If buying isn’t ownership then pirating isn’t stealing
Oh but it’s not buying! The big “Buy” or “Purchase” button might have said so, but if you’d have careful read through 35 pages of user agreements, you’d see that you only rent the license to stream it.
Which obviously is total bullshit and the whole fucking system should be burned to the ground.
This is precisely why I refuse to buy digital games. (And it extends to other media, but games are where I actually spend money)
I’ll pay for a rental service designed to be a rental service (ps+, for example) but will not buy individual games digitally. Who knows when they will become unavailable for some reason, and I can no longer download a copy. It’s bad enough when servers are shut down within 2 years of launch, but when the whole game gets pulled, then what?
I’ve decided I’m not even bothering with the next generation of consoles. So few things are even released on disc, with half the consoles being digital only, that it’s not even worth it. I’ll pirate instead.
Pirating isn’t stealing either way.
Also, copyright infringement never even used to ever be a crime, although now there is a form of criminal copyright infringement, if it’s done for money or if the value is above a certain amount. Thanks to lobbying from wealthy industries. Most copyright infringement still is not a crime, though.
The reason industries lobby for harsher copyright laws is because they know they can make more money if people can’t pirate. They take the piss with their pricing, but they’re acutely aware that if they take the piss too much then people will turn to piracy. By prohibiting piracy and levying harsh penalties they can get away with even more unfair pricing, and maybe even profit from piracy through punitive damages (which is mainly a US thing, most sensible nations only allow you to sue for actual damages).
It is. You’re stealing income from the person that created the thing you took and didn’t pay for.
By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
…If nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property"
–Thomas Jefferson
Licensing isn’t ownership, and pirating isn’t stealing, it’s copyright infringement.
The previous comment is more like shorthand, rather than literal truth.
It’s faster to say piracy isn’t stealing if purchasing isn’t ownership than it is to say “if a company can simply reverse a permanent access license at any time then pirating media from them is perfectly ethical and should not be considered a crime”
It’s bad shorthand though. In this context, there was never any “buying content” happening, nor was piracy ever “stealing”. It’s just misrepresentation of both sides.
It is stealing. I don’t understand the mental gymnastics here. You’re stealing income from whoever created the content if you’re not paying them for your ability to watch it.
How are you stealing income if there was no intention to pay the company to begin with? Even if there was an intention to buy it, companies aren’t entitled to consumers’ money. This is especially the case if the consumer has previously purchased a license to consume the product, and then the company decides to take (or steal) it away. No moral qualms with pirating the same content then.
It’s digital data; you’re copying something, leaving the original completely intact. It’s not like a physical BluRay, where if you steal it from a store, you are making that store lose money due to that physical stock being stolen.
And lastly, how is the company not stealing from consumers when they pull shit like this?
It is not stealing. The mental gymnastics are when you try to claim that it is.
You’re stealing income from whoever created the content if you’re not paying them for your ability to watch it.
It’s just as much “stealing” as me not watching it at all.
I’m infringing on their copyright, absolutely, but I’m not taking anything away from them that they could otherwise profit from.
LOL they know it’s stealing. Some of them will even blatantly admit it with no guilt.
Here’s the question though: if you click the button that says “buy” and give them money, but you don’t actually own it, have they stolen from you?
If you “bought” a printer and then like a year later the company comes back and says “actually no” and takes your printer back, is that stealing? And if you go back to that company’s warehouse and take it back from them, is that also stealing? 🤔
I’m starting to think that everybody’s thinking about this the wrong way. But I think really needs to happen is they need to be sued to oblivion with a class action lawsuit. They can say whatever they want in their user agreement and do their best to get away with it but if it’s not enforceable in court then it needs to be shot down and shot down completely. This needs a class action lawsuit. There need to be several class action lawsuits. One against them, one against Sony and so on.
They have a lot of money and they might win in court maybe but they should at least be challenged in that venue.
A clarification that really only makes this worse: Crunchyroll did not acquire Funimation. Funimation acquired Crunchyroll, and decided to use the Crunchyroll name instead. They have had every opportunity since the merger to support people’s purchases, but have chosen not to.
Tired of honoring your contracts? Simply purchase a different company and hide behind their name.
Or in the case of Comcast or Facebook, just rebrand without having to buy another company.
Or if you’re Google, create another company under a different name, split yourself up, then buy everything under that new umbrella (Alphabet). That’ll keep the antitrust enforcers at bay…
This is incorrect. It was a merger. Sony owns both Crunchyroll and Funimation. That being said, the servers didn’t magically disappear. Media could 1000% have been consolidated.
Sony owns both now, but Crunchyroll was purchased from AT&T in 2021. Sony purchased Funimation in 2017. So while it is perhaps not 100% accurate to say that Funimation itself did the purchasing of Crunchyroll, the company that owned Funimation did.
Edit: it is also worth mentioning that after the acquisition there was an immediate decrease in new content added to Funimation, and within a couple seasons there was virtually none, as customers were being pushed to the Crunchyroll app. Many, but not all, Funimation shows were also copied to Crunchyroll, but none the other way.
They couldn’t even transfer over everyone’s watch history like they promised. They can’t even manage to apply multiple audio tracks and subtitles to the same videos, so each dub is displayed like it’s own season and when youre done a series it just starts playing episode 1 in German right away. Their newly added page is full of old titles that just had a Hindi dub uploaded.
They’d have an easier time getting to mars than letting people transfer their purchased videos over.
But crunchyroll paid video game YouTubers to promote it a decade ago, so it was the brand that won out. Never mind that all these problems did not occur on the funimation website. Never let anyone ever tell you that advertising isn’t important, it’s more ten times more valuable than good coding or engineering.
They can’t even manage to apply multiple audio tracks and subtitles
This is the worst thing.
It’s not even smart enough to finish the episode and not switch over to some other translation, so watching Simulcast is super painful.
The dub problem is a Crunchyroll problem, in my experience, having been a Crunchyroll member before the merger. Dubs on Crunchyroll where a complete mess, each time they tried to fix it, it got worse. As you mentioned, dubs being displayed as seasons.
After the funimation buy out, I see dubbed titles being fixed, and more dub options being added.
Just a couple of weeks ago I used a free trial on Crunchyroll and none of that is true, at least for the 3 titles I watched (My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaizen, and Demon Slayer). The audio tracks were selectable in the video player, as were the subtitles.
Also, the subtitles were absolutely top notch, with translations of Japanese text appearing just next to the original, at the same angle and with the same colours, and without obscuring the original text.
I haven’t heard about any shoddy business before seeing this post, but that could be because I haven’t looked for it.
So they’re using Crunchyroll as the name of their streaming service, but will continue to use Funimation for physical media? I can’t imagine they’re just throwing the entire Funimation brand in the trash.
This announcement is full of weasely language.
“We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from Funimation.”
The problem is your concerns. We are being understanding about your problem.
“Please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported.”
Crunchyroll does not support this, which means that it will not be supported. Your role here is to note this.
“We appreciate your understanding…”
We are being appreciative. Your are being understanding. That’s the way it is, got it?
“We appreciate your patience” has always rubbed me the wrong way too. How dare you assume? I’m a very impatient man, and i know you [x company] appreciate nothing of real value
I still feel like it should be illegal for the button to say “Buy” or “Purchase” when you’re actually leasing the item.
There should be a nice, big, summarized disclaimer right above the button explaining what exactly you are purchasing. I’m sure the 100 page EULA explains but nobody has time to read through the whole thing every time they make a digital purchase.
Been saying it since I popped out the womb, I’m so happy to see more people share this sentiment. It doesn’t matter that changing the definition of “buy” is legal when they put a tiny little link to a 30 page document above the big green “purchase” button. The fact that that’s legal is the whole problem.
I’m still pissed that they changed the meaning of “lifetime” to 20 years or whatever it is now.
That’s basically how iPhones have worked from the start. You’re paying all that money to lease the phone. Apple can do as it pleases or ban you from using your purchased phone for whatever infraction they want. You are paying all that money but you don’t own it, Apple does. That’s why I’ve never and will never own one
Unfortunately, that applies to way more than just Apple products. You can’t unlock the bootloader on many modern Android phones sold in the US, and you can’t replace the primary bootloader on any phone (with very few exceptions), anywhere, due to the hardware implementation of secure boot, which requires the bootloader to be cryptographically signed by the owner of the keys (the vendor).
There is no option to replace the keys with your own in the device that you purchased and “own”.
Don’t even get me started on Smart TVs and other IoT devices. All of a sudden, people don’t care about computer freedom as much if you just stop calling it a computer.
Fuck buying physical media, pirate digital media. It’s better for the environment and your wallet.
you can also steal physical media from Walmart, copy it all to a hard drive, melt down and cast the plastic into dildos and buttplugs for your own enjoyment.
Fucking amen. Especially in the music scene, I’ve read about sooo many people going back to CD’s because they got fed up with their music streaming service of choice and I’m just over here feeling like that guy at the Diablo Immortal announcement… Do you guys not have phones?
Like, these things have hundreds of gigs of storage, more than any iPod ever did, and yet almost everyone has completely forgotten about having an mp3 collection? I have about 2500 songs saved on my phone with the same or better bitrate than you’d get on Spotify premium and it’s like… 25gb? I could easily quadruple my collection and still not be hurting for storage space.
