It is illegal and immoral. It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers who are only trying to make a living. If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.
I hunt criminals. Modern life as a whole is pretty criminal. You realize your tax money has gotten civilians killed right? All tax payers have blood on their hands for essentially paying other people to murder for them so they don’t need to do it themselves and so they can create the apps and movies people pirate. It’s fucked from begining to end. There’s no such thing as holy unless you live in the woods and never touch the rest of humanity.
We are all immoral with no authentic values. Just indoctrinated to think we’re more special than others and literally pay people to kill for us.
He hunt criminals
Keep up the good work, Dog!
You mean the man who assaults poor people?
Go with Christ, brah.
That reminds me …I need to re-dye my hair.
Define a “living”. then tell me who isnt making it. Piracy is self moderating, the content that is being pirated the most involves directors and developers that made the most money, even with the piracy. As you go smaller in scale to creators that are more likely struggling to make a living, are also the least likely to be pirated. Every artist Ive known, digital arts, music, tubers and streamers, have hated copyright strike systems. The ones that are popular enough to have pirates also have comfortable income from fans. There is no one being prevented from “making a living” by piracy.
It is still theft.
All theft is wrong, but it is much less sad when someone steals a diamond from Jeff Bezos than it is when someone steals a loaf of bread from someone who is starving.
“all theft is wrong” nah.
If the starving guy from your example stole food from jeff bezos to survive then that is morally correct theft.
I agree with what you’re saying, it could be argued that it’s wrong that the starving guy needs to steal in the first place, but that’s probably semantics.
If I steal your purse, you don’t have a purse anymore. That’s theft.
If I ride the subway without paying, I’m possibly taking away the seat from someone that paid. Not theft but close to it.
If I pirate a movie I would never have paid for anyway, I’m not taking away anything from anyone and I am not even causing lost income for the producer (cause I never would have bought it). Literally no one is worse off due to my actions, the only difference is that I’ve watched a movie.
copyright is theft. creators that have had their creations taken away because rich people own their IP now.
It becomes universal knowledge which is what we should all strive to achieve, the right way. When the copyright expires, time is up for any gatekeeping of inspiration.
whats the last copyright expiring that you remember
When items enter public domain.
70 years after the creator death. Stuffs should become public domain once the itrms no longer make significant revenue or no revenue at all
So are you morally opposed to all the crap disney has done to ruin the public domain for entire generations?
That seems worse than pirating a disney movie to me.
Im asking what specific item do you remember entering public domain? The creator of the Lord of the Rings died in the 70’s and his work is still under copyright.
Winnie the Pooh and the works of Jim Morrison.
And I agree. However, when youtube decides to make you watch an ad every 2 minutes, you stop caring
Theft has a very strict legal definition. Piracy is not legally theft. It is legally infringement, a separate crime. Conflating one with the other is propaganda by the largest IP holders.
These largest IP holders want nothing more than to lock up all culture and rent it back to you for a price, indefinitely. They would happily steal from you without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, they have stolen from you. They’ve successfully extended copyright terms to an absurd length, preventing works from entering the public domain for decades.
Many of these IP holders also don’t care about preservation. They’ll happily let their works be lost to history. Some are actively fighting against preservation.
Is it immoral to infringe? Yes. But IP holders don’t have the moral highground. They’re just as bad, if not worse. (I’m talking about the multi billion dollar companies here, not the small business persons struggling to get by)
If I were to do it, I would only do it from large established companies or products that are extremely popular anyway, as the percentage of sales lost due to piracy is probably very little in that case.
If you were to do it, then you would be a criminal.
Oh no! Someone shared a file online, take away their liberty!
Illegal and immoral are not the same thing.
That’s why I used two adjectives.
The difference being that money is finite and digital media isn’t.
Money isn’t finite either. States and national banks create an artificial scarcity for it because (non-digital) goods and services you can buy with it are finite.
But since you can create unlimited copies from digital data, the intrinsic value of a copy is 0, therefore piracy isn’t stealing.Abundant and infinite mean two different things though. Money is abundant, not infinite. If you had unlimited money, as you said, it’s intrinsic value would be zero
Piracy does not steal from the directors and creators, but from the distributors whose have already bought the rights. The distributors who attempt to create artificial scarcity, excessively monetize your attention, and in generally act hostile to their consumers. There used to be a pact between distributors extracting money from consumers while leaving the content in a desirable state, but greed ruined that. I don’t mind some ads, but we’re way beyond reasonable. I don’t mind phased rollouts, but actively preventing people from watching just because of their location? I don’t mind things not being shown, but the whole concept of stoking FoMO “before it goes into the vault for next generation”, is just wrong. I don’t mind attempts to copy protect, but paying your politicians to turn a civil matter into criminal and use govt resources to protect your artificial scarcity is just so wrong.
I prefer not to pirate. I used to think policy was wrong when there was some balance between distributors and consumers. However greed ruined that. Greed made distributors take and take. It is not wrong to steal from such corrupt unethical businesses. They’re not worthy of respect
steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers
Software piracy from an independent or small studio, maybe.
Movie piracy? Everyone working on the film got paid for their work. What you’re ‘stealing’ is the profits from a megacorp that’s making more money year-on-year than ever before while still paying those in the industry terribly because they can.
Your hot take is a bit flawed.
As a general rule I actually agree, even if it’s a bit complicated and not black & white
Are people downvoting because this is actually a popular opinion and doesn’t belong here or because they disagree with it?
“Yes.”
Can we not dissect every downvote like it’s an affront to your personal freedom?
It’s an interesting question worth asking.
Can we not assume people are triggered when they’re just asking honest questions?
No
I upvote if I’m having a good day, and downvote if I’m having a bad one.
You’re doing it incorrectly. Upvote the opinions that you think deserve the moniker of “unpopular.”
Forcing your own opinion on others is actually immoral.
They should be upvoting because they are applauding how bad my opinion is.
OP appears to be a genuinely awful person in every possible metric, so I frankly just don’t want to give them the dopamine hit.
If the product studdenly stop release, then it sometimes could be count as moral, because, when there are lots of digital products rely on the digital distribution (e.g. online game shop) then suddenly shut down, people will no longer to enjoy the digital products on that specific devices.
Please search “3ds eshop closeure”
Edit: “rely on”, not “relay to”
Against indie devs yes, against Ubisoft and EA no.
Is it wrong to take food from a grocery store that would otherwise be thrown away? The grocery store isn’t losing anything except potential future revenue.
Food that is being thrown away can’t produce future revenue. A film that is actively streaming on a paid site can. Your analogy doesn’t work.
Wdym? The store is still selling food. If you don’t take the stuff being thrown away, you’d need to buy food from them.
The exact sets of bits are producing as much revenue as the thrown away food. But many people wouldn’t buy if they didn’t pirate, whereas people still need to eat.
Food that is being thrown away can’t produce future revenue.
Not with that attitude.
As @[email protected] said, if you don’t get to take home free dumpster food, presumably you would have to buy fresher food.
And it isn’t hypothetical, large grocery stores are IMMINENTLY worried about this and will call the police on people going through their dumpsters, or they will pour toxic chemicals on the food to render it inedible, or any number of fucked up ways to ensure waste.
Piracy is stealing.
Who are you taking things from? Is the grocery store example wrong as well?
If I download something that I never would have paid for anyway, either because I just wouldn’t pay for that product, or because I literally cannot pay for that product, who has lost out? I haven’t deprived anyone of anything. It’s not like I’ve taken a physical thing away from them.
Ok but then you create a production problem.
You download it, but that piece of media still had a cost of production. If you don’t pay for it then the producers must find other monetization methods.
It’s one of the reasons the modern web is based off ads, or why free-to-play with microtransanction is so common.
I’m not suggesting that I do this for everything, or that everyone should do it constantly. For example, I bought Baldur’s Gate 3 on release, as it seemed worth it. But Ubisoft’s latest shitfest? Probably might be worth a pirate, see if I enjoy it. If I do really enjoy it, I might buy the game. Or I might not, since Ubisoft are a bunch of utter cunts.
Probably might be worth a pirate
But here comes a problem of fairness.
You not only want to play the game, you also want to decide how much is worthed for the producer. If the price is too high, don’t play it. Imagine going to a restaurant and saying “sure, cook for me, I’ll later pay you if and how much I think it will worthed”
Not only this but:
Or I might not, since Ubisoft are a bunch of utter cunts.
Because you acknowledge the damaging nature of piracy, not only that, you also decide that rules are applied arbitrarily, which is a terrible thing to base your system on.
Yes you have.
What about a game or movie you’ve already bought? Are you morality allowed to copy it for your own use in your system?
How? I was never going to give them money. Digital files are not a finite resource. How have I deprived them of anything?
Not really, there is no property loss. Nothing was taken. That’s like saying taking a picture of a piece of art is stealing.
No.
What is stealing prey tell? I think it’s wrongfully taking something from someone.
Exactly. Glad we’re on the same page.
Nothing was taken. It is a copy. The original is still exactly where is was. It is by definition not theft.
Copies that weren’t paid for.
But piracy takes nothing. The original owner still has it.
Crime is badass.
Die in a police shootout then.
deleted by creator
:(
This is the basic premise for a lot more people than will claim it or understand it…
Let’s take a bin full of potatoes. Everyone’s gonna pick the best potato. They’ll dig around, examine, inspect, and pick the good ones. The shitty scruffy looking ones get left sitting there, and don’t nobody who runs a shop wanna just wait until all the potatoes get chosen. They bring out new ones constantly to keep the bin full and have options available so people can pick the best ones.
Maybe once in a great while someone’s buying potatoes for their pigs, and they look for crappy ones. Maybe once in a great while someone needs 200 potatoes and they don’t wanna sit there being Picky Ricky for four fucking hours. Maybe once in a great while those crappy potatoes actually get chosen… but how often? Not very…
Netflix is that bin of potatoes. Is it wrong to pirate movies that are available on Netflix instead of paying Netflix? Well, it kinda depends on the fucking potato, don’t it? You’ll pay the $30/mo or whatever it is for a game of thrones, because you’re getting what you pay for, and pirating that is definitely depriving Netflix of some value in its investment, but if you pirate billy bobs country bunker hour special from 1993, you’re not taking jack shit from Netflix, it’s an old wrinkly ass potato that’s been sitting in the bin for a long ass time while people spent their money on better potatoes, fun it’ll never make a goddamn penny for netflix. It’s only value is adding quantity to the bin.
When it gets old enough that they’ll throw it away, the deprivation of value has been reduced to being trivial. Your point is valid imho
People pirate for different reasons, and the legal definition of it changes nothing really. There’s…
- People who will absolutely not ever pay for anything
- People who will pay as long as they get their money’s worth, who may also be open to supporting the creator directly (Patreon, Nebula, Bandcamp, Floatplane, Liberapay etc.)
- Preserving content in a usable format (e.g. vinyl record plastic breaking down, old 8track players becoming uneconomical to repair and rare to find, playstation magazine CDs that will never be available online despite being susceptible to CD rot)
I’m in the last two camps personally. I wanted to also share my opinions on the points you mentioned directly…
It is illegal and immoral
I think It is illegal and immoral to sell consumers a license to use a product, under the guise of them owning it without explicitly and clearly stating such at the point of purchase, i.e. consumer electronics where you may “own” the device but only have a license to use the operating system, digital game purchases on consoles which can be revoked at any time by Sony/Microsoft or the publisher, services like Amazon Prime Video where a digital box set you purchased (that can only be watched via Amazon’s website) can be deleted by Amazon at any time, leaving you no recourse.
It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors
In my opinion, it should not be right for directors at the likes of UMG to profit from music made by artists who have died.
and developers who are only trying to make a living
The developers do not make anywhere near as much money as they should for their efforts, and quite frankly they are going to get paid regardless of whether you as an individual decide to purchase or pass on a product.
If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.
IMO the people in the first camp probably aren’t interested in money if they have chosen not to purchase their media to begin with
I’m curious as to the reason behind the post though, has someone pirated your content before?
Thank you for an actual intellectual rebuttal. This may actually make me reconsider the morality aspect, but it is still outside of my moral bounds and therefore I can never condone it.
This started because of a post that I saw about a big piracy community being shut down.
Defederated from another popular instance, not shut down.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy is still there, just not viewable through your instance where your account is.
People who will pay as long as they get their money’s worth, who may also be open to supporting the creator directly
The point is, isn’t the producer right to make the price? You can always not consume what they produce. This category is the most obnoxious; would you ever go to a restaurant and expect to decide the prices?
It’s the very same argument for producers that willingly release their contently freely and let you support them, eventually. It’s their choice.
Of the three you quoted preservation is the only one I find acceptable. If the producer no longer care to distribute their product, then they probably don’t care to what it happens to it either.
I think It is illegal and immoral to sell consumers a license to use a product, under the guise of them owning it
For me the main difference is that nobody is forcing you to accept the transaction. I could accept this kind of argument for drugs for example, where you either take it or die/have serious repercussions. But pirating a movie you would have very much lived without just because is easy to do so it’s particularly problematic.
they are going to get paid regardless of whether you as an individual decide to purchase or pass on a product
Except they aren’t. Or at least, of course they’re payed the same, at the moment. But in our economy prices are signals. If a market will appear smaller then it is because of piracy then after some timesfewer developers will be hired, and each of them will be payed less because you’re “falsifying” the signals. Or even worst, the producers will start to use alternative form of monetization. That’s one of the reason the modern web is based off ads or free-to-play games with microtransanctions are so damn common.
IMO the people in the first camp probably aren’t interested in money if they have chosen not to purchase their media to begin with
The people in the first category should also think about the allocation problem. Those products which they like to consume but not pay for, still had a cost of production. The problem is they want ti consume, without supporting production, and that’s not gonna work for a society.
There is no way to buy media forever. Even DVDs go bad and get worn out, then you’re back buying something you already own.
Piracy is not immoral, it is the free market pendulum that always forces media to care the tiniest bit of thought toward consumer experience.
I started pirating stuff I have subs and apps for, it’s simply a horrible experience right now. These episodes of this season are on this one, and these are on another service that I have to switch to.
Now which service has the other episodes? Oh now they moved to a different app, and I’m still paying the old app.
The vast majority of time I’ll just go torrent and plex something than chase it to many different apps, even if I have those subscriptions
These episodes of this season are on this one, and these are on another service that I have to switch to.
This kind of thing just encourages 🏴☠️🚢 the rest of the season IMO.
In almost all cases it’s just easier to just grab the whole box set, pop it on a personal media server and not worry about the streaming service faff - or even look for a modern “pout lock car” equivalent to stream from.
It was nice when everything was on Netflix and HBO, before all the entertainment companies decided they want a piece of the streaming pie, with prices continuing to increase. I used to follow the cordcutters community back on tiddeR and they were starting to get sick of this too.
