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If purchasing isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing
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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Justification is important to those who act against unethical systems. You have to separate the opportunists from the rest. An opportunist will loot any defenseless shop without the slightest sense of ethics. That’s not the same group as those who either reject an unjust system or specifically condemn a particular supplier (e.g. Sony, who is an ALEC member and who was caught unlawfully using GPL code in their DRM tools). Some would say it’s our ethical duty to do everything possible to boycott, divest, and punish Sony until they are buried.
We have a language problem that needs sorting. While it may almost¹ be fair enough to call an opportunist a “pirate” who engages in “piracy”, these words are chosen abusively as a weapon against even those who practice civil disobedience against a bad system.
I think you see the same problem with the thread title that I do - it’s clever but doesn’t really give a solid grounds for ethically driven actions. But it still helps to capture the idea that paying consumers are getting underhandedly deceptively stiffed by crippled purchases, which indeed rationalizes civil disobedience to some extent.
If that's the goal, the better approach would be to not consume the media at all, and being vocal as to why you are doing this. Pirating it just shows them that the demand will still be there, despite how bad they supposedly are as a company, so that they just need to learn how to bone you too. It's like saying "you're a bad company. . .but damn do I like your product and will consume it anyway!" it doesn't make much sense, logically or morally.
Clever? Maybe. Sophomoric? Absolutely. By misrepresenting why they are losing access to this media, they are effectively admitting that piracy is actually stealing. As I've said elsewhere, piracy is not the action of a neutral/chaotic good character, as many among piracy circles like to pretend, but the actions of a chaotic neutral character.
But make no mistake about my position. People losing access to stuff they purchased (and probably thought was now theirs) is just another in a long list of reasons I say "fuck those bitches" and have really no moral qualm with pirating content.
Why does “sophomoric” being used as negative in your argument? you imply we are arguing an unsophisticated logic built on foundational information accessible to everyone, not requiring much depth to grasp. Pedestrian justifications should probably be sophomoric lest the justification be inaccessible and easily confused.
My opportunity to truly own media i purchase has been stolen from me, i was requested or offered no consent on the issue from the large companies claiming that not purchasing a revocable license is theft; i previously found thing accessibly priced so i swallowed my tongue, now media companies are again price gouging so we find ourselves in this situation once more.
Simple arguments that people can understand and sophomoric arguments where people act and argue like children are not one in the same.
Then sue them because you would have a strong case.
Or pirate like I do, but don't pretend that it's something that it isn't.
Sony is a dispensible broker/manager who no one likely assigns credit to for a work. I didn’t even know who Sony pimped -- just had to look it up. The Karate Kid, Spider-man, Pink Floyd.. Do you really think that when someone experiences those works, they walk away saying “what a great job Sony did”?
I don’t praise Sony for the quality of the works they market any more than I would credit a movie theater for a great movie that I experience. Roger Waters will create his works whether Sony is involved or not.
You also seem to be implying they have good metrics on black market activity and useful feedback from that. This is likely insignificant compared to rating platforms like Netflix and the copious metrics Netflix collects.
Can you explain further why grabbing an unlicensed work helps Sony? Are you assuming the consumer would recommend the work to others who then go buy it legitimately?
If it becomes a trend to shoplift Sony headphones, the merchant takes a hit and has to decide whether to spend more money on security, or to simply quit selling Sony headphones due to reduced profitability. I don’t see how that helps Sony. I don’t shoplift myself but if I did I would target brands I most object to.
Pedanticism that totally avoids the point. Whether they provide the product or create it, the logic still obviously applies.
This also defeats the point that it is some duty to pirate it, because if they have no idea the scope then how many people doing it is not going to affect their decisions there either
If we're being pedantic, I never said it helps them. I said it let's them know there is demand there and that not consuming it would be better for the goal.