Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it.
Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?
I would like to hear you.
- When the content is no longer available for retail purchase (i.e old games or shows that have been pulled entirely [see Infinity Train])
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
Concerning the first point there is also the case of content getting altered. For example TV shows that switch songs because of licensing.
Slightly more gray: content I’ve already paid for in one form or another. I spent like $100 going to the theater to see Mario with the family. I’m not losing sleep over adding it to my Plex when it hits VOD.
Paying for a ticket isn’t the same thing and I’d argue that’s not morally justified piracy. You went from a rental to ownership at a rental price.
I thought you were going to say something like “I already bought a copy of Star Wars thirty years ago, then THEY made the way I watch it obsolete, so I don’t feel as bad getting another copy since I already paid for it once.”
That would be closer to moral than “well I watched it in the theaters once, so I totally own a copy!”
We’ve all got our lines, mate. That’s the point of this post.
This is doubly true for games, which tend to be re-released over and over again on different platforms. This is true to a lesser extent for things like movies, but it’s much worse with gaming where each console is a closed ecosystem that’s incompatible with other systems. At least with Blu-Ray, you can expect any Blu-Ray player to play the movie you’ve purchased. It’s not like a Toshiba player will only play Toshiba brand Blu-Ray discs.
Companies love to use the “you don’t own the game, you own a personal license to use the game” line when revoking rights to play games you’ve legally purchased… But that goes both ways; If you own a personal license to use the game, it shouldn’t matter what platform it’s on, because it’s the same game regardless of whether you’re playing on PlayStation or PC.
Straight black but I still consider ethical:
The entire “going to the movies” experience is terrible for me and my wife, only going to get worse with a runt on the way. It’s certainly a fault of the theater I try and attend, but I’m not driving 2 hours for a decent viewing experience.
I pirate like CRAZY. BUT if I find a film/TV show I really enjoy, I certainly do my part in word-of-mouth or digital marketing for them. It’s certainly once it’s left the theaters but I wasn’t going to that anyway. It also gives a chance for older films/series to get some funding that I may not have picked up otherwise.
Occasionally if there’s a film/show that’s a standout, I’ll buy a physical copy. Honestly I never open them as I have a more convenient digital copy on plex but I do put in some for it.
That said, watch Grave Encounters 1 (not 2…) and Cabin in the Woods. I believe they’re both on Netflix but absolute top tier movies if you’re into horror for GE or horror parody for CITW, cabin possibly being in my top 5 of all time.
Also that said, I’ve seen way too many episodes of MTV Cribs for me to care about it too much >:(
I pay for a smattering of VoD services, I don’t lose sleep over watching something that isn’t available on them.
If corporate greed didn’t force a hundred different services on us, then it might be different.
You say you don’t want 100 different services, but do we really want all media content to be under one roof or just a few players? Consolidation is also terrible for media/art. That’s basically why so many people are against the Actibliz acquisition.
It could also have music streaming style. Where the features of platform is the more pull then content.
Spotify supports far more range of devices. Tidal sounds so much better, deezer is slightly worse quality than tidal but for more country. YouTube music gives you add free YouTube etc.
@hoodatninja @majestictechie @vis4valentine @Kushan @charles Isn’t it obvious? They want many players to have all of the content. Which is possible, because content doesn’t run out if one service plays it too much.
All media content under all services.
I’d love that but it’s just not realistic because of how the media publishing landscape currently is. Happy to advocate for that but moving that needle will take decades. My response is it’s usually somewhere in the middle. 5-10 major players, maybe some smaller ones as well. I don’t need access to literally everything ever made. Libraries already have a wonderfully large free collection as it is (for anyone reading this Hoopla is amazing and countless libraries have massive catalogs on it)
Sure, it’s not an easy thing to achieve for sure, but I won’t lose sleep over them losing revenue because they can’t figure it out quickly enough.
Even moreso where it comes to media that’s just not available any more. If you, a content IP owner, don’t make that content available for purchase, then you have only yourself to blame if people pirate it.
If you, a content IP owner, don’t make that content available for purchase, then you have only yourself to blame if people pirate it.
I don’t think we are entitled to someone creative work just because they made it. That opens way too many doors.
Or content you have purchased and have now lost access too, or shit if you buy something at all you can ethically pirate it. You already paid!!
- You have a physical copy, but want a digital version.
Kind of similar but I feel like pirating content you have legal access to (Steam, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, etc.) in a way to get around DRM is ethical.
For example wanting to listen to songs you have on Spotify on an iPod or reading ebooks purchased from Amazon on your PC.
Most people here arguing that the “ethical side” of piracy is when the media is not available elsewhere. Or if it’s available but at an abusive price/requirements. To which I agree.
But I also believe that culture shouldn’t be only for those who can afford it. Books, movies, videogames, tvshows, education, science is what makes a society culturally rich. This is exactly why we have libraries. It’s a public service. I’ve seen teens become avid consumers and incredibly knowledgeable in certain subjects, to the point that they are making a living because of it. Because the internet allow them to explore and grow. Without a pricetag nor preassure on their families.
Heck! Even I pirated almost everything in my teen years. Nowdays I pay for a lot of media. Don’t get me wrong, we should be supporting artists. Always. If possible.
If it’s not possible, go ahead just pirate it. Piracy it’s just the best digital library in history. With a heavy euphemism attached: “piracy” (the act of attacking ships in order to sack them, kill people, rape people). It has a bad connotation on purpose. Don’t fall for it.
Edit: punctuation
I like this take a lot. Noone should be kept from educating themselves due to their financial means or lack thereof, especially since a lot of e.g. research is financed through money from the state i.e. money that belongs to the public.
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i have downloaded tens of thousands of dollars of audio recording software. i always told myself that, if i were to ever make money from my efforts and usage thereof, i would be happy to pay the author.
i never made any money. but i hope the right people got paid by those that did.
For me it concerns the intersection of privacy and piracy (and ownership).
My conceptions of ownership: I give money and receive a product in return. That ends my relationship with the seller.
But, increasingly (or almost exclusively on online marketplaces) businesses expect we will pay them for, essentially, the privilege of becoming their products. They control digital media as a means to record every action and behavior about us, the users, in order to bundle and sell our information to data brokers and other ad partners.
So, essentially, if buying something does not give me full ownership (possession of media) and is simply a means for a business to spy on me and harvest my data by controlling that media, then I’ll pirate.
It’s unethical and dangerous to use a transaction to spy on customers.
When the money goes to people who did not create the media. Support creators, not exploiters.
That’s almost everything.
That’s why I pirate almost everything
Correct.
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My take on this is summed up much better by Cory Doctorow, and best written up in the foreword of his book “Makers”, which he published for free online.
There’s a dangerous group of anti-copyright activists out there who pose a clear and present danger to the future of authors and publishing. They have no respect for property or laws. What’s more, they’re powerful and organized, and have the ears of lawmakers and the press. I’m speaking, of course, of the legal departments at ebook publishers.
…
Why am I doing this? Because my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks, @timoreilly for this awesome aphorism). Because free ebooks sell print books. Because I copied my ass off when I was 17 and grew up to spend practically every discretionary cent I have on books when I became and adult. Because I can’t stop you from sharing it (zeroes and ones aren’t ever going to get harder to copy); and because readers have shared the books they loved forever; so I might as well enlist you to the cause.
That’s a great excerpt and I’m now interested in this book but it doesn’t really address the issue of money not going to the creator. He’s just in a position where he can afford to go without the income. Millions of artists can not. I imagine neither of us wants art creation to be solely the domain of the wealthy. Reminds me of how in college the only people who could do “good” internships were those who could afford to go a summer (or longer after college) without income and live in D.C. and other expensive cities. It’s wrong to not pay people to do a job of course, but that was a major secondary issue. Only people with money could get the internships that got them jobs that made good money.
You are saying that you would prefer to get paid per sale instead of per hour?
I did both and prefer my money per hour. No matter if the sales are low or high. The fluctuation of payment is an insecurity that i don’t want.
IMO it’s better to not pirate small indie content (mostly games in my case).
Assuming they release on Steam of course
Steam really needs their 30% cut, good you’re here to provide it to them
Happy to
Steam offers rather valuable services to the developer in exchange for that fee though. You get to use Steam’s existing infrastructure for content delivery, payment processing, advertising, community management, authentication (not necessarily DRM), multiplayer services, etc. instead of having to implement and maintain it all on your own. Self-publishing is not easy nor is it cheap.
To run a storefront and do R&D to develop handheld PC’s, simple at-home streaming, and higher quality VR? Yes, it’s reasonable for them to charge an industry standard rate as a storefront
If it is not available to buy anywhere for me and the only way is piracy, I feel like piracy is justified. No one loses anything on this scenario.
Won’t someone please think of the poor corporations sitting on those IP rights hoping to squeeze them for profit someday?
You’re practically taking the bread out of the CEOs mouth
Scientific articles. You’re not robbing the authors of a single penny, because they don’t get a cut of the sales by the publishing house anyway and the journal reviewers are volunteers.
many, if not most, authors of such papers are more than happy to provide a copy if you were to ask them directly.
That indeed should be the preferred route when you’re not in a hurry and the contact info is up-to-date, but when you want to binge very quickly through a dozen articles as I used to do a lot that becomes impractical. Sometimes authors are unresponsive too, or deceased in the case of old articles.
Isn’t there an archive site for scientific papers that are freely distributed? I forgot what it was called, should bookmark it.
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As some else said, you really should just reach out to the authors. You would be surprised at how many will gladly send you it. Plus, you now have a direct line to the person to ask questions and are showing them that people want to read their work. Academics really appreciate that generally.
If you couldn’t afford to pay for it in the first place, then they’re not losing any money.
Pirating anything from nintendo since they won’t release anything from the gamecube era and the new games never drop in price.
Whenever EA or Ubisoft releases a half assed game with stellar marketing
When I subscribe to the service, but the app freezes up… Looking at you Paramount+.
Hard for me to say. In most cases I pirate the game first and only then buy it if I think it’s worth the money. Sometimes I finish the game completely on the pirated copy, buy it and never play again. Some games I buy the original game but pirate the dlc since I despise the dlc model.
Suppose some dude on the street hands out books for free and gives you a copy. Does it make you unethical for accepting one? Would it be different online?
Suppose your government charges a “blank media tax” on storage devices to “compensate” creators with the assumption you already “illegally” download their content, didn’t you already pay for it anyway?
What if you’re downloading stuff as a hobby but you’d never pay for it if that would be the only other option, did anyone lose anything of value?
Physical media and digital media are different beasts. When he hands you that book, he no longer has it. I would also assume he didn’t steal that physical copy. Someone got paid initially for the physical media, which the person is now deprived of by giving it to you. It’s not quite “apples to oranges” but it’s definitely not a parallel situation.
This is assuming - like digital media - some one took the time to spend his own free time to make copies of a physical medium.
There is no way of knowing whether the person has copyright or stole the first copy.
Or compare school books: the whole class buys one copy together, makes copies for every person to share costs. Likewise, a whole family can chip in to buy a car - you wouldn’t force them to buy a car each.
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Whether someone spends their personal resources to copy a medium digitally or physically doesn’t really matter to the copyright holder or author. They won’t get paid either way
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The two examples in your later paragraph are wholly different cases: the second is a completely different use-case and the first one is actually less morally unambiguous than you think.
@Fleppensteijn @vis4valentine another thing to consider is whether the creators of the work actually receive anything. When you pay to watch Barbie, basically 100% of that money goes to Bob Iger or someone like that. That’s what the strikes are about. When you pay to play Factorio, a lot more of the money goes to the people who made it.
But if you get it on VHS or DVD or whatever and sell it, or even give it away, Mr Bob won’t receive his cut and it’s not considered piracy or stealing
@Fleppensteijn what? They actually tried to make reselling VHSes and DVDs illegal. And of course we all know that copying them is illegal.
I don’t know about the first part. Copying isn’t illegal for your own use. Either way, when receiving a copy, you’re not the one doing the actual copying. This was protected by fair use until EU politicians got lobbied into banning it.
@Fleppensteijn even in more lenient countries, selling or giving away a copy that you made is illegal
Maybe, but I’m talking about receiving it. That’s why you have to be careful torrenting (uploading) whereas DDL is no problem
