this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The moral thing to do is to pay your share of that if you make a copy, even if the copy itself doesn’t cost anything.

under what ethical system?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Mine, obviously. But feel free to correct me if you disagree with something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

there's no reason to believe what you claimed. a claim made without justification can be dismissed without justification.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What unjustified claim did I make that you disagree with? Seems all rather uncontroversial to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The moral thing to do is to pay your share of that if you make a copy, even if the copy itself doesn’t cost anything.

i don't need to disagree to disbelieve. i do disagree, but without establishing your justification for this claim, it's kind of hard to argue against it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The justification was that creating things has a cost, even if a copy doesn't, and that we should distribute that cost as fairly as possible among the people benefiting from the creation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Idk what to tell you but: Yes it does. We can't really argue if you refuse to elaborate your point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

when you drive over a bridge, do you tip the engineering form? the contractors? they're the ones who created this experience for you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I pay taxes, those were used to pay the people who build the bridge. And yes, taxes should be fair. If it's a private bridge then the owners have every right to demand a fee for crossing it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

not the owners: the designers. what if I copy the bridge and put it in my front yard: do you think I owe royalties to the engineering firm?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, of course. They created the design, it cost them time and money, you want to use it, so you should pay part of those costs. Or to put it differently: You both use the design, why should they be the ones to pay for its creation, and not you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

they still have the design. I haven't taken something from them. I don't owe them anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Who says you can only owe something if you take something away first?

Think about how rent works. The building or appartement will still be there, loose value over time and need repairs whether you live there or not, yet you still owe the owner rent if you do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

your might owe under almost any circumstance, but almost all of them have to drop with a mutually agreed contract or transfer of property. what circumstance do you think created the debt here? and what if someone walks across my front yard bridge? do they owe the engineers too? it's just silly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is going into feasability and away from morality, but ok.

The law is the "mutually agreed contract", and the usage created the dept. You can be expected to know that the design of a bridge might be copyrighted, you can't be expected to know that a bridge is private property and crossing it requires a fee. Ergo it's on you to contact the owner of the design, and it's on you to collect a fee from people using your bridge if that is what you want to do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ergo it's on you to contact the owner of the design, and it's on you to collect a fee from people using your bridge if that is what you want to do.

why?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because of the sentence before the one you quoted. I'm sorry, but this is getting silly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

No it's not. Why should someone let you stay in a building they payed and/or worked for, without you paying for a share of the upkeep, repairs, insurance etc., and the fact that the building exists in the first place?!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if you feel like rent as it currently exists even vaguely approximates the kind of model you claim you haven't been paying attention. rent is, at its core, having other people pay for something because you own it. landlords are infamous for not paying for upkeep and repairs. the incentives behind owning property that other people live in lead to bad outcomes for people who can't afford to own.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm talking about rent in principle, not how it is often perverted today. You can make just about anything immoral if you add price gauging and not-fulfilling-contractual-obligations to it. There are a lot of rents with fair prices, e.g. almost everything that's not housing, but also apartments from social housing or housing associations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

rent doesn't exist in principle, it exists in practice. and in practice, the history of rent is a history of wealth extraction. if its "perverted" today, it definitely was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. if you aren't aware, this is a pretty basic leftist thing. if property can be held privately, those who own the property can use that ownership to extract wealth from people who need water, food, and shelter, but do not themselves own property. they can use that extracted wealth to buy more property, depriving ever more people of places in which to live their lives without paying somebody else for the privilege. and so on. thus "private property is theft".

in any case, rent isn't an uncontroversial example of how to fairly pay people who do things. rent is deeply political, and has been for most of modern history. it isn't just common sense that we ought to allow people who own things to make money off that ownership, that's a political statement, and one that should require some justification, considering its material impact on poverty, homelessness, and the accumulation of wealth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

rent doesn’t exist in principle, it exists in practice. and in practice, the history of rent is a history of wealth extraction

This is a completely useless stance when you want to figure out if rent itself is morally good or bad.

There are a lot of instances of rent today that are completely fine. For example, my parents rent 2 rooms of their appartement to university students, and they just ask for a share of the costs they have, proportional to the size of the rooms. That is rent, but free of other influences like profit maximization, and all parties seem to be very happy with the arrangement. Or if you rent a tool or car from a local company, you'll pay mostly for a share of the acquisition and repair costs, and a bit on top so the owners and employees of the company can keep the lights on. There is absolutely nothing wrong about this form of rent.

If you're saying that rent + limited supply + capitalistic profit maximation + corruption is a problem, then I absolutely agree with you, but it would be false to blame that on the rent part of that equation. And I would definitely not go as far as saying that private property in general is bad, expecially not very limited private ownership like a person owning the house they live in or part of the company they work for. Too much concentration of ownership is a problem, not the concept of ownership itself.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And you are accusing me of not properly supporting my claims??

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, you do, in the form of buying gas or paying taxes. You don't even have to use the bridge to have to pay for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

so use isn't tied to paying. one has nothing to do with the other.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It depends on the system. In taxes, yes. Use isn't tied to paying. In consumer goods and services, they are not paid by taxes. So they do have a direct use/buy causation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

no, they don't: people make things without being paid all the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They made a justification. They showed you how people couldn't make these things without people paying for them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They showed you how people couldn’t make these things without people paying for them.

but that's not true. people make things all the time without being paid.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

people make things all the time without being paid.

Less people make things without being paid than those who make things to get paid. That is a common fact we can both agree on. If you need the number of open source games compared to the number of paid games then I recommend you grab those numbers yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"snake game" returns over one hundred twenty thousand results on github.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are equating someone's terrible hobby project to paid games like it's 1 to 1. You are simply arguing in bad faith. Have a good day though, hopefully, one day we can converse properly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not at all. I just assumed you understood the basics of quality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you never mentioned 'quality' until you wanted to disqualify data that didn't support your position.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yes, because there is a basic assumption. Those projects aren't consumer-facing games. Those are hobbies. You know it and you are simply arguing in bad faith. I know actual game developers who released their games for free or under a pay-what-you-want model. They refuse to do so again because they can't support themselves by doing it. I am a game developer and I won't release my games for free because I need to support myself. There is all the data you need. Find me other data saying otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You know it and you are simply arguing in bad faith

this is rich coming from someone who is moving the goal posts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know actual game developers who released their games for free or under a pay-what-you-want model. They refuse to do so again because they can’t support themselves by doing it. I am a game developer and I won’t release my games for free because I need to support myself. There is all the data you need.

the plural of "anecdote" is not "data"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's more relevant data than you are providing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

your insistence on relevance is giving the lie to your denial about moving the goalposts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

there are over one hundred fifty thousand results on github for "tictactoe".

just how many paid games do you think there are, by the way?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

this doesn't prove anyone ever needs to be paid to make something. a single counter example disproves the claim.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

github shows a hundred thousand repositories for the query "hangman". assuming 10% of them are false positives it's still a great number.