HN user
How is this different from any other theft?
I don’t respect the bakery down the road and will steal their products. Yes it’s protected by laws, but I don’t respect that either. It’s unfortunate, but it’s their own fault for not creating a viable business.
when the copyrighted digital work is not made artificially scarce, it is worthless.
If an artist digitally releases a music album for free - it's worthless? Meaning it has no value? Let's break this down. If I construct a physical object and sell it - it has worth because you can hold it in your hands. If I record an album and release it digitally - it's worthless, despite costing me 100x more than the physical object I created. And despite you appreciating the music 100x more than my physical object. So what defines value? Then physical aspect only? I guess that's a theory, doesn't help to navigate the world increasingly dominated by intangible things, but okay.
Do you completely refuse to accept that there is such a phenomenon as mental illness? If you are of a sound mind and want to starve to death - have it your way. If you are a schizophrenic lying face down on the street - there is something we can do to help you. It's possible with the help of modern medicine to give you a decent life, restore your function.
What is this theoretical individual losing if we help them? What is the society losing if we act to help?
Your position somehow completely ignores the cost of... producing the content itself. It might come as a surprise, but people who write books, make music, film movies all have expenses. Yes it's "free" to make a digital copy, but that ignores the cost of producing content. It sometimes takes years to produce and release a movie, hundreds if not thousands of people are involved. Who is paying for that? Should they all go to Patreon and ask for donations?
So has ignorance.
I don't have a link to a scientific paper. But if you want to sum the losses yourself, here is something to start with:
1. Last Sunday I streamed a movie called Stutz (2022) for free instead of purchasing it from Netflix. That's a loss of $16 for the industry (1 month subscription, but I am not interested in anything else from their catalog).
Have you ever faced a person cutting their veins in a psychotic episode? I have. Saying that it's OK to let them bleed out because they refuse help is an asinine, inhumane position. It seems you are speaking from a very disconnected theoretical standpoint, ignoring the vastness of extreme human conditions.
The Airbnb argument does not hold water. Would someone love to live for free in a vacant Airbnb? Yes. Almost everyone would. So let's then give everyone free housing forever, what are we, capitalist pigs?
To me, this conviction to just let mentally ill people roam the streets is enabling, not compassionate. A truly compassionate view cares about well-being, not just agency. Would you rather see your own child rot on the street in a psychotic delirium or get them help, even if it's not voluntary?
The easiest thing to do is to say "it's their own choice".
That is not what the article is about. It's about hospitalizing people who are severely mentally ill. How is that not a medical emergency?
I don't know if it's some extreme libertarianism or just pure lack of compassion. Some people need - and deserve - help. "Your body, your choice" is just an all-around horrible argument to use for justifying suicide due to mentally or emotionally compromised state.
So no books, movies, music - anything that can be duplicated digitally - has value as a thing to be sold? I am sorry, I am not sure this is a genuine argument.
Why does digital duplication make any difference? When you are buying a physical book you are not paying just for the paper and the printing process. So the remaining part of the cost - writer's check, publisher's check, etc - is what you should be paying for when consuming things digitally (plus the cost of streaming, storage and whatnot).
Why are we assuming there's a viable market?
Because there is? There is a proven, big, viable, essential market for creating and distributing ideas.
That's a completely different question, of course. But to answer: on many occasions I am not committed to a particular movie, so just watch it in the background for a while and might end up not finishing. Sometimes I don't want to deal with different services or even a subscription required to watch a single movie/show legally (Paramount+ on Amazon or a Netflix show). Again, if I have to I will pay, but the convenience of free movie websites is great.
There are probably other reasons but I would be really surprised if my behavior was an exception. I can pay for movies but it's more convenient not to (sometimes).
Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market.
I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
(sorry, posted this comment in the wrong thread by accident)
Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market.
I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
In sorry about the situation you are in.
Can we agree that different people have different urgent needs? I agree with you that you need a house. A mentally unstable person who can’t take care of themselves needs mental help. A person with hard drug addiction destroying them needs physical and mental help. Not all problems can be solved with free housing, just like not all problems can be solved with involuntary hospitalization.
I like your optimism and on my best days I mostly agree with it.
My skepticism is rooted in two phenomena:
1. Our society seems to be unable to address criminal behavior at the current scale, how can we expect it to improve if we expand the attack surface? Counties are unable to stop basic phone and tech support scams for decades now. There are just a few dozen companies that are responsible and we still fail. I can’t trust the authorities to be able to address more sophisticated scams at a bigger scale. Corruption is at the core of this. So now we also have to solve corruption.
2. Tech literacy is not enough to effectively avoid tech scams. It’s helpful for sure, but look at how many educated people got burned by crypto. I agree it’s work in progress and maybe we will become better as a society. But I need to see more proof to feel confident in that.
I don't know. On the one hand - yes, let's stop patronizing people. On the other hand we need to be responsible. There are many vulnerable people, they can't just get their shit together and become tech-savvy.
I might sound too antagonistic on this topic, that's not my intention.
F-droid is a great app repository, no problem with them whatsoever. I am highlighting the fact that a purist argument for a technological change that does not extensively invest into understanding the negative impacts on consumers is bogus. How many iPhone users really need an alternative store? Versus how many iPhone users want to have safeties around installing apps critical to their well-being?
To your point: maybe a hard to enable setting for allowing sideloading would satisfy both the safety and the flexibility concerns. But at the end of the day, if I ever need a hackable device I will just get an Android or jailbrake my iPhone. I explicitly separate my own needs from what I perceive as a very dangerous change for 99.99% of iPhone users.
It's an interesting argument even though I don't fully agree with it. The Tank Man analogy is that even though the Chinese person has not actively pursued this topic, they experience the effects of censorship because this topic has been basically erased from their cultural space. So of course they do not pursue it - they can't ("they don't have a word for it" in Orwell's terms).
However, we are not discussing censorship as a state-level concern. An app censored on iOS can still exist as a web app or as an Android app. Apple's AppStore does not encompass the entirety of our cultural narrative. On the contrary, an app banned from AppStore often generates a lot of press.
(again, anecdotal) I can't remember a single app that I have discovered on the AppStore. The process always starts with hearing about an app from someone else, or reading about it.
To be clear, F-droid is an excellent piece of software. It's small and is used mostly by quite technical people, so it's not as an attractive target as Apple's AppStore. But that's the thing: some technical solutions work amazingly well for the 0.001% (like HN users). But they do not scale to tech illiterate people. It's a completely different problem space.
Any local alternative app store is a far easier target for government censorship. Look at Chinese and Russian Android app stores. They comply immediately, often without even publicizing that. Apple at least takes longer to force to comply.
I would love to agree with this argument. And maybe 5 years ago I would have. But so far crypto has not demonstrated that it can really solve the issues you are listing. Yes, it can result in some capital outflow from oppressive countries, but that does not have a big impact on these people or the regimes. The stories that are being written are not of a hard-working farmer who was able to save some monero and move it to a different country anonymously. Instead, we are seeing millions of people lose their savings and/or investments. I acknowledge that things might change in the future. But as of now I am not optimistic.
In absolutist, idealistic terms - yes, everyone should be 100% responsible for who they trust, should have no limits on this choice.
In practical terms what we get is "Banks are not your friend" being proclaimed by a scammer arguing that you should trust them, not a tightly regulated industry. And millions of people suffer from that. Sure, "it's their fault" because they didn't "look into it".
We have to fight censorship, not introduce a new attack vector that will result in a whole new class of scams targeted at hundreds of millions of people.
Tumblr, Twitter, TikTok - ok, let's focus on preserving access to these apps if you feel this is important. Allowing users to install any unverified app is a massive problem. Just look at what we use our phones for: banking, health, investment, personal info, 2FA, and more.
There are many alternative stores available for Android. In my experience this only leads to:
1. Less trusted software. Can I trust Russian Yandex app store? Can I trust Amazon app store?
2. Focus on upselling their own / affiliated apps.
3. No actual increase in choice. Some devices just come preinstalled with alternative stores for no other reason than their own monetary benefit.
4. A theoretical benefit that "I have choice" and if someone bans something I _might_ be able to install it from a different store. Of course oppressive regimes don't just ban apps, they often restrict internet in more severe ways.
It's a matter of priorities.
Do I want you to be able to install an emulator? Of course. This is pure protectionism by a monopoly.
Do I want my family to be able to install a fake banking or health app? No.
So based on this principle, I would say jailbraking is a viable option for tech-savvy people who really need something special on their phone that is being unfairly restricted by Apple.
And if you have ever worked in IT or helped your extended family with tech issues you would know the difference between the web and iOS in terms of viruses, scam apps, tracking, ransomware, etc.
I agree - for most users safety is more important than "alternative stores".
This post is very manipulative in my view. It would be really easy to avoid that for the authors - just list the downsides of allowing any app to be installed on an iPhone. What are the consequences of allowing your parent to install "Bank of Amerika" on their phone? Exactly.
I am arguing against their appeal. Censorship, decentralization, freedom to chose who you trust, etc. It’s the same appeal crypto uses to deceive inexperienced people into believing that these things are really relevant to their life. It’s manipulative.
Personally I think these aspects are important and will probably play a bigger part in the future. But censorship is not why I think we should open up such a huge risk surface on iOS.