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"Do you have a legal right to distribute this content?" "No." "Do you respect the people who spent their personal time and their money to make the content you

"Do you have a legal right to distribute this content?" "No." "Do you respect the people who spent their personal time and their money to make the content you distribute?" "Yes of course." "No you don't or you would get their permission first." "I don't think whether I respect the creators or not has anything to do with making their content available, which is what I want to do." "Will you please get their permission to distribute what they spent their time and money -- part of their life -- to create?" "Nope, sorry. I'm distributing it for free. They can take a hike." Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they ain't gonna respect you.

ank_the_elder 10y ago
"How much did Return of the Jedi cost to make?" "$32.5 million" "And how much was the revenue?" "$475 million" "So you had a $442.5 million profit!" "No, no. We had no profit - we use Hollywood accounting" Repeat for Forrest Gump, Spider-Man, etc. Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they ain't gonna respect you.
- youngButEager 10y ago
  You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them. You folks are young. If you're lucky enough to learn some of these things, the fact that a lot of bad karma will suddenly disappear from your life and things will go shockingly smoothly -- will only be the dessert. The real banquet will be knowing that you went through a time when you made bad decisions but by a stroke of genius, realized you were actually hurting someone (financially in this case) and were able to set aside your selfish wants on their behalf. One of the best things you will discover is this: when a person is making bad decisions in one part of their life, they're rarely able to confine that bad decision making to just one part of life -- they're making bad decisions across the entire spectrum of their behavior. That was a cool lesson to learn. I had to become in charge of a lot of young techies to discover it. A near-karma-free life is waiting for you guys. Shalom.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    > you'll never be able to rationalize [copyright infringement] He just did. Rationalize, transitive verb (Mirriam-Webster): 1. to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable: as [...] b) to attribute (one’s actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives <rationalized his dislike of his brother> ; broadly : to create an excuse or more attractive explanation for <rationalize the problem> * * * The comments here, whether you agree with the explanations given or not, are a textbook example of rationalizing an action. Perhaps you meant he will never be able to justify copyright infringement?
  - syshum 10y ago
    >>>You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them. The supporters of a too-strict, repressive form of copyright often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to refer to copyright infringement. This is spin, but they would like you to take it for objective truth. Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement. The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says. To refute them, you can point to this real case which shows what can properly be described as “copyright theft.” Unauthorized copying is forbidden by copyright law in many circumstances (not all!), but being forbidden doesn't make it wrong. In general, laws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change. A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear-words. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft
    - youngButEager 10y ago
      You often need permission, then pay royalties, to copyright holders. That is the theft. In cases where you enjoy then distribute the copyrighted works of someone without their permission and avoid paying them the required royalties -- you have stolen money $$ from them. It's the same as eating at a restaurant then not paying. STEALING. You got a benefit you were supposed to pay for -- and you DID NOT PAY. Stealing from others habitually is a very bad decision. You can justify it using any inner dialog you like. The only caution is this: there are consequences to bad decisions you've made. Here is the biggest consequence: if you purposely decide to hurt someone else (financially in this case), unless you are sociopathic/career criminal, you'll have an internal conflict about it. You will 'explain it away' so it doesn't feel as bad: "I do this because the law is unfair" or "everyone else is doing it". YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF. You know darn well you shouldn't act that way. Once you start lying to yourself, you're going to green-light lying to yourself again. For example: If asked in a job interview with the IRS "let's say we hire you and you have access to the IRS secure network, and after a week you discover that a lot of your IRS coworkers change personal data in our computer system and underpay their taxes. And you find your coworkers also download and seed torrent clouds with copyrighted material. Which activity would you find acceptable?" YOU'D HAVE TO LIE TO THE IRS INTERVIEWER!! See? You'd have to say "I would never cheat on my taxes. And I download copyrighted material and seed with copyrighted material all the time." YOU WOULDN'T SAY THAT! Nope, you wouldn't get hired if you admitted to the IRS interviewer -- OR ANY OTHER COMPANY INTERVIEWING YOU FOR A JOB -- that you make illegal, unauthorized use of copyrighted works. Why wouldn't you admit to the IRS job interviewer you seed torrents with copyrighted works without the owner's permission? BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT'S WRONG. That's why. RECAP: (1) you're stealing from an artist by not paying royalties on their film/music/etc. when using sites like KAT; (2) YOU'RE LYING TO YOUR FUTURE EMPLOYER in a job interview. Slippery slope. In managing large groups of tech workers, what I discovered was this: if an employee is unethical or dishonest in one area of life, they seem to have a hard time restricting those bad decisions to only one area.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
"Are you trying to blame the people at the end of the failed distribution channel for the failings of the people further up the chain while failing to account for the nuances of a global market with multiple ways that it can fail for any one country" "Yes"

ank_the_elder 10y ago

"How much did Return of the Jedi cost to make?" "$32.5 million" "And how much was the revenue?" "$475 million" "So you had a $442.5 million profit!" "No, no. We had no profit - we use Hollywood accounting" Repeat for Forrest Gump, Spider-Man, etc. Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they ain't gonna respect you.

youngButEager 10y ago
You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them. You folks are young. If you're lucky enough to learn some of these things, the fact that a lot of bad karma will suddenly disappear from your life and things will go shockingly smoothly -- will only be the dessert. The real banquet will be knowing that you went through a time when you made bad decisions but by a stroke of genius, realized you were actually hurting someone (financially in this case) and were able to set aside your selfish wants on their behalf. One of the best things you will discover is this: when a person is making bad decisions in one part of their life, they're rarely able to confine that bad decision making to just one part of life -- they're making bad decisions across the entire spectrum of their behavior. That was a cool lesson to learn. I had to become in charge of a lot of young techies to discover it. A near-karma-free life is waiting for you guys. Shalom.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  > you'll never be able to rationalize [copyright infringement] He just did. Rationalize, transitive verb (Mirriam-Webster): 1. to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable: as [...] b) to attribute (one’s actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives <rationalized his dislike of his brother> ; broadly : to create an excuse or more attractive explanation for <rationalize the problem> * * * The comments here, whether you agree with the explanations given or not, are a textbook example of rationalizing an action. Perhaps you meant he will never be able to justify copyright infringement?
- syshum 10y ago
  >>>You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them. The supporters of a too-strict, repressive form of copyright often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to refer to copyright infringement. This is spin, but they would like you to take it for objective truth. Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement. The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says. To refute them, you can point to this real case which shows what can properly be described as “copyright theft.” Unauthorized copying is forbidden by copyright law in many circumstances (not all!), but being forbidden doesn't make it wrong. In general, laws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change. A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear-words. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft
  - youngButEager 10y ago
    You often need permission, then pay royalties, to copyright holders. That is the theft. In cases where you enjoy then distribute the copyrighted works of someone without their permission and avoid paying them the required royalties -- you have stolen money $$ from them. It's the same as eating at a restaurant then not paying. STEALING. You got a benefit you were supposed to pay for -- and you DID NOT PAY. Stealing from others habitually is a very bad decision. You can justify it using any inner dialog you like. The only caution is this: there are consequences to bad decisions you've made. Here is the biggest consequence: if you purposely decide to hurt someone else (financially in this case), unless you are sociopathic/career criminal, you'll have an internal conflict about it. You will 'explain it away' so it doesn't feel as bad: "I do this because the law is unfair" or "everyone else is doing it". YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF. You know darn well you shouldn't act that way. Once you start lying to yourself, you're going to green-light lying to yourself again. For example: If asked in a job interview with the IRS "let's say we hire you and you have access to the IRS secure network, and after a week you discover that a lot of your IRS coworkers change personal data in our computer system and underpay their taxes. And you find your coworkers also download and seed torrent clouds with copyrighted material. Which activity would you find acceptable?" YOU'D HAVE TO LIE TO THE IRS INTERVIEWER!! See? You'd have to say "I would never cheat on my taxes. And I download copyrighted material and seed with copyrighted material all the time." YOU WOULDN'T SAY THAT! Nope, you wouldn't get hired if you admitted to the IRS interviewer -- OR ANY OTHER COMPANY INTERVIEWING YOU FOR A JOB -- that you make illegal, unauthorized use of copyrighted works. Why wouldn't you admit to the IRS job interviewer you seed torrents with copyrighted works without the owner's permission? BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT'S WRONG. That's why. RECAP: (1) you're stealing from an artist by not paying royalties on their film/music/etc. when using sites like KAT; (2) YOU'RE LYING TO YOUR FUTURE EMPLOYER in a job interview. Slippery slope. In managing large groups of tech workers, what I discovered was this: if an employee is unethical or dishonest in one area of life, they seem to have a hard time restricting those bad decisions to only one area.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

"Are you trying to blame the people at the end of the failed distribution channel for the failings of the people further up the chain while failing to account for the nuances of a global market with multiple ways that it can fail for any one country" "Yes"