this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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This is inaccurate. You are not buying it (the media), you are buying the right to stream it (as long as the seller provides the media as a stream). You don't "buy" a movie unless you are paying for it's ownership, which would be millions of dollars. For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM). And you generally don't have a right be able to "buy" or have access to all media.
But all that doesn't automaticly make it amoral. ~~this comment is gonna be downvoted to hell~~
edit: There are probably gonna be more responces, so this will address everything else I have to say. What I wrote is how things are legally, more or less. I don't like that either. I do consider piracy stealing (under current laws) and morally right. Stealing is just not that great term for digital stuff. Please don't try to (uselessly) sway me and don't infight
this meme is a criticism of that. it shouldn't be like that. if I buy a chair, I own the chair. I can then choose to sit on it, burn it, or give it to my neighbor, whatever. if I buy a movie, it's suddenly not like that – but not because of some inherent quality that would make it impossible, but only because they say it is like that. but they have one weakness: it's only like that if we actually stick to those rules. they're all arbitrary anyway! we can therefore treat a bought movie just as it should be: a physical copy that we actually own. we can then decide to watch it, to lend it to our neighbor, to play it for everybody to see on the street, to cut it and remix it and do something new with it. will they come and claim we've "pirated" their media? yes of course, but this is nonsensical, dead law, that has to be broken again and again by just – ignoring it, and making it not so. if I buy a movie, I do own the movie, and the company that says otherwise can get fucked. that's what this is about.
That's kind of their point, because we are not in fact buying the media the argument is that piracy has some moral element. Put another way there is no option to own it outside of piracy.
Yeah kinda, but there deosn't need to be an option to own media. You are not entitled to that. It's up to the creator/owner how to use/sell their things. It's whole another question if it should be that way
I have no legal option to own you. Is it moral, then, for me to turn to illegal means to own you?
Now replace "you" with "content you created", and tell me how it's different.
And replace "you" with an exploitive company that doesn't give two shits about anything but making a number go up.
A person vs art, that's the line where our opinion would differ I guess. Art/media is part of the world/history and it feels wrong to lock out large parts of it essentially forever. Let us pay for things and have them, it's that simple. Once it cannot be sold it should be publically available if someone who has it wants to make it so. But again this all crosses into opinion, you can't own a person and be a good citizen at the same time but many pirates are productive members of society or couldn't buy to begin with.
I'd like to point out German law (maybe this expands to EU and other countries) with traditional media.
Traditionally you bought movies and music on physical discs. You had a guaranteed right to be able to sell it to other people, as well as make personal copies of it for private use/backups.
DRM has always tried to oppose this right. And obviously, in the last decade(s) a lot went into service-oriented streaming and temporary access instead of owning even on a partial or theoretical level.
Legally, piracy is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. That's a totally different ball game with different implications.
While stealing even cheap items quickly lands you in legal hot water, just downloading (without uploading) doesn't. I don't know of a single case where someone got a significant fine or even a lawsuit for just downloading (and not redistributing) content.
The legal main difference between stealing and illegaly copying is that when you steal something it's gone.
This changes the damages calculation a lot, since the only damage you caused by copying is the opportunity cost: Since you copied it, they didn't sell it to you. But you might have already bought it in the meantime (then the damages 0), or you might have not bought it at all (then the damages are also 0).
Also, stealing is criminal law, while copyright is civil law, which makes it legally entirely different.
Looks nitpicky, but if you talk about current laws, nitpicky is the whole game.
Piracy is always stealing. Y'all can keep trying to spin it if it helps, but its pure copium.
Is it stealing when they don't lose anything?
Well first of all, yes it is stealing to take something that does not belong to you. The definition of stealing is not beholden to the consequences of the actions itself.
Furthermore, if you pirate to avoid paying a subscription, then yes they are losing something. I'm a massive pirate. I steal all my media. I feel no guilt and I also have no delusions about what I am doing. I do it to save money.
Yes you are taking something. Of course you are. You are a taking a video file which you do not have the right to. Why do you need to convince yourself there is nothing grimy about doing? Like jesus christ, just be grimey. Wht you gotta lie to yourself?
If semantics is the hill you want to die on you've already lost.
The product in this case is the right to view copyrighted material. You absolute can own digital material, that's the entire point of copyright.
You have no right to the video material of say amazon. Amazon can do with their video material as they please, that is their product and they own it. They have the right to control the distribution of that product. When you priate, you infringe on their copyright, which makes it so they lose money on the service where they sell the right to view that copyrighted material. You can spin it until the sun is blue, that is stealing.
You have removed Amazon's right to exclusively offer their product, which is a right that they have and you do not.
Sure, but there's a huge difference between stealing a physical object and copying data without permission.
For most of us sods it's a choice between pirating content or not engaging in it at all. While the upper management of Sony or Disney might live in their profit-focused bubble, everyone else involved with a product would rather we actually participate in their patch of human culture.
But I'm happy to not watch your show or listen to your music, if my presence offends you.
Entirely besides the point. As for the last point, that's pretty funny😂 if you're pirating it it literally makes no difference.
The difference is, your culture is not getting out there.
The reason we all know Joffrey is a git of a king and the Red Wedding was a day to call in sick is because the GoT series was massively pirated and HBO ignored it. It also why we had a decade of gratuitous boobs on television. It also accounted for HBO being stupendously rich for a while.
It's kinda like depending on the wind for sailing, your crew on deck are going to be hot because there isn't much breeze. The more you tap consumption of your art for money, the narrower the gateway and the less it becomes culture, until you end up like Prince (the musician) with most of your work locked away in a vault, unknown to anyone.
But you seem like a the law's the law sort of fellow, and would be simping for the state even as it was torturing your fellow statesmen.
GOT wasn't funded through culture. Also they most certainly didn't ignore it, they just failed to stop it.
Do my a favor and stick your assumptions up your mother's asshole. I'm a pirate, I just don't have any delusions about what it is. I'm not so egotistical that I need to convince myself that it's not stealing just because I'm doing it.
I find your pirate cred dubious. You came onto a pirate thread to throw shade, which smacks to me of Christian vigilantes wandering into a gay bar to start trouble. Or a guy online compelled to send his dick-pic to women online for internal insecurities he can't consciously fathom.
You're not here to protest the problems with stealing, not in the current economic clime. You're here because you need to shit on others, and are trying to justify it by opposing piracy when even the IP holders know it's losing game that only hurts themselves. It's the legal firms they've tapped who are over eager to show they're earning their pay.
You want to evade my assumptions, go crawl back into your hole, or do some proper fucking research. (Start here, and enjoy.).
But so long as you're raising a stink and I'm nearby, you're going to have to choke on the toxic vitriol of my ideology. I won't suffer your moralizing in silence.
The mere notion that piracy might be stealing sends you into a paragraphs long tirade. Pretty stupid. I simply don't care that it's stealing.
Piracy is always stealing. Y’all can keep trying to spin it if it helps, but its pure copium.
So you're just being equivocal and trolling?
And yet you still shared something. Those files exist. This is an extremely weak argument honestly.
Something is being tranferred, and that is the picture which you do not own nor have any right to own.
If I've bought the right to play the game, what's "the game" that I'm entitled to if they decide to take away what makes it the thing I agreed to have access to?
That is answered in the 95-page TOS
There are lots of cars you can't get parts for dude.