4638
preach
(lemmy.world)
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I will accept my downvotes in advance because what I'm about to say is probably against the mindset of most of the people that come here but:
Piracy is wrong.
I say that as someone that pirates. I'm not sure why people have to justify their actions. I know what I'm doing is wrong, I know I'm taking money away from these businesses that run streaming sites, that make movies, write books(this is the one I feel worst about because this is likely taking money directly from creators). But I do it anyway because I'm cheap, I can't afford it, its easier to pirate stuff, plenty of reasons. But none of them make it morally right, and none of them make it ethically right.
When we pirate things, we're pirating entertainment. Entertainment isn't a right. You don't need this stuff to survive. Plenty of entertainment is provided for free at libraries, online with free movies and books. Hell, you can go outside, grab a stick and a rock and boom! Free entertainment. Sure, there are people that pirate things like Photoshop to get ahead in their careers or to jumpstart them, I'm not talking to those people. Adobe has done research and they know those people buy their products when they become professionals. I'm talking to the people downloading a movie and somehow morally justifying it. But when it comes down to it, you are taking something that someone paid money to make in an effort to make money off of it. In my mind, there's no justification for that. Again, I don't care that you do it, I do it too. But no one is gonna get any points in my mind for stating that somehow what you are doing is right, or that it isn't stealing because you're downloading a copy of something. How silly an argument that is. If you take something that someone else expects money for and it isn't vital to your survival, that is wrong.
I'll get off my soapbox now. I love all of you, have a great day :).
Well I'd argue that two things can be wrong at the same time and I see OPs image mostly as a humorous jibe at the dubious practices that have risen with digital content. When you buy a Disc you can resell it, and the company can't knock on your door and say "Excuse me, we'd like the disc back but we'll keep your money". With a digital movie you just obtain a license to view it that you can't resell and can be taken away from you at any time (the cases I know of are admittedly rare till now and caused at least some public unhappiness and in some cases even law suites IIRC). All at the same or even higher price than before.
Then there is the fact that I'm all for using the correct terminology. When you steal something that something is lost to its previous owner. Piracy isn't stealing it's copyright infringement. Companies just prefer to call it stealing because it sounds more evil. Same with the billions of losses through piracy that they complain about. They are based on the wrong premise that every copy is a lost sale, which just isn't true. Take you for example: you can't afford it, so you personally don't loose them anything. And maybe you even buy some stuff you wouldn't have if you hadn't pirated it, or something else from that company before that you really liked. Then I remember people from my school days who had all the movies, all the games, anything. But when you asked "How is it?" they mostly answered "Oh, I haven't played it". I doubt this kind of "collector" would do the same if it actually cost them money, even if they had the means. In short those number are inflated to make the problem appear bigger than it really is.
Is it still a problem/ morally wrong? Probably, but it does put things in a different perspective for me.
And no, I don't need to justify anything to myself. My limiting resource is time, not money, so I buy my fish in the supermarket instead of trying to catch it on the high seas ;) Doesn't stop me from grumbling about them, obviously
I wonder if we're wrong to group entertainment and physical goods into the same category though. They're wildly different things.
If I make you a pair of shoes, I need to charge you money to account for my time, my effort, and the materials it took to make them. If I make a thousand shoes, it doesn't scale; the price per shoe has to stay the same.
If I write an ebook, I would charge for the time and effort it took to write it, but there's no material charge. It scales entirely differently because I can make a billion ebooks for the same cost as one.
Considering that, the old way of thinking that I should be able to resell an ebook like some shoes I bought doesn't seem to apply logically. We're buying entertainment, not physical goods. I don't bitch that I can't resell the experience of going to a concert, so why do I bitch (and I do) that I can't resell digital media?
I just wish the publishers would price media accordingly. If they all worked out a deal with stremio to get ten cents whenever I streamed a movie, I wouldn't think twice. But instead I need to sign up with multiple services and pay $20 to stream one, and I just realized I'm bitching to the choir so I'll end there.
Yea, thats essentially the problem. Companies getting greedy and trying to squeeze out more money by all means they can get away with. If they priced things fairly (and split the profits fairly with the content creators) a lot less people would have an incentive to look to the high seas. And just maybe (pipe dream, I know) worked out deals with each other so people wouldn't need a freakin website just to find out where the hell they have to subscribe to watch something...
And sure, customers trying to avoid paying for anything is also a problem, but I feel the "cure" a) isn't one and b) hurts the people who pay much more than those who pirate.
Essentially the grass isn't green on either side of the fence and that's why we can't have nice things 🤷