I used to have a moral objection to piracy, I thought that if a piece of media is good enough that I enjoy it then the people that made it deserve to be paid for their work.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that even if I do pay for something there is no guarantee that the people that worked on it will get their fair share and paying for media is increasingly a worse user experience than piracy.
I feel similarly but one of those choices is guaranteed not to help the people you’d like to see helped
I’m not so sure that’s true. What if normalizing and removing friction from piracy gets to the point where the streaming services have to react by providing better services and better payouts?
That’s easy to say, but what can they actually do that provides a better service than piracy at this point? They can’t compete on price, number of shows, or quality of shows with piracy by a long shot. They can potentially provide a better ease of experience with quick downloads and casting, but they already have that and I don’t know that it can get any better.
As a general rule, I’d assume more piracy means less money into an industry, and less money in means fewer and less risky products that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
On that note, the only relatively convenient exception I know of is Bandcamp Fridays. They’re specific days where Bandcamp doesn’t take any share of purchases.
I wish this were a more common practice, and I wish I could allocate my Netflix/HBO/prime/etc. subscription dollars to support specific titles. Instead, shows get cancelled because people didn’t stream it enough on day 1. I want a s2 of Tales From the Loop, but it’s still in limbo with no way for fans to show support.
It absolutely depends. I’m an indie game developer. I’ve worked at various studios as an employee, contractor, and as an owner. Depending on the setup if you pay for a game I worked on I could potentially get a bonus, I could see that money directly as profits, or I could see nothing at all. Sometimes just continued survival of the studio in working at is reason enough for me to encourage people to buy the game but sometimes I’ve not liked where I’ve worked and encouraged people to pirate from a studio that rips off its employees.
So really, the best bet is to ask. The best way to support a game developer is to ask how to send the money directly and buy the game on itch.io if available.
In fairness, games are still something I’m willing to pay for and books. I think probably because Kindle and Steam are better user experiences than pirating those.
Piracy isn’t stealing anyway. You’re not removing the data from the original owner.
But the original creation cost time and money, which you’re not reimbursing the creator for. The moral thing to do is to pay your share of that if you make a copy, even if the copy itself doesn’t cost anything.
It’s like going to a concert without paying the entrance fee. Sure it’s not a big deal if only one person does it, but the concert couldn’t even happen if everyone acted like this, or the organizers would have to pay for it all by themselves.
If you want to morally justify piracy then start with the ridiculous earnings and monopolies of big media companies, or the fact that they will just remove your access to media you “bought”. Piracy is like stealing, but sometimes stealing is the right thing to do.
Would you call it Piracy if I lend a bluray from a friend? I didn’t pay for it and yet I’ve watched it.
No, because it’s so widespread and natural that it should be expected and already accounted for in the price. But there is no hard line imo, and simplified examples often fail to capture all the aspects that go into the decision. E.g. I’d say paying for one person at a concert and sneaking in another would basically be piracy, even though the two situations are very similar on a surface level.
I think it’s about reasonable expectations both parties of the agreement can have, based on established social norms. If you buy a movie for personal consumption you should be able to expect that you can watch it whenever you want, and also share that experience with friends and family. And at the same time the seller should be able to expect that you limit it to a reasonable number of personal contacts, and don’t start to sell it to strangers or run a movie theater, because that expectation was used to set the price.
To further the thought experiment. I digitize my Blu-ray and put it on a private tracker to share with ONLY my friends. Is that piracy?
Copywrite laws are antiquated at best and need to be destroyed at worst.
If you need more proof look at bullshit like how Paramount+ until recently couldn’t show flagship shows like Picard in Canada because the rights were given to Crave.
So as a consumer I want to go to the owner of the property and I can’t watch it because the owner told me they gave a copy of it to someone else.
Or if someone walked in and watched it with you
Oh no! 😱that was a lost sale! To pirate jail with you!
(To those who think I’m full of shit, I direct you to Google the Microsoft patent for disabling streaming content if more that 4 people were in the room with a pop up to demand more money or kick someone out before resuming)
The moral thing to do is to pay your share of that if you make a copy, even if the copy itself doesn’t cost anything.
under what ethical system?
Mine, obviously. But feel free to correct me if you disagree with something.
It’s like going to a concert without paying the entrance fee. Sure it’s not a big deal if only one person does it, but the concert couldn’t even happen if everyone acted like this
That’s a systemic problem, something I wouldn’t personally care about. The “system” is just so horribly screwed up and skewed against us that I just no longer care if it works or not.
If you want to morally justify piracy then start with the ridiculous earnings and monopolies of big media companies, or the fact that they will just remove your access to media you “bought”. Piracy is like stealing, but sometimes stealing is the right thing to do.
This rubs me the wrong way too, yes. Though I’m really beyond moral justifications, I just stopped caring.
Public Lending Right programs exist in 35 countries to compensate authors whose works are in libraries.
Amoral at worst. Public transportation shouldn’t have a fee at use. Tax the rich, invest in transport
Not asking about the morality, asking whether or not the people making this argument on piracy consider jumping the turnstile to be theft, in the most practical sense. Not in an ideal world, but in the real world, would you consider that theft?
A turnstile jumper is also exploiting the products and services produced by offers without paying the cost to use them. Nothing is being “removed” in that situation either.
Are they stealing a ride?
I don’t like this analogy, because there’s a real, albeit small, cost to the subway of that free ride, in terms of fuel and increased maintenance. Digital piracy has literaly no real cost to the producer except the nebulous “lost sale.”
No, they’re just stealing the fuel and wages the employees should be getting for maintaining the train.
In that case you’re actually using a limited resource: space on a train. And by occupying it you’re preventing someone else from using it (assuming a full train). Copying media doesn’t cost any resources (ignoring the tiny amounts of electricity) or interfere with anyone else’s ability to use that resource.
They don’t compare.
What if that train is regularly running under capacity, or you are just standing?
I don’t see how that compares. Trains need human labour and lots of resources to function.
How do you think movies, music, games, books, or any form of media is produced?
This post seems to be largely about the value of product ownership and the harm that DRM brings to the end user, and does a great job at making that point. However, the title seems to have caused a different discussion to spawn in the comments about whether piracy of digital content is justified. This is just a casual reminder to read the article before replying in the comments.
IP in general is a very difficult idea to support. In theory, it’s supposed to reward innovation, but in practice it results in stagnation and price gouging.
If you can own nothing, then nothing is theft.
