[LocalH]

Piracy is preservation.

Always has been.

Rightsholders must not be allowed to control how works are preserved, else they can very easily steal from the eventual public domain in ways that mere piracy can never be considered stealing.

[franga2000]

I think it's insane that the concept of a legal deposit [0] is so rarely extended to films or other media. Even more insane is that US courts have found it to be unconstitutional. A primary school's student newspaper needs to send two copies to the national library, while a movie can be played in every cinema in the nation and...nothing?? Let alone video games and other, more complicated media...

Everyone likes to shit on patents, but patents are designed well. You invent a thing and in exchange for publishing it openly, you get time-limited exclusive rights to it. Why the hell is copyright not like that?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

[zahlman]

> Everyone likes to shit on patents, but patents are designed well.

I think the critique of patents has more to do with the patent officers often being ignorant of blatant, widespread prior art, or having a bizarre idea of how the relevant legal principles should apply in a particular problem domain.

[charcircuit]

It's sufficient but not necessary. It would be better if there was an entity like the library of congress who would keep it safe, but private until copyright expired after which it would become public. Right now piracy leads to way more of free entertainment than preservation.

[account42]

In practice, it's necessary. While escrow should absolutely be a requirement to receive the benefits of copyright protection you'd also need to make sure that the escrowed artifact is actually complete and in a usable form and covers every version of the work. That means a lot more than dumping it onto the library of congress so even with that requirement we would benefit from independent archival.

[1317]

well maybe but they don't do a very good job at it

popular stuff that you could watch anywhere, you can pirate of course

but anything more obscure is impossible to find, or was there at one point but is now long gone

[circularfoyers]

Whose "they"? Private sites do a phenomenal job at preserving a large amount of rare content.

[1317]

what's the point if no one can see it

[dncornholio]

Piracy = Piracy. Stop doing mental gymnastics to justify stealing. If you rip a movie and put it up on the internet, it's not preservation, it's piracy.

[account42]

Even if you disagree with copyright infringement, it's not the same as stealing.

[skeaker]

Patently false, just look as far as Netflix taking down exclusive shows and movies from their catalog. You would literally not be able to watch them anymore if not for folks putting them up online.

[LocalH]

Copyright infringement is not stealing. It falls under no theft laws.

It may be a crime in certain situations (most notably, non-commercial infringement is almost never a crime unless done prior to a work's initial publication, but rather a civil issue).