[otrahuevada]

At least according to their own accounting, movies lose otherwise hilarious amounts of money all the time and they seem to still exist somehow.

"Piracy", which in reality is probably better called "online jaywalking" as it, too, is a made up faux-pas created so as to allow a couple soulless drones to make more money, hasn't to date represented an obstacle to content creation, they still happily churn products all the time, so I don't see any reason to think it will become an existential threat to the studio suits any time soon.

And maybe it should. Which is kind of core to the whole debate; is it actually good to anyone in any way to have a business based around forbidding free access to easily duplicable cultural products? Should such a thing even be allowed to thrive?

[dahart]

Easily duplicable cultural products? You’re suggesting that you should be able to take something someone else made because it’s easy to do? It would be easy to steal your computer from you — should that make it legal for me to do so? You think movies should become historic cultural relics with free access to all whenever they are popular? If your wish came true, how exactly would the movie’s creation get funded in the first place? Movies often costs tens to hundreds of millions to produce, and they only take on that level of risk because of the financial return of people who pay to watch them. How do you think that would work if movies were free to everyone?

Do you have a job? Do you work for a company that makes money? Would you be okay with the product you’re working on being taken for free by people who insist they shouldn’t have to pay for it?

Your language feels really very hyperbolic to me. There are many real people with real jobs trying to make livings, even if the corporations they work for are greedy. DRM can indeed be shitty and it often oversteps copyright, but we can ignore DRM here because the argument you’re actually making is one against respecting copyright law and against respecting artists.

> is it actually good to anyone in any way to have a business based around forbidding free access to easily duplicable cultural products? Should such a thing even be allowed to thrive?

Yes. The answer is yes, without question. This has been debated by scholars and lawmakers and artists and business people for hundreds of years, and we have a compendium of laws that protect the people who make content precisely because it does, in fact, do them some good.

See Chesterton’s Fence: you don’t get to nuke the existing system until you actually understand why it’s there and how it got there. If you believe it serves zero people but still manages to exist, that means that your belief is wrong and you need to do some research.

The biggest problem with your argument is you’re blindly focused on the execs and profits of only the very largest media conglomerates, and you’re ignoring not only the tens of thousands of artists they employ, but you’re also ignoring all smaller businesses that aren’t making enormous profits and can’t afford to give away their content for free.

> movies lose otherwise hilarious amounts of money all the time and they seem to still exist somehow.

The amount of money someone makes is not any of your business, and it does not justify stealing the things they make without their permission. Copyright law can and does apply even to works that don’t cost money, and it also applies equally when someone’s enjoying handsome profits. You are not legally invited to copy anything based on someone else’s income.

Studios sometimes do lose money on movies and they survive because they make multiple movies. Studios also sometimes report misleading sales figures. I’ve worked in films and games as an artist, and watched studios do “creative accounting”. Reports of losses don’t prove anything, and don’t justify breaking copyright law.

[otrahuevada]

> Easily duplicable cultural products? You’re suggesting that you should be able to take something someone else made because it’s easy to do?

No, I'm not. What's more, that's an easily disprovable lie: My duplicating of a file does not somehow delete the original. My downloading of this page hasn't done anything to your post.

> Movies often costs tens to hundreds of millions to produce, and they only take on that level of risk because of the financial return of people who pay to watch them.

Financial return that, according to themselves, is at best terrible? And that you, too, keep mentioning, despite loudly proclaiming they are of noone's interest?

> Do you have a job? Do you work for a company that makes money? Would you be okay with the product you’re working on being taken for free by people who insist they shouldn’t have to pay for it?

My job does not rely on handing copies of our product's binaries to people if they pinky promise they'll only use it in a way we approve of though. And if we, too rented garbled copies of it with time-limited access to the ungarbling machinery, we probably should disclose that beforehand so that prospective customers don't end up feeling like they've been defrauded.

> you’re also ignoring all smaller businesses that aren’t making enormous profits but can’t afford to give away their content for free

I'm not asking anyone to give anything away for free. And in any case the fact that the gatekeeping-culture-industrial-complex also exploits other smaller creators could easily also be considered problematic in and by itself.

> The amount of money someone makes is not any of your business

Oh but it is, specifically when they make it into a battle cry to invade my privacy and impede my agency in a deeply dumb search of unapproved copies of whatever they feel like claiming to own.

[dahart]

The argument that you’re not stealing something physical is an old, tired, immature, and naive narrative that seems willfully ignorant of the reality that copyright law is protecting the consumption of copies, it’s about protecting the initial investment and the business model, not the cost of production of individual copies. You actually are hurting the artists by consuming a copy without their permission, because the transaction they’ve offered is to trade your viewing of the movie for a small amount of money. The word “stealing” is defined to include taking something without permission, and does not depend on whether they get deprived of the thing you take.

You’ve made several snarky and strawman replies about money, but ignored the actual point I made; the fact that copyright laws do not depend or discriminate based on profits. This is a fact, not a debate. Your opinion about any given studio’s claimed losses is completely irrelevant to the question of whether you should be allowed to break the law.

> My job does not rely on handing copies of our product’s binaries to people if they pinky promise they’ll only use it in a way we approve of though.

Yes it does. You’re wrong. Does your product’s use come with a EULA? Does your company have any security? Does your product get paid for? Are you putting your code in the public domain? If you write code, your code is covered by copyright law, and you have both legal and technical mechanisms in place to protect people from taking your code and your product for themselves without your company’s permission. You are doing the same things as DRM, you’re being hypocritical.

> I'm not asking anyone to give anything away for free.

Then I’ve gotten the wrong impression, please clarify what you mean. You’ve argued above that you (and everyone) should be able to watch movies for free because they’re easy to duplicate and they are cultural assets. What are you asking for then?

[otrahuevada]

> The argument that you’re not stealing something physical is an old, tired, immature, and naive narrative

And yet here you are, claiming that "pirating" something is somehow bad.

Look, I think our disagreement comes down to definitions. So, let's clarify some things.

For me,

    "A thing" is an entity that is capable of being described as "being". For instance, your phone, a bottle, a trip, a word, love, inertia.

    "Good" is a desirable quality of "A thing" that by being attached to it adds to its value. 

    "Bad" on the other hand is an undesirable quality of "A thing", which detracts from it. 
    
    "Control" is the ability to do with a thing whatever I want,

    "Selling" "A thing" is relinquishing "Control" over it for money, 
    
    "Buying" "A thing" is receiving "Control" of a thing in exchange of money

    "Renting" "A thing" on the other hand is relinquishing "some" control of that thing for some time in exchange of money.
    
    "Promising" something is agreeing to do that thing; doing the thing that was agreed upon is generally considered "Good".

    "Cheating" is "Promising" "A thing" and then doing a different one, which is "Bad"
    
    "Copying" "A thing" is creating "A thing" that is fundamentally interchangeable for "Another Thing"

Given this definitions, it naturally arises that Cheating people into thinking they Bought Things when you only Rented those Things to them is Bad. Which is the entirety of my point.

For you on the other hand all of those terms ostensibly appear to mean "whatever lets me sleep at night" and it seems that this gap is bothering you a lot.

I also see you seem to be conflating your opinion on things with their legality and their moral qualities, which are three entirely disconnected things. It is legal in some countries to kill perceived deviants in a kind of ritual show. Would you call that good? Does that being "legal" make it any better?

[dahart]

Your definitions don’t agree with the dictionary at all. It’s relevant to this discussion and important that you can sell and buy services for which you may or may not have control. I really can’t abide with crappy incorrect definitions you’ve made up on the spot that don’t agree with the ways all other people use these words. Your list of definitions here also isn’t helping clarify anything other than you’re giving me the impression that you didn’t read the actual transaction text before you paid for some online movies?

Yes, I do agree that pirating something is somehow bad. I don’t see the point you’re trying to make by quoting me. You’re going to have to state it rather than expect I can read your mind.

I don’t agree with your snarky summary of my position. What you’ve demonstrated here is that you 1) didn’t listen to and/or didn’t understand what I said but believe you do, 2) don’t understand copyright law, why it exists and what shapes it, and 3) what the boundaries and distinctions are between copyright law and DRM.

Instead of being vague, can you give some specific examples of movies you paid for where the language used in the actual transaction said you were purchasing a copy of the movie, but it ended up being a rental? I’m not aware of any streaming service that uses either of those words, but it seems like you might have expectations that are outside of what the thing being offered was. Please give an example of how you were cheated by linking to the product.

[otrahuevada]

Unfortunately, if we can't agree on what words mean, I can't justify continuing to waste time in this discussion.

Cheerio!