Simplify that to “Piracy isn’t stealing”. Copyright infringement (so-called piracy) is very different from stealing.
Sure, if “buying” isn’t permanent despite assurance it was at the time, then copyright infringement is even more justified. But, copyright infringement isn’t and has never been stealing.
Do I like the lease model that we have been living with for the past 30-40 years? No. I can’t argue it is fundamentally broken (see “30-40 years”) but it does lead to corner cases like the insanity impacting all streaming services at this point. And that is why I love “physical media” that I can rip and put on a plex server.
But I hate this “argument” almost as much as I hate “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism”. It has nothing to do with either a philosophical discussion or an attempt to make things better and is just a way for people to feel good about taking the easy way out.
Because, much like with “piracy is for preservation of video games”, it begins with the false premise of what the media being consumed is. We aren’t talking about a book (… except when we are). We are talking about something a lot closer to a stage show at a theatre. You don’t own every production of Hamlet ever made just because you bought a ticket once. Hell, you don’t even own every production by the 14th Street Acting Troupe. You own that night’s production where Wendy’s boob popped out of her top and Sean couldn’t score any blow before the show and so forth.
This argument is basically saying that there are no moral or ethical* concerns with holding up a camcorder in a theatre or outright jumping the ticket stand because you wouldn’t own it anyway.
And before people start claiming that it is digital media so it is always the same, it isn’t. Remember how we apparently went from Game of Thrones being THE GREATEST HOUR OF TELEVISION EVER MADE during Battle of the Bastards to it being THE ABSOLUTE WORST PIECE OF DOGSHIT EVER CREATED when nobody could see what was going on because all the blacks of the ice zombie war were crushed worse than all the redshirts Jon-boy climbed on in the previous episode? HBO Max isn’t (entirely) paying for the ability to rewatch a guy fuck his aunt any time we want (heh, who remembers all the sex shows on HBO?). It is about being part of that discussion. It is about “experiencing” people who have never seen a war movie that didn’t star Channing Tatum lose their mind over horror. It is about being part of the discussion on what HDR even is. And that is why a lot of film makers really dislike how many people will never see a movie in theatres and instead watch it on a cell phone screen.
But also: If you want to pirate, just fucking pirate. I have a set of “rules” that I use to decide when I pirate versus buy stuff, but I am not going to pretend I am morally righteous for having the 90s Battletech cartoon on my plex server.
Which mostly speaks to people being REALLY immature and incapable of acknowledging they do good and bad. The discussion is always “this isn’t piracy” rather than “Who fucking cares if it is piracy?”. Because even thinking for a moment that you did a “bad” (and then not caring) is beyond people.
As for why I wish people would reassess and actually critically think? Mostly because the bog standard neckbeard “Achshually, I am morally righteous and smarter than you” is fucking annoying. But partly because that is how you actually get feedback out there. I’ve gotten the Netflix “sorry to see you go, can you tell us why?” card a few times. And every time I answer a variation of “You fund awesome shows that I want to watch and I have no problem paying 20 or even 40 bucks for a season of The Last Kingdom. But I am not going to pay that every month. Which puts me into the weird case of deciding I will buy a month of Hulu instead because, even if their shows aren’t as good, they have enough of them to ‘justify’ the month.”. Which probably goes in a bin, but hopefully leads to thoughts on whether Glass Onion should get a blu-ray release and so forth.
*: Remember kids, ethics are not morality. And if you do have an ethical system that justifies this, cool. But that is the kind of thing that takes serious thought and constant reevaluation.
Can we just let people do whatever they want as long as they don’t kill people? If you want to pirate go on idc about your reasons, if you want to buy/rent/subscribe then go on idc about your philosophy, people is having too much time to debate this
So you want everyone to be able to go about their business except people who want to discuss things? Why don’t you go about your business? And how do people discussing things on the internet stop you?
Totally, if you want to profit gauge from the population, that’s you’re thing. These executives worked hard getting into the privileged position they’re in, they should be allowed to take advantage of it. People are just whiny right?
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