I used to have a moral objection to piracy, I thought that if a piece of media is good enough that I enjoy it then the people that made it deserve to be paid for their work.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that even if I do pay for something there is no guarantee that the people that worked on it will get their fair share and paying for media is increasingly a worse user experience than piracy.
On that note, the only relatively convenient exception I know of is Bandcamp Fridays. They’re specific days where Bandcamp doesn’t take any share of purchases.
I wish this were a more common practice, and I wish I could allocate my Netflix/HBO/prime/etc. subscription dollars to support specific titles. Instead, shows get cancelled because people didn’t stream it enough on day 1. I want a s2 of Tales From the Loop, but it’s still in limbo with no way for fans to show support.
I felt like I was the only one that liked Tales From The Loop.
I feel similarly but one of those choices is guaranteed not to help the people you’d like to see helped
I’m not so sure that’s true. What if normalizing and removing friction from piracy gets to the point where the streaming services have to react by providing better services and better payouts?
That’s easy to say, but what can they actually do that provides a better service than piracy at this point? They can’t compete on price, number of shows, or quality of shows with piracy by a long shot. They can potentially provide a better ease of experience with quick downloads and casting, but they already have that and I don’t know that it can get any better.
As a general rule, I’d assume more piracy means less money into an industry, and less money in means fewer and less risky products that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
There’s lots they can do…
- cheaper prices (by lowering the % of rent-seeking),
- better pay distribution for creators (Especially so that I pay to support the shows I watch rather than a global pool),
- interoperability (to allow new businesses which provide frontends to multiple streaming services),
- social (clipping and sharing, group watching, etc)
- more equal promotion of shows/movies (instead of based on royalty rates)
I already said, they can’t compete on price. Cheaper prices will always be more than free. Same with interoperability, if you have the actual file you can run on anything. Group watching already exists.
More equal promotion of shows/movies and pay distribution don’t actually help make the experience better for the consumer, that’s more relying on the consumer behaving ethically and that they believe piracy is wrong. It only helps for the people who think it was only sometimes wrong, which I don’t think is a huge group (although they are certainly the most vocal supporters of piracy)
It absolutely depends. I’m an indie game developer. I’ve worked at various studios as an employee, contractor, and as an owner. Depending on the setup if you pay for a game I worked on I could potentially get a bonus, I could see that money directly as profits, or I could see nothing at all. Sometimes just continued survival of the studio in working at is reason enough for me to encourage people to buy the game but sometimes I’ve not liked where I’ve worked and encouraged people to pirate from a studio that rips off its employees.
So really, the best bet is to ask. The best way to support a game developer is to ask how to send the money directly and buy the game on itch.io if available.
In fairness, games are still something I’m willing to pay for and books. I think probably because Kindle and Steam are better user experiences than pirating those.
Yeah those 2 are exactly the ones I pay for too. Games in particular (I buy most books but not all).
But video content, nope :P
Piracy isn’t stealing anyway. You’re not removing the data from the original owner.
But the original creation cost time and money, which you’re not reimbursing the creator for. 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.
It’s like going to a concert without paying the entrance fee. Sure it’s not a big deal if only one person does it, but the concert couldn’t even happen if everyone acted like this, or the organizers would have to pay for it all by themselves.
If you want to morally justify piracy then start with the ridiculous earnings and monopolies of big media companies, or the fact that they will just remove your access to media you “bought”. Piracy is like stealing, but sometimes stealing is the right thing to do.
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?
Mine, obviously. But feel free to correct me if you disagree with something.
there’s no reason to believe what you claimed. a claim made without justification can be dismissed without justification.
What unjustified claim did I make that you disagree with? Seems all rather uncontroversial to me.
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.
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.
They made a justification. They showed you how people couldn’t make these things without people paying for them.
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.
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.
It’s like going to a concert without paying the entrance fee. Sure it’s not a big deal if only one person does it, but the concert couldn’t even happen if everyone acted like this
That’s a systemic problem, something I wouldn’t personally care about. The “system” is just so horribly screwed up and skewed against us that I just no longer care if it works or not.
If you want to morally justify piracy then start with the ridiculous earnings and monopolies of big media companies, or the fact that they will just remove your access to media you “bought”. Piracy is like stealing, but sometimes stealing is the right thing to do.
This rubs me the wrong way too, yes. Though I’m really beyond moral justifications, I just stopped caring.
Same here. The world is unjust so act accordingly.
Which doesn’t mean be an asshole to everybody and steal everything you can but be an asshole to assholes and steal from franchises.
Would you call it Piracy if I lend a bluray from a friend? I didn’t pay for it and yet I’ve watched it.
Trust me, they’re working on ways to prevent that too as we speak.
To further the thought experiment. I digitize my Blu-ray and put it on a private tracker to share with ONLY my friends. Is that piracy?
Copywrite laws are antiquated at best and need to be destroyed at worst.
If you need more proof look at bullshit like how Paramount+ until recently couldn’t show flagship shows like Picard in Canada because the rights were given to Crave.
So as a consumer I want to go to the owner of the property and I can’t watch it because the owner told me they gave a copy of it to someone else.
No, because it’s so widespread and natural that it should be expected and already accounted for in the price. But there is no hard line imo, and simplified examples often fail to capture all the aspects that go into the decision. E.g. I’d say paying for one person at a concert and sneaking in another would basically be piracy, even though the two situations are very similar on a surface level.
I think it’s about reasonable expectations both parties of the agreement can have, based on established social norms. If you buy a movie for personal consumption you should be able to expect that you can watch it whenever you want, and also share that experience with friends and family. And at the same time the seller should be able to expect that you limit it to a reasonable number of personal contacts, and don’t start to sell it to strangers or run a movie theater, because that expectation was used to set the price.
So if piracy was “widespread and natural” it’d be bueno?
How do you feel about jumping the turnstile at a train station?
I dunno, I mean are the train company allowed to take my money and then go “sorry we fell out with the fuel company so we’re just gonna keep your money and not take you to your destination. Soz babe x”
Amoral at worst. Public transportation shouldn’t have a fee at use. Tax the rich, invest in transport
Not asking about the morality, asking whether or not the people making this argument on piracy consider jumping the turnstile to be theft, in the most practical sense. Not in an ideal world, but in the real world, would you consider that theft?
A turnstile jumper is also exploiting the products and services produced by offers without paying the cost to use them. Nothing is being “removed” in that situation either.
Ah, in that case, no that is also not stealing.
What would you call taking or using something without paying for it, then? Resources are still being spent to transport the person who has not paid for them.
Who is losing resources when you hop a turnstile?
The transportation authority who maintains the trains and stations.
Jumping a turnstile and taking a physical, actually scarce resource is not comparable to duplicating a digital, artificially scarce resource.
The train requires ongoing maintenance and can only hold a finite amount of people. Taking the train seat for free takes away something from another person. Downloading media does not use any ongoing resources, and does not take anything away from another consumer.
Comparing the morality of physical goods to digital goods are not really a good comparison specifically because of the artificial scarcity brought on by making something digital to try to make it more expensive doesn’t map to the real scarcity of physical goods.
Again, I have to ask: How do you think those digital goods are made in the first place? Somebody labored to create it. They deserve to be paid for it.
Not sure why this is such a hot take.
How much should they be paid for it? In a situation where the streaming services have a stranglehold on the market and are extracting a big amount in rent-seeking price vs actually paying the people who labored to create it, should we continue to pay and give in to their morally dubious tactics? In this lens, can piracy be considered a form of civil disobedience?
How much should they be paid for it?
However much they’re asking. They put a price tag on it for exactly this question.
In this lens, can piracy be considered a form of civil disobedience?
Not really. Civil disobedience is about refusing to follow a law, not choosing to break a law. There’s a difference between the two concepts; one involves going about your day as normal and ignoring laws, and the other is going out of your way to break a law. Piracy is no more a form of civil disobedience than looting a grocery store is.
That is a false equivalency.
The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.
Pirating takes away a possible purchase. You haven’t actually used any of their resources or cost them anything.
If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.
If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.
The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.
And media costs money to make.
If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.
If you weren’t going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That’s the thing, if you’re interested enough in a product to want it, then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.
If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.
How do you think scene groups get their materials in the first place? They just find it on a flash drive on a park bench?
More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do. The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.
The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.
The origins of most of all western countries’ wealth comes from theft, full stop.
More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do.
That’s only the case for pre-Bluray release content. Most of it was just captured from rips, Amazon Prime or Netflix.
And media costs money to make.
But not to copy, which is what you are asserting is being “stolen”. No one is claiming that turnstile jumpers are taking away money from train manufacturers. You’re having to mix analogies, because copying something isn’t theft.
I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse. The point is that in both examples, somebody is exploiting somebody else’s labor without paying.
Counter question: Do you think that running libraries is theft?
Public Lending Right programs exist in 35 countries to compensate authors whose works are in libraries.
Great! Let’s do that for any type of media!
Some countries have a blank media fee on writable casettes, discs and hard drives that are paid to music and movie studios for this purpose.
And yet: Netflix prevents me from recording any of their shows and sharing the recording with my friends and family.
I get that the economy we’re in means a bunch of people, like yourself, feel justified in entertaining themselves using whatever means they can afford. I’d be lying if I said I never pirated music when I was a broke highschooler.
But the reality is, if the funding isn’t there, it doesn’t happen. I don’t think DRM is the ethical way to squeeze money out of your audience, nor do I think not compensating people who worked hard to create something you enjoy is the ethical way to consume media.
If you liked it, and you can afford it, pay them a fair price for your experience. Artists are already starving without society having a “copying isn’t stealing” mentality. It doesn’t matter if it’s Netflix, or a busker; you’re not paying them for a physical thing that they hand you, you’re paying them for the effort they went to craft an experience for you.
Depends on the circumstances I guess, but no matter how I feel about it people jumping the turnstile aren’t stealing the train.
Are they stealing a ride?
I don’t like this analogy, because there’s a real, albeit small, cost to the subway of that free ride, in terms of fuel and increased maintenance. Digital piracy has literaly no real cost to the producer except the nebulous “lost sale.”
It should be a free service anyway. Without free public transport, democracy does not exists. Same reason healthcare and education should be. So sure, you are “stealing” a ride - something that should be yours anyway because people are not born with the ability to travel kilometers of cityscapes, something that is now mandatory to survive and thrive.
Digital piracy has literaly no real cost to the producer except the nebulous “lost sale.”
You know that the pirated files were stolen in the first place, right? Movies and video games aren’t just sitting out in the open free for somebody to snatch up like apples on a tree. They end up in the hands of scene groups by somebody in the studio taking an unauthorized copy of the product and distributing it.
Lost sales are damages, as demonstrated by the courts hundreds and hundreds of times over now.
Ever heard of “ripping” a disk, a stream, or a download? Movies, series, and video games get paid for by someone who then proceeds to make unauthorized copies, they very rarely come from anyone at the studio.
Lost sales are “legal” damages, which doesn’t mean they’re actual loss of anything, since people who were not going to pay, are worth exactly $0.
It’s different when bootleg copies get sold, since then there is an actual payment that isn’t going to the right person.
Does you license plate say “PRIVATE”? Because this is some real sovereign citizen logic, using definitions of terms that the rest of the world doesn’t agree with.
Ever read the message at the beginning of a rip? You know, the one with the FBI logo on it. Remind me what it says?
using definitions of terms that the rest of the world doesn’t agree with.
Like which one exactly?
Ever read the message at the beginning of a rip? You know, the one with the FBI logo on it. Remind me what it says?
There is none. Some rips used to come with a “Ripped by [some nick]” and a scene group logo, but they’ve grown out of fashion.
Just kidding, I know you meant this one: https://youtu.be/CXca40Z01Ss
I don’t see how that compares. Trains need human labour and lots of resources to function.
How do you think movies, music, games, books, or any form of media is produced?
Operating a train is not creating a train. And media does not require resources to operate, so nothing is lost when digital media is used by someone without paying.
so nothing is lost when digital media is used by someone without paying.
Using, no. Acquiring, yes.
No, nothing was lost when the copy was acquired, because copying does not remove the original. Literally, nothing is lost.
Lost sales are considered damages, so yes something is lost.
EDIT: This is worse than arguing with SovCits.
In that case you’re actually using a limited resource: space on a train. And by occupying it you’re preventing someone else from using it (assuming a full train). Copying media doesn’t cost any resources (ignoring the tiny amounts of electricity) or interfere with anyone else’s ability to use that resource.
They don’t compare.
What if that train is regularly running under capacity, or you are just standing?
This post seems to be largely about the value of product ownership and the harm that DRM brings to the end user, and does a great job at making that point. However, the title seems to have caused a different discussion to spawn in the comments about whether piracy of digital content is justified. This is just a casual reminder to read the article before replying in the comments.
This is just a casual reminder to read the article before replying in the comments.
This should anyway be a sticky to every post about third party content.
IP in general is a very difficult idea to support. In theory, it’s supposed to reward innovation, but in practice it results in stagnation and price gouging.
If you can own nothing, then nothing is theft.
You can own it though.
Physical media still exists.
which also has DRM on it
True but you can easily rip it.
Which they claim is illegal and a violation of the DMCA
Which used to be considered piracy
This shit again? have people never heard of lending? the thing you get to use for a short duration at a fraction of the cost to buy it outright or create it yourself? The thing you don’t actually own and have to give it back? renting?
is this some kind of alternate universe where people think they own every movie or game simply by paying $$. is this kindergarten mathematics? and this is coming from people who can’t code for shit and don’t realize the scale of things bts.
Get a physical copy that doesn’t require internet activation then, assholes.
but but but… that requires actual physical movement and getting out of my basement. 😭
Hi @satan@r.nf, please remember Beehaw’s primary founding principal when commenting here: Be(e) Nice.
It is possible to disagree with someone without using abusive language. If you think they are wrong, attack their arguments (civilly), not the person.
Get a physical copy that doesn’t require internet activation then, assholes.
I think the point was, it is increasingly hard to find such products.
And even once you think you’ve bought such product, DRM makes sure it’s still not really yours.They where using words like “purchasing”, and asking just as much for the digital files as for the DVD’s. If they where even available.
So it makes sense people where seeing it as “owning”. And then looking puzzled when Sony decided to break into their own devices and delete files…
I have family that FINALLY see that DRM is a thing in their lives, and they DO NOT like it.
Yeah, and as the article links, this is just not about media, CDs, DVDs and games. It’s also about very physical products that we immediately associate as “owned” - like printers, phones, cars, tractors or even, (lol) trains. They’re all locked to manufacturers parts and repair services and increasingly difficult to circumvent.
Get a physical copy that doesn’t require internet activation then, assholes.
Just a little bit closer, you’re almost getting the point!
Granted, I only skimmed through the article, and overall I agree with, but that headline is a nonsensical statement. This coming from someone who pirates every movie and show that isn’t on Disney+. Whether you own, rent, or lend, you still had to pay for access to it. Piracy circumvents that. I don’t own the rental car. If I drove off with it, is that not stealing?
There are plenty of ways to justify piracy. There’s a few good reasons listed in the article. I do it because switching between a dozen streaming services is too inconvenient. But even putting morality aside, that headline is just plain dumb, it’s illogical.
Edited in case this came on too harsh
Driving off with the rental car is a fine analogy if we were comparing this to not returning a DVD you rented.
But this is not that. And that is kind of the point.
Piracy is a breach of contract for sure. The point the author is trying to make is that our current licensing contracts around media are out of touch with the social contract (you pay for something, you get it).
Hence the moral hazard. So companies will flaunt the social contract (like in the case of Sony) with impunity but will get rightous as soon as people flaunt the legal contract. It’s a double standard, where all the power is in the hands of those with the biggest legal department.
You can’t define “theft” untill you first define justice. And if consumers and media holders can’t even agree to a just system, then why bother categorizing anything as theft at all?
The car goes away when you drive it off. Replacing the car would take power to run multiple assembly and formation machines, and resources for each part.
When you download a movie, it doesn’t go anywhere, you simply use a miniscule amount of power to make a copy.
No one has lost anything and the product is still available where it was. Copying is not theft. When you steal, you leave one less left.
How many lemmy commenters can make the same false equivalence analogy in one week?
I know, I know, I figured someone was going to bring this up, and personally that’s part of the reason I justify my own piracy (cause I’m broke and movie studios aren’t), but two things:
-
The cost of creating, copying, and distributing a good isn’t strictly relevant to the transaction of said good. If the original owner doesn’t want me to have access to a good without paying for it, and I take it anyway, that’s stealing. The labor and capital required to create, copy, and distribute that good isn’t relevant to that transaction, only my moral justification for stealing it anyway. Which is fine, imo, just be honest with yourself. You’re stealing, and it’s justified. Stick it to the man
-
Assuming that it is relevant, making digital media isn’t free. I can get away with piracy only because there’s enough people paying for the media to make it worth it for the studio. At least one other commenter pointed this out, but if everyone pirated, who would be making movies and video games? So to keep the system going, imo, only pirate if you weren’t going to buy it anyway - piracy or nothin.
At least one other commenter pointed this out, but if everyone pirated, who would be making movies and video games? So to keep the system going, imo, only pirate if you weren’t going to buy it anyway - piracy or nothin.
You’re missing another option… And one that most people seem to continue to purposefully forget. When Netflix first started… It was a good product at a worthwhile price. Lots of people gave up pirating. Music was the same thing with Spotify and such services. Piracy is only getting worse again because the companies that “produce” the content can’t keep their heads out of their asses and the services that cut back on piracy are now worse than what we left originally. As someone who had purchased these services for YEARS… There’s nothing but greed on their end… They can’t be mad when people respond with their own form of greed, they made the first move here. They could have continued making money from people who otherwise wouldn’t have paid. They chose this path to some extent.
-
