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”
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.
the money I’d pay to Netflix or Spotify won’t actually go to the artists who worked on the stuff
Not enough of the money goes to the artist, but money does go to the artists. If you’re not sure, ask literally any artist who has their content featured on netflix, or any of the other platforms.
Money also goes to the marketing team, and software developers, and internationalization teams, and all the other people in the chain who actually do have a purpose and make that artist’s content more available to the world than it otherwise would be.
But they’re always going to take more than they should, that’s just called inefficiency, and is where competition can happen. But if it’s not generating enough income, the content simply won’t happen.
Which is honestly fine with me, lord knows we have too much garbage on these platforms.
Most imortantly: I don’t want to shame anyone for pay/not paying, as I usually don’t know their financial situtation.
Totally agree. I felt I was very clear that I myself pirated when I couldn’t afford to pay, which is consistent with the belief that you should pay what you can afford.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Ah, that’s not my understanding of civil disobedience. I prefer this definition: “civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/)
I suppose the piracy aspect might not be public enough to count as civil disobedience though, unless you count as public the noticeable cumulative effects of all piracy.
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.
Nothing that some customer could have bought is removed by jumping a turnstyle.
Nothing? Not even the fuel required to transport the extra weight of somebody who hasn’t paid? Not even the wages for the employees who conduct and maintain the trains?
You can argue that the amounts are miniscule, sure. But “miniscule” does not equal “zero”.
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.
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.
You are trying to blur the line between the media/art/music/film, etc, and the reproductions of it.
Artists do deserve to be paid for their work, but artists do not deserve to maintain ownership over the already-sold assets, nor whatever happens to those assets afterwards (like copies made). If you want to say they should retain commercial rights for reproduction of it, sure, but resell of the originally-sold work (e.g. the mp3 file), and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work? Nah.
They didn’t put in labor towards that. To say they did expands “labor” far beyond any reasonable definition.
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.
Bruh, no one in here is arguing about legality, we’re arguing about morality, and no one but corporate shills buy into “potential sales” having value.
You’re trying to argue against what people just fundamentally, intuitively understand; copyright is a legal construct (not a moral one) that is 99% bullshit.
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.
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?
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”
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.
Don’t get me wrong: I pay for my indie games and don’t have the time for the so-called “triple-AAA” crap.
But the money I’d pay to Netflix or Spotify won’t actually go to the artists who worked on the stuff. That’s just not how this works.
Most imortantly: I don’t want to shame anyone for pay/not paying, as I usually don’t know their financial situtation.
Not enough of the money goes to the artist, but money does go to the artists. If you’re not sure, ask literally any artist who has their content featured on netflix, or any of the other platforms.
Money also goes to the marketing team, and software developers, and internationalization teams, and all the other people in the chain who actually do have a purpose and make that artist’s content more available to the world than it otherwise would be.
But they’re always going to take more than they should, that’s just called inefficiency, and is where competition can happen. But if it’s not generating enough income, the content simply won’t happen.
Which is honestly fine with me, lord knows we have too much garbage on these platforms.
Totally agree. I felt I was very clear that I myself pirated when I couldn’t afford to pay, which is consistent with the belief that you should pay what you can afford.
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.
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?
However much they’re asking. They put a price tag on it for exactly this question.
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.
Ah, that’s not my understanding of civil disobedience. I prefer this definition: “civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/)
I suppose the piracy aspect might not be public enough to count as civil disobedience though, unless you count as public the noticeable cumulative effects of all piracy.
Right, but in this instance you’re not damaging the government through these actions. You’re damaging private entities. Civil vs criminal.
EDIT: Although, piracy often crosses both civil and criminal statutes in many cases, because copyright law is weird like that.
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.
Only if the rides are a scarce resource. Which they aren’t. Nothing that some customer could have bought is removed by jumping a turnstyle.
Nothing? Not even the fuel required to transport the extra weight of somebody who hasn’t paid? Not even the wages for the employees who conduct and maintain the trains?
You can argue that the amounts are miniscule, sure. But “miniscule” does not equal “zero”.
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.
And media costs money to make.
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.
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 most of all western countries’ wealth comes from theft, full stop.
That’s only the case for pre-Bluray release content. Most of it was just captured from rips, Amazon Prime or Netflix.
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.
There is no labor in making digital copies.
You are trying to blur the line between the media/art/music/film, etc, and the reproductions of it.
Artists do deserve to be paid for their work, but artists do not deserve to maintain ownership over the already-sold assets, nor whatever happens to those assets afterwards (like copies made). If you want to say they should retain commercial rights for reproduction of it, sure, but resell of the originally-sold work (e.g. the mp3 file), and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work? Nah.
They didn’t put in labor towards that. To say they did expands “labor” far beyond any reasonable definition.
You’re trying to blur the line between what is and what should be. We don’t live in an ideal world.
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.
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.
Bruh, no one in here is arguing about legality, we’re arguing about morality, and no one but corporate shills buy into “potential sales” having value.
You’re trying to argue against what people just fundamentally, intuitively understand; copyright is a legal construct (not a moral one) that is 99% bullshit.
What are you talking about? That’s literally the entire point of the article and this comment section.
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?
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.
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?
Like which one exactly?
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