this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night. It's definitely stealing. This is a piracy community. Don't feign moral superiority. They offer a product, you don't want to buy the product so you find it for free elsewhere. A digital file that you experience for a cost is no different than a book you buy from a store, regardless of the state of ownership after the fact. And regardless if it's a locally published author or a multi billion dollar studio, there's a cost of entry. Semantics is all you're arguing, not the legitimacy of piracy, when you share that copypasta.
"Theft" has a legal definition that at least in my jurisdiction is not met by downloading copyrighted materials. So, no, copying is not stealing.
Actually, even if you are an EU citizen, downloading copywritten material for free is very much considered theft. Ever read those FBI or Interpol statements at the beginning of films?
It's legally called "Copyright Infrigement" and it's not even part of Criminal Law in most Legal Jurisdictions, unlike Theft.
You're talking off your arse so hard that by now you must hovering on your own farts.
In many places, downloading is legal. It's the uploading that's illegal.
You are wrong. You are talking about copyright infringement, which is a civil matter and not a criminal one. That means the party whose rights have been infringed must prove that and sue you. But you won't go to jail if convicted, you'll have to pay damages. That's why the Netherlands, for example, used to be safe for torrenting. It wasn't legal, but copyright holders did not have the right to get account details from providers for IP addresses that were caught sharing content (sharing, not downloading) and thus had no one to sue. If it were a criminal matter, the state would be after you and they have a lot more rights.
You should definitely reevaluate your priorities
In this case, the phrase's become more popular because people buy digital goods and, due to business shenanigans, they lose access to it, like buying a digital copy of a movie, "owning it", then no longer being able to access it because Sony couldn't be arsed to get the rights sorted out.
There's also the numerous situations where you can't legally own media, simply because it's not up for sale, like the vast majority of content on streaming sites. There's no way to own and consume some media except through the provider. It's still illegal, it's still an unauthorized copy, but in this case, it's the only way to "own" something.
Despite crappy licensing agreements and the tenuous relationship between consumers and ownership of a thing, finding a way to circumvent paying for a thing that is for sale in one form or another, is theft.
By that definition making coffee at home and taking it with you to work instead of buying is theft.
Even further anytime you make a product or do a service yourself or get a free alternative (for example, open source software instead of a close-source alternative) instead of buying would be theft by that definition.
That's not the legal definition of "theft", it's not even the historical or common sense definition of "theft", it's some kind of neo-Capitalist Dystopia definition of "theft" that only makes sense if you're starting from a foundation of there being a "right to make money".
How dare you cook dinner for yourself when McDonald's is right there? How will the franchise owners or the brand owners be able to buy meals for their children!?
Look man, I get that piracy isnt an ethically clean solution, but the current state of legal digital media is nowhere near ethically clean either, and I'm far more likely to root for a person than I am for a corporation. Especially since its because of corporations that the digital ownership sphere is so fucked
I will gladly take a position of moral superiority, because copyright has evolved from a very limited monopoly, intended to encourage creativity while balancing public access, into a licence for corporations to seek rent.
So, call it stealing if you like, I will sleep well tonight regardless.
You're taking a thing that costs money, for free. I don't see how it's anything other than stealing.
If you go to a theme park, and they want $20 for you to enter, and you decide you don't want to pay, you'll be in violation of their rules. Those that did pay will leave the park at the end of the day with a great experience, but with no presumption of ownership of the park. This is analogous to piracy by copying a movie. You didn't want to pay the entrance fee, so you found a way to have the same enjoyment for free. The people that paid for their media, however shitty the licensing agreement is, received the agreed upon service with no presumption of ownership.
I'm not here to defend streaming services or crappy licensing deals, but to pretend that it's not stealing, gaslighting everyone here into following your train of thought, is the definition of unearned moral superiority. You're not entitled to free media.
The only theft going on is the ongoing theft from the public domain, due to corruption of copyright law by special interests enabled by law for hire. Your analogy is irrelevant as the marginal cost of operating a park for an extra visitor is not zero.
It's like refusing to pay the $20 park entrance fee and then making your own copy of the park in your backyard. Is that stealing $20 from the park?
I mean it's still possibly copyright and/or trademark infringement, but...
He didn't take the movie/music from them. They still have it. It still exists on their tape/film/drive. If you are going to argue, at least argue in good faith, with words that mean what you are trying to say.
It's not stealing unless you delete the original when you download it. It's forgery at best
I prefer the term appropriation:
Still doesn't fit, because you're not taking anything, you're making a copy.
It's copyright infringement.
Cocksucking cabin is over there --> https://www.motionpictures.org/
Ever been to a library? Try it. They don't bite.