This allows the following hypothetical situation: 1. You buy content A from producer X through a company 1 2. Producer X and company 1 decides to finish the distribution agreement for whatever reason 3. Company 1 revokes your access to content A. 4. Now producer X seals a deal with Company 2 for distribution rights and company 2 has no obligation on giving you access to content A, because why would they. 5. If you want access content A now you have to buy it again from company 2 without guarantee that it will still exist.
Right, _access_. To the companies selling cloud content, like a movie or song that can only be used with the internet, you're just buying _access_ to the content.
Because the TOS means they can restrict that access or remove the content, you're really just paying for a key to a door that may or may not exist, to something in the building that may or may not be there, and that building may someday not even be there.
You're really paying for the right to access something as long as the underlying capability enabling that right exists. It's the kind of thing that allows a lot of wiggle room for the sellers and holders of the content.
This is why I prefer buying physical copies of media, like DVDs and CDs. It's mine for as long as I can manage it or a personal copy of it.
Copying something for personal use is perfectly legal, it's the distribution of those copies to the public en masse that most people end up tripping on.
If you just want to archive your collection of optical disks onto a NAS for personal use, you can legally do that.
0 - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23...
I started my MP3 collection in the late 1990s as CDs became practical and computers finally got to the point they could rip them. A while back I even went fully legit and stripped out all the, ah, "stuff of dubious provenance", or, err, you know, a friend may have done that. The first streaming music service I've ever used was about a year ago and I'm still using it more for discovery than as my actual music service, because as a result of ~25 years of personal collection building, I don't need a streaming service to have probably something on the order of two week straight's worth of music I like. With a lot of stuff no streaming service has, and that not because I'm some sort of exotic collector but just because I have things that were popular enough at the time but just never made it.
By contrast, if all you did was pay for a subscription music service, you're completely beholden to them.
Obviously I can claim no "credit" here; I didn't "bail out" of a bad deal in 1998, because that "bad deal" wouldn't exist for another decade and a half or so. But the fact I didn't do it out of any sort of foresight doesn't mean I don't end with the same benefits.
More recently, I've been digging myself out of the video subscription crappile, and doing more purchase of media instead of using video streaming services. Again, I had a buildup from the pre-streaming era I could carry in which helps, but at the rate I watch movies anyhow it turns out the delta between just buying things as they strike me and streaming them is not very large in dollar terms. (I don't buy very many things on release day, I do a lot of bargain bin surfing for things.)
I'm not saying this to brag, I'm saying it to show the point. It extends to a lot of things. Best way not to get stuck with subscription features on your car is to put your foot down day one and say I'm not buying that. And this extends to so many things in life; as we correctly tell our children, best way not to get addicted to any drugs is to never touch them at all, and that's not because of the obvious logical fact that if you never do dose 1 you'll never get to dose 1,283, but because there really is a slope there. It's a very applicable principle.
Note, slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of actual slippery slopes in real life. It merely means the fact that you are on a slippery slope can not be correctly logically argued to imply the 100% probability of slipping further down. But I'm not even making a logical argument here in that sense. I'm just pointing out that there are rather a lot of slippery slopes, and this includes some that are really hard to see because they're brand new. In 2001, there simply wasn't anybody 20 years down the slippery slope of using DRM'd hardware who could metaphorically yell up to those of us at the top to tell us "Hey, this kinda sucks! Try to avoid this!"
This is one of the greatest challenges of living in the late 20th and 21st centuries, honestly. The foresight to look at something like "paying for a video subscription" and thinking to look 20 years down the road at what happens if everyone does this is rare, and not terribly well respected when found.
Anyhow, back here on practical Earth land, I really do recommend that everyone who is even slightly interested look into Plex or an equivalent service, because you can turn this process on its head, too. Half-heartedly start acquiring your favorite media physically when you see it on discount for a couple of years and get it into a Plex setup, and before you know it you're far enough down that slope that the idea of being independent suddenly doesn't seem so absurd. You can also use the principle of a slow buildup over time that adds up to more than you'd expect in your favor, too.
I don't want to bring out the psych again but i cant help it. I'd wager that until this point if you didn't or don't have your own physical collection its because of your personality makeup. Since these rug-pulls haven't been going on as often as they have in the last few years, if you've been happy being 'pragmatic' and taking what the services have to offer then you aren't as 'idealistic', otherwise refusing to compromise since you down 'own' a copy. Likewise if you're a 'big-picture' thinker you can't stand the chance that things become unavailable due to forces unseen, whereas if you 'think-small' then theres no real risk and we can take companies word at face value.
Of course maximal pragmatism would just be to download it. People are plenty willing to share for free, so paying is a form of idealism.
In either case the argument isn't clear what traits are really responsible for the behavior, i cant say i have a solid case either. I'd also wager disagreeability to play a huge role.
You still chose to keep your collection instead of jumping onto streaming only as many did for convenience.
> Note, slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of actual slippery slopes in real life. It merely means the fact that you are on a slippery slope can not be correctly logically argued to imply the 100% probability of slipping further down.
The slippery slope isn't a logical fallacy at all. It's just an observation at even small steps towards the undesirable can often result in an avalanche that you are unable to stop by the time you realize where things are going. You can't prove that anything is a slippery slope because you can't predict the future but that does not make the observation or the call for caution fallacious. Calling it a logical falacy is just a knee-jerk reaction by those trying to downplay the risk.
A company I can not mention because I am certified by them 14x over did that to me, many times.
The licenses were NOT supposed to expire.
I recently watched A Bug’s Life with my kids. It’s actually a pretty good commentary on the abuses of the ruling class and the norms inability to see their own value:
You let one ant stand up to
us, then they all might stand
up! Those puny little ants
outnumber us a hundred to one
and if they ever figure that
out there goes our way of
life! It's not about food,
it's about keeping those ants
in line."participating" is doing a LOT of work there...
Microsoft has also multiple times started an ebook store only to later shut it down and prevent the purchased books from being read. The first time this happened in the mid-2000’s I lost over a dozen ebooks.
And while I've never had this particular weird problem, I have tens of gigabytes of music in my iTunes library that were never bought from Apple in the first place, which sync to my other devices just fine. No manual copying required.
And, um...how would you even "manually copy" music to an iPhone or iPad? The only way I know of puts it in the Files app, rather than the Music app, leaving it unable to be played "as music" (though you can, of course, still play the audio files one by one).
Something doesn't seem right here.
The file system on iOS isn't exposed, so you can't browse around in the files and folders and copy it somewhere there.
Instead, each app has its own little container with files, so you can use iTunes on Windows or Finder on macOS to copy it into either a specific app’s container or the Files app’s container. If you do the latter, then you can access it on the device via the Files app and third-party music players.
The stock Music app provided by Apple doesn't get access to the files in the Files app. Instead, it maintains its own library synced with other devices, with the option to import your music files into that library.
The optimistic reading of this is that this prevents apps from accessing files that they have no business looking into. The pessimistic reading is that this prevents users from messing around with files and prevents them from tweaking or hacking apps. I think the truth is a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
There are a couple of ways. You can import it via iTunes/Finder into the Files container, like you said. The stock Music app won’t read and play it, but third-party music player apps will. Another option is to import it into your Apple Music library, f/k/a iTunes library. That way, it’s playable in the stock Music app and available on other devices as well (although it might need an Apple Music subscription, not sure).
...That's syncing. It's the absolutely normal way to get music onto your iPhone. I can't see any reasonable way to call that "manually copying".
For Video I think MP4, and MOV are supported? Maybe more though I dont think MKV is.
For Pictures I think you just copy using the OS to the DCIM folder?
There is a Ukrainian company called Softorino that provides a one click app to just transfer any media with any format to your iDevice and have it magically appear in the right app. It does all the conversion work for you in the background.
In any case, I'm still very puzzled as to how this could be a solution to the specific problem that was originally described...
at least you still have this option (doesn't justify the system, but just saying that some devices don't even allow that)
Your data is more important than to be locked into a data-roach-motel. The companies know this, and count on piracy. From there, the pirate user has MB's of content locked into something they cant convert out of. And then, it's pretty easy to force a sale, or worse yet, a rental.
Looking at you Adobe, Autodesk, etc.
[1]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/107
Should we protect all of those too, at great cost to the rest of society?
I don't even know what my personal stance on piracy is but the subject is clearly more complex than saying that theft applies only to physical objects.
In my country the law criminalizing theft begins thus:
> Stöld
> Stöld beskrivs i 8 kap. 1 §. Stöldbrottet förekommer i tre allvarlighetsvarianter:
> * Ringa stöld (tidigare snatteri): 8 kap 2 § > * Stöld: 8 kap 1 § > * Grov stöld: 8 kap 4 §
> Skyddsintresset vid stöld är äganderätten. Endast lösa saker samt del till fast egendom kan ägas.
The third sentence defines property as physical.
Reading texts on international property rights it’s always quite clear what everyone is talking about. “Intellectual property” is sometimes mentioned as an aside with an extra caveat that it is not widely recognized.
By all means argue back and add the nuance you think is missing, but it's intellectually dishonest and lazy to just say "ah, but it's more complicated than that".
How could I have forgotten: the idea of personal property is also essential to Jewish law, predating the Magna Carta by another 2,000 years. That’s at least 3,000 years of at least a portion of humans placing value on private property.
While I agree with your comment, I think the last part is only partly true. The military strength of a country doesn't necessarily correlate with the property values and prices - it is enough to compare, say, Switzerland or the Netherlands with Russia or China. Rather, it is an intricate next of various factors that constantly change.
I'd say that in the context of intellectual property the correct word would be 'postulates' not 'recognizes'.
Benefit to society is hard to proove or measure. It's implied. What's very easy to measure is a benefit to minority of rich people at the expense of the society.
Of course, the ad company owns it, because of their hard intellectual work of collecting it.
Me? No, why would I own information about me? What logic of property is this?
On the one hand, it seems obvious that you have a right to observe, collect data, and sell it. On the other hand, ick.
> 1 : one that spies: a : one who keeps secret watch on a person or thing to obtain information
The question is whether you can __sell__ the information that I had three double cheese burgers and extra greasy fries to my health insurance provider.
You can’t make a billion dollars, IP free, and that’s okay with me.
Because US ran out of physical money to pay its debts but wanted to keep the business as usual and the world just let them?
...And unauthorized use of a motor vehicle as a second count.
In the UK you can be charged with theft.
For joyriding and dumping they created the crime of twoccing (taking without owners consent).
A 'twoker' is also a derogatory term for a certain class of person
You’re using one of the intransitive definitions but general speaking it’s the transitive forms that apply to digital content, ideas, information, etc.
1. to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
2. to take away by force or unjust means
3. to take surreptitiously or without permission
You may not want stealing to mean that… but that’s irrelevant to reality.
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html#:~:t....
Now there has been a lot of effort by the media industry to equate copyright infringement with stealing, I think because the public at large doesn't really understand infringement as a terrible thing. Stealing appears in the 10 commandments, so in our judeo christian societies it's a home run to get 'right thinking' people on side.
The person that came up with the idea still has it. The photographer still has the picture. The programmer still has the program.
It's just about what another person may do with it, the one receiving the picture. May they also send it to someone else? We could have different ideas about that, but calling it "stealing" is inaccurate.
I’m sympathetic to the moral argument you’re making—though when the raw goods are digital too I think it’s an impractical & ill conceived one—but both legally AND linguistically… it’s incorrect
This is all really pretty simple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
Also, (at least in the US) legally copyright infringement is distinct from stealing.
Also, from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take
Verb, 1, To get into one's hands, possession, or control, with or without force.
Child: "I'm going to go take a shower"
Dad: "Make sure you put it back when you're done."
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8380/did-some-c...
For a counter-example connected to your choice, I was recently made aware of the Latin word for "to abduct", and how that word may well be why it took so long for spousal abuse to become recognised as an offence — to paraphrase your own question to demonstrate how this goes very wrong, how can you "abduct" someone you live with?
Are you then saying that when Bob sends another copy to Charlie, Bob is taking something? What is Bob taking?
Bob is the distributor in this context however. In most Berne convention states he broke copyright law (technically, but nothing would happen)
Together Bob & Charlie gained or acquired a picture produced by Alice’s work effort that was unauthorized.
That’s stealing. Is it a big deal? Probably not. Still stealing.
I’d say the opposite - it could still be a huge deal to Alice, but it doesn’t meet the definition of stealing or theft.
We have a separate term already for the right to copy something - copyright.
We have a term for copying something without that right- copyright infringement.
Not theft. Copyright infringement.
Copying movies is copying things congress said you can't, a crime distinct from both theft and fraud.
Piracy has for whatever reason been co-opted to refer to copying despite that having no relationship to piracy on the high seas, but no one is playing linguistic games to argue that they're the same thing so whatever.
One way of looking at it is that the banks didn't have to expend a tiny fraction of $100 worth of effort to obtain the dollar bill, whereas any normal person would have to. The question is does the bank deserve that $100? Especially at a cost to everyone else (who are largely unaware/tricked).
Personally I'd class that as "fraud" but it all comes under a similar umbrella.
Theft is taking something you don't deserve, without the other party's consent.
Fraud is taking something you don't deserve, with the other party's _misplaced_ consent.
So yes, in the case of copying music for example, I agree - you're copying someone's idea, which is essentially taking the product of their work without their consent. Their work is no longer scarce, and so loses half its value. It's not really any different to stealing half the money they've worked for, other than that it seems almost impossible to stop you without creating paradoxes such as this topic.
It's detrimental as they no longer have the same incentive to do that work and so society doesn't progress.
You've taken the reward from the person that did the work and shared it amongst the whole of society who didn't work for it. It's pure socialism - and we can see the effects of it in the quality of modern music.
Likewise, the legal definition of theft or stealing does not apply to copyright infringement despite decades long campaigns to get the public to believe that to ge the case. Relatedly, there are similar campaigns to redefine violence as something that offends someone.
I'd like to add, that revoking a license is about taking someone access away. Only one side is taking something and it's not the pirates.
If that’s your argument… it’s unsound linguistics and legally.
Legally the distinction is also clear - transgression of copyright law is specifically given the term "copyright infringement" in law in English speaking countries and in international agreements. A person cannot be convicted of theft for copying information. The US supreme court, among others, ruled on exactly this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...
Whether you think piracy is right or wrong, there is a crucial difference between traditionally understood stealing or theft, in that the original owner no longer has the thing. With copyright infringement that’s not the case.
As for piracy, of course it's wrong, though far less serious than what I responded to.
> depriving the original owner of the use of the item
When someone invests to make a film, do you think the use of the resulting film to the owner is to watch it or sell it?
To break it down, did someone invest millions to make millions, or did someone pay millions to watch one movie?
You know the answer and thus we know that stealing a copy without paying does does in fact deprive the original owner of the use of the item, which was always to sell copies of it, that's the reason and criteria for its existence.
At small scale though the industry still makes do, so it's less serious than stealing for example, a company (e.g. their information). Every act of piracy also wasn't technically a stolen sale, because not everyone stealing would ever have bought it if stealing wasn't an option.
On paper many incredibly successful films lose money. The game is rigged. The industry more than makes do.
People are free to draw their own lines. I pay for some things and don’t pay for others as far as digital content goes. The structure of it doesn’t even necessarily fit into this clean cut idea however. If I pay for Prime and download something that I could watch via prime ( and I do, because I’d rather watch it in my preferred video play whenever and not only if I have an internet connection or on specific devices or god forbid the thing I’m watching or intending to watch in the near future slips off the service) what is the math in that?
Referring to such things as theft or stealing is lazy and incorrect, regardless of relative severity.
The fact you use the term “stealing” in your justification of the act being “stealing” kinda points to your own circular reasoning there, rather than a good defence.
We can agree it’s wrong without polluting the semantic space. Otherwise we may as well just call everything “murder” or “terrorism” and be done with it.
I know that’s been a tribal shibboleth of piracy since the 2000s, and I’m sympathetic to the moral argument to this view… but it’s just factually untrue (both in terminology AND in law)
- False.
- Incorrect.
- Nope.
Is it just me or is this needlessly smug? Again, the parent isn't productive, but a terse "You are wrong." in the grandparent isn't really a good way to start a productive conversation either.
As for smugness and the format of posts, you sure don't live as you preach.
- sam & max
People just try to rationalize their behavior and play silly word games because they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.
Kant gave us a good principle, universalizability. If everyone pirated, creators would not get compensated, therefore they could not sustain themselves and it would be obvious that the value of their work is being stolen. Evidently, pirates are free-riders and their theft just isn't evident because enough people usually compensate for it.
In my opinion, that would be a far superior world to the one we live in.
I’m not interested in a conversation about whether we really even need entertainment, that’s a whole different premise.
Does society really benefit that much by seeing piece of entertainment 50 years earlier at the cost of millions of dollars?
If making a movie about going to space costs more than actually going to space maybe you shouldn't do it and wait instead till video creation technology advances enough so that single person can do it as passion project? Maybe what copyright enables is just a pathology?
People who want to see it created and are able to rally other people to help them of course.
That's not to say that no copyright means no way to fund big projects, you just have to collect those funds up front or rely on generosity - both of which are less likely to succeed because copyright makes the result into something you "own" rather than society and people are less inclined to fund your own private enrichment.
That's a coherent position, but it is also perfectly reasonable to argue that it's not because you have a copy and have not removed the original.
Edit: Note that this doesn't inherently make piracy okay, since it may deprive the owner of revenue or other benefits; there's a difference between objecting to piracy and saying that it's exactly theft.
It's not. A pirate is just another non-customer. There's robbing involved when someone chooses not to buy something. Watching a movie at a friend's house isn't robbing the producers of anything. Neither is buying something second hand. These are all non-customers of the original creator.
If I buy a used Blu-ray I'm not giving a dime to Disney. I get to watch the Avengers all I want without ever paying them anything. They have lost nothing because I didn't take anything from them nor prevented them from selling a copy of the Avengers to someone else.
If you replaced my second hand copy of the Avengers with a pirated copy, nothing would change about the situation. Disney was deprived of nothing. The same is true if I rent it from the library, borrow it from a friend, or just never watch it. To Disney I am simply a non-customer.
I'm not talking about being obliged to share. Of course people should have the right to not share their credit details. My point is that if you receive information from someone, then choosing to share it with a third party is not stealing.
Actually, an obligation to share information is a restriction on freedom just like copyright, which can prohibit sharing information.
That's one meaning. As with many English words that one has several. Here are several examples of how "steal" is used in English for things that involve other than taking physical taking of property:
• Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart.
• An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show.
• An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula.
• When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen".
• Alice is Bob's fiancé. Mallory woos Alice without Bob's knowledge. Alice elopes with Mallory. Most would find it acceptable if Bob said that Mallory "stole" his fiancé.
• A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.
If I produce and distribute content like music or videos, it's fair for me to want people that want to rent or own it to pay for it. I put a lot of time and effort into it, I have to manage and market it, maybe store it, and I want to make a living at it.
If people are stealing it, ahem, copying without permission, it undercuts my living. I have a right to earning from my work, and you don't have a right to just download it or copy it or distribute it to others without me getting paid for it. It's literally preventing earnings for me that would otherwise happen if you didn't copy it without permission (ahem, stealing).
Digital piracy, broadly speaking, is unauthorized copying. Depending on the context, it could be theft. Sometimes that theft is legal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Other times that theft is illegal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Sometimes, it's just not theft at all.
[Dowling v. United States](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/473/207/)
Tl;dr: Supreme Court ruled bootlegged/pirated media does not constitute theft as it does not deprive the legal owner of his/her property. That’s why they had to invent the term—“Copyright infringement”
You really don't. If you don't work on things that are profitable at the moment you don't have any innate right to earn anything from your work. Right to earn comes from specific agreements with employers. Earning might also come from innate profitability but it's not a right then as the profitability is ephemeral thing.
The root of Stealing is to deprive:
deny (a person or place) the possession or use of something.
Says who? Where did you get that definition? Your claim isn’t very well supported by either of the two dictionaries that I linked to, nor any searches on the etymology of steal that I can find. A valid definition is a valid definition. Common usage is common usage. It may be common to refer to something physical that is deprived, but it’s also extremely common and also completely correct to refer to things stolen that do not deprive. You can, in fact, steal ideas, according to the definition of the word steal.
> It may be used in that context in our society
Yes, and that makes it de-facto correct usage! Discussion of idea stealing has been commonplace in business, and academics, and literature, and among children, and …. You can find a never-ending supply of references to stolen ideas online and in print. It seems especially ironic for people on a startup forum to argue that ideas can’t be stolen when it happens and gets referred to regularly.
I did some searching online and I couldn't find an good root example of stealing, it seems related to stealth which I don't think correctly explains the subject we are discussing. I think what we are both talking about is theft. When I looked up the etymology of theft I found it related to fraud, "a fraudulent production, something intended to deceive". and it goes on, "deception practiced for the sake of what is deemed a good purpose;" the word also seems related to defraud, which could be where you are going with this, "deprive of right, by deception or breech of trust or withholding,"
To clarify, I think you CAN deprive someone of an expression of an idea. I incorrectly lumped it into the idea part. Having an idea (and communicating it to the world) vs having an expression of an idea, for me are two different things.
I don't believe there is any good that can come out of protecting ideas from loss or theft, so I don't put too much stock in the idea of IP law.
The expression of an idea is another matter. but I err on the side of "deception practiced for the sake of what is deemed a good purpose".
For me this is really about protecting the common good. There has to be a balance between the dissemination of creativity vs getting compensated for a work.
Right now, copyright, if that is what we are talking about, is way out of balance. Copyrights are mostly owned and wielded harmfully by corporations. When corporations use copyright, to stop, or take away purchased products, or prevent individuals from sharing in the spirit of sharing, that's where I draw the line. When copyright is used in this way, it deprives the public of some common good. I don't think copyright was ever meant to do that.
So respectfully, I disagree with you on this topic, the way contracts and copyrights are being used is harming our society.
It’s important to remember that etymology is a tool to understand history, and is not the arbiter of word meaning. In fact, it’s extremely common for the etymological historical roots of words to have very different meanings from what they are now, and to have meanings that are no longer accepted or correct. Often with English, word roots come from different languages, and the etymology has little bearing on today’s usage or accepted dictionary definitions. The arbiter of word meaning is common usage, period. Language is not prescriptive, not defined by dictionaries or etymologies, those are just tools to help us document common usage over time. Language is defined by how it’s used, and when a lot of people say “he stole my idea”, it necessarily becomes correct usage, regardless of what the historical documents say about the word steal. This is one of the most fun aspects of language, but easily misunderstood and often forgotten, especially in forum discussions.
> So respectfully, I disagree with you on this topic, the way contracts and copyrights are being used is harming our society.
How on earth did you arrive at the idea that I said anything at all about copyrights or contracts in this thread? What exactly are you disagreeing with?? I’m so confused by this. It is a wild and completely non-sequitur detour from my perspective.
If laywer sets up such a contract with you, he can't be a good one.
I'll see myself out...
Bill Gates made an interesting comment regarding software piracy in the 1990s. At that time, software piracy was rampant in China, and Microsoft’s Windows operating system was one of the most pirated products. In response to this situation, Gates remarked that if people were going to pirate software, he would prefer they pirate Microsoft’s software.
His rationale was strategic: if people in China became accustomed to using Microsoft’s Windows and Office software, they would be more likely to continue using these products in the future, including in business environments where legitimate software licenses are more commonly purchased.
(Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)
I can already see that what works for software does not work for movies.
Other topic is also devices supporting DRM.
I would say paying for software new versions makes sense there is work to be done to keep it working on new devices etc.
Paying for the same book or movie again because distribution rights between corporations changed is messed up.
Well, actually they did, at least in ex-USSR, and I think in Eastern Europe too.
After not ever having a single legitimate license in 1990s and early 2000s (and being laughed upon if you had one), by late 2000s Microsoft business took off handsomely.
But also the key point, right? Although I suspect he was correct.
(Also, has very little to do with the purchasing dynamics of movies or music, etc., although those special interests can fuck off...)
It's how companies like Microsoft or Adobe could grow and gain uncontested monopolies. Because, due to piracy, price was no longer a good enough differentiator. And it's why "Linux on the desktop" never happened.
There aren't many studies on this topic and the available ones are bullshit, as they don't take into account second order effects of piracy, one of which being the rise of streaming with DRM, which also concentrates power in the hands of a few Big Tech companies.
Piracy is one of the biggest reasons for why we have monopolies. The phenomenon is now repeated with ad blockers. And the irony of the situation is that people point at monopolies to justify piracy or the use of ad blockers.
Going from "big corp can handle lost revenue in return for market dominance and exposure" to "it doesn't hurt revenue" is absurd.
"this is why we can't have nice things"
Not that actions of those selling does not likely contribute much more to loss of revenue, mainly by making content unavailable. Availability or pricing compared to product is often sub-optimal.
You pirate photoshop because you know it is good. You pirate movie because you know it is going to be good and everyone is waiting to watch it.
I've done it. I'd bet that most people who have pirated anything have. If you were around for the Napster days you'd know that people would often download things they'd never heard of before and had no idea if they'd like it or not (and that was when it could take many hours, even days, for a single album to download!). Piracy is a great way to try out new things. Napster led to an increase in CD sales as people were discovering new artists and music they'd never heard on the radio or MTV (https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-napster-boosts-cd-sales/)
The objection to P2P file sharing was never about money. It was about power and control. It was about gatekeeping. The RIAA wants to decide what you can and can't listen to and what is popular. They don't want their new artists/albums to have to compete with everything ever released. They know piracy would increase sales. They don't want to give up the control over our culture and they don't want the internet to cut them out as useless middlemen. With computers and the internet we don't need them for distribution or advertising. We can do it all without them.
'Piracy' is the wrong thing to call it.
Perhaps the gatekeepers you describe are the same ones who pushed the term 'piracy' this way; to describe any human who copies chunks of 1s and 0s they feel protective of.
Meanwhile, real pirates really steal real physical goods from real people.
Copiers and pirates are not the same thing, not even close.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I often download obscure games I see on steam to see if they’ll actually hook me or not. I pay for what I actually am able to sink my teeth in to.
The vast majority of movies I download are me going out on a limb. In some cases I’m subscribed to a service they’re available on. I still download them though because I’d prefer to use my own player on my own terms. You can’t even get higher than 720p on Netflix on PC without using edge. Horseshit. It is also not infrequent that there is no way for me to pay someone to watch it online. I’m not going to buy a used copy of a DVD/blu-ray to watch something I’m interested in. Ain’t nobody making money off a used copy. Is resale of used media ethical?
Or when you're at a stall and they give you a bit of cheese to try, or some bit of cake. They know that, if you like it and you can afford it, you'll buy more. The costs to them are small, and the return is worth it. This is just trading-101.
Free labor abused on a systemic scale is completely different. It's like I asked you for a cheese sample as big as what I need to serve a party of 50 people I'm paid to organise.
There is zero cost associated with piracy. Zero.
At best, there's an expectation of profit that's not met. To argue that, you need to show how copying a file translates to a potential sale being converted to a no-sale, and there are plenty of evidence that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted work drives demand up.
> Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground to stand on
Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts anyone. You're trying to pass off your personal assertions as axioms, but it's on you to prove that copying a file without the consent of someone hurts anyone.
Go ahead.
> now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different question
If anything, artists are the least impacted counterpart as they literally get paid a small fraction of the whole income.
>
Wait until the grandparent learns about public libraries. Just havens of content larceny! People "stealing" content left and right!
Comparing library access to piracy is comparing National Parks to Squatting.
If you're going to argue against piracy you're also arguing against libraries. The differences between a pirate and a library are mostly statutory.
No, it is not.
They might later pay to watch and listen to excellent instrumentalists and singers perform that song, so concerts might work for them. Presumably the composer can charge those performers...but how much?
You usually can't figure out the worth of a song beforehand, so if it is going to be a one-time upfront payment from the performers to the composer it is hard to figure out the right price.
You can wait until after the song has been released and see much the concert tour makes and how many people buy copies of the song or listen to it on streaming services and that gives you a good idea of the worth of the song.
Upfront you'd have to agree on how the worth is calculated and how the price is calculated from that. But this is then going to depend on how much revenue the song brings and so sounds an awful lot like a royalty arrangement, just with a lump payment at the end of the license instead of more frequent smaller payments along the way.
people are copying
and what do you mean by "you're not allowed to"
When you copy content that has a cost, if the company is not offering it to you, what do you call your action ?
I mean, really, you spent 5 years working on a game with no salary. Then a day before launch day someone just makes a copy of it and distributed it « for free » in the internet. How are you going to make a salary out of it ?
People make two choices when they pirate - moral, and economical. If economically they cannot afford the game, they weren't going to pay. If morally they are against paying for a game (like if the game company is associated with suicides, etc), they weren't going to pay. There are some people that will pay if piracy isn't available, but not that many.
Anyways, after the income goes around, and all the exec, upper management, and publisher salaries are paid, the piracy or lack of it probably makes about a $1 difference to my weekly earnings. I put a lot of artistic and creative effort, blood, sweat, and tears into it. If it costs me $1 to make people enjoy it, so be it.
In the AAA games industry, piracy is a thing. People talk about it. And most people have only very mild things to say about it, except for execs. Execs make a disproportionate amount of money off games for what they do, and they do kinda have a lot of time to sit on their hands sometimes, so they can fight these piracy battles, die on these piracy hills.
Anyways, don't speak for us please.
You can find any reason to steal, economical, hunger etc the point I making is that the motivation to make a copy does not make it legal.
Do we tolerate some form of theft for moral or other reasons ? Yes sure. But because I, as an individual, have my own reasons not to pay for something and decide to make a copy of it, that does not transforms my action to a perfectly legal thing.
Maybe we can’t do anything about software being copied but that doesn’t magically make laws and IP disappear with it and makes copying software legal ?
I was answering to the comment « nothing is taken ». Because the content is the result of an effort from other people being paid, the content has value. The fact that we can make infinite copies of it makes a single copy worthless because it’s not being burnt into a piece of plastic ?
Legal systems ultimately enshrine the human morality in law. Common law - through case law, civil law - by committees that the legislators consult, religious law - by morality described in legal texts. We're not talking about any of it though. We are talking about day-to-day things, like what does it mean to steal, what kind of consequences it has, are these consequences real or supposed, and other such things.
Law is generally blind to externalities of an action. An action itself is legal, illegal, or undefined in law. We're not in this domain if we talk about the consequences of piracy or how someone might feel about it. We are having a conversation on morals.
Shifting morals will eventually shift the law, of course.
Copying is often called taking a copy. Even basic usage of the term copying invalidates your point!
As for “not allowed” that will vary by contract/law/agreement/license/etc
This distinction is why it’s usually not downloaders that are punished, rather uploaders: they’re the ones that broke an agreement.
—⁂—
(Just for fun, The Devil’s Dictionary (not a work to be taken particularly seriously):
> TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
I quite like that way of putting it because it’s the megacorporations that are the pirates when they steal their DRM content back, because they are acquiring it from you so that you can’t have it, by force if they have to but they prefer stealth.)
I have to admit I haven't looked at these studies in their original form, but I guess sales revenue per install is the best metric to tell
Sounds like it has more like the desirability of the game driving piracy than the other way around.
Stop trying to make fetch happen.
It's a completely fictitious right, akin to converting elementary school playground "stop copying me!" into a cause of action.
The solution to bad legislation isn't more legislation, it's throwing those statutes in a bonfire and reverting to common law.
Copyright rules make sense in protecting inventors and product owners. Maybe you've been neither and can't understand how the lack of this protection harms inventors and owners to the benefit of plagiarists. It's much easier to plagiarize than invent or produce, so without copyright protection, inventors and product owners basically become giant fat cash cows ready to plunder by passers-by that can just copy and paste. Removing copyright would turn the market completely feudalist and chaotic.
Throwing copyright statutes away is also chaotic. Reverting to common law? I'm not sure what you mean there. Just however people feel at the time? We've already evolved past the caveman era.
Maybe you're not familiar with the term? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
> The defining characteristic of common law is that it arises as precedent. Common law courts look to the past decisions of courts to synthesize the legal principles of past cases
Or was it that you were unclear what _rm specifically was saying?
The only thing that is different right now is that some large and powerful corporations are being defrauded too, instead of just people.
The rich are just people.
The sooner we accept that and dispose of the bizarre “deification” of the rich the sooner we can discuss deprecation of their influence and reach.
The apathetic kowtow to a handful of aging out government brown nosers who lobby to insulate themselves is sad.
1980s Reagan economy is not immutable physics and we have no obligation to believe the stories of the rich about their success. There’s a whole lot of behavioral science being leveraged, and intentional PR propaganda tossed around to obfuscate the rich are “just people”
“Rich people” in a fiat economy is due to the valuation of their assets, often but always, large stakes in corporations.
All of which is politically correct hallucination. None of it exists as immutable physics.
The mistake is yours for memorizing vacuous political statements.
Accuracy relative to the dying and long dead’s ignorant political babble is a ridiculous stat to min/max to dial in correctness. Stay in the centrist lane!
Rather than have a forward facing conversation, you reach for history. There’s little point in continuing this conversation
And really, mostly only law enforcement needs to believe the "hallucination" for it to have real effects. You, know, those guys with guns who will hurt you if you don't do what they say?
I don't think our positions are actually that far apart. It's just that, as far as I can tell anyway, you're trying to make a stand on some point of terminology while I'm trying to be reductionist and understand the dynamics.
That said:
“Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” Ambrose Bierce 1906
Some of them were also doing the defrauding, and got a positive net profit, while many weren't. Things are way more complex than "the rich did it".
- sold licenses that are no longer usable to access the work (i.e. if you invalidate by any means already sold licenses)
- don't put work in the public domain/don't make it freely usable without a license when the copyright expires
then you lose the protection of copyright & associated (DRM/reverse engineering) laws for said works. Multiple violations can extend that to "all your works".
At this point I'd rather the legislature (1) just stop, and then maybe (2) roll back what's broken. Don't try to follow up horrendously broken laws like the DMCA with more broken laws to try to arbitrarily patch things up. I'll vote for any politicians who advocate for picking a commit sometime before the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and doing a git --hard reset to that.
I have to agree. There should be legislation preventing this, or the pirates will be morally in the clear. Which does not help copyright owners. Yes, the pirate stole your content, but since you were going to revoke access anyhow he was stealing from a scammer which is justice.