this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Pirating software is stealing as well. That's pretty simple. I know people who have stolen their entire gaming library. That's thousands of hours of work and dedication people put in. Why don't they deserve to get money for it?
The same goes for other software, music and movies.
They deserve to get money for it. No pirate is against that.
If we would exchange money for the product all would be fine. Some people would still pirate because they have no money or just don't want to pay but the majority would pay.
But as we buy just a license that can be revoked for any reason consumers feel that the system is rigged against them.
So it is a natural reaction to try to fuck over a system that is fucking you over.
People pirate software that is buyable on GoG, itch.io or movies that are on disc all the time. Just because some platforms offer the product with just a license shouldn't mean it's now morally justified to pirate it.
But I see people bringing the statement because of platform like Steam or Netflix.
Why shouldn't it mean that? Seems fair to me.
And it is not just about licenses. Often the pirated version is just better because they took out things like DRMs that make a Game run slower or movies where you don't have to wait trougth CSI warnings and the likes.
Piracy is a service problem. People will always choose the way of least resistance and that seems to be piracy for the moment.
And as i said, some people will pirate stuff anyway no matter what. But those are people we don't need to talk about because they wouldn't pay anyway.
I said this elsewhere and there are many, many examples of this. For example, in the age of streaming music services where you can pick between a decent handful that have basically everything on each, and that are pretty reasonably priced, how many people are still pirating a ton of music? I know there are some, but if I had to guess, peak music piracy has been gone since the mid oughts. On the other hand, peak video piracy probably hasn't happened yet and probably will continue to grow until a similar situation is reached. Like, there is no way that Sony/Discovery didn't just create another wave of piracy.
And oft-overlooked, but lots of them couldn't pay. Especially today, arbitrary spending is limited for a lot of people, and I'd hazard a guess again that the vast majority can't afford eight streaming services. They'll buy a couple they find the most value in, and then when they're out of money, how is anyone harmed if they just download content on some of the others?
With what money do you suggest people who make the games or the movies should be paid? The way of least resistance is an incredible weak argument to justify taking the work of others without paying for it.
The money that their employer gives them?
How is it weak? And why do you ignore the other thing i wrote about the better product?
And the money grows on trees? You do realise that the money comes from people purchasing the product?
Slower software because of DRM is an issue for, I estimate, perhaps 1 % of the software that is pirated on a regular basis. If even that.
The few seconds of a screen you "have to wait through", no, I do not think that justifies not paying for an entire movie.
not all of it.
You estimate wrong.
Why not?
I do agree that the workers should be paid, but they have absolutely no say in what the company does at the top. It might be that a lot of them don't agree with the company's actions. Only way to remedy that is to democratize companies.
When tech companies say they want to "democratize" they typically mean they are making a service more widely available to the consumer. The democracy bit is that the consumer "votes" with their wallet. A notable early adopter was Amazon, and I would hardly think that the public, today, see that organization as a paragon of virtue. So, in this sense of the word we're somewhat failing ourselves here.
In the context you present, the companies themselves become little democracies internally. This sounds nice but would ultimately lead to chaos and ruin for those companies. I think this would lead to highly unstable, unprofitable businesses that no investor would ever give money to, or at least not expect any returns from.
Furthermore, I don't necessarily think it would benefit the consumer in the end. Maybe the employees mostly vote to have a good solid ethical company, or maybe they vote in their own best interests to bring home higher wages and/or just keep their jobs safe. One could argue we just witnessed one such example of this with the recent OpenAI debacle with Sam Altman. Board fired him for potentially going against the stated charter of the company (one that has an ethical basis of essentially putting the security and well being of humanity above all else), at the risk of destroying an $87billion company, yet the employees staged a mutiny forcing the board to reinstate him.
But I digress. At the end of the day I think the most we can ever really expect from companies is that they will, inevitably, find new and creative ways to extract ever increasing amounts of money from us, until such time that we simply cease giving it to them.
Edit: spelling.
I would argue the original theft was when the publisher coerced creators to sign away their copyright power due to the monopoly the publisher has on the market: i.e. if you don't sign your rights away, you can't play.
In theory, creators could punish publishers by going on strike, but publishers abuse copyright law to remove potential competitors striking creators might flee to. The DMCA's overly broad application of DRM that also prevents creators from freeing their content from publishers also inhibits competition by increasing switching costs for customers who build up a library or DRM's content that they cannot transfer to another publisher.
Breaking up monopolies by restoring anti-trust law to a pre-Reagan state would prevent the original coersion-theft of rights from creators since creators could reassign copyright from misbehaving publishers, enabling customers to transfer their purchased libraries to another publisher.