Piracy is bad.
It is illegal and immoral. It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers who are only trying to make a living. If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.
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Comments125View original on lemmy.world
I'm a big fan of paying the people who make things for me.
But digital piracy is the only thing keeping archive copies of obscure media around today. Even libraries aren't keeping up. Plenty of media creators have revived their thing that found an audience after decades forgotten - through piracy, and only successfully revived it thanks to archivist pirates, since they had thrown that thing away.
It's not black and white.
Patronage funding, early access, streamlined delivery, and white glove support are the funding models that are working for creatives today.
speaking of libraries, there is also a need for archiving knowledge and information for the public good, such as books and research articles. Especially the latter are usually created and, many times, already paid for by the researchers themselves (often via tax money), many of whom would prefer to have their research disseminated.
In the global north, many universities can afford such high-priced publisher premium. But in the global south, and many underfunded universities, hospitals, schools in general, such prices are impossible. So in practicality, they turn to piracy for the most part.
That's even worse. Stealing from small creators. I don't see how active archiving relates to piracy, nor its connection to fan service.
The Internet Archive, even outside of their Wayback Machine, is effectively built on digital piracy in many ways if anything. The reality is that any sort of media, whether it's physical media that was destroyed, or digital media that was deleted or had it's host platform shut down, could possibly never be accessed again unless it's archived, even if that archival was done with piracy.
Mother 3 could be considered impossible to play legally in many ways, with most of the cartridges being sold unofficially with the English ROM hack being preapplied, and the originals starting near 75 dollars on eBay, and Nintendo isn't making any money off it anymore, so in many cases unless you're a collector, it's best to just pirate the game with an English ROM translation.
The Internet Archive also has an archived online library of books that you're free to borrow from, similar to an Overdrive-like platform of sorts, which is great for finding information that isn't publicly available, or to read a book that is simply rare used and not sold anymore or where another copy isn't to be found.
I don't see the comparison. Archiving is beneficial for the freedom of information, but pirating is beneficial for the pirate.
What I just said was that archiving for preservation often is done with piracy. You need to get the content one way or another to archive, especially with the vast library on there.
Yes, you pay the author.
Which is sometimes not even an option offered and sometimes licencing rules will mean that no matter how many people pay for it, it's going to be lost to the world without piracy.
Btw, it's cute that you think it's the author you're supporting, rather than the exploitative and greedy publisher. Downright adorable! 🥹
Archiving digital media is making backups and copies. That is what archiving those things is intrinsically, immutably.
Making backups and copies is also what the IP owners would refer to as piracy.
You cannot be pro-internet-archive and anti-piracy at the same time, at least not fully. They are contradictory positions.
You got that from my post? I no longer think you're engaging in a meaningful discussion here.
The difference being that money is finite and digital media isn't.
Abundant and infinite mean two different things though. Money is abundant, not infinite. If you had unlimited money, as you said, it's intrinsic value would be zero
Shop local, steal from corporate.
No you shouldn't steal from small or independent creators. However don't try to tell me that Disney is going to go out of business because I pirated their latest movie.
Well, not yet, but give us time! They're huge! It's really hard to take them down!
The problem is the antisocial behavior and externalities. Piracy has a negative externality on society, it lets you consume a product you didn't contribute to production whatsoever. If it becomes commonplace then yes, Disney will go bankrupt, but will every producer, small or big or anything in between.
Rules shouldn't be arbitrary. People work at Disney too, and you'll have less artist, animator and stuff, all paid less, it the market shrinks because of piracy
People pirate for different reasons, and the legal definition of it changes nothing really. There's...
I'm in the last two camps personally. I wanted to also share my opinions on the points you mentioned directly...
I think It is illegal and immoral to sell consumers a license to use a product, under the guise of them owning it without explicitly and clearly stating such at the point of purchase, i.e. consumer electronics where you may "own" the device but only have a license to use the operating system, digital game purchases on consoles which can be revoked at any time by Sony/Microsoft or the publisher, services like Amazon Prime Video where a digital box set you purchased (that can only be watched via Amazon's website) can be deleted by Amazon at any time, leaving you no recourse.
In my opinion, it should not be right for directors at the likes of UMG to profit from music made by artists who have died.
The developers do not make anywhere near as much money as they should for their efforts, and quite frankly they are going to get paid regardless of whether you as an individual decide to purchase or pass on a product.
IMO the people in the first camp probably aren't interested in money if they have chosen not to purchase their media to begin with
I'm curious as to the reason behind the post though, has someone pirated your content before?
Thank you for an actual intellectual rebuttal. This may actually make me reconsider the morality aspect, but it is still outside of my moral bounds and therefore I can never condone it.
This started because of a post that I saw about a big piracy community being shut down.
Defederated from another popular instance, not shut down.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy is still there, just not viewable through your instance where your account is.
The point is, isn't the producer right to make the price? You can always not consume what they produce. This category is the most obnoxious; would you ever go to a restaurant and expect to decide the prices?
It's the very same argument for producers that willingly release their contently freely and let you support them, eventually. It's their choice.
Of the three you quoted preservation is the only one I find acceptable. If the producer no longer care to distribute their product, then they probably don't care to what it happens to it either.
For me the main difference is that nobody is forcing you to accept the transaction. I could accept this kind of argument for drugs for example, where you either take it or die/have serious repercussions. But pirating a movie you would have very much lived without just because is easy to do so it's particularly problematic.
Except they aren't. Or at least, of course they're payed the same, at the moment. But in our economy prices are signals. If a market will appear smaller then it is because of piracy then after some timesfewer developers will be hired, and each of them will be payed less because you're "falsifying" the signals. Or even worst, the producers will start to use alternative form of monetization. That's one of the reason the modern web is based off ads or free-to-play games with microtransanctions are so damn common.
The people in the first category should also think about the allocation problem. Those products which they like to consume but not pay for, still had a cost of production. The problem is they want ti consume, without supporting production, and that's not gonna work for a society.
There is no way to buy media forever. Even DVDs go bad and get worn out, then you're back buying something you already own.
Piracy is not immoral, it is the free market pendulum that always forces media to care the tiniest bit of thought toward consumer experience.
I started pirating stuff I have subs and apps for, it's simply a horrible experience right now. These episodes of this season are on this one, and these are on another service that I have to switch to.
Now which service has the other episodes? Oh now they moved to a different app, and I'm still paying the old app.
The vast majority of time I'll just go torrent and plex something than chase it to many different apps, even if I have those subscriptions
This kind of thing just encourages 🏴☠️🚢 the rest of the season IMO.
In almost all cases it's just easier to just grab the whole box set, pop it on a personal media server and not worry about the streaming service faff - or even look for a modern "pout lock car" equivalent to stream from.
It was nice when everything was on Netflix and HBO, before all the entertainment companies decided they want a piece of the streaming pie, with prices continuing to increase. I used to follow the cordcutters community back on tiddeR and they were starting to get sick of this too.
First, piracy is not illegal everywhere, and a personal copy is the most legal way in almost every country to archive what you have bought.
As for the morality of it, it's your problem, not mine.
And the most important question is: What can I do when whole countries do not sell their music or TV shows? I'm thinking of Poland or Japan for example. I cannot legally buy media from those countries because they don't care about foreign customers. How can they lose money if they don't sell anything?
If you want a concrete example that happened to me yesterday: I want to buy a subscription to https://pilot.wp.pl/tv/. I want to give my money yet they refuse it. What can I do?
If the money actually went to the people that made the content then there would be an argument, but it doesn't, it goes to a bunch of assholes who conned the actual content creators from their hard work.
Have an upvote!
You are wrong of course and "intellectual property" is a bullshit concept. Owning information is what is immoral. It's also not stealing as you're making a copy and not taking anything away.
I'd rather spend another $1000 on harddrives than give a single cent to streaming services or filmstudios.
Are people downvoting because this is actually a popular opinion and doesn't belong here or because they disagree with it?
“Yes.”
Can we not dissect every downvote like it’s an affront to your personal freedom?
It's an interesting question worth asking.
Can we not assume people are triggered when they're just asking honest questions?
No
I upvote if I'm having a good day, and downvote if I'm having a bad one.
You're doing it incorrectly. Upvote the opinions that you think deserve the moniker of "unpopular."
Forcing your own opinion on others is actually immoral.
OP appears to be a genuinely awful person in every possible metric, so I frankly just don't want to give them the dopamine hit.
They should be upvoting because they are applauding how bad my opinion is.
I can't get most of the content legally. What is my option?
When my friend wanted to watch “Breaking bad” a few years ago, he subscribed to a streaming service, it had only the second and third season. He paid for it, but piracy is the only option for him.
Even if you are in the USA, 87% of video games before 2010 are currently impossible to buy.
If the product studdenly stop release, then it sometimes could be count as moral, because, when there are lots of digital products rely on the digital distribution (e.g. online game shop) then suddenly shut down, people will no longer to enjoy the digital products on that specific devices.
Please search "3ds eshop closeure"
Edit: "rely on", not "relay to"
So on a morality point of view, I've downloaded epubs of books of an author where I've previously bought copies of their books multiple times, either because the originals wore out or I gave a copy away. I still have copies on my shelf or in storage, I just want to have copies on my Kindle.
I've bought things (or had bought for me) things on VHS and DVD formats and no longer have a player for either. So yeah I downloaded stuff I wanted to watch again
There are things only available on DVD and not available to stream. There are things that were available to stream which have since been removed and have been taken down. Why not pirate stuff to watch it again?
For a long time the Beatles weren't on Spotify etc. I had their stuff on their official paid for tapes growing up, then on CD when I was older. So in the interim I pirated it when I lost the original digital rips I made from the CDs. And until they release their mono albums officially I'll be hanging on to my pirated copies.
Notice a trend in the above? I very rarely pirate new media. But I treat the internet like an archive (I've not even gone into the stuff that is no longer available anywhere except YouTube or piracy). Quite often I've paid the creator('s masters) more than once for their work. I feel no guilt.
If I were to do it, I would only do it from large established companies or products that are extremely popular anyway, as the percentage of sales lost due to piracy is probably very little in that case.
If you were to do it, then you would be a criminal.
Illegal and immoral are not the same thing.
That's why I used two adjectives.
Oh no! Someone shared a file online, take away their liberty!
Okay.
Against indie devs yes, against Ubisoft and EA no.
Define a "living". then tell me who isnt making it. Piracy is self moderating, the content that is being pirated the most involves directors and developers that made the most money, even with the piracy. As you go smaller in scale to creators that are more likely struggling to make a living, are also the least likely to be pirated. Every artist Ive known, digital arts, music, tubers and streamers, have hated copyright strike systems. The ones that are popular enough to have pirates also have comfortable income from fans. There is no one being prevented from "making a living" by piracy.
It is still theft.
copyright is theft. creators that have had their creations taken away because rich people own their IP now.
It becomes universal knowledge which is what we should all strive to achieve, the right way. When the copyright expires, time is up for any gatekeeping of inspiration.
whats the last copyright expiring that you remember
When items enter public domain.
Im asking what specific item do you remember entering public domain? The creator of the Lord of the Rings died in the 70's and his work is still under copyright.
Winnie the Pooh and the works of Jim Morrison.
So are you morally opposed to all the crap disney has done to ruin the public domain for entire generations?
That seems worse than pirating a disney movie to me.
70 years after the creator death. Stuffs should become public domain once the itrms no longer make significant revenue or no revenue at all
All theft is wrong, but it is much less sad when someone steals a diamond from Jeff Bezos than it is when someone steals a loaf of bread from someone who is starving.
"all theft is wrong" nah.
If the starving guy from your example stole food from jeff bezos to survive then that is morally correct theft.
I agree with what you're saying, it could be argued that it's wrong that the starving guy needs to steal in the first place, but that's probably semantics.
I see it as a "try before you buy".
As a consumer, I have a right to know what I am buying. I shouldn't have to pay to see a movie, watch it and then find out that I didn't like it.
If I pirate music or TV/film and really like it, I will absolutely then pay for the album or the DVD and I have the CD/DVD collection to prove it.
As some other people have mentioned, there is the awkward situation where a DVD may not be available in your region or a CD is out of print etc. There is some music and TV that I'd love to own my own legal copy of, but it's logistically impossible and it's unfortunate that the only way to consume that media isn't legal.
And I agree. However, when youtube decides to make you watch an ad every 2 minutes, you stop caring
Is it wrong to take food from a grocery store that would otherwise be thrown away? The grocery store isn't losing anything except potential future revenue.
This is the basic premise for a lot more people than will claim it or understand it...
Let's take a bin full of potatoes. Everyone's gonna pick the best potato. They'll dig around, examine, inspect, and pick the good ones. The shitty scruffy looking ones get left sitting there, and don't nobody who runs a shop wanna just wait until all the potatoes get chosen. They bring out new ones constantly to keep the bin full and have options available so people can pick the best ones.
Maybe once in a great while someone's buying potatoes for their pigs, and they look for crappy ones. Maybe once in a great while someone needs 200 potatoes and they don't wanna sit there being Picky Ricky for four fucking hours. Maybe once in a great while those crappy potatoes actually get chosen... but how often? Not very...
Netflix is that bin of potatoes. Is it wrong to pirate movies that are available on Netflix instead of paying Netflix? Well, it kinda depends on the fucking potato, don't it? You'll pay the $30/mo or whatever it is for a game of thrones, because you're getting what you pay for, and pirating that is definitely depriving Netflix of some value in its investment, but if you pirate billy bobs country bunker hour special from 1993, you're not taking jack shit from Netflix, it's an old wrinkly ass potato that's been sitting in the bin for a long ass time while people spent their money on better potatoes, fun it'll never make a goddamn penny for netflix. It's only value is adding quantity to the bin.
When it gets old enough that they'll throw it away, the deprivation of value has been reduced to being trivial. Your point is valid imho
Food that is being thrown away can’t produce future revenue. A film that is actively streaming on a paid site can. Your analogy doesn’t work.
Wdym? The store is still selling food. If you don't take the stuff being thrown away, you'd need to buy food from them.
The exact sets of bits are producing as much revenue as the thrown away food. But many people wouldn't buy if they didn't pirate, whereas people still need to eat.
Not with that attitude.
As @[email protected] said, if you don't get to take home free dumpster food, presumably you would have to buy fresher food.
And it isn't hypothetical, large grocery stores are IMMINENTLY worried about this and will call the police on people going through their dumpsters, or they will pour toxic chemicals on the food to render it inedible, or any number of fucked up ways to ensure waste.
Piracy is stealing.
Not really, there is no property loss. Nothing was taken. That's like saying taking a picture of a piece of art is stealing.
No.
What is stealing prey tell? I think it's wrongfully taking something from someone.
Exactly. Glad we're on the same page.
Nothing was taken. It is a copy. The original is still exactly where is was. It is by definition not theft.
Copies that weren't paid for.
But piracy takes nothing. The original owner still has it.
Who are you taking things from? Is the grocery store example wrong as well?
Crime is badass.
Die in a police shootout then.
:(
If I download something that I never would have paid for anyway, either because I just wouldn't pay for that product, or because I literally cannot pay for that product, who has lost out? I haven't deprived anyone of anything. It's not like I've taken a physical thing away from them.
Ok but then you create a production problem.
You download it, but that piece of media still had a cost of production. If you don't pay for it then the producers must find other monetization methods.
It's one of the reasons the modern web is based off ads, or why free-to-play with microtransanction is so common.
I'm not suggesting that I do this for everything, or that everyone should do it constantly. For example, I bought Baldur's Gate 3 on release, as it seemed worth it. But Ubisoft's latest shitfest? Probably might be worth a pirate, see if I enjoy it. If I do really enjoy it, I might buy the game. Or I might not, since Ubisoft are a bunch of utter cunts.
But here comes a problem of fairness.
You not only want to play the game, you also want to decide how much is worthed for the producer. If the price is too high, don't play it. Imagine going to a restaurant and saying "sure, cook for me, I'll later pay you if and how much I think it will worthed"
Not only this but:
Because you acknowledge the damaging nature of piracy, not only that, you also decide that rules are applied arbitrarily, which is a terrible thing to base your system on.
Yes you have.
How? I was never going to give them money. Digital files are not a finite resource. How have I deprived them of anything?
Because you didn't properly pay for it.
Are you being obstinate on purpose, or do you really not understand? I would not pay for these files. There is zero per cent chance of this company getting my money. How have they lost out by my copying these files?
I'm stubborn.
What about a game or movie you've already bought? Are you morality allowed to copy it for your own use in your system?
No.
That form of piracy is even legal.
Curious, are the people supporting piracy also supporting the writers & SAG strike?
How can you support writers and actors getting paid fairly when you steal their product?
I 100% support the writers strike and I want them to make more money. I don't pirate content to avoid paying; I do it because the studios make it so damn hard to get their content legitimately.
As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy isn't a price issue, it's a service issue." I would love to pay for the content but I'm not going to manage 15 different services to do so. Not to mention geoblocking and region specific content make it impossible to get some content even if you pay for every service. Nope, I'll just download it all and enjoy it all in one place; the fact that it's free is just a nice sideffect. If there was a paid service that did the same I would happily pay for it. As it is I haven't pirated a single videogame since I started using Steam over a decade ago because I can just get everything I want there.
Not to mention the potential privacy issues that come with registering for so many of these services, which often also bank on selling user data.
This is what the OG Netflix was. It solved the delivery issue Gabe has so famously talked about. I stopped pirating when Netflix launched and used it for years. Then every company had to splinter out their own streaming service taking a reasonable monthly fee back to cable prices and a fragmented ecosystem. I've gone back to solving the delivery issue with a $60 a year VPN and piracy. Am I proud about it? Absolutely not. Am I going to continue until there is a better answer? 100%. We've gone SIGNIFICANTLY backwards from where Netflix started.
And yes, I get I can subscribe to services here and there then drop them but that still comes back to the delivery issue. I have to actively manage services and make sure I cancel them when I don't need them anymore. This is a huge inconvenience and not something I have a desire to try and manage. Give me back my OG Netflix dammit!
I buy and rip Blu-rays. I also buy digital content on Movies Anywhere from time to time. Streaming exclusive shows are hard, but usually I just don’t watch them as much because of it.
I can promise you the money I've donated to the SAG AFRRA relief fund has done more good than the absolute pittance of money they would get from me streaming legally
They don't get paid from me going to see the movie anyway, that's why they're striking. If they get better residuals, I'll be much more likely to support them. As it is, ticket price largely only helps the exploitative studios.
I think you can support writers right to strike for better wages/benefits while also believing that the current cable-style exclusive rights subscription model is predatory and taking steps to not be taken advantage of. As is famously quoted on the internet, piracy is a service problem, not one where people are too stingy to pay.
This is nonsense. They already weren't making enough money and needed to strike to try and meet their needs.
And you are implying there is a fair distribution of the revenue earned from popularly pirated media? Bullshit.
Writers and actors have always received chump change or less, and never has it ever been implied that they recieve any payment based on sales, but rather work done.
If you find me any company that garuntees that all actors and writers receive fair extra pay based on sales, then I will swear on my life to never pirate anything from them, and buy the content (if it's something I want).
I feel sorry for the couple of good writers of good shows that really deserve better compensation. But looking at the releases of the recent years, that's not a lot of them.
That would sure be hypocritical.
Piracy does not steal from the directors and creators, but from the distributors whose have already bought the rights. The distributors who attempt to create artificial scarcity, excessively monetize your attention, and in generally act hostile to their consumers. There used to be a pact between distributors extracting money from consumers while leaving the content in a desirable state, but greed ruined that. I don’t mind some ads, but we’re way beyond reasonable. I don’t mind phased rollouts, but actively preventing people from watching just because of their location? I don’t mind things not being shown, but the whole concept of stoking FoMO “before it goes into the vault for next generation”, is just wrong. I don’t mind attempts to copy protect, but paying your politicians to turn a civil matter into criminal and use govt resources to protect your artificial scarcity is just so wrong.
I prefer not to pirate. I used to think policy was wrong when there was some balance between distributors and consumers. However greed ruined that. Greed made distributors take and take. It is not wrong to steal from such corrupt unethical businesses. They’re not worthy of respect
I read it as “privacy is bad” and was so confused.
By deleting your information from the Internet, you expel yourself from participating in the ultimate biography of humanity. Information from all facets of life from every single human being living and dead is the only way to get purely unbiased data about humanity and solve currently unsolvable problems.
Oh boy, you dove into this one too, good luck!
What problems does knowing everything about everyone solve? I think it makes a whole lot more problems, especially racal and economic profiling.
It would be a marvel for sociology, psychology, and philosophy, not to mention biology.
But what everyday problems would it solve, and where would the money for implementation come from? I think it'll be used to craft the perfect adds to perfectly turn everyone into the sort of person to buy the product being sold at the price that they will barely afford.
That's also a possibility, but the answers to the meaning of life are only obtained after death. If we can figure out anything that all humans share throughout history and extrapolate meaning from it, that would be a godlike execution of the scientific method. Also, a more comprehensive world history means unearthing very deep perspectives on life.
I accept this an argument for the utility of the internet or collective knowledge (whatever you want to call it) as a historical/anthropological/psychological/etc tool, but to use this as an argument against the morality of privacy is a huge stretch.
It would be hugely beneficial to the field of medicine if we just tested on people for whatever needed researched without concern for their wellbeing or rights, but that doesn't mean it can be used as an argument against personal wellbeing or personal rights
But it seems like you mostly argued this point to see if you could, so whatever
As a general rule I actually agree, even if it’s a bit complicated and not black & white
I hunt criminals. Modern life as a whole is pretty criminal. You realize your tax money has gotten civilians killed right? All tax payers have blood on their hands for essentially paying other people to murder for them so they don't need to do it themselves and so they can create the apps and movies people pirate. It's fucked from begining to end. There's no such thing as holy unless you live in the woods and never touch the rest of humanity.
We are all immoral with no authentic values. Just indoctrinated to think we're more special than others and literally pay people to kill for us.
He hunt criminals
Keep up the good work, Dog!
That reminds me ...I need to re-dye my hair.
You mean the man who assaults poor people?
Go with Christ, brah.
Theft has a very strict legal definition. Piracy is not legally theft. It is legally infringement, a separate crime. Conflating one with the other is propaganda by the largest IP holders.
These largest IP holders want nothing more than to lock up all culture and rent it back to you for a price, indefinitely. They would happily steal from you without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, they have stolen from you. They’ve successfully extended copyright terms to an absurd length, preventing works from entering the public domain for decades.
Many of these IP holders also don’t care about preservation. They’ll happily let their works be lost to history. Some are actively fighting against preservation.
Is it immoral to infringe? Yes. But IP holders don’t have the moral highground. They’re just as bad, if not worse. (I’m talking about the multi billion dollar companies here, not the small business persons struggling to get by)
Illegalist anarchists have entered the chat.
They'll be the first to die.
Software piracy from an independent or small studio, maybe.
Movie piracy? Everyone working on the film got paid for their work. What you're 'stealing' is the profits from a megacorp that's making more money year-on-year than ever before while still paying those in the industry terribly because they can.
Your hot take is a bit flawed.