You seem to be under the impression that people and corporations get equal treatment under the law.
You seem to be under the impression that they should. At what point does one person's right to get richer override other people's right to have a decent life?
Since that abomination called “Citizens United” was imposed on us decent living people (in the US)
Well, they do. It's when humans and lawyers get Involved that things become unjust and unbalanced. The law itself is quite clear, otherwise.
I think that's their point, that they don't get equal treatment under the law.
If a lawyer can twist it around, then we never really had the same protections.
Frankly this catch phrase never made any sense to me, from a logical point of view.
It assumes that:
If buying = owning then pirating* = stealing, because you own it without buying.
And if buying =/= owning then pirating =/= stealing, because you can't own it otherwise.
But the justification in the second statement is completely irrelevant to the first statement. You still own it without buying. It's still stealing.
UNLESS - we examine what "stealing" is. This is where the arguments about being in a digital space vs. a physical space comes in. Where the question is raised: Is making an exact copy really "stealing"? Or, consider what is being "stolen"? The original item? The idea? We need to think about this more.
But it's here the argument should be made and here the debate should be. That's where "pirates" have a chance of winning. Let's get rid of this flawed, easily repeatable, but fundamentally incorrect catch phrase and come up with a better one already. One that makes sense.
*(Nevermind that most of you technically aren't even pirating, you're just downloading the fruits of someone else that pirated.)
I was locked out of my EA account for half a week due to a bug on their end. I downloaded a game I own(lease?) so I could play over the weekend.
Is this pirating?
I think the problem is that theft is the wrong crime to compare to. Piracy is more akin to toll skipping.
I don’t think the phrase supposed to be a logically consistent justification, but rather a way to voice their discontent with/encourage opposition to the increasing degree of control that corporations exert over products you supposedly “bought” from them.
It hasn’t been possible to take full ownership over purchased media since the dawn of copyright law—buying a book doesn’t mean you can run it through a photocopier and sell it at the nearest flea market, after all. Even so, it wasn’t until the advent of software licenses that this rhetoric became popular, as you literally cannot “own” a piece of media that is only available through licensing. Licenses are also largely unregulated: while you were always bound by relevant laws, you are now also bound by the terms of the license, in which the licensor often reserves the right which often reserves the right to change the terms or terminate the license as they see fit. As if relentless regulatory capture was not enough, corporations have engineered a world in which you are effectively at their mercy, and a lot of people are understandably upset by this. So, if these people are deprived of any legal means of owning the media they wish to own, they resort to piracy. Of course this isn’t “justified” in the traditional sense, as stealing something that isn’t for sale is still stealing, and authors/publishers/etc. are not obligated to sell their works, but to them it doesn’t matter, as the underlying social contract of media creation and distribution has been violated.
Piracy technically isn't stealing, it's intellectual property reproduction license violation. Clever bastards those lawyers. You basically don't purchase the music, you purchase the right to reproduce it for non-commercial purposes.
Exactly. If I stole an item that belongs to you, I'm denying you the possession of that item, and you'll either have to acquire another one, steal it back, or just not have it at all. When someone commits an act of digital piracy, they aren't denying anyone the possession of it, therefore it isn't the same as stealing.
Calling it theft is, in my opinion, emotionally manipulative and prevents any serious discussion on the ethics of piracy.
Even the word piracy is a bit suspicious to me; original pirates robbed ships in international waters and were considered enemies of mankind, so calling a much lesser act piracy sounds very manipulative... I wonder where the word piracy was first used to describe copyright violations, can't seem to find anything about it.
Piracy was used as far back as the 1700s to refer to illegal copies of books or unauthorized publishing outside of publishing monopolies. In general, I get the feel of breaking monopolies, turning to less savory methods to get what is owed, and liberating goods from the hands of wealthy hoarders.
For a while, the U.S. publishing industry was based on pirating British books, many of which were previously pirated from France. The only significant difference between the usages is the freeing of information vs keeping goods for oneself.
It's important never to forget who sets the terms of commerce, wages, and employment.
All the peasants can do is game the terms they set. And the owner class that sets those rigged terms, and their doting class traitor sycophants, rage against even that.
"you you you... You're just supposed to eat cat food in the dark crying if you can't afford to enjoy life, while we laugh about your subsistence at the country club! No fair!"
Now... Wait.
Is the argument here that something must be owned to be stolen? I don't think ownership is contested, just who is the owner. Or is the argument that pirating also isn't owning... Or... What? Just tit for tat and it looks like the thoughts should be related somehow? I'm all for sailing the high seas and for right to repair / software ownership, but the two concepts are independent as far as I can see.
Idk, if I'm going to try to reproduce this mental gymnastics I should really stretch first: I don't want to pull something and end up a sovcit.
This saying / idea sprang out of folks losing content they "bought" via online platforms.
Basically the letter from Sony(?) Said that due to licensing rights content was going to be removed from their servers.. and that the items you bought were no longer available.
So.. essentially nothing on a digital platform is ever purchased . It's just leased until the platform owners decide to alter the deal. And such, if you can't actually buy it... Are you actually pirating it?
Licensed, specifically a unilaterally revocable and non transferable licence to view personally. Leasing implies recurring payments, and some areas allow lease assignments and other consumer protections that aren't afforded to licensing.
They just don't want to consider that it's possible to steal from the people who made the game even if paying for it doesn't guarantee you'll own it forever.
The idea is that people buy a cd but record companies and some trolls want to make you believe you dont own whatever is on it just a license which is mental gymnastics. You are right.
You can pare this down significantly. Piracy isn't theft. They are different things.
Imagine if we could hook up Bittorrent and Bitcoin somehow, and made it so you could create a torrent of your work and get some money when people download.
And then people who seed it could maybe get a little cut for helping to host things. And you'd buy tokens and you'd know that almost 100% of the money goes to the artist, and the artist has control over the entire process.
That would be neat, but I'm sure someone here will explain why this is unworkable and stupid. Which is why I posted it.
Imagine YouTube reposts stealing merger ad revenue but it's your main revenue instead.
Most of the back and forth is predicated on the idea that the digital world works the same as the digital one. It does not!
In the physical world you cannot produce and exact copy of something for zero dollars.
In the digital world you can make many copies at effectively zero cost.
Stealing, theft, is predicated on taking something from someone so they no longer have it.
Making a digital copy does not steal or remove access.
The whole argument, which I would posit is deeply flawed, is that pirating removes imaginary potential profits for reselling the thing copied (not stolen). If that's so then prove it. Prove that at some point in the future I, or any other given person, would have bought that digital thing. Unless you've invented time travel you just can't.
Copying digital content isn't theft and pirating isn't the right thing to call it.
We have to figure out how to better frame or address the digital world that just fundamentally doesn't operate the same as the physical one.
So just like you can't prove that none of the pirates would have bought it if pirating didn't exist? But which is more likely, that sales would stay the same or that more people would buy the products if piracy didn't exist?
You're not entitled to the fruit of someone's labor without compensation or their consent, even if you pinky swear that you'll compensate them at a future date.
"Stealing, theft, is predicated on taking something from someone so they no longer have it."
So if I purchase a product and then its taken away due to service closure or 'updated' to be so different as to no longer be recognisable that would be theft surely.
If buying isn't owning,
Then it's time to get communism
This must be why blockbuster failed, people just grabbed whatever and left saying it’s not stealing because blockbuster lets them rent it
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