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Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (pluralistic.net)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 7 points 2 years ago* (25 children)

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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (23 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (10 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (9 children)

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

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    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?

    This is a fair point. I doubt anybody would do this, or the monetization would be done through ads which might fall into the commercial aspect? Don't actually know, but this is already a thing and not something I was really thinking about. Relating to this actually, it would be interesting to know how much licencing fees are in comparison to server costs for the current streaming services.

    I was thinking something more like a program that just pulls data from torrents directly, so no need for a central server. Yes, probably not feasible using the current system as everyone would just leech, but maybe one would have to also share things you watch or something. Yes, again, this would complicate things but I don't think that is necessarily has to. I feel like there has been a service like this (popcorn time or something), I think I used something like this aaaaages ago.

    Definitely there would be technical challenges for something like this but to me it does not sound impossible. I just feel like that if something like this system would exist (if piracy were legal), it would completely nuke the cash flow for tons of companies. It would not remove all of it, some people would donate just like they do for open source projects.

    At least for me personally, I am willing to pay for stuff in order for it to be legal. Should the need to pay be removed, while keeping things legal, I'd have no incentive to pay. The only incentive would be convenience, but I don't think there would be any reason for piracy to be less convenient than non-piracy; it's already more convenient for tons of use cases I'm sure.

    When iTunes came along, it instantly ate up the vast majority of Limewire/Frostwire/IRC traffic for music.

    Definitely true, just as happened with movies etc when Netflix and the like popped up. However, one can also argue that this was not due to convenience, but due to now there being a legal way of doing things. In reality I'm sure that everyone weighs legality and convenience (and the cost of the service) differently and makes their own decision.

    Currently the convenience factor is going down due to enshittification (among other things), while price is going up. I feel like piracy is up but it's not like I can get a non-biased view from Lemmy (or reddit) and I have not actually looked into it.

    It'll be interesting to see the direction in a few years.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

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

    Rips do exist, ya know?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (4 children)

    We're literally talking about piracy, so yes lmao

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

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

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

    These are not the same statement. You're getting the before and after mixed up, likely on purpose.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    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.

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