I don’t even call it piracy, because piracy has a definition that this doesn’t meet. I call it what it is: unauthorized reproduction. That’s it. That’s all “piracy” is, it’s literally just unauthorized reproduction. Doesn’t sound nearly as scary and dramatic when you call it what it actual is, does it?
Unauthorized reproduction or copyright infringements is more scary and dramatic than theft in some ways. Just look at the punishment for copyright infringement vs theft. One is waaaaaay more severe. It’s almost akin to saying “You stole his life!” Instead of “you killed him!” Since severity of punishment for copyright infringements is pretty much up there with murder.
I just got reminded of that sick anti piracy ad that would play before every film back in the 2000s lol
The music and editing of that ad were lowkey fire. The message… got burnt in that same fire :)
The only damage that exists from piracy is to the copyright holders profits…
Since the copyright holder is usually a corporation that is owned by shareholders, the majority of which are richer than all of us combined, ask me if I give a shit and I will show you my field of shits to give, and you will see that it is barren.
Eat the rich. Or Luigi them… I don’t care.
also theft is not a crime either.
I’m pretty sure if someone stole everything you own you’d see it differently
insurance exists;
I have a lot of monetarily worthless stuff that means a lot to me. Souvenirs from trips, some heirlooms from my grandparents, stuff like that. Not gonna be worth anything in insurance but means a lot to me… it’s a dumb take that theft isn’t a crime.
Using insurance means your premiums will go up, meaning you are still going to pay for it. There is also some emotional damage depending on how the theft happens.
Hahahahaha - keep telling yourself that. Until the insurance fails to pay out and you’re homeless, with zero possessions and everybody doesn’t care
sounds like the problem is with capitalism then.
No, the problem is you trusting a capitalist system to make you whole again. Under any other economic system in the world if you steal someones personal property- it’s a shitty thing to do.
But here we are with that being the status quo. I despise thieves who believe it is ok to steal things that people have worked hard, not necessarily in a monetary way to get things. And supporting them shows a complete lack of empathy. I pity you for that
It’s only a crime for poor people
Name a crime
I downloaded a car. I love my Tisla Model C
More like pissla
The problem is that the producer’s business model is based on making and selling copies. You’re not taking an original work, no, but you’re also not paying for the produced content.
Let’s expand the pig analogy.
A farmer has a sow and any piglets that it has are for sale. You steal a piglet. You haven’t stolen the original sow, but you have stolen the piglet you now have because you didn’t pay for it.
Your example is about physical goods.
Software is at its core just digital information a computer can use.
Knowledge/Information (that is not personal information) should be free.
You can make a argument that software developers still must sell copies of their code to make a living but if you look at the reality of software that appears to simply be some kind of bias. You can make software that is free and still make a living they are just not always related.
The software that runs the world’s infrastructure is increasingly FOSS, from critical cybersecurity to vending machines. Even big corporations are increasingly getting involved in using and making open source components for their proprietary fronts.
As a linux user everything i need can be done legally with free software, not only is it free is most of the times vastly superior then a paid product.
Ever needed software on windows to find the installer got bundled with spyware and then the final program turns out to be a trial before Requiring a subscription? That is only because they need to make money.
On linux, you install it, it’s only the thing you actually need, and it works. No bloat, no enshitification. Some person or group realized there was value to be created, created it and as a result the entire world won collectively.
I have a few products of my own that i hope to publish some day and i already vouched to never make them proprietary, My dad called me insane not to try to profit. I call it nothing but ethical to make the best value for humanity that i can. My very common office job provides enough liveable wage and work/life balance for my family and still find time to do such.
That analogy doesn’t work at all because the Sow produces a finite (and rather small at that) number of piglets over a given timespan.
It’s more akin to you getting a piglet/sow elsewhere. Now your piglet/sow need is satisfied and you won’t buy anything from this farmer.
The problem is that the producer’s business model is based on making and selling copies
This is all too vague to actually understand the effect of piracy. The economic impact depends how much piracy replaces actual purchases.
When I was a teenager, I would pirate a lot of music. At the time, I had very little money to spend. This copying did not replace any purchases. On the other hand, me not buying music right now is a lost purchase since I could spend money. That’s why I spend some money every month actually buying music from bandcamp or whatever, which offsets the revenue that the musicians would otherwise lose.
Also, if the artist has other revenue streams, it doesn’t matter as much. Musicians for example don’t make a lot of money off of streaming nowadays, and a lot of their revenue comes from merch and concert tickets etc. So if you spend money there, copying doesn’t really bankrupt the artist.
Of course each type of media has slightly different mechanics, but in general there are a lot of ways you can do piracy without really undermining the business model of the artists. And very rarely are the effects the same as for theft.
Piglet is still there in the morning though.
Maybe lightly used.
Just pirate shit bruh like what [email protected] said. Y’all keep yapping about ethics and shit but still proceed to do it nonetheless.
The problem with almost every pro-piracy argument like this is that they fundamentally require a significant percentage of the population to disagree with it. “People who can pay will pay and I’m not taking anything from them” only works for as long as both the general population and retailers regard piracy as wrong and keep funding all those games, movies etc for you.
Heck, all you pirates should be upvoting anti-piracy posts like this, we’re the ones keeping your habit funded…
The problem with almost every pro-piracy argument like this is that they fundamentally require a significant percentage of the population to disagree with it.
This assumes that people who are ok with piracy are also against paying for content. That’s a nice fantasy and it makes anti-piracy people feel good about themselves, but it doesn’t reflect reality.
People who can pay will pay and I’m not taking anything from them” only works for as long as both the general population and retailers regard piracy as wrong and keep funding all those games, movies etc for you.
This assumes that ‘pro piracy’ people are against artists getting paid for their work. Seeing as how pirates tend to purchase more legal content than the ‘general population’ that is clearly not the case.
There could be a million different reasons why someone might ‘pirate’ a piece of media, and simply not wanting to pay for it is usually pretty low on the list. That attitude also relies on the assumption that every single piece of content that is copied is something the ‘pirate’ would have paid for in the first place.
As an artist, my job is to inspire people, to make them feel, to share my experience with them. I have absolutely zero problem with someone who can’t afford to pay for my work pirating it. I also appreciate the ones who do pay, but I would still be making art even if no one paid, because while the money is nice it’s not the point of it for me. Id much rather someone copy a work of mine and enjoy it than not enjoy it because they couldn’t pay for the privilege.
I understand that some ‘artists’ are in it for the money and that’s fine. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with them that they deserve to get paid for every eyeball that falls upon their work, regardless of the circumstance.
Heck, all you pirates should be upvoting anti-piracy posts like this, we’re the ones keeping your habit funded…
Have an upvote from me for being the hero we don’t deserve and protecting the mega-corps bottom lines. Truly you are a modern day Jesus.
Thanks for your service
Nah, I want all those companies to burn. If they can’t afford to make new stuff because of piracy then there won’t be stuff to pirate. I am totally fine with that. There is a life to live beyond just consumption, you know?
Nobody is forcing you to consume any of the media you feel you need to pirate.
Just live beyond consumption. You can do that, you know?
You forget the alternative mindset:
An active desire to see traditional ways of funding to disappear, and the media along with it.
Sure, we’d all like that, but pretending that piracy is some sort of noble way to bring about a collectivist creators’ paradise is yet more self-serving fantasy.
Nah. Id pay artists if i could.
And in fact do tip them pretty well at the jobs they take to pay rent when im in LA.
What we need is for parasitic creativity destroying shit stain ip-troll ghouls to get the guillotine, so they arent parasiting on every fucking artist.
We need a society that values humanity and art.
Because as is, there kind of isnt a reliable systemic way to support them. Capitalism prevents it.
I hate IP trolls as much as the next person, but that feels almost like a non-sequitur
Thats what studios are, though.
Thry don’t make the art. People make the art.
You people behave like you believe that artists got gathered up under threat of violence, put into these companies and are being forced to work there against their will…
If they dont, they kinda don’t get to do their art. It’s a whole thing.
Id say ‘or they starve/die on yhe street’ but that’s what they get service jobs for.
The idea is that you support creators out of the appreciation and not because you’re forced to.
This seems to work as a model for YouTubers and podcasters. They usually have most of their stuff available for free, and people pay them money, and more often than there is no reward for the money, other than satisfaction of supporting the creator.
This is obviously one example, and it only works for periodic installments, but it is a working alternative to the system, where people who don’t want or can’t pay don’t do thatThis seems to work as a model for YouTubers and podcasters
No, it doesn’t. They’re still being paid by YouTube/Spotify a flat amount based on the number of views - which are being paid for by ads and premium subscriptions.
Which means: people pay (one way or another) first, consume the content later.
a flat amount
Nope, the amount is anything but flat. For bigger youtubers the ad money start to be significant, and for bigger podcasters spotify pays something, but for the most, amount of money from ads is negligible.
The amount of people that take these moral high roads is fucking ridiculous.
Well, the faceless mega-corp made it difficult to purchase or stream
I don’t like that I have to play the game on Steam
Akshually I’m just copying it, so it’s not theft
There are too many streaming services, so I shouldn’t have to pay for ANOTHER service
I’m not depriving the content creator or publisher from any money, since I wasn’t going to pay for it regardless
Just fucking own it. You are downloading content that you did not pay for. I don’t take some enlightened stance when I download a movie; I just do it. What I’m doing is not right, but I still do what I do. I don’t try to justify it with some bullshit political take.
We all have our line on what we deem acceptable or not. The only piracy that, in my opinion, could have a leg to stand on is when it is actual lost media. No physical copies available, no way to stream or pay for it. Anything else is just the lies we tell ourselves to justify our actions.
Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.
They’re are a million wrong ways to come at the wrong conclusion. So why then would we be surprised when many of the people who come to the right conclusion still do it for a variety of reasons? Perhaps the initial premise of why copyright should exist is conceptually riddled with holes.
Owning an idea is inherently capitalist, but the average person who encounters a problem won’t spontaneously become anti-capitalist. They just know something seems wrong about this, but don’t understand why. So they make up a story to address their cognitive dissonance, like nihilism.
How’s the weather up there on that extremely high horse?
Just because you personally steal stuff you can afford to pay for doesn’t mean that is what everyone else does. It’s good that you own up to that, but don’t project your failings onto others. If it’s against your morals to ‘pirate’, quit doing it.
If you are unwilling to listen to or comprehend others peoples reasons, that’s fine- just don’t act like that makes us the same as you, because it doesn’t.
I am not a Christian so I’m not beholden to their rules. Someone like you could claim I am a sinner and I should just own it. No, I don’t have the same beliefs that you do so I am under no obligation to behave how you think I should.
Ok there buddy. There is no ‘high horse’ here. Piracy is piracy. People need to quit with their bullshit justifications. Just own up to it. I do. The fuck are you on about Christianity? There is literally no connection to religion/beliefs here.
People can’t afford to pay for it? Cool. It’s still piracy. One is still depriving the creator/studio/publisher/whatever of a sale.
But I can’t afford it! Therefore I deserve to have it for free!
Ridiculous.
There is no ‘high horse’ here.
🤣 Says the person actively judging others for their perceived moral failings, from their high horse.
People need to quit with their bullshit justifications.
You may not agree with it or understand it, and that’s fine. I’m saying don’t act like we all think that it’s wrong like you do and are going against our own belief systems. You are the one doing that, not me.
The fuck are you on about Christianity? There is literally no connection to religion/beliefs here.
Oh but there absolutely is, and you put literally zero effort into putting any thought into whether it did or not, your knee jerked and you went right back to defaulting your YOUR belief system and insisting everyone else follow it. Sounds exactly like some groups I could think of, I’ll let you puzzle that one out for yourself.
People can’t afford to pay for it? Cool. It’s still piracy.
You cant’ afford to eat? Cool, it’s still stealing when you nick a loaf or bread.
One is still depriving the creator/studio/publisher/whatever of a sale.
OH NO! You mean to tell me that I’ve deprived a billionaire of a couple of pennies?! I deserve to rot in hell.
Ridiculous
I agree. It’s ridiculous that you are only able to look at it from one very specific, capitalist boot licking pov and not even consider other peoples point of view. Must feel good to be so righteous and holy.
Why is no one mentioning here that the business model shouldn’t exist? If a copy can be made basically for free, there is no reason not to make it basically free. We should be providing everyone with the means to live regardless of their ability to sell stuff. If everyone was free to do whatever they please because their existence was provided for, people would still make media, because people love making things like that.
Of course that might mean that in the short term, while we don’t do this, pirating might mean that some things stop existing. I’d be completely fine if all Hollywood movies and other shit disappeared overnight. Maybe then people would finally come to the understanding that our current model of doing things sucks.
Are you suggesting that all art should be free?
Especially if the creator(s) is deceased.
Are you suggesting only the wealthy are deserving of art?
Only the wealthy can afford art? Music? Movies? Graphic Novels? Video Games?
Are you being obtuse?
the buisness model is essentially croud funding the movie after the movie is produced. Hollywood doesn’t need the money, but triangle staff does.
Might I suggest the problem is capitalism. Without the everpresent threat of homelessness and starvation forced on us by the landlords, rampant price gouging of necessary goods like food, and the anti-lottery we all play every single fucking day with our own health, artists wouldn’t need nearly so much compensation for their work. Piracy wouldn’t matter, or even be required as a concept. I dream of living in a world without capitalism, but we don’t. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
I too dream of living in a post-capitalist world. But I’d bet dollars to donuts that people will pirate things regardless of the cost. They don’t want to pay anything for content.
I think pirating scientific papers is a good thing all around. The research isnt funded by the selling of access to those papers, much on the contrary.
Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.
I usually can’t, actually. Not immediately anyway. But that doesn’t stop me from paying for it when I can. Done it with plenty of games. And if I didn’t have that option, which I primarily use for games I’m not entirely sure I’ll stick with, well… I just wouldn’t buy it. Full stop. Wouldn’t be a consideration at all. There is no lost sale here, only the potential to fall in love with it enough to buy it when I eventually can.
Not saying this is some moral high ground. It’s not. But plenty of folks just can’t afford to gamble on whether or not they like something and end up paying it forward when they can.
Yeah, OP’s take is like that of petulant child arguing semantics as though it changed a thing. Doubly cringe for adding that second section at the bottom where he depicts his opponent giving up and agreeing with him.
When I return from the library instead of the bookstore it is with the deepest shame.
Why are you stealing from libraries? Not cool, man
This is a specious analogy. e-books from libraries are already heavily controlled and are usually quite expensive to provide. Physical copies have their own inbuilt limits to distribution.
You’re treating copyright like it’s some sort of hardline moral stance against consuming any media you haven’t directly paid for, when actually it’s more like a very long list of compromises to balance the conflicting requirements of creators’ needs to be compensated for their work versus society’s need to benefit from that work. This is why lending libraries, fair use etc are legal and piracy isn’t.
No, I’m providing a counter-example and rejecting the argument that only lost media entitles you to consume media for free.
And I’m saying that it’s a strawman, because that’s not the principle copyright law operated on in the first place.
Yeah, me too. Especially when I only have a scale model PLA print of the car I downloaded.
I wouldnt download a car, but that’s only because im fanatically anti car.
Because cars are bad. There should not be cars.
Would you download a train?
I am subscribed to a train
Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. Fuck yes.
But would you download a bus?
Depends on file size, and if the train download is done.
Heathen! Buses are as cool as trains :)
Theyre fine. Busses are fine. Im not going to shit talk buses, neither shall i glaze them whwn there are trains around.
I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.
Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.
Theft still took place. You’re probably still getting paid. Maybe it got taken up by insurance and everyone’s premium goes up a tiny fraction, maybe it got taken up by the bank or by your business.
It’s still an incomplete analogy but it’s a little bit closer.
That’s not to say that the vast majority of piracy isn’t people who wouldn’t pay anyway. And back in the day, you certainly got more visibility in your games from people who were pirating.
But now that advertising is on its toes and steam exists, I won’t think they’re getting any serious benefit from piracy and I don’t think that they’re not losing At least modest numbers of sales.
Nah. That analogy does not work.
Piracy situation is more like you have made a cool statue and you charge people money for looking at your statue. Then someone comes, looks at your statue, and goes away without paying.
There’s no thief, nothing was stolen at any point. The one how came looking without paying was probably never going to pay for an entrance, and the statue can me still be looked by anyone. Nothing is loss in the process, no harm is done. Some guy just looked at a statue without paying for it.
This is a horseshit analogy.
Stealing money from your account is theft, it’s not still there afterwards.
The concept I think you might’ve been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.
It’s also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.
but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.
The artist has ownership rights to all copies, not just the original; it’s literally in the word “copyright”.
It is coming for artists to not own their own work. Taylor Swift bought back her own work, Michael Jackson bought Paul McCartney’s work from the record company (which annoyed Paul because he would have done it otherwise).
Yes, which is a distinctly different concept from stealing. It’s copyright. Note how copyright violation isn’t in the Bible. Note how the Bible itself would never have existed if copyright existed at the time given that it is a collection of passed down stories.
Copyright is a dumb as fuck concept. Its a scarcity based system, for stuff that is not scarce.
Its a scarcity based system
In what way?
Capitalism itself is a scarcity based system, and it falls apart somewhat when there’s abundance.
In capitalism, stuff only has value if it’s scarce. We all constantly need oxygen to live, but because it’s abundant, it’s value is zero. Capitalism does not start valuing oxygen until there are situations where it starts becoming rare.
This works for the most part in our world because physical goods by and large are scarce, but in the situations where they aren’t, capitalism doesn’t work. It’s the classic planned obscelesence lightbulb story, if you can make a dirt cheap light bulb that lasts forever, you’ll go out of business because you’ve created so much abundance that after a bit of production, you’re actually not needed at all anymore and raw market based capitalism has no mechanism to reward you long term.
The same is even more true for information. Unlike physical goods, information can flow and be copied freely at a fundamental physics level. To move a certain amount of physical matter a certain distance I need a certain amount of energy, and there are hard universal limits with energy density, but I can represent the number three using three galaxies, or three atoms. Information does not scale or behave the same, and is inherently abundant in the digital age.
Rather than develop a system that rewards digital artists based on how much something is used for free, we created copyright, which uses laws and DRM to create artificial scarcity for information, because then an author can be rewarded within capitalism since it’s scarce.
Unlike physical goods, information can flow and be copied freely at a fundamental physics level.
The electricity and silicon required to make this happen are not free, on a societal or physical level. There is a tangible cost to this transfer, even if you’re ignoring the social construct of copyright.
I think this issue comes from a misunderstanding of “free”, possibly conflating it for “trivially easy”.
Rather than develop a system that rewards digital artists based on how much something is used for free
Feel free to come up with such a system. I think you’ll find that a rather difficult task.
The electricity and silicon required to make this happen are not free, on a societal or physical level. There is a tangible cost to this transfer, even if you’re ignoring the social construct of copyright.
Completely irrelevant.
If I already have a computer and an internet connection then I’ve already paid the costs, prior to initiating that particular request.
I think this issue comes from a misunderstanding of “free”, possibly conflating it for “trivially easy”.
In the context of pricing resources, those are the same thing.
Feel free to come up with such a system. I think you’ll find that a rather difficult task.
The model is the same one used by streaming services. It’s one of reward and attribution rather artificial scarcity. Rather than having streaming and advertising middlemen you have a public system that lets everyone access what they want and rewards creators based on usages. Youtube without Google’s exorbitant profits.
Copyright has no basis in human culture or history. Our literal entire history is based on a tradition of free remixing and story telling, not copyright.
I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.
It’s less an analogy than the literal legal definition of theft.
Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.
This analogy is crap. When they took your paycheck, that was theft. Even if temporarily, you didn’t have the check. If they cash the fraudulent check, they’re not copying the money; it’s coming out of your account. That’s also theft. Both cases, the original is being removed, whether it be the physical check or the money from your account. The only reason there might be a “copy” in your analogy is some sort of fraud protection by the bank, at which point it’s the bank’s money getting stolen. Still theft though.
Theft is more than just physically removing a non-fungible item. Depriving owed earnings is also considered theft, hence why piracy is considered theft because there is a debt owed for the pirated media. If you believe in wage theft, then you believe in IP theft.
hence why piracy is considered theft because there is a debt owed for the pirated media
This is objectively false in any meaningful way. It’s certainly not considered theft (at least in the US), and there’s absolutely no debt owed for pirated media (unless you count seeding it forward).
Depriving owed earnings is also considered theft.
I mean, so is not doing anything… wait i better not give them any ideas.
Do I need to need to pay for the IP of your idea?
If you aim to make significant profit with it. Yes. Otherwise i had nothing to lose to begin with.
Holy fuck this meme is so old it’s probably of legal age to drink
You can tell it’s made the rounds because it has a reaction image nearly the size of the image itself shoved onto the bottom superfluously
I for one would definitely download a car, if I did not already own one I really like.
I’d happily let’s others download mine, if it didn’t affect me or my car in any way.
Same. Its not a fancy car, but its had no problem in almost a decade and gets good mileage. Download it all you like
Piracy is making a child share toys with the kid who has none.
Now make the exact same meme but substitute “AI training” for “piracy” and watch the downvotes flow in.
Because AI isn’t creating a copy of the original thing, it is attempted to replace the original thing for a profit. It would be like if a publishing company took some book, removed random parts of it then replaced them to parts from other books, then sold that instead of paying authors to write books.
Well yeah, because my objections to AI aren’t based on copyright law.
In Canada it’s very hard to get into trouble for piracy unless you make a profit from your piracy.
Or well…until these LLM showed up. That’s the part I take issue with.
This is an interesting argument. I don’t think the two are completely analogous, and the whole thing falls apart once you go beyond consumer level usage due to piracy’s inability to make new things like AI can. While piracy isn’t going to get any game developers or musicians fired, AI image gen very likely will. The more it improves, the harder it will be for companies to continue justifying paying real artists.
That said, you do make a good point that many pro-piracy arguments can be used all the same to be pro-AI image gen. At least at the individual consumer level.
Yeah, cause generally humans downloading things is good and AI downloading things is bad.
tbf I did do this a week ago and nobody downdooted me https://lemmy.uhhoh.com/comment/11886692
