The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied. The intent of that data is to be copied for profit. Now that the data has been copied against the creator/owners will, they do not receive the profit from that copy.

Yes yes the argument is made that the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways, but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data. At the very least it gives people an option not to pay for the data, which is not what the creator wanted in creating it. They are entitled to fair compensation to their work.

It is true that pirating is not directly theft, but it does definitely take away from the creator's/distributor's profit.

[–] greenskye@lemmy.zip 35 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Piracy is somewhat similar to vigilantism to me. My ability to consider it a negative is directly related to how fair I consider the legitimate methods available to be.

If similar efforts were focused on consumer protection laws as we do IP protection, I don't think pirates would have much leg to stand on, and they'd be seen in more of a negative light.

But since consumers are regularly fucked by corporations, all I see is two sides both doing bad shit and I'm not feeling all that charitable for the faceless megacorp. I also dislike pirates who pirate from small time creators. But that's about as far as I can care given the state of things.

We should be focusing on stronger consumer rights to truly fix the problem for all sides.

[–] Carrot@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago

I only started pirating movies/tv because the streaming companies were selling my info and watch history. I've mentioned it on Lemmy before, but I pay for all the subscriptions and don't use any of them, I just pirate stuff and watch through Jellyfin. (Used to use Plex, but they started selling your info/watch history as well, so they get the axe) It's not a money thing for me, it's a lack of consumer respect, and I can't stand it. If I pay for a product, don't try to squeeze every last drop of profit you can off of me by selling my activity. It's why I use a paid Android TV launcher that doesn't have ads on the homepage, and I don't let it connect to the internet. It's why I buy all my music and stream it on Symfonium, another paid app, instead of a Spotify subscription. I'm just tired of having to set up all these self-hosted services just to get big corporations off my back.

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