this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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You're right. If you can afford something you like you should steal it, it's much better. Whenever I go into a library I just take a bag and dump all the books and take them home. Why should I put in the effort of wasting my time(meaning money I could have earned) signing a library card when I can just steal? It's THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY. That's how I stay RICH. I never pay. Whenever I see someone about to pay for something they want I just steal their money, why should they keep it if they're not smart enough to not waste it? Their money is much safer with me. The apartment I'm currently living in is so cheap, because I never pay. I just changed all the locks, have triple bolts on all the doors and just stay here. It's mine, it's free and they can't kick me out because I won't let them. Why should I pay for the internet when it's basically flowing free through these wires and air? I just take some from my neighbor. When I go to a coffee shop I just grab the first drink I see that's on the counter. If they're not fast enough to take their drink, I take it, it's just sitting there, it's free.
Tldr~ the comment isn't relevant as piracy isn't stealing
I'm not sure whether to agree or not, but he's got the point in the following sense: if everyone will pirate and never donate to the creator, then the creator will get about zero returns and will likely go make a living doing something else.
So pirate + donate looks like more fair redistribution of wealth, while pirate + no pay looks like being greedy asshole same as corporations
Honestly, you should go watch Benn Jordan: https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU?si=TWErOa6A1XxvFpJu
He makes some great points and has some personal examples. He made more money by releasing the album on torrents and asking for donations compared to the normal ways of releasing your music.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/gDfNRWsMRsU?si=TWErOa6A1XxvFpJu
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Just curious, why do you not consider piracy stealing? It seems to me that if you take something of value from someone without compensation then that might as well be stealing
You make a copy of something of value, you don't steal it. It's still there afterwards
Agreed 100%. Original argument about taking something of value, if somone takes the source code, rebrands the original and re-releases the content for money, that would be stealing.
What are these people called? Not pirates for sure, Oh right they're called some big "media creator company"
It's actually quite simple. If I steal your car, I have your car and you don't. If I clone your car, you still have your car. Theft leaves you poorer, copying doesn't.
Now, there is a valid cargument about me having some benefit from some vehicle designers' IP without having paid for it, but it is not necessarily true that if I couldn't clone it I would definitely have bought it. So the clone cannot be considered a proven lost sale.
The law actually supports this. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for piracy under the laws of theft (except back in the day when piracy actually was theft, shiver me timbers and all that sort of stuff). It's always copyright violation, and in sensible countries the prosecution have to prove there has been substantial material loss to the IP owner, which in the case of single copies for personal use is virtually impossible (especially where we all have to pay a blank media tax which compensates copyright owners for copies that might be made, even where those media are not used for copying someone else's IP, which is scandalous, but here we are), but where someone has cloned stuff and gone on to either sell copies of ther clones that's a lot easier.
But pirates aren't taking anything
I’ll never lose sleep over it and don’t care for the whales but I do directly donate $15 a month, sometimes individually but often times to 2 or 3 individuals. The only service I pay for otherwise is realdebrid. I started donating as I got to a comfortable place in life and am happy to contribute that subscription plus my $15 a month donation to the project, creator, artist w/e. I pick based on the content our household is consuming or projects I want to support.
At the end of the day I don’t think anyone needs to justify anything. Even if pirating is considered to be immoral, which I’m not arguing, it would still be the least immoral practice in the process compared to all the shit that takes place with large commercially developed content.
If things ever got stupid I’d just play crossword and do puzzles, I’m not so attached to electronic media that I’d pay over $50 a month for the entertainment.
Piracy is literally theft...
Piracy is. Filesharing isn't.
When you steal books from a library, you're preventing others from accessing those books. When you download a digital copy of a book, you aren't.
Same thing with money. If you stole my money, I'd be upset, but I wouldn't be upset if I had infinite money.