You must log in or register to comment.
I’m amused at these statements these ‘wannabe’ pirates make to justify piracy. A smart person would pirate quietly without letting the world know or justifying it.
I know why I do it & I don’t want some validation, internet points, 2 minutes of fame to sound / look cool.
You’ve just let the world know you’re pirating though
deleted by creator
oops lol
Because for some piracy isn’t simply about being a cheapskate but also about activism
Theres some truth to this, but a lot of people do use this as a shield against the general cultural acceptance that piracy is stealing or otherwise morally underhanded. I do it, but I don’t have any illusion I’m one of the activists. I just get indignant and refuse to pay someone for content or entertainment who I think is damaging to the medium or predatory in general. I feel like if I really wanted to make a statement, I just wouldn’t consume their work at all – but life is short and I want to have my cake and eat it too.
It’s possible to do both, I consume plenty of pirated media simply because it’s unavailable due to pathetic capitalist imposed digital distribution limitations and lack of equitable paid access.
I also consume other pirated media because I wouldn’t spend my resources for access because I don’t yet know the value of the content and won’t pay just for an opportunity to be disappointed, been there enough times to have learned that lesson. I’m happy to spend my time to find out your media sucks, but not my money, because that’s also my time with the addition that I’ve put actual effort into converting it into fungible assets.
I also deliberately pirate media that I would pay for and do understand the value of, both because I can’t always afford to purchase said product from a company making billions of dollars in exploitative corporate profits and because I have no interest in caring about that over my own personal satisfaction in life.
Wouldn’t it achieve more to boycott things instead? If you won’t even give up watching a tv show, you aren’t an activist you are just complaining on the internet.
Who said anything about a boycott? Do you just regurgitate shit you heard elsewhere without understanding the context of it?
Your wrong. It’s what Jesus did, when the baker and fisherman couldn’t meet market demand.
So true! Here, have some internet points and validation!
I don’t want some validation, internet points, 2 minutes of fame to sound / look cool.
No, you just need everyone to know you don’t care about sounding/looking cool to sound/look cool. Totally different.
Too cool to be cool syndrome.
How did you do formatting injection in your username?
On the website you can modify your user display name with any font set you like. I used a random fancy font website and simply copy and pasted.
Nice, thanks!
I believe its just a display name, which I assume probably doesn’t have as more lax rules on valid characters (such as emojis) than usernames do.
“A smart person would pirate quietly without letting the world know” While posting “I do it & I don’t want some validation…”
They are screaming because they rather pay for convenience, but that is not how it works.
You just said admitted to pirating, you little muppet.
Now for most sources of media it’s more ethical to pirate their content than obtain it legitimately.
Though granted, if you want to hurt the company more than by pirating their content, you can by not pirating their content.
(Sadly, as seen with The Wizard Game, people are not so motivated to walk away from their beloved franchises. So ⛵️🏴☠️🦜⚔️🌊)
Confused - how does not pirating hurt the company more? Wouldn’t it be the exact same outcome for the company (as when pirated) or is this kinda like when GoT was arguing their popularity is even bigger when you look at the number of people torrenting their episodes
While I do have no morals when it comes to copying smb elses hard work(I am a programmer, basically my job) I Support games when they are good. Movies are rarely any good but the cinema isn’t as expensive for me anymore than when I was a student.
And most important you can’t refund bad movies in the cinema.
I still think it should be illegal to sell someone elses work though. This also means profiting from it when you use it in your product/development environment.
TL;DR:
Piracy can be a means of demonstration to show the flaws in copyright. Which obviously needs to be public.
I think some still feel some level of guilt about it and naturally, whether consciously or subconsciously, rationalize it with ideas like this. I guess the progression from that is posting about it to show that “yes I pirate, but I’m not a bad person because rationalization”.
Pirating is like church sins, less about avoiding causing harm and more about preserving hierarchy and tradition, even though abuses and theft by intellectual property holders cause way more harm and economic cost than infringement, by multiple orders of magnitude.
deleted by creator
You’re so right! Here have an internet point.
Especially when the statement makes no sense
if you create an argument for the moral implications of piracy then you aren’t a REAL pirate (how do you define that, even?)
Until we live in a world where people have equal access to information and essential technology piracy is a moral imperative.
Should something which costs a few hours worth of work in the developed word cost three weeks worth of work in a less developed country, just to make a publishing company worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a few extra bucks? Of course not!
Every other argument is a moot point to me. If I hadn’t pirated Photoshop and other software when I was a poor kid I wouldn’t have the six figure career I have today. The ultrarich steal from us every day in more ways than I can count. Maybe when they start being held accountable I will start caring about their bottom line.
Here I am wondering why there is still a downvote button in the YouTube comments… it does nothing!
The same reason that a lot of crosswalks have fake buttons. So you feel like you have control.
and why elevators have non functioning close buttons
Some elevators.
All the ones near me have fully functional close buttons.
true, it definitely depends where you live. If you’re in the US then it’s definitely a case of most don’t work, because most elevators at this point have been made after 1990, but if you live somewhere else then it can definitely be a case of some, or even none
but that said there definitely are functioning crosswalk buttons that work so being pedantic about some, most, etc, is irrelevant because as long as there are any that dont work its relevant to the topic
While simultaneously undermining your sense of trust in the world
Actually it’s worse than nothing. Youtube promotes comments based on engagement, so while only an upvote increases the tally, voting at all still makes it more visible.
The downvotes are still counted, just not displayed. You can re-enable it via browser extensions.
Pretty sure those extensions all use some sort of estimate methodology, the dislikes aren’t available via any apis or anything
Interesting, I wonder exactly how they work, then?
I’ve never used one myself but I’ve heard talk of various ones either A) taking the public (real) like number and extrapolating the dislikes based on an old like/dislike ratio available for the video from before the dislike removal (doesn’t work on new videos) or B) the extension includes a feature where the user can like/dislike the video within the extension and then the dislike number is extrapolated using the public (real) like number and the extension’s private like/dislike ratio. In either case the number is not connected to the “real” dislike count that YouTube would have access to internally
some sort of estimate methodology
Hey GPT4 watch this video and tell me what its ratio of likes to dislikes would be
For videos. The commnt dislike has done nothing for years
Oh, didn’t realize it was referring to comments. Yeah, that one’s pointless!
Do we really need excuses for pirating media?
I pirate movies because I think digital access to them is overpriced, goes to the copyright holder instead of the creators, it’s convenient and most importantly because I can.
I can’t pirate going to the cinema, nor can I afford to build my own, therefore I gladly pay to have a seat and enjoy a movie there.
Edit: I thought this may be relevant to the movies example I gave. I don’t think movie studios, giving nothing back to society after massive profits are the ones we should debate the morals of stealing with.
But all of those are excuses?
I think this logic is silly.
Employers don’t own you, so witholding wages for services you provided isn’t stealing. Getting a haircut and not paying isn’t stealing.
I think the better justification is: rights holders make it a pain in the arse to access content affordably, so fuck you, just going to steal it.
You’re only partly right. You example services. Of course it is not possible to own services. Piracy is only applicable to products. The point of the Twitter guy is, that companies intentionally stop selling their software etc. as products to sell you the same thing as a service, so that you cannot own it.
Not only that. Remember when Sony said that you don’t own the PS4 you bought for several hundred bucks but just purchased the right to use it as intended so you’re not allowed to tinker with it and for example install another operating system or figure out how their security works.
That’s what is meant by buying is not owning anymore.
I could go on about cars with subscriptions for heated seats that are already installed but not turned on etc.
It’s true that SaaS does stop you from owning software… But what good does “owning” a piece of software do you if you can’t get updates anyway? Back in the pre-internet era we got used to software existing as discrete versions but it hasn’t been like that for a LONG time. As soon as patching became a regular occurrence, “ownership” became a service contract with a CD attached. Then the CD vanished, and it just became a service.
While I do dislike needless “as a service” stuff, that model does genuinely suit a lot of people. It’s not a conjob; companies offer this stuff because a lot of customers want it. Most of the companies that are selling you SaaS stuff themselves use SaaS things in-house.
Yeah, it sucks to hear it, but this guy is right.
It’s also (typically) modeled in such a way that your software is consistently updated to new versions on release. You get active hotfixes, patches and improvements as they are released.
Most people jump software versions in stages of about 2-3 years. You’ll find a lot of SaaS packages will be priced as if you were instead purchasing the software at those stages.
All in all, if you have every intention of using the software regularly, it’s priced well and typically makes for a much better user experience.
Indeed. And that’s without considering that a lot of SaaS stuff on the consumer level lets you cancel at any time. Ok, you can get burned for 30 bucks if it turns out not to be all that useful, but the full packages are typically priced somewhere between eyewatering and “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?”, and they always have been.
A perfect example here - GeForce Now costs like 20 per month, cancel whenever you like. A 4080 gpu costs way over a grand. It’s up to you whether you prefer to own, rent or not bother at all, but it doesn’t take a lot to convince me to spend 20 bucks, but it does take a lot to get me to stump up for a whole new PC.
I think you slightly missed the point too. I think he meant that even when you buy games for example (or any other software).You don’t actually buy the game. You only buy a license to use that software.
Can we not become subreddit by posting this shitty screenshots trying to justify our reasons? Just share your media and enjoy it.
what do you mean trying to justify? discussion of shitty anti consumer tactics in digital media is perfectly valid
A screenshot of some comment is not really discussion though. This is a pretty base level understanding of the concept, which is why I say it’s more cope then actual discussion.
This is one of the most popular posts this week here with more than 4 HUNDRED comments. I don’t know what you view as a discussion but I think this was a pretty successful attempt at creating one.
I will say this thread had way more discussion then I was expecting when I originally posted this. My point about the screenshot still stands, I would much prefer we discuss something new related to sharing media, instead of recycling the same discussion about why its justified to copyright infringe.
I was gonna say the same thing but then I saw the 2200-something upvotes.
This community is doomed to be exactly like the low effort meme sub r/piracy if people keep upvoting this lazy content.
My headcanon is that it’s a passive form of protection: when copyright owners look to communities like piracy they are met with highly upvoted silly memes, which would cause them to miss the more helpful pirate advice mixed within.
deleted by creator
I completely agree. However posts of a screenshot of some shitty comment very much screams cope. That’s what I say enjoy ya loot, cause the reasons don’t matter.
deleted by creator
Loot is just an expression being used to stick with the pirate theme. I don’t get why you are reading so far into it. We call it piracy, when we are not pirates in the traditional sense, same for the word loot.
deleted by creator
So why do we call ourselves pirates? Why do we call it piracy?
I’m all for fuck corpos and freedom of sharing but it’s just lingo, you are reading way to fucking far into it.
deleted by creator
I don’t think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.
Sure you could argue that you’re not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist. I always found that anti piracy commercial “you wouldn’t steal a car” ridiculous as that’s not how piracy works.
For example, I do it because I don’t agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.
When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn’t afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.
The entire issue with these arguments, though, is that the opposition parties just answer those claims with “then you shouldn’t be ingesting that content”. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, then you don’t have the right to view/listen/stream it. Free market a-holes will always, correctly, bring up that the market works by putting out products and people paying for what they support and not paying for what they don’t support. The problem is that you can’t pick and choose which pieces or parts you support or don’t and there’s no way to give companies that type of feedback because they don’t care.
I’m willing to pay for it, but I’m not allowed to do so
For example, Amazon/MGM still don’t allow me to pay to watch Stargate
Then you don’t get to ingest it. “I want it” isn’t any more of an argument than if it was a physical item.
For me, personally, piracy in this case is justified and can even serve as preservation of art. But to pretend that people are somehow entitled to it is childish.
Edit: If Stargate was the only thing you were pirating, you might have a point but let’s be honest… it’s not. People don’t pirate one show because they can’t watch and the subscribe to a piracy forum.
Then you don’t get to ingest it
Says who? You? MGM?
Says the “free market a-holes” I mentioned in the comment you replied to… In this case, they’re also right if we’re being honest and acknowledging that piracy is depriving the creator of income for their work.
In most cases the creator doesn’t hold the IP anymore, they signed it over to the platform. I don’t think it’s cool to pirate indy games when you can afford them because in that case the money is genuinely being withheld from the content creator, but in a lot of cases depriving Amazon of $5 for a TV show isn’t going to impact anyone.
It’s more complex than that - You aren’t wrong, but there’s a lot more going on. Almost anything made by an employee as part of their job belongs to the company. If Amazon licences your work to make something based on it, that’s one thing, but if you are a jobbing writer who gets assigned to develop a new series, Amazon will own everything. You get paid in your salary, not in royalties. And, frankly, a lot of creatives are quite happy with that arrangement (since it’s so rare to make money at all).
And that’s why it’s… Odd. Because the “creator” is some dude who has already been paid; literally has received his salary. But the performance of his show does impact him, at least to some degree. Low ratings don’t mean he gets paid less, but it means he’s unlikely to earn more in future.
I mean if I am not paying either way me ingesting that content or not makes 0 difference to the producer. It is the same logic as throwing excess food to the trash so homeless can’t eat it.
The producer and publisher paid a cost for you to have heard and develop an interest in their products. So yes, it makes a difference to them if that investment turns into you using the content but not paying for it. You’re suddenly a target audience without returns.
It does, though, by the argument they’re making. If you could only ingest it by paying for it, you’d have to have paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to.
The very fact that you’re watching it without paying kind of proves that point.
That’s a fine argument that they might have, but piracy still isn’t stealing. If someone steals something from me, I am deprived of that thing. If someone copies my intellectual property, I am hypothetically impacted by loss of income, but I can still use that information.
They can say it’s morally wrong for someone to use or copy information against the owners wishes or without paying. They are welcome to that argument. None of us are obligated to care about their opinion.
If they can claim customers don’t own something, especially physical items, after purchase because they are being pedantic over how people interact with intellectual property, we can and should absolutely use the same distinction to distance piracy fromt theft.
That’s a dishonest argument. You are stealing. It’s just not the media that you’re stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator.
Imagine there’s an amusement park ride that you want to go on. If you find a way to sneak onto the ride, are you “stealing” the ride? You’re not stealing the physical ride but you’re entitling yourself to the experience without paying the person who has to create, run, maintain, and sell that experience.
Digital content is the same way. You’re justifying it because, in today’s day and age, most content is provided by giant corporations and financial assholes but don’t pretend that you’re not harming the creators of said work and potentially keeping them from making a living. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was honest, we would have all this content be free and people would pay for it if they enjoyed it and wanted more of it and they’d just refuse to pay for things they thought were shit. This insistence that you’re not stealing because you’re not stealing the vehicle of entertainment is stupid and dishonest, though.
Just admit you’re stealing and leave it at that. Attempting to justify the morality of it (or whatever you’re attempting to do here) just makes you look silly. You’re taking the “benefit” of the content without reciprocating.
That’s a dishonest argument. You are stealing. It’s just not the media that you’re stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator.
I don’t agree. I think your trying to compare this to wage theft, wherin an employee is promised or legally guaranteed some income based on hours work, where after both parties have agreed to this the employee has performed the work and the employer is withholding some of the pay. This case is stealing - the trade was completed and the employer is in possession of an asset (eg the pay that they are entitled to) - this is not a physical thing, but it is a real thing, with real physical value, and in removing that the employer would stealing that asset. Obviously there’s a garguntuam difference here because both parties had agreed to exchange assets and the employer has taken ownership of that pay per the agreement. If someone decided to do that same work, absent agreement, obviously they can’t claim wage theft because they didn’t have any entitlement.
To be intellectually honest, you’d compare piracy to plagiarism. But that’s (correctly) not as alarming as stealing which is why we need to mislead people to make it seem worse.
Imagine there’s an amusement park ride that you want to go on. If you find a way to sneak onto the ride, are you “stealing” the ride? You’re not stealing the physical ride but you’re entitling yourself to the experience without paying the person who has to create, run, maintain, and sell that experience.
Entering without permission (in your example, paying) is trespassing. It’s fine argument to say that it’s morally wrong and that you shouldn’t do it. It’s blatantly wrong to claim it is stealing.
Digital content is the same way. You’re justifying it because, in today’s day and age, most content is provided by giant corporations and financial assholes but don’t pretend that you’re not harming the creators of said work and potentially keeping them from making a living. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was honest, we would have all this content be free and people would pay for it if they enjoyed it and wanted more of it and they’d just refuse to pay for things they thought were shit. This insistence that you’re not stealing because you’re not stealing the vehicle of entertainment is stupid and dishonest, though.
Digital content is the same way, insofar as piracy is more akin to trespassing than theft. It’s an abstract argument to say not buying something is harming owners or creators, who are you (or anyone else) to dictate what people buy, or to attach some morality to that?
You say it harms creators, but the evidence says that pirated games make more money. I imagine your claim is based on an assumption that people who pirate stuff do so at the expense of people buying it. Have you bothered to explore that assumption any further? You might be surprised.
Just admit you’re stealing and leave it at that. Attempting to justify the morality of it (or whatever you’re attempting to do here) just makes you look silly. You’re taking the “benefit” of the content without reciprocating.
Piracy is quite literally not stealing. Stealing is an act of removing something from another’s possession, into your own. That is simply not what piracy is, and trying to falsey equate different crimes is every but as absurd as “stop pretending driving 5mphover the limit isn’t murder, it’s wrong and trying to justify the morality of it makes you look silly”
No. I am not comparing to wage theft. You’re just making a semantic argument rather than a substantive argument. Sure, if you want to argue semantics, then I’m viewing it as trespassing or service theft. Either way, you’re depriving a creator of income. If it’s a smaller creator, then you’re stealing money from them because, otherwise, you wouldn’t get the experience of ingesting their content. You’re entitling yourself to the experience of ingesting their work without contributing to your end of the contract. You’re only making the argument in the way you are because larger studios pay the creators on a contract basis. The truth is, though, that those creators don’t get hired if their content doesn’t result in material sales (whether physical or digital) of the content. No one invests in content that doesn’t make money and the excuse that “it still does make money even if I pirate” is just mental gymnastics.
Your second argument is also dishonest - the “no one is losing any money because the person wouldn’t have paid for it anyways” argument. That’s just an extension of the second part of what I said above. If piracy is ok for one person, it has to be ok for all and if it was ok for all, then the content wouldn’t make money. TV shows don’t get renewed. Sequels don’t get made. Sure, maybe the original content made money because some people were honest and paid for it but you are depriving a creator of an income because, had everyone paid, they’d have more work and more income coming in.
All this is to say that I’m fine with piracy. Sometimes you can’t afford it. Sometimes it’s not available legally. Sometimes it’s just a superior experience where you’re not forced to watch ads or deal with DRM. These are all fine. But to try and justify it as deserved or go through these mental gymnastics to claim it’s not stealing is just nonsense or arguing semantics. Just admit you’re stealing/trespassing and not holding to your end of the contract and admit that you’re harming creators.
No. I am not comparing to wage theft
Then I’ll try a third time. My claim is that theft deprived the owner of their item. Piracy does not do this, ergo it is something different than theft.
My second argument is to preempt the inevitable “pure economic loss” claim. It’s a tangent, and is not a claim that 100% piracy is sustainable, simply that the assertion that piracy causes commercial products to fail (as piracy exists today) is factually and demonstrably wrong.
My third point, which you again chose not to address, is that equating piracy to theft is as stupid as comparing speeding to murder. They are different crimes and should be treated as such. You know what an actual comparison to theft is, which is the whole basis of the OP? A product a user has paid for being removed by the publisher because they chose to incorporate drm that is no longer sustainable, wonder why nobody calls this theft (in fact it is closer to theft than piracy). Oh wait no I don’t, I spelled it out in the first post - piracy = theft is propaganda to hurt the little guy, the big players are manipulating the system such that they are above the same laws we play by.
Be fine with piracy or don’t, I couldn’t give a shit either way. That is irrelevant to the points I’ve raised.
You’re still arguing semantics and not the substance of my position.
The issue isn’t whether the action is depriving the owner of the item. The issue is whether the author of the content is deprived of something, in this case income, when someone pirates that content. You cannot honestly claim that they are not deprived of something by piracy. Arguing that piracy and theft are different is just a semantic debate like saying that “murder” and “crime” are 2 different things because not all crimes result in someone being dead.
The second argument is a straw man. No one is discussing whether piracy causes failure. We’re only discussing the morality of depriving an author of income, whether directly or indirectly, and the needless justification being shown here which pretends that there is no effect.
The third point is another semantic argument and a straw man. No one compared murder to theft in any way to suggest that they are the same action. The only comparison of crimes that was made was a suggestion that, regardless of the crimes, two different ones can still have a deprivational effect. And why are you bringing up the DRM situation? I already said that was justified. It’s not theft because you’re not paying for the product, you’re paying for a license. Theft would be paying for a product and having that taken away from you. You bought the license knowing, in advance, that that’s what it was when you bought it. Ignorance is not an excuse for making claims that aren’t factually true.
Your entire response is irrelevant. You’re not addressing anything that was actually being discussed. Instead you’ve focused on the difference between piracy and theft as a semantic argument instead of a substantive one and continue to do so. The social contract for goods and services is that both parties are entitled to the “fruits” of their labor - one party creates and the other ingests and money is exchanged for a good/service. Piracy breaks that contract by allowing one party to ingest without providing the creator an equal good or service in exchange. The further entitlement on display here trying to justify this theft is childish.
deleted by creator
It does matter though - The price paid to the creator was based on the prospect of X number of sales or Y numbers of adverts. Almost everyone who presently is trying to get their creative works seen is hoping that being seen helps them to “make it” and be able to write or sing or whatever as a full time job.
deleted by creator
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Don’t complain that modern media is garbage that doesn’t cater to you while also saying middle class soccer moms can sponsor everything.
deleted by creator
Says the guy not paying for shit that he’s still enjoying. What an entitled child.
Nonsense. It matters to the person who made it if they’re getting paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to watch it.
deleted by creator
That’s irrelevant. If everyone pirates the content, then that creator doesn’t get hired and paid again/anymore.
deleted by creator
So you’re entitled to do it just because everyone isn’t? What a crock of shit. What makes you special and exempt from what others have to do?
I’ve never understood the “piracy is morally acceptable” argument, personally. Best I can agree with is that piracy is not morally bad in some cases. Especially since me pirating something has no impact if I never would have paid for it in the first place. But it can often times be morally wrong (people who refuse to buy games from indie studios despite having the money to do so would usually fall into this category imo), and I can’t imagine any scenario outside of the preservation of media where it’s actually morally good to pirate things.
Like, I’m all for people not buying things that they don’t support. And I feel no sympathy for large companies that make more money in a day than I’ll make in a lifetime losing out on sales. But when did it become my right to play Hogwarts Legacy or watch a show without paying for it?
“If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”
- Eben Moglen
I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.
Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.
I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn’t purchase that but piracy made it possible.
Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.
As a Muslim, it is already forbidden to implement artificial scarcity. So as a Muslim, it’s not an opinion, but objectively wrong, because God said that it is wrong.
Genuinely curious about that now…
I will warn you: We believe that there is good and wrong, and not humans, but Allah (god) is the one who created us and Allah is the one who decides what is good and what is wrong.
So basically what is wrong and what is right is pre-decided by Allah, so we don’t have to decide if something is bad or not, because Allah already gave the info of that to us.
I was interested about the artificial scarcity part
Exactly. IP isn’t rivalrous like land or goods, so it has no place being artificially restricted. Property rights are a solution to human conflict in the natural world.
If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution), let’s pretend for a second. I bet the majority of people wouldn’t even be here asking these questions.
“If it’s legal then why not”. That’s how many people think. However the morality aspects still stand and shouldn’t be skwed by the legal aspect. When you made the example of pirating indie games, if piracy is legal, people would legally download those games from third party sources, even the people who wouldn’t do it if piracy were illegal (like it is in reality).
At that point it’ll become some sort of “if I can afford it I will support the studio and buy the game, if I can’t I will get it for free because people won’t think I’m stealing regardless”. Kind of like a donate if you can sort of system some software developers have in place.
In reality nothing prevents the same people from thinking that way right now. It’s just the stigma behind pirating even those indie games which is still skewed and dependant by the legal aspect of the situation.
The truth about digital products is that if someone doesn’t want to pay for something they won’t pay regardless and it doesn’t rob anyone else from being able to purchase and downloade the same exact content the legit way. The mistake is seeing pirates as otherwise potential paying customers if piracy wasn’t an option.
deleted by creator
If piracy were legal (just the download for personal use, not redistribution)
That is actually the case in some countries, like the Czech Republic. But, torrents aren’t because you are also uploading
deleted by creator
Here’s my justification:
I paid for a product. I’m getting that product, by hook or by crook.
This is a pretty sorry justification. Just cut the shit and steak what you want, don’t blow smoke up our ass about segmentation.
Like segmentation isn’t an issue…
It is, but it doesn’t justify your actions.
To you perhaps, I’m perfectly fine with it.
I just want to point out to anyone who thinks this is a viable legal defence, It isn’t.
You would be considered to be stealing from the rights holder. The rights holder authorises your use of their property when you pay the license fee. If you don’t pay the license fee you are considered to be stealing their property.
Just to be clear, I agree with the sentiment of this post. Legally speaking though, this defence would be cut down in moments.
I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding is that I’m the US at least, it’s still not theft, but copyright infringement, which also means it doesn’t get handled in criminal court, but is instead handled as a civil lawsuit.
I just want to point out to anyone who thinks this is a viable legal defence, It isn’t.
Of course it isn’t. Copyright laws were written by the same kind of people who decided that corporations gets to “people.”
Of course it is no viable defense, but stealing is the wrong term, because stealing is used for the theft of physical goods missing somewhere else. This would be along illegal usage semantically, or as another comment pointed out copyright infringement.
Legally speaking they’re not going after you solely for piracy pretty much ever, at least not in America, unless you’re making a profit from it.
This is inaccurate. You are not buying it (the media), you are buying the right to stream it (as long as the seller provides the media as a stream). You don’t “buy” a movie unless you are paying for it’s ownership, which would be millions of dollars. For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM). And you generally don’t have a right be able to “buy” or have access to all media.
But all that doesn’t automaticly make it amoral.
this comment is gonna be downvoted to helledit: There are probably gonna be more responces, so this will address everything else I have to say. What I wrote is how things are legally, more or less. I don’t like that either. I do consider piracy stealing (under current laws) and morally right. Stealing is just not that great term for digital stuff. Please don’t try to (uselessly) sway me and don’t infight
this meme is a criticism of that. it shouldn’t be like that. if I buy a chair, I own the chair. I can then choose to sit on it, burn it, or give it to my neighbor, whatever. if I buy a movie, it’s suddenly not like that – but not because of some inherent quality that would make it impossible, but only because they say it is like that. but they have one weakness: it’s only like that if we actually stick to those rules. they’re all arbitrary anyway! we can therefore treat a bought movie just as it should be: a physical copy that we actually own. we can then decide to watch it, to lend it to our neighbor, to play it for everybody to see on the street, to cut it and remix it and do something new with it. will they come and claim we’ve “pirated” their media? yes of course, but this is nonsensical, dead law, that has to be broken again and again by just – ignoring it, and making it not so. if I buy a movie, I do own the movie, and the company that says otherwise can get fucked. that’s what this is about.
That’s kind of their point, because we are not in fact buying the media the argument is that piracy has some moral element. Put another way there is no option to own it outside of piracy.
I have no legal option to own you. Is it moral, then, for me to turn to illegal means to own you?
Now replace “you” with “content you created”, and tell me how it’s different.
And replace “you” with an exploitive company that doesn’t give two shits about anything but making a number go up.
A person vs art, that’s the line where our opinion would differ I guess. Art/media is part of the world/history and it feels wrong to lock out large parts of it essentially forever. Let us pay for things and have them, it’s that simple. Once it cannot be sold it should be publically available if someone who has it wants to make it so. But again this all crosses into opinion, you can’t own a person and be a good citizen at the same time but many pirates are productive members of society or couldn’t buy to begin with.
Art/media is part of the world/history
And they are created by human beings, who have every right to decide what their creations are worth to them and under what terms other people can use their creations. I whittled a pretty cool dragon out of a stick once. It’s technically part of the world/history. That doesn’t mean anyone else has a right to it.
Let us pay for things and have them, it’s that simple.
Absolutely, if I am willing to sell you that thing for the price you are offering. If I am not, then the deal doesn’t go through. That is how deals work. You cannot rent a car for $60/day and then decide “actually I’m going to keep this forever.” That was not the deal you agreed upon.
Once it cannot be sold it should be publically available if someone who has it wants to make it so
Yes, I agree. In this case, though, the person who “has it” is the owner. Not the person who signed a deal saying “I myself will use this under the terms we have both agreed upon” and then proceeds to break those terms. Copyright law (in the US) is bullshit and needs a whole lot of reform, but if we’re talking about media made recently? By a still living human? Yes, they should own what they create.
but many pirates are productive members of society or couldn’t buy to begin with
Yes, I imagine this applies to both you and I as pirates. But as a productive member of society, I am fully aware that I am not entitled to anything owned by anyone else. I will not die if I don’t see that new movie I want to, and I am aware of that. I know that me pirating is both immoral and illegal, and directly hurts others. I am willing to admit that.
Thanks for the well thought out response, I believe your dragon may belong to someone else and it may rightfully be theirs, someday. I get what you’re saying in terms of practical day to day, but there is a harmful nature to copyright which is not discussed and I think that’s more important to come to terms with morally vs any harm caused by piracy. I also believe the harm piracy does cause can be mitigated with a more aware system. Once something is created you are in a power struggle to own it that you will lose with absolute certainly if the thing is not destroyed after your time with it.
Yeah kinda, but there deosn’t need to be an option to own media. You are not entitled to that. It’s up to the creator/owner how to use/sell their things. It’s whole another question if it should be that way
For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM).
I’d like to point out German law (maybe this expands to EU and other countries) with traditional media.
Traditionally you bought movies and music on physical discs. You had a guaranteed right to be able to sell it to other people, as well as make personal copies of it for private use/backups.
DRM has always tried to oppose this right. And obviously, in the last decade(s) a lot went into service-oriented streaming and temporary access instead of owning even on a partial or theoretical level.
Legally, piracy is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. That’s a totally different ball game with different implications.
While stealing even cheap items quickly lands you in legal hot water, just downloading (without uploading) doesn’t. I don’t know of a single case where someone got a significant fine or even a lawsuit for just downloading (and not redistributing) content.
The legal main difference between stealing and illegaly copying is that when you steal something it’s gone.
This changes the damages calculation a lot, since the only damage you caused by copying is the opportunity cost: Since you copied it, they didn’t sell it to you. But you might have already bought it in the meantime (then the damages 0), or you might have not bought it at all (then the damages are also 0).
Also, stealing is criminal law, while copyright is civil law, which makes it legally entirely different.
Looks nitpicky, but if you talk about current laws, nitpicky is the whole game.
If I’ve bought the right to play the game, what’s “the game” that I’m entitled to if they decide to take away what makes it the thing I agreed to have access to?
That is answered in the 95-page TOS
There are lots of cars you can’t get parts for dude.
There aren’t literally any cars that I can’t get parts for.
Piracy is always stealing. Y’all can keep trying to spin it if it helps, but its pure copium.
Is it stealing when they don’t lose anything?
Well first of all, yes it is stealing to take something that does not belong to you. The definition of stealing is not beholden to the consequences of the actions itself.
Furthermore, if you pirate to avoid paying a subscription, then yes they are losing something. I’m a massive pirate. I steal all my media. I feel no guilt and I also have no delusions about what I am doing. I do it to save money.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Yes you are taking something. Of course you are. You are a taking a video file which you do not have the right to. Why do you need to convince yourself there is nothing grimy about doing? Like jesus christ, just be grimey. Wht you gotta lie to yourself?
deleted by creator
If semantics is the hill you want to die on you’ve already lost.
Sure, but there’s a huge difference between stealing a physical object and copying data without permission.
For most of us sods it’s a choice between pirating content or not engaging in it at all. While the upper management of Sony or Disney might live in their profit-focused bubble, everyone else involved with a product would rather we actually participate in their patch of human culture.
But I’m happy to not watch your show or listen to your music, if my presence offends you.
Entirely besides the point. As for the last point, that’s pretty funny😂 if you’re pirating it it literally makes no difference.
The difference is, your culture is not getting out there.
The reason we all know Joffrey is a git of a king and the Red Wedding was a day to call in sick is because the GoT series was massively pirated and HBO ignored it. It also why we had a decade of gratuitous boobs on television. It also accounted for HBO being stupendously rich for a while.
It’s kinda like depending on the wind for sailing, your crew on deck are going to be hot because there isn’t much breeze. The more you tap consumption of your art for money, the narrower the gateway and the less it becomes culture, until you end up like Prince (the musician) with most of your work locked away in a vault, unknown to anyone.
But you seem like a the law’s the law sort of fellow, and would be simping for the state even as it was torturing your fellow statesmen.
GOT wasn’t funded through culture. Also they most certainly didn’t ignore it, they just failed to stop it.
Do my a favor and stick your assumptions up your mother’s asshole. I’m a pirate, I just don’t have any delusions about what it is. I’m not so egotistical that I need to convince myself that it’s not stealing just because I’m doing it.
I find your pirate cred dubious. You came onto a pirate thread to throw shade, which smacks to me of Christian vigilantes wandering into a gay bar to start trouble. Or a guy online compelled to send his dick-pic to women online for internal insecurities he can’t consciously fathom.
You’re not here to protest the problems with stealing, not in the current economic clime. You’re here because you need to shit on others, and are trying to justify it by opposing piracy when even the IP holders know it’s losing game that only hurts themselves. It’s the legal firms they’ve tapped who are over eager to show they’re earning their pay.
You want to evade my assumptions, go crawl back into your hole, or do some proper fucking research. (Start here, and enjoy.).
But so long as you’re raising a stink and I’m nearby, you’re going to have to choke on the toxic vitriol of my ideology. I won’t suffer your moralizing in silence.
The mere notion that piracy might be stealing sends you into a paragraphs long tirade. Pretty stupid. I simply don’t care that it’s stealing.
deleted by creator
And yet you still shared something. Those files exist. This is an extremely weak argument honestly.
deleted by creator
Something is being tranferred, and that is the picture which you do not own nor have any right to own.
deleted by creator
That is a dishonest characterization. The video file obviously has value, or you wouldn’t be interested in it. We aren’t talking about a singular bool, but the configuration of the bools of that specific file, which whatever company owns and which they sell the right to view.
What is your opinion on the following argument defending piracy, as in copyright infringement: “Piracy can’t be stealing if paying for it isn’t owning”
Sometimes I like to imagine what a library from a highly advanced race who have transcended the base concepts of copyright and currency in general would be like. If every person in the civilization could absorb any form of media ever made as well as knowledge formerly sequestered away behind paywalls or otherwise suppressed, just imagine what heights such a society could reach.
It is called the Akashic records.
They are believed by theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the mental plane. Because it is believed that the records are encoded vibrationally into the inherent fabric of space, some have likened the mechanism as similar to how holograms are created.
I know some of these words!
to explain: Some trade-off occultist scammers said they can access all of humankinds knowledge in brain-space
I mean it would be cool if I were able to fact-check in real-time within my own brain, but I can’t help feeling that this sounds just like a Black Mirror episode.
What.cd was(kinda) my modern day library of Alexandria for a short while.
To be completely frank, I couldn’t care less if it’s stealing or not. They should sell their shit for cheaper if their companies care so much, which I’m not sure they really do.
deleted by creator
If they do that how will they pay the artists millions of dollars… And how will they buy their latest private jet or yacht or whatever.
Most artists never make any money at all…
Well I’m talking about the ones that do. Don’t you think that it’s a bit unevenly distributed?
As an artist, where is my million dollars?
No offense. I’m talking about the ones that do.
I seriously don’t understand the mental gymnastics here. We pirate because we’d rather get something for free than pay for it. There are certainly cases when someone is forced to pirate a product due to copyright restrictions in their country but that isn’t the case most of the time for people like us who pirate. We’re just selfish and there’s noting wrong with admitting that.
The mental gymnastics are in response to copyright holders’ gymnastics. They remove content, relocate it, put it behind tiered subscriptions, or sometimes effectively delete it from all legal avenues after owners/subscribers paid for it. So if paying for a subscription isn’t owning it, as described in Amazon’s fine print for example, then what do you do? It’s a long-term rental subject to removal upon any licensing transfers. Sure, we get greedy once set up, but if legal options don’t actually offer you any legal ownership due to legal gymnastics, then yeah, I’ll do the mental gymnastics right back at them.
I agree. I’m American and I love the show “Taskmaster.” I would like to give them money to watch it. They would like to receive my money. There have been legal complications for years. I’ve bought their physical board game from their website but as far as the show goes, yo ho ho!
It’s their IP, they can distribute it in any way they see fit. It doesn’t entitle you to steal it just because you disagree with how it’s distributed.
How can it be stealing if downloading doesn’t take the content away from anyone else.
This is just another example of mental gymnastics when it comes to piracy.
Do you strictly have to deprive others of content to be stealing? Taking away potential revenue, stealing someone’s design, etc. are also forms of stealing. If a gaming company lifts some art someone shared and put it in their game without compensating the artist or getting permission, would that not be stealing? They’re not taking away that content from anyone else - so is that ok?
Pretty sure that you do have to intend to permanently deprive for it to be theft. What you’re describing is copyright infringement. Whether that’s morally right is a different question but it’s not stealing.
I have no idea how you came to this conclusion but it is legally incorrect.
Property theft is taking anything you do not own without consent of the owner. It has nothing to do with if that property deprived the owner of anything.
Is it though?
Theft in Scots Law is defined as the wrongful appropriation of the property of another, with the intention of permanently depriving the other person of his or her possession.
If you really believe that then why are you on a piracy forumn?
There’s nuance in the pirate ranks my dude. Some people don’t really believe in property rights at all, some people think that piracy is acceptable when you can’t afford/obtain the original, some just like to try before they buy.
Some think it’s ok for them to steal but not for them to be stolen from.
Edit: dont shoot the messenger
I DO WHAT I WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE
Hey, if you can’t be consistent at least be honest.
Primarily because I pirate the majority of media I consume.
You’re getting downvoted but you’re 100% correct.
There’s people on both sides of the scale here.
I used to pirate stuff because I couldn’t afford it or because I prioritized spending my money elsewhere since I could get stuff for free. Then as I got a job, I could afford to pay for lots of things and legal options became more convenient than piracy, so I just stopped pirating.
Now I’m back on the ship because pirating has become more convenient than subscribing to a bunch of different fragnented and anti-consumer services just to access a handful of content.
Some people just want shit for free (which is ok, been there), some others value service and convenience first and foremost.
Not judging you for your reasons, but you don’t speak for everyone so calm down with the “we” pronoun.
I really couldn’t care if people judged me for my reasons, I pirate because I’m selfish just like the vast majority of people who pirate. But if you’re living in a country where content restrictions or regional pricing isn’t an issue, or if you’re downloading something that isn’t in circulation anymore then you’re in all likelihood pirating because you’re selfish.
Could I get a source for vast majority?
Seriously I don’t understand all the mental gymnastics on an anonymous internet forum, just admit it was easy to steal and you didn’t feel like paying for it lol
People will feel more guilty about piracy than speeding, even though the latter kills thousands of people every year.
But also, are you absolutely sure it’s theft for me to walk into a Hertz and take a vehicle? Like if they’re not in the business of selling vehicles then surely it can’t be theft to take one…
Your reasoning touches on a deep philosophical concept: what is “ownership”?
I’d say owning something is easy enough when you can’t duplicate it (I can’t just copy your car or house to save money). Duplication, however, means the ownership is technically the abstraction of “intellectual property”, which worked fine when duplicating cost money and people paid money for it.
However, the very essence of using a computer on a network is simply using copies. You’re not reading this as I write it, but a copy your computer downloaded.
It’s more about ownership of a copyright than ownership of an actual item though. There are issues with our copyright system that could be addressed (DMCA should be launched into the sun), but overall it’s the lesser of two evils. A society without any copyright enforcement simply wouldn’t produce the kinds of outstanding media that we’re all used to. Movies today cost hundreds of millions to make, and without a sufficient profit motive, no investor would be willing to front that kind of cash. Even crowdfunding, which I actually feel is scammier than private investors, has never come close to raising the capital needed for a major film or TV show. The system only works so long as a critical mass of consumers are actually paying for most media.
Personally I’m fine with paying netflix for their content, with the understanding that I’m licensing its use on my television, not purchasing the work outright. I don’t see that as any kind of scam. I mean I still pirate too, but now that I’m at a point in life where I can afford to contribute, I try to. I have friends that are actors and writers and so I don’t mind paying to ensure a healthy ecosystem of content creators moving forward. But if you make it too difficult or inconvenient for me to access the media I want, then to the high seas I sail, and I’m fine with that too lol
With most modern software you paying for the on-going development and all the network infrastructure to send you your copy. Same way that you pay to use the bowling alley.
I live in Japan. I could wave money around begging for a copyright owner to take it, but they refuse to take it and I can’t access the content.
If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase (false scarcity by removal fro market) or if despite purchasing a physical object, say a car, I can’t fully use it or repair it without special software I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.
This is what I’ve been saying. We don’t even own digital products, all it takes is a server to be taken down or an account to be lost and all you bought is taken away. Pirating also can’t be stealing because we aren’t taking something away from someone else, other people are not deprived of the chance to have this just because we downloaded it.
Or the service is no longer supported. I remember buying some PS3 games digitally but can’t access them on my PS5. Load of BS.
I can’t play my Sega CD games on my PS5 either; difference is that I’m not complaining.
I assume you are referring to a physical copy of the Sega CD. As long as you still own a Sega CD you can play physical copies of games. Recently PlayStation closed down their online service for PS3 so you cannot access any digital games you may own even if you still have a PS3.
And there’s no other way to play those games. They’re pretty much gone forever alongside the money spent to purchase them.
