It is illegal and immoral. It steals the rightful intellectual property of directors and developers who are only trying to make a living. If you want to be a thief so badly, then rob a federal bank.
I’m a big fan of paying the people who make things for me.
But digital piracy is the only thing keeping archive copies of obscure media around today. Even libraries aren’t keeping up. Plenty of media creators have revived their thing that found an audience after decades forgotten - through piracy, and only successfully revived it thanks to archivist pirates, since they had thrown that thing away.
It’s not black and white.
Patronage funding, early access, streamlined delivery, and white glove support are the funding models that are working for creatives today.
speaking of libraries, there is also a need for archiving knowledge and information for the public good, such as books and research articles. Especially the latter are usually created and, many times, already paid for by the researchers themselves (often via tax money), many of whom would prefer to have their research disseminated.
In the global north, many universities can afford such high-priced publisher premium. But in the global south, and many underfunded universities, hospitals, schools in general, such prices are impossible. So in practicality, they turn to piracy for the most part.
That’s even worse. Stealing from small creators. I don’t see how active archiving relates to piracy, nor its connection to fan service.
You got that from my post? I no longer think you’re engaging in a meaningful discussion here.
The Internet Archive, even outside of their Wayback Machine, is effectively built on digital piracy in many ways if anything. The reality is that any sort of media, whether it’s physical media that was destroyed, or digital media that was deleted or had it’s host platform shut down, could possibly never be accessed again unless it’s archived, even if that archival was done with piracy.
Mother 3 could be considered impossible to play legally in many ways, with most of the cartridges being sold unofficially with the English ROM hack being preapplied, and the originals starting near 75 dollars on eBay, and Nintendo isn’t making any money off it anymore, so in many cases unless you’re a collector, it’s best to just pirate the game with an English ROM translation.
The Internet Archive also has an archived online library of books that you’re free to borrow from, similar to an Overdrive-like platform of sorts, which is great for finding information that isn’t publicly available, or to read a book that is simply rare used and not sold anymore or where another copy isn’t to be found.
There is no way to buy media forever. Even DVDs go bad and get worn out, then you’re back buying something you already own.
Piracy is not immoral, it is the free market pendulum that always forces media to care the tiniest bit of thought toward consumer experience.
I started pirating stuff I have subs and apps for, it’s simply a horrible experience right now. These episodes of this season are on this one, and these are on another service that I have to switch to.
Now which service has the other episodes? Oh now they moved to a different app, and I’m still paying the old app.
The vast majority of time I’ll just go torrent and plex something than chase it to many different apps, even if I have those subscriptions
Shop local, steal from corporate.
No you shouldn’t steal from small or independent creators. However don’t try to tell me that Disney is going to go out of business because I pirated their latest movie.
… don’t try to tell me that Disney is going to go out of business because I pirated their latest movie …
Well, not yet, but give us time! They’re huge! It’s really hard to take them down!
don’t try to tell me that Disney is going to go out of business because I pirated their latest movie
The problem is the antisocial behavior and externalities. Piracy has a negative externality on society, it lets you consume a product you didn’t contribute to production whatsoever. If it becomes commonplace then yes, Disney will go bankrupt, but will every producer, small or big or anything in between.
Rules shouldn’t be arbitrary. People work at Disney too, and you’ll have less artist, animator and stuff, all paid less, it the market shrinks because of piracy
If the product studdenly stop release, then it sometimes could be count as moral, because, when there are lots of digital products rely on the digital distribution (e.g. online game shop) then suddenly shut down, people will no longer to enjoy the digital products on that specific devices.
Please search “3ds eshop closeure”
Edit: “rely on”, not “relay to”
And I agree. However, when youtube decides to make you watch an ad every 2 minutes, you stop caring
If the money actually went to the people that made the content then there would be an argument, but it doesn’t, it goes to a bunch of assholes who conned the actual content creators from their hard work.
I see it as a “try before you buy”.
As a consumer, I have a right to know what I am buying. I shouldn’t have to pay to see a movie, watch it and then find out that I didn’t like it.
If I pirate music or TV/film and really like it, I will absolutely then pay for the album or the DVD and I have the CD/DVD collection to prove it.
As some other people have mentioned, there is the awkward situation where a DVD may not be available in your region or a CD is out of print etc. There is some music and TV that I’d love to own my own legal copy of, but it’s logistically impossible and it’s unfortunate that the only way to consume that media isn’t legal.
As a general rule I actually agree, even if it’s a bit complicated and not black & white
The difference being that money is finite and digital media isn’t.
Piracy does not steal from the directors and creators, but from the distributors whose have already bought the rights. The distributors who attempt to create artificial scarcity, excessively monetize your attention, and in generally act hostile to their consumers. There used to be a pact between distributors extracting money from consumers while leaving the content in a desirable state, but greed ruined that. I don’t mind some ads, but we’re way beyond reasonable. I don’t mind phased rollouts, but actively preventing people from watching just because of their location? I don’t mind things not being shown, but the whole concept of stoking FoMO “before it goes into the vault for next generation”, is just wrong. I don’t mind attempts to copy protect, but paying your politicians to turn a civil matter into criminal and use govt resources to protect your artificial scarcity is just so wrong.
I prefer not to pirate. I used to think policy was wrong when there was some balance between distributors and consumers. However greed ruined that. Greed made distributors take and take. It is not wrong to steal from such corrupt unethical businesses. They’re not worthy of respect
Theft has a very strict legal definition. Piracy is not legally theft. It is legally infringement, a separate crime. Conflating one with the other is propaganda by the largest IP holders.
These largest IP holders want nothing more than to lock up all culture and rent it back to you for a price, indefinitely. They would happily steal from you without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, they have stolen from you. They’ve successfully extended copyright terms to an absurd length, preventing works from entering the public domain for decades.
Many of these IP holders also don’t care about preservation. They’ll happily let their works be lost to history. Some are actively fighting against preservation.
Is it immoral to infringe? Yes. But IP holders don’t have the moral highground. They’re just as bad, if not worse. (I’m talking about the multi billion dollar companies here, not the small business persons struggling to get by)
Is it wrong to take food from a grocery store that would otherwise be thrown away? The grocery store isn’t losing anything except potential future revenue.
Curious, are the people supporting piracy also supporting the writers & SAG strike?
How can you support writers and actors getting paid fairly when you steal their product?
I 100% support the writers strike and I want them to make more money. I don’t pirate content to avoid paying; I do it because the studios make it so damn hard to get their content legitimately.
As Gabe Newell said, “Piracy isn’t a price issue, it’s a service issue.” I would love to pay for the content but I’m not going to manage 15 different services to do so. Not to mention geoblocking and region specific content make it impossible to get some content even if you pay for every service. Nope, I’ll just download it all and enjoy it all in one place; the fact that it’s free is just a nice sideffect. If there was a paid service that did the same I would happily pay for it. As it is I haven’t pirated a single videogame since I started using Steam over a decade ago because I can just get everything I want there.
Not to mention the potential privacy issues that come with registering for so many of these services, which often also bank on selling user data.
This is nonsense. They already weren’t making enough money and needed to strike to try and meet their needs.
And you are implying there is a fair distribution of the revenue earned from popularly pirated media? Bullshit.
Writers and actors have always received chump change or less, and never has it ever been implied that they recieve any payment based on sales, but rather work done.
If you find me any company that garuntees that all actors and writers receive fair extra pay based on sales, then I will swear on my life to never pirate anything from them, and buy the content (if it’s something I want).
That would sure be hypocritical.
I can’t get most of the content legally. What is my option?
When my friend wanted to watch “Breaking bad” a few years ago, he subscribed to a streaming service, it had only the second and third season. He paid for it, but piracy is the only option for him.
Even if you are in the USA, 87% of video games before 2010 are currently impossible to buy.Define a “living”. then tell me who isnt making it. Piracy is self moderating, the content that is being pirated the most involves directors and developers that made the most money, even with the piracy. As you go smaller in scale to creators that are more likely struggling to make a living, are also the least likely to be pirated. Every artist Ive known, digital arts, music, tubers and streamers, have hated copyright strike systems. The ones that are popular enough to have pirates also have comfortable income from fans. There is no one being prevented from “making a living” by piracy.
