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I just want a copy of the thing I paid for that I can use on whatever machine in whatever way I want without a bunch of bullshit hoops


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I don't accept that I need to purchase the same work several times for them to be able to eke out a living. Especially given the price of many books.


Oh I also buy a physical copy, especially if they're relatively obscure. I'm the kind of yahoo who also donates to artists patreons.


I only pirate things that I've already purchased. I generally purchase used things, so the artists don't see my dollars either way in that case. Furthermore, artists only see a small fraction of the dollars of any purchase you make. It'd be nice if all media was available inexpensively and without DRM for all to consume as they pleased, and if anything over the hosting costs went straight to the authors rather than through a byzantine old publishing apparatus. But we don't live in that world, so I do what I do.


i pirated mp3 files back then, is ed sheeran living under a bridge now?

if youre worried about artists and authors, you got no idea how much cut publishing houses and music labels take from them.


Artists - just like inventors etc - should be compensated for their work, but in my humble opinion not in what has become now essentially perpetuity.

So, an artist eeking out a living on something they worked hard on and released a month ago or two years ago gets sympathy from me. An artist who released a thing 20 years ago and still wants to eek out a living off that, such an artist doesn't really have my sympathy. The great-grandchildren who want to get paid for something an ancestor released 120 years ago[0]? Hell no, go do something yourself to make money.

If you're Lars Ulrich in 2000 and sue Napster over songs you released 10-20 years ago, while sitting on a net worth of maybe around 100-200M USD (now 350M), then my sympathy is with the pirates.

This doesn't touch the issue of how a lot of artists are not making much money, not because of pirates but because of predatory music labels and publishing houses.

It also ignores the problems with the "lost sales" theory. A lot of the pirates would have never paid for stuff they downloaded in the first place. And a lot of pirates started paying after pirating some stuff. E.g. I remember discovering a lot of artists from songs I illegally copied on LAN parties back in the day[1], usually artists too small to be on a lot of rotation on radio and MTV (yes, MTV used to have music, crazy) which I probably would have never known about otherwise. And I gave lots of money to these artists, buying their CDs, going to their concerts when possible, and so on. In the same vein, I discovered artists on whatcd and similar pirate places later on.

And doesn't touch on the "please take my money" issue... There are a lot of things that are out of print, etc, that you cannot pay for. E.g. large companies holding licenses to content may even take works out of print deliberately in tax avoiding schemes - I am not a Hollywood accountant, but from my limited understanding they can declare a loss when doing so which is worth a lot more in tax reduction than keeping a title in print.

And it also doesn't even touch humanity's need to preserve important cultural artifacts for the future.

[0] Remember, up to artists death + 70 years copyright term. While this exact scenario has probably not happened yet, as these rules are too new, you get a glimpse of what will happen in the future when you look about all the legal fighting still happening over Sherlock Holmes - a figure and body of worked created mostly before copyright law even existed.

[1] Yes, I am old. If you have no idea what a LAN party is, it's basically a bunch of people actually meeting in some venue with their computers, wire everything together into a temporary LAN, to play games and swap files, which back in the day really was the only sane way to do mulitplayer and filesharing stuff as internet speeds were so limited, and internet was usually very expensive, often still paying by the minute.


Because digital copyright is artificial scarcity.


What is wrong with that, especially as it facilitates the creator's being able to earn income from their irreplaceable work?


One could argue that the whole purpose of society is to get rid of scarcity.

Creators being unable to earn income is a problem - but artificial scarcity is not a good solution, as it benefits the few at the expense of many. Imagine if everyone was prohibited from sharing news over internet because "free distribution of news harms the journalists who rely on newspaper sales" - that'd be absurd, wouldn't it?

Old-school copyright relied on the natural scarcity of paper and other distribution resources - digital age has lowered the distribution cost to zero, so the old model does not work anymore. Another model of rewarding authors is needed, one that does not rely on restriction of distribution.


> One could argue that the whole purpose of society is to get rid of scarcity.

BAM you just blew my mind at quarter to 8 on a Friday.


> One could argue that the whole purpose of society is to get rid of scarcity.

Scarcity of resources has nothing to do with scarcity of artistic works. Literature isn't fungible like a commodity, and can't be grown or mined as needed. It's also not a professional service or a form of labor. You can't put a gun to a farmer's head and make them write something brilliant, the way you can make them farm potatoes.

One could just as easily argue that society exists to organize labor in a way that increases specialization and efficiency. The reduction of scarcity is just a side effect. Specialization breeds scarcity in every new speciality until it becomes universally reproducible. Art is the forwardmost outcropping of specialization - it exists in advance of what it describes being known or understood - and by definition it is always the most scarce speciality. The artifice in making distribution of it remain difficult is therefore an extension of the natural place of scarce ideas in a world of abundant things.


> One could just as easily argue that society exists to organize labor in a way that increases specialization and efficiency. The reduction of scarcity is just a side effect.

If so, then what is the purpose of specialization and efficiency, if not for the reduction of scarcity, in terms of individual access to resources? If cooperation wasn't beneficial for the individual, nobody would cooperate (unless forced to do so, but I personally wouldn't want to live in such a society).

> The artifice in making distribution of it remain difficult is therefore an extension of the natural place of scarce ideas in a world of abundant things.

The whole idea of monetizing ideas the same way we monetize material things comes from their representation in scarce material things, such as paper. There's nothing "naturally scarce" about ideas - I'd argue the opposite, the ideas can be multiplied and shared at zero cost to the original author of the idea. The only cost comes from the way in which ideas are distributed.

The golden age of music industry happened when the only way to distribute music at scale was to sell records. Producing records was costly, but since there was no other way to listen to music at home, people paid for them. Companies charged more than production cost, and they made profit. Nowdays, music can be distributed at almost zero cost, and every attempt to restrict that is just an attempt by old money to keep the old ways of business, since it was so profitable for them. Spotify and other music streaming services grew as an alternative. I'm not saying they're perfect, or even good - just that there's no reason why alternative models of monetization couldn't be invented.

My whole argument is that treating manifestation of ideas as scarce things is an outdated view - in the digital age, all it takes to share an idea is a few button clicks. Trying to force scarcity will never work unless we devolve into a surveillance dystopia, and we need another way to reward the authors.


You're talking about distribution cost and ignoring the cost in time (and lost opportunity to do something else) to the writers or musicians.

The price of a record was never just the cost of pressing the record. CDs cost pennies to burn; paper and digital printing by the late 20th century were extremely cheap. The wholesale and retail prices always included pay for the artist (along with a raft of agents and corporations along for the ride). Spotify itself imposes artificial costs to distributing music, in the form of limits, prohibiting downloads, subscriptions and advertising. They do this to make money for themselves, but also to pay the artists.

As you say, distribution is now essentially free from a technical standpoint. There's no philosophical difference between Spotify charging 100x what it costs them to stream a song, and a record company charging 20x what it cost to press a CD. Free distribution would mean zero money for artists. We started by talking about piracy. By definition, with piracy the artist gets nothing.

Since no one can sustain an artistic career and produce writing or music over a long period without some sort of income, this means either all artists will have to be from the wealthy classes, have other means of support, and simply want to make art as a hobby, or else there has to be a distribution channel with an imposed toll of some kind that ultimately funnels them payment for their work. Whether subscription-based, or charging per-device for copy protected media, that will never be a perfect system, will never be free of piracy, and will always appear to the end consumer as an arbitrary restriction on free information.

I don't think scarcity of paper has been the limiting factor on price since at least the 18th Century. Since there is no scarcity of electrons, I don't view scarcity as a useful paradigm. The prices of locked downloads are simply representing the actual cost and market value of the work, which should be the same whether on the paper or in the aether.


Distribution costs are the reason why record labels earned so much money - it provided friction to piracy, since copying a vinyl was as expensive (if not more) than buying a new one. That friction is no longer there, and such a model cannot work anymore. Perhaps the age of "rock stars" collecting rent for years is simply over. Why should artists be rewarded indefinitely for just one piece of work? Perhaps the very expectations are inflated due to the previous golden age.

Artists should be rewarded for their work - but artificially limiting everyone's ability to share information is not the right way to do it. It would have severe consequences for the free society.

Another way must be found. I don't have any ideas, but I know that restriction of sharing information is not a good one.


Personally, I use libgen to check if I actually want a given book, and if I do, I buy it (a physical copy, if possible). So, for me, it's a kind of a virtual bookshop.


I do the same, i live in germany and wanted a book from UK, sadly it has 4-5 weeks delivery time but our vacation was a week away. So i downloaded the book, read it on our vacation and had the physical copy a few weeks later deliverd. Later i bought the book a second time when the german version released. With another book i bought for my wife and wanted to read at the same time, i downloaded it and we could both read it and talk about it simultaneously. Some other time i wanted to read a book at home with a physical copy and on my kindle during some time when i was outside in the garden. Cause in a hammock the kindle is easier to hold. Every time i had purchased the physical copy and the illegal download was just for convenience. No harm done.


That's great of you to buy the book as well, major kudos. I would bet most are not as altruistic as you.

Do not traditional libraries and their ebook lending systems, however inconvenient, provide the same service? All one needs to do is be patient until the book you are interested in becomes available. In the meantime, maybe you can check out a different book that is available that you might not have discovered otherwise!


What is the difference between me waiting for a single book at my library to be passed between 5 people, and me just reading it online?


Presumably the library paid for their copy?

[Edit]

Also check out OverDrive / Libby


The library would've paid for the copy regardless of whether or not the person actually borrowed the book - the act of borrowing itself makes no difference.




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