Couldn't all of the mobile apps our friends are writing fit onto that same disk drive? With room to spare for the source code to Facebook and Google? Does that indicate that the entire intellectual property business is in its "death throes"?
You could also include all the credit card numbers and ACH information for all the accounts in the world on that same drive. I guess that means its OK to use those numbers?
How can so many software guys really believe that their bits are more valuable than the bits created by media companies? Or that stealing is "ok" just because it's easy if you know how?
The media industry has done a shit job of making its product easy to buy or making money ad supported. They're in decline because they have done such a bad job adapting. But someone will figure it out.
Entertainment will definitely evolve, but it won't go away. There's a lot more to learn reading pg's request for ideas than reading pro-piracy posts like this that seem to litter hacker news.
Software is not analogous because it has been developed from the very start with the knowledge that the bits would be easily copy-able, and has been designed accordingly. I remember being asked to type in phrases from a game instruction manual at least a decade before anyone was consuming commercial audio or video on their PC. Furthermore, software is an interactive medium, which makes copy protection easier, and copying riskier. It isn't clear to me how you could make copy protection inherently part of music (without ruining it). Even if you fully controlled all the hardware and software used for playback, you wouldn't control the link between the speaker and my ears.
As to ACH information, it depends on what you mean by "use those numbers," since they have no inherent value. If you mean reading them for fun, I would be OK with that. If you mean using them to drain money from people's bank accounts, that would not be okay, but it also wouldn't be copying (since the original would be destroyed). If you knew of a way to copy money from one account to another, I would be completely fine with you copying my checking account in full.
I know you would probably prefer that people think about stealing and unauthorized copying as the same thing, but there is a difference and it's important. One is completely physically undetectable to the victim, and the other isn't. How can you tell the difference between your CD selling poorly because people are pirating it, and it selling poorly because it sucks? Without widespread snooping on other peoples' electronic communications, you can't. If someone drained your bank account it would be trivial to detect.
I agree that draconian laws or snooping measures are not reasonable mechanisms to enforce copyright.
But the analogy to mobile is interesting. Mobile app revenues are absolutely booming, and mobile apps dont require inconvenient or invasive protection schemes. Mobile apps are easier to buy than pirate, and they are reasonably priced. It's bizarre to me that most of the good content isn't available for streaming, when I'd be perfectly happy to pay per view.
I dont have any media in my home. It's all streamed. My friends who pirate all deal with torrents and file conversions and moving files around. And honestly I dont have time for that. It's far cheaper just to pay for it. Or not watch it at all, because most of the good content isn't available for streaming. Which is the real problem.
The big difference is between stuff that you release and stuff that you don't.
Once released bits become common knowledge and they lose a large amount of their potential value because the scarcity element is instantly gone.
This is one of the driving engines behind the the whole software-as-a-service game, it gets rid of the problem of piracy and it turns the product into a subscription rather than a one-time sale.
No second hand version of google docs will ever be sold.
Paid mobile apps are widely released, and people I know make a living selling them. Is anyone who buys a mobile app a chump?
And what about the ACH information? If you came across that sort of data you would feel free to use it to transfer a few million bucks to your own account? It would be just as easy as copying a movie. So if the data is out there, you are arguing that it's OK to do that?
> Paid mobile apps are widely released, and people I know make a living selling them. Is anyone who buys a mobile app a chump?
You used google and facebook as an example, they are clearly not releasing binaries but are in the service industry. Mobile applications (which I think are a transient phenomenon that will evaporate when mobile web applications will be more viable, the same happened with desktop software, with some notable exceptions) are already pirated wholesale (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20107572-94/how-piracy-ruin...) that doesn't make the writers of mobile software 'chumps', but it does mean that they will have to factor this in or they will likely be hurt.
> It would be just as easy as copying a movie, and the data is out there, so you are arguing that it's OK to do that?
No, obviously I'm not arguing that it is ok to do that.
"the bits created by media companies"
They don't. Media companies don't write songs, neither they're really shoot movies. They are the middlemen.
Yes, I think that my bits are more valuable than the vapor created by middlemen.
But there's more important issue: Once I have 100000 books, 1000000 songs and 10000 movies on my hard drives, I might lose desire to have any of their bits at all.
I don't even need them produced because the bits already there are just as fine.
There are a lot of super smart guys working day and night to create movies, and they're solving a lot of hard technical challenges and applying many decades of experience in what makes a production entertaining.
While I dont watch a lot of TV or see a lot of movies, I certainly respect the impressive work that goes into them.
You could also include all the credit card numbers and ACH information for all the accounts in the world on that same drive. I guess that means its OK to use those numbers?
How can so many software guys really believe that their bits are more valuable than the bits created by media companies? Or that stealing is "ok" just because it's easy if you know how?
The media industry has done a shit job of making its product easy to buy or making money ad supported. They're in decline because they have done such a bad job adapting. But someone will figure it out.
Entertainment will definitely evolve, but it won't go away. There's a lot more to learn reading pg's request for ideas than reading pro-piracy posts like this that seem to litter hacker news.