this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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And more importantly, did Netflix pay the creators a greater amount for the relatively little amount of money they were charging you? Was Netflix more moral because of their treatment of employees? Is that why it allegedly killed piracy?
What's that? No? It was just convenient and cheap? I guess it is, once again, just about you not wanting to pay money for things other people make.
spotify basically killing services like limewire? Netflix being incredibly popular because it was a good service?
Piracy is literally just a basic supply and demand driving force. You supply content that's easily accessible, for a fair price and people will pay for it, it's as simple as that.
I can't say much about netflix originals, but any of the licensed content would've already been paid for. Netflix currently sucks, and that's not really what we're talking about, though there is a conversation to be had there.
if this was the case why would we see piracy decline over the last decade, only to see it increase noticeably in the last 4-5 years or so.
I thought you said that "piracy made the music industry be reasonable." Spotify basically killing limewire is not evidence of that any more than saying radio made the music industry be reasonable since it's just as killed.
Look up "residuals"
Because streaming services have been charging more for less content, as the content owners have come to realize how much streaming cannibalizes purchases from other revenue streams.
I'm not trying to argue that people don't pirate less when there are cheap convenient services available. I agree with that. But that's just people behaving in their own self-interest, not some moral good about fighting big companies or other stuff pirates say to feel better about it.
I accept that people do selfish things, just as I accept when people jump the turnstile in the subway without paying their share. What I don't accept is the self-righteous pirates who try to act like they're doing something good for society, like I should be thanking them for downloading the shows I helped pay for, and pretending that it has no impact whatsoever on the people who depend on that for their income.
why do you think people were pirating music instead of buying albums? Why do you think spotify immediately picked up lots of users instead of people just pirating, it's basic free market swings.
yeah, and people don't like getting stiffed.
you could argue it's self interest based, but fucking anything anybody does ever is self interest based. There is no world where someone does something that isn't self interest based in even the littlest of quantities.
I'm not saying it's moral, you can argue about the morality of it all you want, but at the end of the day, i think archival is more morally respectable than killing content and removing it from the market permanently for no other reason than "haha funny"
Killing people is morally bad, killing people who kill other people is morally good. (generally)
my primary argument is that it's basic market forces driving it, arguing about morals is just appeal to the corporation for producing bad market products. If you want to appeal to someone, go donate money to the unions for actors or whatever. Go support an indie film, go donate money directly to people whom you like and support.
how can you disagree with this? There are SO many examples of piracy done for the good of either, the public, or human history.
For example, there used to be a website that hosted all kinds of repair and service manuals for medical devices. It was DMCAd and then taken down. This website, arguably helped to save the lives of tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people throughout the years.
What about libgen? The entire purposes of this project is to bring works into the field of public access for nothing other then the benefit of the common person.
What about the darkweb for people who live in places that are overly persecutory, not exactly piracy, but distributing religious works in places where religion is restricted is equally as important for internet pirates as is archiving a culturally relevant TV show.
what if for example, you were, idk let's say, watching community, the iconic TV show, on a streaming service, because to my knowledge, they don't produce blurays of it anymore (it's on amazon, but i've seen it disappear before so) or maybe you just don't like blurays because optical media sucks, and bluray players are terrible. Or perhaps, like me you like a heavily integrated content system that you have full control over. Such that you can watch the content in full resolution, without being restricted, or being hit with a terrible UI, or having to deal with a logged in service, that has to have internet access. Sure you could rip a bluray, but if you think that's easy you've never tried.
Only to discover that they've pulled a few episodes, and they're considered to be "lost media" or something. Now what? You're gonna buy the bluray, and deal with using a secondary form of media just for the one episode that they pulled?
What about shows like mythbusters, which to my knowledge, have NEVER been released on physical media (though i believe they recently sold the video rights to another corpo, so maybe that already happened, or it will happen soon? IDK)
here's a fun fact, discovery+ is a terrible platform, genuinely awful video player, better hope you don't want to do any player customization what so ever. Maybe you don't feel like watching it stretched? Oops, too bad, you can only watch it stretched.
Also to be clear, i'm not saying you should thank me for shit you don't care about, that's fine. You'll find something someone archived some day and be happy that it was archived by someone like me, and really appreciate the work they've done. I'm just saying you probably shouldn't be so defensive about it. Pirates are defensive about it because the industry fucking sucks. The law fucking sucks, and politics fucking sucks. We're doing what we can the best that we can. It's not about people like you, it's about corpos like disney.
there have been a few studies regarding this topic, there was one study in the EU that was done, and it's circulated on the darknet every so often, claiming that piracy has a minimal impact. For music artists? A lot of them have material on bandcamp, or independently released services. And it's also just a fucking wav file I'm perfectly ok with paying money for music from an artist that i like and support. Primarily because it's just a WAV file, and i can just put it into a music player. That's all i need. A lot of people go to shows and buy merch or other physical garb. I'd give money directly to artists if they let me. Numerous times artists have released their music on torrents, and had it be rather successful.
There are also artists with rather hard to find albums and titles like woob, who pull entire albums. The collectors CD market is a little bit fucked. I'm not paying some random dude 50 USD for a CD of one album just because it's rare. That money doesn't even support the artist.
My single favorite thing about the internet, is that if i decided that i wanted to learn about metal casting in the early 1900's and late 1800's that i can pull up the internet archive, find some material written about it that's been archived, and then just fucking read it. There's all kinds of shit out there that's akin to that, which arguably constitutes as piracy, but is for the public good regardless.
I want an engineering tables book? That's just fucking out there, and i can have it. A book about machining? Again it's all just out there.
Steam, case in point. You can find cracked games fairly easily, there's even games entirely lacking drm that could be passed around effortlessly
But steam is very convenient, the prices are reasonable, and they have good customer support. That's enough that even people who pirate switch games buy pc games on the same device
Which is my point. People do things which are cheap and convenient because it is in their self interest. They stop pirating for selfish reasons just as they were pirating for selfish reasons.
Which is why I can't stand self-righteous pirates who try and convince themselves and everyone else that they aren't actually doing it selfishly, they're doing it for some fabricated moral good and we should be thanking them for their service, that they're fighting corporations somehow, and pretending that they aren't withholding money from the people who spent the time making the things they enjoy.
I'm not going to say pirating is some morally superior act, but there is something to be said for refusing to support companies that have user-hostile distribution
And I don't think that act is cheapened by accessing the content anyways - yes, you are not contributing to the creators while enjoying their content. If you weren't going to pay into the stream that they get a small part of anyways, then you're not costing them anything - if you wouldn't have bought it and didn't, it's the same result on their end either way
Ultimately it goes back to piracy being a problem of accessibility, and rejecting an inaccessible service is the moral part, I see the piracy in this context as just neutral
The problem is when people claim they were never going to buy an awful lot of content. If someone spends a significant amount of time playing, or consuming, pirated content, I call bullshit. They would have bought at least some of it if they weren't getting so much stuff for free. Considering the rewards and lack of consequences, I doubt the vast majority of people pirating are being really honest with themselves about what they "would never have" paid for, and instead use it as a simple excuse for bad behavior.
And rejecting a service you don't consider worth it isn't moral. That's just basic capitalism and self-interest. That's the standard decision to not buy something, which is a decision people make literally dozens of times when they go in the store. And pirating that content anyways certainly doesn't make it any more moral.
There's many reasons people pirate - sometimes it's a matter of means & availability, sometimes it's a matter of controlling their paid-for content (like people who actually buy switch games but want to run them on their steam deck), and sometimes it's basically a hobby
Some people would surely buy some games if piracy wasn't on the table (assuming the terms were unacceptable to them), but I used to rewatch the same things and play the same games endlessly. I think the vast majority would do without
This seems to be our core difference. I don't think capitalism is a moral system, and "enlightened self interest" only works with equity of opportunity and fierce competition - that's not the world we live in. And even then, I don't think it's a very ethical moral framework
I see supporting a service hostile to users as immoral - it's like enabling an abuser, however slight, you're contributing to behaviors that are a detriment to others
Very little of that justifies it to me. For means & availability, this isn't a mother stealing baby formula. Pirated content isn't a need (though I'd make an exception for things like school books). There's plenty of content made to be free and available, as well as libraries. And I'm completely fine with people pirating copies of paid-for content; there's an argument to be made that that isn't actually piracy and is personal archiving. It probably doesn't need to be said that "hobby" is not a justification in the least, just like people who shoplift for the thrill.
To me the real crux is that you believe that not doing something immoral is the same thing as doing something moral. Me sitting here is moral because I'm not murdering someone. Yay me. I'm also not blackmailing, gaslighting, stealing, etc. etc. Me sitting here might be the most moral thing anyone has ever done.
To me the case for the absence of activity actually being moral is it requires some amount of sacrifice to continue to do the right thing. Avoiding going to Walmart to support a local business, even if you pay more and it's further away. The difference between not wanting to see a movie and boycotting it. There's nothing moral about not going to a movie you didn't want to see. But I think it is moral to avoid going to a movie you wanted to because of labor practices; you made a sacrifice in support of your beliefs. If you then go and pirate said movie, it's indistinguishable from selfish behavior.
As I've said in other spots, if it's genuinely about not supporting hostile services and not about self-interest, donate however much you're saving by pirating to a union or charity. That's completely fair. But if not, all I see is people acting in their self interest and trying to justify it by saying that they are doing a bad thing to bad people so it's okay (and maybe they're doing a little bad to some good people as well, but that's a price you're willing to have them pay for you).