No-one is saying that you're not right, we're just saying that this has been said so many times that it doesn't need saying again.
Anyone who insists that copyright infringement and theft are the same thing isn't someone who has anything useful to add in this debate. Given that why not focus the debate on useful, genuinely contentious areas and solutions, not rehashing an argument that has been had and won over and over again?
(And yes, I know there are people who don't buy into this but by and large they're not reading Hacker News so you're doing nothing to progress the argument on that front repeating it here).
Human interaction is not code. Human discussion is not code. People are not code. Repetition is how people learn and understand things. Seeing a point once makes a person think "oh good point". Seeing many times forces them to think of it in different contexts and different ways. This allows them to understand it better.
Congratulations to you for being around long enough, and seeing this point enough times, that you find it commonplace. I guarantee however that there are plenty of people here who still need to see it. There are lots of people on this site who are very intelligent in many ways who make comments like "you need to protect your patent or you lose it" or "copyright doesn't count unless registered". As long as they exist, this point can be made without it just being echo chamber fodder.
And what determines what is important vs. what is not? Certainly something like spam is pure noise, but what justifies the repetition? I'm trying very hard not to see it as consensual groupthink, but coming up short. I see this in every community: a set of near-sacrosanct 'truths' emerges that inevitably must be defended, and part of that process involves repeating them, often under the guise of 'educating' others.
IMO, the argument is simply being reframed to avoid dealing with the larger and more difficult problem. I'm not interested in avoiding the real issue here -- compensation for creators in the age of easily-copied goods.
If we fix that, the semantics argument won't be an issue. After all, if we have a just system that fairly compensates individuals for creating while providing good incentives for consumers not to infringe, we don't need to nitpick about theft v. infringe.This, to me, serves as a good indication of what is actually important in this issue.
Perhaps the argument is being reframed back and forth, not to avoid an issue, but as proxy to this issue: creators are over-valuing their work and/or copiers undervaluing. The semantics chosen are done so because they reflect the point of view of the speaker. Put a different way: there are 2 ideas of fair out there, each set of semantics represents one idea of fair accurately.
Simple repetition can be a powerful way to get people to change their minds but I suspect in this sort of environment it doesn't work so well as those who disagree simply don't read it once they establish the basic gist and just skip the post. As a result it's not really being repeated to them in any way that matters.
My experience tends to be that if I've not won someone over with one particular argument then my best tack is to try something else they might be more responsive to rather than just keep repeating myself.
But maybe the real issue is that I hope that HN might be a source of intelligent discussion on the subject with an attempt to find interesting and / or practical solutions to the problems raised rather than a more straight forward continual reassertion of views that could frankly be carried out by a series of Python scripts.
I think it needs to be said as often as people continue prevaricating by using the word 'theft'.
Semantic argument can become tedious and repetitive, but it's necessary for any more substantive argument to proceed. If there's no mutual agreement on what the terminology represents, then the participants of the discussion are effectively speaking separate languages, and they will be unable to 'access' each other's reasoning.
Sometimes, the semantic dispute is caused by an intentional attempt to confound terminology in order to make two things seem more similar than they otherwise are. Calling this out is appropriate and necessary every time it happens.
Possibly because the system as it exists now might be perceived as near-optimal for the average user: some people fund creative works that others enjoy for free. Thus, the discussion is consistently trainwrecked into one of semantics (sometimes, with a bit of a victim mentality thrown in) because some people would like the system to continue as is. Real solutions to this problem are very hard, and I can't think of one in which someone doesn't get screwed.
Then again, it is quite refreshing to see so many people defend the purity of the English language.
Anyone who insists that copyright infringement and theft are the same thing isn't someone who has anything useful to add in this debate. Given that why not focus the debate on useful, genuinely contentious areas and solutions, not rehashing an argument that has been had and won over and over again?
(And yes, I know there are people who don't buy into this but by and large they're not reading Hacker News so you're doing nothing to progress the argument on that front repeating it here).