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Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
(pluralistic.net)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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I've seen this quote repeated over and over these past few weeks, while noone brothers to actually explain what it means and why. This article is no different unfortunately.
When you spend money on something, let's say one of those movies from PlayStation, you don't actually own that movie, there is no file given to you that is yours. You are just given access to it. And then, out of no where, they can take that away from you.
When you pirate something, you are just creating a copy of the file, you aren't taking away the original file.
So, the argument here is that morally pirating is okay because no one is losing anything, aside from potential sales for the company I guess. But on the flip side, the company is essentially stealing from you because they took your money, and you aren't allowed access to what you bought.
The most morally just position in this case would be that if you were one of those customers who paid for and then lost access to said movies, and then you pirated them back, you could say that the company had already made their money on you, and you're owed those movies.
In my opinion, I don't think pirating from any million / billion dollar company is bad even if you didn't "own" it originally.
Which would also be less bad if they reimbursed you for it in some way. But of course they don't.
What brought this quote into the limelight most recently is Louis Rossmann's coverage of Sony pulling all Discovery channel content not just from their storefront, but also from people's libraries.
Sony essentially stole content from people's libraries that they'd already paid for, not just rented content. Sony argued against this that you only had a licence to the content, you didn't own what you bought, hence the quote's meaning...
If buying isn't owning [because it's all just a copy of their content], then piracy isn't stealing [because it's also just a copy of their content].
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Louis Rossmann's coverage
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This seems like it's very specific to that one incident. But people try to use it on all digital products.
It's not just Sony. All the digital library providers have done this. Apple, Amazon, and Google have all had similar instances that resolved the same way; the consumer got fucked.
Ohh yeah, Microsoft. I own Forza 7 Motorsport. It's installed on my hard drive. Microsoft killed the servers so I can't even play single player because the tracks weren't included in the game. You have to download the track every time you play single player or multiplayer.
What's with the hundreds of thousands of other media that is shared?
What about them. I'm not talking about freely shared media, I'm talking about media companies repeatedly removing access to media that we paid for. It is a pattern of behavior from these "people" and if they won't stop stealing from us, then I propose we nuke their headquarters.
That is not the same thing. You still own the game, whether or not it is playable is not the same as not owning. Legal bs but that's how most Western societies are built.
Whenever a game or program or goes unplayable you can not go and fix it, despite "owning it".
Removal of any kind of DRM, even if for personal, even in products you've bought, is illegal.
And there's no lower-limit on how "secure" DRM has to be: even if the client-server communication is not encrypted in any way, doesn't include any identifying information, and you can perfectly re-implement server-side software, tricking the program into itself into talking to your server, instead of the original, is, at best, legally grey area.
I'm not sure what your point is? We're taking about ownership, not whether you can reverse engineer sine DRM.
Being able to do things to your property is one of the basic concepts of, well, property.
Let's say your car's manufacturer fixed the wheels using security bolts and they're the only people who have the sockets.
With actual cars it would be, at most, annoying. You'd still be able to undo the bolts, either by buying or making a fitting socket, or just smacking a regular one until it fits.
In the digital world, however, just because it's called a "security" socket, you're forbidden, by law, from tampering with it. And if the licensed services stop servicing the model of your car one day... You're fucked. Because, even though you "own" the car, you are legally forbidden from doing basic maintenance required to use it.
When you "buy" digital content, be it music, movies, software or games, you almost never actually buy the product. What you get is a limited license to view or use the product for an undefined amount of time.
Generally, companies reserve the right to, at any moment, restrict how can access the content (e.g. force you to use a specific device and/or program) or remove your ability to use or view the product entirely.
For example, a movie or song you've "bought" might get removed from whatever streaming service you're using. A game or program might stop working due to changes in the DRM system.
Actual example from less than half a year ago: Autodesk disabled people's supposedly perpetual licenses for Autocad and other software, forcing anyone wishing to continue to use their software into a subscription.
Imagine buying a house, only for the seller to show up 10 later and state that they change their might and staring from this point in time the house is no longer yours - despite the fact that you've paid for it in full - and you own them rent, if you want to keep living in it.
The architectural design is Intellectual Property and you've got a time-limited license to use it.
Absolutelly, the land is yours, as are the materials the house is made from, but you'll have to pay extra for continued use of that design once your license expires.
PS: This is how I imagine the argument would be made.
Companies selling software and other digital goods tend to pull back parts of their library for all kinds of reasons, which in turn takes these goods away from paying customers who thought they bought something. Since the company defends itself by saying they never bought those goods outright, customers defend themselves by saying that if paying for it isn't buying, then not paying isn't stealing.
I'm interested in where I can hear this explanation from the Noone Brothers.
watch the recent Louis Rossmann videos if the first part is what you don't understand
https://youtu.be/a71_BespSCY?si=sM3DLjzLnpSZjKNL
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/a71_BespSCY?si=sM3DLjzLnpSZjKNL
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
People want at the same time that wages are higher but they also do not want to pay, for example, software developers appropriately.
No one wants to be part of the problem, though. So some people justify their copyright infringing by claiming it's some sort of movement for justice and rebellion against corporations.
Have you ever bought something online (movies, games) that you can't save/download and then the company you have the money to removed that? That is stealing from you. Simple.
No, actually I never was in that situation. Is there another incident like that apart from Sony and the Discovery channel?
And how does that mean all digital products are now okay to pirate?
If Sony openly stole from these people, a class action case against them should be a no brainer.
But you won't see one because we both know it isn't theft. They're still garbage and trash, and so I have no problem pirating content, but calling what they did "stealing" is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly disingenuous.
Pirating software is stealing as well. That's pretty simple. I know people who have stolen their entire gaming library. That's thousands of hours of work and dedication people put in. Why don't they deserve to get money for it?
The same goes for other software, music and movies.
They deserve to get money for it. No pirate is against that.
If we would exchange money for the product all would be fine. Some people would still pirate because they have no money or just don't want to pay but the majority would pay.
But as we buy just a license that can be revoked for any reason consumers feel that the system is rigged against them.
So it is a natural reaction to try to fuck over a system that is fucking you over.
People pirate software that is buyable on GoG, itch.io or movies that are on disc all the time. Just because some platforms offer the product with just a license shouldn't mean it's now morally justified to pirate it.
But I see people bringing the statement because of platform like Steam or Netflix.
Why shouldn't it mean that? Seems fair to me.
And it is not just about licenses. Often the pirated version is just better because they took out things like DRMs that make a Game run slower or movies where you don't have to wait trougth CSI warnings and the likes.
Piracy is a service problem. People will always choose the way of least resistance and that seems to be piracy for the moment.
And as i said, some people will pirate stuff anyway no matter what. But those are people we don't need to talk about because they wouldn't pay anyway.
I said this elsewhere and there are many, many examples of this. For example, in the age of streaming music services where you can pick between a decent handful that have basically everything on each, and that are pretty reasonably priced, how many people are still pirating a ton of music? I know there are some, but if I had to guess, peak music piracy has been gone since the mid oughts. On the other hand, peak video piracy probably hasn't happened yet and probably will continue to grow until a similar situation is reached. Like, there is no way that Sony/Discovery didn't just create another wave of piracy.
And oft-overlooked, but lots of them couldn't pay. Especially today, arbitrary spending is limited for a lot of people, and I'd hazard a guess again that the vast majority can't afford eight streaming services. They'll buy a couple they find the most value in, and then when they're out of money, how is anyone harmed if they just download content on some of the others?
With what money do you suggest people who make the games or the movies should be paid? The way of least resistance is an incredible weak argument to justify taking the work of others without paying for it.
The money that their employer gives them?
How is it weak? And why do you ignore the other thing i wrote about the better product?
And the money grows on trees? You do realise that the money comes from people purchasing the product?
Slower software because of DRM is an issue for, I estimate, perhaps 1 % of the software that is pirated on a regular basis. If even that.
The few seconds of a screen you "have to wait through", no, I do not think that justifies not paying for an entire movie.
not all of it.
You estimate wrong.
Why not?
I do agree that the workers should be paid, but they have absolutely no say in what the company does at the top. It might be that a lot of them don't agree with the company's actions. Only way to remedy that is to democratize companies.
When tech companies say they want to "democratize" they typically mean they are making a service more widely available to the consumer. The democracy bit is that the consumer "votes" with their wallet. A notable early adopter was Amazon, and I would hardly think that the public, today, see that organization as a paragon of virtue. So, in this sense of the word we're somewhat failing ourselves here.
In the context you present, the companies themselves become little democracies internally. This sounds nice but would ultimately lead to chaos and ruin for those companies. I think this would lead to highly unstable, unprofitable businesses that no investor would ever give money to, or at least not expect any returns from.
Furthermore, I don't necessarily think it would benefit the consumer in the end. Maybe the employees mostly vote to have a good solid ethical company, or maybe they vote in their own best interests to bring home higher wages and/or just keep their jobs safe. One could argue we just witnessed one such example of this with the recent OpenAI debacle with Sam Altman. Board fired him for potentially going against the stated charter of the company (one that has an ethical basis of essentially putting the security and well being of humanity above all else), at the risk of destroying an $87billion company, yet the employees staged a mutiny forcing the board to reinstate him.
But I digress. At the end of the day I think the most we can ever really expect from companies is that they will, inevitably, find new and creative ways to extract ever increasing amounts of money from us, until such time that we simply cease giving it to them.
Edit: spelling.
I would argue the original theft was when the publisher coerced creators to sign away their copyright power due to the monopoly the publisher has on the market: i.e. if you don't sign your rights away, you can't play.
In theory, creators could punish publishers by going on strike, but publishers abuse copyright law to remove potential competitors striking creators might flee to. The DMCA's overly broad application of DRM that also prevents creators from freeing their content from publishers also inhibits competition by increasing switching costs for customers who build up a library or DRM's content that they cannot transfer to another publisher.
Breaking up monopolies by restoring anti-trust law to a pre-Reagan state would prevent the original coersion-theft of rights from creators since creators could reassign copyright from misbehaving publishers, enabling customers to transfer their purchased libraries to another publisher.
I don't have a problem with it morally because for things like what happened with Sony where people reasonably believe they bought something and would have access to it forever, but no. So fuck these companies I don't give a shit about them.
But you're absolutely right, and you'll be downvoted for it. I want a luxury good and don't want to pay the price, so I take it. It's the same for virtually every other pirate. It's not justified, it's just morally ambiguous. But people need to convince themselves that they are justified, because they don't want to admit they are commiting a bad act. Literally someone else in this thread is arguing its moral imperative to pirate. Lol
There are certainly aspects of this, but the primary reason I pirate is not because of this, and I suspect there are quite a few people for whom this is also true. In the early oughts once I started getting some money and in basically the infancy of the digital media age, I did try to buy stuff the corporate way. And I got burned by it too many times (probably 3-4, but really once is probably enough.) So now I don't ever even attempt to "buy" something that is digital and DRM encumbered, and I'm more than fine "demoing" a game or whatever. By the time iTunes started selling movies and TV, my purchasing of content I expected to own was limited only to places that released DRM-free.
These days, I have a little more money that I could be spending on this type of content, but Sony just demonstrated exactly why I -never- will (and they're just the latest in a long line.) You know that there were people that bought stuff that were still in the middle of watching it or just bought it a few minutes ago who Sony/Discovery effectively just robbed. I'm sure Sony/Discovery just created a many, many pirates with this action.
Further, there is far more content than I could possibly purchase, so the money I do spend on digital goods, I do so either with the expectation it's ephemeral (like a subscription service - it's impossible guarantee they'll even stay in business) or that I actually own it, eg: DRM free. If I'm out of money to spend, I can't find a moral or ethical reason that makes piracy wrong, and I think actually it's likely that it benefits everyone. When I was younger especially, I couldn't afford much, but I pirated a lot. In Doctorow's case specifically, I've bought some of his books, but that's only because I was able to download some of the earlier work and then spend the money when I had it. With bands in particular, I can guarantee they have made far more money from me than in a world where piracy didn't exist.
If you apply this type of concept to basically anything else, no one would buy it. If you go to Target and grab a t-shirt, and someone whips out a contract -after- you've paid which they demand you sign before you can have the shirt that they can come to your home and take it whenever they want, no one would do it. Or that you can't wear that shirt into a Walmart without getting sued. Or that you can't cut the sleeves off or turn it into a scarf later. If you went back a second time and bought another shirt and they come and take them both, everyone would look at you like the sucker.
So yeah, if by some magic piracy stopped existing tomorrow, I wouldn't suddenly be a Sony/Discovery customer, I'd just take up woodworking or some shit. While some piracy is probably always going to exist that's as you describe, piracy is a service problem.
That was just a long winded way - s very long winded way - of demonstrating my point. Don't get me wrong, weve followed a similar path and probably a major reason why we both say "fuck these assholes" and don't feel bad about it.
But at the end of the day you said nothing to change the point that this is a luxury good you want, but don't want to pay the price, so you take it.