Because I’m a cheap bastard.
And also because I’m a third worlder and piracy is my only access.
What if you’re pirating to avoid agreeing to an EULA that lets a giant corporation murder your family members?
Yeah, that lawsuit from last week is also why I started pirating 20 years ago.
Try the Sony BMG Rootkit, contained on music CDs:
In 2005 it was revealed that the implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs distributed by Sony BMG installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and “phone home” with reports on the user’s private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software’s existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
I have a few of those CD’s. They also have copy protection to keep people from copying the CD’s. It doesn’t work.
You can’t really have effective copy protection on any disc that can be played in a basic CD player; they’re just too simple.
So Sony’s approach was to put an autorun installer for a ‘music player’ on the disk too. If installed, it attempted to lock your CD drive from being used by any other software and couldn’t be easily uninstalled. And they pirated open-source software (yes, that’s possible) to build it.
SMH My Head.
Even if it did we’s still find a way to copy it. I copy Ultra HD-Blu-rays I purchase to my hdd as a backup. DRM only serves to punish those who actually spend money on media.
Oh, indeed. I’m just pointing out that terrible & illegal DRM is hardly a new practice.
Then you’re violating the law! Just agree to the 40 page legalese text as if you were on an equal footing.
- Let your personal pet lawyer read it if you can’t.
- Don’t forget to read every change to them, because every EULA allows the vendor to change parts of the EULA at any time.
- Enjoy having fewer rights to the bought stuff than a pirate does, because the EULA makes you waive them. Or will make you waive them.
I just like getting my dumb blorbos without having to have a spreadsheet of where to find them scattered over 20 different services
My friend (an old lady unfamiliar with pirates) bought a dvd the other day. A comedy from 15 years ago.
It had been censored. Offensive dialogue dubbed over. No warning on rhe package.
Yo ho forever.
Still not theft.
I’m fine with people calling piracy theft, if it means they’ll pirate more.
it’s not theft it’s plundering
Cuz I’m broke and Hollywood isn’t. It’s wealth redistribution. /s….? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I pirate because I want to watch Last Exile now, not 3 months ago when Hulu had the rights to it, and not some time in the future when they may acquire the rights again
Also it’s easier than finding physical copies of 30 year old OVAs
It’s just a better product.
Yup, if you present me a side-by-side of the free one and the paid one when the free one is better even disregarding costs, I’m pirating 100% of the time.
- “Oh, you’ll only have access to this as long as our servers remain online or as long as we keep renewing the license.”
- “Sorry, your device needs to phone home to use this.”
- “Don’t you love ads in your paid product?”
- “You’ll need to juggle several different services if you want what you can otherwise get for free on a central hub.”
- “Yes, you can only use this on one or two devices at a time thanks to DRM.”
- “Fuck you, you’ll need an account with us to use this even though you bought it without that account somewhere else.”
- “This thing’s only ongoing cost on our end is version updates you totally need and want, so it’ll be an indefinite subscription (which we’ll make a pain in the ass to cancel).”
- “This game runs noticeably worse because of the shitty DRM we shoehorned in.”
- “You’re saying you don’t like being spied on for ad targeting?”
- “You can only get this bundled with a bunch of other bullshit you don’t want and would never pay for individually.”
- “Our UI that you’re forced to interact with to use this is fucking garbage.”
- “We don’t sell this anymore; ask Scalper4478 on eBay.”
- “We use the money that you pay us to lobby against your rights as a consumer.”
- “We somehow lack QoL features that the free version has.”
You’ll need to juggle several different services if you want what you can otherwise get for free on a central hub.
This one, while common, I kind of take issue with. You’re basically complaining that there is no one, all-consuming media oligarchy that owns EVERY show/movie, and distributes it on their singular massively overpriced service (and yes, with that market stranglehold, they would massively overprice it)
Shouldn’t the principle of competition mean there are multiple services, each trying to present better content? People reasonably contend with only being subscribed to a few they care about - I don’t know who is assuming they should get access to all media, all the time, without paying truckloads of money.
I will grant that for games, no service beats Steam, but I will absolutely buy games from other platforms like Itch and GOG in the spirit of competition when their prices or better or the dev has avoided Steam for reasons of adult content censorship.
Morality is a great tool for justifying legal enforcement of my desires. All it takes is a good argument connecting the two.
The arguments are getting less good here tho. They’re getting very thin and flimsy.
What would happen if we threw away the moral argument?
What if instead of offering a moral argument for why you shouldn’t pirate their movies, Disney just said “come at me bro”?
Then I would come. And by God would I die stealing the dumbest shit imaginable just for the sake of it
Why not both?
If purchasing doesn’t convey ownership, copying cannot be theft.
Removed by mod
The left picture is lemmings trying to justify how its their right to watch youtube for free and without ads, because all the infrastructure that delivers the content is free I guess, bonus points if they bitched about Youtube not paying the creators properly in another comment
YouTube without ads is YouTube that’s actually functional. They don’t deserve money for the default experience.
And ad block is basic security. No I’m not turning it off
So pay for the service you are using?
b-b-but it’s not theft 😢
Right? No justification is required.
Semantically doesn’t matter much.
If a peach seller has a harvest of 1,000 peaches that will go bad in a week, he doesn’t care about “only having 940 peaches” when someone steals 60 of them. He cares that he spent all that effort and money growing the peaches on the bet he’d make a profit, rented the shop space in the market, hired an assistant to bag and sell them, and some douchebag still didn’t pay for them.
The quantity of product a seller maintains is generally almost completely irrelevant to the costs. It’s about the societal expectations of paying your due to people who have put work into something you want.
Ok so alternatively, instead of “stealing” peaches, I pay $10 monthly for Peaches+, which means I get to look at the peaches whenever I want to until they go bad. Sometimes new peaches arrive but they rarely look as good as the previous ones. Then when I eventually cancel my Peaches+ subscription I still don’t own a single peach even though I paid a lot of money.
You Wouldn’t Look At A Peach…
Let’s say that no matter how much is “stolen” the peach seller has an infinite inventory. It never depletes, and it never goes bad.
The peach seller takes all the money, increases the selling price of the peach, and each peach you buy is a contract that allows the seller to kill your wife.
Yeah, you’re right, sorry, we can’t have a concept of intellectual property without Disney mandating we attach a murder clause into it. That’s certainly not stretching the argument.
Just gonna paste my reply since I have an infinite supply of it. (Did I just steal from myself?)
Why singularly focus on the one point about a recent Disney event and completely disregard the other points as if they were now wholly tainted by your critique.
Ignore the single point about the reference to Disney then.
Please continue with the other points.
I’d be more likely to reply if you’d actually withdraw the argument. Say “You’re right, sorry, that was a dumb thing to focus on since it has nothing to do with the point about intellectual property. But the point stands.” Don’t just put the onus on me to “ignore the times I say something I can’t substantiate.”
Basically, if I know you’ll never walk something back from being convinced, you’re not arguing in good faith, and addressing the rest of it (something you can imagine I’ve wasted my time doing before in previous online discussions) is really not worth my effort.
Why does everyone bring the Disney thing into every discussion of piracy’s moral footing?
Why singularly focus on the one point about a recent Disney event and completely disregard the other points as if they were now wholly tainted by your critique.
Ignore the single point about the reference to Disney then.
Please continue with the other points.
What if someone richer than the peach grower took a picture of the peaches, and then demanded everyone else pay them instead of the peach grower for copies of the photo of the peaches? Would you still be upset if the peach photographer didn’t make money from every single person who obtained a copy of the photo of the peaches? In some cases, the peach grower got paid before the photo started being sold, in other cases the peach grower gets 0.0004% of the profit from each peach photo sold.
Classic lemmy logic. Lemme say something ridiculous, but it’s “capitalism bad”, so everyone will upvote.
You’re playing a game, or watching a movie made by labor. Highly qualified and paid labor.
All those involved in the production could easily go and make their own company and do their own movies/games. And they often do. But you keep pirating AAA titles and Hollywood produced movies instead of paying for indie games and watching independent cinema.
That’s because deep in your soul you’re a capitalist hoe, you’re just also a poor joe, but somehow you need to rationalize.
You want the system of capitalist abuse in the media industry to end? Instead of pirating, stop consuming for-profit media, and take your hard earned cash to support independent creators.
Piracy helps that capitalist system. Cuz they’ll abuse everyone they can, and those who can’t will illegally use the results anyways. And this way no independent market will ever form.
You’re not a warrior of freedom, anon. You’re a corpo sucker, just a poor one.
There’s a little concept known as Intellectual Property that begs to differ
If someone steals my bike, I lose ownership of the bike, that’s theft.
If I pirate a movie, Disney still owns the movie.
If I buy a game, I don’t even own that copy of the game??
In my opinion, theft is a bit more nuanced than that. You pirating the game denies the producers of the game the profit they would have otherwise derived from you purchasing the game
no because otherwise I simply wouldn’t have bought it
When people hear the concept of thought crimes described to them, they rightfully recoil in disgust at that kind of dystopic idea. However, euphemize the concept as intellectual property, and for some reason, most people are fine with it.
I have no idea what a “though crime” is, but if your intent is to antagonise IP laws then you’re probably not a very creative person
IP theft isn’t a thought crime, though.
No idea what point buddy was tryna pass across there
