Why are people suddenly embracing this argument that piracy isn't theft?
People work to create music just like people work to mine the earth to produce coal. Should one not get paid just because what they're producing can't be physically held?
You know, there used to be a SHAME associated with shoplifting. One had to have the friggin balls, and take considerable risk to go through such an endeavor. No, BUT NOW, as long as we can hide behind our frikken computers, with absolutely no risk, we start grabbing whatever we want now, don't we? And no, that's not theft, oh no no no. I now have a fond new found respect for shoplifters. At least they have true grit, and don't delude themselves by calling it anything other than stealing.
We're talking about a simple legal definition here - copyright infringement is using some kind of intellectual property without the proper license to do so, while theft is depriving somebody of their property.
This isn't an argument about what's morally right - all that is being argued is that no legal system in the world classes copyright infringement as stealing.
If someone sincerely believes that piracy is theft, then they should simply demand that piracy be equated to theft at all level. This would then imply that piracy would be dealt as any other theft is dealt.
This would involve the owner making a police report about this theft, and state machinery getting search warrant to find the "stolen" article. Once the stolen article is found, it will be "replaced" back to the owner.
This would then be also beneficial to defendant, because now he would have the right to lawyer, and if he is unable to get one, the state will provide one. He would also have presumption of innocence, and if found guilty, his punishment would be jail time. If there is fine, it would have to be proportional to the "theft", and not some $250,000 for immeasurable damage.
Very likely, three strike laws and such would also apply, which ensures that anyone committing "theft" repeatedly will most probably see long sentences.
Why have different laws on book, if piracy is theft and can be dealt as such? And what about all the expiration of ownership? My great-grandfather's ring is still with me, and its ownership did not expire 70 years after his death. Perhaps all literature should still be owned by the estate of the dead, after all, it is property that is being stolen in plain sight everyday.
Why is it a loophole? At no point does using correct verbiage affect the argument at all. The same action is still occurring. The debate should not be "is copyright infringement stealing?", the debate should be "is copyright infringement wrong?"
It depends on what kind of relationship you have. Traditionally, and what seems right to most people is a relationship with a level of commitment towards the other. I'm not saying this is always true, but that level of commitment does have benefits, usually resulting in a stronger relationship because of the trust developed.
Associating watching porn with lack of commitment sounds like something out of the 50s. Nobody(*) contemplates leaving their SO for some person on a website (or in a movie, or on TV), and porn isn't an exception.
But actually, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody broke off an existing relationship to pursue someone they were fantasizing about online. If they're unhappy in their current relationship, online fantasy is a form of escape and leads to eventual idealization. By comparison, the real person can't compete as their flaws are evident.
Dime-store psychology perhaps, but on these topics nothing surprises me.
Probably closer to more like something out of the 90s. Also very much age / culture / internet age related.
I think many of the attitudes regarding porn has changed simply because it became so ubiquitous that it changed culture, not that culture somehow grew up and grew to embrace porn.
>The installation process may take a while (several hours.. or less)
It depends on what you're talking about. With relatively fast internet (I have 20Mb/s), I can have a functional box up with my favorite DE in just an hour or so. It's true that I configure things here and there for the next couple days as I need them, and each configuration is simple and only takes a second or two, but several hours seems a lot longer than the average install to me.
My first Arch install took well over a couple hours, and was a pleasurably educational hassle. I think it took me over a day to get the system completely working back then. And that was despite my background using Slackware. But every time I've installed since then, the duration has more-or-less halved, and my most recent install was easily under 30 minutes.
The biggest gotcha for me as a newcomer was trying to install on a laptop, having no ethernet access handy, and not knowing that I'd need to install wireless_tools when running through the initial setup in order to get online.
The amount of time it takes varies greatly according to what you consider to be complete. I never stop tweaking my system, and there are always some points of dissatisfaction with it. But Arch is a great distro. It's very well-documented, and is pretty much delightful to configure.
I agree. Arch Linux configuration is educational and well worth the few hours it takes on your first try, but you should definitely have another computer with the wiki open while you do it.
It's true that Arch might be fast to install, and can get something working very fast, in less than half an hour, but this post is aims for beginners, and it's probably not that fast for them, so I thing it's better to say "you wanna try Arch? take a day, and do it with the documentation". It seems to me more fair than say 30min top, you have Arch. You probably won't disappointed new users, with wrong surprise when few hours after they still stuck without Xorg running.
And karma should only be from comments. I don't understand why someone has downvoting power just because they stumbled across and posted a popular story on HN.
Like the guy who submitted the story for Steve Job's death, now has over 1k karma simply from posting a link to apple.com at the right time, and from nothing else. How does that qualify him to downvote over me, who has been thoughtfully posting comments here and there for nearly a year now?
I'm not really that concerned. I don't care about karma, really. I just think it's a very stupid system.
I agree the system is flawed here. I think Stack Exchange solves this problem nicely with their daily 200 point cap. This way it forces you to make a time investment in addition to posting quality content.
It's true that there's always risk involved with advancing technology. Faster, better and more capable phones are better at doing good things for you, but it also makes them more capable of doing bad things to you too.
People work to create music just like people work to mine the earth to produce coal. Should one not get paid just because what they're producing can't be physically held?