"Piracy isn't stealing" doesn't require a qualifier. It's objectively a separate, lesser crime. That correlation is just the result of effective, aggressive marketing that conflates the two. It was so effective that everyone misremembers the "you wouldn't steal a car" ad.
Thanks for that trip down memory lane. I was just a child when I saw that, and my first thought was “but… But when I steal from someone, they don’t have it anymore. If I download it, they still have it”
Copying information is a nonrivalrous activity. To steal inherently requires the owner to be deprived of a thing, and copying does not deprive an owner of a thing. Copying therefore cannot really in “stealing.”
The industry argument for that is “you’re stealing our potential revenue”. I personally subscribe to one streaming service. That’s it. If what I want to watch isn’t on that, I hoist the anchor and set sail.
The predictable way that video streaming services became content islands and actually a worse user experience than cable really shows how the industry would rather provide worse experience and cash grab than attract more customers naturally. By contrast, I can subscribe to one music service, and listen to literally every artist I can possibly want to. As soon as video streaming does that (at a reasonable price), piracy for video will plummet like it did for music.
Within reason, yeah. If the video industry came out with a platform that had all you can stream and all the content in one place, but wanted $150/month for it, that would be a pricing problem. My ceiling is more like $40-50/month.
Which is ridiculous. It’s like suing someone for tapping you on the shoulder while you’re deep in thought, claiming that you almost came up with a great invention but their interference meant you lost your train of thought. Therefore, by tapping you on the shoulder, they owe you millions of dollars of lost potential revenue from that invention.
In addition, you have to consider whether they’re morally justified in receiving that revenue. Say someone manages to bribe the government so that they get paid $1 every time someone says “shazam”. If you say “shazam” and don’t pay them, they lose $1 in potential revenue. But, is this potential revenue that they are morally justified in collecting? Copyright law is just as ridiculous as “shazam” law. In both cases the government came up with a rule that allows someone to collect revenue simply because the government says so.
IMO the entertainment industry has ridiculously warped copyright. It used to be that copyright was a 14 year term, renewable for another 14 years if the author was alive. Under that rule, Forrest Gump would just have had its copyright expire. That seems pretty reasonable. It cost them $55 million to produce, and it brought in $678 million, it’s probably mostly done making money for them. Time for their rights to expire, right? Nope, they get to keep their monopoly until 2114. It’s fucking ludicrous.
Copyright is supposed to be a balance between what’s good for people creating something, and the general public. The creator is given a short-term monopoly as an incentive to create, that’s how they benefit. The public benefits because after a short time that creation becomes public. The alternative is no copyright, where creators need to be paid up-front by someone like a patron, and what they create becomes public immediately. The patronage system is responsible for all kinds of magnificent art like most classical music, the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, etc. The argument for copyright is that the patronage system wasn’t good enough, and the public could benefit even more by allowing a short monopoly for the creator. But, with the lobbying of the entertainment cartel, the public benefit is far worse. You now still effectively have the patronage system controlling what art gets made (the entertainment cartel), they then also keep that art from the public for more than a century.
I’m all for piracy but I still try to spend money where it morally makes sense to me.
I’ll buy, rent or subscribe to content from actual creators or artists or developers if I know I am supporting their livelihoods or careers.
I’ll pirate content if I decide for myself that the content has already paid for the livelihoods of the creators or workers who produced the material and now it’s only the title holders and corporate interests that are profiting from the ownership and entitlement of controlling the content for commercial reasons only. For me this is mostly just big budget movies, old films and commercially produced music.
To me, anything that’s already paid to help the original artist or creators should be made public. Locking it away and making people pay for the privilege of the content just to make more profit for someone else is piracy itself. This is especially true for films and music that are so old that the original artists and creators and owners are multi millionaires or just no longer exist.
I may be wrong but that is my own personal view of collecting digital content.
A dollar at a time … I’m willing to give or donate a dollar, two dollars or even five at a time … if we all did that with a popular creator, they’d easily be able to reach a lot of money in a short time.
I donate to wikipedia, Open Source Software projects I use, firefox, thunderbird, ubuntu (although I am getting skeptical about this one) and other linux projects … on top of that I send funds to creators, app developers and lemmy instances and other fediverse projects and those people who maintain the software, servers and communities in the fediverse
In all, I probably spend about three or four hundred dollars a year or more to these projects … but I know that for the majority of them, the money is going to people that need it … not to people who just want to add to their wealth after never contributing anything of value other than their ownership of someone else’s work.
And if we all did this as users across the board … these small content creators would have more than enough to sustain themselves and continue creating and maintaining these projects
I don’t subscribe to the logic but I guess a part of it can be the lossless factor. Quality of pirated digital content is exactly like the original. If you tape something it usually loses quality. So people seem to care less about that kind of piracy. Which is stupid since going for lossy compressed pirated videos is allegedly not less wrong in the face of law.
Our current favorite show is Bob's Burgers, it's a comfort show we fall asleep to. Prior to signing up with real debrid I got tagged for downloading a 2 year old episode.
We pay for Hulu. We pay for YoutubeTV. We have a working OTA antenna (for when the internet goes out).
My math says I have 3 licenses, yet still illegal to download?
Well it’s an interesting question. From Hulu’s TOS:
a. License. Within the United States and subject to the terms and conditions in this Agreement, we grant you a limited, personal use, non-transferable, non-assignable, revocable, non-exclusive and non-sublicensable right to do the following:
Install and make non-commercial, personal use of the Services; and stream or temporarily download copyrighted materials, including but not limited to movies, television shows, other entertainment or informational programming, trailers, bonus materials, images, and artwork (collectively, the “Content”) that are available to you from the Services.
This is a license agreement and not an agreement for sale or assignment of any rights in the Content or the Services. The purchase of a license to stream or temporarily download any Content does not create an ownership interest in such Content.
While I’m not a lawyer, I’m gonna guess the lines about a revocable license are intended to cover this. Sites like Hulu rotate their content out, which I’m gonna guess means your license to view their content only extends to what’s in their library at that time. Under fair use, you might be able to argue that you can create a backup copy for your own viewing – it does say “temporarily download,” but doesn’t say you have to download it from them – but legally you’d probably be obligated to delete your copy once Hulu gets rid of it regardless.
Also, the TOS does specify that circumventing their copy protection is a TOS violation. While the DMCA grants certain exceptions to the copy-protection rule for fair use, I don’t think it requires Hulu to continue to serve you content or not revoke your license if you break their TOS. Kinda reminds me of Red Hat’s use of TOS to enforce terms that go above and beyond the GPL. They can’t exactly stop you 100%, but they can refuse to do business with you, which makes it a lot harder.
Not to disparage your reply, because it’s well thought out and written, but doesn’t it seem to you we’re hiding behind legalese?
I want to buy a turkey. I have money. I will visit a farm, pay for the turkey (if the price is agreeable to both parties) and I now own that turkey. I will then do whatever the fuck I want with that turkdy, from raising it as my child, to cooking it for thanksgiving, to cloning it if I have the technology. Sure, I might not be able to return it in some cases. But that’s a living fucking thing, and nobody can tell me how to use it.
Now - I want to buy a movie. I have money. I will go to the cinema, but it’s not playing anymore. I will look for it on TV, but it’s only on one channel, only while I’m at work. I will look for it on the internet and it’s available on one website, where I need to make an account and provide quite a lot of information about me. So I make the account and click through their shitty prompts, pay for the movie and now I can only do one thing: stream it?
Excuse you? Who the fuck are you to tell me how I can enjoy my media? What if I want to make a vynil record and listen to it? What if I want to watch it on my old-timey projector? What if I want to burn a frame of the movie onto my morning toast every day for 2000 years? What if I want to put it in a small baggy tied to my balls while I’m fucking the mom of some movie exec, am I supposed to put the entire laptop in the baggy? How the fuck dare you make that distinction for me? Oh, because your site isn’t granting me the right to buy a movie, but to buy a license to watch that movie in whichever conditions you decide? Great - here’s the thing: I have my own license, which says whenever I pay for something, I use it however the fuck I want, and if you attempt to exert any control over my property or how it is used I will literally stab you and bury you in the woods, because I don’t take kindly to corporate fucks who attempt to instruct me how to use the things I’ve bought. Fuck you, you should’ve read my license when you took my money.
There is no “license” here, my dude. I don’t pay for licenses, regardless of what the website wants to charge for. I pay for a product, or a a service. Let’s not hide behind legalese and let’s just acknowledge that these are scummy practices to ensure the wealth of corporations at the expense of the rights of consumers. And until these types of shady “licenses” to temporarily view THEIR PROPERTY are smacked into the fucking ground by consumer-friendly laws, piracy is the only way to have justice in a system stacked against you.
The whole “illegal to download” bit is somewhat misleading. People almost always get in trouble for uploading, which just happens to be a part of how bittorrent works. When you’re downloading, you’re also uploading (Unless you’ve changed your settings).
Recording from free to air is legal because of the “time shifting” argument. The show is being broadcast regardless, just because it’s at an inconvenient time for you doesn’t mean you should have to miss it. It’s also worth noting that media producers fought tooth and nail against this.
That might actually be an element of a workable argument in Court. I think it’s a very clever reframing of the precedent that allows recordings of broadcast media.
I’ve got a better argument but it won’t hold up in court. If a company is making a profit then all costs of production, operation, and provision have been covered, every single shareholder from the individual worker to the CEO to the suppliers have all been paid adequately and fairly for their contribution, the consumers with the means and ability to contribute have, and I thank them for enabling the ability to socialise access to the product for the rest of the society that propped up the corporation so that it could produce.
If you want to argue that suppliers, producers, and workers haven’t been adequately and fairly compensated for their contribution then why is there a profit margin?
In fact, it’s morally acceptable to socialise the benefits and production of any corporation making a profit, though the law has this pesky tendency to call it theft.
Companies pay big bucks for timed exclusivity though. If reverse timeshifting was legal, movie theaters would go bankrupt. I feel like this wouldn’t hold up.
I like the way you think, but that’s kind of not true these days. We have streaming services and rights holders just straight deleting shit or producing shitty sequels and reboots just to keep the IP out of public domain. IDK about your location but here FTA is basically dead. It’s all shitty reality shows being hosted by third rate celebs from other reality shows because they either can’t or won’t produce or pay for actual shows.
The difference is that grabbing it pre-FTA is also grabbing a perfect copy. The quality may not matter to many of us, but to some it does. And because it matters to some, major copyright holders have started to treat unlicensed exchanges as “competition” from a business PoV (which is a concession from strictly seeing it as crime). So their business strategy is to compete with the unlicensed channels by offering perfect quality media at a price (they hope) people are willing to pay (also in part to avoid the inconvenience and dodgyness of the black market).
FWiW, that’s their take and it’s why they get extra aggressive when the unlicensed version is perfect.
Remember that there were also big campaigns against tape recorders and VCR. They even managed to get VCR vendors to implement a feature that prevents users from skipping ads. So it’s not like it’s simply legal, the media corps were just not as successful in their lobbying as they are today.
I can't find anything about VCR's blocking; I did find a bunch saying the opposite.
There were copy protections that prevented a VHS -> VHS copy being made of some movies. Easily defeated, but they did exist.
My scenario was recording an Over The Air transmission onto VHS using a VCR; not making a backup copy of a movie you purchased on VHS.
Edit: I do recall a campaign against VHS recording of TV shows, but didn't it ended basically saying "Broadcast public == public domain"?. That actually led to copy protections in VHS tapes.
In fairness, it was never legal to make thousands of copies of that VHS tape and hand them out en masse. Which is how you’re getting it when you download it, from someone doing exactly that.
I used to have Netflix, HBO Max, Youtube Premium, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime and “Videoland”. But since I used Linux, I could not stream with a higher bitrate. I could not download for offline playback, I had to jump through hoops to get things to play every now and then.
They also did not always have everything I wanted to see, or I had to pay extra for “premium early access” (Disney).
So I was fed up, learned about using multiple usenet backbones, how to send sabnzbd through VPN’s, Radarr, Sonarr and Overseerr. Now I only have Netflix and Youtube Premium for my wife. And Plex for myself. And access to much more content.
And I do not consider it stealing, i consider it to be the natural result of them trying to gouge me while still not providing me.
I assume when the purchase happened there was an agreement that said something like this might happen. If not, then people can sue Sony for the stealing. If so, then trying to argue that this means piracy isn’t stealing is sophomoric at best.
I don’t get why my fellow pirates try so hard to justify what they’re doing. We want something and we don’t want to pay the price for it because it’s either too expensive or too difficult, so we go the cheaper, easier route. And because these are large corporations trying to fuck everyone out of every last dime, we don’t feel guilt about it.
Embrace the reality instead of using twisted logic to try and convince yourself that it’s something else.
In agreement with you! I don’t get why the need to justify. First of all life isn’t about fairness, and people and corporations both need money to survive. Individuals and corporations make all the effort to get more for less.
If there was a need to justify it should be as simple as corporations take things for free all the time, be it tax brakes, labor, IP, whatever and try to get by with it without it being “stealing” it. Artists take ideas, copy, repurpose all the time and get by without “stealing” when they can.
In the seas one should be reasonable and take what they “need” (actually a want) “for less”, without violence, instilling physical harm, and they are good to go. Life isn’t fair.
Above all, like you said, people in general want things for less with the least friction. For some people the seas are dangerous and present too much friction to get in and out unscathed, these people will pay to get something. Sailors do not want to pay and accept some of the risks, and for those sailors that know how to do it well the risks and frictions are small.
There is no need to justify to the ego whether it is stealing or anything else. It is just taking and sharing. And doesn’t the saying goes that “sharing is caring”? ;-)
The ways they try to justify ad blockers as their god given right is equally frustrating. It’s okay to use an ad blocker (and you should!). Please stop acting personally insulted when sites then attempt to make your ad blocker useless, it’s just how things go.
I don’t get why my fellow pirates try so hard to justify what they’re doing. We want something and we don’t want to pay the price for it because it’s either too expensive or too difficult, so we go the cheaper, easier route. And because these are large corporations trying to fuck everyone out of every last dime, we don’t feel guilt about it.
Justification is important to those who act against unethical systems. You have to separate the opportunists from the rest. An opportunist will loot any defenseless shop without the slightest sense of ethics. That’s not the same group as those who either reject an unjust system or specifically condemn a particular supplier (e.g. Sony, who is an ALEC member and who was caught unlawfully using GPL code in their DRM tools). Some would say it’s our ethical duty to do everything possible to boycott, divest, and punish Sony until they are buried.
We have a language problem that needs sorting. While it may almost¹ be fair enough to call an opportunist a “pirate” who engages in “piracy”, these words are chosen abusively as a weapon against even those who practice civil disobedience against a bad system.
I say /almost/ because even in the simple case of an opportunistic media grab, equating them with those who rape and pillage is still a bit off (as RMS likes to mention).
I think you see the same problem with the thread title that I do - it’s clever but doesn’t really give a solid grounds for ethically driven actions. But it still helps to capture the idea that paying consumers are getting underhandedly deceptively stiffed by crippled purchases, which indeed rationalizes civil disobedience to some extent.
Some would say it’s our ethical duty to do everything possible to boycott, divest, and punish Sony until they are buried.
If that’s the goal, the better approach would be to not consume the media at all, and being vocal as to why you are doing this. Pirating it just shows them that the demand will still be there, despite how bad they supposedly are as a company, so that they just need to learn how to bone you too. It’s like saying “you’re a bad company. . .but damn do I like your product and will consume it anyway!” it doesn’t make much sense, logically or morally.
it’s clever but doesn’t really give a solid grounds for ethically driven actions.
Clever? Maybe. Sophomoric? Absolutely. By misrepresenting why they are losing access to this media, they are effectively admitting that piracy is actually stealing. As I’ve said elsewhere, piracy is not the action of a neutral/chaotic good character, as many among piracy circles like to pretend, but the actions of a chaotic neutral character.
But make no mistake about my position. People losing access to stuff they purchased (and probably thought was now theirs) is just another in a long list of reasons I say “fuck those bitches” and have really no moral qualm with pirating content.
It’s like saying “you’re a bad company. . .but damn do I like your product and will consume it anyway!” it doesn’t make much sense, logically or morally.
Sony is a dispensible broker/manager who no one likely assigns credit to for a work. I didn’t even know who Sony pimped -- just had to look it up. The Karate Kid, Spider-man, Pink Floyd.. Do you really think that when someone experiences those works, they walk away saying “what a great job Sony did”?
I don’t praise Sony for the quality of the works they market any more than I would credit a movie theater for a great movie that I experience. Roger Waters will create his works whether Sony is involved or not.
You also seem to be implying they have good metrics on black market activity and useful feedback from that. This is likely insignificant compared to rating platforms like Netflix and the copious metrics Netflix collects.
Can you explain further why grabbing an unlicensed work helps Sony? Are you assuming the consumer would recommend the work to others who then go buy it legitimately?
If it becomes a trend to shoplift Sony headphones, the merchant takes a hit and has to decide whether to spend more money on security, or to simply quit selling Sony headphones due to reduced profitability. I don’t see how that helps Sony. I don’t shoplift myself but if I did I would target brands I most object to.
Sony is a dispensible broker/manager who no one likely assigns credit to for a work
Pedanticism that totally avoids the point. Whether they provide the product or create it, the logic still obviously applies.
You also seem to be implying they have good metrics on black market activity and useful feedback from that.
This also defeats the point that it is some duty to pirate it, because if they have no idea the scope then how many people doing it is not going to affect their decisions there either
Can you explain further why grabbing an unlicensed work helps Sony?
If we’re being pedantic, I never said it helps them. I said it let’s them know there is demand there and that not consuming it would be better for the goal.
Why does “sophomoric” being used as negative in your argument? you imply we are arguing an unsophisticated logic built on foundational information accessible to everyone, not requiring much depth to grasp. Pedestrian justifications should probably be sophomoric lest the justification be inaccessible and easily confused.
My opportunity to truly own media i purchase has been stolen from me, i was requested or offered no consent on the issue from the large companies claiming that not purchasing a revocable license is theft; i previously found thing accessibly priced so i swallowed my tongue, now media companies are again price gouging so we find ourselves in this situation once more.
I had no idea it would turn out to be such a big deal until my friend linked me a Lemmy post with my YouTube name in the picture. 🤣 Then I realized I had an absurd number of YouTube notifications! Interestingly enough, YouTube has some kind of interesting way to taper the notifications off so they aren’t overwhelming.
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