[stuffn]

Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay. Piracy has a very specific sting to it. This was a deliberate choice. We don't call burglary "piracy", yet if we relax the definition enough to include IP theft, it is also piracy.

GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said. GabeN is in fact an industry plant and owns one of the strictest IP protection platforms on the market. Why people buy on steam when they can ban you for almost anything and take everything you've ever rented (you dont own anything on steam). Thousands of dollars of games gone with a ban. In any normal world this would be tantamount to grand theft and a small business owner would actually face real prison time for it.

You can't "steal" something that isn't gone when it's stolen. If I walked into a house, took a necklace, and left an exact unaltered copy I'd at best be charged with a lesser crime that didn't include theft. But if you copy movies/music/software you're liable to have your entire life absolutely financially and possibly criminally ruined.

The government of the US is hardly a government for the people, by the people. It's strictly designed to enrich the few and consume "human resources".

[GolfPopper]

>Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay.

Without weighing in on the merits or morals of copying intellectual property, the term 'piratical booksellers' was used in a British House of Commons speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1841. (The speech itself is superb and well worth reading. I included one passage below.)

"At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot… Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create."

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...

[TomasBM]

While I also find various approaches and reasons behind IP governance dumb, copying IP is piracy. In practice, copying some things is unlawful, regardless if we think it shouldn't be or if piracy once only referred to naval burglary.

If you copy a book in a bookstore, or leave a perfect synthetic copy of a natural diamond you take, you'll likely be charged with something. Digitally, that's much a clearer legal charge because copying is easier. So, neither is theft, but that doesn't make it lawful either.

There are valid reasons for enforcing IP rights digitally, because "all content should always be free" doesn't pay the bills when all you (can or want to) do is produce content. No existing society agrees that content producers should be subsidized, so in a society dependent on "earn for yourself", content producers shouldn't be punished.

But the punishment does exceed the severity of the "crime" by a lot, I agree.

[MrDrMcCoy]

Piracy started as a term directly related to theft. Its use in the modern age for copying is also an attempt to frame the activity as theft, even though there is no action that can reasonably described as theft. Copying leaves the original right where it was, so no theft has taken place. I'm not saying that violating copyright is OK, just that the terms we are using to describe the wrongness are willfully dishonest. The punishments are also not fit for the crime, but that's another matter entirely.

[TomasBM]

Look, I'm not even claiming that piracy is a good term for it, or that the association between theft and copying wasn't pushed in pro-IP campaigns. But for the past 20 (or 30?) years, piracy has been the word everyone uses for this type of activity.

My point is: even if you changed the word, and explained the difference to everyone who couldn't distinguish between (A) literal theft of a physical object, and (B) a replication of some sequences of binaries, you're still not addressing the real question.

And the real question is: Why shouldn't an author have an option to protect their IP, physically or digitally? What's the difference between copying a physical book and a digital book without author's approval, from the point-of-view of an author trying to get paid for every copy?

I'm personally a fan of alternatives to IP-based earnings and earning enforcement, but I don't see how that helps any author trying to make a living from their content in the world where there are very few alternatives.

[MrDrMcCoy]

My imperfect solution would be to implement some sort of compulsory licensing system that lets people copy at will for reasonable prices, and comes with a more sensible penalty system for violators. People should get paid for their work, but the system we have for that now sucks for everyone but the middlemen / IP squatters.

[MarsIronPI]

I'm pretty sure piracy also includes threats to phisical security by the pirates. No such thing here. Let's not dilute the meaning of the word.

[triceratops]

> If I walked into a house, took a necklace, and left an exact unaltered copy I'd at best be charged with a lesser crime that didn't include theft

Idk what law books you've been reading but this isn't true.

[fluffybucktsnek]

To call Steam one of the strictest IP protection platforms is so laughably innacurate, it's basically wrong. Its DRM is trivial to bypass (specially compared to others), and I have yet to see a case where they banned someone for something stupid in a way that made them lose access to their library.

Otherwise, I agree with the spirit of your comment.

[patrickmcnamara]

I never understand these positions. How do authors make money selling books if someone can legally copy it and give it out for free?

[newer_vienna]

Commissions, grants, advertisements, sponsorships, donations, teaching... There's already an enormous ecosystem of artists and authors who work outside of the copyright realm (blog writers, substackers, social media artists, youtube creators, soundcloud rappers) and who make money enough to pursue their passion and whose business model would be totally unchanged if copyright were abolished entirely tomorrow. When their work is downloaded or shared or copied or linked or edited or remixed they appreciate it and see it as a multiplication of their artistic impact.

[TomasBM]

It's not necessarily incompatible: authors can make money in ways that don't depend on enforcing IP or even the number of books sold. For example, Patreon, Kickstarter, government subsidies, payment for number of books written, grants, etc.

However, all those other ways are more difficult to set up, and can be risky for the funders, so IP enforcement is the least-worst solution.

[compass_copium]

I dunno, the same way they did for decades with public libraries?

[Dylan16807]

Did you take an argument that it's not theft and change the words?

Unlike theft, the word piracy is fine. Nobody thinks you're talking about ships, and the "specific sting" is negligible.

[alex1138]

This isn't so relevant but Steam is actually very annoying to use. No easy settings to disable some of the overlays. I played Final Fantasy 7 and it was some gimped out graphics version, although SE (Square Enix) is also a kind of litigious company

[nemomarx]

Steam only adds one overlay (which is pretty easy to toggle off). if you have another graphic change or overlay it's the devs or publisher who added it

There's a per game toggle for their UI overlay basically and you just need to uncheck a box

[zzzoom]

> GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said.

It is a supply problem. Steam regional pricing and game passes have demolished piracy in countries where people wouldn't have dreamed of paying for a game 15 years ago. And so did Netflix for a while with video, but then everyone had to jump on the bandwagon and now piracy is flourishing again.