Filesharing isn’t piracy. It’s filesharing.
Piracy is when you attack a ship and steal its cargo.
But, of course, it was difficult for the RIAA to have a war on sharing, so they had to use a different term with sinister connotations and implant it into the public consciousness.
And it worked! You never hear anybody talk about “filesharing” anymore.
The copyright holder is only actually harmed if I would have paid them otherwise. Since I never would have paid for the movie nothing changes for them. Nothing is stollen because they would have no idea someone had a copy unless they check.
Real pirates steal stuff. So-called digital “piracy” isn’t piracy at all. This is just propaganda for the business model that the establishment is trying to hold onto.
It doesn’t hurt IP holders to “pirate” their data. It is no difference to them whether you were to pirate it or to have never been born at all in the first place. Their profit is the exact same either way. Their business model is imaginary and they want to force it on everyone else.
To be more precise: it is actually beneficial for big corporations if you pirate their media, as opposed to you having never been born. The sole act of you ‘consuming’ their media is positive for them, since you’ll almost definitely see their logos (advertising to you), and you may spread the word to people who may pay for it (advertising by you).
As you said, it’s all pretty much propaganda to brainwash us into trying to be ‘good citizens’ (obedient consumers).
I don’t even call it piracy, because piracy has a definition that this doesn’t meet. I call it what it is: unauthorized reproduction. That’s it. That’s all “piracy” is, it’s literally just unauthorized reproduction. Doesn’t sound nearly as scary and dramatic when you call it what it actual is, does it?
Piracy is when you board a ship, kill or kidnap its crew and steal the cargo. Copying a file is nothing like that.
These days (at least in my country) I can’t own movies, games and watch or play them at my will
Companies like Netflix, Amazon are lending movies but not making them free for you. And then they wonder why piracy is rising
Tbh for a student like me, piracy is the only option. If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing
Disclosure: I have been sailing the seas for years, but…
This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.
The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied. The intent of that data is to be copied for profit. Now that the data has been copied against the creator/owners will, they do not receive the profit from that copy.
Yes yes the argument is made that the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways, but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data. At the very least it gives people an option not to pay for the data, which is not what the creator wanted in creating it. They are entitled to fair compensation to their work.
It is true that pirating is not directly theft, but it does definitely take away from the creator’s/distributor’s profit.
Cool argument, except a huge quantity of pirated works aren’t “owned” by the creator or even a group that funded it, but instead by parasitic companies that abuse capitalistic tools to actually steal value from those creators.
I have thousands of purchased games. 3 categories here:
1: obtained as part of a pack (humble gog etc)
2: purchased AFTER trying out via pirate copy to know if it is my kind of thing
3: picked up early access due to demo or general interest from being a known smaller dev/studio (hare brained for example)
With less and less access to shareware and viable demos, piracy is often the only conduit to prevent me getting ripped off of $80 for something that looks like a shiny sports car but end up being another “buy $800 in dlc for the full story!” Ford pinto.
Additionally, I now flat refuse to fund the likes of Denuvo, and wish that piracy actively hurt the bottom line of companies deploying that kind of anti-user shit.
I dislike investors as much as anyone but someone had to fund development. At least until we get UBI
or even a group that funded it
I noted I’m ok with investors.
I’m against parasitic groups that feed on properties and prevent money getting to the actual dev folks.
Adding on to say: no. It doesn’t cost the creator anything when a pirated copy is made. They potentially miss a sale, but if their item wasn’t in a store where someone may have made a purchase you wouldn’t call that actively harmful, right?
In addition, most media the creators don’t actually make money from the profit. Most of the time they’re paid a salary, maybe with a bonus if it does particularly well. The company that owns the product takes the profit (or loss), not the actual creators.
Also, a lot of media isn’t even controlled by the same people as when it was made. For example, buying the Dune books doesn’t give money to Frank Herbert. It goes to his estate.
Piracy is somewhat similar to vigilantism to me. My ability to consider it a negative is directly related to how fair I consider the legitimate methods available to be.
If similar efforts were focused on consumer protection laws as we do IP protection, I don’t think pirates would have much leg to stand on, and they’d be seen in more of a negative light.
But since consumers are regularly fucked by corporations, all I see is two sides both doing bad shit and I’m not feeling all that charitable for the faceless megacorp. I also dislike pirates who pirate from small time creators. But that’s about as far as I can care given the state of things.
We should be focusing on stronger consumer rights to truly fix the problem for all sides.
This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.
It does though, since no harm is being done.
The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied. The intent of that data is to be copied for profit. Now that the data has been copied against the creator/owners will, they do not receive the profit from that copy.
They also don’t receive profit from not copying, unless there’s a purchase made. By your logic, watching something on Netflix or listening to it on the radio is actively harmful to creators, which I think most people can admit is absurd.
but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data.
You made this assertion, but don’t really back it up. If you were correct here, being able to copy cassette tapes or burn cds would have killed the music industry decades ago. Piracy is the original grassroots promotional method.
At the very least it gives people an option not to pay for the data, which is not what the creator wanted in creating it.
That’s a separate argument and doesn’t relate at all to the supposed financial harm.
They are entitled to fair compensation to their work.
That’s a loaded assertion. If I sing a song right now, what am I entitled to be paid for it? And you’re ignoring that most of the “work” of being a musician (in most genres at least) is playing live performances, the experience of which cannot be pirated.
It is true that pirating is not directly theft, but it does definitely take away from the creator’s/distributor’s profit.
I don’t think it’s definite at all. Most of what musicians make these days is from merch and ticket sales, which piracy contributes to by bringing in new fans.
You have some very entitled opinions, if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media. You’re free to not watch movies or listen to music but it’s pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing
Edit: I assumed it would be pretty obvious I was talking about digital media that needed a budget but apparently not. Of course anyone can make digital media for free in their spare time but you’d need some kind of income to support that hobby. FOSS is the same but you need some income to survive.
You have some very entitled opinions
Nah, the entitled opinions are coming from the “pay me, but you can’t own media” folks.
if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media
If everyone thought like me, people could buy digital media in convenient formats at reasonable prices, and buying media would probably still be a lot more popular. My Bandcamp library is in the tens of thousands and growing. I support digital purchasing more than most, when it’s done well.
but it’s pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing
As the whole crux of the thread makes clear, no taking is involved. You might want to go re-read the OP again, speaking of asinine.
having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data.
According to who?
I guess herein lies the potential fallacy of my statement. Decreased desire is a Subjective observation.
One cannot draw a direct correlation, but there is data to conclude that not having a piracy option will boost sales of data initially, at least when it comes to games. (Hence why publishers continue to use Denuvo)
Counterpoint: When Louis CK (prior to being outed as a sex pest) released one of his comedy specials on his website DRM-free for $5 he became a millionaire almost overnight.
https://boingboing.net/2011/12/22/drm-free-experiment-makes-loui.html
Price point matters, too.
It also jives with early Steam Sales when Valve would cut titles like
Left 4 DeadCounter Strike down to 90% off, and they would sell so many digital copies that they were actually making more money off the lower price.https://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/
Now we did something where we decided to look at price elasticity. Without making announcements, we varied the price of one of our products. We have Steam so we can watch user behavior in real time. That gives us a useful tool for making experiments which you can’t really do through a lot of other distribution mechanisms. What we saw was that pricing was perfectly elastic. In other words, our gross revenue would remain constant. We thought, hooray, we understand this really well. There’s no way to use price to increase or decrease the size of your business.
But then we did this different experiment where we did a sale. The sale is a highly promoted event that has ancillary media like comic books and movies associated with it. We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40. Which is completely not predicted by our previous experience with silent price variation. …
Then we decided that all we were really doing was time-shifting revenue. We were moving sales forward from the future. Then when we analyzed that we saw two things that were very surprising. Promotions on the digital channel increased sales at retail at the same time, and increased sales after the sale was finished, which falsified the temporal shifting and channel cannibalization arguments. Essentially, your audience, the people who bought the game, were more effective than traditional promotional tools. So we tried a third-party product to see if we had some artificial home-field advantage. We saw the same pricing phenomenon. Twenty-five percent, 50 percent and 75 percent very reliably generate different increases in gross revenue.
also theft is not a crime either.
I wouldnt download a car, but that’s only because im fanatically anti car.
Because cars are bad. There should not be cars.
Would you download a train?
Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. Fuck yes.
But would you download a bus?
Depends on file size, and if the train download is done.
Heathen! Buses are as cool as trains :)
Theyre fine. Busses are fine. Im not going to shit talk buses, neither shall i glaze them whwn there are trains around.
I’d rather download some bicycles, but yes.
I wished, we could pirate food.
Dont let them catch you with your pink pineapples or you might get in trouble:
Less of a problem now.
Also, even for such an expensive-ass pineapple, it really was darn tasty. Maybe I lucked out, but it was second place only to ones I’ve had in Thailand.
