I would still download a car if I could. 🚗

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).

Depends what you download but mostly true.

YoU WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD A Car!?!?!

You're damn right I would; get me a 3D printer big enough...

The music and editing of that ad were lowkey fire. The message... got burnt in that same fire :)

Piracy is when you board a ship, kill or kidnap its crew and steal the cargo. Copying a file is nothing like that.

Unauthorized reproduction or copyright infringements is more scary and dramatic than theft in some ways. Just look at the punishment for copyright infringement vs theft. One is waaaaaay more severe. It's almost akin to saying "You stole his life!" Instead of "you killed him!" Since severity of punishment for copyright infringements is pretty much up there with murder.

Would you download a train?

More like pissla

The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied.

No, they're not. Not earning more is not the same as losing what you already have.

Yes yes the argument is made that the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways,

Yet studies have shown the opposite happens.

content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies

Does your granny know what a torrent is?

not to pay for the data, which is not what the creatordistributor wanted in creating it.

There, FTFY

This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.

"Financial harm" is a loaded term. People expected to make money and then didn't, but is that a bad thing?

What if the US president declared that it is now a legal requirement that every American subscribe to a new paid tier of Facebook, and that declaration was rubber stamped by the lawmakers. Anybody who didn't capitulate would be doing "financial harm" to Meta, but is that really a fair way to frame that? If a bully wants your lunch money and you resist, are you doing "financial harm" to the bully?

The way I see things, the initial copyright laws were a relatively fair trade: a 14 year monopoly on something, that could be renewed for another 14 years if the author was still alive. In exchange, everything after that term became part of the public domain. So, it would encourage people to produce writing, and the public would benefit because a reasonable amount of time later what was produced would be available to everybody at no cost. Modern copyright terms are a massive give-away to Hollywood, the record labels, etc. So, while it's true that infringing copyright does reduce the potential amount of money a copyright holder might hope to receive, morally it's closer to fighting off a bully than it is to theft.

It's not my fault if somebody makes content at a loss and isn't able to recuperate their losses. It happens all the time, sucks for them. I mean that earnestly by the way, though it sounds callous -- it really does suck for them, and I feel bad for artists who can't turn a profit.

However, I just don't agree with you that "objective harm" is done when one pirates media. If this were true, you must admit that it's equally objectively harmful to the IP holder for one to not consume media at all. I just don't see how you can square that.

Devil's Advocate: Many pirates would have not paid for access to that media so to say it takes away from the creators profit isn't exactly true since one act of piracy does not equal one lost sale.

Devil's Advocate Part II: There is s significant amount of research that supports the notion that pirates actually spend more money on media than the average person.

I personally am an example of part II. I pirate a lot of music but I refuse to use Spotify because of how little it pays artists and I have also spent significant amounts of money buying music from artists I enjoy via Bandcamp or buying from the artist directly because I know they get a bigger cut of the profits that way.

So a little more in depth:

So, a little more in depth:

Im poor as fuck. So the option isnt 'buy/pirate' its 'pirate or get nothing'. Fuck you if you think i should live without art.

The artists generally do not recieve profit when a copy is streamed/sold. It simply is not done; their unions are too weak. This is blatant corporate propaganda.

The entire mechanism to do that is fucked anyway, even if it were hooked up to something. I'm sorry, but i wouldnt deal with that shit show for free. Even new releases or classics have to be hunted down like cult films, and then even if i buy them, i lose them at some arbitrary later date. Music was the last thing i tried to pay on, and i just could not keep a cohesive collection together-at this point, if it's not on bandcamp, i assume the artist doesn't want money. And even bandcamp has disappeared tracks i paid for, reducing me to local backups. So fuck em.

I'm sorry. I really would love to support art and artists, but it simply isn't possible to do that systemically within capitalism. There is no clear systemic option. Just ways to lick corporate boot and waste your fucking time.

although

I bet i do actually pay artists-cast crew and musicians at least-more than you do. When i dine out, rare as that is, in los angeles, i tip ~30% in cash. So i am actually supporting the arts, while you, my boot licking friend, are not. Youre supporting the corporate ghouls who feast upon them.

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.

it does definitely take away from the creator’s/distributor’s profit.

Oh no! Not the distributor's profit!! Oh holy Supply Side Jesus, I pray in your name- protect the profits of the Capitalists. Take the money I worked hard for and give it to the do-nothing rich, they clearly deserve it more than me. Amen

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.

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?

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.

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.

Corporations profiting from copyright laws they helped write deserve to have their profits stolen in any case. Not gonna lose any sleep over it.

The people who make shit normally dont get paid anyway.

the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways, but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire

Also, the person deciding whether or not they "would have" paid for it, has a strong incentive to kid themselves that they wouldn't. Imagine if cinemas worked that way, and you could just walk in and announce that you weren't going to buy a ticket anyway and since there's a seat over there still empty it's not going to cost them anything for you to sit in it. They'd go out of business by the end of the week.

Also also, either the thing you're copying has value that arose from the effort of creating it, or it doesn't. If it's of value, then it's reasonable to expect payment for it. It's it's not of value, then you shouldn't miss not having it.

The problem with almost every pro-piracy argument like this is that they fundamentally require a significant percentage of the population to disagree with it.

This assumes that people who are ok with piracy are also against paying for content. That's a nice fantasy and it makes anti-piracy people feel good about themselves, but it doesn't reflect reality.

People who can pay will pay and I’m not taking anything from them” only works for as long as both the general population and retailers regard piracy as wrong and keep funding all those games, movies etc for you.

This assumes that 'pro piracy' people are against artists getting paid for their work. Seeing as how pirates tend to purchase more legal content than the 'general population' that is clearly not the case.

There could be a million different reasons why someone might 'pirate' a piece of media, and simply not wanting to pay for it is usually pretty low on the list. That attitude also relies on the assumption that every single piece of content that is copied is something the 'pirate' would have paid for in the first place.

As an artist, my job is to inspire people, to make them feel, to share my experience with them. I have absolutely zero problem with someone who can't afford to pay for my work pirating it. I also appreciate the ones who do pay, but I would still be making art even if no one paid, because while the money is nice it's not the point of it for me. Id much rather someone copy a work of mine and enjoy it than not enjoy it because they couldn't pay for the privilege.

I understand that some 'artists' are in it for the money and that's fine. It doesn't mean I have to agree with them that they deserve to get paid for every eyeball that falls upon their work, regardless of the circumstance.

Heck, all you pirates should be upvoting anti-piracy posts like this, we’re the ones keeping your habit funded…

Have an upvote from me for being the hero we don't deserve and protecting the mega-corps bottom lines. Truly you are a modern day Jesus.

Nah. Id pay artists if i could.

And in fact do tip them pretty well at the jobs they take to pay rent when im in LA.

What we need is for parasitic creativity destroying shit stain ip-troll ghouls to get the guillotine, so they arent parasiting on every fucking artist.

We need a society that values humanity and art.

Because as is, there kind of isnt a reliable systemic way to support them. Capitalism prevents it.

Nah, I want all those companies to burn. If they can't afford to make new stuff because of piracy then there won't be stuff to pirate. I am totally fine with that. There is a life to live beyond just consumption, you know?

You forget the alternative mindset:

An active desire to see traditional ways of funding to disappear, and the media along with it.

The idea is that you support creators out of the appreciation and not because you're forced to.
This seems to work as a model for YouTubers and podcasters. They usually have most of their stuff available for free, and people pay them money, and more often than there is no reward for the money, other than satisfaction of supporting the creator.
This is obviously one example, and it only works for periodic installments, but it is a working alternative to the system, where people who don't want or can't pay don't do that

Thanks for your service

Same. Its not a fancy car, but its had no problem in almost a decade and gets good mileage. Download it all you like

Yeah, why the fuck not?

Obviously, something made in a specialized vehicle manufacturing plant will be better/more durable/whatever, but given the option between downloading a car vs spending a year's salary to buy one.... I'd rather download one.

Unless my wages get better (which they are not) or cars get cheaper (which they won't), I'll continue to have this opinion.

There's a nontrivial number of cars that cost more than a house did in the 80's and 90's. So it's entirely possible for someone to spend the same dollar value on their home, when purchasing it in the 90's, as they do 25 years later, buying a house in the 2020's.

Stupid.

Agree!

If you want to pirate content, go ahead pirate it. But don't act like you're doing something morally right or some other mental gymnastics to tell yourself you're allowed to pirate content. The truth is, you're doing something illegal. If you're okay with that, then by all means go ahead, but don't tell yourself or others that it is somehow not illegal, because it is.

I think pirating scientific papers is a good thing all around. The research isnt funded by the selling of access to those papers, much on the contrary.

Might I suggest the problem is capitalism. Without the everpresent threat of homelessness and starvation forced on us by the landlords, rampant price gouging of necessary goods like food, and the anti-lottery we all play every single fucking day with our own health, artists wouldn't need nearly so much compensation for their work. Piracy wouldn't matter, or even be required as a concept. I dream of living in a world without capitalism, but we don't. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

They're are a million wrong ways to come at the wrong conclusion. So why then would we be surprised when many of the people who come to the right conclusion still do it for a variety of reasons? Perhaps the initial premise of why copyright should exist is conceptually riddled with holes.

Owning an idea is inherently capitalist, but the average person who encounters a problem won't spontaneously become anti-capitalist. They just know something seems wrong about this, but don't understand why. So they make up a story to address their cognitive dissonance, like nihilism.

Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.

I usually can't, actually. Not immediately anyway. But that doesn't stop me from paying for it when I can. Done it with plenty of games. And if I didn't have that option, which I primarily use for games I'm not entirely sure I'll stick with, well... I just wouldn't buy it. Full stop. Wouldn't be a consideration at all. There is no lost sale here, only the potential to fall in love with it enough to buy it when I eventually can.

Not saying this is some moral high ground. It's not. But plenty of folks just can't afford to gamble on whether or not they like something and end up paying it forward when they can.

Why is no one mentioning here that the business model shouldn't exist? If a copy can be made basically for free, there is no reason not to make it basically free. We should be providing everyone with the means to live regardless of their ability to sell stuff. If everyone was free to do whatever they please because their existence was provided for, people would still make media, because people love making things like that.

Of course that might mean that in the short term, while we don't do this, pirating might mean that some things stop existing. I'd be completely fine if all Hollywood movies and other shit disappeared overnight. Maybe then people would finally come to the understanding that our current model of doing things sucks.

When I return from the library instead of the bookstore it is with the deepest shame.

Yeah, OP's take is like that of petulant child arguing semantics as though it changed a thing. Doubly cringe for adding that second section at the bottom where he depicts his opponent giving up and agreeing with him.

How's the weather up there on that extremely high horse?

Just because you personally steal stuff you can afford to pay for doesn't mean that is what everyone else does. It's good that you own up to that, but don't project your failings onto others. If it's against your morals to 'pirate', quit doing it.

If you are unwilling to listen to or comprehend others peoples reasons, that's fine- just don't act like that makes us the same as you, because it doesn't.

I am not a Christian so I'm not beholden to their rules. Someone like you could claim I am a sinner and I should just own it. No, I don't have the same beliefs that you do so I am under no obligation to behave how you think I should.

I'm picturing a guy sighing with his hands on his head, staring at most of a car with the front wheel stuck in the router. Like, he can figure this out, just give him a minute. Maybe he needs a walk to clear his head. The pieces are there.

@salacious_coaster@infosec.pub I had the same issue!

Hey man, you can't park that here

In 1992 I started downloading a car, the server is still downloading...

Pff. You really think food grows on trees?

A lot of people used to pirate food, but as our housing was pushed from houses to apartments, they took that freedom from us. If you still live in a house, you can still pirate a lot of food in your yard.

Dont let them catch you with your pink pineapples or you might get in trouble:

https://patents.google.com/patent/USPP25763

hold on let me use my 50 different materials 3d printer that has to be bigger than a car to print one. or for me to learn how to make a car from its parts

Well yeah, because my objections to AI aren't based on copyright law.

tbf I did do this a week ago and nobody downdooted me https://lemmy.uhhoh.com/comment/11886692

Because AI isn't creating a copy of the original thing, it is attempted to replace the original thing for a profit. It would be like if a publishing company took some book, removed random parts of it then replaced them to parts from other books, then sold that instead of paying authors to write books.

This is an interesting argument. I don't think the two are completely analogous, and the whole thing falls apart once you go beyond consumer level usage due to piracy's inability to make new things like AI can. While piracy isn't going to get any game developers or musicians fired, AI image gen very likely will. The more it improves, the harder it will be for companies to continue justifying paying real artists.

That said, you do make a good point that many pro-piracy arguments can be used all the same to be pro-AI image gen. At least at the individual consumer level.

Yeah, cause generally humans downloading things is good and AI downloading things is bad.

You can tell it’s made the rounds because it has a reaction image nearly the size of the image itself shoved onto the bottom superfluously

More like toymakers letting children share with each other.

I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let's not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.

It's less an analogy than the literal legal definition of theft.

Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.

This analogy is crap. When they took your paycheck, that was theft. Even if temporarily, you didn't have the check. If they cash the fraudulent check, they're not copying the money; it's coming out of your account. That's also theft. Both cases, the original is being removed, whether it be the physical check or the money from your account. The only reason there might be a "copy" in your analogy is some sort of fraud protection by the bank, at which point it's the bank's money getting stolen. Still theft though.

This is a horseshit analogy.

Stealing money from your account is theft, it's not still there afterwards.

The concept I think you might've been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.

It's also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.

Nah. That analogy does not work.

Piracy situation is more like you have made a cool statue and you charge people money for looking at your statue. Then someone comes, looks at your statue, and goes away without paying.

There's no thief, nothing was stolen at any point. The one how came looking without paying was probably never going to pay for an entrance, and the statue can me still be looked by anyone. Nothing is loss in the process, no harm is done. Some guy just looked at a statue without paying for it.

That assumes you were entitled to something that nobody owed you.

If the money was never yours, can you say it was stolen from you?

I'm pretty sure if someone stole everything you own you'd see it differently

It's only a crime for poor people

Name a crime

Your example is about physical goods.

Software is at its core just digital information a computer can use.

Knowledge/Information (that is not personal information) should be free.

You can make a argument that software developers still must sell copies of their code to make a living but if you look at the reality of software that appears to simply be some kind of bias. You can make software that is free and still make a living they are just not always related.

The software that runs the world’s infrastructure is increasingly FOSS, from critical cybersecurity to vending machines. Even big corporations are increasingly getting involved in using and making open source components for their proprietary fronts.

As a linux user everything i need can be done legally with free software, not only is it free is most of the times vastly superior then a paid product.

Ever needed software on windows to find the installer got bundled with spyware and then the final program turns out to be a trial before Requiring a subscription? That is only because they need to make money.

On linux, you install it, it’s only the thing you actually need, and it works. No bloat, no enshitification. Some person or group realized there was value to be created, created it and as a result the entire world won collectively.

I have a few products of my own that i hope to publish some day and i already vouched to never make them proprietary, My dad called me insane not to try to profit. I call it nothing but ethical to make the best value for humanity that i can. My very common office job provides enough liveable wage and work/life balance for my family and still find time to do such.

Piglet is still there in the morning though.

That analogy doesn't work at all because the Sow produces a finite (and rather small at that) number of piglets over a given timespan.

It's more akin to you getting a piglet/sow elsewhere. Now your piglet/sow need is satisfied and you won't buy anything from this farmer.

(Edit: And even then you took that piglet/sow away somewhere else, reducing supply there, which will make it more likely for this farmer to get a sale in the future.)

The problem is that the producer’s business model is based on making and selling copies

This is all too vague to actually understand the effect of piracy. The economic impact depends how much piracy replaces actual purchases.

When I was a teenager, I would pirate a lot of music. At the time, I had very little money to spend. This copying did not replace any purchases. On the other hand, me not buying music right now is a lost purchase since I could spend money. That's why I spend some money every month actually buying music from bandcamp or whatever, which offsets the revenue that the musicians would otherwise lose.

Also, if the artist has other revenue streams, it doesn't matter as much. Musicians for example don't make a lot of money off of streaming nowadays, and a lot of their revenue comes from merch and concert tickets etc. So if you spend money there, copying doesn't really bankrupt the artist.

Of course each type of media has slightly different mechanics, but in general there are a lot of ways you can do piracy without really undermining the business model of the artists. And very rarely are the effects the same as for theft.

It's not a problem though. If you as a pirate want the business model of selling copies to not exist anymore, everyone always pirating would achieve that and not be a problem.