That is a false equivalency.

The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.

Pirating takes away a possible purchase. You haven’t actually used any of their resources or cost them anything.

If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.

If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.

Chozo
link
fedilink
41Y

The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.

And media costs money to make.

If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.

If you weren’t going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That’s the thing, if you’re interested enough in a product to want it, then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.

If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.

How do you think scene groups get their materials in the first place? They just find it on a flash drive on a park bench?

More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do. The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.

If you weren’t going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That’s the thing, if you’re interested enough in a product to want it then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.

I don’t agree with this at all. There are tons of things someone might want to use or have but not enough that they’d be willing to pay for it. Or over a certain amount of money.

Chozo
link
fedilink
21Y

The fact is that the person in question is still taking something without paying for it. A sense of entitlement (I want it badly enough that I should have it for free) doesn’t change anything in this equation.

Sure, they are procuring something worth money without paying for it. But this is a very different argument than you would not pirate something if you would not also be prepared to pay it.

@Prunebutt@feddit.de
link
fedilink
7
edit-2
1Y

The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.

Rips do exist, ya know?

Chozo
link
fedilink
21Y

And physical media’s never stolen, right?

The data to validate this is scarce, but I’d wager that most rips come from stolen physical media. I don’t think there’s too many people out there going “I just paid $20 of my hard-earned money for this Blu-ray, so now I’m going to give it away to strangers for free”. The whole “paying for something” thing is kinda antithetical to piracy in the first place. But again, there’s no real way to quantify this.

So you just dmit that you assume everything is stolen. That’s motivated reasoning, buddy.

Chozo
link
fedilink
11Y

We’re literally talking about piracy, so yes lmao

We’re literally talking about piracy, so yes lmao

So, according to you, piracy is stealing, because it has to be stolen at some point. And the reason that it must be stolen is because it is connected to piracy.

Don’t act surprised if you’re downvoted, if you present your circular logic this plainly.

Chozo
link
fedilink
11Y

So, according to you, piracy is stealing, because it has to be stolen at some point.

No, I never said anything of the sort. Piracy is stealing because you are taking something without paying the cost for it.

Don’t act surprised if you’re downvoted, if you present your circular logic this plainly.

I don’t care about downvotes from pirates with a Robin Hood complex. I’m on Kbin and most of them don’t sync to my instance, anyway.

@Prunebutt@feddit.de
link
fedilink
3
edit-2
1Y

When I steal a shoe, the shoe can’t besold anymore, because I have it. If I pirate a game, is there one less copy that steam can sell?

Piracy is categorically something else than stealing. Have you even read the original post?

Edit: If you really follow your logic strand, you would have to reach the conclusion that Sony stole content from their users.

Edit2:

No, I never said anything of the sort.

This u?

The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.

The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.

The origins of most of all western countries’ wealth comes from theft, full stop.

More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do.

That’s only the case for pre-Bluray release content. Most of it was just captured from rips, Amazon Prime or Netflix.

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
11
edit-2
1Y

And media costs money to make.

But not to copy, which is what you are asserting is being “stolen”. No one is claiming that turnstile jumpers are taking away money from train manufacturers. You’re having to mix analogies, because copying something isn’t theft.

Chozo
link
fedilink
41Y

I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse. The point is that in both examples, somebody is exploiting somebody else’s labor without paying.

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
9
edit-2
1Y

There is no labor in making digital copies.

You are trying to blur the line between the media/art/music/film, etc, and the reproductions of it.

Artists do deserve to be paid for their work, but artists do not deserve to maintain ownership over the already-sold assets, nor whatever happens to those assets afterwards (like copies made). If you want to say they should retain commercial rights for reproduction of it, sure, but resell of the originally-sold work (e.g. the mp3 file), and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work? Nah.

They didn’t put in labor towards that. To say they did expands “labor” far beyond any reasonable definition.

and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work?

But by this definition then, it should be ok for only one person to buy the item and then just copy and give it to everyone else, and the original author receives payment from a single item?

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
2
edit-2
1Y

If it comes from their copy, sure. But streaming proved that people won’t do that if they have a less onerous way to do it, whether it be Spotify or Netflix.

People only started reverting to piracy when services started cannibalizing access to content and demanding more money than the access was worth.

Most video games don’t contain DRM, and can be found as torrents online, and yet video game sales are through the roof.

You’re literally just rehashing all the tired MPAA/RIAA talking points claiming that piracy would kill music and movies, that never panned out despite piracy always still existing.

But streaming proved that people won’t do that if they have a less onerous way to do it, whether it be Spotify or Netflix.

This is true to an extent, but if you would have a legal streaming platform that is free with all the same content then everyone would use that, no? The only reason someone would want to pay for Netflix is to donate to Netflix because they like it. But we all know how small of a percentage that would be. Reason why people use streaming services is that they’re simple and legal, and they are willing to pay for it.

Most video games don’t contain DRM, and can be found as torrents online, and yet video game sales are through the roof.

True. Though literally no clue about how much DRM there is. However, if piracy is fully legal then there would be no reason to purchase the games (assuming they’re as convenient). People are prepared to pay for things that are legal.

You’re literally just rehashing all the tired MPAA/RIAA talking points claiming that piracy would kill music and movies, that never panned out despite piracy always still existing.

Not really. I am arguing against piracy being legal. I am not arguing that piracy in its current form is killing anything.

If it comes from their copy, sure.

As in this argument.

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
1
edit-2
1Y

As in this argument.

Yes, that was my point.

if you would have a legal streaming platform that is free with all the same content then everyone would use that, no?

Are you suggesting a case in which it’s funded by some billionaire who does not need to charge money in order to cover the cost of hosting? Because if not, we’re back in the “commercial use” territory that I already covered.

If it’s purely hypothetical in order to ask if people prefer free things, then sure, of course people prefer free. But people prefer convenient even more, as streaming shows.

Half the reason piracy took off in the days of Limewire and Napster is because the RIAA actually made agreements with the big music publishers not to sell their music on digital services, in order to prop up CD sales. When iTunes came along, it instantly ate up the vast majority of Limewire/Frostwire/IRC traffic for music.

Chozo
link
fedilink
31Y

You’re trying to blur the line between what is and what should be. We don’t live in an ideal world.

Yup, many people (like you) consider copyright morally okay, and many people (like me) consider copyright infringement morally okay.

Not an ideal world for either of us, I guess.

@Shambles@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
7
edit-2
1Y

I don’t get this logic at all. Piracy doesn’t take away a possible purchase. There is an assumption that the media downloaded was ever going to be paid for. In 100% of the cases where I downloaded pirated content, I was never going to pay for the product, even if it was available to me by other means. Further I cannot remove a sale from someone when I never possessed the money to pay for it anyway.

I believe most people that pirate cannot afford to buy digital releases or pay for streaming services etc… (not all cases of course). In these situations nobody loses. The media companies didn’t lose anything because I was never going to buy it, and it wasn’t stolen because they still possess the media.

Edit - I agree with you Lmaydev I replied to the wrong comment.

Create a post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 125 users / day
  • 289 users / week
  • 605 users / month
  • 2.26K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.36K Posts
  • 67.6K Comments
  • Modlog