Jumping into the debate on whether pirating is ethical or not - I don't know if that's the right question per say. I think we should be asking, can it be good? Perhaps even, is it necessary? As...
Exemplary
Jumping into the debate on whether pirating is ethical or not - I don't know if that's the right question per say.
I think we should be asking, can it be good? Perhaps even, is it necessary?
As @lou pointed out in a comment above, piracy is essentially how developing nations have consumed media for the last three decades. One example that comes to mind is how North Koreans pass around flash drives full of stolen movies in order to glimpse the outside world. If every country on Earth became peace-loving democracy tomorrow, we would still have to contend with all the people who just can't wait to take away access to information they don't like. It's a personality type and humankind won't ever be rid of it.
I also believe that pirates are, intentionally or not, archivists and preservationists. How many YouTube videos, songs, games, and old pieces of software have been saved because some asshole had a stolen copy sitting on a hard drive somewhere? Better yet, how many times has a company completely abandoned media/software, refused to sell it, refused to let anyone else take it over, and essentially just let it disappear forever?
I would also add that pirates provide a much-needed check on power. I'm not saying they're all doing it out of protest or principle - they're not. But they serve as a reminder that companies need to make their media affordable and easily accessible. Imagine for a minute that piracy just never existed. Can you imagine how many insane hoops you would have to jump through to watch a show if these media conglomerates truly had everyone held over a barrel with absolutely no alternative for media consumption? Every TV show would cost an absurd amount to watch and you'd be signing up for add-on services with no option to opt out. Honestly, it would probably be worse than that. Just look at your local internet provider if you live in an area with no competition. I kid you not, when we got a second provider in our area, my current provider doubled my speed and cut the price in half without me even having to opt in. They just sent a letter telling me I was getting double speed for half the price. What does that tell you about the last decade of payments I made to them?
Finally, I will admit that I pirate media rarely. Almost always when I don't have an accessible or affordable alternative. Try to watch James Cameron's The Abyss. Hope you have a DVD player. Compare that to Bladerunner (The Final Cut). It's not free, it's not on streaming, but I was happy to pay YouTube the $3.99 to rent it because it was easy and accessible. I pay for tons of media. Those assholes with petabytes of movies and TV shows, the ones who have never paid for a single show in their entire lives, I honestly think they're a necessary evil. Piracy is in a sweet spot right now where it's just enough of a risk/pain in the ass that people will generally do the right thing when paying is easier than pirating. I think that's a good place to be honestly.
Wherever you land on the debate of whether piracy is theft or the morals/ethics of it, you have to admit these people are dedicated to their stance and it’s admirable.
Wherever you land on the debate of whether piracy is theft or the morals/ethics of it, you have to admit these people are dedicated to their stance and it’s admirable.
Literally from the era of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when websites were the way they are and that was that. With how gamified UX design has become as it is entwined with marketing, I also...
Literally from the era of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when websites were the way they are and that was that.
With how gamified UX design has become as it is entwined with marketing, I also kinda don’t fault them.
I’m already getting hardly any donations or advertising revenue. The project is basically a hobby of mine. I finance almost everything out of my own pocket. And that will not change in the future.
I don't know how I feel about it. I used to pirate a lot, but as I learned of people's struggles in the music, movie and book industry, and with the advent of everything getting simpler to stream,...
I don't know how I feel about it. I used to pirate a lot, but as I learned of people's struggles in the music, movie and book industry, and with the advent of everything getting simpler to stream, I stopped. Is this person making society better or worse? Yes, there are problems with copyright laws and tons of problems with corporate enrichment, but it's not just hurting them, it's also hurting the little guy.
I don't blame anyone who pirates, I would not even blame anyone who steals from Walmart or the like, but if you can afford it, why pirate?
There are also a few piracy success stories (my favorite movie of all time, A Man From Earth, for example), but those are anomalies that everyone cites. Or the idea that "it's better to just send money to the author directly", but nearly nobody does that. I remember using all of these points to justify pirating. But it was just that, a justification to not pay for things.
This is interesting because I know people in the small book and small TV business (all of it in Canada) and they are strongly anti-piracy.
I can't speak for the video game, Music or book Industry but I worked in the entertainment industry, and I'm 100% in support of piracy and so is just about everyone I know in the industry as well.
This is interesting because I know people in the small book and small TV business (all of it in Canada) and they are strongly anti-piracy.
I personally find the impact varies by the size of whoever is producing and distributing the media, because that impacts the number of people involved. Books, for example, typically have one...
I personally find the impact varies by the size of whoever is producing and distributing the media, because that impacts the number of people involved. Books, for example, typically have one author. Publishers get a part of the cut, but the author is otherwise the primary one to benefit from sales. But when you go into other media, it gets increasingly messy and complicated.
I'm into game dev, and it's a similar story with indie developers: they're typically small teams, sometimes as small as one person. How they divide the profits varies and can be complicated by the addition of an outside publisher, but overall, every penny they earn goes to the game studio. Pirating their games can severely deprive them of income and make their studios shut down.
But big game studios like EA? Big movie studios? Big productions in general? As you scale in size, the individuals involved get less and less of the final profits. Barring special contracts for certain key individuals, typically the majority of the profit from the media goes to the massive company behind it. And even then, there are plenty of stories of people being screwed by contracts so they get barely anything at all.
Also, sometimes there's just no legitimate way to get media that isn't prohibitively expensive. Older movies that got a limited DVD release (if even that), TV shows that were semi-obscure and only have a cult following, video games from obsolete consoles, books that are out of print, etc. Heck, piracy is actually helpful for media preservation. There are a lot of old films and TV shows where the only remaining copies are pirated copies.
Piracy is how most people in the third world had access to global culture for the past 30 years, even more so if you count cassetes and VHS. I'm not making an ethics argument, but their habits do...
Piracy is how most people in the third world had access to global culture for the past 30 years, even more so if you count cassetes and VHS.
I'm not making an ethics argument, but their habits do not represent a monetary loss because the choice is and was often between piracy or nothing at all. Importing expensive media from abroad is for the rich, and even official local versions where inaccessible to most.
And without "alternative" PDFs and ebooks, lots of academic research would be poor, difficult, or even impossible in many fields.
Even with access to things through my uni, I still use scihub and friends for everything. Originally it was because using the official channels was absurdly cumbersome and unreliable, plus there...
And without "alternative" PDFs and ebooks, lots of academic research would be poor, difficult, or even impossible in many fields.
Even with access to things through my uni, I still use scihub and friends for everything. Originally it was because using the official channels was absurdly cumbersome and unreliable, plus there are just some things I cannot access at all in spite of our uni spending 7 figures (at least) on subcriptions. Now I do it out of principle. I have no sympathy for the big publishers exploiting universities, and plus, I shouldn't have to load scripts from Google, Facebook, Kakao, and any number of questional third parties just to read some research papers.
Oh yeah, fuck the big guys over whenever you can without screwing yourself, and support the little guys instead. I can't believe how much money I wasted on textbooks until I started just finding...
Oh yeah, fuck the big guys over whenever you can without screwing yourself, and support the little guys instead.
I can't believe how much money I wasted on textbooks until I started just finding them online or just waiting to see if we actually would use them.
And I hope whoever invented their bullshit online codes system rots in the deepest pit of hell.
These are all true facts, but none of them justify first world households making pulling in comfortable six figure incomes torrenting everything to host on their Plex servers. So how do we...
These are all true facts, but none of them justify first world households making pulling in comfortable six figure incomes torrenting everything to host on their Plex servers.
So how do we structure piracy arguments in a way that actually does protect the disadvantaged without giving assholes like these a free pass?
I wish that there was a way to pay creative people for their work directly for their work and cut out all of the middlemen. Just this morning I was listening to a podcast with two actresses...
I wish that there was a way to pay creative people for their work directly for their work and cut out all of the middlemen. Just this morning I was listening to a podcast with two actresses telling their audiences to go and pirate stuff because the people involved aren't getting paid for it anyways.
I'm not condoning piracy, but it's not like purchasing media is a beacon of virtue either. Artists get screwed over all the time by major corporations. And even when they aren't being screwed, most of the people involved in creating popular media only get paid for the stuff they make once; when the job is done, they don't get residuals. The corporations are the ones who get the lion's share of the money you spend on any given piece of art unless you're dealing with the artist directly.
I don't really see how that would work either. How would you go about compensating everyone who worked on a film? Where would the initial funding come from to make the movie in the first place?...
I don't really see how that would work either. How would you go about compensating everyone who worked on a film? Where would the initial funding come from to make the movie in the first place? The "middlemen" exist because they are able to make these things happen. They do in fact provide value in cultivating talent, funding projects, and providing tons of other resources that are virtually impossible for individuals to assemble on their own.
Yes, the studios are run by greedy assholes who will do whatever they can to boost their own margins, but that doesn't mean they are useless tumors. Hollywood is heavily unionized preciesly to keep them in check.
I did start it off with "I wish". Wishes don't have to be realistic! Unions are great, but the problem is that they have too little power. Right now we've got two film industry unions on strike...
I did start it off with "I wish". Wishes don't have to be realistic!
Unions are great, but the problem is that they have too little power. Right now we've got two film industry unions on strike because the big corporations are unwilling to agree to pay them properly and respect their rights. Do we even need to talk about the ununionized parts of the industry, or how unfair business practices have caused VFX studios like Rhythm and Hues to go out of business?
As with so much else in life, the best solution is probably better legal regulations, but like everything else that needs them there's no way to get congress to care about it enough for them to pass meaningful legislation.
I don't pirate games (I know a lot of people credit this to Steam but I'm actually not much of a fan) and no longer pirate music thanks to Spotify. But TV/movies are just different. Not only are...
I don't pirate games (I know a lot of people credit this to Steam but I'm actually not much of a fan) and no longer pirate music thanks to Spotify.
But TV/movies are just different. Not only are all the streaming services such a confusing mess, there's also so much shit to filter through, and even more annoying is the fact that I'm in Canada where a) many shows/movies are on different services than the US and b) some flat out aren't available at all. There's actually been shows where I've been pumped for their release and had no legal way to watch other than to wait for some unknown date in the future if ever. For example we don't have Hulu here, its stuff gets distributed among other serviced and sometimes not at all.
We do pay for Netflix and have Prime Video but barely use either. I'd say it's like 5% Prime, 10% Netflix and 85% Plex.
I have, on occasion, downloaded movies I already had on streaming services I pay for just because it's easier to have them all on Plex neatly arranged.
I have, on occasion, downloaded movies I already had on streaming services I pay for just because it's easier to have them all on Plex neatly arranged.
aaaannnnnd donated. I'd have never known about this site, not a German language speaker but don't care. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and "piracy" is how a lot of the poorer...
aaaannnnnd donated.
I'd have never known about this site, not a German language speaker but don't care. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and "piracy" is how a lot of the poorer classes and developing nations access things. If you stream you're already functionally stealing from artists (see SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike conditions) anyway and music streaming is pathetic how little it pays smaller artists so unless you're finding a way to pay directly the artists and creatives whose work you enjoy then you're just stealing from them already, just with extra steps. The only difference is it makes it easier for you to do on your side and lets you feel like you have moral justification when really you don't. You're just perpetuating a broken system.
But everything is in a sliding scale. By the same token, how can someone justify being subscribed to Spotify knowing how little money goes to the artists? At that point, the subscription exists as...
But everything is in a sliding scale. By the same token, how can someone justify being subscribed to Spotify knowing how little money goes to the artists? At that point, the subscription exists as a moral justification, and if a person really likes a song, they should buy it.
It's the same reasoning isn't it? I don't actually want to pay market value for this music, so I'll pay way below that.
On one hand I agree with you, in principle, about supporting the "little guy". However, the systemic financial abuse of the media industry is well known. There was another well-written article...
On one hand I agree with you, in principle, about supporting the "little guy".
However, the systemic financial abuse of the media industry is well known. There was another well-written article about how the industry preys on new artists in ways that range from hiring people specifically their age to draw them in (as part of a confidence scam) to charging them for everything like "pre-warming" their guitars and amps before a recording session and how every person involved gets a point/percentage of the income (not profit) before the band sees any money. It was yet another article that mentions how they front bands all this money while handwaving away concerns and then when they sell a million+ records they receive no money as a result. I want to say that Courtney Love wrote it too about Nirvana but my Google-fu is failing me atm.
On the other hand, there's so much wrong with the system that I consider it a form of civil disobedience. The laws are unjust (seriously, they have penalized more for a copyright infraction than the airlines pay for a human life) and the social contract behind copyright has been broken. Back when it took months to a year to cross the US copyright was 14 years with 1 extension. In our digital world of instant transmission it is death of author +70 years--except corporations don't die. Instead of hundreds or thousands of things entering public domain every year it is a slow trickle, if that (and some of those are only due to negligence of the copyright owner).
If something is not purchasable then the owners are not profiting off it so if I then pirate it they have lost no sales since they have no sales to lose on that work. If Courtney Love will see pennies if I buy a song online or a physical CD then is she really out anything when someone torrents a song?
For the record I stopped sailing the seas after it was more convenient not too. Netflix was a huge impact on this. Netflix was a cheap, easy to use one stop shop with a huge catalog. However, splintering is making it harder to track specific things down1 and I am dismayed that some works are simply not available anymore as the gatekeepers lock them away. I'll never be able to show my kids movies like Cacoon, Slueth, Song of the South, Dogma and have discussions about them (good or bad) or shows like Ed, Chicago Hope, Moonlighting, etc. With the exception of Song of the South (which I think is still watchable just to have that discussion about why it is problematic) the other movies were nominated and/or award winning movies and while we may never watch those shows, I'm not happy with the ability to watch/rewatch them snatched away. Th ekids and I will often talk about pop culture phenomenon and/or watch series like "The Movies that Made Us" yet it is increasingly difficult to find some of those movies they discuss to watch. Unfurling the sails is looking to be an option again rather than trying to juggle a multitude of accounts looking for what I want that may or may not be available (and I'm not sure if E.T. is worth $4 to rent. For now, I'm buying second hand DVDs of things I may be interested in and filling in Jellyfin then tossing the discs in the attic.
I know it is unrealistic, but I would love a law that says that if a work is not available within a realistic price range (say 50% above like items) then the copyright reverts to public domain. That way they couldn't offer Cacoon for $2 million dollars and say "see, it IS available for sale!" While we're discussing "wish list" items for copyright reform, I also think that each renewal should be for 4 years but cost 10x as much. So if JKR wants to copyright Harry Potter the first 28 years are (made up number) $5,000. Her next renewal is $50,000 and good for 4 years. The renewal after that is now $500,000 and good for another 4 years. Eventually each copyright holder will be forced to determine the actual financial viability of perpetual rights. If they pay it then society wins with funding and the like. If they don't pay it then society wins with a new entry into public domain.
1The worst is when movie sequals or multi-season series only has certain movies/seasons available on certain platforms.
I used to, uh, download a lot of stuff. And then I found Steam, and Spotify, and Netflix. Suddenly I could get unlimited streaming for less than the cost of a DVD or CD a month. It's like I...
I used to, uh, download a lot of stuff. And then I found Steam, and Spotify, and Netflix. Suddenly I could get unlimited streaming for less than the cost of a DVD or CD a month. It's like I stopped downloading things overnight. My biggest problem is that Spotify doesn't function like my iPod did so I can't quite listen to music the way I often want to. Spotify's algorithms are also straight trash. I have to skip songs I like so that it doesn't decide I exclusively want to listen to Weezer and Green Day and Everclear and Matchbox Twenty.
Eh a lot of what I pirate is what I can’t actually purchase to watch on my terms. If a paid means of downloading a piece of content exists I’m generally fine with paying for it. A lot of the time...
Eh a lot of what I pirate is what I can’t actually purchase to watch on my terms. If a paid means of downloading a piece of content exists I’m generally fine with paying for it. A lot of the time though, what I want is to be able to watch content while not online on a laptop, as opposed to on Netflix, or in a theatre, or in a particular country (so many region locks exclude Canada).
I think that's one of the big motivating factors for me, is that content providers sometimes make impossible to get content in a legal way. I have enough content through subscriptions and other...
... if you can afford it, why pirate?
I think that's one of the big motivating factors for me, is that content providers sometimes make impossible to get content in a legal way. I have enough content through subscriptions and other legal channels that I don't care as much, but the restrictions placed are sometimes a strong motivation to seek other means, including piracy.
Funnily enough I hear far more about recording artists in particular being short changed by the likes of Spotify than was ever obvious during the height of online music piracy. Of course the...
Funnily enough I hear far more about recording artists in particular being short changed by the likes of Spotify than was ever obvious during the height of online music piracy.
Of course the market has changed, back in the height I'm talking about people still bought albums on CD. Nowadays people pay Spotify who hand a penny to the artist (maybe).
I don't really know, I've continued to buy new releases from artists I always have but I know they're barely selling anything now, everything is streamed and music piracy has become very niche.
Us hearing about these things is a direct product of communication from everyone to everyone via Internet, I believe. It used to be that artists relied on journalists to get their opinions onto...
Us hearing about these things is a direct product of communication from everyone to everyone via Internet, I believe.
It used to be that artists relied on journalists to get their opinions onto paper for them.
Have artists ever really made money off broadcast radio though (not exposure but actual cash)? That's what I find odd about these recent complaints about how little people make from Spotify--it...
Have artists ever really made money off broadcast radio though (not exposure but actual cash)? That's what I find odd about these recent complaints about how little people make from Spotify--it doesn't seem like anything new.
While searching for how much some incredibly famous bands/artists made solely off radio play, this is what I did find
Why songwriters are paid instead of artists
Remember, this question is only relevant in the US, where songwriters are paid royalties for radio airplay, but recording artists are not. The reason? Well, the real-life answer is that the US is one of the few counties that hasn’t signed the Rome Convention of 1961, recognizing neighbouring rights of recording artists (and royalties, compensating them for the public performance of their recordings). Rome Convention recognizes the neighbouring rights for airplay on radio stations in the signatory countries — but only to recording artists that are residents of one of those countries. “If the US radio stations don’t pay neighboring rights to non-US citizens, we will refuse to pay those royalties to all US citizens”. That was pretty much the logic.
If the above is correct, that would explain why I can't seem to find estimates as to how much Elvis or The Beatles made as performers for their songs on the radio. I could find estimates on how much their estates make now from songwriter royalties, how much they made on specific tours or special performances and the like.
Thing is though people still bought music they heard on the radio (occasionally). Now you don't need to do that, I'm not sure streaming services like Spotify can really be compared to radio on...
Thing is though people still bought music they heard on the radio (occasionally).
Now you don't need to do that, I'm not sure streaming services like Spotify can really be compared to radio on that basis even if they have been screwed in a slightly similar way. People use Spotify exclusively instead of buying music.
Perhaps, but it wasn't like they were making huge bank from CD sales either, though. The Courtney Love article I linked somewhere in this thread gave numbers and examples. Musicians have pretty...
Perhaps, but it wasn't like they were making huge bank from CD sales either, though. The Courtney Love article I linked somewhere in this thread gave numbers and examples. Musicians have pretty much always made their bread and butter from live performances.
I think Piracy is an answer to anti-consumer trends in the market. Piracy took off because comcast/disney/media et al. were gouging consumers. When streaming entered the picture piracy took a...
I think Piracy is an answer to anti-consumer trends in the market. Piracy took off because comcast/disney/media et al. were gouging consumers. When streaming entered the picture piracy took a nosedive because we could access great content for a reasonable price. Now that the hay day is over and we have a traditional cable equivalent of streaming services to choose from I think we're likely to see the rise of piracy again.
Compounding that we've also gotten a look at who profits from consumer media's price gouging tactics - it's not the writers, actors, or staff - it's the corporate offices themselves. For music it's easy to support the bands you like, by buying their albums in a physical medium such as vinyl at a show but then also stream it or even pirate it for convenience. For movies, I attend in person at our local theater. I would like my dollars to go to the folks making the content, the underpaid ones, not ticketmaster, disney, or comcast.
In the words of Gabe Newell: Shame the big corporations never seen to learn that, they're too busy counting their dollar bills...
I think Piracy is an answer to anti-consumer trends in the market. Piracy took off because comcast/disney/media et al. were gouging consumers. When streaming entered the picture piracy took a nosedive because we could access great content for a reasonable price. Now that the hay day is over and we have a traditional cable equivalent of streaming services to choose from I think we're likely to see the rise of piracy again.
In the words of Gabe Newell:
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
Shame the big corporations never seen to learn that, they're too busy counting their dollar bills...
It's both accessibility and price. If you stop getting in the way of people wanting to give you money...you'll make money. When you get in the way, piracy props its head. If it's accessible and...
It's both accessibility and price. If you stop getting in the way of people wanting to give you money...you'll make money.
When you get in the way, piracy props its head. If it's accessible and affordable people will happily be bootlickers and shame pirates.
If you make it inaccessible or too expensive, the thieves will come for what they want.
I have actively avoided the sequel the sequel because I hear terrible things, especially since the first one is so good. I would love to know if it's worth watching it!
I have actively avoided the sequel the sequel because I hear terrible things, especially since the first one is so good. I would love to know if it's worth watching it!
In short: It's very different and it's definitely not good or important, but it's also not as terrible as the internet paints it. Man From Earth was about educated people discussing a thought...
In short: It's very different and it's definitely not good or important, but it's also not as terrible as the internet paints it.
Man From Earth was about educated people discussing a thought experiment. Man From Earth: Holoscene is a spin-off that takes the same thought experiment and turns it into a teen movie. I don't remember much of the plot, but it feels like those 90s horror movie sequels that jumped on the success of Hellraiser, Wishmaster, Chucky, Leprechaun, etc.
I think you'll be fine as long as you don't expect anything like the original and you can happily waste your time with no regrets.
Jumping into the debate on whether pirating is ethical or not - I don't know if that's the right question per say.
I think we should be asking, can it be good? Perhaps even, is it necessary?
As @lou pointed out in a comment above, piracy is essentially how developing nations have consumed media for the last three decades. One example that comes to mind is how North Koreans pass around flash drives full of stolen movies in order to glimpse the outside world. If every country on Earth became peace-loving democracy tomorrow, we would still have to contend with all the people who just can't wait to take away access to information they don't like. It's a personality type and humankind won't ever be rid of it.
I also believe that pirates are, intentionally or not, archivists and preservationists. How many YouTube videos, songs, games, and old pieces of software have been saved because some asshole had a stolen copy sitting on a hard drive somewhere? Better yet, how many times has a company completely abandoned media/software, refused to sell it, refused to let anyone else take it over, and essentially just let it disappear forever?
I would also add that pirates provide a much-needed check on power. I'm not saying they're all doing it out of protest or principle - they're not. But they serve as a reminder that companies need to make their media affordable and easily accessible. Imagine for a minute that piracy just never existed. Can you imagine how many insane hoops you would have to jump through to watch a show if these media conglomerates truly had everyone held over a barrel with absolutely no alternative for media consumption? Every TV show would cost an absurd amount to watch and you'd be signing up for add-on services with no option to opt out. Honestly, it would probably be worse than that. Just look at your local internet provider if you live in an area with no competition. I kid you not, when we got a second provider in our area, my current provider doubled my speed and cut the price in half without me even having to opt in. They just sent a letter telling me I was getting double speed for half the price. What does that tell you about the last decade of payments I made to them?
Finally, I will admit that I pirate media rarely. Almost always when I don't have an accessible or affordable alternative. Try to watch James Cameron's The Abyss. Hope you have a DVD player. Compare that to Bladerunner (The Final Cut). It's not free, it's not on streaming, but I was happy to pay YouTube the $3.99 to rent it because it was easy and accessible. I pay for tons of media. Those assholes with petabytes of movies and TV shows, the ones who have never paid for a single show in their entire lives, I honestly think they're a necessary evil. Piracy is in a sweet spot right now where it's just enough of a risk/pain in the ass that people will generally do the right thing when paying is easier than pirating. I think that's a good place to be honestly.
Wherever you land on the debate of whether piracy is theft or the morals/ethics of it, you have to admit these people are dedicated to their stance and it’s admirable.
If the website owner is willing to stick with his principals as long as he has stuck to that website design, I admire him.
Literally from the era of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when websites were the way they are and that was that.
With how gamified UX design has become as it is entwined with marketing, I also kinda don’t fault them.
and this is why I use cloudflare dns. For now, they haven’t limited any address. 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1.
Does anyone have any insight on how much precedent exists for site takedowns happening at the DNS level, such at this?
What a chad.
I don't know how I feel about it. I used to pirate a lot, but as I learned of people's struggles in the music, movie and book industry, and with the advent of everything getting simpler to stream, I stopped. Is this person making society better or worse? Yes, there are problems with copyright laws and tons of problems with corporate enrichment, but it's not just hurting them, it's also hurting the little guy.
I don't blame anyone who pirates, I would not even blame anyone who steals from Walmart or the like, but if you can afford it, why pirate?
There are also a few piracy success stories (my favorite movie of all time, A Man From Earth, for example), but those are anomalies that everyone cites. Or the idea that "it's better to just send money to the author directly", but nearly nobody does that. I remember using all of these points to justify pirating. But it was just that, a justification to not pay for things.
This is interesting because I know people in the small book and small TV business (all of it in Canada) and they are strongly anti-piracy.
Maybe as a smaller company they're more equitable to the actual creators? If that's the case I'd be anti piracy too.
I personally find the impact varies by the size of whoever is producing and distributing the media, because that impacts the number of people involved. Books, for example, typically have one author. Publishers get a part of the cut, but the author is otherwise the primary one to benefit from sales. But when you go into other media, it gets increasingly messy and complicated.
I'm into game dev, and it's a similar story with indie developers: they're typically small teams, sometimes as small as one person. How they divide the profits varies and can be complicated by the addition of an outside publisher, but overall, every penny they earn goes to the game studio. Pirating their games can severely deprive them of income and make their studios shut down.
But big game studios like EA? Big movie studios? Big productions in general? As you scale in size, the individuals involved get less and less of the final profits. Barring special contracts for certain key individuals, typically the majority of the profit from the media goes to the massive company behind it. And even then, there are plenty of stories of people being screwed by contracts so they get barely anything at all.
Also, sometimes there's just no legitimate way to get media that isn't prohibitively expensive. Older movies that got a limited DVD release (if even that), TV shows that were semi-obscure and only have a cult following, video games from obsolete consoles, books that are out of print, etc. Heck, piracy is actually helpful for media preservation. There are a lot of old films and TV shows where the only remaining copies are pirated copies.
So to sum my philosophy: support independent and smaller creators, but don't feel too bad about pirating the latest Marvel movie or TV show. Especially if the creators themselves are pirating it.
Piracy is how most people in the third world had access to global culture for the past 30 years, even more so if you count cassetes and VHS.
I'm not making an ethics argument, but their habits do not represent a monetary loss because the choice is and was often between piracy or nothing at all. Importing expensive media from abroad is for the rich, and even official local versions where inaccessible to most.
And without "alternative" PDFs and ebooks, lots of academic research would be poor, difficult, or even impossible in many fields.
Even with access to things through my uni, I still use scihub and friends for everything. Originally it was because using the official channels was absurdly cumbersome and unreliable, plus there are just some things I cannot access at all in spite of our uni spending 7 figures (at least) on subcriptions. Now I do it out of principle. I have no sympathy for the big publishers exploiting universities, and plus, I shouldn't have to load scripts from Google, Facebook, Kakao, and any number of questional third parties just to read some research papers.
Oh yeah, fuck the big guys over whenever you can without screwing yourself, and support the little guys instead.
I can't believe how much money I wasted on textbooks until I started just finding them online or just waiting to see if we actually would use them.
And I hope whoever invented their bullshit online codes system rots in the deepest pit of hell.
I think this is also a testament to the beauty of libraries, which came up in another thread recently.
These are all true facts, but none of them justify first world households making pulling in comfortable six figure incomes torrenting everything to host on their Plex servers.
So how do we structure piracy arguments in a way that actually does protect the disadvantaged without giving assholes like these a free pass?
I wish that there was a way to pay creative people for their work directly for their work and cut out all of the middlemen. Just this morning I was listening to a podcast with two actresses telling their audiences to go and pirate stuff because the people involved aren't getting paid for it anyways.
I'm not condoning piracy, but it's not like purchasing media is a beacon of virtue either. Artists get screwed over all the time by major corporations. And even when they aren't being screwed, most of the people involved in creating popular media only get paid for the stuff they make once; when the job is done, they don't get residuals. The corporations are the ones who get the lion's share of the money you spend on any given piece of art unless you're dealing with the artist directly.
I don't really see how that would work either. How would you go about compensating everyone who worked on a film? Where would the initial funding come from to make the movie in the first place? The "middlemen" exist because they are able to make these things happen. They do in fact provide value in cultivating talent, funding projects, and providing tons of other resources that are virtually impossible for individuals to assemble on their own.
Yes, the studios are run by greedy assholes who will do whatever they can to boost their own margins, but that doesn't mean they are useless tumors. Hollywood is heavily unionized preciesly to keep them in check.
I did start it off with "I wish". Wishes don't have to be realistic!
Unions are great, but the problem is that they have too little power. Right now we've got two film industry unions on strike because the big corporations are unwilling to agree to pay them properly and respect their rights. Do we even need to talk about the ununionized parts of the industry, or how unfair business practices have caused VFX studios like Rhythm and Hues to go out of business?
As with so much else in life, the best solution is probably better legal regulations, but like everything else that needs them there's no way to get congress to care about it enough for them to pass meaningful legislation.
I don't pirate games (I know a lot of people credit this to Steam but I'm actually not much of a fan) and no longer pirate music thanks to Spotify.
But TV/movies are just different. Not only are all the streaming services such a confusing mess, there's also so much shit to filter through, and even more annoying is the fact that I'm in Canada where a) many shows/movies are on different services than the US and b) some flat out aren't available at all. There's actually been shows where I've been pumped for their release and had no legal way to watch other than to wait for some unknown date in the future if ever. For example we don't have Hulu here, its stuff gets distributed among other serviced and sometimes not at all.
We do pay for Netflix and have Prime Video but barely use either. I'd say it's like 5% Prime, 10% Netflix and 85% Plex.
I have, on occasion, downloaded movies I already had on streaming services I pay for just because it's easier to have them all on Plex neatly arranged.
aaaannnnnd donated.
I'd have never known about this site, not a German language speaker but don't care. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and "piracy" is how a lot of the poorer classes and developing nations access things. If you stream you're already functionally stealing from artists (see SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike conditions) anyway and music streaming is pathetic how little it pays smaller artists so unless you're finding a way to pay directly the artists and creatives whose work you enjoy then you're just stealing from them already, just with extra steps. The only difference is it makes it easier for you to do on your side and lets you feel like you have moral justification when really you don't. You're just perpetuating a broken system.
But everything is in a sliding scale. By the same token, how can someone justify being subscribed to Spotify knowing how little money goes to the artists? At that point, the subscription exists as a moral justification, and if a person really likes a song, they should buy it.
It's the same reasoning isn't it? I don't actually want to pay market value for this music, so I'll pay way below that.
On one hand I agree with you, in principle, about supporting the "little guy".
However, the systemic financial abuse of the media industry is well known. There was another well-written article about how the industry preys on new artists in ways that range from hiring people specifically their age to draw them in (as part of a confidence scam) to charging them for everything like "pre-warming" their guitars and amps before a recording session and how every person involved gets a point/percentage of the income (not profit) before the band sees any money. It was yet another article that mentions how they front bands all this money while handwaving away concerns and then when they sell a million+ records they receive no money as a result. I want to say that Courtney Love wrote it too about Nirvana but my Google-fu is failing me atm.
On the other hand, there's so much wrong with the system that I consider it a form of civil disobedience. The laws are unjust (seriously, they have penalized more for a copyright infraction than the airlines pay for a human life) and the social contract behind copyright has been broken. Back when it took months to a year to cross the US copyright was 14 years with 1 extension. In our digital world of instant transmission it is death of author +70 years--except corporations don't die. Instead of hundreds or thousands of things entering public domain every year it is a slow trickle, if that (and some of those are only due to negligence of the copyright owner).
If something is not purchasable then the owners are not profiting off it so if I then pirate it they have lost no sales since they have no sales to lose on that work. If Courtney Love will see pennies if I buy a song online or a physical CD then is she really out anything when someone torrents a song?
For the record I stopped sailing the seas after it was more convenient not too. Netflix was a huge impact on this. Netflix was a cheap, easy to use one stop shop with a huge catalog. However, splintering is making it harder to track specific things down1 and I am dismayed that some works are simply not available anymore as the gatekeepers lock them away. I'll never be able to show my kids movies like Cacoon, Slueth, Song of the South, Dogma and have discussions about them (good or bad) or shows like Ed, Chicago Hope, Moonlighting, etc. With the exception of Song of the South (which I think is still watchable just to have that discussion about why it is problematic) the other movies were nominated and/or award winning movies and while we may never watch those shows, I'm not happy with the ability to watch/rewatch them snatched away. Th ekids and I will often talk about pop culture phenomenon and/or watch series like "The Movies that Made Us" yet it is increasingly difficult to find some of those movies they discuss to watch. Unfurling the sails is looking to be an option again rather than trying to juggle a multitude of accounts looking for what I want that may or may not be available (and I'm not sure if E.T. is worth $4 to rent. For now, I'm buying second hand DVDs of things I may be interested in and filling in Jellyfin then tossing the discs in the attic.
I know it is unrealistic, but I would love a law that says that if a work is not available within a realistic price range (say 50% above like items) then the copyright reverts to public domain. That way they couldn't offer Cacoon for $2 million dollars and say "see, it IS available for sale!" While we're discussing "wish list" items for copyright reform, I also think that each renewal should be for 4 years but cost 10x as much. So if JKR wants to copyright Harry Potter the first 28 years are (made up number) $5,000. Her next renewal is $50,000 and good for 4 years. The renewal after that is now $500,000 and good for another 4 years. Eventually each copyright holder will be forced to determine the actual financial viability of perpetual rights. If they pay it then society wins with funding and the like. If they don't pay it then society wins with a new entry into public domain.
1The worst is when movie sequals or multi-season series only has certain movies/seasons available on certain platforms.
I used to, uh, download a lot of stuff. And then I found Steam, and Spotify, and Netflix. Suddenly I could get unlimited streaming for less than the cost of a DVD or CD a month. It's like I stopped downloading things overnight. My biggest problem is that Spotify doesn't function like my iPod did so I can't quite listen to music the way I often want to. Spotify's algorithms are also straight trash. I have to skip songs I like so that it doesn't decide I exclusively want to listen to Weezer and Green Day and Everclear and Matchbox Twenty.
Not my experience. Hit and miss. But there are hits!
I just get the same stuff over and over and over. I think "ooh, this seems like a new type of playlist!" Nope, same shit, different name.
The post has been deleted, but It's worth checking out the comments that have a bunch of different ways to find new music.
I’m glad it’s not just me. Even down to the bands.
Eh a lot of what I pirate is what I can’t actually purchase to watch on my terms. If a paid means of downloading a piece of content exists I’m generally fine with paying for it. A lot of the time though, what I want is to be able to watch content while not online on a laptop, as opposed to on Netflix, or in a theatre, or in a particular country (so many region locks exclude Canada).
I think that's one of the big motivating factors for me, is that content providers sometimes make impossible to get content in a legal way. I have enough content through subscriptions and other legal channels that I don't care as much, but the restrictions placed are sometimes a strong motivation to seek other means, including piracy.
Funnily enough I hear far more about recording artists in particular being short changed by the likes of Spotify than was ever obvious during the height of online music piracy.
Of course the market has changed, back in the height I'm talking about people still bought albums on CD. Nowadays people pay Spotify who hand a penny to the artist (maybe).
I don't really know, I've continued to buy new releases from artists I always have but I know they're barely selling anything now, everything is streamed and music piracy has become very niche.
Us hearing about these things is a direct product of communication from everyone to everyone via Internet, I believe.
It used to be that artists relied on journalists to get their opinions onto paper for them.
Have artists ever really made money off broadcast radio though (not exposure but actual cash)? That's what I find odd about these recent complaints about how little people make from Spotify--it doesn't seem like anything new.
While searching for how much some incredibly famous bands/artists made solely off radio play, this is what I did find
If the above is correct, that would explain why I can't seem to find estimates as to how much Elvis or The Beatles made as performers for their songs on the radio. I could find estimates on how much their estates make now from songwriter royalties, how much they made on specific tours or special performances and the like.
Thing is though people still bought music they heard on the radio (occasionally).
Now you don't need to do that, I'm not sure streaming services like Spotify can really be compared to radio on that basis even if they have been screwed in a slightly similar way. People use Spotify exclusively instead of buying music.
Perhaps, but it wasn't like they were making huge bank from CD sales either, though. The Courtney Love article I linked somewhere in this thread gave numbers and examples. Musicians have pretty much always made their bread and butter from live performances.
I think Piracy is an answer to anti-consumer trends in the market. Piracy took off because comcast/disney/media et al. were gouging consumers. When streaming entered the picture piracy took a nosedive because we could access great content for a reasonable price. Now that the hay day is over and we have a traditional cable equivalent of streaming services to choose from I think we're likely to see the rise of piracy again.
Compounding that we've also gotten a look at who profits from consumer media's price gouging tactics - it's not the writers, actors, or staff - it's the corporate offices themselves. For music it's easy to support the bands you like, by buying their albums in a physical medium such as vinyl at a show but then also stream it or even pirate it for convenience. For movies, I attend in person at our local theater. I would like my dollars to go to the folks making the content, the underpaid ones, not ticketmaster, disney, or comcast.
In the words of Gabe Newell:
Shame the big corporations never seen to learn that, they're too busy counting their dollar bills...
It's both accessibility and price. If you stop getting in the way of people wanting to give you money...you'll make money.
When you get in the way, piracy props its head. If it's accessible and affordable people will happily be bootlickers and shame pirates.
If you make it inaccessible or too expensive, the thieves will come for what they want.
Price is a service issue.
I’ve not met many other people who know “A Man From Earth.” I adore that movie. Is the sequel any good?
I have actively avoided the sequel the sequel because I hear terrible things, especially since the first one is so good. I would love to know if it's worth watching it!
In short: It's very different and it's definitely not good or important, but it's also not as terrible as the internet paints it.
Man From Earth was about educated people discussing a thought experiment. Man From Earth: Holoscene is a spin-off that takes the same thought experiment and turns it into a teen movie. I don't remember much of the plot, but it feels like those 90s horror movie sequels that jumped on the success of Hellraiser, Wishmaster, Chucky, Leprechaun, etc.
I think you'll be fine as long as you don't expect anything like the original and you can happily waste your time with no regrets.