It doesn’t matter if it’s a CD, a Film, or manual with the instructions to build a spaceship. If you copy it, the original owner doesn’t lose anything. If you don’t copy it, the only one missing something (the experience) is YOU.
Enjoy!
Of course, if you happen to have some extra money for donations to creators, please do so. If you don’t have that, try contributing with a review somewhere or recommending the content, spread the word. Piracy was shown to drive businesses in several occasions by independent and biased corps (trying to show the opposite).
Devil’s advocate: “If you copy it, the [original] owner doesn’t lose anything…”
They loose the right to distribute it or not distribute it to who they choose. As the owner, it’s technically their right to deny access to the work, and you are taking that right away from them.
I’m not a shill, and I am never going to be a customer of big media. If I can’t get it without charge, I’d rather go without. But, I am taking that right away from the owner. I sleep ok.
That right is something they should not have. Streaming services greenlight shows, get them made, then cancel them after two seasons to prevent artists getting residuals.
Then if they lose popularity they pull them off the site and even the people who worked on them can’t see them anymore. Animators have to rely on piracy just to show people their own portfolio. That’s where respecting copyright leads.
The copyright owner is just whoever fronted the money, and the only reason we’ve decided they “own” anything is because people with money have decided money should be the most important thing in our society.
Perfect example of this is the movie Dogma. Kevin Smith has stated he would love to do a follow up on it, but he as the creator can’t because the IP is owned personally by Harvey Weinstein, and he refuses to give money to Harvey to license or buy it because obvious reasons. So, his own creation is locked away from him because a monster put up the money for the original before Kevin or most people knew they were a monster.
Yup, copyright doesn’t help artists. Its main purpose is to allow the hoarding of property into the hands of the wealthy, just like basically every other property relation under capitalism.
We can see with things like patreon that people love to support artists they like even if most of their work is free. We really don’t need gatekeepers to make art happen.
They still have the right to distribute it. It’s not like reddit, who not only claim the right but also apparently claim ownership of any content you publish there, while providing no consideration (payment) in return.
However, as you say, they have the right to deny you, and by copying you are subverting their rights. That’s still not theft, though, which is why copyright infringement is a separate offense.
Theft is a crime, copyright infringement is a civil matter.
not only claim the right but also apparently claim ownership of any content you publish there, while providing no consideration (payment) in return.
That’s not entirely true.
The payment is hosting your content for free on their servers that provide reasonable uptime and unlimited retention. You can choose to carve out your own place on the internet and post your content on your own hosting if you want, but a lot of people choose Reddit, or Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, because the tradeoff is agreeable.
a lot of people choose Reddit, or Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, because the tradeoff is agreeable.
A lot of people choose those sites because they don’t understand the trade off, because the site is presented as “free of charge” while the exchange of your data is a secondary transaction hidden in the fine print of the terms and conditions. It is NOT and exchange of data for access to the service, not at the point of sale, not the way they present it.
There is also a nuance in that you have to grant them rights to your work in order for them to legitimately host the material. This is essential, but they use it as an opportunity to claim far more rights than are necessary, without any fair exchange.
The “right to control distribution” is utterly unenforceable in a world with computers and the internet. The only way to enforce that right is to have centralized institutions with absolute control over every computer.
I can understand a need for controlling personal information in order to protect the user privacy. I can even get behind the idea of having to control dangerous information, like schematics for nuclear weapon systems. I do not support the idea of moving towards a world where the NSA has a rootkit on every computer because capitalism can’t be bothered that artists make enough to eat.
Maybe there is an inherent problem with a social system in which so many people struggle to make a living. And maybe the solution isn’t to create artificial scarcity in computer systems where information can be shared freely.
Is it actually ethically acceptable to control distribution of something that naturally shares itself?
Before computers, it actually required some energy to copy the content of a book. With computers now, the action of reading an ebook will actually copy it from the hard drive to the ram. If your book is on the cloud, there’s even more copying going on. It actually takes more efforts to erase temporary copies (ex: from local cache)!
Digital copying is not the same as physical copying.
At last we were able to create the Torment Nexus…
good, i hope it happens
their endless nickel and dimeling shows thay have grown way too complacent
hopefully better people will replace them
The problem is that when everyone is using their right to deny access to their works to make people give them money, and there is only so much money you can reasonably spend on entertainment and so on per month, people end up abstaining from a lot of things they could otherwise have taken part in for no extra cost.
I think that the things we pirate have a value: music, movies and games have a value because they are cultural products and vulture is important, software like photoshop has a value because it is a useful tool. Putting up barriers to accessing these things means destroying this value. Having a system where the main way to make money of e.g. music is to paywall it has the “destruction” of a lot of value as its outcome. In some ways streaming platforms like spotify are better in this regard but then that means giving the platform a lot of power over music discovery for example. Spotify doesn’t really do a good job of paying its artists either which is its supposed ethical advantage over piracy.
Based on this interpretation libraries are stealing from book publishers and food banks are stealing from grocery stores.
Libraries and food banks have their inventory paid for, though. Neither one of them accepts stolen goods. What are you talking about?
So if I torrent something from someone who paid for it, it’s like checking it out from a library’s collection and not piracy. Got it.
/s?
it’s like checking it out from a library’s collection
Yes, exactly. But better, because by “checking it out” you’re not preventing anyone else from also enjoying it at the same time (on the contrary, by nature of the bittorrent protocol you’re improving the availability of said cultural work, helping to preserve it, and culturally enriching society to a greater extent than libraries can unless they don’t artificially restrict access to digital works).
You’re right, it’s not a perfect analogy. I was more pushing back against the supposition that the depravation of a potential sale equates to theft.
That said, media that is pirated comes from somewhere. Many times that content is ripped from streaming providers directly, which means someone has paid for the content initially. Other times the content is ripped off a blu-ray, which also means someone has paid for the content already. Cam recordings require someone to pay for a ticket (or someone to work at a theater but at that point we’re getting in to semantics).
At this point I’ve completely lost the context of what we’re even discussing here. Oh, right. OP said piracy isn’t stealing. Stealing/theft/larceny requires real property to be taken from its owner. Digital piracy does not meet that definition, full stop. OP is technically correct. Is it copyright infringement? Sure. Is that moral? Idk, I can’t dictate your morals but I don’t have any moral objection to it myself.
Is that moral?
When copyright holders can remove access to paid content on a whim, or destroy already finished works because it’s somehow more profitable than selling them, or simply don’t care about preserving the works they claim to be responsible for, archiving them even against their wishes is not only moral, but a moral imperative.
Culture is more important than profits. And if preserving culture is illegal, the law is wrong, and must be ignored until it’s been corrected.
Technically, they are, as they also deny them the option to distribute books and food.
“Books” and “food” are not someone’s intellectual property so that’s okay. If brand A were to sell “BRAND B SUPER FOOD” (let’s assume this is a known brand of Brand B), that would very much be problematic.
In the case of books, if you wrote the “super personal top secret book” and a library somehow got a copy without your permission and made it public, you’d be pissed too and they’d deny your right to distribute or not distribute.
What? No. Denying the option to distribute something is not theft.
Your point about Brand A selling something named a derivative of Brand B makes me think there’s a misunderstanding here. This would fall under the realm of trademark violation, which I wasn’t aware was being discussed.
if you wrote the “super personal top secret book” and a library somehow got a copy without your permission and made it public, you’d be pissed too and they’d deny your right to distribute or not distribute.
I’d be pissed that the library somehow stole the physical book from me or that they hacked into my computer and stole the books manuscript file from me, which both would be examples of actual theft. If I sold the library the physical book and an epub version with DRM, the library removed the DRM, then began loaning out the DRM-stripped epub I could potentially be mad, but it certainly would not be because of theft because no theft would have occurred in that scenario.
This is one of the few actually interesting counterpoints to piracy. The rights of the artist for the use of their work is a very nuanced topic. For instance, most people would say that parody and satire are very important forms of expression that ought to be protected. But those often dance the line of “infringement” in the eyes of the courts.
On the other hand, it feels wrong to say that an artist has to accept their work being used for evil purposes, like a group of neo-nazis using an open source font in their propaganda materials, or a group of religious extremists using a musician’s backing track in their efforts to convert people.
I lean pretty strongly for the rights of the consumers of art to do with it what they want, but I admit it gives me pause on some of the edge cases. Very complicated issue.
Devil’s advocate: “If you copy it, the [original] owner doesn’t lose anything…”
They loose the right to distribute it or not distribute it to who they choose.
They already lost that right when they gave their product over to a licensor or distributor. Especially more in some industries such as book publishing.
non-commercial file sharing is not piracy, the industry just re-defined it because they don’t want anyone to share stuff.
Piracy has always been stealingᵢ. Violently. Using ships, or boatsᵢᵢ.
What you’re calling “piracy” — falling into the “intellectual property” mafia’s trap by borrowing their malicious misnomer — is just plain old sharing.
Copying what we like (sometimes changing and adding our own ideas to it) and sharing it with other people, so they can like, share, and change it too.
It’s how human culture works and has always worked!
Copyright (another intentional misnomer, since all it does is restrict the right to copy — and share, and modify — cultural works) is, at least in its current form, not only detrimental to culture (and its spread and preservation) but an attack on human nature itself.
Sharing, in these dark times when destroying cultural works seems to have somehow become more profitable than commercialising themᵢᵥ, has become not only an essential part of human nature, but a moral imperative for anyone who cares about art, culture, and social progress.
As for the hypothetical profits we are supposedly “stealing”, paraphrasing Neil Gaiman, sharing not only doesn’t cause a loss on profits, it increases themᵥ. It’s free advertising.
It’s not about profits. It’s not about authors’ rights. It’s never been. It is, and has always been, about control. About deciding who and when can have access to culture, and who can’t. When we can be human, and when we are not allowed to.
I — Well, sometimes mostly murdering, I suppose, if there was not enough to steal; and of course there was the whole letters of marque thing, which made it political and complicated. But mostly stealing, OK?
II — It being on navigable water is what distinguishes it from pillaging, if I’m not mistaken.
III — In the borrowed words of Sir Terry Pratchettᵥᵢ, “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”; sharing stories, and any other form of culture, is what distinguishes us from other species. It’s what makes us human.
IV — And even before. “IP” wranglers have a long history of not being reliable custodians of the cultural works they claim responsibility for, and sharing has many times been the only way to preserve said works after their (often malicious) mismanagement.
V — There’s studies, too, if Gaiman’s account is too anecdotal for your liking.
VI — GNU
Great article you wrote there! Thank you very much.
At this point digitally downloading things needs to just stop being called piracy and start being called digital archival. WiFi went down, luckily I have my digital archive.
All the people who made the content already got paid for their hours in large media. If you’re pirating from a studio that is 1 to 10 people you probably know that and probably know it’s lame. The money we’re paying to view/listen is literally just the corporation trying to “make money back”, even though the CEO and execs are probably a few tonnes richer than the rest of us, and the regular working class is getting paid hourly.
We’ve really got to be moving away from restricting knowledge, honestly even the idea of a $/hr type thing. Imaging being charged 15c every time you heard 40 seconds of a song or TV show. I like the idea of artists being paid royalties but our current system is such a scam with us, the core creator, getting hardly anything after the corporations get their cut. FFS, audiobook producers get more share of royalties than musicians do (most audiobooks are ~40% royalty share and musicians are lucky to get 25%.
It’s hard as an artist. I want to be able to make money off my music, and be able to live from just that. The very real reality is that piracy (digital archival) would have almost ZERO affect on me due to the scale of it. People would be more likely to hear about me through its word of mouth than they are currently trying to buy my music with my advertising (none). I’m also not making music for money, but so that it can be listened to. Making money from it is more of a benefit than the goal, despite how nice it would be to do nothing but make music.
So, really, if I am hardly affected by people archiving my work, why in the fuck would HBO be? And if it were true, why would they remove hundreds of movies and shows from their service, lost forever. How are the royalties from those being lost when I archive it?
No, there is none.
There is only one reason to not digitally archive something. One alone.
Metrics.
If you like something and you want it to survive, fucking pay to watch it. I love It’s Always Sunny. I have all of it archived, and mostly watch it there. But I will put money into Hulu once in a while just to stream Sunny, for the new season, for whatever. Because those guys have more hours of my life than any other show, and I want them to be able to continue making it, and they can only do that if FX sees that enough people watch them to justify continuing. I don’t agree with everything Hulu does, like their showing ads for networks even on the “Ad free” tier (the network contracted for it, which leads me to wonder when other networks won’t leverage for the same deal), and something else that I had on my mind but just escaped me due to the late hour. Those guys all already got paid, the crew and teams, everything is taken care of. But for another season to happen enough people have to have seen it on a platform that matters to them, so the only thing that really matters is the metrics.
Of course, if you’re HBO even that doesn’t matter and it can be all thrown out anyway… so…
to digital archival I go
Depends on how you define stealing.
If you say it’s taking something away from the original owner then you’re right, but if you say it’s not paying your share of the costs of a good you’re using then you’re wrong. E.g. if you go to a concert and don’t pay the entrance fee then the concert will probably still happen, but you’re not reimbursing the artists and crew for their costs and effort.
Yeah, but then the “tax optimization” done by the wealthy is grand theft.
Depends on how you define stealing.
Well you should probably use the actual definition. Copying information is never stealing. Whether or not piracy is ethical is a debate you can engage in if you want, but either way, it’s still not theft. Words have meanings.
Concert would be something like theft of service. Lights, etc, aren’t free.
Copying something is nothing more than copyright infringement, period.
Calling it stealing is disingenuous, at best.
“Stealing” requires a tangible item which would otherwise be sold.
Take someone to court and charge them with theft for copying a CD, and see how fast the judge throws it out (hint: it would never make it before a judge).
Depends on how you define stealing.
Stealing is theft, or in US law larceny, which is very clearly defined. Copying does not meet this definition, hence why copyright infringement is a separate offense.
Theft is a crime, copyright infringement is a civil offense (except commercial copyright infringement, which can be reached if the value exceeds $1,000 - lobbyists worked hard to criminalise what normal citizens were doing and had success in this point, while they still get away with fleecing everyone, both artists and end users).
Depends on how you define stealing.
Pirates love to use a definition of “theft” that puts the entire definition on the victim, instead of their own actions. They use definitions like “depriving the original owner”, instead of “taking what doesn’t belong to them”.
But in this analogy, wouldn’t it be that somebody is going to a concert and not paying? Or am I misunderstanding the analogy?
You’re right. Here’s the difference though. With “piracy” they can estimate how many copies have been “stolen” and deduct that from their taxable income.
U got some sauce for that?
Its called “shrink”, and retailers handle theft exactly like so. If the labels and publishers haven’t thought to claim such losses on their taxes, then they need new lawyers.
https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc515
Theft loss.
I used to make music with a band. We had studio rent, transportation costs, etc. We would mostly break even on gigs between all our expenses. In the rare event we profited from a gig, it went back into the band. As a whole, we were losing money.
If someone pirated the music that I spent hours working on in the space I paid rent for, I am absolutely losing a sale that could really have helped me out and, with enough of them, even let us maybe do it full time. I was always fine with people wanting to try before buying, but liking and listening to the music we spent a ton of time and money to make and not paying me anything is shitty as a small band. Your argument basically ends with “BuT WE’rE PaYinG You In ExPOSure!!!” which is always shit.
If someone pirated the music that I spent hours working on in the space I paid rent for, I am absolutely losing a sale that could really have helped me out
You are assuming they would have bought your music had pirating not been an option instead of just going without
I understand the feeling.
But when someone buys music from you and then puts it in house parties for tens of other people, those people are also listening to your music without paying.And a lot of people these days will never pay for a specific artist’s music.
They’ll use a streaming service like Spotify, which barely pays anything to small artists (especially when free users listen to the music, and not premium users).
But I can use Spotify for free, listen to small artists’ music, share it with other people, and it will be considered legal and “ok”.And personally, whatever I pirate, I wouldn’t have bought in the first place without being able to try it. So it isn’t a lost sale.
those people are also listening to your music without paying.
True, but that doesn’t grant them a copy they can play anytime. This is also why I’ve always been fine with listening before buying.
I can also buy a CD and if I live with family members / roomates, share it and let them play it whenever they want without them paying for it.
Or let people copy it.
But did actually anyone actually pirate your music? Like is your music on a torrent indexer or shared on a site specific to music?
Pasting my comment fron elsewhere"
I hate opening this way, but, as an “artist,” DL everything. Art deserves to be pushed away from profit motives and i hate hearing, “but your fave musicians wont get ur money!” Theyre not getting money off of record sales anyway, they hardly ever did. Ill put out what i make for free download. If ever ppl seem crazy enough to wanna donate, ill look into opening up those avenues, but its not like thats happening anytime soon. Way i see it, its not like i could stop if i wanted to. Why ask for money and limit how many ppl i can reach?
Now ill add,
I learned everything i know off of being able to have free access to near infinite music. Any genre, any style, all available to be perused. My tastes were able to expand, my mind was allowed to be opened. All bc i could listen to anything i wanted to for free when affording any legal music was not possible.
Ive done the band shtick too, and i honestly put more time, money, and effort into my craft now as i have to do all instruments largely by myself. Everything i do is bc of my tastes and ability to listen to more music than i could ever handle. Anything i make is a result of that. Itd be hypocritical of me to try and deny others what has made me “successful” (able to make whatever music i wanna make). Even if i did seek commercial avenues of putting my shit out, i would still not stand opposed to piracy. Piracy is why i ever got to this point in the first place.
Eta: and for the record, when it wasnt pirated, it was listening to shit uploaded to YT. More free music that allowed me to broaden my horizens without worrying about money.
You’re sharing a correct sentiment, but completely missing the point.
Your artistic work has value and you should be in the condition of making art while taking care of yourself economically. This is definitively true. Don’t assume the only possible way to achieve that is to gatekeep your otherway easily replicable art (which is sad and completely agains art’s purpose if you want my opinion). It may be the most viable way now, but it’s not the only one (and it’s not working great, as your example underline).
It’s the same for tipping colture, if you want a parallel situation to look from outside. Is absolutely criminal that full-time worker has to rely on a mandatory charity donation in order to survive and we should all be against that. The worker could say “I need the tips couse I can’t afford live without it, so if you are against tipping you are hurting me”, which is the same things you are saying about yourself.
If someone pirated the music that I spent hours working on in the space I paid rent for, I am absolutely losing a sale that could really have helped me out and, with enough of them, even let us maybe do it full time.
Do you know that though? Is someone going to buy a song just to listen to it? There’s no guarantee that they would have bought it in the first place. Also, piracy literally can increase the exposure to your music and can lead to measurably increased sales. In fact, the YouTuber penguinz0 talked about how piracy actually helped sell more copies of his comic series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJVCDD2lhH0
Who cares. Piracy is its own thing. People will still do it and creators will still hate it whether it’s classified as “stealing” or not.
Such a shallow take, I think if you can’t afford the commercial software then there’s a whole ecosystem of FOSS you should be using instead. Way too much outstanding free software in the world to bother with piracy! My two cents is I don’t want to go anywhere that I’m not welcome, and if you can’t bother to pay the devs then you’re probably not welcome
Yeah, for games too? Every software I use is FOSS, except games and DAWs, because alternatives don’t exist. Same for pirating specific music and TV shows.
You don’t think the people who make the games deserve your support? There is no need to play a game, you want to do it. You won’t lose your livelihood if you don’t launch Steam today get real. So if you desire the software, and they are asking for money, you really ought to honor that. Most game devs are just trying to make it like the rest of us, it’s not right to just take and take. Why do you think you’re owed stuff for free? It’s like you feel justified in stealing from Walmart because you’re broke. This argument that it doesn’t hurt anyone is irrelevant and not accurate. It’s one thing to not activate Windows, but I think most people on Steam need the money
I do pay for games. I was just contesting your statement that there ate FOSS alternatives for everything.
I do pay for games. I was just contesting your statement that there ate FOSS alternatives for everything.
I see, I guess my thought there is you don’t need video games to work or earn a living, a video game is a luxury and luxuries aren’t worth compromising integrity over. In fairness to all of you guys, I did my fair share of piracy when I was a kid, my sense is that as soon as you can afford software your tune suddenly changes because App Stores are a lot easier than whatever the kids are doing these days
Copying was never piracy
Piracy is a pejorative term used by record companies and copyright holders in general in attempt vilify people who won’t play along with their gatekeeping and trolling and also make the act of doing it seem scary and wrong.
Depends on who you define as “the original owner”
Now you know corporations and government departments will lie to children to benefit the ownership class and harm the labor class.
Let your kids know who authorities really work for, to question everything.
Heck, let the grown-ups know too. Many didn’t get the memo.
Image from https://invidious.flokinet.to/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4 by Nina Paley
Who cares? Why the reach for moral superiority? I don’t have an issue with stealing IP. Because the concept of IP is stupid. But I’m not going to rub myself off over what to call it.
OTT providers would withdraw as many choices. Piracy would preseve content you purchased.
To those insisting on the wrong idea: how can you argue with the catchy lyrics of this song?! =P