I am ashamed that I hadn’t reasoned this through given all the rubbish digital services have pulled with “purchases” being lies.
I am ashamed that I hadn’t reasoned this through given all the rubbish digital services have pulled with “purchases” being lies.
Theft isn’t specific to property, you can steal services too.
The water is certainly muddy with digital media, but this is just another oversimplified argument.
If you need to do mental gymnastics to feel OK about pirating then…idk find something better than this.
See comments below for more mental gymnastics
People who assert property rights (including limited monopoly rights on intellectual property) are doing mental gymnastics too. We’re just used to them, thanks to a century of propaganda after the great depression.
The current state of wealth distribution a century later doesn’t seem to carry the promise that capitalism can be fair.
In fact, IP maximalism (Thanks, Walt!) has denied the public a robust public domain, and our courts struggle to do the mental gymnastics to understand why we have a public domain in the first place.
That is to say, the US and EU have totally lost the plot.
Property rights aren’t even fair. Big guys assert them, and little guys have them taken away. A good comment: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/5648831
If I were to steal cable, I would be using the cable company’s resources to deliver content to my house without paying for it. If I were to set up an inductor under a power line to steal power, I would be depriving the power company of power they could have sold to somebody else without giving them anything in return.
When I torrent something, I don’t even put any additional load on Netflix’s servers. With their current monetization scheme I don’t even make the show’s producers any less money.
And when you subscribe to 1 or 2 rotating streaming services and only torrent for personal archiving purposes, you aren’t even depriving the streaming services of any revenue.
When you steal cable, you don’t deprive the cable company of anything.
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It was clear from context what was meant, i.e. torrenting copyrighted content. Let’s not be disingenuous about this.
It’s not gymnastics. It’s a pretty easy step. Corporations fuck you over. You fucked them over. No mental gymnast skills required for that
I buy water, I own it. It just passes Thur my body or shower and pipes. That’s like saying you don’t own your tires as they wear away. You can own consumables. I get your underlying point about theft is more then taking away something. You could be depriving someone of money they would have made. Same with copyright theft. Someone buys your product and copies it then sells it. They didn’t steal from you directly but still caused harm. Piracy is a service issue, if things you buy on that service don’t work people will stop using that service. I’m not going to download 12 game launchers to play the games I want, I’ll stick with steam. Same way with tv/movies.
“muddy waters” is a saying, I don’t think you should take OP literally. The Rest you’ve written seems to agree with their sentiment btw.
Ahhh, thanks I misunderstood. I do agree but also I have a Plex server. I started it when I worked at blockbuster. Technically even ripping your Blu-rays can be illegal so, you have to find your one morals and not rely on laws.
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Copyright infringement causes less harm than the copyright itself. Piracy causes less harm than the cruelty and greed in production and distribution of mainstream media. Less harm is caused by theft than by a system that willfully starves the public and vaults away excess to drive demand and market price.
No artists should go hungry but then no non-artist should either. And yet in our system artists are enslaved and had their work taken from them so that enterprisers can live in luxury while the rest of us toil, undernourished.
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