What if you’re pirating to avoid agreeing to an EULA that lets a giant corporation murder your family members?
Yeah, that lawsuit from last week is also why I started pirating 20 years ago.
Try the Sony BMG Rootkit, contained on music CDs:
In 2005 it was revealed that the implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs distributed by Sony BMG installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and “phone home” with reports on the user’s private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software’s existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
I have a few of those CD’s. They also have copy protection to keep people from copying the CD’s. It doesn’t work.
You can’t really have effective copy protection on any disc that can be played in a basic CD player; they’re just too simple.
So Sony’s approach was to put an autorun installer for a ‘music player’ on the disk too. If installed, it attempted to lock your CD drive from being used by any other software and couldn’t be easily uninstalled. And they pirated open-source software (yes, that’s possible) to build it.
SMH My Head.
Even if it did we’s still find a way to copy it. I copy Ultra HD-Blu-rays I purchase to my hdd as a backup. DRM only serves to punish those who actually spend money on media.
Oh, indeed. I’m just pointing out that terrible & illegal DRM is hardly a new practice.
Then you’re violating the law! Just agree to the 40 page legalese text as if you were on an equal footing.
- Let your personal pet lawyer read it if you can’t.
- Don’t forget to read every change to them, because every EULA allows the vendor to change parts of the EULA at any time.
- Enjoy having fewer rights to the bought stuff than a pirate does, because the EULA makes you waive them. Or will make you waive them.
Still not theft.
I’m fine with people calling piracy theft, if it means they’ll pirate more.
it’s not theft it’s plundering
I’m over here pirating things because I don’t want to pay for them but I’ll probably never watch/play them. Which side of the image am I?
Lagolas, Destroyer of Bandwidth.
Gameli, a little short on time to actually play the plunder
I guess if you aren’t consuming then you must just really enjoy the theft aspect of it. You’re on the right
Once unskippable warnings and ads appeared on DVDs I bought, I became a lost cause.
ON DVDs??? No way they did that… Jeez…
It’s just a better product.
Yup, if you present me a side-by-side of the free one and the paid one when the free one is better even disregarding costs, I’m pirating 100% of the time.
- “Oh, you’ll only have access to this as long as our servers remain online or as long as we keep renewing the license.”
- “Sorry, your device needs to phone home to use this.”
- “Don’t you love ads in your paid product?”
- “You’ll need to juggle several different services if you want what you can otherwise get for free on a central hub.”
- “Yes, you can only use this on one or two devices at a time thanks to DRM.”
- “Fuck you, you’ll need an account with us to use this even though you bought it without that account somewhere else.”
- “This thing’s only ongoing cost on our end is version updates you totally need and want, so it’ll be an indefinite subscription (which we’ll make a pain in the ass to cancel).”
- “This game runs noticeably worse because of the shitty DRM we shoehorned in.”
- “You’re saying you don’t like being spied on for ad targeting?”
- “You can only get this bundled with a bunch of other bullshit you don’t want and would never pay for individually.”
- “Our UI that you’re forced to interact with to use this is fucking garbage.”
- “We don’t sell this anymore; ask Scalper4478 on eBay.”
- “We use the money that you pay us to lobby against your rights as a consumer.”
- “We somehow lack QoL features that the free version has.”
You’ll need to juggle several different services if you want what you can otherwise get for free on a central hub.
This one, while common, I kind of take issue with. You’re basically complaining that there is no one, all-consuming media oligarchy that owns EVERY show/movie, and distributes it on their singular massively overpriced service (and yes, with that market stranglehold, they would massively overprice it)
Shouldn’t the principle of competition mean there are multiple services, each trying to present better content? People reasonably contend with only being subscribed to a few they care about - I don’t know who is assuming they should get access to all media, all the time, without paying truckloads of money.
I will grant that for games, no service beats Steam, but I will absolutely buy games from other platforms like Itch and GOG in the spirit of competition when their prices or better or the dev has avoided Steam for reasons of adult content censorship.
Interesting that you pick GOG and Itch as examples, because I have all my gemes from these platforms available Through Lutris in a central interface. And it works well because Lutris can, provided my login info, just download and install the games without needing any extra services.
I made that point short to be pithy, but what I actually take issue with in there being so many streaming services is that:
- Upfront transparency for what shows and movies are actually there, let alone in what state, is often incredibly limited. This isn’t inherent to there being multiple services, but when I haven’t found one whose experience isn’t profoundly shitty, I’m counting it against them.
- Even if you accurately assess which subscriptions you need at first, that can collapse at any time because shows are treated as playing cards, and you often need to put ongoing effort beyond just paying money into maintaining that list. (I often watch shows over months or years instead of binging them, and this is super shitty under a streaming service.)
- Even if you have all those subscriptions and maintain them well, there’s no place to centrally view their content, something which cable TV – for what a piece of shit it was – shockingly made easier than streaming. If I purchase half my games from Steam and half from GOG, I can still access what I buy from a shared location: my desktop. If I purchase a bunch of discs from multiple different vendors, it’s all centralized on my DVD rack. The UI is consistent (and even slightly quicker to access). This isn’t massive, but it’s still objectively a point against them.
- Unlike the PC gaming landscape where games are often available across multiple stores, streaming services are becoming increasingly exclusivity-focused, and this happens because there’s such an oligopoly in the TV and film industry, and basically every member of that oligopoly now runs a streaming service.
I don’t think the point should be that there should be one streaming service to rule them all, but that in their current state, they represent an objectively substantial downgrade to piracy even taking away costs.
Nah. We need legal protection to separate content creators and distributiors. Creator’s license content. Laws could mandate all distributors get access to the same pricing. Then you pick the distribution platform you enjoy.
Creator’s compete for views with quality content.
Distributors compete for users with features and curation.
No exclusive rights. No studio running a streaming platform. No streaming platform starting up studios. None of this anticompetitive lock-in.
I don’t even know if I disagree with that approach, but how would you mandate equal pricing? The relationship between producer and content distributor today is normally based on length of time and the general size of the audience, like “$2 million to distribute in these five countries for the next year”
For that matter, given how much media is produced internationally, how would you set up every country to agree on terms simultaneously?
I’m in favor of a system that empowers creators, but I’m also aware they tend to only get funding from big publishers with big expectations on return (including licensing rights). A system without lock-in contracts may just mean no one helps them create their vision.
Public price lists from each studio’s clearing house. Licensing becomes like fuel at the pump. Doesn’t matter who pulls up they’re all paying the same rate.
I have a game my ex me for my Xbox I think it was rainbow six I’ve never played because I couldn’t get through the obnoxious sign up process to play a goddamned game that I owned.
b-b-but it’s not theft 😢
deleted by creator
Right? No justification is required.
Semantically doesn’t matter much.
If a peach seller has a harvest of 1,000 peaches that will go bad in a week, he doesn’t care about “only having 940 peaches” when someone steals 60 of them. He cares that he spent all that effort and money growing the peaches on the bet he’d make a profit, rented the shop space in the market, hired an assistant to bag and sell them, and some douchebag still didn’t pay for them.
The quantity of product a seller maintains is generally almost completely irrelevant to the costs. It’s about the societal expectations of paying your due to people who have put work into something you want.
Ok so alternatively, instead of “stealing” peaches, I pay $10 monthly for Peaches+, which means I get to look at the peaches whenever I want to until they go bad. Sometimes new peaches arrive but they rarely look as good as the previous ones. Then when I eventually cancel my Peaches+ subscription I still don’t own a single peach even though I paid a lot of money.
You Wouldn’t Look At A Peach…
And you only get to see what peaches Peaches+ has the rights for at this time. There’s no guarantee they’ll have a Canadian Harmony next week, and if you didn’t try one when they were available, then that sucks. There’s a used bluray copy of Canadian Harmony available on Amazon for $60 if you’re interested.
Oh but don’t worry! You can pay another $10 per month for a VPN service and change your location to Canada to see which peaches are available to watch over there!
And if they don’t have it there, they can at least recommend other peach cultivars you might like with absolutely no regard for the genre of peach that you were looking for. Sorry we didn’t have any Canadian Harmonies, would you like a May Pride, or maybe a Donut Peach?
(Made extra realistic by the fact that I don’t actually know the differences between different peach cultivars)
Let’s say that no matter how much is “stolen” the peach seller has an infinite inventory. It never depletes, and it never goes bad.
The peach seller takes all the money, increases the selling price of the peach, and each peach you buy is a contract that allows the seller to kill your wife.
Yeah, you’re right, sorry, we can’t have a concept of intellectual property without Disney mandating we attach a murder clause into it. That’s certainly not stretching the argument.
Just gonna paste my reply since I have an infinite supply of it. (Did I just steal from myself?)
Why singularly focus on the one point about a recent Disney event and completely disregard the other points as if they were now wholly tainted by your critique.
Ignore the single point about the reference to Disney then.
Please continue with the other points.
I’d be more likely to reply if you’d actually withdraw the argument. Say “You’re right, sorry, that was a dumb thing to focus on since it has nothing to do with the point about intellectual property. But the point stands.” Don’t just put the onus on me to “ignore the times I say something I can’t substantiate.”
Basically, if I know you’ll never walk something back from being convinced, you’re not arguing in good faith, and addressing the rest of it (something you can imagine I’ve wasted my time doing before in previous online discussions) is really not worth my effort.
Why does everyone bring the Disney thing into every discussion of piracy’s moral footing?
Why singularly focus on the one point about a recent Disney event and completely disregard the other points as if they were now wholly tainted by your critique.
Ignore the single point about the reference to Disney then.
Please continue with the other points.
The issue is not the criticism of Disney my brother. The issue is everyone trying to generalise and use it as a moral backbench to justify piracy when this is just an example of a case specific incident
My point is that it would be smarter to use the Disney argument to evaluate whether it would be sensible for one to purchase a Disney subscription rather than as an argument to justify piracy as a whole
What if someone richer than the peach grower took a picture of the peaches, and then demanded everyone else pay them instead of the peach grower for copies of the photo of the peaches? Would you still be upset if the peach photographer didn’t make money from every single person who obtained a copy of the photo of the peaches? In some cases, the peach grower got paid before the photo started being sold, in other cases the peach grower gets 0.0004% of the profit from each peach photo sold.
If it’s the photographer’s wish to make money off the photo, and each person who sees it agrees that it’s high value, then yes, I’d be upset about him not making money. If it was so easy to take good photos of peaches, I’d prefer everyone took their own for their eye-catching uses. As it so happens, it’s not so easy.
In fact, it’s extremely hard for photographers to convince clients, even wealthy magazines, to pay for photo licenses.
Classic lemmy logic. Lemme say something ridiculous, but it’s “capitalism bad”, so everyone will upvote.
You’re playing a game, or watching a movie made by labor. Highly qualified and paid labor.
All those involved in the production could easily go and make their own company and do their own movies/games. And they often do. But you keep pirating AAA titles and Hollywood produced movies instead of paying for indie games and watching independent cinema.
That’s because deep in your soul you’re a capitalist hoe, you’re just also a poor joe, but somehow you need to rationalize.
You want the system of capitalist abuse in the media industry to end? Instead of pirating, stop consuming for-profit media, and take your hard earned cash to support independent creators.
Piracy helps that capitalist system. Cuz they’ll abuse everyone they can, and those who can’t will illegally use the results anyways. And this way no independent market will ever form.
You’re not a warrior of freedom, anon. You’re a corpo sucker, just a poor one.
I hope you’re just playing devil’s advocate and not licking corporate boots
The corporations can fuck right off because they steal more from creators than pirates ever could. But directly supporting independent creators you like is a good thing that should be lauded. Someone dying penniless in the street because they chose to make things that enhanced people’s lives instead of going into a soul sucking banking career or some shit is a travesty if you ask me.
It’s about the societal expectations of paying your due to people who have put work into something you want.
An excellent argument in favor of banning the sale of used copies of media
First paragraph addresses the overheads of running a biz.
Second paragraph proffers a specious moral argument.
A connection is vaguely insinuated.
Sloppy.
There’s a little concept known as Intellectual Property that begs to differ
If someone steals my bike, I lose ownership of the bike, that’s theft.
If I pirate a movie, Disney still owns the movie.
If I buy a game, I don’t even own that copy of the game??
If I buy a game, I don’t even own that copy of the game??
Here’s my chance to shill for GOG in this thread! It feels nice to legally own a copy of Stardew Valley
In my opinion, theft is a bit more nuanced than that. You pirating the game denies the producers of the game the profit they would have otherwise derived from you purchasing the game
no because otherwise I simply wouldn’t have bought it
That’s why it’s called piracy, not theft.
And when you call it piracy, some turbo nerds come out of the woodwork to claim it’s not piracy because piracy implies theft
In the end, anyone who’s not a low tier troll knows exactly the meaning of theft in the context of content creation.
Y’all can cope all you want, but there’s a reason a lof of folks feel guilty when pirating indie games, and i bet that’s because deep down they know that ultimately, piracy is wrong. They just shift the goalposts when it comes to corporations
My favorite take in this thread was a guy saying that two months after release all the artists etc are paid off therefore piracy is ok lmao
When people hear the concept of thought crimes described to them, they rightfully recoil in disgust at that kind of dystopic idea. However, euphemize the concept as intellectual property, and for some reason, most people are fine with it.
IP theft isn’t a thought crime, though.
No idea what point buddy was tryna pass across there
I have no idea what a “though crime” is, but if your intent is to antagonise IP laws then you’re probably not a very creative person
They likely meant “thought crimes”
IP isn’t a thought crime though
Theft is such an ugly word. It’s really taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
Keep robbin’, stay hoodin’.
I am a willing kleptomaniac
⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠟⠛⠉⠡⢤⣀⣒⠈⢙⡓⠠⠀⠀⠈⠙⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡟⢁⠐⢦⣌⠲⣌⡲⢦⣍⣛⠲⣬⣙⠢⠑⠶⣄⠀⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⢀⡀⠈⠐⠈⠑⠀⠉⠂⣈⣉⣓⣀⣈⣠⣄⣠⣌⣀⡈⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⠇⠾⠿⠷⠤⠈⣿⡆⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⠇⠐⠾⠛⠛⠿⣷⡘⣧⠹⡿⠟⣛⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⡦⢠⢤⠀⠀⠀⡈⢁⣿⡀⠀⠰⠌⠁⢹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⡿⢡⣇⣿⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⠟⠃⠀⠀⣿⠂⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢃⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⠃⢿⠿⢯⡙⡿⠿⣿⠋⠀⠀⢰⡀⠉⠠⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠛⠛⣡⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠁⢄⣈⠢⠀⢳⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⠇⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣷⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢠⠀⠠⣄⠀⢀⡀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⡟⠀⡀⠃⠀⠀⣀⠰⠆⢼⡆⠐⢀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⠂⠀⠀⡀⣆⠀⠸⣀⠁⠈⠃⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⠋⠉⠁⠈⠉⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⡀⠁⢠⡅⠘⠰⠀⢈⡄⣺⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠻⢿⣿ ⣿⣿⣦⣤⣬⣤⣴⠞⠀⠓⠛⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣠⣴⣶⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⢀⣀⣀⣀⣀⣀⣀⣠⣤⣴⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft. It is something else.
You pirate content to save money and protest the excesses of capitalism.
I pirate content because I enjoy singing sea shanties with the mates while seeding torrents.
We are not the same.
I just view it as a “try before you buy”. I have loads of CDs and DVDs that I wouldn’t have bought if I hadn’t seen how good they were first.
If I try something and don’t like it then I shouldn’t have to pay for it.
But then you won’t spend money on bad stuff! We can’t get your money before you realize it’s worthless! We can’t have that, think of the “economy”!
This is the problematic view here. You think the monetary value is attached to the product itself, when it’s actually attached to the perceived satisfaction you thought you would’ve gained before purchasing it.
I don’t understand your reply.
I just don’t want to buy an album based off of one song I heard on the radio and then find out that I don’t like it.
Edit: a downvote and no clarification of what you meant. Thanks I guess. . .
You don’t need to buy albums these days though.
P.S - I didn’t downvote you
I like to buy albums, I think it’s a much better way to support artists than streaming plus I like getting a physical copy, the artwork and the lyrics etc. But that’s another debate and it was more just an example.
P.S. Sorry, the downvote seemed conveniently timed
What a great show. I really appreciate this meme.
Over the Garden Wall for those who don’t know. It was a miniseries Cartoon Network did in the 2010s and I agree, it was a really great show.
Because I’m a cheap bastard.
And also because I’m a third worlder and piracy is my only access.
My friend (an old lady unfamiliar with pirates) bought a dvd the other day. A comedy from 15 years ago.
It had been censored. Offensive dialogue dubbed over. No warning on rhe package.
Yo ho forever.
