The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
Piracy was never stealing. It’s copyright infringement, but that’s not the same as stealing at all. People saying it’s stealing have always been wrong.
One of the great modern scams, was to convince society that unauthorized copying of data is somehow equivalent to taking away a physical object.
Jesus didn’t ask for permission to copy bread and fish. It’s a clear moral precedent that if you can copy you should.
What would the Jesus do?
Checkmate Atheists!
Jesus was the first pirate.
Nah, that would be Prometheus.
Wasn’t the idea and origin story of Jesus stolen from previous texts and religions lol
They forked Judaism
Athiests don’t have a problem with Middle-Eastern Socialist Jews, the ‘Christians’ sure do.
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Still not theft.
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Not a lawyer, but most of what you said is true, except:
then it’s not possible to copy that data without depriving the creator of its value.
We’re talking about the theoretical value the creator might get if you decide to pay for something. If you never had any intention of paying to access something if you couldn’t find a pirated copy, no value has been lost by the creator due to copying the data and therefore no harm has been done. The requirement for criminal liability should be that a harm has been inflicted by you beyond any reasonable doubt. Piracy as a deprivation of monetary value can not ever meet this requirement. Of course, the actual requirement is that you have committed a crime beyond reasonable doubt, so if corrupt legislators make piracy a crime, the justice system can obviously charge you with it despite it being victimless, hence the scam.
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Literally no one thinks that. But you know that already, don’t you?
It’s theft of intellectual property…
There is no such thing as intellectual property - you can not own a thought.
Once again with the strawman.
Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea or digital creation. Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time. Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.
I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.
You seem to not understand what the word own means and the difference between material and not material goods.
You seem to not understand what “theft” means.
I have a thing and than someone takes it away, so I can’t use it anymore. If somebody copies that thing - it’s not really theft.
My point is more - concepts from physical world don’t nessessary apply to digital world.
“Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.”
Just telling on yourself 😂
What is that supposed to mean?
I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.
I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws. I don’t need to “justify” at all. I rarely even pirate anything, but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong when I do.
I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws.
Wow look that’s 3 strawman in a row, you guys are exceptional at fabricating fictional arguments to tear down.
If you’re going to use that word you should at least know what it means so you don’t sound stupid.
Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea
Ah, it’s an idea, not a thought. Gotcha. Glad you cleared that up.
Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time.
Who the fuck cares? Dinner also takes a great deal of time to make.
Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.
That’s not true. People have been telling stories and creating art since humanity climbed down from the trees. Compensation might encourage more people to do it, but there was never a time that people weren’t creating, regardless of compensation. In addition, copyright, patents and trademarks are only one way of trying to get compensation. The Sistine chapel ceiling was painted not by an artist who was protected by copyright, but by an artist who had rich patrons who paid him to work.
Maybe “Meg 2: The Trench” wouldn’t have been made unless Warner Brothers knew it would be protected by copyright until 2143. But… maybe it’s not actually necessary to give that level of protection to the expression of ideas for people to be motivated to make them. In addition, maybe the harms of copyright aren’t balanced by the fact that people in 2143 will finally be able to have “Meg 2: The Trench” in the public domain.
Why should an artist not be paid but a gardener or someone who build your house is supposed to be paid?
After all, humans build stuff and make stuff with plants without compensation all the time.
You just sound like a Boomer who thinks work is only work when the product isn’t entertaining or art.
Why are you making up a story about an artist not getting paid?
Who the fuck cares?
People who are not human fucking garbage care. If your position is that you simply don’t care about stealing from someone else what they spent years of time and money to create, you’re just a trash person and this conversation is moot.
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If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?
Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.
If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?
…huh?
Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.
…no? What are you talking about? All it involves is illegally copying someone else’s work.
Isn’t ‘theft of intellectual property’ taking someone else’s work and try to pass it off as your own?
No.
Intellectual property is a scam, the term was invented to convince dumb people that a government-granted monopoly on the expression of an idea is the same thing as “property”.
You can’t “steal” intellectual property, you can only infringe on someone’s monopoly rights.
Imagine if startrek was written with IP in mind. Instead of all these wunderkinds being all gung ho about implementing their warp field improvements on your reactor you’d get some ferengi shilling the latest and greatest “marketable” blech engine improvements.
Fiction is much better without reality leeching in.
Star Trek was set in a future utopia. One of the key things about the show is that it’s a post-scarcity world where even physical objects can be replicated.
They definitely wrote the series with IP in mind… in that their view of a future utopia was one where not only did copyright etc. not exist, but nobody cared much about the ownership of physical objects either.
That is absolutely 100% a completely insane position. The fact that you feel entitled to literally everything someone else creates it’s fucking horrific and you are a sad person.
For someone who bitches all over this thread about people strawmanning their position, this is a pretty fucking great reply.
Hint: one can be pissed about people throwing around the not-based-in-legal-reality term “intellectual property.” One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft, a strategy which has apparently worked mightily well on you. One can be all of those things, and yet still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”
What you posted was a textbook definition of a straw man.
One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft
No, you have it wrong, one is part of a strategy to confuse the public into thinking it’s not, because it justifies doing whatever they want.
still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”
But they don’t feel that copyright infringement is wrong. How closely did you read the previous statements?
They literally said “Intellectual property is a scam”. I don’t know how else you could possibly interpret that
I don’t know how the original poster meant it, but one possible way to interpret it (which is coincidentally my opinion) is that the concept of intellectual property is a scam, but the underlying actual legal concepts are not. Meaning, the law defines protections for copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, and each of those has their uses and are generally not “scams,” but mixing them all together and packaging them up into this thing called intellectual property (which has no actual legal basis for its existence) is the scam. Does that make sense?
Nah, if I stole their IP, they wouldn’t have it anymore
Nah, that’s not how that works.
So you also believe people shouldn’t need a ticket for a concert, for example?
The performers time is not infinitely reproducible so your argument is apples to oranges.
But the time to create a novel, a videogame, or a news story is not infinitely reproducible, either. So when you are pirsting one of those things, you are actively reaping the benefits of someone’s time for free, like going to a concert without a ticket
Yeah, this is the real issue. That said it is a shame and a waste for the results of these efforts to be artificially restricted. I do really hope that one day we can find a way to keep people fed and happy while fully utilizing the incredible technology we have for copying and redistributing data.
I mean, we’ve kinda already found a way, and it’s ads. Now it’s obvious that the ad market as a whole is horrible (it’s manipulative, it has turned into spying, it does not work really well, it’s been controlled by just a handful of companies etc), but at least it’s democratic in that it allows broader access to culture to everyone while still paying the creators.
Personally, I would not be against ads, if they were not tracking me. As of now, though, the situation seems fucked up and a new model is probably necessary. It’s just that, until now, every other solution is worse for creators.
There’s a difference between the performer’s time to create not being infinitely reproducible, and an user’s time to use the product being or not infinitely reproducible. Whether I’m pirating or buying a TV show, the actors were already compensated for their time and use for the show; my payment for buying actually goes to the corporate fat: licensors, distributors, etc.
Whereas when pay a ticket into a live concert, I’m actually paying for something to be made.
Whether I’m pirating or buying a TV show, the actors were already compensated for their time
And where do you think that money comes from…?
It just magically appears /s Its disingenuous to try and justify piracy on the basis that the performers have already been paid. I don’t agree with studios either of course, customers are being scammed
From the investors who are paying the cheques of course. They are corporations, they can afford to spend some coins on [checks notes] living wages.
This only applies to cases where the artist/actor/whatever gets paid upfront. Most of the times, that does not happen. The creator of something only gets money when somebody buys what they have created (books, videogames, music, etc)
I can get that they’d not necessarily be paid upfront, but there is no possible legal contract in which they are to be paid only in the future, in causality, according to the performance of a ~~third~ ~ fourth party who is not in the contract. What, are the actors paying their weekly groceries with IOUs?
But it is though: via the power of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television?wprov=sfti1
Though you could charge for the experience of other sweaty humans, bad ventilation in some cases, and the thrill of potentially being trampled
I don’t see anything wrong with paying for software or music or digital media. I don’t think that not doing so is theft - like I also don’t think that getting into a concert without paying is theft. By the way a concert is also not digital data, at least an irl one.
Why do you hate libraries?
A library card is your ticket there and libraries are paid via taxes, which is why they’re free at point of use.
Attending a free concert is not stealing. Breaking into the Eras tour is.
The library buys once and allows multiple people to read/watch each item without each person needing to individually purchase. Just like one person buying something and sharing it with others.
The main point is that digitization distribution is not a concert
Digital distribution is a service. You can steal a service.
If you fuck a prostitute and then don’t pay them, you are stealing from them.
If the prostitute uses a technique, and then you use the same technique without paying hem for reuse, is that stealing or does their direct involvement matter?
You’re not using their distribution service when you pirate something. That’s the whole point.
It’s okay I won’t use their digital distribution system to pirate their stuff.
It’s just like falling to pay a prostitute you never fucked
Libraries get money via tax. What people here are arguing for is that others should work for them or free. Because game studios, for example, are overwhelmingly not paid via tax money. They are depending on people buying their software. And many software has ongoing costs.
I have never had a problem with people taking a tape recorder to a concert, even if it’s against terms of service
But you do understand that if nobody would buy a ticket, there wouldn’t be concerts?
Do you think I should be forced to pay for a ticket if I’m standing next to the concert venue on the sidewalk but can still hear the performance?
YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A PURSE
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
-Character from some movie I pirated
In this economy with this level of corporate greed, I will download all the purses
I would infringe all over its copyright tho
You wouldn’t steal a baby!
You wouldn’t shoot a policeman and then steal his helmet.
But I would definitely take a shit in that helmet
…and then return it to his grieving wife?
You wouldn’t download fish and bread!
Jesus: hold my wine……
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I bet you aren’t a software developer.
I’m a software developer, and I endorse the grandparent comment.
And you all just were happy and bro fisted people who ignored the licensing terms?
Yes.
Well, not literally, both because I’m more inclined to “high five” and you can’t do either gesture over the Internet. But figuratively, yes.
Why don’t you just gift away your software than? That’s an honest question. You obviously aren’t expecting to be paid for it, do you think in general developers shouldn’t earn money with software or is it just you?
Why don’t you just gift away your software than?
Because I don’t make those decisions; my employer does. They ought to give it away, but they don’t.
(The software I’ve worked on has tended to be either (a) tools for internal company use or (b) stuff used by the government/large companies where the revenue would definitely have come from a support contract even if the code itself were free.)
ParsnipWitch seems to have been eaten by a grue.
So, you would work for free for your employer?
I am a system engineer who works on a project that is open source, AMA
The writer whose article is the subject of this post releases his books without DRM. He ends his podcast with a quote encouraging piracy. I found him because of an earlier book he released under a share alike licence
He has found that piracy increases the reach of his message, and increases his sales
That doesn’t answer my questions.
Software developer who gives away my software for free as Free and Open Source Software. I agree with the grand-grand-parent comment.
If I made software that people cared enough about to crack and pirate, I’d be happy that it’s popular enough for that to happen.
I am a software developer but I’ve only worked on SaAS and open source projects.
I work on software which is pirated. It is even sold by crackers, who make money off my work. This does not make me proud.
What does make me proud is when a paying customer says they love a specific feature, or that our software saves them a lot of manual work.
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Did you intentionally misunderstand the comment you replied to?
I think I replied to the wrong comment
Pride unfortunately doesn’t pay the bills. It’s terrific that you contribute to open source, but not all commercial software can be open sourced.
Popularity opens other ways to make money. Open source is profitable for GNU. Cory Doctorow does fine.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every commercial product to find profitability through exposure. I can attest to this first hand as I had published an open source Android game that was republished without ads. This led me to ultimately make the repository private, because I could not find a way to remain profitable while offering the source code and bearing the costs of labor and various cloud services.
On the flip side I guess I can take credit for the millions of installs from the other app… except they didn’t publicly acknowledge me.
Was it under a “copyleft” licence (like GPL) that forces the other one to also be open source? Did you use a licence that requires you are acknowledged?
If you did the first, you at least pulled someone else into open source work
Yes, GPL.
At the time I had seen that it had been forked into numerous private repositories, I believe roughly 100 or so. Perhaps I could have made a claim to have the other app taken down through Google Play, but I had no faith that this would be resolved, and even if it would be, it would be an ongoing problem.
As for whether they would have made open source contributions or not is in the end a moot point for me, because the only change that I observed was that they changed the colors and typeface and extracted the in-game menu into a separate welcome screen. I would not have merged this back into my repository.
While I myself violated the copyleft of my project by taking it closed source, I felt that it was my only resort. I’ve continued to develop the game over the past few years and by modernizing it and adding additional content, I’ve been able to significantly outpace my competitor.
For me, this ordeal had been a bit of an eye opener. I came out of university fully supportive of open source and when I discovered how this affected a real world project, I genuinely approached this situation understanding that it was just a risk I needed to accept. However, in the three years that it was available on GitHub, I received only two small PRs, and combined with the license violations, I felt that there was really no advantage to keeping it open source.
While this is just my anecdote, it has changed my perspective on how open source can realistically work more broadly. I honestly can’t envision any kind of business that needs to offset large production costs able to publish that content viably as open source.
Most people who work on open source projects have a lucrative job and work on Open Source on the side. I also volunteer, but I still need a job that actually pays me as well.
Reading some of the comments here it feels like speaking to little children who believe money magically appears on their account.
Tell me which so I can develop a competing service and steal your userbase!
I’d be happy that it’s popular enough for that to happen.
of course you would. you would actually give them your house and wife, because you’re so proud now. right?
Ah yes, because downloading Shark_Tale.mp4 is exactly the same as someone taking your house away from you and obtaining your wife and owning her as personal property.
Get some fucking perspective. I usually try to be polite online but this is just straight up moronic and you need to be told so bluntly.
Lmao
You need to disconnect the badness with the term stealing because you’re just wrong. Yeah it’s ip infringement. Yes it’s illegal. Yes people are impacted. And still… Not stealing.
You aren’t.
Yes I am. And the two companies I worked for both were small, offered their products for cheap and still had people pirating the modules or circumvent licensing terms. It’s a legit problem that a lot of people don’t see why they should pay for software simply because it’s sometimes easy to steal it.
circumvent licensing terms
So to be clear: was it possible to purchase and own the software? Or did users have to pay a subscription for a license? Because personally I’m getting sick of every piece of software thinking it’s appropriate to require a subscription.
How about you don’t use it if it is to be paid by subscription? How is it justified to go against an agreement just because you don’t like it?
If something is wrong you have a moral obligation to go against it. Be it legal or not.
All hail the Grand Nagus!
That’s why I am against indiscriminately pirating all digital goods. Because it’s morally wrong to have people work for you and then not pay them.
Naa, I’d just pirate it. Fuck the rent-seekers.
Are you against employees getting good wages?
So either way I’m not paying for it. In that case pirating is not a lost sale.
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I am.
If there is no easy way to own what you buy, then piracy becomes a moral obligation to preserve culture for future generations.
You want something, but you don’t want to pay the cost (either monetarily or because they have made it too hard) and so you take take it. Fuck these assholes companies who try to milk people for every last penny, so I have no moral qualms with piracy, I do it myself.
But, fuck, can we stop trying to paint it as some noble thing? Effectively zero pirates are doing it to perseve culture, instead it’s fulfilling personal desire.
This is chaotic neutral at best, not neutral good.
I think there’s an exception to be made in your argument for abandonware. There are classic arcade games that wouldn,'t exist any more but are widely available due to MAME support.
The Nintendo eShop shutdown is another example of preserving software through piracy.
Internet archive, and a chunk of r/datahoarders, is built for that purpose. Just as people have saved old paintings (aka media) it’s also good for us to save significant pieces of our current culture. Old VHS tapes and CDs are already disappearing. Sometimes finding something is just a little bit more difficult and it’s only going to get worse.
It doesn’t need to have been a noble goal to be a noble result.
For something to be actually and reliable preserved and win against random decay, data loss, disaster, and whatever else will statistically destroy copies, a thing will need to be stored by at least thousands of people. But there is no way to know how many, only that you increase the likelihood of perseveration by storing a copy.
I agree, most people are downloading a thing because they want it. But by keeping that thing, they are also preserving it.
I pirated plenty when I was young and poor, I’m pretty sure that helped form a desire for that sort of stuff which I pay for now.
I bet if I had abstained when I couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t have spent the money on all the content I buy now
I believe the bulk of pirates are people who wouldn’t have bought the content if they had to pay for it
I have a Spotify subscription that I still pay, but built a library full of FLACs on the side specifically because I got fed up with “right holders” taking songs in and out of my playlists and having the right to deny me access forever.
It literally would be cheaper and easier for me to just use Spotify.
If you pay to own a movie then yes, you should be allowed to make copies of it and keep it forever, even if the seller goes bankrupt in future. You are paying to own the movie.
If you subscribe to Netflix you are not paying to own the content, you are paying for access to their content. Therefore you cannot legally download a movie from Netflix and keep a copy forever.
However, if Netflix don’t make it possible to buy their unique content for permanent ownership, then piracy is the inevitable result and they should address that.
But let’s be honest here, none of you are intending to buy anything.
I spend way more money on streaming services than I ever spent buying DVDs or CDs.
To say that “I don’t intend to buy anything” is a BS accusation. You have no clue about another persons motives.
Forget about features and prices, how about actual content?
2017 I buy this space shooter game called “Destiny 2”. It has some problems, but it’s decent enough. $60 buy in. The single player story missions took you through four initial planets/moons, the European Dead Zone, Titan, Nessus, and Io, recovering your power and kicking the asses of the space turtles who tried to kill everyone.
Expansion 1, 2, 3 and 4 come out widening the story, adding more locations, Mercury, Mars, The Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, the Moon… with all the associated story missions, strikes, raids…
And I bought in on those too. Some hundreds of dollars.
Roll forward to 2020, almost 2,000 hours in game. Bungie decides they’re done with story missions and removes them from the game. They also decide that the game is “too big” for new players to get into, and seeking a Fortnite, free to play style audience, removes 1/2 of the content from the game.
Existing players like me drop the game because content we paid good money for and hours we spent exploring, collecting and curating gear, just went up in smoke.
New players now have no onboarding point and are incredibly confused because there’s no story and no real way to get into the game.
So Bungie managed to completely alienate both their existing user base, and the one they hoped to attract.
Oh, and they have now promised not to do it again, but at the same time, haven’t brought the content back either.
It’s an online service as a game too, so piracy is not an option. The only way to experience the original content is through YouTube videos.
This is exactly me. Started in d1 beta. I quit cold the day the removed my purchased content
I feel like I got scammed by Bungie with the shit they pulled with Destiny 2. I will never give them a single dime ever again. I loved that game and they completely ruined it.
I don’t exactly recall when or where I heard/read this quote, but man it is dope
- “it should not be a concern when people pirate your content, it should be when people don’t even want to pirate your content”
I remember this from the hip hop scene. You know you’ve fallen off when nobody is sharing/pirating your album
I am the guy! I made the quote! Feels goddamn awesome to see it everywhere now!
Not the one you said, but OP quote.
Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.
Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.
Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that’s very different from stealing something.
People are always on here arguing about whether pirating is stealing or not. I do think it’s stealing I just can’t bring myself to give a fuck about these large corporations. They have been stealing from the people for years.
Yeah I really don’t care if I’m stealing in this context, I care if I’m stealing from independent content creators. Another thing is I know I can’t afford all the music I listen to, but I can afford to go to shows of my favorite artists. Piracy is often completely transparent of any content distribution strategies so I find it a great way to explore music.
I’d probably argue digital piracy isn’t theft. It’s quality control.
you cant steal something that isnt fucking physically real
am i stealing smells and sounds from my neighbors
no democrat city judge would side with a corpo over a random joe with a bangin lawyer
Your last sentence sounds unhinged but I agree wtiu the rest
What would you call it if you make a contract with a gardener, they make your entire garden and then you don’t pay them. Since it’s not stealing, where is the harm, right?
You’re stealing their time. That’s not really comparable since the people who made the tv show or movie you’re pirating have already been paid.
Do you believe actors etc. would still keep getting paid if everyone would just pirate everything?
Do you believe there will ever be a time where everyone pirates everything?
Since the idea seems to be that pirating digital goods is a moral imperative, the question what are the consequences if everyone would do it is valid.
Er… first off, you signed a contract. Second, you’d be stealing their labor. Their physical labor.
Netflix and Amazon prime simply won’t work with VPNs active, which I use for work and privacy towards my ISP.
I won’t compromise my security for their bad services. Living in a non US country, we are also always several years behind on content being offered.
Yeah, nah. The paying customer always pays for the percieved sins of non customers.
Set sail.
With the right VPN they do. Mostly no problems with Proton VPN
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket - you are stealing.
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket, make a copy and put my original 5 eur back to my pocket - this is not stealing.
Further to that, paying for a product then the seller taking that product away from you without refunding your payment is stealing.
Don’t forget adjusting for inflation and real money being given back not some shitty gift card
YES! This IS stealing!
Man does “Google Nest” come to mind. Buys company. Pushes it all over the place. “Eh, I think we’re done. Whole ecosystem useless now.”
Which is par for the course with Google and not at all a surprise, but sheesh.
That’s not a fair example, because 5 Euros has an intrinsic value. The theft here is of intellectual property. Here’s an analogy:
- When you take a book from a book store without paying for it, you are stealing.
- When you take a book from a book store without paying for it, make an exact replication of it and return the original, you are stealing intellectual property.
Stealing involves depriving the original owner of access or possession of the item. Duplication is not stealing because the item being duplicated is not taken away.
Even if you consider it stealing, then what defense do you have for the people who paid the price that would supposedly allow them to have it permanently and suddenly it still gets taken away? That’s not stealing? Even if we accepted that piracy by people who didn’t pay is theft, why should people who already paid for the media not be able to access it from somewhere else if their original access is denied?
There is more nuance to it than that. The copyright holder still owns whichever copies are made, whether or not they are made with their permission. One could argue that by making a duplicate, you have taken possession of a copy without consent from its owner.
As for your other example about a copyright owner revoking access; this is completely subject to the terms of sale of that item. Without details of the license agreement it’s impossible to say if the terms were breached.
There is more nuance to it than that. The copyright holder still owns whichever copies are made, whether or not they are made with their permission. One could argue that by making a duplicate, you have taken possession of a copy without consent from its owner.
That is an extremely recent construct largely promoted by the big media companies themselves. For the vast majority of human history, intellectual property was not a thing and works could be freely copied, modified, redistributed, etc and it was considered normal. When copyright first came into effect, it was for a fixed period that was relatively short, after which anyone could use the work however they wanted. That was the original intent of copyright, which was only to give artists an exclusive period to profit from their work without competition, not exclusive rights for all eternity. Disney was the one that lobbied for copyright terms to be extended, then extended again, then again, and critically, extended to include the life of the “person” that created it, but since corporations are also “persons” under the law and just so happen to not have bodies that can die, effectively corporate media is copyrighted forever.
Also, those media companies claim to be such big proponents of intellectual property protection, they would never, ever do the exact same goddamn thing to independent artists, with the only difference being that they actually profit from it when the vast majority of “piracy” is for personal use, and that they know for a fact that independent artists rarely have the resources or time to actually do anything about it, right? Riiiiiiight?
https://mashable.com/article/disney-art-stolen-tiki
https://insidethemagic.net/2023/12/disney-under-fire-for-allegedly-stealing-furry-fanart-ld1/
https://insidethemagic.net/2021/01/super-nintendo-world-stolen-art-ad1
If anything, shouldn’t small independent artists get more protection under the law if copyright was really meant to benefit artists and safeguard the creative process like it claims it does? The FBI can arrest and jail you for pirating a movie, but when a corporation commits the same crime there isn’t even a whiff of consequences. At this point we really ought to ask what the real purpose of copyright is after all the changes made to it and who it’s actually meant to protect.
As for your other example about a copyright owner revoking access; this is completely subject to the terms of sale of that item. Without details of the license agreement it’s impossible to say if the terms were breached.
Gee, it almost sounds like the laws regarding what they can and can’t put in those terms of sale are nowhere close to fair and were specifically written by the giant media holding companies to exclusively benefit them and screw over the consumer! Laws and regulations can’t possibly be immoral and corrupt right?
I absolutely agree with you that the arguments you put forward is the way it should be. However, currently, as we see here in the case of Sony, there is a perceived unfairness in what consumers expect from a license agreement and what is in fact in them.
Time will tell if our judicial system acknowledges that it’s reasonable to assume that if you are offered a digital good “to buy” that it will remain available ad infinitum and hence Sony held to be liable.
Dude, thank you for reminding me I’m not fucking insane.
By duplicating, you’re depriving the company to the exclusive right to copy that thing. But I don’t think stealing some nebulous concept of a monopoly like that is wrong.
The action is still harmless. Information should be free.
How is creating a popular a novel any different than creating a popular object? Hundreds of hours of labor go into both and the creators are entitled to the full value of said labor.
Say you have an amazing story about the vacation you took last year, and told all your friends about it. You would justifiably be pissed if you later found out one of your friends was telling that story as if they had done it. It’s the same for someone who writes a book or any other form of media.
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Piracy can only be considered to be depriving someone of some good if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the pirate would have paid for access to the content had they not had a pirated copy available. Not only is this not true in the majority of cases, it’s also completely impossible to prove in 99.9% of the cases where it is true.
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We aren’t talking about plagiarism, the friend would be telling the story about you still.
Spoken word narratives are such an integral part of culture, imagine if your grandpa told you to never repeat any of the stories of his childhood because “he owns the copywrite”. Insane. That’s what you are suggesting.
Ideas are not objects. Having good ideas shared incurs no loss to anybody, except imagined “lost potential value”.
I’m saying that those who create are entitled to the value of what they create. If a company asks to look iver some of your work before hiring you, says that they aren’t interested, and then you see them using that work afterwards i doubt you would be saying “well, information should be free”.
If you want to write stories, draw pictures, make movies or webshows and distribute then for free ti everyone, then that’s a noble initiative, but creatives depend on what they create for their livelyhood.
saying that those who create are entitled to the value of what they create.
Here I was thinking we all deserved a giant meteor.
The publisher example is one of a difference in power and you’re saying that IP is there to protect the author. Except this whole video is about how that doesn’t happen anymore. The law is written and litigated by those with power.
That happens already.
If the situation is reversed, the hammer comes down on the independent artist.
We need stronger worker and consumer protections. Copywrite is a shit solution.
Including your personal information?
Strawman. Is intellectual property the same as personally identifiable information? Can you doxx a director using their movie?
Comment I replied to said information.
No reasonable person who says “information should be free” is also lumping in PII with that. It’s clear from the context in this thread that they are referring to media and knowledge (seeing how the post itself was about media and everyone has been discussing the justifiability of things like piracy amid the erosion of digital ownership), not about posting where people live and shit, so you bringing up personal information is at best a misunderstanding of what the saying “information should be free” actually means or at worst a logical fallacy and deliberate attempt to derail the conversation.
Also, just saying, personal information is currently free regardless of whether or not it should be or whether it’s legal. There are thousands of websites indexable by search engines that list people’s information for anyone to take, mostly from data breaches or otherwise scraped from the internet. There are even websites specifically dedicated to archiving doxxes, hosted in jurisdictions with no privacy laws so the victim can never get it removed. Search your own phone number or email, I bet you’ll find it listed somewhere possibly with a ton of your other information.
What is exactly “information” in this statement? Is a feature length movie “information” that needs to be shared freely? At 4K freely or will HD suffice for the meaning? Or is it just a plot summary? I’m in the camp that will argue just the latter.
if information is free, the action would be harmless.
FTFY.
That second dot should be when you make an identical copy of the book without taking it from the shelf. When I get an unlicensed copy of a book, the original is never out of place, not for a moment
Piracy was huge in Australia back when films were released at staggered times across the world. If it was a winter release in America, it would release six months later in the Australian winter. Try avoiding spoilers online for six months.
Piracy is less now because things are released everywhere at once and we aren’t harmed by a late release
Now when companies pull shit like deleting content you think you bought, they encourage people to go around them. Play Station can’t be trusted? Well there are piracy channels that cost only a VPN subscription (and only while you’re collecting media, not after, while watching and storing it) and people will be pushed to those
Only if you subsequently distribute it does that “theft” break the law.
Also money doesn’t actually have intrinsic value. It’s just fancy paper. Things like food and shelter and clothing, and the tools and materials with which to make them, that’s what intrinsic value is.
Making a copy without the copyright is against the law, no matter which way you slice it. Egregious large-scale infringement is usually prosecuted, whereas it’s otherwise settled civilly. Nevertheless, both constitute copyright infringement.
Indeed I had the terms confused: it’s incorrect to say fiat currency has intrinsic value; it has instrumental value.
Nani?
If what you care about is the abstract idea that the idea of something can be owned, whether the book is in the library or in my pocket doesn’t change the fact that the idea of the book is by the author. I can move the book wherever - across even national borders if I want to - and that “intrinsic value” doesn’t change.
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Taking a product from the shop without paying and returning the item later is still stealing.
The issue here is that there is a period of time where the shop does not have the item.
If you are trying to make an analogy to digital copies, this still doesn’t hold water. The copyright holder does not have ownership of your copy.
The copyright holder should never have ownership of my copy. If I purchase it it should be mine to use. The shop should not be allowed to come to my house and take it away.
The key difference here is that you only own the copy when the copyright holder sells it to you. I don’t know if you’re being obtuse, but this shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp. If it helps in understanding, try replacing “copy” with “product” and “copyright holder” with “store.”
The key difference here is that you only own the copy when the copyright holder sells it to you
Right, I should own my copy. I have purchased this copy and it’s mine now. It’s bullshit for a store to say “now that we no longer sell the thing your purchased previously you’re not allowed to own it anymore.”
Ownership is one condition that a copyright holder might offer, but that’s not guaranteed. Video rental shops would allow unlimited consumption for a limited time period, for example. We can argue all day about the differences and what consumers want versus the conditions under which content producers currently operate. I am personally also extremely frustrated by that, and I vote with my wallet: I do not subscribe to services that I find too restrictive or too expensive.
Where I am in the minority, however, is my position that copyright infringement is illegal, unethical and can in any way be legitimized.
Some people would call it counterfeiting but we won’t do that , right ?
Depends on the intention. Most “illegal” copies are distributed for free so that’s not counterfeiting (there’s no intention to deceive or defraud)
That’s probably going into semantics and what the law says, it’s different for every country.
What’s happening with games and softwares are cracks and repacking, it’s manipulating few parts of the original product to provide partial or sometimes full functionality. This is an infringement of intellectual property and not a counterfeit.
For podcasts, music and movies it’s usually a rip, out of vinyls, lossless or a high definition source. These are copies, not manipulated in any way.
Maybe camrips are truly a counterfeit.
… This is an infringement of intellectual property …
Not unless it’s distributed.
Copying copyrighted works is not a crime. Distributing those copies is a crime.
Copyright doesn’t explicitly say anything about distribution. Distribution is usually used to determine the scale of the crime and calculating incurred damages.
Yea there might be an intent to make profit or resell in there
I have yet to see country that doesn’t mind copying their currency unofficially but I’m open to suggestions 🫡
Correct, that would be counterfeiting if you would copy money with the intention to deceive or defraud others. That doesn’t contradict what I said.
IMHO it does contradict what you say. Intention doesn’t matter. If you copy currency , you either have to make apparent its fake currency or you are might get in trouble with law. Intention, aka motive is hard to prove and if proven doesn’t make it legal to copy official currency.
If you have sex with, but don’t pay a prostitute, are you stealing?
Piracy is also not at all like stealing services, just as it is unlike theft of real items.
Not paying a prostitute because you have a sexual partner at home who meets your needs is closer, but also not the same
Except your literally performing the same service, which I paid by everyone but you. Game of Thrones is expensive. Subs pay for it.
Fuck man I’m pro-piracy because I do it to, but it is absolutely stealing. Make peace with it.
Stealing is the wrong word for it though as software piracy does not deprive the owner of the thing copied.
There are arguments that it is nett good even as it gets people into an author, singer, game company, while they cannot afford it and they may become a good customer for that author, singer, game company later in life
This new problem where companies revoke your licence to content is the industry shooting itself in the foot so I don’t care about the ethics of it, if they don’t sell me a product for me to own like I own a paper book, I’ll take a copy without licence
How is the owner not deprived of your copy? Have you given it back to them? It’s an odd thing to mince over words like “theft” and “stealing.” If it’s the words that bother you, perhaps consider this: should it be permissible to consume a digital good without consent of the copyright holder?
If the copyright holder wants more exposure, that is up to them to decide. It’s absolutely unreasonable to do so on their behalf and claim it’s somehow doing them a favor. With that logic, any form of theft can be legitimized.
The fact that no product is missing anywhere means it’s not stealing.
If you rent your car from Mercedes and I make a copy of it, the only change is that I’ve not copied your car, I’ve copied Mercedes’.
By this logic no services should be paid. Are you really just hung up on the word “stealing”? It is wrong to go against an agreement or to take the work of others and not pay for it simply because it’s easy to do that when the work isn’t tangible.
Are people really that fucked up today?
I’m not talking about payment, I’m talking about if it’s stealing or not. It might be copyright infringement depending on local law, but it’s not stealing. Selling a copy might be counterfeiting.
I never made an agreement but to copy things without paying. That agreement was made on my behalf, and if you look into the history of it, it’s really fucking shady. Copyright in the US originally lasted 20 years (IIRC), and I would be ok with that, but big copyright holders successfully bribed lawmakers to extend the term until now it’s effectively infinite.
So tell me, was it immoral to ignore copyrights after 20 years when that was the law? Did changing the law change what’s moral?
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Thanks, but I was actually referring to the Tyler James Hill post Cory links at the end…
I think piracy is copyright infringement. But like who cares if some big corpos get infringed upon by some dudes.
Normally people pay to see the circus, but you could just sneak in though. It’s not exactly stalling, so what do you call that? The circus is still there, but you didn’t pay for it.
If lots of people start doing that, the circus probably won’t have enough money to keep on performing. Maybe they’ll get rid of the more expensive bits and just keep the cheaper ones in the future.
What would you call it if you buy a piece of art and hang it on your wall, then a couple months later the company that sold you the art comes into your home, takes the art away, and says you don’t own it anymore?
If enough companies do that people are going to stop paying for art.
If that was a normal purchase, then that’s clearly theft.
If it was art leasing, there’s probably a long contract with details about a situation like this. No matter what the contract says, the local law might still disagree with that, so it can get complicated. The art company might be violating their own contract, although it is unlikely. The company might be within the rights outlined in the contract, but they might still be breaking the law. You need a lawyer to figure it out.
Well it was sure we fuck presented as a normal purchase. Adding legal text to where you sign the cheque saying “you may come to my house and take this away at any time” doesn’t make it less bullshit.
The world is full of bad contracts. It’s truly sad that we decided to accept them without making numerous alterations here and there.
It’s not possible to make changes to a digital contract. The only option is to not make the “purchase” and acquire it elsewhere.
More people should let the service provider know that their contract sucks and that they refuse to pay for the service under the proposed conditions. Most people don’t even read the contract, so I don’t think the situation is going to improve any time soon.
People are pirating products that can be purchased and owned.
People are also shoplifting from stores. That’s irrelevant to what is being discussed here
If you pay for the circus and they take away the circus so you can’t see it, and then replace it for Circus2, did you own a ticket for the circus?
That would depend on the terms of sale.
Unlikely as what you’re implying sounds like a get-out clause in favor of the trader which is not valid.
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Without details of the hypothetical scenario made here, we cannot know if that’s the case. If the ticket purchaser was unable to see the circus because their flight home was delayed, the circus has no obligation to refund them. If attendance of “Circus 2” is offered to the purchaser due to the cancellation of “Circus 1” under the conditions of the original ticket purchase, then it’s unlikely to be an unfair contact.
There are all kinds of details missing here that we can freely speculate about.
I’m legit unsure whether your argument is purposely bad or you just don’t know that it is.
Why is the argument bad? Please elaborate.
Because the issue at hand is more like if you bought tickets to the circus, but when you went to go see it you were told the circus isn’t there anymore and you don’t get a refund.
That I would definately call stealing, and if I wanted to see the circus the next time it was in town I would absolutely sneak in.
A more honest analogy for the situation was that there are very few incidents of circuses doing that and now people demand it’s morally justified to get free entrance to every circus, concert, fair, museum, …
It’s not just a few circusses. Every major circus company seems to consistently pull this trick.
But people aren’t just sharing media that is affected. They pirate everything, even when there are ways to buy and own it.
Not enough workers exploitation.
It’s a thousand times better than this empty garbage. How does this have any upvotes?
That’s a bad analogy because there’s finite space for people to watch the circus, meaning that seating for the show they conforms to fire codes, etc. is finite.
It’s also a bad analogy because someone who sneaks into a circus trespassing, not stealing.
I agree that the analogy isn’t perfect. As you pointed out, people sneaking in are taking space from people who would be willing pay for the service.
If you could somehow sneak into Netflix and take some of their bandwidth or their ability to provide the service to paying customers, then the analogy would work. In reality though, people pirate Netflix shows and movies by torrenting, and that has no impact on Netflix’s bandwidth.
The way I see it, circus and digital videos are a service. You are supposed to pay for both, but you can easily see both of them for free. Comparing these two with stealing just doesn’t work IMO.
You could also compare it with watching a football match from the other side of the fence. Although, in reality, you wouldn’t get a very good view of the game, whereas torrenting movies gives you a great view. Interestingly, the football example doesn’t involve trespassing, but you still get to enjoy a part of the service. All analogies break at some point.
Good topic, good point, terrible writing. I couldn’t finish the article with the author’s ego and personal bias butting into his great story.
the way i see it, on big budget productions anyone who is relying on their paycheck to survive already got paid for their work, and the ones collecting royalties or sales percentages are rich enough that i couldnt care less. smaller independent studios or individual creators are the ones that i will always support, and in cases like itch.io games that are pwyw i will take the free download and figure out how much i will pay based on how much i like the game.
Heads up! Plex media server with the Plex clients on all your devices is such a smooth experience. Highly recommended. And their “Watch together” feature is so nice for people that prefer to stay in bed and spend the winter binge watching next to a warm body.
Use Jellyfin. Stop relying on corps’ services.
Just started my switch last weekend! Jellyfin is amazing so far. Just need to figure out how to export all the Plex metadata and posters to .nfo files.
There are surely tools to help, that has to be a common problem
Jellyfin is majorly based. I use it with Syncthing for all my media except games
Or Kodi
There’s a Jellyfin plug-in for Kodi and it’s pretty awesome
I would if it had most of the features that Plex does.
It does.
It doesn’t work on Samsung TVs, I tried
You’re inputs broken? Who the fuck cares about TV OS support?
Who the fuck cares about TV OS support?
Me with my limited budget
I spent 30 dollars on an orange pi zero 2 and installed android TV on it.
Can you afford 30 dollars? The privacy alone is worth the cost. Those samsung TVs are spyware central.
Ok.
So it has a dedicated music app?
It has music filtering?
Good 4k/x265 performance?
Has a third party (or built in) utility that shows me streaming usage?
Allows me to limit remote users to streaming from a single IP address at a time?
Let’s me watch something together with another remote user?
Has an app for most any device (like Plex or Emby) that does NOT require sideloading?
Has built in native DVR steaming/recording support?
And they recently added a feature where they tell your friends on the platform what kind of porn you’ve been watching ✌🏾 I think I’ll stick to Jellyfin.
Heads up! Plex is garbage and enshitefying their own services to make more money.
Heads up! Jellyfin is a great alternative!
It is working well for my purposes, but I suppose I may have recommended something without knowing this part of the story.
