But 'fairness' is just a diversion: these copyright trade monopolies are supposed to prevent competition (of distribution), that is their point. That is how they increase one kind of revenue and so supposedly increase production.
When non rights-holders are copying/distributing it is competition de facto -- according only to the basic rules of physics. And it can therefore be an important signal: because what is basically physically possible is what the economy should really be aiming for. If people can distribute informational goods themselves better than the authorised channels, those channels are clearly underachieving according to the real baseline measure.
I can't force you to give me things.
But neither can you stop me from sharing them.
Die Gedanken sind frei.
It's 'fair' for you to have control over your content, as much as it's 'fair' for me to have control over how I can share, remix and improve and the content I bought.
When your right conflicts with my right, then I don't it's fair for you to make it illegal for me to improve and share the content created by your grandparent 90 years ago.
Short version, the world is not as simply black or white as you'd like to believe.
Therefore, ad-supported streaming services exist.
The only reason why ad-supported streaming services aren't the king is because they can't stream every content. That lands us back on availability problem. Copyright holders can not figure it out.
Complaining that customers are demanding is just sour grapes. Customers are always demanding; welcome to capitalism. You either provide what the market wants, or somebody else does.
That's the entire damn problem with piracy. Nobody else is providing them with "what the market wants", someone else is TAKING another businesses product and then distributing it themselves.
I mean sure, if people wanted to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones but couldn't because it wasn't available to them (or they were unhappy with the terms) and someone else then said "I have a series like Game of Thrones and it's free!" THAT would be "somebody else" providing what the market want, but it isn't.
comparing physical and digital products is never 100% accurate, so forgive me for this, but if a Ferrari dealership charges $100,000 for a car and someone steals one and offers it for free, that isn't "someone else providing what the market wants", it isn't capitalism... it's someone stealing.
Here's what I'm saying: If HBO is offering Game of Thrones on HBO.com to anyone willing to pay $10 (or whatever) for it, and The Pirate Bay is offering it for $0, probably some people are still going to go to The Pirate Bay and get it for $0 instead of paying $10 for it. And that sucks; it would be nice if we could wave a magic wand and make it stop without impacting millions of innocent people, but we can't.
However, if you go to HBO.com and there is no reasonable way for you to insert cash and watch video, far more people are going to end up at The Pirate Bay than would if the show was available on the official website. And that is something we can easily do something about. So isn't it better to adopt the solutions that actually reduce the problem than to sit around complaining how unfair it is while unnecessarily losing a bunch of would-be customers?
Therefore, we are not going to buy your argument.
What if you want some product from USA, and you live on one of countries USA chooses to BULLY for no apparent reason (think Cuba), and you buy the product somewhere and smuggle it home? Is it morally wrong? I will say it isn't.
Therefore, we are not going to buy your argument.
The law is not a moral authority, and attempting to presenting it as such is one of the most disingenuous fallacies in existence.
Something is never wrong because it's against the law. Ideally, something is against the law because it is wrong, but that's not always the case.
When I buy a physical good, such as a Ferrari, there's nobody who can tell me what the fuck I can do with it. For all the seller cares I could drive it repeatedly against the nearest wall, then set it on fire. Same goes for selling it. I do not see myself obliged to answer to any authority on what I can do with my property.
The problem is, copyright law says I have no rights and copyright holders have any rights they want to impose over me. Sorry guys, it's not a good offer.
Such ingenuity is incompatible with the entrenched industry's old-school way of thinking, though. They want it their way, how it's always been.
The consumer is moving at a much faster pace, willing to consume content in different and often more convenient ways. They use the internet, which is global, and want to consume content that is still arbitrarily restricted to national boundaries. This is a demand that has yet to be legitimately satisfied, and thus naturally, the consumer becomes demanding.
Unfortunately, the industry is determined to defend itself from a changing world, instead of embracing it. DRM, unskippable piracy warnings, local content restrictions, etc. are all manifestations of such a practice, and all of which actively punish the legitimate customer.
The internet, and everything it has enabled, is still pretty new. In some ways, this resistance to change isn't surprising, and it's easy to be a commentator on the sidelines. It'd be better to reflect on it with the benefit of hindsight.
Streaming is what people actually want half of the time. It's convenient. But the whole talk is baseless as long as streaming services can't make the same offering pirates do.
of course they can't! Piracy has one major value to people that engage in piracy: it allows people to acquire content without abiding by the acquisition policy set out by the content distributors. It's "competition" in the same way that it's "competition" when 1 athlete in an Olympic running event is taking steroids and has jet boots on. You can't treat piracy as fair competition.
Most people don't pirate out of a "It's too difficult for me to buy this song via itunes", they pirate because they don't want to spend money. Content distributors can't compete with that, even with services like Netflix and Hulu people still pirate because they don't like adverts. If they are unwilling to pay and unwilling to view adverts what other options are there besides just giving away content for free? People that pirate (in general) want content without compromising on the way they want it, while piracy exists these people will continue to pirate.