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Buying something is owning. That has never changed.
You don't purchase digital goods. You buy a license to use them, under the conditions you agreed to. Piracy explicitly breaks those conditions 99.9% of the time.
So no, it isn't stealing. It's just plainly illegal. And it hurts everyone from the original artist to the multi-billion dollar company that distributes it. Whether you think that is immoral or not is up to you.
Yes, that is the small text they use to justify it, but that's not how they advertise it. When Amazon Prime wants me to pay for a movie it doesn't say "License it now!" It says "Buy it now!"
If you go digging into the EULA you'll see it being called a license, but no effort is made to actually make that clear to the customer.
Furthermore, being technically legal doesn't make it acceptable. If someone opened a bookstore, and put some treatment on all their books that caused them to suddenly disintegrate after a year, it doesn't matter if they have on all their receipts that "books are not guaranteed to last longer than a year" or that they "aren't doing anything illegal". It's still a bullshit business practice that shouldn't be tolerated.
When it says "buy it" you asuume the it refers to the content - they'd probably argue it refers to the license.
It’s worth stating this has basically always been true for books. You can buy paper. Buying bound paper with words on it is not quite the same. You can’t produce a movie from that idea, and state “I invented this idea from a bundle of bound pages I bought, that already had some words on them.”
You never owned the original reproduction rights to the book’s content. That never mattered much until copying and pasting became so easy.
Huh. Never quite looked at it that way, but you are right. I can see how physical book is a form of a license to read a literary work. It is however naturally impossible to revoke. It would be the same if digital content had no DRM - which is generally not the case.
So I guess DRM and you not being able to download and use content outside the company's ecosystem is the real issue here.
You can buy those movies on physical medium though.
Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha.
Bro is just incredible how there is people defending this multibillions dollars companies. The studios don't care about the author or the creator. They don't care about the actresses or the singers. They don't care about you as the consumer of this media. They only care about PROFIT.
Sources :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hollywood_labor_disputes
https://apnews.com/article/actors-strike-ends-hollywood-5769ab584bca99fe708c67d00d2ec241
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/17/business/hollywood-actors-sag-aftra-strike-by-the-numbers/index.html
As you can see these executives are not compensating the actors , the writers. The actual creators of these movies and series you said " wE sHoUldN't pIrAtE" are not even getting their good deal and let's not talk about the music industry which is the same or worst situation for the creators.
I don't see how piracy hurts anyone.
Some pirates just want a free demo before they buy it, others pirate stuff they already bought for convenience reasons, or decide to pay for a license if they like it and want to support the creators, and the third type of pirate never would've bought anything to begin with, so no lost sales in any conceivable way.
So it doesn't hurt the content creator because a minority of pirates actually compensate them for their work?
If piracy didn't exist at all the "never would've bought it" people wouldn't have a choice but to compensate the content creators in order to enjoy their work. They probably wouldn't buy all the content that they consume at the moment and would instead be playing less games or watching less movies, but they would still be doing something with their free time and money and it would profit others (and potentially themselves).
Those are valid points, I agree.
I think we have to get to the bottom of why people pirate things. Some just don't give a fuck and want everything for free, even though they could afford it. Being pissed at those people as a content creator is perfectly understandable, everyone should be fairly compensated for their work.
It's just that when companies do their best to make being a legitimate buyer an objectively bad experience, that's a point where I'm not opposed to piracy at all. Adobe comes to mind. Fuck those guys, they just ruin everything.
But if we look at video games, Steam has become so nice over the years that many people rather buy there than to pirate, which says a lot.
What's funny about that is that people don't own anything they buy on Steam either. Valve can turn around and ban your account for no reason and you'll have no recourse against them. They have complete control over the distribution of content through their platform, not the users. They (and probably the publishers as well) can decide to remove a game from their servers completely and it will be just too bad for you if you purchased it.
Yeah, you don't own anything you buy there.
(Well, some games on Steam are in fact completely DRM-free, but that's another story)The main difference is that Steam is overall so much more customer friendly than say Ubisoft or EA, to the point these other stores realized they can't miss out on the sales they get by distributing their games there.
Steam offers a lot more features and ways to deal with your games. For example, once you're logged in, you can still access your games even when offline, which other launchers don't allow you to do. Infuriating when the internet is down and you thought you could still play one of your singleplayer titles.
And they even go so far as to still provide games that were taken down to those who bought them before, which I don't think any other platform does.
But in the context of the current conversation, Steam is no better than any other option that isn't DRM free (there are DRM free games on Steam but you can't download the installer itself, you download the game through Steam and then can copy the install folder elsewhere as backup).
Yeah, I was just trying to say that maybe piracy would be less of a problem if customers were actually respected
Do you know any platform that only offers digital stuff that's not buyable in a "good" way? Because I don't. That pirates pretend to ride some moral high horse is a cope that's incredibly disrespectful towards creators.
I feel in online communities like the Fediverse there is an active community of people who do not respect work of people who aren't working in tech or science. Or maybe it's predominantly a disrespect for creatives? I see this in discussions about AI image generators as well. And it's basically the same set of arguments that try to suggest artist should work for free.
They just have to add "get a real job and do your hobbies in your free time" and we have full circled back into the boomer mindset.
I'm gonna draw a hard line though, one between individual creators who do honest and fair work, and big corporations that exploit anyone who wants or needs to aquire their products legitimately.
Because legal or not, what some companies are doing is just completely fucked. Again, Adobe.
Yes, there's a million reasons to rationalize piracy to yourself.
I think it's fair to say that, at least occasionally, one of those reasons isn't true and it hurts the creator.
It's just my impression of things based on what I've seen, but if that's objectively wrong, I want to learn why
And on the general topic of rationalizing piracy:
Don't get me wrong here, it is within the sellers rights to impose rules and restrictions about how the product is to be used. That's not a bad thing per se.But some of these restrictions are just stupid, and only hurt legitimate customers.
Sure, take me for example: I've pirated movies which I very well could have paid for, but just didn't want to.
Yes, I agree that sellers can impose those restrictions. Yes, I agree that those restrictions can hurt legitimate customers.
We have another one.
Slavery used to be legal. So it was okay?
Right now „selling“ stuff and saying its just a license you fool is legal so it is okay?
That is a false equivalence, and I think you know that.
Feel free to point out where because thats exactly what people mean by the phrase in the post.
Comparing slavery to purchasing digital media might be a good place to start.
Its unimportant which example you use.
The underlying principle is legal ≠ correct. Just because something is legal, its not necessarily morally or otherwise correct.
Selling a movie to someone and calling it a license is highly manipulative and I think you know that.
Yes, I said from the start that it might not be moral.
But that's exactly the point: companies sell movies to theaters, and then those theaters sell tickets to each viewer. That's the license they each agreed to. A theater buying a movie off Amazon and then selling tickets to everyone who watched it would probably make some people upset, and would very clearly be illegal.
Talk about mental gymnastics.
You cant sell a limited time license. That is rent, plain and simple. If you pay 3 years rent at once or monthly, its still rent.
If you pay for something and have to give it back, you dont actually become the „owner“.
And thats why people say if buying isnt owning, piracy isnt theft, plain and simple.
Renting generally refers to physical goods, with the following property: when it’s being used by one party, it’s unavailable to everyone else.
For intellectual property, things that can be used by N people without interference between them, the term limited license is correct.
Its still manipulative to call it „selling“ or „owning“.
What's funny about your bad equivalency is that pirating is treating the people who created the content as slaves since you're enjoying the fruit of their labour without compensating them.
This user you interacted with here, went on to describe this conversation as you “abusing” and “manipulating” them. They claimed that you were a troll, and started a huge thread in the Fediverse community about expanding ban powers and purging the world of people they disagree with.
My god it’s a discussion thread on the internet, with two people disagreeing. This is what they consider trolling and abuse now.
Look at how they responded to you disagreeing with them: https://lemmy.giftedmc.com/post/204629
Wow...
And another one. There are a lot more and better ways to compensate an artist than giving money to record companies.
Besides that, I‘m not saying dont buy artistic work, I‘m saying please pirate products of companies that try to bullshit their customers.
Ok, realistically, how many pirates turn around and send money to the creators, making sure that all the people involved in the creation of the content are compensated for their work?
You don't want to admit it but in the end you're still taking money from the creators and if everyone was doing that then no one would create content.
I hope pirates are happy that some people keep paying for shit.
You‘re not answering my comment but repeating a set of beliefs. If you want to discuss stuff, feel free to. Otherwise kindly move along.
You're saying there are better ways to compensate the creators, I'm saying no pirates do it, especially not in a way that would make them legally allowed to have a copy of the creators' work.
If you don't want to buy a CD because you don't want the record label to profit from your purchase and you instead buy a t-shirt and go see a show, it doesn't give you the right to have a digital copy of the artist's songs. What you bought is the right to see a show and to own a t-shirt and downloading a copy of their album is still taking money from the artists and all the people that worked on it.
Referencing one point of my many arguments is not a discussion.
„Selling“ limited licences should be illegal but isnt. Legal does (evidently) not mean morally or otherwise okay. Supporting artists does not mean buying bad products, you cant prove that no pirates buy merch or use alternative methods to support creators, therefore I‘ll just ignore your statement.
You were the one trying to derail the topic to a cd or movie, which is not what I said.
Here's your whole argument:
`And another one. There are a lot more and better ways to compensate an artist than giving money to record companies.
Besides that, I‘m not saying dont buy artistic work, I‘m saying please pirate products of companies that try to bullshit their customers.`
I'm refuting the first part (which is your main argument because the second part is just another way to say the exact same thing) and my rebuttal also covers your second point (you're punish the creators that have nothing to do with the company that's doing bullshit).
You can't prove that pirates do compensate the creators either so your argument is moot if mine is. The only way to legally have the creators content on hand is but purchasing it (license or full ownership), no other form of compensation allows you to have those files or compensates ALL the people involved.
As for derailing the conversation, you're the first one who mentioned artists and compensating them in other ways, which, if you can be honest for 30 seconds, isn't something that exists in the video game world.
In the end, it's on you to just not play games that are distributed in a way that makes you reliant on a third party. Just because you're mad it doesn't make it ok to enjoy the work of the people who created the games that are distributed in a way you disagree with without compensating them.
Many words for something you could have said in three sentences.
You obviously dont know how to prove something. I would have to prove someone has pirated something (if thats how we define pirate) and then prove they have done whatever to compensate the creator, e.g. buy merch, subscribe on patreon or otherwise send them money.
And no, it is not my main argument. My main argument was that calling a limited license „buying“ or „owning“ is manipulative and should be illegal, therefore pirating products from a company using these tactics is ok.
For fuck's sake, what have YOU proven so far? You're the one who brought up "alternative compensations", yet you can't prove that's something that happens or that it makes you legally entitled to own the media created by the people you're compensating in this alternative way.
Pirating is only ok if you decide to ignore the fact that the creators have a right to make a living. If you think they don't then you're no better than a slaver as you're talking their work and enjoying it while they're left without any form of compensation in return. The responsibility is on your as a consumer to say "This product is distributed in a way I disagree with therefore I will do without it." and you can contact the creators/publisher to tell them how you feel. The second you open your eyes and see the human element you have no moral ground to stand on and from the get go you already know you don't have any legal ground to stand on either.
In the end you're just treating people in a way you would never accept to get treated yourself.
https://lemmy.giftedmc.com/post/204629
Wow, you're a big baby aren't you?
Let me solve that for you by blocking you 😘
Yeah, feel free to. Always happy for one abusive person less in my lemmy experience. Reported, blocked.
they supposedly bloced me, too.
some people cant stand the cognitive dissonance that comes with learning they were wrong.
Considering that this account has never before interacted with me and immediately went there, they either used an alt or have severe issues with impulse control and abusive behavior.
no, it's not
What do you call it if you work to create something for someone and that person decides that what you created is theirs for free and you don't have a say in the matter?
Because that's exactly what slavery is and that's exactly what pirates do.
If you disagree you should mention it to your boss because I'm sure they would be very happy to know that!