I realize this is not the mainstream HN view. Accepted wisdom says if you can copy something, than you may copy it. But I just don't get it. If you value someone's work, I think you owe them some form of compensation.

There's a line I read on 1001 Rules For My Unborn Son, "If a street performer makes you stop walking, you owe him a buck." I tend to agree with this, both literally and metaphorically.

I agree that good ideas shouldn't be trapped or left to wither in isolation when they could benefit society at large. I just think this has to be tempered with some form of compensation to the person who introduced the idea.

But I'm open to being convinced otherwise if anyone has a good argument to the contrary.

I am quoting this example for the second time. MS made Office common place. It doesn't mean OpenOffice.org owed MS anything, other than "hey neat". As long as it's not infringement recognized by law, no body owes anyone anything.

> if you can copy something, than you may copy it.

"can copy" is hard, may be a little less hard than the first implementation, but it's still hard work. You don't get exclusivity by getting there first. In the cases in which you do get it viz. software patents, it creates more problems than it solves. So yes, I am pretty much in line with "if you can copy it, you may".

> If you value someone's work, I think you owe them some form of compensation.

It's entirely possible to value someone's work, but not agree with his exclusivity requirements.

> I agree that good ideas shouldn't be trapped or left to wither in isolation when they could benefit society at large. I just think this has to be tempered with some form of compensation to the person who introduced the idea.

And I think "I was here first so you all are prosecuting me by not going somewhere else and trying to get here" is a prefect way to let good ideas wither and die. More importantly, this sense of exclusivity and entitlement is misplaced.

If something is inevitable or trivial (slide to unlock, one-click checkout), I don't think there should be any protection at all.

But the more original something is, the more the creator has actually added to society by creating it. And yes, copying it can add to society as well by making it universal, but I think some kind of monetary incentive is a great way to get people to work on original ideas.

Would Apple be so creative if they weren't so profitable? Isn't it their profitability which gives them the ability to spend time and money on R&D? If you take away the profit, don't you take away the opportunity to do R&D?

I think this is why patents were introduced in the first place. I don't think patents work for software, but I think the idea is the same. For the greatest good for society, we want lots and lots of universally applied creative ideas. But there's a trade-off between encouraging new ideas and encouraging mass distribution of ideas. "IP" laws encourage new ideas but discourage sharing. "Piracy" encourages sharing but discourages new ideas.

I just think that there needs to be a balance, and that "thanks for doing the hard work, I'll take it from here" isn't it.

EDIT: I would appreciate an explanation of why people feel I am not contributing.

If Apple's profit equates to Android not doing what they are doing, Apple going bankrupt will be a fair trade in my book. If Apple comes up with something original, which Android re-implements, it doesn't owe Apple anything, even if it affects Apple's profits. Apple working on original things and being in business is good, but not so much that others' ability to re-implement things be taken away.

Android has different hardware, a different OS, a different programming language for development, etc.

At the most precise level, copying music creates and absolutely perfect copy. There is literally no difference between the original file and the new one.

Would it be fair for someone to make an exact copy of an iPhone, running an exact copy of iOS and then distribute it?

I think the precision of the copy has a great deal to do with whether it's OK or not, which I think is what Dustin was getting at when he said it's OK to steal his ideas but not his implementation.

Maybe he doesn't get to draw the line wherever he likes, but it seems there ought to be a line somewhere.

I would never repaint van Gogh, because I'd rather paint my own things. On the other hand, if I were to want a Thomas Kincade painting (for some ghastly reason), I'd definitely buy the cheapest reproduction I could find, because the original painting just wasn't that valuable to begin with.

If I were a painter, I would paint me the hell out of some van Gogh. In every skill I've practiced seeing what the masters do, reproducing it (especially figuring out _why_ they did it that way) has been a very useful learning technique.

More to the point of your post, and this story: Would I sell my van Gogh copies? Probably not. Not because I think there's something terribly wrong about it. Mostly because they'd still be inferior to the original.

I would certainly give them away to friends who wanted to hang it in their den or library, though.

Unfortunately, you picked a bad example: a painting is a finite resource -- there is only one physical painting painted by the original artist. A painting cannot be "copied" with the same veracity as software can be (bitwise, which in the case of software becomes piracy) and any attempt to pass a "copy" of a painting as an original is forgery.

Classifying any work (art/software) as a rip-off requires defining the very fine line between fair-use and unfair forgery. When it comes to artistic endeavors (as in "design"), you'll have more luck defining the position and velocity of an electron around a nucleus than delineating that fair/unfair boundary.