piracy. Clamping down on the civil rights of the populace as a whole in order to prevent a tiny fraction of the populace from violating already outrageous laws on "intellectual property" really isn't a good idea. Stupid laws and stupid enforcement of stupid laws make people disrespect the law and law enforcement.

The DMCA does not criminalize reverse engineering; my field is based in large part on routine reverse engineering of all sorts of software. While there is some grey area and certainly some overreach in the DMCA anti-circumvention mechanism, what it essentially criminalizes is an attempt to build a business on devices that circumvent content protection.

As a sometimes-reverser, I'm ambivalent about this. I wouldn't howl if anti-circumvention was eliminated (it won't be, but still). I'll howl with all the other security researchers when it's abused to stifle research and disclosure of security flaws (for the overwhelming most part, it isn't, but still).

I don't understand your sock/cheese metaphor at all. People can in fact bundle socks and cheese. Nobody would in reality stick up for you if you stole the socks to avoid the cheese. But nobody does bundle socks and cheese, because that's moronic. It is manifestly not moronic to bundle Game Of Thrones with ESPN.

(I posted this a month ago)

How do you know, if you are that you are indeed breaking DRM vs just doing complicated stuff with a firmware?

It seems obvious if there's PKI in there somewhere. But aside that, how do you tell the difference?

Might I add that the old proposed "Broadcast Flag" would have been a bit in the HDTV stream to signal no_copy. Changing that bit would have broken the DMCA.

BnetD managed to violate the DMCA merely by being unable to emulate the authorization layer.

https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

Oddities like that render "intellectual property" useless. Since copyright (in the USA) lasts for life-of-author + 70 years, or 90 years for corporate authorship, you can't tell on the face of some information whether it is "property" or not. You need to know when/if the author died.

Stop me if I'm wrong, I haven't had cable for a long time. We only watched Discovery and Food Network, and not even very much of those. We now get more Mythbusters and more cheesy cartoon series from Netflix or Denver Public Library.

ESPN is a sports network, right? "Game of Thrones" is a swords-and-sorcery type thing with a lot of sex, right (I've only read 20 pages of the first book). I don't see how that makes it "manifestly not moronic" to bundle the two. I personally might take a look a GoT, but you'd have to pay me to watch the manifest stupidity of ESPN. So, I personally don't see the immoronicity of bundling ESPN and "Game of Thrones".

But that was my point with socks and cheese: market places don't take into account whatever imaginary linkage I might assign or what Immoral MegaCorp assigns to bundling HBO and ESPN. What vone person values as "manifestly moronic" another sees as "manifestly awesome".

As near as I can tell, you're trying to argue that legislating some linkage via DRM makes that linkage valuable to the free market, when in fact, it does not, any more than my linking socks to cheese makes that linkage valuable.

The marginal cost to the cable provider of providing you with HBO versus ESPN+HBO is nil. Bundling makes perfect sense.

You might complain about cross-subsidization, but you are both payee and payer in that bargain.

If you could get only HBO, it would cost a lot more than what it costs on top of a cable subscription.

It's like two people buying a newspaper with two section. Person A only wants section A and person B only wants section B. They each complain about subsidizing the other section. They see the 50 cent cost and say "I would only pay 25 cents if I was only paying for the half I wanted!" But the costs to the provider for only providing you with one section is exactly the same. If they only gave each person just what they wanted, each person would pay, to a first approximation, 50 cents for getting one section.

"The marginal cost to the cable provider of providing you with HBO versus ESPN+HBO is nil. Bundling makes perfect sense."

To the provider. The customer is directly paying for Disney/ESPN/Fox and whatever else is on basic cable. I don't want to subsidize any of that crap, no matter how cheap it's being offered to me.

'tptacek claimed that bundling makes perfect sense. And it does, for the same reason that newspapers don't charge extra for the sports section.

Bundling happens in every industry with high fixed costs and low marginal costs.

I don't want to subsidize any of that crap

You are in a shared market.

CNN makes around $250 million a year from cable subscribers. Let's say 100 million households with cable just to make the math easy. So each is paying $2.50 for CNN.

Now, let's say all those households got to choose yes/no on whether they got CNN, and half those houses don't watch any CNN and half of them watch CNN regularly. They wouldn't be paying $2.50 each. They would, to a first approximation, be paying $5 each, because built-in to CNN's pricing to the cable companies was the fact that only half their customers watched it, and it doesn't cost the cable company any extra to provide it to those people who don't want it.

To a smaller degree, this is what happens if you shop at one store in a mall. You are "subsidizing" the other stores in the mall because they have joined forces to reduce their shared, fixed costs. But those other stores are also "subsidizing" you.

"They wouldn't be paying $2.50 each. They would, to a first approximation, be paying $5 each, because built-in to CNN's pricing to the cable companies was the fact that only half their customers watched it, and it doesn't cost the cable company any extra to provide it to those people who don't want it."

And why should this concern me?

"A season's worth of GoT Blu-Rays costs $50 1-2 years after the series has been released on HBO. Content is much more lucrative during its initial release window; it has a very definite time-value."

So weigh the cost for monthly fees accordingly to the value-add and factor in for the lack of subsidization.

> "...the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution... Steam, iTunes, Netflix..."

I agree with your point to an extent. The thing is that they're not exactly viable alternatives yet. Each service you mentioned operates off the same distribution model, each with their own custom DRM that sandboxes the user from leaving that platform.

I'm not rationalizing.

The media companies, at one time, had some of my money. They don't now.

I'm a dirty pirate who takes what isn't bolted down, and unbolts for others.

P.S. Adblock and noscript take away adverts. I do that too, so I'm also evil in ad revenue streams.

That'll show those evil media companies for funding the kinds of content that dirty pirates want to watch. You show 'em!

The only person here who seems concerned about 'showing' anyone is you, I'm afraid. We're just missing the 'inherent right to intellectual property at all costs' ethics update and can't be bothered with throwing money at incompetent salesmen.

Really, I'm surprised at your apparent inability to make cogent or compelling arguments when it comes to these sorts of policy issues, given the rather high quality of your thoughts on just about everything else. Ah, the mysteries of life!

Every movie ever published by a MPAA affiliate company has lost money, went in the hole and whatnot. Even that lowly named mass loser called Star Wars.

Or that's what they tell the IRS.

This isn't a battle over who's more morally right. Save that crap argument for church sermons. This is Hollywood politics: the kind when you jump state lines to get away from camera patents.

Yes, Star Wars sure drove Lucas into the poorhouse.

"Yes, Star Wars sure drove Lucas into the poorhouse"

It helps to read what people post before jumping to the quips and insults. They were referring to "Hollywood accounting" as practiced.

I do tend to stay away from attacking somebody to avoid discussing a certain point brought up. However, tptacek sure cuts the cake on this...

From his profile: "THOMAS H. PTACEK hopes, by strict attention to business, combined with moderate charges, to merit a fair share of patronage and support."

Does he hope to gain some sort of social credit by attacking and being so damned obtuse? I sure as hell hope somebody monied notices this.

And can we also conclude how tptacek treats his employees, if we are treated as such on a semi-anonymous blog?

    I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
    I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
    I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
    And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"
     
    You load sixteen tons, what do you get
    Another day older and deeper in debt
    Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
    I owe my soul to the company store

Not every pirated work is a lost sale. In fact I'd wager an exceedingly small number of them are. The rest are downloaded by digital packrats, the future's archivists essentially, who just like to hoard stuff that has value, even if they never consume the media itself.

If I download, reshare and stock a movie that I never end up actually watching... What damage has actually been done? Someone somewhere, maybe, was made a new fan of a certain director or producer or genre?

True that. Everyone is fretting about movie/TV show availability on Netflix, etc., but I sidestepped that and just built an HTPC[0] and combined it with a private torrent site that has all the movies and TV shows I could ever want. In technical terms, it is far and away the best solution.

0: http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-o...

I trusted the pirates more than the companies.

Many of us still do, and will for as long as these companies assume most of their users to be thieves. It's also usually the least creative people pushing DRM; Hollywood for instance is not known for its creativity but rather to suck dry the ideas of the handful of creative people it has.

Same reason why open-source is more trustworthy than proprietary in general. These guys aren't trying to bullshit you into buying their product and aren't creating the product for the sole purpose of profits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com