[WendyTheWillow]

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.

[TheMode]

You are acting like entertainment exists in a vacuum. You go about your day, consume some movie, then go back to your life as if nothing happened.

In practice, new entertainment entices more people into consuming it. For example lets say your group of friend suddenly became huge fan of some unknown show, you didn't see it but they keep talking about it for days. You then notice that it costs $500. You indeed have the choice to not watch it, its not like you ever felt the need to before it has been mentioned to you, but won't you?

This example is a bit excessive but these kind of events happen all ever the case for entertainment that cost a fraction of it. The problem is that it stacks up.

As for your immoral accusation, its perfectly fine if you think this way, but I also believe that it is perfectly fine to think the opposite way. The only things companies can lose from piracy are potential sales, and ultimately if people aren't willing to pay for it I believe that it is fine for the company to shut down. Why should they be forced to pay for something they can access without causing any harm?

[WendyTheWillow]

None of this is relevant to the morality of piracy. It's immoral to make a promise to not do something (what you do when you license a copy of a work) and then turn around and do that very thing.

[johnnyanmac]

for many, it does exist in a vacuum. Others may place more weight into it.

>For example lets say your group of friend suddenly became huge fan of some unknown show, you didn't see it but they keep talking about it for days. You then notice that it costs $500. You indeed have the choice to not watch it, its not like you ever felt the need to before it has been mentioned to you, but won't you?

sure, life is all about compromises. I had plenty of rich friends take things for granted in grade school that my parent literally could not afford. I probably "lost" some rich friends because I could not engage in such actiities. Such is life.

I grew up not expecting to get everything I wanted when I wanted it. Practicing restraint and prioritizing my needs over my wants is a core part of my character. So hearing people act like they need to watch Game of Thrones but can't pay HBO or whatever falls on deaf ears. I simply never watched Game of Thrones, life did move on.

>As for your immoral accusation, its perfectly fine if you think this way, but I also believe that it is perfectly fine to think the opposite way.

I care more about hypocrisy than morals, and a lot of the "pro-consumer" arguments come off a hypocritical. They compare it to people breaking into your house but are happy in most other contexts treating the digital commons as different from a physical one, despite that cost of the commons coming from some often non-government entity.

And honestly, it's just the dishonesty that bothers me the most. Some just don't want to say they do bad things. At least own up to it. I pirate, sometimes I just don't care. I'm not a good person. There, easy.

>and ultimately if people aren't willing to pay for it I believe that it is fine for the company to shut down. Why should they be forced to pay for something they can access without causing any harm?

logistically, the company shutting down hurts the people who caused it the least. So I do feel bad. CEO has a million dollar eject button and the rest of the airplane of underpaid artists are stuck in a nosedive. Maybe I couldn't save it, but I at least don't want to say I didn't chip in.

morally, a company that produces value that has all of what is valued stolen is a downer.

[TheMode]

> sure, life is all about compromises. I had plenty of rich friends take things for granted in grade school that my parent literally could not afford. I probably "lost" some rich friends because I could not engage in such actiities. Such is life.

Sometimes you indeed have to cope, not everything can be accessible. But in the case of digital data it is definitively possible, and people are independently distributing torrents, not like movie studios have to distribute their own work for free.

More digital piracy would also overall mean less production, and so less expectation from consumers, and less barriers for the people who cannot afford everything (or anything really). Going back to a more "organic rate" of story telling. Stories have always existed after all.

> And honestly, it's just the dishonesty that bothers me the most. Some just don't want to say they do bad things. At least own up to it. I pirate, sometimes I just don't care. I'm not a good person. There, easy.

Maybe that I am a bad person too then. But its a pretty quick reasoning, am I really to blame for downloading bytes over the internet? Why couldn't you blame all the creators for expecting this sort of income? am I to blame if their work only has value when imposed?

[johnnyanmac]

>More digital piracy would also overall mean less production, and so less expectation from consumers, and less barriers for the people who cannot afford everything (or anything really).

what kind of awful logic is this? We have decades of free (and "free" as in beer) knowledge and media alike available with no ethical quandries. Why do we need to pirate the copyrighted stuff? For all its gripes, Youtube and Tiktok have indeed provided ore entertainment than one can consume for "free".

But for traditionally premium media, Look no further than the music industry to see how this leads. Spotify is a race to the bottom and artist basically don't get any money from their actual music anymore. Great for consumers (it's all free with ads or paying a one time subscrption to remove ads), awful for those wanting to sing professionally.

We're seeing it in gaming as well, and people hate it more than ever despite the "game" itself becoming free these days (can't pirate what's ultimately a thin client that companies give away for free). The value comes from exploiting scarcity of resources. People say it's ruining gaming, but it seems to be the exact kind of endgame for someone who can't afford $40-60 games but wants to play the latest and greatest. You spend your time or your money. Or both.

>But its a pretty quick reasoning, am I really to blame for downloading bytes over the internet?

yes. you're not entitled to all bytes. This decomposition of media to "just data" doesn't work at all in the favor of respecting art. are you really to blame for "just grabbing trees?", or "just grabbing reverbs in the air"?

> am I to blame if their work only has value when imposed?

Yes? If you value a product and you choose to not pay for it but consume it anyway, how are you not to blame? You didn't haggle with the creator, you didn't leave any feedback suggesting to make it cheaper or more accessible, you didn't offer any argument to how contributing this to a metaphoical library would benefit them.

You saw a piece of candy on the shelf and chose to pocket it. That would be considered unethical. No survival mechanism to appeal to (you don't need candy to survive), on extra context to justify your action. Many do it because risk is low and they value the item.

And honestly I don't care when people do it. I'm no snitch and Nestle already took into account X% of theft when pricing the item. But the worst thieves are the ones that whine that "well I deserve this I had a hard life". Just accept you did a bad thing and reflect on if you want to repeat those actions again. Don't pretend society owed you a butterfinger or that you're toppling the Nestle empire by grabbing a single piece out of some 7-11.

[TheMode]

> But for traditionally premium media, Look no further than the music industry to see how this leads. Spotify is a race to the bottom and artist basically don't get any money from their actual music anymore. Great for consumers (it's all free with ads or paying a one time subscrption to remove ads), awful for those wanting to sing professionally.

Are consumers responsible for encouraging people to sing professionally? If they aren't being paid enough, maybe that they should choose a different career. Its a rough thing to say, but this wouldn't have happened to begin with if the music industry didn't become that big due to copyright.

> This decomposition of media to "just data" doesn't work at all in the favor of respecting art. are you really to blame for "just grabbing trees?", or "just grabbing reverbs in the air"?

Trees are physical. I don't believe that I should dig up your tree to put it in my garden. But I should have the right to take its picture and try to grow the same.

Bytes are bytes, you are the one imposing their values. Copying more files doesn't steal money from its author.

> Yes? If you value a product and you choose to not pay for it but consume it anyway,

These are only products because we have laws allowing them to be. It is mostly an artificial market. Without copyright these authors would probably do something else. Just because they decided that their work is worth money doesn't mean I should give them. Otherwise maybe that I should bill you for looking at my eyes if I decide so, would be unethical not to.

> You saw a piece of candy on the shelf and chose to pocket it. That would be considered unethical.

If I could duplicate that candy and leave with it, I would. Is it unethical? You are really trying to make the comparison between intellectual property and physical matter, but one can be duplicated and freely shared while the other cannot.

The problem is that you assume that author must be a job, while I do not believe that they should be particularly protected. There will be less of them and its not necessarily a bad thing. If you wanna get paid get funding beforehand.

[johnnyanmac]

>The problem is that you assume that author must be a job, while I do not believe that they should be particularly protected. There will be less of them and its not necessarily a bad thing. If you wanna get paid get funding beforehand.

So you end with victim blaming? They can sell their art however they want, for whatever price they want. And traditional capitalism say they will succeed or fail based upon those dynamics. Theft is a factor that well, cheats the entire system.

I think it's ironic you have such a stance on a web site made for getting that exact funding. You think those VC's are funding stuff that can be easily stolen and produce no profits back for them?

[ndriscoll]

> I grew up not expecting to get everything I wanted when I wanted it. Practicing restraint and prioritizing my needs over my wants is a core part of my character. So hearing people act like they need to watch Game of Thrones but can't pay HBO or whatever falls on deaf ears. I simply never watched Game of Thrones, life did move on.

I don't see how to interpret this as anything other than performative asceticism. Once you've judged that you cannot or will not pay, you've put yourself in a situation where watching vs. not watching has no material impact on anyone in the world. You'd have to explain why it makes you a bad person to download it from someone who willingly shares it with you (and who you might even make feel good for having shared). What exactly is the part where you've done something bad?

Where does the bad action happen? If you download it and delete it without watching, was that bad? All you've done is tied up a pirate's capacity to upload, so if anything you're the good guy, right? And it's the actual watching (which affects no one) that carries moral weight? Is watching at a friend's house (or borrowing their DVD) okay? What if your friend had ripped it to their computer, and you stream it from them, but you make sure not to watch at the same time as them, so they never "had more DVDs being used than they owned"? Or was it the creation of a copy? What if you just send all of the incoming packets straight to /dev/null and never have more than ~1500 temporary bytes at a time?

What if I get all of my entertainment value from simply downloading everything I can because I'm such a rebel (or because I'm someone on /r/datahoarder), but I never actually watch it, so in principle it didn't really matter whether I even downloaded the right thing?

It's hard for me to see how the "morality" doesn't essentially boil down to the axiom that what is morally permissible is to follow the law and impermissible to break it, which is IMO a pretty weak perspective. The law seems to be a little too full of special-cases here to think it got it precisely right morally (e.g. if you can borrow but not stream; convenience is immoral?), and surely most people wouldn't agree that e.g. drug use or abortion are immoral because they are illegal in some jurisdictions.

For reference, I don't have a TV and have never watched GoT because I'm just not interested in it. I entertain myself other ways like pondering this sort of nonsense. I don't really see much difference with some counterfactual world (or with some hypothetical person) where I find it worth my time to watch, but not worth (my time + $50) to buy it on ebay and watch. Or (my time + $120) to get the UHD one.

The people who most caused the company to shut down would be people like me that just weren't interested in the thing at all, and yes we are affected the least, and I don't see why anyone should feel bad about that. That's how it should be. People who pirate, if they have any effect at all, will create mindshare by talking about it to people who will buy it. That is still preferable for the company over me changing the subject when someone talks about GoT.

I would love for all of these media companies to go out of business though so they would stop pushing for treacherous computing.

[johnnyanmac]

>I don't really see much difference with some counterfactual world (or with some hypothetical person) where I find it worth my time to watch, but not worth (my time + $50) to buy it on ebay and watch. Or (my time + $120) to get the UHD one.

Well value is subjective. You couldn't pay some people to consume certain media and other have people spending hundreds on virtual skins.

That's all the invisible hand is about. Finding the sweet spot and accepting that some will not value what is offered. Or at all.

>The people who most caused the company to shut down would be people like me that just weren't interested in the thing at all, a

Sure, but at the same time you aren't their paying audience. Why should you be frustrated when a company metaphorically locks their door? As a thief that is just a basic expectation of the "job". Find an easier target or get better tools. If people didn't steal to the point where it impacted business, the act of selling door locks wouldn't be a million dollar industry. That now extends to the digital realm.

I can sympathize with greedy practices, but I don't know how you expect someone to bemoan your lack of ability to obtain free media (especially when there's ALREADY so much free media out there).

>I would love for all of these media companies to go out of business though so they would stop pushing for treacherous computing.

Don't like it, don't buy it. I don't like making that dismissal but I also don't line imposing my personal will on society. Which you're doing at this point. There will be people who just want convinence over free media and companies found an audience. Adapt to that or find media you do want to support.

Or just steal, I guess. Again, I don't care. Just don't be pompous about it like youre defending the integrity of software.

[ndriscoll]

I'm not sure where you think I complained about my ability to obtain free media? I could easily do that if I wanted. The places where it's available aren't very hidden. I don't want to though, which is what I said. I'm not interested. I do not care about their stuff at all. I don't even have a TV.

I complained that e.g. my computer has functionality in it that's designed to disobey me, its owner, and instead obey them, some unrelated party I have no business with. These sorts of chips do not belong in my computers, but you can't buy ones without them. Similar functionality will no doubt be used in the next 10 years to force you to use a compromised OS (e.g. with built in adware and spyware) if you want to do e.g. online banking. The trend is obvious to anyone paying any attention.

My house doesn't come with someone else's locks. All of the locks are mine. I and only I have the keys. And I can change or remove them whenever I like. There's no access door for Disney to come in and inspect my bathrooms.

And yes I think it should be illegal to sell a product that's designed to sabotage itself. I don't own a Blu-ray drive (no reason to, again I'm not interested), but my understanding is that a disk can tell the drive to revoke its keys and essentially brick itself. That should be criminal, and is actual destruction of property.

Anyway, I'll note that I still don't see an answer of what precisely is morally wrong with filesharing. Which of the acts I listed is the bad one? Or is it something else?

What is worse about downloading a movie than e.g. deciding to spend your $20 on marijuana (which is illegal everywhere in the US, and is in fact a crime, unlike downloading a movie, which is a civil matter) and watch the clouds go by?

For what it's worth, I don't do drugs or these days even drink. I've never found marijuana to be appealing. But I don't think people who do partake are bad for doing so. I feel much the same about people downloading movies. It doesn't affect anyone else, so I don't see an issue. If anything, the drugs have more of an impact on others. Some of my neighbors stink up the whole street, which is unpleasant on my walks.