I work with photographers. All of them get screwed daily by newspapers and big corporations using their pictures without paying the (typically $50 once for unlimited online use) license fee.

You wouldn't steal a DVD. But if greedy megacorps are stealing from you, would you steal from them in return?

Should Disney get paid for works they didn't pay for themselves?

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/06/disney-is-still-trying-t...

If I could pirate a car I would do it so fast, in fact, that's sort of the future people envision with 3D printing.

The whole anti-piracy message is really difficult for people to take in because they simply cannot perceive the losses. And I mean, telling someone "but you could have been a potential sale that has been lost" is not very convincing. I think rarely a pirate will resort to buying instead of, well, simply waiting.

Pirating is really easy, specially movies and tv shows, and most of the time people don't really think they're doing something wrong. I think a big part of it is that lots of us have grown up with TV where the perceived cost is zero. When you go into these websites that host pirated series they are full of ads; in a way, it feels similar to TV to the end user.

also movies, shows and music is full of ads

Something i dont see here is the simple fact that not everyone can get it legally. I'm from small country in europe and netflix for example is here from 5 or so years, before that if you want a movie there is a really big chance that movie to not be on local market on DVD (VHS before that) so your only option is pirating. Same goes for software and games, sometimes you cant get that from store.

Sometimes these DVDs have some nasty DRM even if you buy it from other country you cant watch it, so again, pirating is the only option millions of people have.

- Piracy is, for the majority of the people who practice it, a matter of convenience -- can't find the movie on DVD or Netflix is the usual scenario. Sure there are people who want to have everything for free but the anti-piracy PR has inflated their share and made them look like the majority. That is simply not true and never was.

- Even if Skynet came tomorrow and made pirating technically truly impossible, income from rented movies or streaming services will likely increase just by few percent and never move up. Most people who pirated before will simply stop consuming media. This is another thing that the right-holders ALWAYS get wrong: they think they can force people into buying things. There's only so much pressure you can apply before people simply turn their backs and leave.

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I get it, the corporations are scared that piracy will become commonplace so they periodically take measures to limit it. But their PR and actions are panicky and often heavy-handed. IMO long-term they achieve the opposite effect.

I've personally spoken with people who said they never pirated before but that they will start because seeing what the companies do makes them believe that all their legally bought movies can be made illegal at any point because the company wants a fresh stream of revenue, or lobby for laws that disallow lending to your neighbor, etc.

Are these valid concerns? No clue, I'm not an expert -- they are likely not but it hardly even matters. Because people can and do draw these conclusions in response to the anti-piracy measures.

The main reason they fail is that they only get seen by people who are not pirating. People who get their media illegally do not see these messages.

It's like if Amazon only showed me adverts for things I've already bought...oh, wait...bad example.

I don't think these ads have any effect in the direction intended, but I do share the feeling of absurdity in that I only see these ads when watching a DVD that I've already purchased.