Oh but it’s not buying! The big “Buy” or “Purchase” button might have said so, but if you’d have careful read through 35 pages of user agreements, you’d see that you only rent the license to stream it.
Which obviously is total bullshit and the whole fucking system should be burned to the ground.
This is precisely why I refuse to buy digital games. (And it extends to other media, but games are where I actually spend money)
I’ll pay for a rental service designed to be a rental service (ps+, for example) but will not buy individual games digitally. Who knows when they will become unavailable for some reason, and I can no longer download a copy. It’s bad enough when servers are shut down within 2 years of launch, but when the whole game gets pulled, then what?
I’ve decided I’m not even bothering with the next generation of consoles. So few things are even released on disc, with half the consoles being digital only, that it’s not even worth it. I’ll pirate instead.
This is where the law needs to step in, it should be illegal to call it “Buy” if you are just leasing it. It’s absolutely misleading to most consumers.
Also, copyright infringement never even used to ever be a crime, although now there is a form of criminal copyright infringement, if it’s done for money or if the value is above a certain amount. Thanks to lobbying from wealthy industries. Most copyright infringement still is not a crime, though.
The reason industries lobby for harsher copyright laws is because they know they can make more money if people can’t pirate. They take the piss with their pricing, but they’re acutely aware that if they take the piss too much then people will turn to piracy. By prohibiting piracy and levying harsh penalties they can get away with even more unfair pricing, and maybe even profit from piracy through punitive damages (which is mainly a US thing, most sensible nations only allow you to sue for actual damages).
By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
Creating a competitor is not the same logic at all. That competitor gets paid when someone buys their product.
The issue is that time and effort are put into something that is being made to get compensation for that time and effort, not to be given away for free. If you’re going to a competing product, you’re not ingesting the initial product without paying for it.
I’m not arguing legal definitions. I’m arguing against the bullshit mental gymnastics that piracy is not stealing. It is. Just admit it and move on. I don’t care if people pirate. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of trying to justify theft. If you ingest something that an artist made to try and make a livelihood and don’t pay them, you’re stealing that livelihood.
The argument that digital piracy is theft is predicated on the idea that pirating is depriving the creator of their rightful property: the money from a sale. In the absence of said sale, that money wasn’t their property to begin with, however. The only way to reconcile this is by treating potential income as property.
In doing so, a number of stupid things can be argued for:
Creating a new product is theft because it deprives the competition of their potential income.
Boycotting a company is theft because it deprives them of potential income.
Not purchasing a new phone is theft because it deprives the manufacturer of potential income.
Not hiring Tom because Bob was a better candidate is theft because it deprives Tom of potential income.
There’s a reason that piracy legally falls under copyright infringement rather than theft. You aren’t depriving the creator of property by making a new digital copy of their media, but you are violating their copyright by creating an unauthorized copy.
It is not the same logic. You are not ingesting the work of the creator by going to a competitor. The issue is that you are gaining something from the labor of the creator without compensating them for that labor (which they gain from). It is an unequal exchange that both parties have not agreed to. It is theft. Going to a competitor and buying from them is an equal exchange - you’re paying money for the product of their labor.
Everything else you’ve said continues to be dishonest because it is based on this very simple, fundamental flaw in your original argument.
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the productandnot paying for that use.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
You should pick your examples more carefully.
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
It is stealing income. You’re taking advantage of the result of someone’s effort and time without compensating them for it. No one is ok with that in any other context but y’all bend over backwards to justify it unilaterally here as opposed to denouncing this behavior (the Crunchroll behavior, to be clear) as its own issue that is also wrong.
That’s irrelevant. That’s not the case with all media, especially anime, when the creators are the owners and executives of many studios. Even if it was, it doesn’t change the calculus that the work is being sold.
If you weren’t gonna buy it anyway and since the creator doesn’t lose anything, how can it be stealing?
And on top of that, it offers the creator exposure and creates new fans who one day might buy some of their products.
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries. But painting has been a thing for thousands of years, we’ve had time to adapt to it. Not the same thing with digital media. It came about after all these definitions and laws. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And because corpos are greedy, we’ll probably keep having this conversation forever
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries.
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of art galleries are not free. And, they tend to rotate their content regularly, so you have no control over what you have access to. Pretty much everything this thread is complaining about Crunchyroll doing.
It’s stealing because you watched it. If you didn’t watch it and didn’t buy it or steal it, then nothing has been stolen. The entire crux is that you’re consuming and ingesting the product they’re selling without paying for it.
Additionally, if you’re making the argument that you can’t count “potential” sales of something as theft then you can’t also make the argument that “potential” exposure is valid. Either both potentials are valid or neither is and, if they both are, then it’s theft.
And you’ve just proven my argument for me with your art gallery examples. Art galleries explicitly give people that access. You pay for that access. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get to look at those paintings without buying anything because you already had to buy something to even get to look at the paintings. Unless the creator is explicitly giving you access for free, you’re stealing if you’re ingesting or consuming something that they made for which they are charging.
That’s just factually untrue. The ‘creators’ are just animators that work for animation studios that get paid by companies like funimation, amazon and Netflix to publish content and those middle men reap the majority of the benefits. Very very rarely do actual individual people make a percentage of whatever a work earns. It’s just middle men executives that earn that.
I would argue that piracy helps make them more money anyways. The actual money is in merchandise. If I’m able to pirate an anime and really like it I’m more likely to spend money on merchandise VS me not bothering to watch a show and not buying merch.
Here’s an article proving that the actual creators don’t make much money at all and it’s not because of piracy.
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
That’s both dishonest and factually untrue. If you’re ingesting the creation without paying for it, then you’ve stolen it from the artists because they didn’t create it for free (unless they explicitly have). The creator sees a difference because you wouldn’t have been able to ingest their creation without paying them for it.
Theft requires you to deprive the original owner of their property.
Creating a digital copy does not prevent the creator from accessing or selling their property. Potential income is not property; it was never in their possession to begin with.
I am arguing that people deserve to be paid for their work. If you’re not willing to pay them, you are not entitled to the fruits of their labor for free. Full stop.
Don’t worry, you’re correct and these people are just uncomfortable to define this as theft (if you didn’t pay something to someone prior.). If you didn’t pay, it’s theft, and it doesn’t matter what background revenue sharing agreements exist.
Google’s example sentence is quite topical. Still: Until potential income is defined as property, its loss isn’t theft. Besides that, if someone wasn’t going to pay for a digital copy in the first place, it’s not exactly a loss of potential income.
I know. It’s painfully obvious that the people arguing against this are just dishonest. I’ve already stated several times that I have no issues with piracy. All I’m saying is that, if people are going to pirate, they should be clear that it is theft, they’re depriving the creator of income, they’re ok with that, and they’ll continue to do it. That’s it.
…If nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property"
This is a dishonest response. Movies and media are not ideas. They are representations of ideas that take time and effort to create and that are created so that the artist that made them can make a living and pay their bills. Stealing those representations without compensating the artist for their time and effort means they can’t pay their bills which means they have to stop creating in order to get a job where the fruits of their efforts aren’t stolen.
No. The substance of it is irrelevant to my argument. You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not to put too fine a point on it - ideas are like assholes; everyone has them and most of them stink but the idea of an asshole doesn’t actually make you wretch the way the stench of an actual asshole might.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Lemme use a different, better example. Say I buy used copies of everything I watch. How is that different from watching shows on sketchy streaming websites? Either way I consume the media and the people who made it get nothing. If anything, it seems worse to me for me to lose money and the creators to gain nothing, while some random person on the internet profits from reselling their work after they’ve already consumed it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product.
And you’re ignoring the fact that the producer treats their digital product with no real scarcity as if it was a physical product that cost a significant amount to produce and distribute. By your own reasoning, the digital product should be much cheaper.
If it wasn’t for piracy, the product (digital or physical) would be even more expensive. As it is, producers know that if they price too high people will turn to piracy, if that wasn’t an option then there would be nothing holding them back.
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
The legal definition is not the definition. That is just nonsense. There are an innumerable amount of terms that have a literary definition that is not the same as the legal definition.
The previous comment is more like shorthand, rather than literal truth.
It’s faster to say piracy isn’t stealing if purchasing isn’t ownership than it is to say “if a company can simply reverse a permanent access license at any time then pirating media from them is perfectly ethical and should not be considered a crime”
It’s bad shorthand though. In this context, there was never any “buying content” happening, nor was piracy ever “stealing”. It’s just misrepresentation of both sides.
That’s fair, but I feel like the point is that many people go through a process where
You pay money
The buttons on your screen say “buy” “purchase” “check-out” or something else to that effect
That feels like buying media, so according to the common “consumer” (hate that word) brain, you are spending money to buy content.
At the same time, media corps have been trying to teach us for years that piracy is exactly the same as stealing.
The whole point of the shorthand is to explain that these are not facts, they’re misconceptions, AND both of these misconceptions exist for the same reason, corporate propaganda.
Because you’re bitching about it. Either there’s a better way to express the precise picture you’re describing, or your central argument is fundamentally flawed, and it’s an effective shorthand.
Sure, there’s nuance. Shorthand is used to convey a nuanced thought quickly. That’s literally the point.
It is stealing. I don’t understand the mental gymnastics here. You’re stealing income from whoever created the content if you’re not paying them for your ability to watch it.
How are you stealing income if there was no intention to pay the company to begin with? Even if there was an intention to buy it, companies aren’t entitled to consumers’ money. This is especially the case if the consumer has previously purchased a license to consume the product, and then the company decides to take (or steal) it away. No moral qualms with pirating the same content then.
It’s digital data; you’re copying something, leaving the original completely intact. It’s not like a physical BluRay, where if you steal it from a store, you are making that store lose money due to that physical stock being stolen.
And lastly, how is the company not stealing from consumers when they pull shit like this?
I don’t understand what that has to do with anything. You’re copying something someone else created, for the express purpose of generating income, without their permission.
Who said anything about generating income off of pirated work?
Theft does not imply the intention to pay, that’s kinda the whole point.
The definition of theft according to MW: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
If you do not deprive the original owner of the property (such as: copying), it is not definitionally theft. Legally speaking, it is considered copyright infringement.
You hit the nail on the head. That’s why they’re downvoting and arguing. It personally benefits them to steal.
I’ve said it several times here…I don’t care if people pirate stuff. There are a myriad of reasons to do so. My issue is with the dishonesty of pretending it’s not stealing. Keep doing it, I don’t care, but own up to what you’re doing and admit it’s stealing.
It’s mental gymnastics because they need to be able to continue stealing but don’t want to feel bad about it.
Even if there was an intention to buy it, companies aren’t entitled to consumers’ money.
Then you’re not entitled to ingest the content being created by that “company” (doesn’t have to be a company, it could be a single artist or a small group of artists).
Taking away licenses is wrong. I’m not disputing that. But that doesn’t magically make stealing something that actual people created right.
Then you’re not entitled to ingest the content being created by that “company” (doesn’t have to be a company, it could be a single artist or a small group of artists).
Are you making an ethical, moral, or legal statement here?
Ownership of intangibles in this context exists only as a means to support a particular political arrangement. I think you may be assuming others here share your politics; there is no objective moral standard for exclusive ownership of intangibles.
By that argument, there is no moral imperative for people to create intangibles as they have no value. If someone creates art that you like, they deserve to be paid for the time and effort it took to create that art whether the art itself is physically tangible or not. If you don’t agree to that premise, then there’s no point in discussing this with you.
there is no moral imperative for people to create intangibles as they have no value.
You’re right, there is no moral imperative for people to create (or share) intangibles, but nobody is claiming they have no value.
If someone creates art that you like, they deserve to be paid for the time and effort it took to create that art whether the art itself is physically tangible or not.
Again, is this a ethical, moral, or legal statement? It strikes me as a uniquely ideological statement, but you’ve not elaborated.
Everyone arguing that it’s not stealing is making the claim that it has no value.
Why does it matter? I would consider it moral and ethical but have no care whether it’s a legal one. I’m not disputing the legality of anything here (since I believe that the subject of the OP is also illegal - “Buying” something denotes ownership and, therefore, taking it away is also stealing).
Additionally, I do not have objections against piracy and think there are many legitimate reasons for it. I am only arguing against the mischaracterization and dishonesty of claiming that it is not stealing.
You can’t reason with him. He is an anti-piracy troll.
For him, any comparison made to help him understand is a logical fallacy and any evidence presented against his argument is “irrelevant” as he puts it.
It is like arguing with a trump-like narcissist lol. “My argument counts and yours is wrong, but if yours is right then it is irrelevant, made up, and/or a straw man. If I don’t understand something then it is an attack and I will insult you and instantly label you inferior.”
It’s sad honestly and just like them all he is all “think of the poor artists who created the media you love” while conveniently ignoring that in the music industry, many/most artists don’t even get royalties because the record labels swindled then forced them to sign their lives and works away getting a couple pennies on the dollar.
Video game industry is salaried. All profits go to the corporations outside of indie games. Movies, outside of the big name stars, earn almost poverty wages and absolutely 0.00% of what gets sold because the studios are so incredibly corrupt.
Not to mention dead artists where unless they were extremely smart, their families are likely earning 0% of sold media.
Also not getting into the fact that copyright used to be very short until large corporations bribed lawmakers constantly and for so much corrupt money that they changed copyright to extend an extreme amount of time, otherwise things from the 90s would already be public domain if there wasn’t so much blatant bribery and corruption done by the people you are “stealing” from.
Unless you are pirating things from Dolly Parton or someone who was business savvy enough to not get cheated by the studios, you are not stealing from the artists in any crazy mental gymnastic stretch of the imagination.
Piracy, at the very worst, is stealing from long time hard criminals. There is not a single big record corporation that has not committed a multitude of thefts, blackmail, drug dealing, bribery of government officials, and worse. That isn’t even getting into the crimes of porn studios and movie studios. Disney mass murdered animals on camera for views as one example.
No it’s not. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t watch it. If they’re not entitled to your money, then you’re not entitled to the product of their time, effort, and labor.
If i could just teleport into your house so i could liberate your keyboard, i would. Because your take is so collosally stupid that it actually angers me that you have it.
Like real, palpable rage that this insipid argument still exists in this world, after all this time.
An ad hominem would be if i avoided your point and instead attacked you as a person. I attacked the point itself as frivolous and years-debunked. Please… Listen… Your keyboard is suffering under the weight of false premise. Free it, please
You did not address the point at all. Nothing has been debunked. It cannot be debunked because it’s true - you are stealing something someone created, which they made in order to get paid and make a living, because you are ingesting it and not paying them.
That’s not what ad-hominem is, “dude”. It’s still a superficial attack rather than an attack of the argument if there’s no substance to it to actually dispute the argument.
I’m not arguing the legal or criminal semantics. I’m arguing the dishonest justification and misrepresentation of piracy. Piracy is stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator if you ingest their work without paying for it. I don’t care if people pirate things but admit that it’s stealing and move on.
Well, that’s a different argument. I believe it is also dishonest to have a “Buy” button for something you don’t actually get to own (that’s bullshit).
Digital media should be bought the same way as physical media.
If I had my way, you’d be able to watch media first and then decide to pay for it. Better yet, you pay for it in advance, watch whatever you want, and then decide how your payment got divided up amongst the artists and creators that you feel deserve your money for their work.
Stealing this stuff, which is what piracy does (and ai have no issue with for all kinds of reasons), only results in the people who made things you want to watch not getting paid to make that stuff.
Stealing this stuff, which is what piracy does (and I have no issue with for all kinds of reasons), only results in the people who made things you want to watch not getting paid to make that stuff.
Would make sense if the artist was independent, but corporations pay either a wage or a salary. It is rare for an artist to be paid a percentage of revenue for that product, so the only ones who would be affected by piracy are the corporations who did not directly create the art.
If I had my way, you’d be able to watch media first and then decide to pay for it. Better yet, you pay for it in advance, watch whatever you want, and then decide how your payment got divided up amongst the artists and creators that you feel deserve your money for their work.
That would be great, but that is not the case for the vast majority of media. Generally-speaking, media is encumbered with DRM, which prevents the consumer from being able to copy the data or watch it in any way they deem fit (see: streaming services requiring hardware DRM for 4K streaming, even when they charge extra for it)
Well, that’s a different argument. I believe it is also dishonest to have a “Buy” button for something you don’t actually get to own (that’s bullshit).
So, given that this is not an option for the vast majority of content, the only alternative where consumers maintain full control over their own media-playing devices is to download a DRM-free copy.
As Gabe Newell famously said, piracy is a service issue. Steam also has the same problem of lack of ownership and DRM, though, so its users are at the mercy of Valve to not revoke access to purchases.
GOG is one company who does it right, IMO. Sell only DRM-free copies of games, and allow people to download their copy and back it up to whatever media they want to put it on. This type of practice is rare in the media world, though. Most media companies require DRM on their product in order to license it out.
Also on the first point, independent producers of content generally don’t put DRM on their work anyway, so no reason not to buy their work.
This is an entirely separate and dishonest argument.
My point about DRM is highly relevant in this case, because a consumer cannot own something that is encumbered with DRM. They are renting a license for that product, even if the button they click on says “purchase”, since, hidden in the EULA somewhere, the company decided to redefine the word “purchase”. The company will always be able to revoke that license without notice or permission from the consumer, let alone a refund or any kind of compensation.
Again, it is not relevant because I’m not arguing against the OP. I am only arguing against the dishonesty and mischaracterization of piracy as being something other than stealing.
If buying isn’t ownership then pirating isn’t stealing
Oh but it’s not buying! The big “Buy” or “Purchase” button might have said so, but if you’d have careful read through 35 pages of user agreements, you’d see that you only rent the license to stream it.
Which obviously is total bullshit and the whole fucking system should be burned to the ground.
This is precisely why I refuse to buy digital games. (And it extends to other media, but games are where I actually spend money)
I’ll pay for a rental service designed to be a rental service (ps+, for example) but will not buy individual games digitally. Who knows when they will become unavailable for some reason, and I can no longer download a copy. It’s bad enough when servers are shut down within 2 years of launch, but when the whole game gets pulled, then what?
I’ve decided I’m not even bothering with the next generation of consoles. So few things are even released on disc, with half the consoles being digital only, that it’s not even worth it. I’ll pirate instead.
This is where the law needs to step in, it should be illegal to call it “Buy” if you are just leasing it. It’s absolutely misleading to most consumers.
Pirating isn’t stealing either way.
Also, copyright infringement never even used to ever be a crime, although now there is a form of criminal copyright infringement, if it’s done for money or if the value is above a certain amount. Thanks to lobbying from wealthy industries. Most copyright infringement still is not a crime, though.
The reason industries lobby for harsher copyright laws is because they know they can make more money if people can’t pirate. They take the piss with their pricing, but they’re acutely aware that if they take the piss too much then people will turn to piracy. By prohibiting piracy and levying harsh penalties they can get away with even more unfair pricing, and maybe even profit from piracy through punitive damages (which is mainly a US thing, most sensible nations only allow you to sue for actual damages).
It is. You’re stealing income from the person that created the thing you took and didn’t pay for.
By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
Creating a competitor is not the same logic at all. That competitor gets paid when someone buys their product.
The issue is that time and effort are put into something that is being made to get compensation for that time and effort, not to be given away for free. If you’re going to a competing product, you’re not ingesting the initial product without paying for it.
I’m not arguing legal definitions. I’m arguing against the bullshit mental gymnastics that piracy is not stealing. It is. Just admit it and move on. I don’t care if people pirate. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of trying to justify theft. If you ingest something that an artist made to try and make a livelihood and don’t pay them, you’re stealing that livelihood.
No, it’s exactly the same logic.
The argument that digital piracy is theft is predicated on the idea that pirating is depriving the creator of their rightful property: the money from a sale. In the absence of said sale, that money wasn’t their property to begin with, however. The only way to reconcile this is by treating potential income as property.
In doing so, a number of stupid things can be argued for:
Creating a new product is theft because it deprives the competition of their potential income.
Boycotting a company is theft because it deprives them of potential income.
Not purchasing a new phone is theft because it deprives the manufacturer of potential income.
Not hiring Tom because Bob was a better candidate is theft because it deprives Tom of potential income.
There’s a reason that piracy legally falls under copyright infringement rather than theft. You aren’t depriving the creator of property by making a new digital copy of their media, but you are violating their copyright by creating an unauthorized copy.
It is not the same logic. You are not ingesting the work of the creator by going to a competitor. The issue is that you are gaining something from the labor of the creator without compensating them for that labor (which they gain from). It is an unequal exchange that both parties have not agreed to. It is theft. Going to a competitor and buying from them is an equal exchange - you’re paying money for the product of their labor.
Everything else you’ve said continues to be dishonest because it is based on this very simple, fundamental flaw in your original argument.
What if I don’t sell it? If someone opts to use FreeCAD instead of Fusion360, did FreeCAD steal income from Autodesk?
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the product and not paying for that use.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
You should pick your examples more carefully.
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
You eating data?
Ingesting something doesn’t only mean eating it. It literally means “to bring into”.
I wish piracy was stealing income, I need some of that income.
It is stealing income. You’re taking advantage of the result of someone’s effort and time without compensating them for it. No one is ok with that in any other context but y’all bend over backwards to justify it unilaterally here as opposed to denouncing this behavior (the Crunchroll behavior, to be clear) as its own issue that is also wrong.
The workers already got paid. It’s executives that are being “stolen from.” ( I’m too broke to buy it anyways)
That’s irrelevant. That’s not the case with all media, especially anime, when the creators are the owners and executives of many studios. Even if it was, it doesn’t change the calculus that the work is being sold.
If you weren’t gonna buy it anyway and since the creator doesn’t lose anything, how can it be stealing?
And on top of that, it offers the creator exposure and creates new fans who one day might buy some of their products.
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries. But painting has been a thing for thousands of years, we’ve had time to adapt to it. Not the same thing with digital media. It came about after all these definitions and laws. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And because corpos are greedy, we’ll probably keep having this conversation forever
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of art galleries are not free. And, they tend to rotate their content regularly, so you have no control over what you have access to. Pretty much everything this thread is complaining about Crunchyroll doing.
It’s stealing because you watched it. If you didn’t watch it and didn’t buy it or steal it, then nothing has been stolen. The entire crux is that you’re consuming and ingesting the product they’re selling without paying for it.
Additionally, if you’re making the argument that you can’t count “potential” sales of something as theft then you can’t also make the argument that “potential” exposure is valid. Either both potentials are valid or neither is and, if they both are, then it’s theft.
And you’ve just proven my argument for me with your art gallery examples. Art galleries explicitly give people that access. You pay for that access. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get to look at those paintings without buying anything because you already had to buy something to even get to look at the paintings. Unless the creator is explicitly giving you access for free, you’re stealing if you’re ingesting or consuming something that they made for which they are charging.
That’s just factually untrue. The ‘creators’ are just animators that work for animation studios that get paid by companies like funimation, amazon and Netflix to publish content and those middle men reap the majority of the benefits. Very very rarely do actual individual people make a percentage of whatever a work earns. It’s just middle men executives that earn that.
I would argue that piracy helps make them more money anyways. The actual money is in merchandise. If I’m able to pirate an anime and really like it I’m more likely to spend money on merchandise VS me not bothering to watch a show and not buying merch.
Here’s an article proving that the actual creators don’t make much money at all and it’s not because of piracy.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/7/2/20677237/anime-industry-japan-artists-pay-labor-abuse-neon-genesis-evangelion-netflix
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
That’s not stealing lol. If I pirate something or if I don’t, the creator sees no difference.
Stealing income would be reducing the income for the author (piracy doesn’t alter it) and you getting it instead (you don’t).
That’s both dishonest and factually untrue. If you’re ingesting the creation without paying for it, then you’ve stolen it from the artists because they didn’t create it for free (unless they explicitly have). The creator sees a difference because you wouldn’t have been able to ingest their creation without paying them for it.
Theft requires you to deprive the original owner of their property.
Creating a digital copy does not prevent the creator from accessing or selling their property. Potential income is not property; it was never in their possession to begin with.
You’re arguing a legal definition. I am not.
I am arguing that people deserve to be paid for their work. If you’re not willing to pay them, you are not entitled to the fruits of their labor for free. Full stop.
Don’t worry, you’re correct and these people are just uncomfortable to define this as theft (if you didn’t pay something to someone prior.). If you didn’t pay, it’s theft, and it doesn’t matter what background revenue sharing agreements exist.
Google’s example sentence is quite topical. Still: Until potential income is defined as property, its loss isn’t theft. Besides that, if someone wasn’t going to pay for a digital copy in the first place, it’s not exactly a loss of potential income.
I know. It’s painfully obvious that the people arguing against this are just dishonest. I’ve already stated several times that I have no issues with piracy. All I’m saying is that, if people are going to pirate, they should be clear that it is theft, they’re depriving the creator of income, they’re ok with that, and they’ll continue to do it. That’s it.
–Thomas Jefferson
This is a dishonest response. Movies and media are not ideas. They are representations of ideas that take time and effort to create and that are created so that the artist that made them can make a living and pay their bills. Stealing those representations without compensating the artist for their time and effort means they can’t pay their bills which means they have to stop creating in order to get a job where the fruits of their efforts aren’t stolen.
That statement makes no sense in this context, regardless of whether I reflect on its poor grammar or not.
Sure it does, you just don’t like the substance of it.
No. The substance of it is irrelevant to my argument. You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not to put too fine a point on it - ideas are like assholes; everyone has them and most of them stink but the idea of an asshole doesn’t actually make you wretch the way the stench of an actual asshole might.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Lemme use a different, better example. Say I buy used copies of everything I watch. How is that different from watching shows on sketchy streaming websites? Either way I consume the media and the people who made it get nothing. If anything, it seems worse to me for me to lose money and the creators to gain nothing, while some random person on the internet profits from reselling their work after they’ve already consumed it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
And you’re ignoring the fact that the producer treats their digital product with no real scarcity as if it was a physical product that cost a significant amount to produce and distribute. By your own reasoning, the digital product should be much cheaper.
If it wasn’t for piracy, the product (digital or physical) would be even more expensive. As it is, producers know that if they price too high people will turn to piracy, if that wasn’t an option then there would be nothing holding them back.
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
I’m not arguing the legal definition of this so everything you’ve said is irrelevant.
The legal definition is THE definition, it’s literally what the word means, and where the concepts of both originate.
What you’re saying isn’t irrelevant, it’s just completely ignorant and wrong.
The legal definition is not the definition. That is just nonsense. There are an innumerable amount of terms that have a literary definition that is not the same as the legal definition.
You’re trying to say that your definition is the only valid one, which conveniently is one that your argument is entirely reliant upon.
It isn’t valid, you’re wrong, your argument does not hold water.
Licensing isn’t ownership, and pirating isn’t stealing, it’s copyright infringement.
The previous comment is more like shorthand, rather than literal truth.
It’s faster to say piracy isn’t stealing if purchasing isn’t ownership than it is to say “if a company can simply reverse a permanent access license at any time then pirating media from them is perfectly ethical and should not be considered a crime”
It’s bad shorthand though. In this context, there was never any “buying content” happening, nor was piracy ever “stealing”. It’s just misrepresentation of both sides.
That’s fair, but I feel like the point is that many people go through a process where
That feels like buying media, so according to the common “consumer” (hate that word) brain, you are spending money to buy content.
At the same time, media corps have been trying to teach us for years that piracy is exactly the same as stealing.
The whole point of the shorthand is to explain that these are not facts, they’re misconceptions, AND both of these misconceptions exist for the same reason, corporate propaganda.
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Come up with something better then.
Why?
Because you’re bitching about it. Either there’s a better way to express the precise picture you’re describing, or your central argument is fundamentally flawed, and it’s an effective shorthand.
Sure, there’s nuance. Shorthand is used to convey a nuanced thought quickly. That’s literally the point.
Lol “bitching” about it.
Weird logic. Pointing out something that isn’t accurate but gets parroted anyways means I need to come up with a better thing to parrot.
There’s no logic here. You’re right and they’re just throwing a tantrum because it means they’re wrong.
Infringe me harder daddy ©👄©
It is stealing. I don’t understand the mental gymnastics here. You’re stealing income from whoever created the content if you’re not paying them for your ability to watch it.
How are you stealing income if there was no intention to pay the company to begin with? Even if there was an intention to buy it, companies aren’t entitled to consumers’ money. This is especially the case if the consumer has previously purchased a license to consume the product, and then the company decides to take (or steal) it away. No moral qualms with pirating the same content then.
It’s digital data; you’re copying something, leaving the original completely intact. It’s not like a physical BluRay, where if you steal it from a store, you are making that store lose money due to that physical stock being stolen.
And lastly, how is the company not stealing from consumers when they pull shit like this?
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Who said anything about generating income off of pirated work?
The definition of theft according to MW: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
If you do not deprive the original owner of the property (such as: copying), it is not definitionally theft. Legally speaking, it is considered copyright infringement.
You hit the nail on the head. That’s why they’re downvoting and arguing. It personally benefits them to steal.
I’ve said it several times here…I don’t care if people pirate stuff. There are a myriad of reasons to do so. My issue is with the dishonesty of pretending it’s not stealing. Keep doing it, I don’t care, but own up to what you’re doing and admit it’s stealing.
It’s mental gymnastics because they need to be able to continue stealing but don’t want to feel bad about it.
Then you’re not entitled to ingest the content being created by that “company” (doesn’t have to be a company, it could be a single artist or a small group of artists).
Taking away licenses is wrong. I’m not disputing that. But that doesn’t magically make stealing something that actual people created right.
Are you making an ethical, moral, or legal statement here?
Ownership of intangibles in this context exists only as a means to support a particular political arrangement. I think you may be assuming others here share your politics; there is no objective moral standard for exclusive ownership of intangibles.
By that argument, there is no moral imperative for people to create intangibles as they have no value. If someone creates art that you like, they deserve to be paid for the time and effort it took to create that art whether the art itself is physically tangible or not. If you don’t agree to that premise, then there’s no point in discussing this with you.
You’re right, there is no moral imperative for people to create (or share) intangibles, but nobody is claiming they have no value.
Again, is this a ethical, moral, or legal statement? It strikes me as a uniquely ideological statement, but you’ve not elaborated.
Everyone arguing that it’s not stealing is making the claim that it has no value.
Why does it matter? I would consider it moral and ethical but have no care whether it’s a legal one. I’m not disputing the legality of anything here (since I believe that the subject of the OP is also illegal - “Buying” something denotes ownership and, therefore, taking it away is also stealing).
Additionally, I do not have objections against piracy and think there are many legitimate reasons for it. I am only arguing against the mischaracterization and dishonesty of claiming that it is not stealing.
It is not stealing. The mental gymnastics are when you try to claim that it is.
It’s just as much “stealing” as me not watching it at all.
I’m infringing on their copyright, absolutely, but I’m not taking anything away from them that they could otherwise profit from.
You can’t reason with him. He is an anti-piracy troll.
For him, any comparison made to help him understand is a logical fallacy and any evidence presented against his argument is “irrelevant” as he puts it.
It is like arguing with a trump-like narcissist lol. “My argument counts and yours is wrong, but if yours is right then it is irrelevant, made up, and/or a straw man. If I don’t understand something then it is an attack and I will insult you and instantly label you inferior.”
It’s sad honestly and just like them all he is all “think of the poor artists who created the media you love” while conveniently ignoring that in the music industry, many/most artists don’t even get royalties because the record labels swindled then forced them to sign their lives and works away getting a couple pennies on the dollar.
Video game industry is salaried. All profits go to the corporations outside of indie games. Movies, outside of the big name stars, earn almost poverty wages and absolutely 0.00% of what gets sold because the studios are so incredibly corrupt.
Not to mention dead artists where unless they were extremely smart, their families are likely earning 0% of sold media.
Also not getting into the fact that copyright used to be very short until large corporations bribed lawmakers constantly and for so much corrupt money that they changed copyright to extend an extreme amount of time, otherwise things from the 90s would already be public domain if there wasn’t so much blatant bribery and corruption done by the people you are “stealing” from.
Unless you are pirating things from Dolly Parton or someone who was business savvy enough to not get cheated by the studios, you are not stealing from the artists in any crazy mental gymnastic stretch of the imagination.
Piracy, at the very worst, is stealing from long time hard criminals. There is not a single big record corporation that has not committed a multitude of thefts, blackmail, drug dealing, bribery of government officials, and worse. That isn’t even getting into the crimes of porn studios and movie studios. Disney mass murdered animals on camera for views as one example.
No it’s not. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t watch it. If they’re not entitled to your money, then you’re not entitled to the product of their time, effort, and labor.
Then why is digital piracy legally considered to be copyright infringement instead of theft?
That’s irrelevant. I’m not arguing the legality of it.
If i could just teleport into your house so i could liberate your keyboard, i would. Because your take is so collosally stupid that it actually angers me that you have it.
Like real, palpable rage that this insipid argument still exists in this world, after all this time.
Ahh yes… the tried and true ad-hominem. No actual argument against the point, just childish name-calling and insults. Grow the fuck up.
An ad hominem would be if i avoided your point and instead attacked you as a person. I attacked the point itself as frivolous and years-debunked. Please… Listen… Your keyboard is suffering under the weight of false premise. Free it, please
You did not address the point at all. Nothing has been debunked. It cannot be debunked because it’s true - you are stealing something someone created, which they made in order to get paid and make a living, because you are ingesting it and not paying them.
Stop being dishonest.
Saying your argument is stupid isn’t attacking you, dude.
That’s not what ad-hominem is, “dude”. It’s still a superficial attack rather than an attack of the argument if there’s no substance to it to actually dispute the argument.
That’s a valid opinion. It doesn’t change the fact that the crime is copyright infringement, not theft.
I’m not arguing the legal or criminal semantics. I’m arguing the dishonest justification and misrepresentation of piracy. Piracy is stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator if you ingest their work without paying for it. I don’t care if people pirate things but admit that it’s stealing and move on.
No it is not. By any definition.
You can think it’s morally wrong, that’s fine. But it simply, factually is not stealing.
That’s the only point I’m making.
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Wait, do you think people that pirate things all have the same beliefs or something? Such a weird way to logic. 😅 Truly, that’s a new one.
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Well that’s certainly a convenient way to validate your own beliefs. lol
“Everyone that disagrees with my worldview just isn’t being honest!”
Stay scientific, friend
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Well, that’s a different argument. I believe it is also dishonest to have a “Buy” button for something you don’t actually get to own (that’s bullshit).
Digital media should be bought the same way as physical media.
If I had my way, you’d be able to watch media first and then decide to pay for it. Better yet, you pay for it in advance, watch whatever you want, and then decide how your payment got divided up amongst the artists and creators that you feel deserve your money for their work.
Stealing this stuff, which is what piracy does (and ai have no issue with for all kinds of reasons), only results in the people who made things you want to watch not getting paid to make that stuff.
Would make sense if the artist was independent, but corporations pay either a wage or a salary. It is rare for an artist to be paid a percentage of revenue for that product, so the only ones who would be affected by piracy are the corporations who did not directly create the art.
That would be great, but that is not the case for the vast majority of media. Generally-speaking, media is encumbered with DRM, which prevents the consumer from being able to copy the data or watch it in any way they deem fit (see: streaming services requiring hardware DRM for 4K streaming, even when they charge extra for it)
So, given that this is not an option for the vast majority of content, the only alternative where consumers maintain full control over their own media-playing devices is to download a DRM-free copy.
As Gabe Newell famously said, piracy is a service issue. Steam also has the same problem of lack of ownership and DRM, though, so its users are at the mercy of Valve to not revoke access to purchases.
GOG is one company who does it right, IMO. Sell only DRM-free copies of games, and allow people to download their copy and back it up to whatever media they want to put it on. This type of practice is rare in the media world, though. Most media companies require DRM on their product in order to license it out.
Also on the first point, independent producers of content generally don’t put DRM on their work anyway, so no reason not to buy their work.
This is an entirely separate and dishonest argument. I’m not arguing anything related to DRM or the structure of the market that creates some content.
My point about DRM is highly relevant in this case, because a consumer cannot own something that is encumbered with DRM. They are renting a license for that product, even if the button they click on says “purchase”, since, hidden in the EULA somewhere, the company decided to redefine the word “purchase”. The company will always be able to revoke that license without notice or permission from the consumer, let alone a refund or any kind of compensation.
Relevant Louis Rossmann video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
Again, it is not relevant because I’m not arguing against the OP. I am only arguing against the dishonesty and mischaracterization of piracy as being something other than stealing.
👆