It doesn’t matter if it’s a CD, a Film, or manual with the instructions to build a spaceship. If you copy it, the original owner doesn’t lose anything. If you don’t copy it, the only one missing something (the experience) is YOU.
Enjoy!
Of course, if you happen to have some extra money for donations to creators, please do so. If you don’t have that, try contributing with a review somewhere or recommending the content, spread the word. Piracy was shown to drive businesses in several occasions by independent and biased corps (trying to show the opposite).
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Devil’s advocate: “If you copy it, the [original] owner doesn’t lose anything…”
They loose the right to distribute it or not distribute it to who they choose. As the owner, it’s technically their right to deny access to the work, and you are taking that right away from them.
I’m not a shill, and I am never going to be a customer of big media. If I can’t get it without charge, I’d rather go without. But, I am taking that right away from the owner. I sleep ok.
Based on this interpretation libraries are stealing from book publishers and food banks are stealing from grocery stores.
Libraries and food banks have their inventory paid for, though. Neither one of them accepts stolen goods. What are you talking about?
So if I torrent something from someone who paid for it, it’s like checking it out from a library’s collection and not piracy. Got it.
/s?
it’s like checking it out from a library’s collection
Yes, exactly. But better, because by “checking it out” you’re not preventing anyone else from also enjoying it at the same time (on the contrary, by nature of the bittorrent protocol you’re improving the availability of said cultural work, helping to preserve it, and culturally enriching society to a greater extent than libraries can unless they don’t artificially restrict access to digital works).
You’re right, it’s not a perfect analogy. I was more pushing back against the supposition that the depravation of a potential sale equates to theft.
That said, media that is pirated comes from somewhere. Many times that content is ripped from streaming providers directly, which means someone has paid for the content initially. Other times the content is ripped off a blu-ray, which also means someone has paid for the content already. Cam recordings require someone to pay for a ticket (or someone to work at a theater but at that point we’re getting in to semantics).
At this point I’ve completely lost the context of what we’re even discussing here. Oh, right. OP said piracy isn’t stealing. Stealing/theft/larceny requires real property to be taken from its owner. Digital piracy does not meet that definition, full stop. OP is technically correct. Is it copyright infringement? Sure. Is that moral? Idk, I can’t dictate your morals but I don’t have any moral objection to it myself.
Is that moral?
When copyright holders can remove access to paid content on a whim, or destroy already finished works because it’s somehow more profitable than selling them, or simply don’t care about preserving the works they claim to be responsible for, archiving them even against their wishes is not only moral, but a moral imperative.
Culture is more important than profits. And if preserving culture is illegal, the law is wrong, and must be ignored until it’s been corrected.
Technically, they are, as they also deny them the option to distribute books and food.
“Books” and “food” are not someone’s intellectual property so that’s okay. If brand A were to sell “BRAND B SUPER FOOD” (let’s assume this is a known brand of Brand B), that would very much be problematic.
In the case of books, if you wrote the “super personal top secret book” and a library somehow got a copy without your permission and made it public, you’d be pissed too and they’d deny your right to distribute or not distribute.
What? No. Denying the option to distribute something is not theft.
Your point about Brand A selling something named a derivative of Brand B makes me think there’s a misunderstanding here. This would fall under the realm of trademark violation, which I wasn’t aware was being discussed.
if you wrote the “super personal top secret book” and a library somehow got a copy without your permission and made it public, you’d be pissed too and they’d deny your right to distribute or not distribute.
I’d be pissed that the library somehow stole the physical book from me or that they hacked into my computer and stole the books manuscript file from me, which both would be examples of actual theft. If I sold the library the physical book and an epub version with DRM, the library removed the DRM, then began loaning out the DRM-stripped epub I could potentially be mad, but it certainly would not be because of theft because no theft would have occurred in that scenario.
They never said it was theft. Its taking away a “right”(CONTROLLING distribution, being able to DENY it to some) that should not BE a “right”. Saying grocers have the right to deny food they were going to throw away to those who would eat it is little different than saying Israel has the right to deny the entry of aid in the form or food and/or medical supplies into Gaza.
It’s a “right” to FORCE people to starve, and to FORCE others to let them starve. “Right”? Its no such thing.
They never said it was theft.
My bad, you’re right they did not. In the context of the OP and the quote used in the top level reply, “the owner doesn’t lose anything” clearly means “the owner does not lose a physical good or object”.
Saying grocers have the right to deny food they were going to throw away to those who would eat it is little different than saying Israel has the right to deny the entry of aid in the form or food and/or medical supplies into Gaza.
It’s a “right” to FORCE people to starve, and to FORCE others to let them starve. “Right”? It’s no such thing.
Ok, I’m losing the thread here. I’m not really sure what this has to do with piracy or whether piracy constitutes theft at this point. If you’re trying to draw an analogy between two situations I’m just not understanding it.
Not an analogy, a parallel. Israel literally prefers that food be left to rot or dumped at sea rather than reaching “certain” people who need it.
Again, not seeing how this parallel really applies to the conversation at hand?
That right is something they should not have. Streaming services greenlight shows, get them made, then cancel them after two seasons to prevent artists getting residuals.
Then if they lose popularity they pull them off the site and even the people who worked on them can’t see them anymore. Animators have to rely on piracy just to show people their own portfolio. That’s where respecting copyright leads.
The copyright owner is just whoever fronted the money, and the only reason we’ve decided they “own” anything is because people with money have decided money should be the most important thing in our society.
Perfect example of this is the movie Dogma. Kevin Smith has stated he would love to do a follow up on it, but he as the creator can’t because the IP is owned personally by Harvey Weinstein, and he refuses to give money to Harvey to license or buy it because obvious reasons. So, his own creation is locked away from him because a monster put up the money for the original before Kevin or most people knew they were a monster.
Yup, copyright doesn’t help artists. Its main purpose is to allow the hoarding of property into the hands of the wealthy, just like basically every other property relation under capitalism.
We can see with things like patreon that people love to support artists they like even if most of their work is free. We really don’t need gatekeepers to make art happen.
They still have the right to distribute it. It’s not like reddit, who not only claim the right but also apparently claim ownership of any content you publish there, while providing no consideration (payment) in return.
However, as you say, they have the right to deny you, and by copying you are subverting their rights. That’s still not theft, though, which is why copyright infringement is a separate offense.
Theft is a crime, copyright infringement is a civil matter.
not only claim the right but also apparently claim ownership of any content you publish there, while providing no consideration (payment) in return.
That’s not entirely true.
The payment is hosting your content for free on their servers that provide reasonable uptime and unlimited retention. You can choose to carve out your own place on the internet and post your content on your own hosting if you want, but a lot of people choose Reddit, or Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, because the tradeoff is agreeable.
a lot of people choose Reddit, or Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, because the tradeoff is agreeable.
A lot of people choose those sites because they don’t understand the trade off, because the site is presented as “free of charge” while the exchange of your data is a secondary transaction hidden in the fine print of the terms and conditions. It is NOT and exchange of data for access to the service, not at the point of sale, not the way they present it.
There is also a nuance in that you have to grant them rights to your work in order for them to legitimately host the material. This is essential, but they use it as an opportunity to claim far more rights than are necessary, without any fair exchange.
good, i hope it happens
their endless nickel and dimeling shows thay have grown way too complacent
hopefully better people will replace them
The “right to control distribution” is utterly unenforceable in a world with computers and the internet. The only way to enforce that right is to have centralized institutions with absolute control over every computer.
I can understand a need for controlling personal information in order to protect the user privacy. I can even get behind the idea of having to control dangerous information, like schematics for nuclear weapon systems. I do not support the idea of moving towards a world where the NSA has a rootkit on every computer because capitalism can’t be bothered that artists make enough to eat.
Maybe there is an inherent problem with a social system in which so many people struggle to make a living. And maybe the solution isn’t to create artificial scarcity in computer systems where information can be shared freely.
Is it actually ethically acceptable to control distribution of something that naturally shares itself?
Before computers, it actually required some energy to copy the content of a book. With computers now, the action of reading an ebook will actually copy it from the hard drive to the ram. If your book is on the cloud, there’s even more copying going on. It actually takes more efforts to erase temporary copies (ex: from local cache)!
Digital copying is not the same as physical copying.
For anyone that isn’t aware, this is the logical argument used in Cory Doctorow’s book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, which you can get an ebook of for free on his site.
At last we were able to create the Torment Nexus…
The problem is that when everyone is using their right to deny access to their works to make people give them money, and there is only so much money you can reasonably spend on entertainment and so on per month, people end up abstaining from a lot of things they could otherwise have taken part in for no extra cost.
I think that the things we pirate have a value: music, movies and games have a value because they are cultural products and vulture is important, software like photoshop has a value because it is a useful tool. Putting up barriers to accessing these things means destroying this value. Having a system where the main way to make money of e.g. music is to paywall it has the “destruction” of a lot of value as its outcome. In some ways streaming platforms like spotify are better in this regard but then that means giving the platform a lot of power over music discovery for example. Spotify doesn’t really do a good job of paying its artists either which is its supposed ethical advantage over piracy.
This is one of the few actually interesting counterpoints to piracy. The rights of the artist for the use of their work is a very nuanced topic. For instance, most people would say that parody and satire are very important forms of expression that ought to be protected. But those often dance the line of “infringement” in the eyes of the courts.
On the other hand, it feels wrong to say that an artist has to accept their work being used for evil purposes, like a group of neo-nazis using an open source font in their propaganda materials, or a group of religious extremists using a musician’s backing track in their efforts to convert people.
I lean pretty strongly for the rights of the consumers of art to do with it what they want, but I admit it gives me pause on some of the edge cases. Very complicated issue.
Devil’s advocate: “If you copy it, the [original] owner doesn’t lose anything…”
They loose the right to distribute it or not distribute it to who they choose.
They already lost that right when they gave their product over to a licensor or distributor. Especially more in some industries such as book publishing.
deleted by creator
If morality was tied to law, there wouldn’t be piracy because the greedy fucks at the top would all be imprisoned.
If morality is tied to law,
How cute how innocent you are.
deleted by creator
Piracy has always been stealingᵢ. Violently. Using ships, or boatsᵢᵢ.
What you’re calling “piracy” — falling into the “intellectual property” mafia’s trap by borrowing their malicious misnomer — is just plain old sharing.
Copying what we like (sometimes changing and adding our own ideas to it) and sharing it with other people, so they can like, share, and change it too.
It’s how human culture works and has always worked!
Copyright (another intentional misnomer, since all it does is restrict the right to copy — and share, and modify — cultural works) is, at least in its current form, not only detrimental to culture (and its spread and preservation) but an attack on human nature itself.
Sharing, in these dark times when destroying cultural works seems to have somehow become more profitable than commercialising themᵢᵥ, has become not only an essential part of human nature, but a moral imperative for anyone who cares about art, culture, and social progress.
As for the hypothetical profits we are supposedly “stealing”, paraphrasing Neil Gaiman, sharing not only doesn’t cause a loss on profits, it increases themᵥ. It’s free advertising.
It’s not about profits. It’s not about authors’ rights. It’s never been. It is, and has always been, about control. About deciding who and when can have access to culture, and who can’t. When we can be human, and when we are not allowed to.
I — Well, sometimes mostly murdering, I suppose, if there was not enough to steal; and of course there was the whole letters of marque thing, which made it political and complicated. But mostly stealing, OK?
II — It being on navigable water is what distinguishes it from pillaging, if I’m not mistaken.
III — In the borrowed words of Sir Terry Pratchettᵥᵢ, “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”; sharing stories, and any other form of culture, is what distinguishes us from other species. It’s what makes us human.
IV — And even before. “IP” wranglers have a long history of not being reliable custodians of the cultural works they claim responsibility for, and sharing has many times been the only way to preserve said works after their (often malicious) mismanagement.
V — There’s studies, too, if Gaiman’s account is too anecdotal for your liking.
VI — GNU
Great article you wrote there! Thank you very much.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Using the term “piracy”, instead of “filesharing”, was always pro-corporate framing. In his 2010 essay “Ending the War on Sharing”, Richard Stallman wrote:
When record companies make a fuss about the danger of “piracy”, they’re not talking about violent attacks on shipping. What they complain about is the sharing of copies of music, an activity in which millions of people participate in a spirit of cooperation. The term “piracy” is used by record companies to demonize sharing and cooperation by equating them to kidnaping, murder and theft.
non-commercial file sharing is not piracy, the industry just re-defined it because they don’t want anyone to share stuff.
At this point digitally downloading things needs to just stop being called piracy and start being called digital archival. WiFi went down, luckily I have my digital archive.
All the people who made the content already got paid for their hours in large media. If you’re pirating from a studio that is 1 to 10 people you probably know that and probably know it’s lame. The money we’re paying to view/listen is literally just the corporation trying to “make money back”, even though the CEO and execs are probably a few tonnes richer than the rest of us, and the regular working class is getting paid hourly.
We’ve really got to be moving away from restricting knowledge, honestly even the idea of a $/hr type thing. Imaging being charged 15c every time you heard 40 seconds of a song or TV show. I like the idea of artists being paid royalties but our current system is such a scam with us, the core creator, getting hardly anything after the corporations get their cut. FFS, audiobook producers get more share of royalties than musicians do (most audiobooks are ~40% royalty share and musicians are lucky to get 25%.
It’s hard as an artist. I want to be able to make money off my music, and be able to live from just that. The very real reality is that piracy (digital archival) would have almost ZERO affect on me due to the scale of it. People would be more likely to hear about me through its word of mouth than they are currently trying to buy my music with my advertising (none). I’m also not making music for money, but so that it can be listened to. Making money from it is more of a benefit than the goal, despite how nice it would be to do nothing but make music.
So, really, if I am hardly affected by people archiving my work, why in the fuck would HBO be? And if it were true, why would they remove hundreds of movies and shows from their service, lost forever. How are the royalties from those being lost when I archive it?
No, there is none.
There is only one reason to not digitally archive something. One alone.
Metrics.
If you like something and you want it to survive, fucking pay to watch it. I love It’s Always Sunny. I have all of it archived, and mostly watch it there. But I will put money into Hulu once in a while just to stream Sunny, for the new season, for whatever. Because those guys have more hours of my life than any other show, and I want them to be able to continue making it, and they can only do that if FX sees that enough people watch them to justify continuing. I don’t agree with everything Hulu does, like their showing ads for networks even on the “Ad free” tier (the network contracted for it, which leads me to wonder when other networks won’t leverage for the same deal), and something else that I had on my mind but just escaped me due to the late hour. Those guys all already got paid, the crew and teams, everything is taken care of. But for another season to happen enough people have to have seen it on a platform that matters to them, so the only thing that really matters is the metrics.
Of course, if you’re HBO even that doesn’t matter and it can be all thrown out anyway… so…
to digital archival I go
So, please read this as serious and no ulterior-motivation.
I’m hoping to release a game in a few years, and naturally I would like to sell it.
I am also supportive of this community and understand somewhat about the release date underground release.
I’d rather either get the revenue from my work directly, or give it away in exchange for donations, trade, or even nothing at all.
All this especially in light of how often independent creators get their shit stolen by megacorps.
Is there something I should be keeping an eye out for, or preparing for so everything goes smoothly at least with regards to this community?
Is there something I should be keeping an eye out for, or preparing for so everything goes smoothly at least with regards to this community?
On the 6th of May, 2028, travel to 2 Augusta Hills Drive, Bakersfield, Kern County, California, United States. At exactly 4 PM local time, place an orange traffic cone on top of the nearest garbage can and await further instructions.
This better not be another attempt to reach me about my car’s extended warranty, godamnit!
Copying was never piracy
Piracy is a pejorative term used by record companies and copyright holders in general in attempt vilify people who won’t play along with their gatekeeping and trolling and also make the act of doing it seem scary and wrong.
Who cares. Piracy is its own thing. People will still do it and creators will still hate it whether it’s classified as “stealing” or not.
I wasn’t gonna buy it anyways. Unless I’m a big fan. Then I’ll buy it. But it needs to be a decent price and the merch has to be worth it.
Now you know corporations and government departments will lie to children to benefit the ownership class and harm the labor class.
Let your kids know who authorities really work for, to question everything.
Heck, let the grown-ups know too. Many didn’t get the memo.
Depends on who you define as “the original owner”
Depends on how you define stealing.
If you say it’s taking something away from the original owner then you’re right, but if you say it’s not paying your share of the costs of a good you’re using then you’re wrong. E.g. if you go to a concert and don’t pay the entrance fee then the concert will probably still happen, but you’re not reimbursing the artists and crew for their costs and effort.
Yeah, but then the “tax optimization” done by the wealthy is grand theft.
Depends on how you define stealing.
Well you should probably use the actual definition. Copying information is never stealing. Whether or not piracy is ethical is a debate you can engage in if you want, but either way, it’s still not theft. Words have meanings.
Concert would be something like theft of service. Lights, etc, aren’t free.
Copying something is nothing more than copyright infringement, period.
Calling it stealing is disingenuous, at best.
“Stealing” requires a tangible item which would otherwise be sold.
Take someone to court and charge them with theft for copying a CD, and see how fast the judge throws it out (hint: it would never make it before a judge).
Depends on how you define stealing.
Stealing is theft, or in US law larceny, which is very clearly defined. Copying does not meet this definition, hence why copyright infringement is a separate offense.
Theft is a crime, copyright infringement is a civil offense (except commercial copyright infringement, which can be reached if the value exceeds $1,000 - lobbyists worked hard to criminalise what normal citizens were doing and had success in this point, while they still get away with fleecing everyone, both artists and end users).
There’s nothing morally wrong with the hypothetical concert goer in my opinion. Maybe my opinion is radical but i don’t think there’s any morality in buying things either.
Hell i’ll go a step further! I think unless you’re stealing from a fellow citizen take that shit bro/sis. Ill cheer you on.
Too much wage theft out there for me to give a fuck about some kid stealing a PlayStation from a walmart
I think we need to separate giving a fuck from morally wrong. I know that even stealing from Walmart is morally wrong because two wrongs don’t make a right as the old saying goes, but more importantly, by living in this society and reaping its benefits, we agree to abide by its rules too. Justification is way too easy of an exercise to have any bearing on what’s acceptable.
That being said…I also don’t even give a fraction of a fuck about someone stealing from Walmart.
We can admit that something is wrong without caring if it’s enforced or not. Kind of like solo drivers being in the carpool lane. Wrong? Yes. Care? Not a chance. They’ve made their own risk/reward calculations in each case.
Well said. There is a difference between them, but as for me i truly separate the idea of “morality” from the buying and selling (or stealing) of goods. I don’t think it’s wrong, at all.
Stealing from your fellows is a separate issue.
I’m with @the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works here, I had no idea I had a radical opinion but I also don’t think theft of physical goods is morally wrong.
“If what you seek ain’t free, then steal it. If it ain’t necessity, you don’t need it. Just leave what’s left for those who come next.”
But in this analogy, wouldn’t it be that somebody is going to a concert and not paying? Or am I misunderstanding the analogy?
You’re right. Here’s the difference though. With “piracy” they can estimate how many copies have been “stolen” and deduct that from their taxable income.
U got some sauce for that?
Its called “shrink”, and retailers handle theft exactly like so. If the labels and publishers haven’t thought to claim such losses on their taxes, then they need new lawyers.
https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc515
Theft loss.
From your source verbatim, emphasis mine:
A theft is the taking and removal of money or property with the intent to deprive the owner of it. The taking must be illegal under the law of the state where it occurred and must have been done with criminal intent.
Piracy of digital media would not meet that threshold set by the IRS. If any media publisher is deducting this type of “loss” from their taxes it sure reads like they’re committing tax fraud.
Depends on how you define stealing.
Pirates love to use a definition of “theft” that puts the entire definition on the victim, instead of their own actions. They use definitions like “depriving the original owner”, instead of “taking what doesn’t belong to them”.
The legal definition definitely involves physical objects being removed from their owners possession though.
Image from https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4 by Nina Paley
Who cares? Why the reach for moral superiority? I don’t have an issue with stealing IP. Because the concept of IP is stupid. But I’m not going to rub myself off over what to call it.
