If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing

I didn't know things had gone quite this far yet.

I have to agree. There should be legislation preventing this, or the pirates will be morally in the clear. Which does not help copyright owners. Yes, the pirate stole your content, but since you were going to revoke access anyhow he was stealing from a scammer which is justice.

It's not stealing. It's communication. You can't "steal" ideas, information or facts. To steal means to physically take someone's property without their consent.

Incorrect.

You’re using one of the intransitive definitions but general speaking it’s the transitive forms that apply to digital content, ideas, information, etc.

1. to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully

2. to take away by force or unjust means

3. to take surreptitiously or without permission

You may not want stealing to mean that… but that’s irrelevant to reality.

Also in these transitive definitions, stealing is about taking. And in the case of piracy (communicating information to others without permission of the original source), nothing is taken.

The person that came up with the idea still has it. The photographer still has the picture. The programmer still has the program.

It's just about what another person may do with it, the one receiving the picture. May they also send it to someone else? We could have different ideas about that, but calling it "stealing" is inaccurate.

Say one counterfeits a hundred dollar bill perfectly. Does he steal? Say he is able to do this in large quantities. Does he steal? You still have you hundred dollar bill. No loss to you right? Wrong. Your money’s worth is lessened by the counterfeiting, the copying. That is what they mean by stealing: you are decreasing the value of their products by providing identical copies outside of their control.

By that definition, whenever I create (on my own) a product that is both superior and cheaper than a competitor's offering, lessening the value of their product, it is stealing.

There are actually people who reason like this. I remember being struck by this attitude when reading Bloomberg's book - effectively morally eqivocating business competition with stealing food out of their children's mouths.

Unfortunately, businesses actually think this way. See any number of lawsuits based on this kind of thinking.

This is exactly what people are saying about any number of innovations!

You're right that counterfeiting devalues currency, but that doesn't make it stealing. Nobody would refer to counterfeit currency as "stolen".

Alrighty. So copying movies is fraud. Not theft or piracy.

It's only fraud if you sell them as genuine?

Fraud involves lying, copyright infringement doesn't necessarily.

Copying movies is copying things congress said you can't, a crime distinct from both theft and fraud.

Piracy has for whatever reason been co-opted to refer to copying despite that having no relationship to piracy on the high seas, but no one is playing linguistic games to argue that they're the same thing so whatever.

Banks wish money into existence with fractional reserve banking. Sounds like counterfeit to me!

No, it is lawful. So not stealing. That is illegal. It may not be fair though. But it is lawful. Complain to your liberal government rep.

If you've managed to create a perfect hundred dollar bill then you've done nothing different to what the bank did. Are both of you stealing?

One way of looking at it is that the banks didn't have to expend a tiny fraction of $100 worth of effort to obtain the dollar bill, whereas any normal person would have to. The question is does the bank deserve that $100? Especially at a cost to everyone else (who are largely unaware/tricked).

Personally I'd class that as "fraud" but it all comes under a similar umbrella.

Theft is taking something you don't deserve, without the other party's consent.

Fraud is taking something you don't deserve, with the other party's _misplaced_ consent.

So yes, in the case of copying music for example, I agree - you're copying someone's idea, which is essentially taking the product of their work without their consent. Their work is no longer scarce, and so loses half its value. It's not really any different to stealing half the money they've worked for, other than that it seems almost impossible to stop you without creating paradoxes such as this topic.

It's detrimental as they no longer have the same incentive to do that work and so society doesn't progress.

You've taken the reward from the person that did the work and shared it amongst the whole of society who didn't work for it. It's pure socialism - and we can see the effects of it in the quality of modern music.

If Alice breaks Bob’s leg, does she steal his mobility? Sure, but criminally she’d be charged with assault or battery or both.

Likewise, the legal definition of theft or stealing does not apply to copyright infringement despite decades long campaigns to get the public to believe that to ge the case. Relatedly, there are similar campaigns to redefine violence as something that offends someone.

Since value is only defined by what people are willing to pay for it, and lacking any extra common rules, these acts of copying simply signal not accepting the demanded price: so the value claimed by the owner was not the actual value, thus they have lost only their self-deception about the value.

Taking can simply mean “to gain or acquire”. So, once again, incorrect. Sorry.

I’m sympathetic to the moral argument you’re making—though when the raw goods are digital too I think it’s an impractical & ill conceived one—but both legally AND linguistically… it’s incorrect

Which dictionary defines taking as simply gaining or acquiring something? If you "take" something from someone else it generally means that they no longer have what you took.

This is all really pretty simple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

Also, (at least in the US) legally copyright infringement is distinct from stealing.

Hot take, take a photo, take part, take the bus, take a left, take a shower, take pride in your work, take a joke, take something apart, take my word for it, take a while, take an oath. Being over precious about definitions is unwise.

Also, from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take

Verb, 1, To get into one's hands, possession, or control, with or without force.

Is taking a picture of someone kidnapping?

Depends on who you ask

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8380/did-some-c...

Curious choice of example. I know what you mean of course, but the point is words shift meaning.

For a counter-example connected to your choice, I was recently made aware of the Latin word for "to abduct", and how that word may well be why it took so long for spousal abuse to become recognised as an offence — to paraphrase your own question to demonstrate how this goes very wrong, how can you "abduct" someone you live with?

This use of 'take' is an endless source of dad jokes, of course.

Child: "I'm going to go take a shower"

Dad: "Make sure you put it back when you're done."

A new legend, was born.

Let's say Alice took a photograph and sends a copy of it to Bob.

Are you then saying that when Bob sends another copy to Charlie, Bob is taking something? What is Bob taking?

Charlie certainly was (he took a copy from Bob).

Bob is the distributor in this context however. In most Berne convention states he broke copyright law (technically, but nothing would happen)

Together Bob & Charlie gained or acquired a picture produced by Alice’s work effort that was unauthorized.

That’s stealing. Is it a big deal? Probably not. Still stealing.

So close and then the stealing part slipped back in.

We have a separate term already for the right to copy something - copyright.

We have a term for copying something without that right- copyright infringement.

Not theft. Copyright infringement.

as you said, he broke copyright law. that is copyright infringement, it is not theft.

Alice still has it, so it’s not stealing as commonly understood.

I’d say the opposite - it could still be a huge deal to Alice, but it doesn’t meet the definition of stealing or theft.

people are not taking anything, they're copying

Copying is “gaining or acquiring” so would come under “taking”, sorry.

To take: "to move something or someone from one place to another". Copying is not taking, sorry.

You seem to be using a dictionary with very short entries. Mine contains 10 different meanings of the verb "take" and one of them is "obtain, gain, acquire".

Dictionary definitions and legal definitions may or may not overlap. If not discussing the legal definition, than steal could mean someone enjoyed an appropriately licensed copyrighted work secretly or in private.

Your definition supports the OP. All three require 'taking', which doesn't happen with copying

Taking can simply mean “to gain or acquire”.

If that’s your argument… it’s unsound linguistics and legally.

If its an unsound argument, why are copyright and theft different bodies of law?

But that isn't what it means in the context of theft, and linguistically the distinction is clear unless you are being disingenuous. There is absolutely no linguistic foundation for equating theft and duplicating information.

Legally the distinction is also clear - transgression of copyright law is specifically given the term "copyright infringement" in law in English speaking countries and in international agreements. A person cannot be convicted of theft for copying information. The US supreme court, among others, ruled on exactly this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...

The point is that stealing has traditionally meant denying the rightful owner the thing that has been stolen. What is going on here is that a copy has been made without permission - piracy is copyright infringement, this is different to stealing.

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html#:~:t....

Now there has been a lot of effort by the media industry to equate copyright infringement with stealing, I think because the public at large doesn't really understand infringement as a terrible thing. Stealing appears in the 10 commandments, so in our judeo christian societies it's a home run to get 'right thinking' people on side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

I don't even know what my personal stance on piracy is but the subject is clearly more complex than saying that theft applies only to physical objects.

I remember one RMS lecture that made me think. He pointed out that the so-called "intellectual property" doesn't really exist. What exists are certain laws, such as patents, copyright, trademarks and so on. Each of these recognizes the benefit to society of temporary restriction of freedom of others to use the ideas that were invented/transmitted by others.

You can just drop "intellectual" and there will be no fundamental change to the argument, it's only the name of the laws defining "property" that change.

You seem to be missing that my laptop existing is an objective fact rather than a logical argument.

Yes, but the association of that laptop with yourself as an owner is an abstract idea. Many mammals do not have such ideas of ownership as an exclusive right, though many will defend territory, mates, and offspring.

It can not be understated how foundational exclusive property rights are to modern society and technological advancement. Since at least the Magna Carta it’s considered a human right. The US Declaration of Independence almost enumerated property as an inalienable right in place of the pursuit of happiness.

How could I have forgotten: the idea of personal property is also essential to Jewish law, predating the Magna Carta by another 2,000 years. That’s at least 3,000 years of at least a portion of humans placing value on private property.

Yes, but that's true of IP, too. And the importance of property laws in general doesn't make them less of an abstraction.

I updated my earlier comment to point out much earlier property laws. As best I can tell, copyright laws are around 500 years old, and about 230 in America. They were always written to give the creator a limited monopoly, unlike property, which is in perpetuity. Personal property is typically not considered to have the wide public value or cultural impact that ideas have.

There’s definitely a deep philosophical discussion to be had here about what value governments provide in return for your tax dollars on property that in reality they allow you to do certain things with, insofar as any human can claim to own any piece of this planet. In the end, it usually boils down to paying for them to defend it from invaders and anyone trying to take it from you, so think about the tax like a protection fee that entitles you to call up guys with guns to make whoever is trying to break that government’s rules about what you can and cannot do with that property you pay tax on stop. Consider US military strength (perceived and actual, as far as we can even measure that) vs rest of world, same with property values and wages in the US vs other places.

I’d highly recommend reading the 1840 banger * What Is Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government* by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon of Property is theft! fame.

If you want to know how bullshit intellectual "property" is, ask the simple question of who owns the personal information the ad company collected about me?

Of course, the ad company owns it, because of their hard intellectual work of collecting it.

Me? No, why would I own information about me? What logic of property is this?

If you come to my restaurant isn't in my info that you walked in my door, sat at my table, ordered my food? Why do you think it's your info? When two interact both sides get to remember the interaction.

The question is whether you own information about their food choices that you can sell to a third party without even telling the customer it was collected.

On the one hand, it seems obvious that you have a right to observe, collect data, and sell it. On the other hand, ick.

Just ask TV and car manufacturers who collect telemetry about absolutely everything you do with their products and probably everything that happens on your connected phone and/or wifi network too.

But if I walk into a franchise restaurant with a camera recording, they'll kick me out while happily recording and selling data with their own cameras.

The question is not if you can "remember" it. That is not what ownership in personal information is about.

The question is whether you can __sell__ the information that I had three double cheese burgers and extra greasy fries to my health insurance provider.

Yes, but people are allowed to express a strong opinion on a complex subject without also specifically mentioning all the caveats and possible counter-arguments to their position.

By all means argue back and add the nuance you think is missing, but it's intellectually dishonest and lazy to just say "ah, but it's more complicated than that".

Uh, surely "I know it is more complicated but I will not mention that" is the lazy stance?

Posting to HN is not like writing a finalized spec or publishing an academic paper. It’s ok to ignore complicated edge cases and speak in generalities. Nobody expects commenters to 100% cover every issue with every post.

The fact that some powerful organizations are trying to complicate a matter does not make it complicated per se.

In my country the law criminalizing theft begins thus:

Stöld

Stöld beskrivs i 8 kap. 1 §. Stöldbrottet förekommer i tre allvarlighetsvarianter:

* Ringa stöld (tidigare snatteri): 8 kap 2 § > * Stöld: 8 kap 1 § > * Grov stöld: 8 kap 4 §

Skyddsintresset vid stöld är äganderätten. Endast lösa saker samt del till fast egendom kan ägas.

The third sentence defines property as physical.

Reading texts on international property rights it’s always quite clear what everyone is talking about. “Intellectual property” is sometimes mentioned as an aside with an extra caveat that it is not widely recognized.

You are confusing what they think is justice with what some people have decided is justice.

False. When someone without your permission copies your source code, plans or inventions, which are not physical things, is this not theft? What about the non physical bits and bytes in your Dropbox or bank account? That's just like, an exchange of information, man. Why must the "physical" qualifier be there?

One does not merely copy the numbers in a bank account when committing theft. The key part is depriving the original owner of the use of the item.

Whether you think piracy is right or wrong, there is a crucial difference between traditionally understood stealing or theft, in that the original owner no longer has the thing. With copyright infringement that’s not the case.

I didn't comment on piracy.

As for piracy, of course it's wrong, though far less serious than what I responded to.

depriving the original owner of the use of the item

When someone invests to make a film, do you think the use of the resulting film to the owner is to watch it or sell it?

To break it down, did someone invest millions to make millions, or did someone pay millions to watch one movie?

You know the answer and thus we know that stealing a copy without paying does does in fact deprive the original owner of the use of the item, which was always to sell copies of it, that's the reason and criteria for its existence.

At small scale though the industry still makes do, so it's less serious than stealing for example, a company (e.g. their information). Every act of piracy also wasn't technically a stolen sale, because not everyone stealing would ever have bought it if stealing wasn't an option.

Well actually (Yeah I’m going to well actually you) many movies are quite literally produced in such a way that structures the production companies to not make any money and instead shift any profits up the pyramid while extracting the maximum value of possible tax credits and grants offered any number of political entities, as well as disbursing themselves from several liabilities.

On paper many incredibly successful films lose money. The game is rigged. The industry more than makes do.

People are free to draw their own lines. I pay for some things and don’t pay for others as far as digital content goes. The structure of it doesn’t even necessarily fit into this clean cut idea however. If I pay for Prime and download something that I could watch via prime ( and I do, because I’d rather watch it in my preferred video play whenever and not only if I have an internet connection or on specific devices or god forbid the thing I’m watching or intending to watch in the near future slips off the service) what is the math in that?

Copying something does not remove the thing from the original owner, hence these are different acts.

Referring to such things as theft or stealing is lazy and incorrect, regardless of relative severity.

The fact you use the term “stealing” in your justification of the act being “stealing” kinda points to your own circular reasoning there, rather than a good defence.

We can agree it’s wrong without polluting the semantic space. Otherwise we may as well just call everything “murder” or “terrorism” and be done with it.

The key part is depriving the original owner of the use of the item.

I know that’s been a tribal shibboleth of piracy since the 2000s, and I’m sympathetic to the moral argument to this view… but it’s just factually untrue (both in terminology AND in law)

It’s not though, in law, as they are different crimes. And that’s where copyright infringement even is a crime rather than a civil matter as it is in many places.

Of course you can steal information, there's no reason why the notion of theft ought to be limited to physical goods, we're not living in the stone age. 90% of what we do and own exists in digital form. We can take possession of it, protect it, lock it away, attribute ownership to it as much as we can do to any physical property. If you disagree I'd appreciate if you could tell us your credit card information.

People just try to rationalize their behavior and play silly word games because they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.

Kant gave us a good principle, universalizability. If everyone pirated, creators would not get compensated, therefore they could not sustain themselves and it would be obvious that the value of their work is being stolen. Evidently, pirates are free-riders and their theft just isn't evident because enough people usually compensate for it.

If everyone pirated music, musicians would make all their income from merch and touring and it's not clear that they'd be worse off.

And if you read or watch much about all the musicians reviewing their Spotify Wrapped this year vs how much they were paid, you’d see that we’re already there. The value of their work went to music streaming services and everyone using their music in their productions, very little made it back to the creators.

piracy is robbing other people of their labour.

That's a coherent position, but it is also perfectly reasonable to argue that it's not because you have a copy and have not removed the original.

Edit: Note that this doesn't inherently make piracy okay, since it may deprive the owner of revenue or other benefits; there's a difference between objecting to piracy and saying that it's exactly theft.

If everyone pirated, the only people who would create content would be people doing it purely for the sake of art or their own enjoyment, far more people would be personally involved in creating art (in music for example, there would be far more people going to see local performances if there were less music produced as mass media due to loss of profitability), mass media would be reduced and more art would be local (and still physical), increasing the richness and diversity of the media landscape.

In my opinion, that would be a far superior world to the one we live in.

they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.

It's not. A pirate is just another non-customer. There's robbing involved when someone chooses not to buy something. Watching a movie at a friend's house isn't robbing the producers of anything. Neither is buying something second hand. These are all non-customers of the original creator.

After someone steals a movie, the studio can no longer stream that movie as they do not possess it any longer.

"Stealing" has been used as a common word for "copying without permission" in the digital age. To try to play word games by trying to walk back the definition of stealing to mean only "taking someone's physical property" is completely pointless and futile unless you're just trying to feel OK with yourself copying without permission.

If I produce and distribute content like music or videos, it's fair for me to want people that want to rent or own it to pay for it. I put a lot of time and effort into it, I have to manage and market it, maybe store it, and I want to make a living at it.

If people are stealing it, ahem, copying without permission, it undercuts my living. I have a right to earning from my work, and you don't have a right to just download it or copy it or distribute it to others without me getting paid for it. It's literally preventing earnings for me that would otherwise happen if you didn't copy it without permission (ahem, stealing).

Yeah but if you sell them something and they click “buy” or “purchase” and not “rent” and then you revoke the license years later you’re the thief, not the person downloading what they purchased on utorrent.

I’m increasingly convinced that the right of first sale must extend to copyrighted work licenses to individuals to rebalance the benefit to society. Movies, video games, and music are all “sold” primarily in a way that prevents them from being shared, lent, or transferred to others. Books are probably the only medium left that is still primarily physical (71% in 2022).

"Stealing" is morally charged and too associated with the loss of property to be a fair or accurate term here. It's not word games; it's conceptual analysis and a basic understanding of rhetoric.

Digital piracy, broadly speaking, is unauthorized copying. Depending on the context, it could be theft. Sometimes that theft is legal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Other times that theft is illegal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Sometimes, it's just not theft at all.

When the people who sell it to us are free to revoke access at any time, then there's no walking back being done by us. We're just recognizing that the accepted state of things was reneged on by one party and they can't insist on being in the right when we decide we're not obligated to follow their arbitrary rules anymore.

In the case of cars (the go-to object for all analogies) the bad guy is charged with "unauthorized use of a motor vehicle". That's not stealing either.

Well actually that would be grand theft auto at least in the US.

...And unauthorized use of a motor vehicle as a second count.

Surely you can steal a car without using it?

Depends on the jurisdiction.

In the UK you can be charged with theft.

For joyriding and dumping they created the crime of twoccing (taking without owners consent).

A 'twoker' is also a derogatory term for a certain class of person

And that’s why it is impossible to make a living from anything that isn’t embodied as a physical item, right?

Of course you can and should be entitled to make a living. You can do so IP free, even in creative fields.

You can’t make a billion dollars, IP free, and that’s okay with me.

I mean, why do you think we really got away from the idea of tying currency to something physical? Money and property are just ideas that enough people agree about to matter. If you don’t agree, too bad and good luck convincing all the others that you’re right, especially with all the resources and power that the winners under this system have gained under it.

To steal means to physically take someone's property without their consent

That's one meaning. As with many English words that one has several. Here are several examples of how "steal" is used in English for things that involve other than taking physical taking of property:

• Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart.

• An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show.

• An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula.

• When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen".

• Alice is Bob's fiancé. Mallory woos Alice without Bob's knowledge. Alice elopes with Mallory. Most would find it acceptable if Bob said that Mallory "stole" his fiancé.

• A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.

Substituting one meaning of "steal" or "theft" for another meaning and saying they're the same thing sure sounds like equivocation.

Metallica made sure that argument doesn’t hold water in court back when they were suing all their fans for downloading their music on Napster. To this day I remind everyone who will listen why I refuse to listen to them ever again whenever their name comes up.

Yeah, I can’t believe Metallica recovered from that. In my mind, they’re up there with Volkswagen - their brand has a stigma attached to it.

what word would you use if you hired a lawyer or accountant to do some paperwork and when they finished you just copied the documents and then didn't pay them because "it's not stealing, it's just communication"?

Actually two words: bad laywer

If laywer sets up such a contract with you, he can't be a good one.

I'll see myself out...

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” ― Thomas Jefferson

But why giveth when you can chargeth

Information wants to be free.

information wants to be wrong!!!

- sam & max

This is obviously a bit about the definition of words but I've only really heard it called stealing in the US where I think the narrative is pushed by corporate interests. In the UK where I live the offence is generally called copyright infringement because under UK law that's what it is.

That’s incorrect. One absolutely can steal ideas, it’s even used explicitly in the definition of multiple dictionaries: “to claim credit for another’s idea” [1]; “to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment” [2]. The word steal has many definitions that don’t involve taking physical property, e.g., stealing elections, stealing liberty, stealing base, stealing a kiss, making fraudulent deals, etc., etc..

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steal

[2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/steal

A pirate didn't steal content, though. Nobody lost any content! There was no transaction involved. Piracy isn't zero-sum.

Piracy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, there is a cost associated with it. Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground to stand on; now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different question, with interesting arguments for how or why modern copyright might not provide the intended outcomes.

Every study done on the matter shows piracy correlates with sales. If we are to stop pretending, we should start with ending the myth that piracy hurts sales. There is no evidence whatsoever of that.

Piracy is, in fact, free advertising. And, as we all know, advertising is the soul of commerce.

Calling BS on that because no one is going to pirate unknown movie/song/software.

You pirate photoshop because you know it is good. You pirate movie because you know it is going to be good and everyone is waiting to watch it.

Calling BS on that because no one is going to pirate unknown movie/song/software.

I've done it. I'd bet that most people who have pirated anything have. If you were around for the Napster days you'd know that people would often download things they'd never heard of before and had no idea if they'd like it or not (and that was when it could take many hours, even days, for a single album to download!). Piracy is a great way to try out new things. Napster led to an increase in CD sales as people were discovering new artists and music they'd never heard on the radio or MTV (https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-napster-boosts-cd-sales/)

The objection to P2P file sharing was never about money. It was about power and control. It was about gatekeeping. The RIAA wants to decide what you can and can't listen to and what is popular. They don't want their new artists/albums to have to compete with everything ever released. They know piracy would increase sales. They don't want to give up the control over our culture and they don't want the internet to cut them out as useless middlemen. With computers and the internet we don't need them for distribution or advertising. We can do it all without them.

100%

'Piracy' is the wrong thing to call it.

Perhaps the gatekeepers you describe are the same ones who pushed the term 'piracy' this way; to describe any human who copies chunks of 1s and 0s they feel protective of.

Meanwhile, real pirates really steal real physical goods from real people.

Copiers and pirates are not the same thing, not even close.

People are going to pirate unknown movie/song/software because no seller is going to give it shelf space, making it all but unavailable to the general public through 'normal' channels.

Define unknown?

I’m not ashamed to admit that I often download obscure games I see on steam to see if they’ll actually hook me or not. I pay for what I actually am able to sink my teeth in to.

The vast majority of movies I download are me going out on a limb. In some cases I’m subscribed to a service they’re available on. I still download them though because I’d prefer to use my own player on my own terms. You can’t even get higher than 720p on Netflix on PC without using edge. Horseshit. It is also not infrequent that there is no way for me to pay someone to watch it online. I’m not going to buy a used copy of a DVD/blu-ray to watch something I’m interested in. Ain’t nobody making money off a used copy. Is resale of used media ethical?

How is this line any different than the sleazy ‘work for free and you’ll get exposure!’ grift that people constantly do with creative workers?

It's not even as straightforward as that. Most serious studies on the topic have demonstrated that piracy not only does not lead to lost sales, but in fact it leads to increased sales instead.

... for Big Tech.

It's how companies like Microsoft or Adobe could grow and gain uncontested monopolies. Because, due to piracy, price was no longer a good enough differentiator. And it's why "Linux on the desktop" never happened.

There aren't many studies on this topic and the available ones are bullshit, as they don't take into account second order effects of piracy, one of which being the rise of streaming with DRM, which also concentrates power in the hands of a few Big Tech companies.

Piracy is one of the biggest reasons for why we have monopolies. The phenomenon is now repeated with ad blockers. And the irony of the situation is that people point at monopolies to justify piracy or the use of ad blockers.

Indeed, just because some big corps can handle the lost revenue in return for pricing competitors out and exposure, doesn't mean piracy doesn't impact revenue.

Going from "big corp can handle lost revenue in return for market dominance and exposure" to "it doesn't hurt revenue" is absurd.

Analogy: doing business in high-crime or corruption areas. Only "big mean nasty" type companies can survive the onslaught.

"this is why we can't have nice things"

I would assume, that this is partly because one can get familiar with the pirated product and then many people decide it is worth buying or supporting the creator. Or spread the word about the existence of the product.

Piracy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, but there is a cost associated with it.

There is zero cost associated with piracy. Zero.

At best, there's an expectation of profit that's not met. To argue that, you need to show how copying a file translates to a potential sale being converted to a no-sale, and there are plenty of evidence that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted work drives demand up.

Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground to stand on

Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts anyone. You're trying to pass off your personal assertions as axioms, but it's on you to prove that copying a file without the consent of someone hurts anyone.

Go ahead.

now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different question

If anything, artists are the least impacted counterpart as they literally get paid a small fraction of the whole income.

Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts anyone.

Wait until the grandparent learns about public libraries. Just havens of content larceny! People "stealing" content left and right!

At all the public libraries I've used they only let me checkout something if the total number of copies already checked out is less than the number of copies the library has licenses for. If the number checked out is not under the number of licenses they make me wait until one of the checked out copies is returned.

Artists can make money during live concerts instead. As it has always been. The artist that writes stuff once and reaps benefits forever is a horrible heresy.

What about artists who are not performing artists? Not many people are going to pay to watch someone with just basic guitar or piano skills and an ordinary singing voice write a song, no matter how great the song turns out to be.

They might later pay to watch and listen to excellent instrumentalists and singers perform that song, so concerts might work for them. Presumably the composer can charge those performers...but how much?

You usually can't figure out the worth of a song beforehand, so if it is going to be a one-time upfront payment from the performers to the composer it is hard to figure out the right price.

You can wait until after the song has been released and see much the concert tour makes and how many people buy copies of the song or listen to it on streaming services and that gives you a good idea of the worth of the song.

Upfront you'd have to agree on how the worth is calculated and how the price is calculated from that. But this is then going to depend on how much revenue the song brings and so sounds an awful lot like a royalty arrangement, just with a lump payment at the end of the license instead of more frequent smaller payments along the way.

Weird Al recently made a video to point out 300k streams of his songs on Spotify earned him a lousy 12 bucks. It seems there are costs either way.

He made hundreds of thousands of dollars from those streams, “twelve dollars” was ironic understatement about his dissatisfaction with the compensation Spotify pays artists.

Life isn't fair. If I didn't like a movie, I can't unsee it and get my money and time back. That's just a fact of life. In the same way, people can share content since physics doesn't prevent it. We should just accept these limitations of how we can control each other.

I think this is reasonable stand. Piracy does affect revenue, but probably quite a bit less than anyone makes it out to. I believe most that pirate would not have paid in first place, either because they don't value it high enough or they do not have enough money to pay for it.

Not that actions of those selling does not likely contribute much more to loss of revenue, mainly by making content unavailable. Availability or pricing compared to product is often sub-optimal.

Doesn’t need to have a transaction to be stealing. You just need to take (or appropriate) something that you’re not allowed to.

this has been said many many times - nothing is taken

people are copying

and what do you mean by "you're not allowed to"

There is thousands of hours of paid work to produce any kind of software or game. It doesn’t matter if the end result is burned into a physical disk or not. What’s of value here is not the 1 cent piece of plastic but the content.

When you copy content that has a cost, if the company is not offering it to you, what do you call your action ?

I mean, really, you spent 5 years working on a game with no salary. Then a day before launch day someone just makes a copy of it and distributed it « for free » in the internet. How are you going to make a salary out of it ?

Games are always pirated if they are even a little bit popular. I work in the games industry, and games I worked on are always pirated, but the more popular they are, the more copies will be sold legitimately.

People make two choices when they pirate - moral, and economical. If economically they cannot afford the game, they weren't going to pay. If morally they are against paying for a game (like if the game company is associated with suicides, etc), they weren't going to pay. There are some people that will pay if piracy isn't available, but not that many.

Anyways, after the income goes around, and all the exec, upper management, and publisher salaries are paid, the piracy or lack of it probably makes about a $1 difference to my weekly earnings. I put a lot of artistic and creative effort, blood, sweat, and tears into it. If it costs me $1 to make people enjoy it, so be it.

In the AAA games industry, piracy is a thing. People talk about it. And most people have only very mild things to say about it, except for execs. Execs make a disproportionate amount of money off games for what they do, and they do kinda have a lot of time to sit on their hands sometimes, so they can fight these piracy battles, die on these piracy hills.

Anyways, don't speak for us please.

My example was a illustrate a point. It could be a game or a productivity software, movies, music anything.

You can find any reason to steal, economical, hunger etc the point I making is that the motivation to make a copy does not make it legal.

Do we tolerate some form of theft for moral or other reasons ? Yes sure. But because I, as an individual, have my own reasons not to pay for something and decide to make a copy of it, that does not transforms my action to a perfectly legal thing.

Maybe we can’t do anything about software being copied but that doesn’t magically make laws and IP disappear with it and makes copying software legal ?

I was answering to the comment « nothing is taken ». Because the content is the result of an effort from other people being paid, the content has value. The fact that we can make infinite copies of it makes a single copy worthless because it’s not being burnt into a piece of plastic ?

There are moral principles, and legal principles. Legally, you are right. But the moral perception of piracy is shifting, and broadly speaking, this entire debate is in the moral/philosophical realm.

Legal systems ultimately enshrine the human morality in law. Common law - through case law, civil law - by committees that the legislators consult, religious law - by morality described in legal texts. We're not talking about any of it though. We are talking about day-to-day things, like what does it mean to steal, what kind of consequences it has, are these consequences real or supposed, and other such things.

Law is generally blind to externalities of an action. An action itself is legal, illegal, or undefined in law. We're not in this domain if we talk about the consequences of piracy or how someone might feel about it. We are having a conversation on morals.

Shifting morals will eventually shift the law, of course.

Taking just means, broadly, “to gain or acquire”. Repetition of an incorrect point doesn’t make it any more valid I’m afraid.

Copying is often called taking a copy. Even basic usage of the term copying invalidates your point!

As for “not allowed” that will vary by contract/law/agreement/license/etc

This distinction is why it’s usually not downloaders that are punished, rather uploaders: they’re the ones that broke an agreement.

That sense of the word “take” is fairly consistently used of physical things, where you are depriving another of possession (with or without permission).

—⁂—

(Just for fun, The Devil’s Dictionary (not a work to be taken particularly seriously):

TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.

I quite like that way of putting it because it’s the megacorporations that are the pirates when they steal their DRM content back, because they are acquiring it from you so that you can’t have it, by force if they have to but they prefer stealth.)

Instead of getting into a shouting match over whether piracy is or isn’t stealing, here’s an interesting story.

Bill Gates made an interesting comment regarding software piracy in the 1990s. At that time, software piracy was rampant in China, and Microsoft’s Windows operating system was one of the most pirated products. In response to this situation, Gates remarked that if people were going to pirate software, he would prefer they pirate Microsoft’s software.

His rationale was strategic: if people in China became accustomed to using Microsoft’s Windows and Office software, they would be more likely to continue using these products in the future, including in business environments where legitimate software licenses are more commonly purchased.

(Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)

(Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)

But also the key point, right? Although I suspect he was correct.

(Also, has very little to do with the purchasing dynamics of movies or music, etc., although those special interests can fuck off...)

the same goes for most professional software, like the adobe suite. if people pirated, it's because they're not professionals yet. once they are, they're more likely to buy the software they're used to and not the competition.

Not so fun part is that this discussion goes on about „generic” idea.

I can already see that what works for software does not work for movies.

Other topic is also devices supporting DRM.

I would say paying for software new versions makes sense there is work to be done to keep it working on new devices etc.

Paying for the same book or movie again because distribution rights between corporations changed is messed up.

(Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)

Well, actually they did, at least in ex-USSR, and I think in Eastern Europe too.

After not ever having a single legitimate license in 1990s and early 2000s (and being laughed upon if you had one), by late 2000s Microsoft business took off handsomely.

In fact games that get pirated more statistically also earn more revenue overall compared to those that don't. QED, piracy causes sales.

So you’re saying that the more popular a game is, the more likely it is to be pirated?

Sounds like it has more like the desirability of the game driving piracy than the other way around.

https://xkcd.com/925/ :P

Correlation vs. causation: is it that games get pirated get more exposure therefore more sales, or games that are already popular get pirated?

I have to admit I haven't looked at these studies in their original form, but I guess sales revenue per install is the best metric to tell

Not only sales, but market share/power. Imagine if J3QQ4... did not work for Windows 98... Linux on Desktop would be already perfect 20 years ago.

One extra detail. They reserve the right to revoke your license but they still reserve the right to keep selling the product if the laws allow.

This allows the following hypothetical situation: 1. You buy content A from producer X through a company 1 2. Producer X and company 1 decides to finish the distribution agreement for whatever reason 3. Company 1 revokes your access to content A. 4. Now producer X seals a deal with Company 2 for distribution rights and company 2 has no obligation on giving you access to content A, because why would they. 5. If you want access content A now you have to buy it again from company 2 without guarantee that it will still exist.

That is not a hypothetical.

A company I can not mention because I am certified by them 14x over did that to me, many times.

I smell Microsoft…

I smell Cisco…

I smell any company that charges subscription fees to creatives for content they’re selling from other creatives and taking a huge cut of.

They revoke a license I paid for, then demand I buy another license for the exact same thing.

The licenses were NOT supposed to expire.

If only an anonymous account would appear and name names.

I recently watched A Bug’s Life with my kids. It’s actually a pretty good commentary on the abuses of the ruling class and the norms inability to see their own value:

    You let one ant stand up to
    us, then they all might stand
    up! Those puny little ants
    outnumber us a hundred to one
    and if they ever figure that
    out there goes our way of
    life! It's not about food,
    it's about keeping those ants
    in line.

Not surprising it has such a deep philosophical core, it's a remake of the Seven Samurai.

If you want access content A

Right, _access_. To the companies selling cloud content, like a movie or song that can only be used with the internet, you're just buying _access_ to the content.

Because the TOS means they can restrict that access or remove the content, you're really just paying for a key to a door that may or may not exist, to something in the building that may or may not be there, and that building may someday not even be there.

You're really paying for the right to access something as long as the underlying capability enabling that right exists. It's the kind of thing that allows a lot of wiggle room for the sellers and holders of the content.

This is why I prefer buying physical copies of media, like DVDs and CDs. It's mine for as long as I can manage it or a personal copy of it.

Yeaaa. This bothers me, too, on a conceptual level, and I’ve been thinking about setting up a NAS and doing the whole Plex thing. But on a practical level, I’ve “owned” movies and tv shows on (the service formerly known as) iTunes for like 15 years without issue. I question whether, on average, I’d be able to do as good a job, and how much effort it’d take.

If you start and aren’t happy with it, at least you learned something along the way. Time and format shifting are allowed acts under copyright law (though possibly not DMCA), so I’d consider it a great way to backup the things you bought.

Obligatory IANAL.

Copying something for personal use is perfectly legal, it's the distribution of those copies to the public en masse that most people end up tripping on.

If you just want to archive your collection of optical disks onto a NAS for personal use, you can legally do that.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117

One of the patterns I've personally really been noticing over the past couple of years (not related to any big events in those years, just the time period I happened to notice them in) is that a lot of theses situations are a bona fide slippery slope. The further in you get, the harder it is to leave. The sooner you bail out, the less it impacts your life at all.

I started my MP3 collection in the late 1990s as CDs became practical and computers finally got to the point they could rip them. A while back I even went fully legit and stripped out all the, ah, "stuff of dubious provenance", or, err, you know, a friend may have done that. The first streaming music service I've ever used was about a year ago and I'm still using it more for discovery than as my actual music service, because as a result of ~25 years of personal collection building, I don't need a streaming service to have probably something on the order of two week straight's worth of music I like. With a lot of stuff no streaming service has, and that not because I'm some sort of exotic collector but just because I have things that were popular enough at the time but just never made it.

By contrast, if all you did was pay for a subscription music service, you're completely beholden to them.

Obviously I can claim no "credit" here; I didn't "bail out" of a bad deal in 1998, because that "bad deal" wouldn't exist for another decade and a half or so. But the fact I didn't do it out of any sort of foresight doesn't mean I don't end with the same benefits.

More recently, I've been digging myself out of the video subscription crappile, and doing more purchase of media instead of using video streaming services. Again, I had a buildup from the pre-streaming era I could carry in which helps, but at the rate I watch movies anyhow it turns out the delta between just buying things as they strike me and streaming them is not very large in dollar terms. (I don't buy very many things on release day, I do a lot of bargain bin surfing for things.)

I'm not saying this to brag, I'm saying it to show the point. It extends to a lot of things. Best way not to get stuck with subscription features on your car is to put your foot down day one and say I'm not buying that. And this extends to so many things in life; as we correctly tell our children, best way not to get addicted to any drugs is to never touch them at all, and that's not because of the obvious logical fact that if you never do dose 1 you'll never get to dose 1,283, but because there really is a slope there. It's a very applicable principle.

Note, slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of actual slippery slopes in real life. It merely means the fact that you are on a slippery slope can not be correctly logically argued to imply the 100% probability of slipping further down. But I'm not even making a logical argument here in that sense. I'm just pointing out that there are rather a lot of slippery slopes, and this includes some that are really hard to see because they're brand new. In 2001, there simply wasn't anybody 20 years down the slippery slope of using DRM'd hardware who could metaphorically yell up to those of us at the top to tell us "Hey, this kinda sucks! Try to avoid this!"

This is one of the greatest challenges of living in the late 20th and 21st centuries, honestly. The foresight to look at something like "paying for a video subscription" and thinking to look 20 years down the road at what happens if everyone does this is rare, and not terribly well respected when found.

Anyhow, back here on practical Earth land, I really do recommend that everyone who is even slightly interested look into Plex or an equivalent service, because you can turn this process on its head, too. Half-heartedly start acquiring your favorite media physically when you see it on discount for a couple of years and get it into a Plex setup, and before you know it you're far enough down that slope that the idea of being independent suddenly doesn't seem so absurd. You can also use the principle of a slow buildup over time that adds up to more than you'd expect in your favor, too.

There needs to be a truth in labeling act so every DRM'd e-book and digital download clearly states that you're buying a license to it and not it.

They don't need to revoke a license. They can say the "license verification servers are too expensive to keep running" so you need to rebuy the product. This is literally what Adobe has done with previous versions of their Creative Suite.

And this is also why Adobe software is some of the most frequently-pirated software of all time. After all these years and all the other examples of the correct way to do this, they still refuse to see the light of “free for personal use” licensing to get more people trained on and in love with your software, so those that do go on to use it commercially will demand it and have their companies pay the license fees.

And as someone who pirates, I highly discourage pirating proprietary programs that save your data in their locked-in formats.

Your data is more important than to be locked into a data-roach-motel. The companies know this, and count on piracy. From there, the pirate user has MB's of content locked into something they cant convert out of. And then, it's pretty easy to force a sale, or worse yet, a rental.

Looking at you Adobe, Autodesk, etc.

This is why I can never accept the idea that we're just buying a license. Laws need to be made that ensure once you buy the rights to access a piece of content, that you keep that right regardless of who the current owner is or if the distribution method changes. If I buy a book, I never have to worry about it being taken away or what happens if somebody else gains ownership of a property.

For movies, this is mostly a solved problem. If I buy a movie on iTunes, I can access it on other participating platforms.

>I can access it on other participating platforms.

"participating" is doing a LOT of work there...

I have an album that I bought digitally in itunes that was revoked and republished identically by the publisher (i think by accident). The consequence is that as far as apple music is concerned, that album is not in my account. The physical files will still activate and play, but I have to copy them manually to every device. Apple support was unable to help.

Microsoft has also multiple times started an ebook store only to later shut it down and prevent the purchased books from being read. The first time this happened in the mid-2000’s I lost over a dozen ebooks.

When did you buy that album? iTunes went DRM free 15+ years ago.

...and at the time, all previously-bought content (AFAIK) was eligible for upgrading to DRM-free status.

And while I've never had this particular weird problem, I have tens of gigabytes of music in my iTunes library that were never bought from Apple in the first place, which sync to my other devices just fine. No manual copying required.

And, um...how would you even "manually copy" music to an iPhone or iPad? The only way I know of puts it in the Files app, rather than the Music app, leaving it unable to be played "as music" (though you can, of course, still play the audio files one by one).

Something doesn't seem right here.

I'm confused. What happened to company 12 initially mentioned and content A.4?

Things were always this far. There has been almost 2 decades since Amazon deleted the book 1984 from every Kindle. Since then, those things never stopped.

The only thing that is different right now is that some large and powerful corporations are being defrauded too, instead of just people.

Stop hiding reality behind euphemism.

The rich are just people.

The sooner we accept that and dispose of the bizarre “deification” of the rich the sooner we can discuss deprecation of their influence and reach.

The apathetic kowtow to a handful of aging out government brown nosers who lobby to insulate themselves is sad.

1980s Reagan economy is not immutable physics and we have no obligation to believe the stories of the rich about their success. There’s a whole lot of behavioral science being leveraged, and intentional PR propaganda tossed around to obfuscate the rich are “just people”

You're conflating "large and powerful corporations" with "rich people". This is a mistake. Your post is not really wrong, but doesn't address anything in the one you replied to.

What are large and powerful corporations under the hood? It's only an abstraction to facilitate business, but the reality is just a few people making decisions. Don't make the mistake of giving a physical existence to companies.

Thanks for reinforcing my point about over reliance on euphemisms.

“Rich people” in a fiat economy is due to the valuation of their assets, often but always, large stakes in corporations.

All of which is politically correct hallucination. None of it exists as immutable physics.

The mistake is yours for memorizing vacuous political statements.

It's a completely fictitious right, akin to converting elementary school playground "stop copying me!" into a cause of action.

The solution to bad legislation isn't more legislation, it's throwing those statutes in a bonfire and reverting to common law.

All rights are fictitious. All laws are made up. They're simply defined to provide a guide for liberty and order. They're not always enforced. People's defined rights are different over countries and years. Slaves had their rights defined by others throughout history, and many groups considered slavery justified where the master had rights to the slave and the slave had rights defined by the master. Saying copyright itself is fictitious doesn't mean anything.

Copyright rules make sense in protecting inventors and product owners. Maybe you've been neither and can't understand how the lack of this protection harms inventors and owners to the benefit of plagiarists. It's much easier to plagiarize than invent or produce, so without copyright protection, inventors and product owners basically become giant fat cash cows ready to plunder by passers-by that can just copy and paste. Removing copyright would turn the market completely feudalist and chaotic.

Throwing copyright statutes away is also chaotic. Reverting to common law? I'm not sure what you mean there. Just however people feel at the time? We've already evolved past the caveman era.

Reverting to common law? I'm not sure what you mean there.

Maybe you're not familiar with the term? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

The defining characteristic of common law is that it arises as precedent. Common law courts look to the past decisions of courts to synthesize the legal principles of past cases

Or was it that you were unclear what _rm specifically was saying?

My man, what was this

Pirates had been morally in the clear ever since everyone buying any blank storage media had to pay a tax to entertainment companies...

This is only true in some jurisdictions. AFAIK, for instance, it is not true in the US.

This is why web3 is a thing, so you don’t have to make laws, the tech can make the laws unnecessary. We are trying to do this for content at Darkblock. You buy it, you own it.

This is why web3 is a thing

Stop trying to make fetch happen.

It's also relatively easy to write this legislation. If you:

- sold licenses that are no longer usable to access the work (i.e. if you invalidate by any means already sold licenses)

- don't put work in the public domain/don't make it freely usable without a license when the copyright expires

then you lose the protection of copyright & associated (DRM/reverse engineering) laws for said works. Multiple violations can extend that to "all your works".

It’s no wonder that certain parties are so very interested in gutting consumer protections in US government at every level so they can continue these consumer-hostile practices unchallenged, but it’s hard to get voters to care about these issues, especially in a two-party system.

Good luck getting legislation done. Our country thinks legislation gets in the way of the free market, stifles innovation, and kills jobs.

Teach a man to buy and you sucker him for a day. Teach a man to rent and you sucker him for a lifetime.

Piracy was never stealing to begin with.

It’s immoral, regardless of what you call it, as it’s a violation of the social contract.

Monopolies and price-gouging are a violation of the social contract.

Firstly they are not (and presupposing the latter claim begs the question anyway), and secondly if you think that then don’t participate in the use of the ill gotten goods. Nobody died because they couldn’t hear a song or watch a movie.

By your logic who died when someone downloaded a non approved copy?

That isn’t my logic, but the artist is harmed, for one…

Artists are not harmed, for sure. If you don't have money, you wouldn't buy it anyway. By pirating in that scenario, you are promoting it, and thus artist benefits.

You’re presuming all pirates only pirate what they otherwise would not purchase, which is impossible to claim credibly.

And you are presuming that no pirates do by claiming that all piracy is immoral.

How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that still immoral?

Not at all, I’m claiming piracy generally is immoral. I’m sure you can find exceptions, but the general case is the problem.

Without a clear definition of morality that is considered universal you cannot make any claims about generality.

There are many examples of piracy where no one loses out yet someone does benefit.

Painting such a complex subject with such a broad brush makes it seem like we’re just talking about your particular feelings rather than something universal.

Which is fine, but you’re making claims of generality without presenting a cogent argument.

Sorry but no, this is not a vague concept that we do not share; morality is indeed agreed upon in large strokes, by the very virtue of us interacting in this forum, we already are implicitly agreeing to a number of shared values. For one, you’re not calling me insulting names, you’re accepting I have a point of view, etc.

What I am claiming presumes only that you live in a modern society, and therefore you participate in the social contract. Given that, what I am saying is then a conclusion of that.

You’re claiming that all piracy is immoral or breaches a social contract. Then you claim exceptions are ok. Thus not all piracy is immoral.

I am trying to get to specifics but you keep waving your hands about this stuff.

Good thing i didn’t claim that all piracy is immoral then!

And I’ve given lots of specifics. It’s just not a complex concept.

I'm probably misreading your argument, because it seems inconsistent to me. You are saying that piracy is immoral because it causes harm; and that it causes harm because in some cases the downloaded would have purchased the downloaded media if not for piracy.

I'm very confident that in the majority of cases, people who download stuff would not have bought it at any price that the publisher would accept, if piracy wasn't an option. Which means that by the definition of harm I think you are using, the majority of cases would not be immoral. It seems to me the immoral cases would be the exception.

I guess it makes more sense if you also say that consuming something without paying for it is immoral even if you would never have paid to consume it. I find it hard to agree with that though, as I don't see who's harmed.

I think your confidence is not only unfounded, but awfully convenient for someone who stands to benefit from the acceptability of piracy to consider.

Besides, "harm" here is not the core of my argument. Doing moral wrong is. It is wrong to lie to obtain something, and it is wrong to benefit from ill gotten gains.

These acts are wrong themselves, regardless of whether or not they cause pain directly. This is not a hedonist argument, the cause of pain through harm in all or even many cases is not necessary for the act to be wrong.

It's also wrong to judge others when you know nothing about context.

Further, more educated people have better prospects in life, which lead to better personal finances, which lead to buying more and pirating less stuff.

That is a fallacy. The artists tend to gain with it, for one piracy boosts concert sales (https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-concert-ticket-sales-...). Box office revenues are hurt but the last Hollywood strikes just showed us the corporations couldn't care less about the artists.

Only business models that rely on monopolies are harmed.

It wouldn’t be a fallacy, it’d just be wrong, except it’s not wrong, and very basic concept that you can’t eat public goodwill demonstrates why.

And the entire concept of property is built on monopoly. Are you saying you don’t believe in property?

What are you talking about?

A fallacy is a "mistaken belief", so of course it is wrong. And you should look more into the concept of free riding. For that a good introduction would be The philosophers arms episode about free riding.

And what is that about private property? Where did that come from? We are talking about different concepts here, it is about markets and business models. As long as we don't honestly debate how outdated our modes of consumption are, piracy would be a natural response to artificial scarcity.

That’s not what a fallacy is defined as, and are you seriously unable to see how private property is relevant to copyright law?

Rest assured, I am not defending piracy. Pointing out flawed reasoning is not the same as defending what it is criticising.

My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice. And that is what I think, that the current state of how the market is configured is anticonsumer, and therefore piracy is a natural response to it. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong. Everything is less than ideal in this whole affair.

Natural things can be immoral, and the “state of the market” has no impact on the morality of piracy. There is no justification for lying, misrepresentation, breaking your word, or knowingly benefiting from ill gotten gains, given the immensely low stakes involved in listening to a particular song or watching a particular tv show.

knowingly benefiting from ill gotten gains

Who decides what is "morally" ill gained? There's quite a good case that benefiting without work, e.g. through capital gains, is ill gained.

The social contract does. It would be bad if people throughout society just straight up ignored the concepts of ownership and copyright law, and all of the things you enjoy would not be made. However, by ignoring that and pirating it anyway, you're becoming a "free rider" who benefits from the contract but doesn't abide by it.

Yes, that is all true and is also valid for the big businesses that lie, steal and use their weight to exploit society. I am glad we agree!

Are you saying that there's no difference in nature between physical and immaterial? Or that intellectual property and physical property are the same, with the same working principles, and follow the same rules?

Nope!

Artists aren't the ones getting millions in salary bonuses each year.

How can a student not participate in the use of the ill-gotten goods of textbooks for their studies? For a researcher in a developing country for research papers? Nobody dies, but a lot of people fall behind. It doesn't beg the question when it's so obvious which industries have abused copyright law, gained over 100% in profits, and manipulated the market to gain absolute control over what is offered.

Of course, pirating an indie band's song is a lot more in the questionable area (and not done nearly as often, since piracy by nature focuses on the more necessary/popular products) but that's not what's under discussion.

Yes, the piracy is an indie song is precisely what’s under discussion.

Piracy is so much more than that. If that is your concern you should specify it. Even then the morality is still debatable but in my view discussion of it is a distraction from the bigger issues.

And in my view, the casual nature of piracy enabling the breakdown of the social contract is one of the many things tearing society apart, so to me it’s pretty important.

If people break a law so easily, it can't be part of a social contract, because the people don't support it.

IP, and specifically copyright are fairly new legal additions. The redefinition of time limited copyright to something extending past normal lifetimes especially so. EULAs and DRM enforcing copyright beyond book-style possibilities is new, and ongoing as we speak.

I'd say we see the public at large rejecting part of the law because it is not consistent with the social contract in their heads.

Powerfull entities trying to force the law outside the social contract's support is working, but not completely, and that's what's tearing society apart.

Except people don't stick to pirating old works, a huge "scene" exists to get the latest and greatest episodes and movies out to the masses via piracy. You bring up an exception, which may be different! But it is an exception. The general rule of piracy is that it's immoral, however.

to me it’s pretty important.

What other things do you feel are "tearing society apart", and how important are they to you compared to this?

Societies are usual torn apart from the top, because that's where there are people with power to make impactful decisions.

Nobody dies

Yes they do. Copyright and patent trade agreements kill and they kill a lot people.

If anyone is interested in the topic, a good first entry point paper to understand how this works and impacts:

"What is the impact of intellectual property rules on access to medicines? A systematic review"

"With very few exceptions, the articles in this review found that the introduction of patents following implementation of TRIPS rules and pharmaceutical-related TRIPS-plus IP provisions are associated with an increase in drug prices, consumer welfare losses and increased costs to consumers of pharmaceuticals and national governments."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9013034/

This paper alone should probably get you depressed, but if that gets you going, read "Information Feudalism" by Peter Drahos, then you'll understand how people in power truly have no respect for human lives in developing countries.

A poor kid who can't participate in culture arguably endures more harm than whatever harm might be caused by copyright infringement.

and secondly if you think that then don’t participate in the use of the ill gotten goods

If a company has a monopoly on something, you cannot just go somewhere else to get something equivalent - that's the thing about monopolies, in a lot of cases, you simply don't have a choice.

You do have a choice; do not consume the product. You are not entitled to art because you want it.

This idea creates a lot of chance inequality in society and excludes many people from good parts of life.

Yes, inequality in society will exist, but such is the nature of the concept of property. Not everyone gets to access all property.

There is no singular conception of The Social Contract, nor indeed of morality.

You’re making a point about how you feel about it without presenting an argument.

The discussion of harms or lack of harm from piracy has been raging for a long time. It’s not going to be solved by appealing to the idea of right and wrong. It’s not universal in this instance which is why the argument continues.

You would have a point if everyone agrees it is wrong but some people do it anyway. However, that is not the case.

It’s extremely well understood that the social contract covers “don’t lie to get stuff”, which is what pirates do to obtain the copy they then make available, as the social contract presumes those engaged in a sale of a copy of a work won’t turn around and give it away for free.

Pirates are thus “free riders” to the social contract.

Your argument is based on the terms of a conceptual social contract which is ill defined and not universal.

You seem convinced that your system of values are the same set everyone else has. That doesn’t make for a useful argument.

It’s actually very important that we agree on the structure of the social contract, and this is not “my” system at all, but a description of the system we both rely on to not get stabbed in the street for our lunch money.

There's nothing social about intellectual property law. It's been shaped by and to the benefit of corporations who would have us paying royalties to the descendants of the man who "invented" the wheel if they had their way.

It goes entirely against how humans think, strangling creativity and innovation. An artist is harmed far more when they're forced to spend years in court, debating whether their chord progression is too similar to a song written by someone who's been dead for 50 years.

Couldn’t disagree more; IP is the only way we could have found to properly compensate creators for the value of their work. To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.

IP is the only way we could have found to properly compensate creators for the value of their work. To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.

Umm you do realize that some of the greatest works of art were created LONG before "IP" was a thing right? The patronage system did pretty well....

If those are all the greatest works, why does anyone bother pirating movies and TV? Oh right, because they're infinitely more entertaining and cost millions to make.

Intellectual property is not all about arts and extends beyond it.

To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.

Art is older than intellectual property.

"To throw out intellectual property" wouldn't stop anybody to continue making art, it would at most challenge the way we build an economy around it.

Throwing out intellectual property absolutely would stop the vast majority of the art made today from being made. We've had an explosion of art once we entered into an understanding that the creators of a work have control over how that work is used. Getting rid of that would kill film, television, and music. Would people still make these things? Yes. But not nearly at the quality or quantity we see today.

https://youtu.be/PJSTFzhs1O4

Hmmm, how much real world exposure to art do you actually have?

Have you ever actually published anything for others to purchase?

Are you are relying on that terminology because you believe piracy to actually be stealing? Depriving a person of something they already own.

Nope, stealing involves depravation.

Then which specific thing in your conception of the social contact are you equating piracy with?

The post states that piracy isn’t stealing and you agree.

There must be some other thing in your mind that is equivalent.

It’s called trespass, I believe the legal phrase is “trespass of chattel” but IANALY.

No, that tort specifically relates to depriving someone of, otherwise damaging their property.

We've agreed it's not stealing. We've agreed that not all piracy is immoral, for some definition of immoral.

I think we can agree that this specific tort does not apply.

Which specific thing in the social contract, some simple verb such as "stealing" are you equating piracy with. Then we'll have something concrete to discuss I think.

We don't have to discuss anything if you don't like, you replied to me.

Also that's not what trespass means. You don't "deprive" someone of their land when you walk on it without permission, and you don't "deprive" someone of their song when you pirate it.

my friend had some old Cowboy Bebop DVDs he got from a garage sale way back. i bought them off him, and then visited a 2nd friend's place to rip them using her DVD reader, and having done so showed the series to a 3rd friend group next time i visited them. it was a hit, and after i left one of the friends wanted to watch the bonus features. so i gave him access to the FTP server i keep all my media on and he copied it off there.

by the law as media companies would wish us to understand it, this is piracy. but when and by whom was a contract broken during this chain of events? i shared the content with my friend, but my purchase of the DVD wasn't conditional upon any agreement not to, so it couldn't have been me who broke a contract. was the contract broken by the person at the garage sale who sold the DVD without verifying that the recipient wouldn't pass it on to another recipient who would then duplicate it? if so, doesn't that same logic imply the DVD manufacturer broke a contract? if this is how you imagine the contract to function, it would seem the existence of piracy _anywhere_ in this chain means that the entire industry is criminal.

this isn't a hypothetical, btw. there actually is a Bebop DVD out there with a chain of custody that complex (actually more complex by now).

There is a clear expectation in law for at least 100-200 years now that owning a copy of a piece of media doesn't allow you to copy or perform it. This is by no means a new concept, and you broke the social contract the moment you copied the DVD. This may not be printed on every book and DVD, but it is very clear - you own the physical copy, not the text.

There are other gray areas related to property and copyright. This is not one of them.

Your dates are off by more than a century though. Initial copyright terms were barely more than a decade. Cowboy Bebop would have been fair game.

Duration of copyright is separate from the principle. The current durations of copyright are obviously crazy. But that doesn't mean we should just do away with copyright entirely.

sure, i can identify the moment in this chain when copyright law may have been violated. it's the contract part i'm caught up with though: law is a thing which exists whether i agree to it or not, but contracts are agreements opted into. and i can't identify any moment where i reneged on any agreement, implied (the friend i bought that DVD from knew me well enough to understand what that meant) or otherwise.

Based on all the comments you left in this thread, I'm not sure you really want to engage this topic earnestly.

I think you are making the mistake of applying social contracts that can work well on a person to person level to person vs corporation situations. With the latter, one party has way more leverage than the other. On top of that corporations have proven again and again that they will mislead, lie to you and abuse you to the extent permissible by law, or even more if they think it's lucrative to so. On a person to person level that would be a very toxic relationship. They certainly didn't uphold classical inter-personal social contracts, so why should you?

Genuine question, did you fully read the article before commenting here?

I not only read the article, but I am familiar with Doctorow’s positions on this issue, and am fairly well versed in ethics.

The problem here is probably that most folks can’t separate what “is” and what “ought” to be. For example you’re discussing how corporations behave despite it being wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not piracy is immoral. The argument is one of “oughts” and you’re trying to talk in terms of “is”, despite the gaping crevasse separating the two of them (Hume's Guillotine).

This isn’t where ethics is ambiguous or debated; it’s very obviously immoral to pirate, for a whole host of reasons, some of which I’ve already mentioned. From there you surely can concoct scenarios where a baby would die if it doesn’t hear a Metallica album or whatever, but the general point will stand.

I see your point. Based on your earlier replies it was not clear to me you were talking about the abstract concept in an unrealistic world. Might help to make that more clear.

In some kind of perfect world there would be no need for violence. Yet we live in a complex and ambiguous world, where the widely accepted moral view that killing is a bad thing is sometimes the "right" thing to do. Or would you argue the Ukrainian people should just roll over because the social contract says killing is bad? My point is, I don't see how the notion that piracy is bad in a world we don't live in helps this discussion. To me it feels more like an argument one could use to demand people stop doing this immoral thing now.

No, what? This is not about an ideal world, it’s about what ought to be in this one. Murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, and piracy is wrong, same kind of thinking (though hopefully it is obvious that one is worse than the other).

I don't know what working definition of social contract you are using but classically the social contract is a set of rules between individuals and a state. Crucially whenever these rules change, e.g when DRM modifies the idea of ownership to a weak form of lending, the individuals are entitled to diverge from the contract.

No, the social contract is a philosophical concept where people agree implicitly to behave a certain way in order to maximize the value of interaction. Part of that involves consenting to governance, but that is merely one aspect of the social contract.

It seems to me the media companies are violating the social contract here, and the "pirates" are merely working around that issue.

If so, that'd be vigilante justice and still immoral.

Violating a social contract is not necessarily immoral, in the same way that breaking the law is not necessarily immoral.

In this case it’s clearly immoral however, as the stakes for the pirate are so incredibly low.

Discovery recently deleted any already purchased shows and series on PlayStation without a refund.

It is not immoral to download content illegally when the alternative is a revocable digital token being sold fraudulently.

Except that is not the alternative, is it? Couldn’t you just not watch the show?

But I paid to be able to watch the show. Sony made a deliberate action to deprive me of that ability, should I not be made whole?

Maybe, but that’s not for you to arbitrarily decide on your own.

So, instead of "arbitrarily" deciding that on their own... how should they decide that "properly"?

By officially asking for new Terms of Service maybe?

Law suit, but generally arbitration of some kind (the conceptual kind, not the legal term). Part of the social contract is that we don't resolve our own disputes beyond a certain level of seriousness, we allow neutral third parties to do so. Otherwise we'd have fights in the streets and mob justice.

we allow neutral third parties to do so.

That hasn't been working out so well lately, thus the whole "alternative methods" thing being pretty popular in some circles these days.

Probably a multi-year class action suit where everyone who got screwed over eventually gets $0.79 for their troubles while lawyers on both sides get a fat payday for creating exactly nothing. That’s what this precious “social contract” gets you, and I piss on it.

I think they mean, you could have neither bought nor pirated the content, knowing that the terms Discovery is offering are very one-sided (I am presuimg the license agreement explicitly stipulated that they were allowed to do what they did).

Either way, when one party breaks their contract, you sue them in a court of law. You don't seek remedies on your own.

clearly immoral

I hope you do realize that it’s your own opinion.

Nope, it is my conclusion based on a set of priors we almost certainly share.

I'm not for or against but:

First, I never violated a license agreement I signed by buying a product.

Also, my moral isn't yours, clearly. In my mind, sharing information is moral, withholding it is immoral. I think there is degree to this (clearly a State, or government officials, or state agents withholding non-vital information is extremely immoral, whereas it's less immoral to do so for a company), but clearly, I think of proprietary code, unshared patents and copyright of a song or artistic creation immoral.

Nobody is talking about a license agreement, that’s not what the social contract is.

And you very clearly benefit from all those things you claim are immoral, and the systems that brought them about, so I find myself skeptical to your claim they’re bad. It seems more like you disapprove of your inability to satisfy your sense of entitlement. After all, if you dislike these concepts so much, why do you want the very things they’ve produced?

What? Sorry I think I wasn't very good expressing my opinion, art is different than it's support. Hopefully my comment on your sibling comment will clarify.

Listen, the only social contract I have is respecting the laws of my country, and the contracts I agreed to sign. No laws in my country prevents me from downloading whatever piece of art or content I want. None. I just cannot share it outside of friends and family. Which I don't.

Also, I think I've download 3 pieces I didn't have a license for: Skyrim, Mass effect 1 and 2. I now own them all on steam. So my sense of entitlement is great, thank you. I was never into TV or movies, and my father digitalized his 500 CDs and probably trice that number from the public library, so even early 2010s when I was a broke student, I never had to find download links for the music I wanted to listen at the time (now I find out that this isn't enough and just download the music from YouTube).

Sorry but no, you are part of the social contract, as it doesn't require you to "sign" it. It's not that kind of contract. It's the set of expectations you have for the people around you to behave in a way that's conducive to interaction, and in exchange you are expected to act in kind.

When you pirated those works, you committed an immoral act, as the owner of the work did not give you permission to access those works. Broke students don't get to play games for free just because they want to. You're not entitled to whatever you want, especially when the alternative is that you are in no way harmed. You would have survived, thrived even, if you didn't have those games.

In my mind, sharing information is moral, withholding it is immoral.

I am quite certain you do not really hold this position, otherwise you would almost certainly pulbish your real name, home address, bank account balance and other information on your profile. Withholding all this information would be quite immoral.

Also, software and art are not "information", they are a separate thing. And copyright and patents don't prevent anyone from disclosing said "information", on the contrary. They allow artists and software companies to share this information without worrying that others will profit from their work.

Everyone imagines that Disney or Microsoft wouldn't exist in a world without copyright, but the opposite is true. They would freely copy any competitor while using their marketing and sales teams to convince everyone to give them (most of) the profits from their work. It's a lot easier for Disney to make money off your original screenplay than it is for you to make money off Mickey Mouse.

I do think in a moral world, every information ought to be publicly accessible. My bank account information should be available for anyone that ask themselves how much money I have access to.

And I'm not equating art and information. I agree that art have the right to be reserved for the artist. I disagree that the recordings themselves have the same rights. And especially the 'master recording' concept that can prevent an artist to play his own songs on stage. I'm on Swift's side against Scooter Braun basically.

"clearly"...

That's the bit we're disputing. It's not "clear" and it's not "obvious".

Then dispute it. I’m claiming it is, and giving lots of reasons. Plenty of angles to approach this, for you.

I did in my other comment.

Then why make two?

Given how much I’ve had to scroll through this thread to get to this comment, it’s evidently not clear at all.

Stakes have nothing to do with morality

A more specific, practical and workable discussion than questioning the morality of it is on the perspective of how (and why) the law should balance, in the short and in the long term those interests that should be converging: artists, general public, production/distribution/rights management companies.

It's a violation of copyright which has been around for a lot less time than "th social contract" however you define it.

So - prior to the existence of copyright - was it immoral?

And how do laws related to fair-use etc affect it's morality? "Immoral" implies something fairly clear-cut and universal, not the kind of thing where there are complex provisions defining a range of exceptions, differing between jurisdictions.

In summary - you are massively oversimplifying a complex topic so I'd have to disagree almost entirely with your formulation.

If someone says "I spent a lot of resources making this digital content. please pay before consuming it" and you consume it without paying, then that seems kind of like a social contract violation to me (though I may be using an overly broad definition of social contract).

Of course, per the article it seems the sellers are often turning around and saying "hey I know I sold you this, but now I'm going to change/revoke it remotely" which is also a breach of social contract. So an eye for an eye I guess.

What if I say "I spent a lot of time on my appearance, if you look at me you should pay". Do I have the right to bill anybody making eye contact?

Contrived and distinct situation; you agree to the terms when you license the song.

If I download a song from, let’s say, The Pirate Bay, I never agree to any terms.

Futher, it’s debatable whether clicking “I agree” on a pages-long EULA where there is no realistic expectation that people actually read the text, is really agreement.

I also take issue with "you've agreed to the contract" arguments in general, if the contract is between one individual vs. an entire organization, or usually collection of organizations.

There's such a high power imbalance there that I find it intellectually dishonest to say that it is a free-willing contract between two entities. In my decades of Internet use, I haven't once set a single clause on a contract I've "agreed to" with a service. Those agreements were always even more one-sided than Treaty of Versailles, and the upper limit of how far they'd push was almost always what the local regulations permitted.

Therefore I ask, can you exist on this digital world without ever accepting one EULA in your life? or moving the goal post: can you exist on this world without accepting one-sided agreements, like, all the time? It's not an agreement if you had no real choice to begin with.

It's just as immoral to steal from Big MegaCorp as it is to steal from Joe Random, especially when what you're stealing is entirely frivolous and not in any way required for your life or even happiness.

The insidious nature of piracy is that it's so completely unnecessary. There are no "but I'm starving" kind of arguments to be had here.

You know the person who you downloaded from did, which is then benefitting from ill gotten gains, and also immoral.

was forced into the agreement based on laws i never agreed with. anyway, y'all are talking about ethics not laws so your point is invalid.

Nobody here is discussing laws except as an outline of expectations of the social contract.

So if we encouraged people to make such terms to help with their end of month, looking at people would become immoral?

Pieces of paper/text shouldn't be able to dictate what is moral outside of common sense. The world I describe above would become a worse place for everybody.

Here, the problem is that the artist put a lot of time into making the song because there is the expectation of that term and the ability to extract money out of it. Without this expectation, none of it would feel immoral for either of both side.

Nope, you keep forgetting the key ingredient; the "lookers" would need to agree to this arrangement in the first place. None of these things are foisted upon people without their consent, as you keep trying to claim. You agree to terms when you buy a copy of a work, both implicit and explicit, that forbit its further distribution.

In a morally-equitable world, “I spent a lot of resources making this content. please pay before consuming it” means the artist and/or the artist’s team spent time honing their craft, money on food and housing, and some more money on materials.

In the current world it’s rarely like this. Now it’s “we as a production conglomerate loaned an artist 500k to produce some content that we expect to make a profit on, made them use our very expensive in-house resources (at MSRP), and we pay them $0.03 for every $1 we make until they pay off that loan”.

The perception those conglomerates want to spread is that there is a direct social contract between you and the artist who’s work you are pirating, but the real contract is between you and the conglomerate themselves. Even if (and usually especially if) that conglomerate screws over the artist.

doesn't cost anything to write a book

Immoral is in no way clear cut, but in this case it is as universal as the agreement to abide by copyright rules are at the time of the exchange between the licensee and owner.

The violation of the social contract comes when you agree to terms you intend to our letter decide to violate, or in the case of the consumer pirate, when your benefit from the ill gotten gains of the person you know to have deceitfully obtained to copied work from its owner.

So it's immoral for the license owner to share it, not for a random person to download it?

It’s immoral for the person who made the implicit agreement (via the social contract and the presumption of the appointment of copyright law) with the owner claiming they wouldn’t share it, and then proceeding to share it.

Cool. So no worries about other family members (aka not party to the agreement) being the ones to share it with the world then. Naturally doing so without the original family member knowing about it.

All good then. :)

Sorry but no, this won't work as you'd know the goods were gained through deception (since that's the only way the goods would be made available to you).

Sorry, but no to your no. You're trying to blindly force things into a shape they don't fit. :)

I don't think "made" is really true here. I did not make the choice to be born in this particular country with this particular social contract. And the copyright law for most part get established before I was even born and I had no say in that.

I get the point of social contract, but most people do not form it because it was established before in most cases. Not to mention that this assume you live in a democracy and that social contract is not of sort (it is what it is or we will kill and prison you).

So I don't think it is appropriate to make it appear like this was a choice everyone makes. It is not immoral to violate social contact (slavery was social contract but the moral thing was to oppose it -just example not comparison-)

Frankly, too bad. You benefit every waking moment from the social contract, and in particular the social contract is exactly what made these works you love so much available in the first place. If you don't agree to the social contract, you can opt out by either leaving society generally, or at the very least not consuming the works that were created as a result of its existence.

The very fact that you pirate the work demonstrates you buy into the social contract at least enough to benefit. And if you benefit without contributing/consenting, you're considered a "free rider".

as universal as the agreement to abide by copyright rules are at the time of the exchange between the licensee and owner

So are you saying that a provider "selling" some content and then removing it from your library is as bad as you pirating it in the first place?

Perhaps, but what’s more likely is they asked for that right during the initial sale, and you just didn’t notice.

Besides the remediation is not to pirate the copy back, that’s vigilantism. You would need to find a way to prove they took something they shouldn’t have.

Besides the remediation is not to pirate the copy back, that’s vigilantism. You would need to find a way to prove they took something they shouldn’t have.

That seems unbalanced to me. Why is the onus on the customer to prove that, rather than they just pirate it and the onus is on the seller to prove that they took something they shouldn't have?

So guilty until proven innocent then? You see zero problems with that?

social contract

1. a contract is just an abstraction over a commitment to give it more salability. if every contract violation is a sin then so is me committing to meet you for dinner tonight but canceling because i'm feeling under the weather.

2. show me this contract. where/when did i sign it, and was i under duress when i did so?

No, that’s not how the social contract works. You “sign” it by being born into the society where it applies, and you refuse it by leaving that society.

That's a very peculiar understanding of what a contract is, and even of what the ill-named implicit "social contract" is.

There's the law, that applies upon everyone in a society. There are treaties that try to make laws from countries work together.

No morality in that, just practical, time-tested and updated (and updatable) rules & codes. No need to leave a society to refuse and change its laws, hopefully.

My man allow me to blow your mind: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/

This is neither my idea, nor is it peculiar in any way. It’s a term used to describe the agreement we all commit to in order to interact in a shared environment.

great, now read his counterpart, Rousseau. these are both just stories, and in as much as their conclusions rely upon their assumptions about the "state of nature" they're both flawed: with every decade anthropologists unearth more of human history and find more evidence that neither portrayal comes close to representing the actual ways in which humans interacted at any point before or distant from the English society we and they knew.

Uh, no. The social contract is not a "story" any more than supply/demand is a "story". It's an attempt to explain how something works, with a great deal of rigor and reasoning supporting its ideas.

Would it blow your mind to know that this is the equivalent of linking a podcast?

Are podcasts peer reviewed?

That was not my point. :)

I know what this is used for. It's still ill-named (you don't sign it, it would be a "de facto" instead), and still debatable a theory (which states that in an ideal, invented state of nature, without such a contract enforced by an authority, violence would be the natural relation between individuals).

There's more (especially since the times of Hobbes) to describe how societies have functioned/could/should function.

Social contract theory is not much more solid than the homo economicus one: it has its points, and its flaws.

then i very clearly participate in this contract only on conditions of duress. i lack the means to "leave society" and exit this supposed contract without risking starvation or death from the elements: literal threats to my life. no court would enforce a literal contract entered into upon such conditions.

None of this frees you from the contract, I’m afraid. Besides, it costs nothing to live as a hermit in the woods! But you probably quite like the benefits of the contract, e.g. all of society, so I bet you’ll stick around.

Besides, it costs nothing to live as a hermit in the woods

if i formally opt out of this "contract" (i.e. renounce my citizenship), then there are no woods i can recede to without being considered an illegal alien.

That's a practical problem and a flaw in society, not a flaw in the concept.

Given how few people among the general public ever cross paths with copyright law, and how common copyright infringements are in practice (eg posting a photo of a movie poster on Instagram or sharing a meme based on a shot from a TV show), I don't find your appeal to social contract very convincing.

Many copyright provisions survive only because too few people are affected by them in practice. For example, publishing a photo of Eiffel tower at night is illegal in France, because the illumination is a work of art still under copyright protection. This does not mean universal acceptance of these provisions.

Where I can read this social contract?

Glad you asked: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/

Hobbes was not the last (nor the first) person who thought about the social contract. As you put it in another comment:

Allow me to blow your mind https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contempo...

So you understand now what makes piracy so uninterestingly immoral? So clearly a violation then, enacted by free riders who wish only to benefit from the effort and concession of others?

enacted by free riders who wish only to benefit from the effort and concession of others?

You mean like doing something once and then expecting to be paid for it in perpetuity?

Expecting to be paid for the efforts of others, decades after their death?

Redefining the legal system in order to prevent others from carrying out the, distribution?

I'm much more concerned about those free riders than a teen with no way to pay for digital goods, someone who couldn't afford it, or someone who'd like to keep the things they pay for.

If that's what the owner of the work wants, that's what they're entitled to. It's theirs.

Besides, the concern isn't pirating The Sound of Music. The concern is pirating Game of Thrones or Euphoria. That's what's being discussed here. You can obviously find exceptions to the general rule of "piracy is immoral" but it is the general rule.

his substantive conclusions have served mostly as a foil for the development of more palatable philosophical positions.

Doesn't sound like he's held in high regard, except possibly to take a position to debate against.

And then there's this ...

https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/525

Exactly. People are overthinking this in vain. There is nothing you can do about it, take it as a fact of life - as long as there are digital goods, there will be piracy. Take this into account, do not fight against it.

A very “is” argument, but the conversation around morality concerns whether you “ought” to.

That's very black and white thinking.

Copyright is broken, and in many cases actively impedes accessibility. For example, I have many DVDs that have no subtitle options. If I were hearing impaired, and if piracy were "immoral", I would be shit out of luck if I wanted to watch a film I'd, you know, paid for.

In this day and age I can go to OpenSubtitles and find a subtitle track, enabling me or someone who was in genuine need to actually enjoy what they purchased.

(Except in Australia, Open Subtitles is blocked! Its considered by the lobbyists to the Government to be piracy and of course, piracy as you point out, is "immoral regardless" and a "violation of the social contract").

There are many other examples of copyright impeding the creation of accessibility options for media where there is no economic motive or legislative requirement to produce such things, such as in the case of Audio Described content for blind and low-vision users for older films. If you're blind and want to watch, say, the Special Edition of ALIENS (1986) then there's no official option to do so, and the only way to be able to enjoy that is via (illegal) volunteer efforts on an "immoral" pirate-archivist website.

The false presumption you make here is that you are entitled to these works; you are not. Furthermore, your example isn’t piracy! If you own Aliens, go watch it. If you’ve lost it, you no longer own it I guess then, do you?

My response was nothing to do with owning something and losing it.

It was about the problem of rigid copyright when accessibility options are missing, and the measures that a disabled person might need to resort to to have the same access that everyone else does, especially when the copyright owners decline to make those options available.

It was about being inclusive, and inclusivity is absolutely part of our modern social-contract.

I'd love it if you re-read my earlier post, and respond to the points as made. It's an interesting and engaging debate. Thank you.

The problem you’re refusing to address, and why I did reply to your earlier post the way I did (after reading it), is that a) you completely ignore the rights of the owner of the work, and b) presume some kind of entitlement to the work in the first place. What gives you the right to stomp on someone else’s rights just because you “want” to watch a movie?

Besides, as I’ve already said, we can come up with exceptions all day, the general case of piracy, the one being discussed, is immoral. If you tie a baby to a railroad and only agree to let the baby go if it hears a Metallica song, yeah piracy would be justified. That doesn’t mean much in this conversation however.

It is fundamentally discriminatory to not provide accessibility options. Whether that's a wheel-chair ramp, alt-text on an image, using correct HTML markup, subtitles/closed-captions or audio description, it's part of being inclusive and accomodating and welcoming to people with difference in ability, perception and neurology. That's a social contract, right there, one that's about people and not stuff.

Indeed, in many places there is legislation that formally grants exemption from copyright for this exact reason, but it's mostly a bit on the weak side and doesn't address the systemic problems, which is the big one.

Nothing immoral going on here.

That's not how it works. If a creator doesn't provide accessibility options, you must ask them to, and if they refuse, then use the power of adjudication to enforce the aspects you claim are part of the social contract, or get permission from the creator of the work.

If what you're describing isn't part of the social contract (e.g. as you say exceptions to copyright law), then what you're describing is vigilante justice, where you decide what harms to dole out to others arbitrarily, and that's another part of the social contract we all agree is not worth it.

The false presumption you make here is that you are entitled to these works; you are not.

That's not true. If a publisher refuses to publish a book in braille because they see no profit in that, but nevertheless sues everyone who does the conversion to braille and publication on their own, then this directly deprives blind people of their cultural rights.

traditionally contracts have to be signed by both parties to be valid

You signed it when you were born, and you benefit from it every waking moment of your life. The least you could do is abide by it in turn…

No. Given the current situation, as explained by the article, the moral thing to do is piracy, as a form of resistance at the very least.

I also have the right to copy and extract parts of the content under Fair Use. If content providers are making this technically impossible - thus depriving us of the possibility of using it for teaching, research, news reporting, or criticism - how are they not violating the social contract?

"Don't pay for something you can get for free" is about as strong a social contract as you'll find under capitalism

It is also immoral to delete bought content from users' devices

a violation of the social contract.

Wallstreet feeds on daily violations of the social contract, from 2008 to asset stripping to consolidation to the point where therr is no competition, etc.

Digital piracy. Piracy was indeed piracy at one time.

Piracy still exists.

Yep, shipping containers are stolen straight off ships to this very day, or ships are just straight-up hijacked. Real, actual piracy.

Is there still a lot of piracy with the goal to actually steal the goods though? My impression is that current-day pirates try to capture the ships themselves and hold them for ransom. (Genuinely curious though)

I think so. I haven't read any recent news on it or anything, but there are surely still pirates that steal individual containers or sets of containers rather than trying to hijack the entire ship.

Individual containers are far far easier to steal dockside - seals can be broken and contents taken leaving the container and an undiscovered theft, containers can be rerouted onto trucks, etc.

Stealing a container on the high seas is damn near impossible, doable but a challenge.

The middle ground would be taking under tow floating containers that fall off of ships in bad weather - but I daresay that comes under salvage.

It's come down to hostage ransom now. Easier to pull some people off the boat and hide them in the jungle for ransom. The huge vessel they came in on requires expertise to crew.

To be fair, historically, capturing people was likely always far more lucrative. The Mediterranean piracy for instance far was bigger (by several magnitudes) than the much more culturally popular Caribbean piracy.

The Barbary pirates enslaved about 1.25 million people between 1530 and 1780 (and it was a massive threat in the Middle Ages and ancient times we just don't really have reliable figures).

It was such a massive threat that coastal villages all but disappeared throughout much of Mediterranean Europe. The barbary pirates went as far as Ireland, England or even Iceland to murder an enslave people.

This was an issue up until the 1800s (the first foreign war the US fought was against Morocco and Tripolitania) when the European powers finally took a break from fighting each other to do something about their common enemies who were terrorizing their subjects for centuries.

Piracy is to increase big time. All it takes is a remote-autonomous drone canoe with explosives and a protection money racket.

It's not hard to render remote-autonomous drone canoes inoperable, with various sorts of remotely-operated countermeasures like a signal jammer or a rifle.

Civilian ships cannot have weapon, can they? Sea is not America.

Look at me. I am the captain now.

Cool! Then you can fill in crew evaluation journals, file the ship maintenance report, negotiate the rates with the unions.

Puts on my best Hedberg glasses and yet, it still was ... too.

Speaking of which, here's a great piracy idea:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535109/

Interpret that how you want ;)

Perhaps part of the problem is that even the pro-copying side keeps calling it "piracy." I'm pretty sure it's meant to induce negative feelings in the listener.

Maybe I'm just sheltered, but "pirates" to me evoke goofy adventures and hijinks more than hardened criminals hurting innocents. So describing copyright violations as "piracy" emphasizes how comical the laws being broken are.

Same. When I think of “pirates” I think of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY

Piracy was never piracy

The social contract is so broken that I'm not surprised that piracy is rampant. I justify it (and I make games). It has all become a matter of leverage, I truly believe that if some companies (or people) could point a gun to our heads they would, and it shows in the way they operate.

And no, it's not always "it's just profit", sometimes it's a shortsighted chase of the next stock value high with complete disregard for the future since lack of accountability is pretty much built-in into the higher classes of managers

It can't be worse than in the mid-90's (at least in relative numbers, of course absolute numbers will be much higher because the market is so much bigger now).

Ever since services like Steam existed I have pretty much pirated zero games, it's just too much hassle compared to clicking the Buy button on Steam (and if it's too expensive, the next season sale is always just around the corner). In comparison, my 90's self owned pretty much zero bought games.

Or as our Lord and Saviour Gaben ;) said:

"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."

Still spot on.

Yeah, of course Gaben will say that (while providing developers a Steam DRM mechanism). A good PR example: he knows the importance of antipiracy, but he also knows the importance of downplaying it to not irritate the gamers.

The steam drm is a joke and I think it's on purpose. It takes a few minutes to use a steam emulator and overcome it.

Publishers do also have the option of including their own DRM, which Steam proactively discloses, one of the things that I love most about it. But it's rare enough (basically just Ubisoft and EA) that I can fully boycott anything with that label without feeling like I'm missing out.

DRM is optional for Steam games, I think that's a pretty good balance between the interest of game developers vs the interest of user, it's an issue between users and game devs, not between users and Steam.

The more important point is though that the Steam DRM is hassle-free for the user. For instance games (with macOS ports) I already bought for PC I can also just install on my Mac, with save games automatically shared between the two. I don't have to buy a separate Mac version (as would be the case with Xbox vs Playstation), nor do I need to pay extra, so there's no incentive to pirate the Mac version.

DRM could also be executed in a way that makes it impossible for companies to claw back the content. DVDs use DRM and all it does is restrict what devices can access it, but it can't be retroactively clawed back. Consumers understanding when that is the case is the problem. They just assume it can't be clawed back or they just think it's very unlikely, and only get mad when it happens. Unexpected restrictions in content is a centralized platform thing in general and can happen with your own content on any cloud storage provider for example, it isn't necessarily a DRM problem.

I also appreciate Gaben, but we can't rely on enlightened despots, it just leaves room for bad actors to eventually ruin things.

Of course, but since the Steam model works so well one wonders why everybody else is stumbling along instead of "just" copying it. Steam is pretty much the only platform where I don't care that I'm constantly bombarded with "targeted ads" for instance, I'm actually most of the time interested in what the Steam recommendation algorithm has in store for me.

The "ads" on steam are so good that piracy websites use steam to recomend new releases.

I wouldn't even call it "bombarded". I only get ads when i click on "store", as in I signal "I'm interested in spending money, what do you have?" - that's actually a reasonable time to get ads.

Of course, but since the Steam model works so well one wonders why everybody else is stumbling along instead of "just" copying it.

Origin, Blizzard, uPlay et al failed to challenge Steam largely because they lack both features and catalog; it's not clear they even intended to take on Steam, because of the lack of content from other publishers.

EGS is worth special attention because it both has content from other publishers and has dumped considerable cash into the goal of unseating Steam. I think it comes down to features: the EGS store has generally been a sub-par experience, and they purposefully refused to implement features like Community Scores, Forums, and other metasocial features that make Steam what it is.

They underestimate the value of player reviews, community scoring, forums, guides, workshop and so on. Even if most of users of most games don't avail themselves of those features, they're important features for retaining the most die-hard of users; who in turn form the core of the social draw to use Steam.

Valve can take away software you've rightfully purchased as well. I don't know that they are the holy grail either even though they're commendable for what they've done with gaming on Linux. I bought CS GO years ago but after the CS 2 transition, I was no longer able to play the game since it became Windows and Linux only.

Gabe Newell rightly pointed out that piracy is a service problem. People pirate if getting access the legal way is prohibitively expensive or too much of a hassle. I can easily get access to any game I care about at a reasonable price on Steam. I can listen to any music I care about at a reasonable price on Spotify.

The same could almost be said of movies and TV series on Netflix years ago, but hasn't been remotely true for a while now, ever since the splintering of streaming into warring content owner kingdoms.

Guess which types of media I haven't even considered pirating, and which media I've given up on getting legally.

I've been in your camp on all fronts for a while, but Spotify has been getting worse and more expensive, and there are some meaningful gaps in their catalog. I got rid of my CDs a decade+ ago, but I think it's time to start buying and ripping music again.

Unfortunately, Plex also wants to charge me to stream my own music, so the first step to find a new media player that isn't subject to enshittification.

Jellyfin.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin

I also use Navidrome for my music. Supports the Subsonic API too.

Jellyfin and I had a bad going-through with handling. Minutes to pull up even a single discography. These days, it plays videos and that's it.

Unfortunately, Plex also wants to charge me to stream my own music, so the first step to find a new media player that isn't subject to enshittification.

Shit. I was considering switching my music library over the Plex, since they already both live on the same hard drive...

I'm on the same boat as you. I don't pirate games or music anymore, and I've not done so for years. However, for movies and TV shows it's another story. I don't watch enough of them to warrant a single subscriptions, let alone multiple to watch the few shows and movies that do interest me and never are on the same platform.

It's endemic for sure -- I download pirated stuff yes, but as I got older, I really did try to make an effort to use streaming services, movie/media stores, app stores, etc. Everything about it was so awful and ridiculous that it just wasn't worth my time to deal with the frustrations and more importantly the ever increasing costs and advertisement non-sense. Having an entire TV series I was watching suddenly vanish from the provider library in between episodes, shows/music I had used the applications own "download to local device" feature vanished just because I was traveling and suddenly I was not approved to watch/listen to the stuff I had paid for, constant advertisements and pushes for more subscriptions, it was absolutely asinine.

I do continue to download some pirated items but largely I just checked out of modern media mostly because the cost of participation is too much. At least online there are some services that video essayists release on which aren't too bad (Nebula isn't horrible, but still is a bit annoying).

I'm fearful of the day that searching "[some specific functions I want] + FOSS" and looking for repositories that have what I'm hoping for will stop working, since it's been fairly successful for me to find software that doesn't come with all the modern tech world non-sense. Some of the most simple applications like DaisyDisk for macOS or the Redirector plugins for browsers are absolute gems that have made my life objectively better and more convenient, and the teams behind these programs have shown repeatedly they aren't interested in anything else besides just having their programs work. It was very easy decision to donate to these teams/buy the apps because it was the most simple transaction ever, and the programs work as well or better than they did when I first installed them. Same with games from GOG -- I love that I have bought HoMM3 one time, and I think more than a decade later, I can still use the same installer, get the installer again, and enjoy my game wherever I want, and it's a completed game that can be further improved by mods.

Real and workable models for selling tech exist and it works without DRM -- I know for corporations it's not enough money coming in and they "need" to monetize every last drop of blood out of everything, but it's not like these business models are impossible or even bad; just different and a bit calmer than the corporate non-sense we have today. And the alternative models without DRM and data pilfering are definitely something I am willing to buy into, since there looks to be a pretty damn good chance I'll be able to actually use the stuff I'm buying how I want to.

I agree, real and workable models do exist. The problem stems from regulatory capture, unbalanced leverage, and long-term unaccountability of the "higher ups", in my opinion.

Profit or stock value is what is measured, sociopathy is what's driving it and lack of accountability enables it.

Precisely. Corporations are purely sociopathic entities; they would kidnap us off the street and blend our bodies into bloody slurry if they thought it might make them a single penny of profit. There is no use treating your relationship with corporate entities as anything other than strictly adversarial.

I buy games, but not until there is a way to pirate them first. I just want to be sure that I can play what I buy forever and ever and the way I like it.

I hope one day it will be a country somewhere on Earth who will have a ban for non-free software in the Constitution. The reality has changed too much to trust some people in govt to protect us from megacorps. We really need Richard Stallman kind of guy as a president of at least a tiniest country in the whole mad world.

That seems like a sure fire way to hamstring your country. Does that also include firmware for devices? Will this government have a large dev team to make software that its populace can use? Would you install trackers and block the internet in general so citizens can’t get software that’s open source. Would you demand visitors to surrender their devices while visiting so the authorities can check for non-free software installed?

These are fair criticisms of the proposal. A similar but more workable path would be a constitutional clause to 1. limit the concept of property to scarce goods and 2. outlaw the creation of legal mechanisms like copyright.

We tried something similar once. It broke down quickly, led to the rich owning everything, required a surveillance nightmare to function, and left a permanent scar on the world. I don’t think we should in engage this idea again.

I do not understand your point. (or maybe you did not understand mine)

limit the concept of property to scarce goods

This is a very powerful yet very dangerous train of thought. Modifications to the concept of property were at the heart of the way communism has been implemented in the USSR, and it led to awful results.

You might have a different goal in mind, but so did many of those involved in the October revolution.

There is no analogy between (strengthening scarce-property rights) and (communism). There is no analogy between (preventing copyright) and (communism).

We did not try mass refusal of defective by design technologies since Clair Patterson.

Does that also include firmware for devices? Will this government have a large dev team to make software that its populace can use?

The law I proposed has to be working against governments and semi-government institution such as banks, not about random Joes.

The firmware question is interesting, because there is no such thing as FLOSS hardware except of some low-end microcontrollers, thank you for noticing.

The most decent way of achieving this state seems like to prohibit only import of new devices and don't even bother about user's ones or anything second-hand. I have an observation that if you have 2 identical laptops but one with Nvidia/Amd and one with Intel HD then the former laptop will die naturally, such as any laptop with Ati today, while the latter laptop keeps serving until the physical death. You can install Ati driver for Windows 7 but can not for Windows 8 and never; also proprietary Ati driver fails to work with modern Linux stack while free Ati driver uses to much energy to consider the device as a laptop. This is an example of natural death of proprietary hardware/software, just stop import new proprietary devices.

Any authorities checking user devices for anything is a way of tyranny/authoritarism/totalitarism, nowadays the governmenns are working into totally another way, elusive to see for us the adults. In XXI governments use to propagate this or that ideas in schools. Teach them to have their fun and games in GNU/Linux distros and prohibit teachers to propagate Microsoft, Zoom, Viber, Google without restricting usage of these service for leisure. When the proprietary devices will start begging to buy a new hardware but it will not be available inside of the country then we will found ourselves in a new world.

Will this government have a large dev team to make software that its populace can use?

There is no such thing in XXI as an independed government without a large dev team.

Like the original article explains well, the question isn't technical, it's legal. You don't have to inspect users' devices if you make selling licences illegal, because then nobody can legally make money selling them.

Open source is a technical detail. One can see a less drastical change that will have the same effect.

1. Update the laws so that the shenanigans of the companies are finally named as they are:

- Retroactively removing a feature is stealing from the owner.

- Deleting bought digital content is also stealing from the owner.

- Spying on a user is an unlawful search.

2. Make these transgressions be investigated by the prosecutor's office, so that a citizen only needs to report it to them and not figure out how to get a class lawsuit going. This will allow security researchers to do their job.

3. Classify devices with unpatched and unpatcheable security bugs as "unfit for use" and eligible for a full unconditional refund, and extend warranties on them to, say, 15 years.

4. Obviously, make any kind of security research legal and protected from intimidation by the companies.

I branch off company close branch down because it was unprofitable - I don’t have to support device.

Other approach, only huge companies start making devices because medium size companies cannot take the risk of the refunds.

Users are worse off, companies are worse off everything with the outlined rules is worse. Making law is hard.

Agreed. Still, reverse engineering unsupported software or hardware should be made legal.

Why can't it enter the public domain by default? Like how copyright used to work for media.

bought digital content

The fundamental problem lies here: you haven't actually bought anything useful. You didn't buy content, you bought a license, and that license is merely "you might be able to view content in a very specific way for an unspecified amount of time that is completely at our discretion".

You still have what you bought when they revoke the license, it's just in a different and less useful state.

That whole system needs to be crushed into dust to make a real difference. Make it so that buying a license to content isn't a thing - that you are now actually buying content - and all of the things that come with ownership will follow.

But I don't see any viable path to that happening. A sightly more possible outcome would be to have a minimum standards/requirements for digital content purposes - a set of required rights/restrictions/components for any digital purchase the all licenses must incorporate or cannot compromise on.

Yes and…

We need a figure head with a strong moral and ethical compass who lives in private as if they are in public. Whom is capable of addressing all situations with grace, elegance, respect, compassion, and humility in that order only in reverse. One whom is frugal, well read, and courteous. One whom in being frugal is able to think of all and is able to stand fast in the face of corruption as they deep down truly experience the interconnectedness of life and by proxy society… and through experiences, travels and interactions has attained a working understanding of the all pervasive ripple effect.

Oh yeah, and this person has to be willing to martyr themselves as the public life sucks!

Yeah, we need a good dictator (...) or we need to create federated horizontal power structures with consensus decision making as an alternative to current systems.

Who said anything about a dictator? What I was describing is the hypothetical dream traits of what I perceive are a necessity to be an effective leader in this era.

It’s a tall ask but someone embodying those traits would scoff at the notion of wanting, let alone keeping power!

If you’d like to see what federated horizontal power structures with consensus decision making looks like and how it feels to participate in I challenge you to join a local planning commission in your city if you haven’t already and if you live in america of course…

How about everyone self organizes into 2000ish person communes, all structured in the way they feel life is best lived?

I’ve always dreamt of at least the EU and China (yes I know of Kylin) mandating libre software for governmental use.

Could you imagine the gigantic amount of flow of money that goes into Microsoft enterprise and Office support instead flowing into open source? And the amount of bug that amount of eyeballs would catch.

Both the Linux desktop and things like LibreOffice would see meteoric improvements within the year.

Right now there is already some chances budding (in Spain’s regional governments, Munich, France’s military), it just needs to be pulled together into a comprehensive plan and get a good push.

Germany offered the UK a "test and trace" app during the corona virus pandemic. The UK government of course refused, because producing an app was an opportunity to divert £37 Billion (!) from taxes to their associates. The delay in not taking the completed app also would have cost thousands of lives.

In short, the first thing you need is people who care about their countrymen. People often propose ideas that start from an assumption that politicians want to make the World better, but the ones in power in the UK at least are more motivated by other things: greed for example.

china is actually trying, but it is not easy to get every governmental employee to listen and enforce such a change.

in europe on the other hand the issue is entirely political. a city switches to linux. when the leading party changes it switches back because microsoft promises some benefits like jobs or worse kickbacks, or the new leader is simply ignorant and actually believes that windows is better.

It's an idealism, for sure; but after reading about experiments like Hamburg's maybe we'll get there eventually.

But what's far more important (and practical) than mandating libre software is mandating libre file formats, and this is what we've seen happen somewhat successfully around the world: governments requiring official documents to be primarily available in PDF/A and/or OpenDocument (c.f. OpenOfficeOrg/LibreOffice) instead of (say) MSFT's Office OOXML formats.

I believe in most cases, DRM would not exist if people wouldn't have started pirating digital content. We're also to blame for the state of things.

Just like I would not bother to buy and use a bike lock if people would not steal bikes in the first place. It's a bad analogy though, like all analogies are, since if I sell my bike I can't make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But that's the big difference between digital and physical.

I have been working on and off on anti-piracy measures for my Lunar app (https://lunar.fyi/) and as much as I want this to not affect normal users, the app can still stop working after a decade or two if the Paddle licensing server doesn't respond as I expect it for example, and I'm no longer around to fix it. This could be regarded as DRM by some.

But I would have never wasted time with this if people would not crack my app in the first place AND demand customer support and flood my dashboard with errors unrelated to the normal functioning of the app.

If piracy isn't stealing, then protecting against it isn't limiting ownership.

I find your posts fascinating - after working in the content industry for awhile, it's very easy to see (and confirmed with repeated studies) that DRM doesn't significantly affect or prevent piracy. Not to mention that there's a constant stream of more and more anti-customer requests coming from content provider lawyers. Requests that would make your head spin at just how fundamentaly evil they are (most of them... for now... can be pushed back). Remember, those dudes had the idea to attempt to make physical media that rot away after few days of use.

You are hugely, hugely wrong in the basic premise that actual reality of piracy is something that even comes close to reasoning for people who put these anti consumer practices in.

Use your brain - DRM allows them to increase profits even without piracy (by taking away consumer rights like second sale doctrine and ability to share content with your friends and family). You're seriously implying it's a bit of piracy that's making them say "yes, let's make sure everyone buys their own copy of the movie"? Do you think copyright protection laws were extended to 70 years+death of the authors because there were too many pirates copying Mickey movies?

a bit of piracy

Don't know about other content industry, but at least in video games, "a bit of" and "piracy" are oxymoron. Any semi-popular game has a significant number of pirated copy players.

Example: World of Goo claims 90% of players play pirated copies.[1] This is a game distributed without DRM and the price isn't high ($15 and region-based). 90% piracy rate is how customers respond to no DRM.

[1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/world-of-goo-vs-piracy

we divided the total number of sales we had from all sources by the total number of unique IPs in our database, and came up with about 0.1. that’s how we came up with 90%

Did they account for dynamic IPs? If not that number is way off.

The price is quite high for a jobless minor, of which most gamers are.

Note that those % numbers don't convert into sales or profits. Those are just the biggest numbers found to defend DRM.

(Similarly how being able to share a BluRay with your family doesn't lose the content industry N sales of discs.)

This issue is a lot more nuanced than reading some skewed stats and declaring that it's a problem.

The core issue is that this is a hugely emotional issue - the content industry (and artists of course) are constantly playing the "oh poor us, everyone is stealing, those criminals!" note to make pirates look bad... while in the same sentence establishing outright abusive DRM practices and trying to extract maximum money of every single shmuck that actually bought their content legally.

DRM has a massive negative effect on legitimate consumers - instead of quoting "90% piracy that", instead think about just how much of that piracy ACTUALLY hurts anyone and how much the attempt to fight it ACTUALLY hurts people who legitimately pay for their content and hardware.

Have a look at http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

<large number>% of copies are pirated, but only <tiny number>% of players pirate, it is simply that (some of) those that do pirate will tend to pirate a whole lot more games. Meaning that that 90% piracy rate means e.g. 5% lost sales.

And if you follow https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 then 90% piracy rate could also mean 5% extra sales.

Honest question: has your implementation of copy protection increased your revenue and decreased your support request by an appreciable amount?

And honest answer: yes. People that would otherwise crack the app, still would not buy the app at my price, but started asking for discounts. Some were also honest enough to tell me that they previously used a cracked version, others I recognize from cracking forums.

I'm happy to provide such discounts when people don't have the means to pay the whole price. I didn't build the app to get rich, I built it to help people get control of their monitor brightness, and I'm working towards that goal.

Sorry, I guess I must have missed something -- why would they crack it if it didn't have DRM already?

I was comparing anti-piracy measures with DRM, I don't have actual DRM in my app. I can't block users that really bought the app from using it (which is what DRM is notorious for).

But I do have a license verification for the Pro features (https://lunar.fyi/#pro), and that is what people are cracking in the app. I only added more protection around this verification.

And even then, why have DRM when you could simply request the user's invoice-number or license-ID in the support-ticket form?

since if I sell my bike I can't make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But that's the big difference between digital and physical.

But that's the entire thing the article is about: That suddenly in the digital space, it seems to be not just normal but expected that vendors maintain control over a product even if it's sold.

This could be regarded as DRM by some.

Indeed it is, and it shows the problems with that approach: As you say, even with the best of intentions, you can't guarantee that the DRM will only shut out illegitimate users: It might also deactivate legitimately bought apps if the licensing server has an issue or if at some point you don't have the resources to run it any longer. That makes a DRM-enabled digital product strictly worse than an analog one.

And that's if you're one of the good guys and don't get into any third party contract disputes, don't do any shady deals with user data and don't go crazy with subscriptions.

But I would have never wasted time with this if people would not crack my app in the first place AND demand customer support and flood my dashboard with errors unrelated to the normal functioning of the app.

That sounds a bit like "I wouldn't have to put up this fence if people didn't keep jumping over it". What about permitting free usage but restricting support to paying customers?

    > What about permitting free usage but restricting support to paying customers?

I already provide a generous free version of my app, I can't see how pirating the Pro features, on which I spend an enormous amount of time, can be justified.

Restricting support is what I tried first, but it takes too much time and effort. Email is slow since I'm very often in a different timezone than the buyer. So increasing the back and forth messages for asking for the license, and then me having to go to a non-mobile friendly site to verify that license made the support emails pile up so much that I got burnt out in less than two weeks.

Asking for the license also upsets people that are already angry because they think my app bricked their monitor or something along those lines.

don't use a general email address for support.

use an online support tool that can only be accessed by people who have a license. possibly use a tool to verify the license before they can even contact you.

everyone else can post issues on github.

also, do you track names and email addresses of those who bought a license? then you can match up requests and reduce the amount of license verification that you need to do.

Just like I would not bother to buy and use a bike lock if people would not steal bikes in the first place. It's a bad analogy though, like all analogies are, since if I sell my bike I can't make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But that's the big difference between digital and physical.

That's not why your analogy is wrong, especially because some connected electric bikes allow that just like smartphones do. Here is a rewriting that explains why you analogy is actually (very) wrong: "It's a really bad analogy though, since if someone steals my bike, I don't have it anymore, while “stealing” in the digital world consists in making a copy. But that's the big difference between digital and physical."

Theoretically, you would be right. However, it did reach the state of limiting ownership when the providers started changing the terms of service making the copy you have not entirely yours. Nothing forced them to do that except their own interests

Why is this even confusing? Piracy is piracy, it is the act of consuming products outside of the framework that enabled the funding for creation of these products. And the owning was always about owning the rights to consume some product within some framework, no one ever claimed that you own an album in the sense that you can do whatever you like to do with it if you paid 19.99$.

If you want to actually own an album, you do it like Martin Shkreli purchasing the album from Wu-Tang Clan. Pay 4 million dollars and it's all yours.

Useless discussions, honestly. It's like claiming that Walter White did not actually die on Breaking bad.

If I buy a book, I can read it as many times as I want, lend it to other people or even burn it in a fireplace if I want to. Why shouldn’t these rights extend to digital media?

I think it should. Go ahead and implement it, then get content producers distribute their work in your framework. Good luck.

It sounds to me like you are trying to say that because technology exists to enforce oppressive stances against basic consumer rights we all had just a few years ago, we should also not make use of technology that exists to circumvent this attack.

Is your argument solely based on "it is, therefore it should be", or is there more to it?

I think you are misrepresenting the situation and misreading what I said.

What I say is, if you don't like how Oppenheimer was funded, produced and then how they tried to collect money from you when you wanted to see it then you should fund and produce your own movie and distribute it the way you see fit. Upload it to YouTube, share a magnet link - whatever. Nothing stops you from not participating in the DRM stuff.

Where does this logic end? If you don't like what the government is doing, start your own? There is a huge imbalance between corporation and consumer where decades of generational wealth allows a film like Oppenheimer to be made. It's completely ridiculous to tell people struggling to pay their rent that they should just make their own blockbuster film if they don't want to be dirty thieves.

Content distribution has gotten worse overtime to the benefit of nobody but the richest people.

A book carries the same licensing terms as a DVD and as most digital media. However, the implementation of some of these terms is much easier or harder depending on the actual medium. It's easy to lend a book, it's hard to achieve the same thing with digital media. But in the EU at least, if a platform supports a way for a user to transfer their ability to a different user, then re-selling or lending through this mechanism is legal.

The real abuse from digital media sales is the seller maintaing the right to revoke access to the work arbitrarily.

act of consuming products outside of the framework that enabled the funding for creation of these products.

Are you a corporate lawyer? Because this sentence really doesn't mean anything but can be made to mean a lot depending on the context you decide to frame it in.

Regardless of that, it highlights the fact that you haven actually read the article itself. Which I highly suggest as it does a good job of pointing out a big issue with how that framework currently works towards consumers.

This sentence addresses exactly the content of the article: The framework within stuff is funded, created and later compensated.

The article is a ramble on the issues of implementation of the enforcement. Only if people would play along we wouldn't have ushers in the cinema, only if people would play along we wouldn't have cashiers but a box where people put the money in and take out the change.

Implementation of DRM etc. is quite low quality and is prone to issues. So? Those unhappy should simply avoid content made with that business model and framework of tools enforcing it.

The ad-supported model gained a lot of traction and people make a lot of DRM-free content that is distributed for free in exchange of editorial influence or distribution influence. Some even see great success in it, there are YouTube content producers who can afford to make content with considerable production value.

If you like what you get stick with it, if you don't - don't. Produce the stuff the way you think should be produced and distribute it the way you think should be distributed, no one is forcing you to use DRM or whatever. That's just a tool that you might choose to use in hope that people will agree to pay you this way.

So you are saying that you have no issue with a framework where people have put money towards material (funded it) but can at any future time be denied access to that content?

Furthermore I still believe you haven't actually read the article. As you are heavily focused on what appears to be media content. Where the article touches on digital material in general like software.

In general the article does a good job of highlighting an issue the sort of framework that is widely prevelant.

Sure, the current state does have issues. Also, I don't care much about that and since my solution to it is that don't purchase it if you don't like the rules.

Personally, I'm more concerned on fair use and the impact on the society when a product(media or software) is withheld geographically or produced with agenda beyond collecting direct payments. The fair use is more interesting one, when a digital product is widely successful it does have cultural impact on the society and IMHO it should become public domain at some point because the society becomes like a minefield for the other creatives.

I don't really care much about the tragedy of not being able to watch a movie years later after you paid as much as hamburger for it. It is not a real issue and you should have read the fineprint.

To me, the points you personally care about are very much related to the issues discussed in the article.

Geographic restrictions are very much driven by the same motivators that result in DRM and revokable content

You seek to make a distinction here that simply isn't there.

And the owning was always about owning the rights to consume some product within some framework

You missed the point. There is not supposed to be a "framework" when it comes to personal use. When you buy a CD, you can copy it to all of your personal devices, archive it, and listen to it unrestricted at any time, at any geographical location until the end of time. You can transcode it, remix it, or edit it for your personal enjoyment. You own your personal copy and you can do with it as you wish.

These are things that you're lawfully allowed to do with your licensed copy, if it wasn't for digital distribution and DRM which are now adding restrictions that can permanently revoke your rights to access the media at any time.

Piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement. The copyright lobby overplayed their hand with those infamous cringey "you wouldn't steal a car" ads, and trying to claim that every copy made of their product was a "lost sale".

Piracy isn’t piracy either :-). No sailors were harmed in the watching of this torrent.

Yeah, IT is a funny world where there are rockstars, architects, pirates, and neither of them are what the name suggests. It's like when people were naming the sea things after the already established land-things, so we got the seahorse, sea cucumber, seaweed etc.

We generally have to invent so many names it’s dizzying. No wonder we’re using analogies.

Also, terms like “pirate” and “rockstar” are fun to use. Maybe we like to use names that distract us from the purely abstract, digital reality.

Sure, but pirates do steal. How is this a suitable word to differentiate something from stealing?

One mans pirate is another mans patriot… if we’re gonna get pedantic

The worst thing about this campaign was that nearly every person on Earth would download a car if that was possible, e.g. with an affordable advanced 3D printing robot.

I recently learned that it had been reported that the music for those ads was stolen and used without permission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car

Because of course it was. smh.

I always found these funny "you wouldn't steal a car" well I might under certain circumstances.

I kind of liked they did that because now the whole "you would not download a car" became a joke and made the position of the copyright lobbies weaker morally.

It is though because you 'rent' from a digital store but you 'steal' from the content owner. Someone owns the content. Just not you.

An analogy would be if I rent a car and someone takes it they haven't stolen from me but they have stolen from the rental company.

(Where 'steal' is strictly shorthand for copyright infringement, but that's a pretty meaningless semantic difference outside of a courtroom.)

(Where 'steal' is strictly shorthand for copyright infringement, but that's a pretty meaningless semantic difference outside of a courtroom.) //

It's not at all meaningless. If I take a photo of your house, I copy it, then I do not deny you full enjoyment of that house. If on the other hand I steal your house, I think you would feel a little more than a semantic difference.

Now, I might copy your house and build another from the same materials, which again is unlikely to feel to you like theft.

There are lots of other possible scenarios of course. Suppose you're the architect of the first house, you got paid, but not you're pissed off because you think you should get paid again despite having done no more work... but then it turns out people see both houses and they want a house in that style, so they come to and give you another few months of work. Do you complain about it being "theft" now?

It's not at all meaningless.

It is meaningless, because pointing out the difference doesn't move the conversation forwards in any useful way. Everyone who's discussed piracy in the last 40 years knows what 'stealing' means in a copyright context, and everyone discussing the morality of copyright theft, such as this thread, rather than the legality of copyright theft, means stealing in the sense of 'taking something without paying for it' and not 'depriving the owner of something'.

While the armchair lawyers can't move on from the semantic moral (not legal, that's important) difference we won't get anywhere. If you're a supreme court judge it matters. If you're an internet poster it doesn't.

Of course it matters, people copy memes which act is copyright infringement in the UK. If doing so was theft, then many of those people wouldn't do it because it's unethical to deny someone use of a meme that they created.

Plenty of people skip adverts who wouldn't go into a shop and take a BluRay, because they recognise a Categorical difference between copyright infringement and theft.

Media companies want to use brainwashing (adverts, news stories, statements from authority figures) to cause people to consider theft and copying as equivalent so that they can exploit creator's labour without themselves adding value.

I'm curious what you mean by this:

armchair lawyers can't move on from the semantic moral (not legal, that's important) difference

It seems like you're suggesting there's no legal difference between the tort of copyright infringement and the crime of theft. Which, given your cogency elsewhere seems unlikely. So, what?

I'm saying there is a legal difference but there's no important moral difference.

While the acts of stealing and copyright infringement are different for the victim, they're not different for the person doing committing the theft. That person gets something for nothing. I'm saying that's actually the important bit in the moral argument. The answer to the question of "Is it wrong to take something without paying for it?" shouldn't really be "That depends!"

How is "theft vs copyright infringement" just a "meaningless difference"?? Stealing takes something away from person A to benefit person B. Copyright infringement just...benefits person B - nothing is taken from person A.

The better car analogy is if you steal a car from me, I no longer have a car, but if you take a detailed 3D scan or photo of my car, I still have it. Of course car analogies are terrible. A library book is better: if I borrow a book and don't give it back, nobody can borrow it again and the library needs to buy a new one (theft), but if I borrow it, make a photocopy and then return it, other people can also borrow it.

The only way you can make it sound like stealing is using the "lost sale" logic, but if the sale isn't guaranteed, it's still "less" than theft, and many studies have shown that the sale to a pirate isn't even close to guaranteed.

I've talked to a lot of pirates over the decades and there are very few "lost sales" - something like 80% of the file sharing population are either "never going to buy it anyway" or "I have a paid copy which I have backed up and enjoy sharing".

The peak pirating years for Australia (when per capita the country dominated the file share numbers) were when digital copies of games, music, films were being marked up at 25% to 50% over the (after currency conversion) sale prices in the US and EU.

After some years of unabated piracy the Australian prices dropped to match the rest of the world and piracy rates receded to just ticking over, sustained by the technical types that enjoyed the process as much if not more than the content.

I think your analogy is flawed. With piracy, you rent a car and someone makes a copy of it, and you never lose the car you rented.

If we're talking analogy, it'd be the loss of revenue from the 2nd car that would've been rented had the copy not been made.

The basic meaning of theft is that the thief actually deprives the owner of their property. If I steal your car then you obviously no longer have it and can't use it anymore.

Copyright infringement or counterfeiting, which is related in some jurisdictions when an unauthorised copy is made, isn't stealing in law because it does not pass that test. Hence your example completely misses the point.

Is it a 'meaningless semantic difference'?

If I told you I would give you X if you did Y for me, but after you did Y I refused to give you X, did I steal from you?

What if I told a prospective client of yours a lie about your abilities and they didn't hire you; did I steal from you?

I agree with the sentiments of most points in this article but this one irks me:

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

Different perspective: Imagine you've been so lucky that you were able to work on a program and GET PAID for it irrespective if it will turn out to be a flop or even deemed so bad that it's more worthwhile to write off than release. Imagine being so lucky that during the COVID-19 pandemic where most people were left without job and/or income you still had the privilege to show up on set at 5AM and do a 16-hour work shift and provide food on the table for your kids so they can eat a healthy breakfast. Talk about privilege and luck that you've ended up in a position in life that enables you this job security in life which 99.99% of humans can only dream of.

This reeks of corporate bootlicking because we should be so "lucky" we're not part of the poor and starving class in 2023.

If you work for someone else you're entitled to get a fair payment for your time and skill. If you want more than that go and create your own business.

That’s disingenuous - part of your compensation at many companies involves the expectation that the work is rewarding or its outcome has some non-monetary compensation. This is especially true in entertainment and media industries where workers will even be asked to work at a discount for the prestige.

Otherwise why do finance have to pay engineers more (at least here in London) or why are the interesting jobs nearly always paying below market?

If the show or film was cancelled after the worker signed a contract to work, the expectation of the worker when they signed up was that said work will see the light of day. Part of the compensation would be having the work on your CV etc and the prestige of your name on the credits.

The studio has reneged on an expectation the worker had when they accepted the contract and did not compensate them fairly for this new risk.

    > Otherwise why do finance have to pay engineers more (at least here in London)

Because of the demand and supply curve. If you require people in the city every day your hiring pool is less, if you require SC clearance your hiring pool is smaller, if you require some finance knowledge or experience of working on a trade floor then your hiring pool is smaller.

    > or why are the interesting jobs nearly always paying below market?

That’s not true, unless you refer to startups by “interesting” jobs and then part of the deal is equity with a chance to make the engineers retire 30 years earlier than normal workers. Not a risk worth for everyone but it’s there for those you want it.

Parent poster wasn't nearly that bent over.

The employee doesn't get to decide what happens to the product. Simple as. Employees are workers on a field.

Is that entirely fair? Depends only on whether everyone has equal opportunity to work on something else without serious repercussions. And we should work towards that.

In this case, as in many others, Hollywood is a racket and there are limited alternatives, so it's somewhat unfair. But there are multiple studios and you can always choose to toil on someone else's field.

I know people with this perspective. It's healthy, especially in the startup world where a good fraction of companies fizzle without making a profit.

I also know a lot of people (scientists, and many humanitarians, for example) who really aren't motivated by getting payed beyond a basic subsistence. They could make more money, and have more stable careers elsewhere. They do what they do for a lot of other reasons: status, ideals, curiosity, etc. Maybe they are just victims in a cold capitalist world that exploits them, but they get a lot done.

Do these people exist in entertainment? Would we loose something if they become disillusioned? Should they be calculating their input based on what they need to keep food on the table and pay coming in, or should they feel some (maybe irrational) connection to the larger project?

This quote from the author is my favorite. This is so spot-on:

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further."

The CEO of the last startup I was at was like that. Very much an archetype in my mind now. I will never work with someone like that again.

This video from Y Combinator, “How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer,” is full of great tips.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fcfVjd_oV1I

Great video, thanks for sharing

Wow, that's hella tone-deaf.

EVERYBODY under Capitalism, aside the owner class, is getting exploited.

It's not 'if you're getting screwed'. It's 'how much'.

I agree with the substantive point that these DRM-enabled shenanigans are a bad thing but I think putting things this way is unproductive:

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

> WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Leaving it as ‘WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE. YOU WILL RENT, NOT OWN, ANYTHING YOU PURCHASE FOR IT.’ would be honest.

Ditto ‘enshittification,’ ditto particularly ‘most guillotineable executive,’ ditto ‘deserves to be staked out over and anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup.’ These are not the words of a mature adult making a mature point: they are the words of a performance artist. One’s opponents are human beings too.

I was thinking the same.

But people are convinced that these CEO types or high ranking MBA employees don’t look down on customers or employees as people but as numbers in excel.

So it is super hard to treat them as humans too.

If we're debating how to optimize that 'disclaimer', start with capitalizing it properly. All caps is HOSTILE YELLING and big blocks of it are generally meant to be skipped over. Second, don't think of it as a separate disclaimer - emphasize the relevant details right in the review itself!

"The device has great battery life, tactile controls, and a responsive UI. But the main way of getting music on the device is a proprietary 'media store' that lets you rent access to albums for some unknown time. Loading your music collection as standard mp3 or flac files is currently possible, but due to security vulnerabilities in the client software this option may disappear at any time the manufacturer wants to force you into the more profitable option. The MSRP is $200 but the expected TCO of this device will be upwards of $1200 or more assuming you want to listen to a modest 50 albums."

Childish? Yes.

Understandable? Also yes.

Don't forget defeating DRM for ethical purposes is a grey area. Maybe even illegal.

Example: those trains in Poland [referred in the article]. I think what the company did by contracting the hardware hackers to investigate (by RE) what was going on was illegal, and what they did was illegal too.

What if they hadn't? The company would have lost the support contract.

The law is out of sync with morals and what's better for society.

So, while not recommended, the tone is acceptable or, at least, understandable.

Taking a book from the library without a library subscription and returning it is still stealing.

That corps can brick the device you paid for or block access to your media is an different matter.

The comparison is off.

The comparison should be "the library has plenty of copies of a book but does not allow anyone to borrow it, regardless of if they have a subscription. Someone takes it out, returns it". Is that stealing? It might be, IDK, but is certainly more complex than your example.

No, that's the second part: restricting access. If a library would not allow a paying subscriber to lend books, they would break the contract. Same for bricked phones or DRM.

But "piracy", is it's meant here, is the first part: lending/taking without paying.

It's not meant as a blanket condemnation of piracy, and certainly not as support for subscription access, but as a counter-example against the headline: even if you don't own, piracy still can be stealing.

Human laws do not follow laws of nature, or laws of logic. Trying to rationalize why something is or isn't owning or stealing is a misunderstanding.

"It is not missing anywhere, so it isn't stealing" does not apply. What applies is more like "This paper says it is stealing, so it is." The paper says it because a human wrote it there, as a result of whatever complexity going on in their natural neural network.

Please notice I didn't say "right", "wrong", "good", or "bad" anywhere.

We write these laws on paper, and not on two stone tablets because they aren't fixed.

You make it sound like "once it's written down, that's how it is. forever". Which is also not how law works (not even how religious "laws" work).

To me, it sounds more like you're saying the same thing as me: It is not a law of nature, it is text on paper, a human fiction. Yet, somehow you manage to disagree with me. How did that happen?

TIf I copy the money in someone's bank account - it's just numbers, after all - I haven't actually stolen anything. So that must be ok?

TBH I would be ok with that. But - inexplicably - the pro-piracy people never are.

How about the videos of your personal sexy times on your phone?

Ah but wait! Money has value! No, money does not have value. Money is a special kind of resource-constrained IP with a unique protection mechanism and tightly controlled access rights. If it were possible to hack that system - and some people have done this - it's still just numbers with no more "value" than any other numbers.

Either you accept that ownership and access control are valid ways to manage access to resources, or you go full post-scarcity neo-communist and destroy the concept of ownership altogether.

Anything else is hypocrisy.

The fact that most IP is owned by terrible people and doesn't benefit the artists is a different argument. That's an argument against wealth capture, political inequality, and rentier capitalism - a much bigger issue with relevance across multiple domains.

The real tell is that this is only ever about creative and never expands into wider questions of ownership and resource control.

My suspicion is that non-creative people resent the apparent agency and freedom that creatives have, and this is always more about that resentment than some supposed question around IP.

Basically some guy who makes music is an easier target than CEO bro, and it's always easier to punch down than up.

Interesting analogy with money but I don't think it holds up.

Money requires scarcity, otherwise its utility goes down. En masse, money copying would bring about hyper inflation very quickly. Society loses.

On the other hand, what work of art requires scarcity to be enjoyed? Personal sexy videos don't count here, as that's a privacy matter not a scarcity issue.

I can see that argument working for the fashion industry for example: buying clothes from an exclusive designer has the value of making you look unique. If suddenly that outfit gets copied and everyone is wearing knockoffs, you no longer look unique.

However if someone pays to rent a movie, and someone else pirates it, none of the consumers lost. The copyright owner only loses if a sale would've otherwise happened.

So I think that outcomes matter according to specific scenarios, and showing damage should be essential in court cases. Too many innocents have their lives ruined by inflated piracy claims that truly caused little damage.

Congratulations, you've realized that copying some data can be immoral while copying other data isn't. Neither of your examples of money or intimate videos has anything to do with copyright, so they're completely irrelevant to what's being discussed.

So easy to pile on this post.

I remember decades ago watching closely the new crop of televisions released each year — getting nerdy about the specs, features (back when TV's were dumb, expensive, and the new annual crop always exciting, shiny). I began to notice that a company like Sony would produce a suite of TV's that were the same in more ways than not — but there seemed to be features that were simply neutered on the lower price-tier devices.

I could imagine some marketing hack coming to the engineers and telling them which features to gimp on the base model, which ones to exclude on the next tier....

I must be both naive and old-fashioned to think that companies would compete by trying to both keep their prices lower than their competitor and their features superior. Sony (and of course others) decided to compete with themselves instead.

Then when I started amassing a huge DVD collection a couple decades ago, it became increasingly annoying that I would have to sit through ads on the DVDs before I could watch the film I had paid for.

Trailers, coming-attractions, also-available-from-time-warner are ads.

I finally started to rip my own DVDs and have done so ever since.

The forced ads on DVDs remains an important inflection point in the rise of digital media, I think. Early on one of the most common points in favour mentioned by those advocating for digital-only media was that you simply weren't required to sit through advertisements.

I personally installed VLC for a number of folks simply because it allowed them to watch DVDs without advertisements. It was a meaningful draw.

Then Netflix came and offered a low-barrier service with a decent catalog and, importantly, no advertisements. I'm of the impression that the broadcasters and studios have hated that aspect of it the most, and are hell bent to return to forced advertisement views.

I think I read someone else say that, if libraries weren't a thing already, the publishers would have never allowed them.

Paying does not equal buying. If I lease a car, you can still steal it. If I rent a car, you can steal it.

If I subscribe to a daily newspaper, you can steal it off my driveway in which case you steal from me and not the publisher because I never owned the content. If you sell my newspaper then you've stolen from the publisher even though I paid the publisher for that printed copy.

It's really not that hard. Original pirates could steal from dozens of merchants, share holders, and sailors in various ways and degrees, monies paid to monies earned, to monies owed, to monies potentially gained, by seizing the cargo of one vessel.

Let’s use your example. How would you feel if, due to a disagreement with the publisher over the quality of ink, the publisher was “forced” to break into your house while you eat breakfast and rip the newspaper out of your hands? This is what happens today. They’ve colluded to redefine the verb “buy” due to “licensing”, and it’s sick.

Actually, this is a good explanation why I don't use streaming services and download music intead, which is 90% torrents and 10% bandcamp that costs overall higher than streaming subscription would be

Can I ask how you discover new music? Or if you have any non-subscription sources for radio-like services not swamped with adds? I have largely moved away from subscriptions but still use spotify for those two reasons.

This why big companies want to move everything to "subscriptions", i.e., rental, in order to eliminate the concept of ownership.

One of the reasons why I'm glad Stadia died. That's a future I didn't want to see realized.

Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so...

At least in Europe, a company can't just remove features from a device.

If a product doesn't do what you can reasonably expect, this is considered fraud and you can go back to the store and demand compensation.

The field of interpretation for "can reasonably expect" is very wide though, how many devices you own are still receiving security updates?

Warning: unpopular opinion that you won't like.

If the audience of HN were writers, singers, and artists, people who know what it's like when the fruits of your work are stolen and you barely make any money (I have friends like that), the sentiment would've been quite different. But software developers can't relate to this and that's why they are so pro-piracy. They get a paycheck every month or bi-weekly and never face a situation when their intellectual work is stolen against their will and offered to their employer for free and the employer now cuts the paycheck in half because why pay if you can get it for free.

I'm not saying the current situation with content consumption is ideal. Big corps have no shame in many ways. But sometimes both sides can be wrong. And this is exactly what I'm seeing here.

The question is always: how much money would those individuals make if their work wouldn't be pirated. It's much more likely that they would just barely survive like they do now instead of raking in the big moneyz. Sometimes it's not piracy that's the problem, but simply that the art/content is unpopular, or a bad business model was chosen.

when their intellectual work is stolen against their will and offered to their employer for free and the employer now cuts the paycheck in half because why pay if you can get it for free

Your friends should get a lawyer. This is a different case than people "pirating" content because the content is locked exclusively behind yet another service subscription.

If companies truly want to solve the piracy problem, they will treat consumers better. That is the only way to hit minimum piracy.

Anecdotally I would observe that few people pirate games, movies, books, etc released by publishers with a record for respecting their consumer based - compared to piracy of media released by publishers that do things like revoking access to media you’ve paid for.

Anecdotally I would observe that few people pirate games, movies, books, etc released by publishers with a record for respecting their consumer based - compared to piracy of media released by publishers that do things like revoking access to media you’ve paid for

Anecdotally I've seen a lot of comments over the years from book authors whose books are sold completely DRM-free, as physical books and/or DRM-free PDFs, say that they are widely pirated.

There are a lot of people who will always find an excuse to pirate. Even if the ebook is inexpensive, DRM-free, in a completely open format everything can read, and the license allows everything that you can do with a physical book bought from a bookstore including lending it to others as long as only one person at a time has access, people will find some excuse for why they must pirate it, like "I wanted to buy 3 books that week, from 3 publishers, and it is too much hassle to have to enter my credit card number on 3 different web sites".

Cory links as the source of this quote to a bluesky page. does anyone know how to view these things without a login? doesn't seem to be supported by bypass-paywalls or by archive.org yet.

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kf...

https://skyview.social/

Quick link to quote: https://skyview.social/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbsky.app%2Fprofile...

"If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing" is my new favourite slogan. Yahrrr!

He was right; it has now played out and this is a legitimate accounting of it.

It goes beyond the headline, though. We should rejoice that we have a writer that can make such boring-ass societal degradation interesting.

I never "bought" any TV shows on my Playstation (or any Pantone colors on my Adobe) because I knew this would happen, but... the key sentence fragment of the article:

this is the foreseeable, inevitable result

the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California

This guy has a lot of good points, but this is way over the line.

Buying is an investment, piracy is a loss of investment and the license come with it.

Piracy isn't stealing -- full stop. No ifs and buts.

For profit entities have proven multiple times they are not to be trusted with preserving culture.

Piracy is the only way some games and TV shows are still available.

"remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades"

Revoking or paywalling API access falls under this definition of enshittification.

The enlightenment* brought about human rights.

We are well within the digital age without any meaningful Digital Rights.

Adversarial interop should be one such digital right.

Piracy isn't copying things for free. If it was, it wouldn't have been a crime on the high seas, nobody would've died, and we'd be in a utopia. (The kind we have in cyberspace and we're trying to enforce the tyrannical limits of meatspace onto for $, which can be used to buy stuff in meatspace, which you still can't copy for free.)

Pithy, but it wont pass muster in court.

It's a false dichotomy.

Snapping features from paid-for devices, or taking away content people paid for, is shitty and should be legally banned.

DRM is a tool, like an electric drill, and you can use it to build a house or kill someone. I'm happy to pay less to rent a film online subject to constraints such as time or single device, and for DRM to enforce that. I reject the idea that my printer stops working because I used third-party ink. DRM is an implementation detail.

Finally, there's nothing noble about piracy, even if you pirate things from asshole corporations. I'll agree that it is less bad in the context, but still. Victimless crime or not, someone owns IP to whatever you are after, and using it without their permission is not some kind of civil disobedience.

This is excellent. Doctorow doesn't disappoint.

Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff

To be fair, he wasn't the one who figured it out, *many* production companies were/are doing this. You only hear about some because the actors spoke up, but most won't risk violating their NDA

I couldn't read this rant all the way through. It was simply too much spewing hatred.

DRM serves many purposes. It's just as much tamper detection as it is intentional control.

While I want protections for promises implicitly made by products, they are implicit promises.

In the end, it's a give and take.

We as users get a lot for our money. I'm rarely disappointed by most consumer products - and they tend to be surprisingly feature rich. I look around my house and do not see DRM tragedies but products I like and have enjoyed owning so far.

This article is a clickbait rant and I'm honestly sick of it.

Calling rentals "buying" should be illegal, because apparently people aren't equipped to understand the nature of their transaction by description.

Where I come from, both parties have to consent. The buyer says "I purchase this for $10". The seller says "I purchase for $10." You have a valid sale. Modern forms involve giving the money, then getting a receipt.

Here's the problem - the seller can be a thief. The common forms of seller theft is selling something of less value than marketed, or with conditions that were not brought up earlier (like no repair).

Being illegal isn't be the only measure of theft, not in some societies. You can pirate something without theft -- as long as the seller consents to it. It won't be legal if there's no written agreement of consent. Some companies have this model where you can illegally use their software forever, but have to pay for a license. They want some of the richer people to pay, but the law doesn't recognize this selective consent, so it's enforced selectively.

But in OP's case, there's no valid transaction possible in some situations. They're not pirating nice guy WinRAR. The seller doesn't want to consent and the buyer won't consent. Because there's no possible option, the pirate assumes it belongs to nobody and takes it.

Thieves will often justify a theft, either by saying nobody owns it or that it belonged to them. There's a whole hill of philosophy here about what private property means. Taking back your homeland is not theft, because it's yours. That's why we have laws so a third party can judge these things.

But you know, maybe just come to terms that stealing isn't always unethical. Instead of saying piracy isn't stealing, it's more like piracy isn't unethical. It's pedantic, but solves a lot of the nitpicks people have on the topic.

I honestly think that "perpetual until something" licenses should be forbidden or at least should guarantee the full price paid back.

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired.

This was an interesting discussion 20 years ago, but none of this matters in five years. Creative content delivery became too cheap to meter with the Internet. We're entering the age of creative content generation becoming too cheap to meter.

you know, my default stance is pirating is the way. i don't give a shit who "owns" the media. if it's in my harddisk, it should not go away unless I delete it or the system (fs / hw / what have you) is kill. good thing I don't enjoy entertainment like movies or music. but in the small chance I like it, I'd go to the store, get the disk, rip it or just torrent it.

but bro! that's immoral and you will suffer in hell!

nah bro, we're already in hell.

bro! them popos will catch your ass and put you in jail!

nah bro, if they don't know, it's not illegal.

Copying isn’t stealing, full stop. But this new catch phrase is just stupid. It sounds like one of those “checkmate atheist” gottcha’s. A conditional license, no matter how shitty the terms, is what you’re buying, you only assumed you were buying something more. It does not then follow that “pirating isn’t stealing”, that’s just a fact that stands on its own.

"But I think this borders on the alarmist: "It's worse with video, where switching away from Media Center PC might cost you the footage of your son's first steps, your sister's wedding, your holiday films."

Even the darkest tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists don't suggest that Microsoft is going to hold my WMV-encoded home videos hostage. But you seem to be taking it even further, somehow tying it to the Media Center itself. Please explain.

Posted by: Chris Anderson"

to demonstrate how blind-sided or too naive or optimistic, a supposed technology-aware person can be.

One of the most astounding things I've learned is how movies/shows/cartoons get quietly changed, and you no longer have the original art.

Wokeness, marketing, etc...decisions are made to change content, and the "owner" gets their product changed without consent or remedy.

It starts at the first word. It's not buying anymore, for most things. It is getting a permission for a restricted use of it, not even renting. And still, they charge you as you were buying. The original company is still the owner, and can do and undo whatever it wants.

Imagine "buying" a house, but the real owner can kick you out, put someone living with you in some of your rooms, install their security cameras, forbid you to put some furniture or have a saying on who can invite you there.

Also, piracy is as stealing as taking a photo of your car is stealing it. You still have your car, someone that wouldn't buy it anyway won't pay for that neither. And probably the person pirating it will have more rights over the thing they didn't pay than a lawful buyer would have over the item he fully paid and "bought".

wow, so true.

1. Piracy is when guys in ships board another ship and take its cargo. Copying files is not piracy.

2. Sharing is caring and information wants to be free.

3. La propriété, c'est le vol!

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_propriété,_c'est_le_vol_!

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Joseph-Proudhon

Piracy, in the sense used about IP, was never stealing, it has always been trespassing. Stealing is when you deprive someone of property without consent, trespass is when you use property without consent without depriving the owner of it.

This remains true irrespective of what kind and term if rights you get when you purchase an IP license.

Google lets you "buy" movies online. The movie is attached to the email account. You cannot transfer it to a different email account.

The very same google that offers Gmail but is also known to block accounts for perceived violation of contract and which will now close Gmail accounts that aren't used for a number of months.

It's interesting that America, steeped in their self described "liberalism" and "market economy" has become a nation of renters. You don't own anything, but rent it. If you need to transport yourself, you rent an uber using your phone which is rented from google, on the internet connection rented from AT&T.

It's important to note that I'm not saying you need to own a car to live up to the American ideal, but you'd expect the freedom conscious American to demand rights, making them the true owners of their possessions. You'd expect the American to demand guaranteed access to transportation.

piracy was never stealing, stealing requires the removal of where it comes from, which copies do fundamentally not do

piracy is causing hypothetical financial damage by braking some laws

with the irony that sometimes there is no financial damage, or that the damage is such a small fraction of the claimed damage to a point where persuading it should make no sense

through sometimes it also can be big enough to destroy companies

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578872 -- 4 hours ago.

as a longtime, proud, and noble pirate; attempts at moral justification or condemnation are simply gratuitous and i'm certain many like me feel the same

It feel like some basic consumer disclosure/protections would be a good start - you can’t use the word “buy” unless the purchaser truly has perpetual irrevocable use of the asset - other wise you have to use the word “rent” and simple disclaimer box with the length of the rental period if and how it can be canceled, and what remedies (if any) are provided if the rental is terminated early.

Rent movie XYZ for $x

Rental period: perpetual

Cancelable: at will with x days notice

Remedies if cancelled early: none

This is all about convenience. Consider streaming. You have everything available instantly without any effort… until your network connection goes down. Then you have nothing.

Most young people cannot imagine living in a world disconnected. It’s great until it isn’t, and at that point it’s hopeless without any recourse. It might as well be a death apocalypse.

I do know what it’s like to live in a world disconnected. Because of that I keep my media on a portable storage device and back it up on redundant devices so that it does not get lost. I pay no subscriptions to access my media. It’s always instantly available when I travel anywhere. There are no advertisements, outages, bills, pauses, or other disruptions. Because of stuff like Bluetooth, Samba, and Plex it’s available to all my household media devices automatically.

My son loves his streaming service, but that just looks like paying a premium for laziness with a high potential for failure.

Let's elect more people like Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez to work on this stuff.

The definition of private property is defined by political systems, which are shaped by cultural norms and values. It's unlikely that humanity will still treat intellectual output as private property centuries from now. The digital (and network) revolution are paradigm shifts, and the latter can take a very long to play out.

That said, financially supporting worthwhile projects is a moral duty. So please do your part.

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578872

companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for..

I figured out a Workaround for this. I install the crapware Driver-o-Software they want me to. Then I run "Double Driver 4.10 Portable" (not affiliated), I take a backup of the driver(s). Then I uninstall (or roll-back). Then the driver is still missing but I user my Double Driver folder backup (I keep in external disk), and booya! the device works without the crapware. It adds a couple more hoops in the experience, but it has worked like a charm.

(I remember Steve Gibson mentioned DoubleDriver some years back on the SecurityNow podcast - I tried it, and I never looked back)

even though (I think) I 100% agree with that article, I'm not sure it is sound. one can buy the right/rights to something "for X amount of time" or on "Y amount of devices" (what is known as a "lease", sometimes), but the "legal" gobbledygook specifies that what one is "buying" is limited to/by certain conditions. Like leasing a car. I think (but am not positive) that is how Apple ideologically reframed the way they "license" music/media consumption through iTunes? And also how, following in Apple's footsteps, how Google started "loaning" content (movies on YouTube) that are available for 48 hours after the "purchase"

[dupe]

Mods, merge in earlier discussion (Cory's stupid permalink scheme),

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578872