> piracy
> 2. fig. The appropriation and reproduction of an invention or work of another for one's own profit, without authority; infringement of the rights conferred by a patent or copyright.
> 1771: Luckombe Hist. Print. 76 “They..would suffer by this act of piracy, since it was likely to prove a very bad edition.”
> 1808: Med. Jrnl. XIX. 520 “He is charged with `Literary Piracy', and an `unprincipled suppression of the source from whence he drew his information'.”
> 1855: Brewster Newton I. iv. 71 “With the view of securing his invention of the telescope from foreign piracy.”
https://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-video-urges-advertise...
So exactly what should happen with regard to consumption of digital content that's expensive to produce but basically free to distribute? I'm not really sure, nothing that's been done yet seems quite right.
Old-school pay big $$$ to own a copy doesn't seem to work very well, when most of the money is going to fatcat corporations that don't add any value, and "own" in the context of digital services that get turned off or moved on a whim doesn't seem very good.
Piracy channels work great for the end-user, but nobody knows how to get money to the artist and producer when distributing through these channels.
Subscription services seem kind of okay. At least until they either split into hundreds of them and you end up paying even more, or it consolidates into a couple of big ones who exert the same forces, especially regarding effective censorship for lack of willingness to take a chance on something risky, as the old guard did.
*from the 1660's https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/462700/what-is-t...
People going to prison for copying movies is disgusting and immoral.
One can argue that it represents an economic loss insofar as the person who stole it isn't going to buy a copy now, but a response you often hear to that is relatively few who pirate content would have paid for the content if piracy were unavailable.
But that's totally irrelevant to this conversation. If the theater is charging $5, or $2, you still can't just sneak in the back door without paying.
Like, people can argue if it's as bad as theft or not as bad than theft (I would definitely argue that it's substantially less bad than theft, but I know that some people would disagree), but no matter what, such an action is not theft, it's something else.
Replace "movie theater" with Disneyland. Is it not theft to sneak into Disneyland without purchasing a ticket, even on its slowest day of the year?
Is this the right thing to do? Is this something you should be doing? Is this something you feel you have the right to do?
Remember that I didn't mention anything about economic loss.
People have said it better than me, but in short: Disney and friends have legally stolen public domain from all of us and erected a barrier between us and our human right to access to our culture. I therefore consider it my moral right to take back what should be mine - I may not have the means to buy the laws that would make it legal, but I have the technical means to do it and therefore I do.
So yes, I consider it the right thing to do. Civil disobedience, if you will.
I don't really consume TV or movies.
I do listen to music, and lots of it. I have a YouTube Red subscription (or whatever Google has decided to rename it this week), mostly for supporting small creators on Youtube (when they don't have a Patreon / I don't watch enough of their stuff to fit them in on Patreon). So basically all music from major labels I listen to, I do through Youtube (or Youtube Music, when I remember to open the right app up). But that's a small fraction of my listening habits.
Mostly I like stuff from small, independent artists - a lot of which I've discovered through Youtube, and a lot of those Youtube videos were probably copyright infringement (unauthorized uploads). If I listen to something more than a few times, I buy it on Bandcamp- last month I spent over $100 on Bandcamp purchases.
For creators I really love, as mentioned earlier, I fund them directly on Patreon. This adds up to over another $100/month.
If I dropped the YouTube Red subscription - which is, due to their comically low revenue share, practically indistinguishable from piracy for artists in economic terms - I don't think I'd be in a meaningfully different position, ethically, if I chose to continue consuming music from major labels without a license.
On the other hand, if I stopped buying things on Bandcamp and instead listened to music from small artists through YouTube Red, I'd feel awful, and I'd consider that to be rather unethical, even though I'd have a license.
Whether or not I believe it's the right thing to do seems like it'd depend on how much respect I have for copyright law, and whether any harm it causes is sufficiently abhorrent to me according to my personal ethics.
The economic argument is part of assessing the harm it causes.
Oh, you mean you're trying to say unauthorized copying is unethical? Oh, darn it, scratch that. Sorry!
Scenario A) 5000 people paid and enjoyed it
Scenario B) 4500 people paid and enjoyed it 50000 people enjoyed it without paying.
We can pretend that the percentage lost is equally taken from all people that participated in the production but it beggars belief to imagine bobby the grip got paid less because you pirated Indiana Jones. The reality is that the funds earned from the creative efforts aren't divided like friends sharing a Pizza gains and losses overwhelmingly hit the pockets of those whose interests in the matter are directorial or financial.
Ultimately creative work already enjoy such a ridiculously slanted treatment with insane punishments, public resources invested in policing, and terms that perfect enforcement would yield such a very small increase in utility for companies focused on creative work and much less for those actually engaged in it that it isn't worth the decrease in utility gained by more free distribution of creative works.
Fuck fairness if it results in a net negative utility for society I'm not interested in promoting a schoolyard notion of fairness at the expense of society.
Some philosophers (like Max Stirner) would argue that not only are those questions irrelevant, but that their whole basis (morality and right) are categories which become real and exert their influence only due to our own reification of them. That is to say, to someone unconvinced of morality (and in particular what other people say about morality), and further unconvinced by the legitimacy of the state and its opposition to the individual, the questions would be laughable if only it weren't so tragic that to many they extert their control over us and we let them.
So.... the smartass "just took a cookie" the hard worker just spent time and money for everything else ;)
Bill Gates made a ton of money and wasn't necessarily following either law or moral guidelines to do so.
The success enjoyed by Bill Gates was hard earned. Success is a destination at the end of a journey that is too hard for a lot of people.
Bill Gates' software is some of the most pirated software ever.
Bill Gates is one of the richest people ever.
Can anyone become anywhere near that scale of rich without being morally or ethically bankrupt?
What crime 'piracy' in comparison to the business practices of the highly successful / profitable / rich?
I don't know the answer to those questions, and I don't pass judgement as it's subjective, but they're the places my mind went in relation to your comment.
Rich people convinced other rich people that it would be a good idea to let rich people decide which bits I'm allowed to transmit to you in order to maximize the revenue of people who for the most part are in the business of licensing creative work not actually doing it.
With zero chances of influencing the law on this or most other issues I can either choose to be a slave to it or not.
Only slaves and cowards obey their masters even when they aren't being watched.
I jaywalk too when its safe to do so. "Find me in New York for this quarter!"
The creators like myself you valorize don’t exist in a vacuum. If distributors who finance the projects upfront with risk capital don’t get paid then there is nobody to pay me for making content and thus content does not get made. Financing the speculative production of a movie or tv series is inherently high risk.
Let me flip the script a little michaelmrose. What do you do for your money and why should you not have to do it for me for free?
That's kind of the point. Whether I pirate your work and watch it or I watch paint dry for an hour doesn't affect your bottom line, because you weren't going to get my money either way.
It really doesn't matter what I do. My employment is an arrangement for services rendered same as yours. At the absurd limit where nobody paid for anything and absolutely everyone pirated everything nobody would be forcing you to work for free. Your employer in that scenario would have totally and wholly failed to secure an arrangement with customers to voluntarily transfer their money to your employers pockets and thus justify their existence. You wouldn't work for free you would just do something else.
In reality if its really easy to pay and even mildly frustrating to pirate it seems like a reasonable balance of paying customers and freeloaders is apt to make you all healthy and wealthy.
Definition of theft
1a : the act of stealing specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
Much like violating copyright isn't similar in nature to commandeering ships on the high seas its not much similar to the taking of real property in that the owner isn't deprived of anything and in fact is wholly unaffected and absent from the transaction.
Actual property is the necessary resolution of the inherently rivalrous nature of property while Copyright is mandate that I limit what data I transmit to another party so as to avoid transmitting any patterns of bits that could reasonably be argued to be owned by any entity on the premise that this limitation will create an intangible good that can serve as an incentive to encourage creators to trade in it.
If congress contrary to the rest of our interests grants you sole ownership of the color red I wont be a thief if I opt to paint my house that color.
Really this is a tired subject having been debated endlessly since the 70s. Anyone still using it is apt to have staked out their position and decided they care more about the emotional import of the word thief than reasoned argument.
> Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
> WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?
> Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.
It equates a completely non-violent act with a very violent act that was once a capital crime.