- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
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Piracy was never stealing. It’s copyright infringement, but that’s not the same as stealing at all. People saying it’s stealing have always been wrong.
One of the great modern scams, was to convince society that unauthorized copying of data is somehow equivalent to taking away a physical object.
Jesus didn’t ask for permission to copy bread and fish. It’s a clear moral precedent that if you can copy you should.
What would the Jesus do?
Checkmate Atheists!
Jesus was the first pirate.
Nah, that would be Prometheus.
Wasn’t the idea and origin story of Jesus stolen from previous texts and religions lol
They forked Judaism
Pretty sure it was Marvel or something.
Athiests don’t have a problem with Middle-Eastern Socialist Jews, the ‘Christians’ sure do.
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Still not theft.
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Not a lawyer, but most of what you said is true, except:
then it’s not possible to copy that data without depriving the creator of its value.
We’re talking about the theoretical value the creator might get if you decide to pay for something. If you never had any intention of paying to access something if you couldn’t find a pirated copy, no value has been lost by the creator due to copying the data and therefore no harm has been done. The requirement for criminal liability should be that a harm has been inflicted by you beyond any reasonable doubt. Piracy as a deprivation of monetary value can not ever meet this requirement. Of course, the actual requirement is that you have committed a crime beyond reasonable doubt, so if corrupt legislators make piracy a crime, the justice system can obviously charge you with it despite it being victimless, hence the scam.
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Literally no one thinks that. But you know that already, don’t you?
It’s theft of intellectual property…
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Honestly that’s only because people are intimidated by big words.
Don’t know, never heard of it.
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My guy I think maybe you don’t realize how old you are because that campaign is 25+ years old 🤣
That is just typical corporate disinformation and not reflective of modern opinions held by real people.
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There is no such thing as intellectual property - you can not own a thought.
Once again with the strawman.
Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea or digital creation. Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time. Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.
I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.
You seem to not understand what the word own means and the difference between material and not material goods.
You seem to not understand what “theft” means.
I have a thing and than someone takes it away, so I can’t use it anymore. If somebody copies that thing - it’s not really theft.
My point is more - concepts from physical world don’t nessessary apply to digital world.
I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.
I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws. I don’t need to “justify” at all. I rarely even pirate anything, but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong when I do.
I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws.
Wow look that’s 3 strawman in a row, you guys are exceptional at fabricating fictional arguments to tear down.
If you’re going to use that word you should at least know what it means so you don’t sound stupid.
“Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.”
Just telling on yourself 😂
What is that supposed to mean?
Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea
Ah, it’s an idea, not a thought. Gotcha. Glad you cleared that up.
Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time.
Who the fuck cares? Dinner also takes a great deal of time to make.
Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.
That’s not true. People have been telling stories and creating art since humanity climbed down from the trees. Compensation might encourage more people to do it, but there was never a time that people weren’t creating, regardless of compensation. In addition, copyright, patents and trademarks are only one way of trying to get compensation. The Sistine chapel ceiling was painted not by an artist who was protected by copyright, but by an artist who had rich patrons who paid him to work.
Maybe “Meg 2: The Trench” wouldn’t have been made unless Warner Brothers knew it would be protected by copyright until 2143. But… maybe it’s not actually necessary to give that level of protection to the expression of ideas for people to be motivated to make them. In addition, maybe the harms of copyright aren’t balanced by the fact that people in 2143 will finally be able to have “Meg 2: The Trench” in the public domain.
Why should an artist not be paid but a gardener or someone who build your house is supposed to be paid?
After all, humans build stuff and make stuff with plants without compensation all the time.
You just sound like a Boomer who thinks work is only work when the product isn’t entertaining or art.
Why are you making up a story about an artist not getting paid?
Who the fuck cares?
People who are not human fucking garbage care. If your position is that you simply don’t care about stealing from someone else what they spent years of time and money to create, you’re just a trash person and this conversation is moot.
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Intellectual property is a scam, the term was invented to convince dumb people that a government-granted monopoly on the expression of an idea is the same thing as “property”.
You can’t “steal” intellectual property, you can only infringe on someone’s monopoly rights.
This feels like an easy statement to make when it applies to Disney putting out new Avatar movies. Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took, instead of re-printing it without your permission.
“InfORMaTioN wANts tO Be FrEe, yO.”
Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took
That’s a pretty specific example. Probably because in many cases photographers are paid in advance. A wedding photographer doesn’t show up at the wedding, take a lot of pictures, then try to work out a deal with the couple getting married. They negotiate a fee before the wedding, and when the wedding is over they turn over the pictures in exchange for the money. Other photographers work on a salary.
Besides, even with your convoluted, overly-specific example, even without a copyright, a magazine would probably pay for the photo. Even if they didn’t get to control the copying of the photo, they could still get the scoop and have the picture out before other people. In your world, how would they “reprint” it without your permission? Would they break into your house and sneakily download it from your phone or camera?
This is the kind of situation I’m citing:
A lot of photography is not based on planning ahead before being paid (a person requests Photo X, and then pays on delivery). Nature photographers, and in fact many other forms of artists, produce a work before people know/feel they want it, and then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website, and then requests use of that work themselves.
The struggles of the above insect photographer are even with the existing IP laws - they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into, and VERY MANY media outlets don’t bother; to say nothing of giving a charitable donation.
then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website
So, they choose to rely on copyright, when they could do work for hire instead.
they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into
No, they ask for unfair compensation based on copyrights.
Imagine if startrek was written with IP in mind. Instead of all these wunderkinds being all gung ho about implementing their warp field improvements on your reactor you’d get some ferengi shilling the latest and greatest “marketable” blech engine improvements.
Fiction is much better without reality leeching in.
Star Trek was set in a future utopia. One of the key things about the show is that it’s a post-scarcity world where even physical objects can be replicated.
They definitely wrote the series with IP in mind… in that their view of a future utopia was one where not only did copyright etc. not exist, but nobody cared much about the ownership of physical objects either.
That is absolutely 100% a completely insane position. The fact that you feel entitled to literally everything someone else creates it’s fucking horrific and you are a sad person.
For someone who bitches all over this thread about people strawmanning their position, this is a pretty fucking great reply.
Hint: one can be pissed about people throwing around the not-based-in-legal-reality term “intellectual property.” One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft, a strategy which has apparently worked mightily well on you. One can be all of those things, and yet still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”
What you posted was a textbook definition of a straw man.
One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft
No, you have it wrong, one is part of a strategy to confuse the public into thinking it’s not, because it justifies doing whatever they want.
still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”
But they don’t feel that copyright infringement is wrong. How closely did you read the previous statements?
They literally said “Intellectual property is a scam”. I don’t know how else you could possibly interpret that
I don’t know how the original poster meant it, but one possible way to interpret it (which is coincidentally my opinion) is that the concept of intellectual property is a scam, but the underlying actual legal concepts are not. Meaning, the law defines protections for copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, and each of those has their uses and are generally not “scams,” but mixing them all together and packaging them up into this thing called intellectual property (which has no actual legal basis for its existence) is the scam. Does that make sense?
If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?
Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.
If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?
…huh?
Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.
…no? What are you talking about? All it involves is illegally copying someone else’s work.
Isn’t ‘theft of intellectual property’ taking someone else’s work and try to pass it off as your own?
No.
Nah, if I stole their IP, they wouldn’t have it anymore
Nah, that’s not how that works.
So you also believe people shouldn’t need a ticket for a concert, for example?
The performers time is not infinitely reproducible so your argument is apples to oranges.
But the time to create a novel, a videogame, or a news story is not infinitely reproducible, either. So when you are pirsting one of those things, you are actively reaping the benefits of someone’s time for free, like going to a concert without a ticket
There’s a difference between the performer’s time to create not being infinitely reproducible, and an user’s time to use the product being or not infinitely reproducible. Whether I’m pirating or buying a TV show, the actors were already compensated for their time and use for the show; my payment for buying actually goes to the corporate fat: licensors, distributors, etc.
Whereas when pay a ticket into a live concert, I’m actually paying for something to be made.
Whether I’m pirating or buying a TV show, the actors were already compensated for their time
And where do you think that money comes from…?
It just magically appears /s Its disingenuous to try and justify piracy on the basis that the performers have already been paid. I don’t agree with studios either of course, customers are being scammed
From the investors who are paying the cheques of course. They are corporations, they can afford to spend some coins on [checks notes] living wages.
This only applies to cases where the artist/actor/whatever gets paid upfront. Most of the times, that does not happen. The creator of something only gets money when somebody buys what they have created (books, videogames, music, etc)
Even if they were paid upfront, they were paid off the idea that the company could make bank on their (ready yourself for the word in case it triggers): Intellectual Property.
In a future world where people have achieved their wish and the concept no longer exists, companies have no reason to pay creators ahead of time.
I can get that they’d not necessarily be paid upfront, but there is no possible legal contract in which they are to be paid only in the future, in causality, according to the performance of a ~~third~ ~ fourth party who is not in the contract. What, are the actors paying their weekly groceries with IOUs?
Yeah, this is the real issue. That said it is a shame and a waste for the results of these efforts to be artificially restricted. I do really hope that one day we can find a way to keep people fed and happy while fully utilizing the incredible technology we have for copying and redistributing data.
I mean, we’ve kinda already found a way, and it’s ads. Now it’s obvious that the ad market as a whole is horrible (it’s manipulative, it has turned into spying, it does not work really well, it’s been controlled by just a handful of companies etc), but at least it’s democratic in that it allows broader access to culture to everyone while still paying the creators.
Personally, I would not be against ads, if they were not tracking me. As of now, though, the situation seems fucked up and a new model is probably necessary. It’s just that, until now, every other solution is worse for creators.
But it is though: via the power of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television?wprov=sfti1
Though you could charge for the experience of other sweaty humans, bad ventilation in some cases, and the thrill of potentially being trampled
I don’t see anything wrong with paying for software or music or digital media. I don’t think that not doing so is theft - like I also don’t think that getting into a concert without paying is theft. By the way a concert is also not digital data, at least an irl one.
Why do you hate libraries?
A library card is your ticket there and libraries are paid via taxes, which is why they’re free at point of use.
Attending a free concert is not stealing. Breaking into the Eras tour is.
The library buys once and allows multiple people to read/watch each item without each person needing to individually purchase. Just like one person buying something and sharing it with others.
The main point is that digitization distribution is not a concert
Digital distribution is a service. You can steal a service.
If you fuck a prostitute and then don’t pay them, you are stealing from them.
If the prostitute uses a technique, and then you use the same technique without paying hem for reuse, is that stealing or does their direct involvement matter?
You’re not using their distribution service when you pirate something. That’s the whole point.
It’s okay I won’t use their digital distribution system to pirate their stuff.
It’s just like falling to pay a prostitute you never fucked
Libraries get money via tax. What people here are arguing for is that others should work for them or free. Because game studios, for example, are overwhelmingly not paid via tax money. They are depending on people buying their software. And many software has ongoing costs.
I have never had a problem with people taking a tape recorder to a concert, even if it’s against terms of service
But you do understand that if nobody would buy a ticket, there wouldn’t be concerts?
Do you think I should be forced to pay for a ticket if I’m standing next to the concert venue on the sidewalk but can still hear the performance?
YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A PURSE
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
-Character from some movie I pirated
In this economy with this level of corporate greed, I will download all the purses
I would infringe all over its copyright tho
You wouldn’t steal a baby!
You wouldn’t shoot a policeman and then steal his helmet.
But I would definitely take a shit in that helmet
…and then return it to his grieving wife?
And then steal it again?
You wouldn’t download fish and bread!
Jesus: hold my wine……
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I bet you aren’t a software developer.
I’m a software developer, and I endorse the grandparent comment.
And you all just were happy and bro fisted people who ignored the licensing terms?
Yes.
Well, not literally, both because I’m more inclined to “high five” and you can’t do either gesture over the Internet. But figuratively, yes.
Why don’t you just gift away your software than? That’s an honest question. You obviously aren’t expecting to be paid for it, do you think in general developers shouldn’t earn money with software or is it just you?
Why don’t you just gift away your software than?
Because I don’t make those decisions; my employer does. They ought to give it away, but they don’t.
(The software I’ve worked on has tended to be either (a) tools for internal company use or (b) stuff used by the government/large companies where the revenue would definitely have come from a support contract even if the code itself were free.)
ParsnipWitch seems to have been eaten by a grue.
So, you would work for free for your employer?
I am a system engineer who works on a project that is open source, AMA
The writer whose article is the subject of this post releases his books without DRM. He ends his podcast with a quote encouraging piracy. I found him because of an earlier book he released under a share alike licence
He has found that piracy increases the reach of his message, and increases his sales
That doesn’t answer my questions.
Software developer who gives away my software for free as Free and Open Source Software. I agree with the grand-grand-parent comment.
If I made software that people cared enough about to crack and pirate, I’d be happy that it’s popular enough for that to happen.
I am a software developer but I’ve only worked on SaAS and open source projects.
I work on software which is pirated. It is even sold by crackers, who make money off my work. This does not make me proud.
What does make me proud is when a paying customer says they love a specific feature, or that our software saves them a lot of manual work.
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Did you intentionally misunderstand the comment you replied to?
I think I replied to the wrong comment
Pride unfortunately doesn’t pay the bills. It’s terrific that you contribute to open source, but not all commercial software can be open sourced.
Popularity opens other ways to make money. Open source is profitable for GNU. Cory Doctorow does fine.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every commercial product to find profitability through exposure. I can attest to this first hand as I had published an open source Android game that was republished without ads. This led me to ultimately make the repository private, because I could not find a way to remain profitable while offering the source code and bearing the costs of labor and various cloud services.
On the flip side I guess I can take credit for the millions of installs from the other app… except they didn’t publicly acknowledge me.
Was it under a “copyleft” licence (like GPL) that forces the other one to also be open source? Did you use a licence that requires you are acknowledged?
If you did the first, you at least pulled someone else into open source work
Yes, GPL.
At the time I had seen that it had been forked into numerous private repositories, I believe roughly 100 or so. Perhaps I could have made a claim to have the other app taken down through Google Play, but I had no faith that this would be resolved, and even if it would be, it would be an ongoing problem.
As for whether they would have made open source contributions or not is in the end a moot point for me, because the only change that I observed was that they changed the colors and typeface and extracted the in-game menu into a separate welcome screen. I would not have merged this back into my repository.
While I myself violated the copyleft of my project by taking it closed source, I felt that it was my only resort. I’ve continued to develop the game over the past few years and by modernizing it and adding additional content, I’ve been able to significantly outpace my competitor.
For me, this ordeal had been a bit of an eye opener. I came out of university fully supportive of open source and when I discovered how this affected a real world project, I genuinely approached this situation understanding that it was just a risk I needed to accept. However, in the three years that it was available on GitHub, I received only two small PRs, and combined with the license violations, I felt that there was really no advantage to keeping it open source.
While this is just my anecdote, it has changed my perspective on how open source can realistically work more broadly. I honestly can’t envision any kind of business that needs to offset large production costs able to publish that content viably as open source.
Most people who work on open source projects have a lucrative job and work on Open Source on the side. I also volunteer, but I still need a job that actually pays me as well.
Reading some of the comments here it feels like speaking to little children who believe money magically appears on their account.
Tell me which so I can develop a competing service and steal your userbase!
I’d be happy that it’s popular enough for that to happen.
of course you would. you would actually give them your house and wife, because you’re so proud now. right?
Ah yes, because downloading Shark_Tale.mp4 is exactly the same as someone taking your house away from you and obtaining your wife and owning her as personal property.
Get some fucking perspective. I usually try to be polite online but this is just straight up moronic and you need to be told so bluntly.
Lmao
You need to disconnect the badness with the term stealing because you’re just wrong. Yeah it’s ip infringement. Yes it’s illegal. Yes people are impacted. And still… Not stealing.
I have been for over 20 years actually! What do I get for winning the bet?
Edit:
One of our games we actually ended up supporting a form of piracy. A huge amount of our user base ended up using cheat tools to play our game which meant that they could get things that they would normally have to purchase with premium currency. Instead of banning them, we were careful to not break their cheat tools and I even had to debug why their cheat tool stopped working after a release.
How did your employer pay your salaries? Or did your money perhaps came from those people who actually do pay for in-game currency in your games?
You aren’t.
Yes I am. And the two companies I worked for both were small, offered their products for cheap and still had people pirating the modules or circumvent licensing terms. It’s a legit problem that a lot of people don’t see why they should pay for software simply because it’s sometimes easy to steal it.
circumvent licensing terms
So to be clear: was it possible to purchase and own the software? Or did users have to pay a subscription for a license? Because personally I’m getting sick of every piece of software thinking it’s appropriate to require a subscription.
How about you don’t use it if it is to be paid by subscription? How is it justified to go against an agreement just because you don’t like it?
If something is wrong you have a moral obligation to go against it. Be it legal or not.
All hail the Grand Nagus!
That’s why I am against indiscriminately pirating all digital goods. Because it’s morally wrong to have people work for you and then not pay them.
Naa, I’d just pirate it. Fuck the rent-seekers.
Are you against employees getting good wages?
So either way I’m not paying for it. In that case pirating is not a lost sale.
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BINGPOT.
I am.
If there is no easy way to own what you buy, then piracy becomes a moral obligation to preserve culture for future generations.
You want something, but you don’t want to pay the cost (either monetarily or because they have made it too hard) and so you take take it. Fuck these assholes companies who try to milk people for every last penny, so I have no moral qualms with piracy, I do it myself.
But, fuck, can we stop trying to paint it as some noble thing? Effectively zero pirates are doing it to perseve culture, instead it’s fulfilling personal desire.
This is chaotic neutral at best, not neutral good.
I think there’s an exception to be made in your argument for abandonware. There are classic arcade games that wouldn,'t exist any more but are widely available due to MAME support.
The Nintendo eShop shutdown is another example of preserving software through piracy.
See also: The Despecialized Edition of the Star Wars Original Trilogy
Internet archive, and a chunk of r/datahoarders, is built for that purpose. Just as people have saved old paintings (aka media) it’s also good for us to save significant pieces of our current culture. Old VHS tapes and CDs are already disappearing. Sometimes finding something is just a little bit more difficult and it’s only going to get worse.
I pirated plenty when I was young and poor, I’m pretty sure that helped form a desire for that sort of stuff which I pay for now.
I bet if I had abstained when I couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t have spent the money on all the content I buy now
I believe the bulk of pirates are people who wouldn’t have bought the content if they had to pay for it
It doesn’t need to have been a noble goal to be a noble result.
For something to be actually and reliable preserved and win against random decay, data loss, disaster, and whatever else will statistically destroy copies, a thing will need to be stored by at least thousands of people. But there is no way to know how many, only that you increase the likelihood of perseveration by storing a copy.
I agree, most people are downloading a thing because they want it. But by keeping that thing, they are also preserving it.
People who are doing porting work to make Windows-entwined Ubisoft games available on Linux are helping to preserve media for the future. People booting up Limewire are doing nothing.
I have a Spotify subscription that I still pay, but built a library full of FLACs on the side specifically because I got fed up with “right holders” taking songs in and out of my playlists and having the right to deny me access forever.
It literally would be cheaper and easier for me to just use Spotify.
Like the latest controversy with the internet archives
If you pay to own a movie then yes, you should be allowed to make copies of it and keep it forever, even if the seller goes bankrupt in future. You are paying to own the movie.
If you subscribe to Netflix you are not paying to own the content, you are paying for access to their content. Therefore you cannot legally download a movie from Netflix and keep a copy forever.
However, if Netflix don’t make it possible to buy their unique content for permanent ownership, then piracy is the inevitable result and they should address that.
But let’s be honest here, none of you are intending to buy anything.
I spend way more money on streaming services than I ever spent buying DVDs or CDs.
To say that “I don’t intend to buy anything” is a BS accusation. You have no clue about another persons motives.
Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.
Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.
Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that’s very different from stealing something.
The irony is, you pirating today has been shown to influence you buying it later on in a sale. And there’s a good argument to be made about your word of mouth praise helping their sales.
Yup. I’m about to suggest about half a dozen people to watch a movie on Netflix I pirated last night. Leave the World Behind. I highly reccomend you see this to understand my last statement here. I have “suggested” to a few dozen people to watch Hulu for Firefly.
They don’t get my money because I don’t give a flying fuck to support the extortion of the people this tyrrany that’s been running since Crowley and even longer. Looks free but there was never an end to slavery. It just stopped giving a shit about your color. To counter, goes over everyone’s head one way or another. Doesn’t matter. All life will die on this planet in less than a decade.
Holy moly that comment took a turn.
Yeah, but did you get it at the “counter?”
No, I don’t get it.
The counter is that the slavery of everyone doesn’t mean they’re “not racist” by applying slavery “to white people too.” They’ve been enslaving white people since way before we came to the US. I am, by family, English & Irish. So just because I’m blond, blue and white don’t mean I’m not ready to WAR against slavery by the corporations or any bullshit hedgemony. Democratic party is as guilty as the republicans and their claim to fight is just sucker lies. They don’t fight shit for real and Biden is just Trumps most active cock sucking bitch.
I don’t mean this in any disrespectful way at all, but I’m completely missing the context of what you’re trying to tell me and genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.
Jesse, WTF are you talking about?
Sucks being uneducated, especially when folks don’t care to help because you’re a condescending dick about it. Not to mention religiously expletive.
RIP
Ditto.
Biggest personal examples are Minecraft and FL Studio. I asked my parents to buy Minecraft for me after a week of pirating it, and I bought an FL Studio license when I could afford to, nearly a decade after I first used it. I don’t use it much, but it felt right.
yup, pirated jedi: fallen order. liked the game very much, but jedi: survivor wasn’t cracked yet. so i bought a key for 30€.
the problem is: it runs like shit, because it’s a bad PS5 port and denuvo probably also has an effect on that.
i will never buy from EA again.
It likely was the fault of denuvo, which ironically piracy would strip improving the experience.
As every musician knows, exposure is always better than payment! This is why you shouldn’t offer payment to musicians at your wedding, since they’re getting great exposure already. /s
That’s two very different cases. Using exposure to extort services out people is different than copying something to see if you’d enjoy it.
It’s really not that different. The main difference is the audience size. For an independent musician selling merchandise, it would be equally insulting to them to tell them that they will be repaid in exposure if they give you one for free.
Making a copy of something “to see if you’d enjoy it” or because it’s somehow great for their exposure is mental gymnastics to justify piracy. Let’s just call it intellectual property theft and stop beating around the bush.
Copying isn’t theft. You’re about 40 years late to this conversation and you’re starting from the taste of boots? You’re equating an instantly reproducible, finished product with a service; your analogy sucks.
The entire goal of my comment was to avoid mincing words. As somebody who has first hand experienced copyleft violation, it sure doesn’t feel different on the receiving end. I feel this very personal experience is equivocal to copyright infringement. I’m not licking any boots—thanks for that accusation.
It’s easy to excuse illicit behavior from your armchair by gaslighting with the choice of words, because after all, violating copyright is just sticking it to the man, right? In truth, I feel that my software was stolen for profit and just for me as the little man, there’s no other word that comes to my mind than “theft.”
You should write an open letter to hobbyists. It worked for Gates. If your software was “stolen for profit” and that didn’t result in more people trying it and buying, I have bad news: it didn’t seem like it was worth the money to the people who tried it. JRC does many studies on piracy and the data shows that total sales are not displaced by piracy volume, again and again. You can make the argument that this is only true for games and music (typically the subject of these studies) but this hardline attitude of it being the same as stealing sucks.
Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old.
https://youtu.be/Qi5GXwY7W_0?t=165
Not exactly. The original translation from Hebrew was closer to “thou shall not kidnap,” arresting control of a person’s personal boundaries and will, not a violation of personal property, which didn’t really exist as a concept at the time.
An associate of mine defines stealing as, “taking (either by cloning or removing) something (either digital or physical) of which is not of your original possession”
If anyone has a rebuttal, please help.
Edit: What’s with the downvotes? I’m on your side.
It’s not really a rebuttal, but by that assessment, a person may not view a webpage, as the browser copies files from a distant server for viewing.
It’s not so much a rebuttal, but ask if they think stealing has any relation to depriving another person of something. Imo, they have a correct, though extremely narrow, definition of stealing that doesn’t leave any nuance for comparing different kinds of stealing. Piracy, or as they would say ‘stealing digital media’ is not a kind of stealing that deprives another person of that thing, so clearly it’s somewhat different than stealing money or physical property.
If they aren’t willing to entertain that there are different kinds of stealing then they’re ignorant of reality and it might not be worth your time to try to change their mind.
It’s because that’s not a common definition and it’s not even a good one. No normal person would call cloning stealing. Also, this completely misses lending, gifting, downloading a webpage or even renting. All of those would be stealing under this definition.
Who cares what your associate uses as a definition, stealing / theft has long established definitions. You can just point and laugh and say that your associate doesn’t actually understand the words he/she is using.
You could say that you define agreeing as “thinking someone is completely wrong”, and that you agree with your associate.
Hi, welcome to the Technology community here on Lemmy! Discourse is not tolerated here, so please just tack on your endorsement of piracy and leave your civility at the door.
I never endorsed it. Sure, it may be justified, but that doesn’t make it legal.
Whoa whoa, we don’t take kindly to people telling us that. Only a boot-licking, brain-dead, corporate shill wouldn’t outright endorse piracy. Take your nuance somewhere else, pal!
The war of semantics is about as intelligent as the tweet that went viral where someone criticized trains requiring tickets. “Why are you charging me to get on? You’re going that way anyway.”
Forget about features and prices, how about actual content?
2017 I buy this space shooter game called “Destiny 2”. It has some problems, but it’s decent enough. $60 buy in. The single player story missions took you through four initial planets/moons, the European Dead Zone, Titan, Nessus, and Io, recovering your power and kicking the asses of the space turtles who tried to kill everyone.
Expansion 1, 2, 3 and 4 come out widening the story, adding more locations, Mercury, Mars, The Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, the Moon… with all the associated story missions, strikes, raids…
And I bought in on those too. Some hundreds of dollars.
Roll forward to 2020, almost 2,000 hours in game. Bungie decides they’re done with story missions and removes them from the game. They also decide that the game is “too big” for new players to get into, and seeking a Fortnite, free to play style audience, removes 1/2 of the content from the game.
Existing players like me drop the game because content we paid good money for and hours we spent exploring, collecting and curating gear, just went up in smoke.
New players now have no onboarding point and are incredibly confused because there’s no story and no real way to get into the game.
So Bungie managed to completely alienate both their existing user base, and the one they hoped to attract.
Oh, and they have now promised not to do it again, but at the same time, haven’t brought the content back either.
It’s an online service as a game too, so piracy is not an option. The only way to experience the original content is through YouTube videos.
This is exactly me. Started in d1 beta. I quit cold the day the removed my purchased content
I feel like I got scammed by Bungie with the shit they pulled with Destiny 2. I will never give them a single dime ever again. I loved that game and they completely ruined it.
The thing that absolutely kills me is that they did so much RIGHT with the first game, and then it was like they completely forgot how to design a game between 1 and 2.
For example:
In Destiny 1 you picked the story missions off the map and each story mission was marked with a light level so you knew the order to do them in. When you finished all the normal missions, there was a Strike to finish off the planet.
Destiny 2? Yeah, story missions, you can’t see them on the map, you have no idea how many there are or if you’re the appropriate level, and while there are strikes, you can only access them from a playlist and MAYBE it’s the one from the planet you’re on, maybe it’s not. Maybe you’ll get the same strike 4 times in a row because fuck you if there’s a specific one you want to play.
Everyone was talking about how good The Pyramidion was, I could never get it to come up. Bungie finally relented after a YEAR(!) and put them on the map, a feature D1 had on DAY 1.
That sounds awesome! Too bad I never played D1.
You still can, it’s up and running right now. Backwards compatible even.
Like I said, Bungie isn’t getting a dime from me.
Buy a used disc for $5. :) Bungie gets nothing.
Hmm, interesting!
I don’t exactly recall when or where I heard/read this quote, but man it is dope
- “it should not be a concern when people pirate your content, it should be when people don’t even want to pirate your content”
People are always on here arguing about whether pirating is stealing or not. I do think it’s stealing I just can’t bring myself to give a fuck about these large corporations. They have been stealing from the people for years.
Netflix and Amazon prime simply won’t work with VPNs active, which I use for work and privacy towards my ISP.
I won’t compromise my security for their bad services. Living in a non US country, we are also always several years behind on content being offered.
Yeah, nah. The paying customer always pays for the percieved sins of non customers.
Set sail.
With the right VPN they do. Mostly no problems with Proton VPN
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket - you are stealing.
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket, make a copy and put my original 5 eur back to my pocket - this is not stealing.
Pirated valheim, played 20 hours, bought the game.
Pirated baldurs gate 3 on early access, bought the game with only act 1, that’s how good it is.
Pirated Valhalla, played 5 hours, uninstalled that trash forever.
Started pirating streaming services when they told me that I can’t watch shit anymore because streaming service b and c took the shows, and now I have to pay two different streaming services if I want to keep watching.
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The fact that no product is missing anywhere means it’s not stealing.
If you rent your car from Mercedes and I make a copy of it, the only change is that I’ve not copied your car, I’ve copied Mercedes’.
By this logic no services should be paid. Are you really just hung up on the word “stealing”? It is wrong to go against an agreement or to take the work of others and not pay for it simply because it’s easy to do that when the work isn’t tangible.
Are people really that fucked up today?
I’m not talking about payment, I’m talking about if it’s stealing or not. It might be copyright infringement depending on local law, but it’s not stealing. Selling a copy might be counterfeiting.
I never made an agreement but to copy things without paying. That agreement was made on my behalf, and if you look into the history of it, it’s really fucking shady. Copyright in the US originally lasted 20 years (IIRC), and I would be ok with that, but big copyright holders successfully bribed lawmakers to extend the term until now it’s effectively infinite.
So tell me, was it immoral to ignore copyrights after 20 years when that was the law? Did changing the law change what’s moral?
I think piracy is copyright infringement. But like who cares if some big corpos get infringed upon by some dudes.
I think a compromise on copyright could be a good middle ground in future. In the same way that I’m happy to wait for a game to go on sale before I buy and play it, I’d be happy to wait until a movie or series enters the public domain so I can consume it without paying. Obviously not for hundreds of years, or 56 years. But if Netflix/HBO etc shows and movies became free to watch after 6-7 years, most piracy traffic could be easily captured by legal platforms that are more convenient and accessible to more viewers. I struggle to see how it would not further relegate piracy to a niche activity done by very few, or be bad for the content producers in any significant way
What about non-corpos and small companies that make the stuff being pirated? Is that still a “who cares” situation?
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You would be in the minority, piracy can increase sales because a lot of people see the value after the trial period and pay for it.
Linky for source of one company.
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There is a third party that cares: those of us who pay subscriptions that finance the content that pirates steal. Due in part to rising rates of piracy, our subscription fees go up and/or production budgets go down. In turn, pirates should care, too, because then there’s less in quantity and quality to steal.
At least for piracy of streaming content, I believe what should become apparent to everyone is that convenience drove down piracy and greatly increased gains for everyone, and once corporations got greedy and started rolling out new platforms and fragmenting content between them, everything started going down the drain. Even without accounting for piracy, convenience was lost, multiple platforms mean more fees to get the same content that was originally in one platform, so less people willing to pay. Less income per platform drives down investment in content and drives up cancelations of ongoing projects. Less income than was originally observed when a single platform had condensed content means there’s greater incentive to drive ads and increases prices on all platforms, thus also potentially driving down users subscribing to said platforms.
None of that factors in piracy. If we do factor in piracy, it’s a fact that before fragmentation, subscription rates were high, and after fragmentation, there’s a lot more incentive to pirate content. In some instances, platforms shoot themselves in the foot even further by further charging rental fees or purchases of individual content, as well as region blocks and ads.
Piracy surely is a problem all throughout the history of streaming services (something that could still be argued as not actually something to worry about because those pirates were never going to be customers in the first place, and Netflix was still booming enough to incentivize other companies to roll out their own platforms), but it becomes a symptom of another problem later down the line due to lack of convenience. Even so, the current state of streaming platforms wouldn’t be much different if piracy wasn’t happening. People would simply consume less content due to budget constraints or due to being annoyed at lack of conveniences.
I personally hate depending on a platform that on a whim may decide to remove content I watch. There’s specific songs that have disappeared from my Spotify playlists for no good reason (a lot for geoblocking reasons), there’s shows that just get removed from Netflix, there’s all of game of thrones on prime which I couldn’t watch due to geoblocking and ended up having to pirate it even though I was paying for a platform which had the show. It’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, to pirate. The content is yours, instantly, until you decide to delete it from your computer. I didn’t mind paying for Netflix for years, and since they incentivized account sharing, I shared the account with 2 other friends and we split the cost. It was super convenient. Now, I have a plex library nearing the 50tb mark with about 40 people watching content on it, everything automated and everyone can request whatever they want, and I simply ask for donations to buy more drives. It’s still more expensive than subscription services due to energy costs, donations not being enough for the equipment needed to store content and run services, and costs of internet, static ips, and domain names, but I’m not planning to stop as it’s overall more convenient, not just for me, but for 40 other people.
Your frustrations with streaming services are very relatable and I completely agree that the space has become increasingly fragmented. I, too, have cut down on some subscriptions where I feel that I don’t get my money’s worth.
I believe your case is a perfect example of intellectual property theft: your 40 customers are paying you instead of paying the copyright holders. If you hadn’t offered them with this solution, it’s not unreasonable to think that they would be more willing to spend that money on purchasing it directly from the legitimate owner. Consequently, it can be argued that your shared library is incurring damages through missed revenue. By extension, even by an iota of a percentage, the service provider or the production studio will need to recoup that in the ways I’ve mentioned.
So while I completely understand your rationale for pirating, surely we can agree that in cases like these, there is some—no matter how little—degree of legitimacy to the assertion that piracy is detrimental to those of us who pay for our subscriptions.
We can agree about piracy being detrimental for sure! We just disagree on how detrimental it is vs corpo’s own actions.
Regarding the donations, it’s “give whatever you want, even 0, and inly when I say we need new gear”, so I wouldn’t say it’s lost revenue since barely anyone donates and it all goes directly to covering part of the cost of new hard drives. I’ve asked for donations twice so far, and none of the times have seen enough donations to cover for 100% of equipment expenses. Just thought I’d clarify on the “donations” thing :)
Do you give those 40 people back their donation money if you ever close your service? Since in the end, they never got any of the hardware or media they watched over your Plex for their money.
They’re called donations for a reason, it’s a contribution to keep the service growing (not going since I’m personally invested in keeping it going for as long as possible) and nobody is forced to give a dime if they don’t want to.
Have you considered giving Netflix a monthly donation for all the great content they continue to create for your collection?
I’d have to give Amazon, HBO, Hulu, Disney, crunchyroll, etc. Donations as well since they’re contributing just as much, if not more than, Netflix to my collection now👀
Piracy isn’t costing these companies any money if people never intended on giving them money in the first place. This argument almost implies that these companies have an inherent right to our money whether we want to spend it with them or not.
There will be a portion of pirates that never intended to spend money, but surely there will also be at least some pirates who deliberately stopped paying a subscription in favor of consuming content for free.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that corporations have some unalienable right to take our money; what I’m saying is that with the recent increase in digital piracy, it’s not unthinkable that it has had some, however small, financial impact on their bottom line.
I feel this is a very nuanced take and genuinely don’t understand how this community has taken offense to it.
Good topic, good point, terrible writing. I couldn’t finish the article with the author’s ego and personal bias butting into his great story.
I honestly don’t see the same conceit you do, and I expected it before reading. I just read the author as a jaded evangelist.
Oh! Doctor Korkorow? Yeah I feel ya, I couldn’t ever really get through his writing either, but I know of him, about him, his opinions, values, dedicated work et c, I have nothing but respect and gratitude for for the dude.
Cory fights for the User!
I don’t see an article. And don’t you dare contradict me. You’ll be missing the point entirely.
I usually just assume that Im probably gonna agree with the thing so dont see the need to put more time into it. If it was something that I felt different about then maybe i might have, but as that is probably not the case there’s no need dragging it out for no reason.
Plus, they seem to be on top of the thing, so im gonna make sure to stay out of their way and leave them alone and let them do their jobs.
There’s little left to do at this point, and its not really my place to tell them how to do their jobs. Thatd be presumptious, as I might just as well know next to nothing about it compared to them. Why making it even more complicated than it already is? Its their job after all, not ours, and we have to respect that. Lol what would even the job be, that is not exactly information i would carry around so. Besides, i already have one other job anyway, so…
In the end, the important thing is that they are on top of it, and i bet i would feel more or less the same way even if the whole thing was another thing altogether, as long as i feel the same way as they do about it, and that theyre doing something about it instead of giving it time to grow, maybe into something even worse!
But regardless- something is being done, right now, by someone, right there. you dont see that sort of thing around much these days. Also doesn’t hurt that they could possibly have more insight into the details of the case than maybe anyone else.
I dont know how you guys feel about it, sometimes I’m not 100% sure myself, but i cant imagine i am going to feel any regret having maybe the best guys possible feeling more or less dead on the same way i do about it. Its practically guaranteed, think about it- if it werent for them, I could have never heard anything about it in the first place…
And as if that wasn’t all, here comes the icing on the cake- the same guys who first blew the lid off the whole thing to begin with can likely identify the deeper issues as well, and therefore should know how to change it for the better instead of some shmuck making it worse out lack of insight and proper research… Winnn!
At this point for all we know, literally any alternative could be a better option. In the end, regardless of every little detail of everything about this, they seem to be here to really do something- anything about it, and I think we might consider ourselves lucky that something is being done here at all.
You say an unholy bunch of nothing at all.
Normally people pay to see the circus, but you could just sneak in though. It’s not exactly stalling, so what do you call that? The circus is still there, but you didn’t pay for it.
If lots of people start doing that, the circus probably won’t have enough money to keep on performing. Maybe they’ll get rid of the more expensive bits and just keep the cheaper ones in the future.
Heads up! Plex media server with the Plex clients on all your devices is such a smooth experience. Highly recommended. And their “Watch together” feature is so nice for people that prefer to stay in bed and spend the winter binge watching next to a warm body.
Use Jellyfin. Stop relying on corps’ services.
Or Kodi
There’s a Jellyfin plug-in for Kodi and it’s pretty awesome
Jellyfin is majorly based. I use it with Syncthing for all my media except games
Just started my switch last weekend! Jellyfin is amazing so far. Just need to figure out how to export all the Plex metadata and posters to .nfo files.
I would if it had most of the features that Plex does.
And they recently added a feature where they tell your friends on the platform what kind of porn you’ve been watching ✌🏾 I think I’ll stick to Jellyfin.
Heads up! Plex is garbage and enshitefying their own services to make more money.
