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.
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?
Oh I agree with the article as I already stated in my previous comment, and I hope people read it, because my only argument really is that it has a poor headline. The headline says that taking media that you wouldn’t have owned isn’t piracy (which is nonsense), the article says that piracy is justified when ownership is as nebulous as it often is with a lot of digital media these days (which I agree with).
The headline says “you’re told that what you’re doing is buying by the people selling you the media, but that’s not what you’re actually doing. So, if they’re lying to you about what you’re buying, then pirating a different thing isn’t stealing the thing they are trying to sell you.”
It’s definitely tongue in cheek and has some hyperbole in it, but that is the gist of the statement.
then pirating a different thing isn’t stealing the thing they are trying to sell you.
Maybe not that version of the thing specifically, but it’s still stealing if they ultimately created it and you obtained it ignoring their conditions for sale.
Don’t get me wrong, you have a really good point. A lot of times the bootleg version of a good is better than the legal version because of the legal version’s tos and spyware enforcing them. I just don’t see how obtaining the bootleg isn’t piracy/stealing. There’s good justification for stealing it imo (as a pirate myself), but that’s all it is, justification. It’s still stealing.
So I guess I’m just being pedantic when I say I disagree with you, but realize I see where you’re coming from, and that we basically agree in spirit
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.
I think my last sentence includes your “missing option”, actually. Take streaming for example, I’m not paying for 6 different streaming services. I can’t, I won’t, and I’m not going to juggle them every couple months either. So I pirate. Even if for some reason I couldn’t pirate their stuff, I just wouldn’t watch it. Either way, they don’t get my money.
If everyone who would buy a digital product pirates it instead, then it’s clear that they have been harmed by the piracy. This whole “own” vs “rent” vs etc argument is completely tangental as is the definition of “steal”, unless pedantry is the purpose of this post. It’s clear that piracy can be harmful.
“But they lost nothing physical” is an extremely shallow argument that ignores that not everything with value is physical. If I copy your idea as-is and make a product out of it before you, you can always come up with new ideas, right? It’s not like you lost something physical. Clearly you haven’t been harmed, right?
If someone who wouldn’t purchase a digital product pirates it, then it’s less obvious whether the creator got harmed by it. Also, to be clear, the discussion over digital ownership is still important.
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?
Oh I agree with the article as I already stated in my previous comment, and I hope people read it, because my only argument really is that it has a poor headline. The headline says that taking media that you wouldn’t have owned isn’t piracy (which is nonsense), the article says that piracy is justified when ownership is as nebulous as it often is with a lot of digital media these days (which I agree with).
No no, that is not what the headline says.
The headline says “you’re told that what you’re doing is buying by the people selling you the media, but that’s not what you’re actually doing. So, if they’re lying to you about what you’re buying, then pirating a different thing isn’t stealing the thing they are trying to sell you.”
It’s definitely tongue in cheek and has some hyperbole in it, but that is the gist of the statement.
Maybe not that version of the thing specifically, but it’s still stealing if they ultimately created it and you obtained it ignoring their conditions for sale.
Don’t get me wrong, you have a really good point. A lot of times the bootleg version of a good is better than the legal version because of the legal version’s tos and spyware enforcing them. I just don’t see how obtaining the bootleg isn’t piracy/stealing. There’s good justification for stealing it imo (as a pirate myself), but that’s all it is, justification. It’s still stealing.
So I guess I’m just being pedantic when I say I disagree with you, but realize I see where you’re coming from, and that we basically agree in spirit
I get ya. I think there’s also a petulant sentiment of “you don’t want to play fair? Then fuck you, I won’t either”
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.
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.
I think my last sentence includes your “missing option”, actually. Take streaming for example, I’m not paying for 6 different streaming services. I can’t, I won’t, and I’m not going to juggle them every couple months either. So I pirate. Even if for some reason I couldn’t pirate their stuff, I just wouldn’t watch it. Either way, they don’t get my money.
If everyone who would buy a digital product pirates it instead, then it’s clear that they have been harmed by the piracy. This whole “own” vs “rent” vs etc argument is completely tangental as is the definition of “steal”, unless pedantry is the purpose of this post. It’s clear that piracy can be harmful.
“But they lost nothing physical” is an extremely shallow argument that ignores that not everything with value is physical. If I copy your idea as-is and make a product out of it before you, you can always come up with new ideas, right? It’s not like you lost something physical. Clearly you haven’t been harmed, right?
If someone who wouldn’t purchase a digital product pirates it, then it’s less obvious whether the creator got harmed by it. Also, to be clear, the discussion over digital ownership is still important.