I don’t get this logic at all. Piracy doesn’t take away a possible purchase. There is an assumption that the media downloaded was ever going to be paid for. In 100% of the cases where I downloaded pirated content, I was never going to pay for the product, even if it was available to me by other means. Further I cannot remove a sale from someone when I never possessed the money to pay for it anyway.
I believe most people that pirate cannot afford to buy digital releases or pay for streaming services etc… (not all cases of course). In these situations nobody loses. The media companies didn’t lose anything because I was never going to buy it, and it wasn’t stolen because they still possess the media.
Edit - I agree with you Lmaydev I replied to the wrong comment.
The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.
And media costs money to make.
If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.
If you weren’t going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That’s the thing, if you’re interested enough in a product to want it, then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.
If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.
How do you think scene groups get their materials in the first place? They just find it on a flash drive on a park bench?
More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do. The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.
If you weren’t going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That’s the thing, if you’re interested enough in a product to want it then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.
I don’t agree with this at all. There are tons of things someone might want to use or have but not enough that they’d be willing to pay for it. Or over a certain amount of money.
The fact is that the person in question is still taking something without paying for it. A sense of entitlement (I want it badly enough that I should have it for free) doesn’t change anything in this equation.
Sure, they are procuring something worth money without paying for it. But this is a very different argument than you would not pirate something if you would not also be prepared to pay it.
But not to copy, which is what you are asserting is being “stolen”. No one is claiming that turnstile jumpers are taking away money from train manufacturers. You’re having to mix analogies, because copying something isn’t theft.
You are trying to blur the line between the media/art/music/film, etc, and the reproductions of it.
Artists do deserve to be paid for their work, but artists do not deserve to maintain ownership over the already-sold assets, nor whatever happens to those assets afterwards (like copies made). If you want to say they should retain commercial rights for reproduction of it, sure, but resell of the originally-sold work (e.g. the mp3 file), and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work? Nah.
They didn’t put in labor towards that. To say they did expands “labor” far beyond any reasonable definition.
and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work?
But by this definition then, it should be ok for only one person to buy the item and then just copy and give it to everyone else, and the original author receives payment from a single item?
If it comes from their copy, sure. But streaming proved that people won’t do that if they have a less onerous way to do it, whether it be Spotify or Netflix.
People only started reverting to piracy when services started cannibalizing access to content and demanding more money than the access was worth.
Most video games don’t contain DRM, and can be found as torrents online, and yet video game sales are through the roof.
You’re literally just rehashing all the tired MPAA/RIAA talking points claiming that piracy would kill music and movies, that never panned out despite piracy always still existing.
But streaming proved that people won’t do that if they have a less onerous way to do it, whether it be Spotify or Netflix.
This is true to an extent, but if you would have a legal streaming platform that is free with all the same content then everyone would use that, no? The only reason someone would want to pay for Netflix is to donate to Netflix because they like it. But we all know how small of a percentage that would be. Reason why people use streaming services is that they’re simple and legal, and they are willing to pay for it.
Most video games don’t contain DRM, and can be found as torrents online, and yet video game sales are through the roof.
True. Though literally no clue about how much DRM there is. However, if piracy is fully legal then there would be no reason to purchase the games (assuming they’re as convenient). People are prepared to pay for things that are legal.
You’re literally just rehashing all the tired MPAA/RIAA talking points claiming that piracy would kill music and movies, that never panned out despite piracy always still existing.
Not really. I am arguing against piracy being legal. I am not arguing that piracy in its current form is killing anything.
if you would have a legal streaming platform that is free with all the same content then everyone would use that, no?
Are you suggesting a case in which it’s funded by some billionaire who does not need to charge money in order to cover the cost of hosting? Because if not, we’re back in the “commercial use” territory that I already covered.
If it’s purely hypothetical in order to ask if people prefer free things, then sure, of course people prefer free. But people prefer convenient even more, as streaming shows.
Half the reason piracy took off in the days of Limewire and Napster is because the RIAA actually made agreements with the big music publishers not to sell their music on digital services, in order to prop up CD sales. When iTunes came along, it instantly ate up the vast majority of Limewire/Frostwire/IRC traffic for music.
Exactly. And if they can’t afford to keep making music or whatever on that then we just have less of those things. Sure seems like we have more than ever, though.
Yes, we have more than ever. Because people are willing to pay for legal content. If you are suggesting that an artist should be content with selling a single album, then I doubt we would have professional artists for long.
The data to validate this is scarce, but I’d wager that most rips come from stolen physical media. I don’t think there’s too many people out there going “I just paid $20 of my hard-earned money for this Blu-ray, so now I’m going to give it away to strangers for free”. The whole “paying for something” thing is kinda antithetical to piracy in the first place. But again, there’s no real way to quantify this.
So, according to you, piracy is stealing, because it has to be stolen at some point. And the reason that it must be stolen is because it is connected to piracy.
Don’t act surprised if you’re downvoted, if you present your circular logic this plainly.
The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.
The origins of most of all western countries’ wealth comes from theft, full stop.
More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do.
That’s only the case for pre-Bluray release content. Most of it was just captured from rips, Amazon Prime or Netflix.
That is a false equivalency.
The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven’t paid for.
Pirating takes away a possible purchase. You haven’t actually used any of their resources or cost them anything.
If I wasn’t going to buy it anyway they haven’t lost anything.
If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you’ve actually cost them resources.
I don’t get this logic at all. Piracy doesn’t take away a possible purchase. There is an assumption that the media downloaded was ever going to be paid for. In 100% of the cases where I downloaded pirated content, I was never going to pay for the product, even if it was available to me by other means. Further I cannot remove a sale from someone when I never possessed the money to pay for it anyway.
I believe most people that pirate cannot afford to buy digital releases or pay for streaming services etc… (not all cases of course). In these situations nobody loses. The media companies didn’t lose anything because I was never going to buy it, and it wasn’t stolen because they still possess the media.
Edit - I agree with you Lmaydev I replied to the wrong comment.
And media costs money to make.
If you weren’t going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That’s the thing, if you’re interested enough in a product to want it, then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.
How do you think scene groups get their materials in the first place? They just find it on a flash drive on a park bench?
More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do. The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.
I don’t agree with this at all. There are tons of things someone might want to use or have but not enough that they’d be willing to pay for it. Or over a certain amount of money.
The fact is that the person in question is still taking something without paying for it. A sense of entitlement (I want it badly enough that I should have it for free) doesn’t change anything in this equation.
Sure, they are procuring something worth money without paying for it. But this is a very different argument than you would not pirate something if you would not also be prepared to pay it.
Like anything covered by free use, or for making reaction gifs
But not to copy, which is what you are asserting is being “stolen”. No one is claiming that turnstile jumpers are taking away money from train manufacturers. You’re having to mix analogies, because copying something isn’t theft.
I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse. The point is that in both examples, somebody is exploiting somebody else’s labor without paying.
There is no labor in making digital copies.
You are trying to blur the line between the media/art/music/film, etc, and the reproductions of it.
Artists do deserve to be paid for their work, but artists do not deserve to maintain ownership over the already-sold assets, nor whatever happens to those assets afterwards (like copies made). If you want to say they should retain commercial rights for reproduction of it, sure, but resell of the originally-sold work (e.g. the mp3 file), and non-commercial reproductions from that sold work? Nah.
They didn’t put in labor towards that. To say they did expands “labor” far beyond any reasonable definition.
But by this definition then, it should be ok for only one person to buy the item and then just copy and give it to everyone else, and the original author receives payment from a single item?
If it comes from their copy, sure. But streaming proved that people won’t do that if they have a less onerous way to do it, whether it be Spotify or Netflix.
People only started reverting to piracy when services started cannibalizing access to content and demanding more money than the access was worth.
Most video games don’t contain DRM, and can be found as torrents online, and yet video game sales are through the roof.
You’re literally just rehashing all the tired MPAA/RIAA talking points claiming that piracy would kill music and movies, that never panned out despite piracy always still existing.
This is true to an extent, but if you would have a legal streaming platform that is free with all the same content then everyone would use that, no? The only reason someone would want to pay for Netflix is to donate to Netflix because they like it. But we all know how small of a percentage that would be. Reason why people use streaming services is that they’re simple and legal, and they are willing to pay for it.
True. Though literally no clue about how much DRM there is. However, if piracy is fully legal then there would be no reason to purchase the games (assuming they’re as convenient). People are prepared to pay for things that are legal.
Not really. I am arguing against piracy being legal. I am not arguing that piracy in its current form is killing anything.
As in this argument.
Yes, that was my point.
Are you suggesting a case in which it’s funded by some billionaire who does not need to charge money in order to cover the cost of hosting? Because if not, we’re back in the “commercial use” territory that I already covered.
If it’s purely hypothetical in order to ask if people prefer free things, then sure, of course people prefer free. But people prefer convenient even more, as streaming shows.
Half the reason piracy took off in the days of Limewire and Napster is because the RIAA actually made agreements with the big music publishers not to sell their music on digital services, in order to prop up CD sales. When iTunes came along, it instantly ate up the vast majority of Limewire/Frostwire/IRC traffic for music.
Exactly. And if they can’t afford to keep making music or whatever on that then we just have less of those things. Sure seems like we have more than ever, though.
Hurray free market capitalism
Yes, we have more than ever. Because people are willing to pay for legal content. If you are suggesting that an artist should be content with selling a single album, then I doubt we would have professional artists for long.
You’re trying to blur the line between what is and what should be. We don’t live in an ideal world.
Yup, many people (like you) consider copyright morally okay, and many people (like me) consider copyright infringement morally okay.
Not an ideal world for either of us, I guess.
Rips do exist, ya know?
And physical media’s never stolen, right?
The data to validate this is scarce, but I’d wager that most rips come from stolen physical media. I don’t think there’s too many people out there going “I just paid $20 of my hard-earned money for this Blu-ray, so now I’m going to give it away to strangers for free”. The whole “paying for something” thing is kinda antithetical to piracy in the first place. But again, there’s no real way to quantify this.
So you just dmit that you assume everything is stolen. That’s motivated reasoning, buddy.
We’re literally talking about piracy, so yes lmao
So, according to you, piracy is stealing, because it has to be stolen at some point. And the reason that it must be stolen is because it is connected to piracy.
Don’t act surprised if you’re downvoted, if you present your circular logic this plainly.
No, I never said anything of the sort. Piracy is stealing because you are taking something without paying the cost for it.
I don’t care about downvotes from pirates with a Robin Hood complex. I’m on Kbin and most of them don’t sync to my instance, anyway.
When I steal a shoe, the shoe can’t besold anymore, because I have it. If I pirate a game, is there one less copy that steam can sell?
Piracy is categorically something else than stealing. Have you even read the original post?
Edit: If you really follow your logic strand, you would have to reach the conclusion that Sony stole content from their users.
Edit2:
This u?
The origins of most of all western countries’ wealth comes from theft, full stop.
That’s only the case for pre-Bluray release content. Most of it was just captured from rips, Amazon Prime or Netflix.