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).
You must log in or register to comment.
It terrifies me how much effort piracy communities spend on absolving themselves from immorality by projecting it onto other pirates. No one cares about how broken IP law is, they just care about having the moral high ground. And so the laws continue to get more and more broken.
We’re all breaking the law (at least in certain jurisdictions). If morality is tied to law, none of us are moral. And when the law comes for pirates, it doesn’t care about our petty divisions.
If you want to protect yourself (and creators for that matter), don’t attack each other. Attack unjust laws and systems that deny creators fair compensation.
If morality is tied to law,
How cute how innocent you are.
If morality was tied to law, there wouldn’t be piracy because the greedy fucks at the top would all be imprisoned.
Such a shallow take, I think if you can’t afford the commercial software then there’s a whole ecosystem of FOSS you should be using instead. Way too much outstanding free software in the world to bother with piracy! My two cents is I don’t want to go anywhere that I’m not welcome, and if you can’t bother to pay the devs then you’re probably not welcome
Yeah, for games too? Every software I use is FOSS, except games and DAWs, because alternatives don’t exist. Same for pirating specific music and TV shows.
You don’t think the people who make the games deserve your support? There is no need to play a game, you want to do it. You won’t lose your livelihood if you don’t launch Steam today get real. So if you desire the software, and they are asking for money, you really ought to honor that. Most game devs are just trying to make it like the rest of us, it’s not right to just take and take. Why do you think you’re owed stuff for free? It’s like you feel justified in stealing from Walmart because you’re broke. This argument that it doesn’t hurt anyone is irrelevant and not accurate. It’s one thing to not activate Windows, but I think most people on Steam need the money
I do pay for games. I was just contesting your statement that there ate FOSS alternatives for everything.
I do pay for games. I was just contesting your statement that there ate FOSS alternatives for everything.
I see, I guess my thought there is you don’t need video games to work or earn a living, a video game is a luxury and luxuries aren’t worth compromising integrity over. In fairness to all of you guys, I did my fair share of piracy when I was a kid, my sense is that as soon as you can afford software your tune suddenly changes because App Stores are a lot easier than whatever the kids are doing these days
It’s especially true if you do it for archival copies of content you’ve already purchased.
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.
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.
Why would you bother unless you feel you’ve taken something from the creator that you feel you need to atone for in some way? If you don’t feel you stole it, you surely don’t owe the creators anything, you deserve the content you attained without payment just the same as someone that paid money for the same content.
Tbh, I was just trying to point out that being grateful is possible. In the same way that you return a smile, or give some money when buying goods or services in a context of a solidarity event. For example the other day people were selling hotdogs for “pay what you want” whole raising money for refugee kids. That’s how I approach this, copying/ piracy is “pay what you want” (to creators, not platforms). They made some effort to create it, yes. You are not taking anything from them. Nonetheless, you can express economically your gratitude for what they did. Like, homage to celebs.
The world doesn’t (need to) run on giving only what you owe. People donate to creators not through moral obligation, but because they like what the creator has made and they want to reward them for it and/or enable them to make more of it.
Why do you think Patreon (and others) is so popular? Any cynic would surely point out that from a purely transactional outlook, the donors are getting a bad deal. And yet.
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.
Where can I copy one of those pins? That’s badass
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Yeah, but then the “tax optimization” done by the wealthy is grand theft.
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).
But in this analogy, wouldn’t it be that somebody is going to a concert and not paying? Or am I misunderstanding the analogy?
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.
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 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.”
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.
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
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.
Great article you wrote there! Thank you very much.
Depends on who you define as “the original owner”
non-commercial file sharing is not piracy, the industry just re-defined it because they don’t want anyone to share stuff.
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.
