just take my upvote
That’s my upvote now
OUR upvote 🫡
That’s… a good argument. I never thought of it like that.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for the cinema? You don’t own anything new after.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for your haircut? You don’t own anything new after.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for your car service? You don’t own anything new after.
The difference is that in your later two examples, a business lost something, their time / labor. If you took someones seat at the theater, there will be a disruption at the least, maybe the customer does not get their seat or you have to be kicked out or cleaned up after, but if you don’t disrupt anything or make a mess, you caused no harm whatsoever.
No one looses anything when someone copies a file without permission. The FBI and other propaganda sources would have you believe that media companies would make more money if you didn’t copy the file, there is no evidence of that, only evidence to the contrary, even so, if it were true, taking an action that causes someone to earn less money than if the action were not taken is not theft. If I open up a store, next to your store, and sell the kind of products you sell, you will make less money than if i don’t, but no person with any self respect would ever claim that I stole anything from you, except you, the angry store owner. The reality is that these laws and their associated propaganda exist because the wealthy ruling class is terrified of making slightly less money for their investors.
Think back to the moment you learned that copying was considered theft, you knew it was ridiculous at the time, but you’ve seen so many FBI warnings, and so much of your favorite youtubers whining about facebook videos that belong to them with more views than theirs, steeling their precious views, even though almost no one on earth watches videos on facebook and on youtube, and no one who knows and wants to support a creator would ever watch their content in a way that would instead support someone else who provided no new value. The reality is that the youtuber was never going to get any views from the audience of the facebook video if the facebook video didn’t exist, but because it did, many people followed the comment saying that the video was stolen right back to the original creator. Likewise the people who are pirating software or media are probably not going to buy it in any timeline, but now that they copied the content, they might promote it to people who will actually buy it, people who otherwise would not know about it.
Think back to the moment you learned that copying was considered theft
Well copying is very broad… Plagiarism’s treatment as being both technically and morally wrong imo always makes sense. Plagiarism goes beyond copyright infringement though, since infringement only requires “use” of the material whereas plagiarism is passing it off as your own.
I agree. Though palgerism as an institutuonal rule is a lot stronder than it is in real life. If i write a paper for you and tell you that you can use your name on it instead of mine, maybe because you payed me to. I belive the law is totaly fine with that, but your readers may not like it, and your school may go as far as kicking you out.
In those three cases, you’re receiving a service (showing you the movie, cutting your hair and servicing your car), so yeah, you’re stealing their work, which is arguably much worse than stealing objects.
In contrast, copying a copy of a movie or a game or whatever without removing the original or even a copy of it is not stealing.
And before you chime in with “but future income!”, those profits are hypothetical, so even in the most uncharitable rational definition, you have stolen something that someone MIGHT have gotten.
Copying is not theft and you can’t steal something that doesn’t and might never exist.
I’m guessing you’re in favor of counterfeiting currency, then?
Nope. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never tried to pay for goods or services with a pirated copy of Shrek 2, much less one I was trying to pass off as the “real deal”.
After society collapses, pirated copies of Shrek 2 will be one of the only objects worth anything at all.
Sounds better than the current state of affairs tbh 🤷
That is actually, by law, NOT stealing, thats called fraud.
You’re technically correct, the best kind of correct.
You wouldn’t download a car
I’d download you if I could.
Ain’t no paywall here
Is this for movies? Because you can always just buy the DVD lol. Then you would own it
“Harry Potter is no longer available on this platform”
This statement feels so wrong yet also feels so correct. If companies can’t let ppl own what they paid they shouldn’t complain when ppl pirate.
The only thing I would (totally naively and magically) wish for is some kind of really well organized and curated time capsule mainly for movies and music preservation.
I don’t want all the music and movies for myself, I wouldn’t be able to watch/hear it all but I wish for anyone from any time in the future — to have a simple/legal option to just dig anything out, public domain or whatever will work best.
People have created some amazing gems.
Well, yes. This exist — I am really grateful for that, but… This audio library now contains 15M positions. It is a big number, no doubt about it.
Then, Spotify has over 80M files in the library with around 4M podcasts.
Estimated existing music amount is unclear but around 90-200M and growing all the time.
And suddenly 15M is getting somehow small in terms of preserving, and this is with music only.
With movies I even remember some interviews with Tarantino and Nolan talking about how badly some movies are being mistreated, lost cuts, not even close to proper/safe long time storing, fires, accidents and so on…
So I can keep my rental car, got it.
internet piracy? i never ever would do such a thing, it is illegal. instead i will pay for 5 streaming services and never own anything. remember, you wouldn’t steal a car.
One might argue that software developers deserve to be paid fairly for their work.
That argument falls flat, though, when their products include user-hostile misfeatures like performance-ruining DRM and obnoxious in-app advertising, which pirates remove. By including such misfeatures, software companies are basically punishing their customers for not pirating their products.
Why even pirate the game if you don’t agree with the mechanics?
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You can’t do FOSS with music or movies man.
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That’s a great point. The only reason I’m using Spotify is that my sister added me to her family plan so it’s free for me.
But you have convinced me to get Apple Music if ever I’m kicked off😂
Buying CD/DVD or digital media can be 100% FOSS. Another issue.
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And you aren’t gonna carry around a Sony Discman while working out at the gym are you💀
Don’t mind me here with my walkman and cassettes.
But yes the lack of cassette decks and compact disc players in the wild has reached new heights unfortunately, hell they’re getting rid of AUX ports now, the absolute fucking cunts they are! My laptops don’t even have disk drives anymore, I had to get an external one.
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This is true, but I don’t have to be happy about it dammit! Lol
While I appreciate the sentiment, theft of service is a crime. You don’t have to be able to own something to be able to steal it.
When evil hides behind legality, there’s no moral imperative for good people to follow laws.
Exactly! So many authoritarians pretend that every law is sacrosanct to the same degree as the ones against murder and meanwhile we have motherfuckers outlawing water breaks in triple digit degrees weather and mandating discrimination!
You shouldn’t have to pay for something which there is no scarcity of. A haircut takes time and effort, so you should pay for it. Food is not unlimited, so you should pay for it. Software can be duplicated an unlimited number of times, so you should not have to pay for it. That’s just giving people passive income.
