The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.
Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.
Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that’s very different from stealing something.
The irony is, you pirating today has been shown to influence you buying it later on in a sale. And there’s a good argument to be made about your word of mouth praise helping their sales.
As every musician knows, exposure is always better than payment! This is why you shouldn’t offer payment to musicians at your wedding, since they’re getting great exposure already. /s
That’s two very different cases. Using exposure to extort services out people is different than copying something to see if you’d enjoy it.
It’s really not that different. The main difference is the audience size. For an independent musician selling merchandise, it would be equally insulting to them to tell them that they will be repaid in exposure if they give you one for free.
Making a copy of something “to see if you’d enjoy it” or because it’s somehow great for their exposure is mental gymnastics to justify piracy. Let’s just call it intellectual property theft and stop beating around the bush.
Copying isn’t theft. You’re about 40 years late to this conversation and you’re starting from the taste of boots? You’re equating an instantly reproducible, finished product with a service; your analogy sucks.
The entire goal of my comment was to avoid mincing words. As somebody who has first hand experienced copyleft violation, it sure doesn’t feel different on the receiving end. I feel this very personal experience is equivocal to copyright infringement. I’m not licking any boots—thanks for that accusation.
It’s easy to excuse illicit behavior from your armchair by gaslighting with the choice of words, because after all, violating copyright is just sticking it to the man, right? In truth, I feel that my software was stolen for profit and just for me as the little man, there’s no other word that comes to my mind than “theft.”
You should write an open letter to hobbyists. It worked for Gates. If your software was “stolen for profit” and that didn’t result in more people trying it and buying, I have bad news: it didn’t seem like it was worth the money to the people who tried it. JRC does many studies on piracy and the data shows that total sales are not displaced by piracy volume, again and again. You can make the argument that this is only true for games and music (typically the subject of these studies) but this hardline attitude of it being the same as stealing sucks.
Piracy was never stealing. It’s copyright infringement, but that’s not the same as stealing at all. People saying it’s stealing have always been wrong.
One of the great modern scams, was to convince society that unauthorized copying of data is somehow equivalent to taking away a physical object.
Jesus didn’t ask for permission to copy bread and fish. It’s a clear moral precedent that if you can copy you should.
What would the Jesus do?
Checkmate Atheists!
Jesus was the first pirate.
Nah, that would be Prometheus.
Wasn’t the idea and origin story of Jesus stolen from previous texts and religions lol
They forked Judaism
YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A PURSE
I bet you aren’t a software developer.
I’m a software developer, and I endorse the grandparent comment.
And you all just were happy and bro fisted people who ignored the licensing terms?
Yes.
Well, not literally, both because I’m more inclined to “high five” and you can’t do either gesture over the Internet. But figuratively, yes.
Why don’t you just gift away your software than? That’s an honest question. You obviously aren’t expecting to be paid for it, do you think in general developers shouldn’t earn money with software or is it just you?
I am a system engineer who works on a project that is open source, AMA
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket - you are stealing.
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket, make a copy and put my original 5 eur back to my pocket - this is not stealing.
Removed by mod
I look forward to this gem being repeated along with “enshittification” by the dunning krugers at large
If there is no easy way to own what you buy, then piracy becomes a moral obligation to preserve culture for future generations.
I think piracy is copyright infringement. But like who cares if some big corpos get infringed upon by some dudes.
I think a compromise on copyright could be a good middle ground in future. In the same way that I’m happy to wait for a game to go on sale before I buy and play it, I’d be happy to wait until a movie or series enters the public domain so I can consume it without paying. Obviously not for hundreds of years, or 56 years. But if Netflix/HBO etc shows and movies became free to watch after 6-7 years, most piracy traffic could be easily captured by legal platforms that are more convenient and accessible to more viewers. I struggle to see how it would not further relegate piracy to a niche activity done by very few, or be bad for the content producers in any significant way
the way i see it, on big budget productions anyone who is relying on their paycheck to survive already got paid for their work, and the ones collecting royalties or sales percentages are rich enough that i couldnt care less. smaller independent studios or individual creators are the ones that i will always support, and in cases like itch.io games that are pwyw i will take the free download and figure out how much i will pay based on how much i like the game.
I’ve seen this quote repeated over and over these past few weeks, while noone brothers to actually explain what it means and why. This article is no different unfortunately.
People want at the same time that wages are higher but they also do not want to pay, for example, software developers appropriately.
No one wants to be part of the problem, though. So some people justify their copyright infringing by claiming it’s some sort of movement for justice and rebellion against corporations.
Have you ever bought something online (movies, games) that you can’t save/download and then the company you have the money to removed that? That is stealing from you. Simple.
When you spend money on something, let’s say one of those movies from PlayStation, you don’t actually own that movie, there is no file given to you that is yours. You are just given access to it. And then, out of no where, they can take that away from you.
When you pirate something, you are just creating a copy of the file, you aren’t taking away the original file.
So, the argument here is that morally pirating is okay because no one is losing anything, aside from potential sales for the company I guess. But on the flip side, the company is essentially stealing from you because they took your money, and you aren’t allowed access to what you bought.
The most morally just position in this case would be that if you were one of those customers who paid for and then lost access to said movies, and then you pirated them back, you could say that the company had already made their money on you, and you’re owed those movies.
In my opinion, I don’t think pirating from any million / billion dollar company is bad even if you didn’t “own” it originally.
What does that even mean?
Ownership is compromised a bundle of rights. If it’s your bundle, you can split them up however you want, sell whatever kind of limited or unlimited licenses that can come up with, and this applies to real, personal, and intellectual property.
If it’s not theft, why does the greed and unfair practices of the industry matter? Why does there need to be any justification or excuse?
Should definitely have a right to repai; with any other property right you generally have a duty to maintain the access to your interest. I recently unlocked a bunch of premium features in my car. HD radio, comfort window roll down (rolls down 2" with a tap") auto tailgate close (had auto open, but not close, had to hit a button on the lid to close), auto side mirror tilt down in reverse, roll down windows from keyless entry, close tailgate from keyless entry.
If I understand the interface at all, it’s pretty openly accessible (if you have the right OBDii port adapter and software, which ironically you need to buy a license for). Code looked fairly straightforward, and by that I mean it looked like other computer code I’ve seen. Wonder what the original price was for those extras were from the dealership, probably over 10k.
If it’s not theft, why does the greed and unfair practices of the industry matter?
Because it tears at the fabric of Humanity. It’s a ‘death by a thousand cuts’.
Humanity constantly needing to be on guard and pushing back against being taken advantage of by people who want to charge them multiple times for the same thing in different ways, especially the ones that used to be free, over and over again.
Fighting that is pushing back against unfairness, which is one of the root beliefs of Humanity.
Pirated valheim, played 20 hours, bought the game.
Pirated baldurs gate 3 on early access, bought the game with only act 1, that’s how good it is.
Pirated Valhalla, played 5 hours, uninstalled that trash forever.
Started pirating streaming services when they told me that I can’t watch shit anymore because streaming service b and c took the shows, and now I have to pay two different streaming services if I want to keep watching.
It’s probably worth pirating games just to test play them before buying the good ones for online play
It’s also great to check if my aging pc is even capable of running it somewhat smoothly.
You can just return steam games within 2 hrs tho
True, which again brings us back to “piracy is a service problem” which imho it totally is. I never pirate steam games.
Heads up! Plex media server with the Plex clients on all your devices is such a smooth experience. Highly recommended. And their “Watch together” feature is so nice for people that prefer to stay in bed and spend the winter binge watching next to a warm body.
Use Jellyfin. Stop relying on corps’ services.
I would if it had most of the features that Plex does.
It does.
It doesn’t work on Samsung TVs, I tried
You’re inputs broken? Who the fuck cares about TV OS support?
Who the fuck cares about TV OS support?
Me with my limited budget
I spent 30 dollars on an orange pi zero 2 and installed android TV on it.
Can you afford 30 dollars? The privacy alone is worth the cost. Those samsung TVs are spyware central.
Heads up! Plex is garbage and enshitefying their own services to make more money.
