The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
One of the great modern scams, was to convince society that unauthorized copying of data is somehow equivalent to taking away a physical object.
Jesus didn’t ask for permission to copy bread and fish. It’s a clear moral precedent that if you can copy you should.
What would the Jesus do?
Checkmate Atheists!
Jesus was the first pirate.
Nah, that would be Prometheus.
Wasn’t the idea and origin story of Jesus stolen from previous texts and religions lol
They forked Judaism
Pretty sure it was Marvel or something.
Athiests don’t have a problem with Middle-Eastern Socialist Jews, the ‘Christians’ sure do.
Literally no one thinks that. But you know that already, don’t you?
It’s theft of intellectual property…
There is no such thing as intellectual property - you can not own a thought.
Once again with the strawman.
Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea or digital creation. Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time. Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.
I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.
You seem to not understand what the word own means and the difference between material and not material goods.
You seem to not understand what “theft” means.
I have a thing and than someone takes it away, so I can’t use it anymore. If somebody copies that thing - it’s not really theft.
My point is more - concepts from physical world don’t nessessary apply to digital world.
Yes, it absolutely is, by any standard. Ask the dictionary, ask the law, ask literally any authority on literacy and they all come up with the same verdict.
You’re just lying to yourself to justify doing whatever you want.
If you want to argue when piracy is and is not ethical, that is a different discussion we can have, and we’d likely largely agree. But saying that anything that is digital doesn’t belong to anyone is pure nonsense.
Sure buddy what ever makes you happy.
You say “ask the dictionary” — multiple dictionary definitions as well as Wikipedia say that theft requires the intent to deprive the original owner of the property in question, which obviously doesn’t apply to copyright infringement of digital works.
You say “ask the law” — copyright infringement is not stealing, they are literally two completely different statutes, at least in the US.
So, what the hell are you talking about? Copyright infringement is not theft.
It just seems that what you are saying is that people shouldn’t be paid if their work doesn’t create something physical.
Nope, that’s not what I’m saying. I just make a difference between copying, stealing, physical goods, digital goods and immaterial things. They are not the same.
Easy examples: original and copy does not really apply to digital works or two people on opposite sides of world can have the same thought but not have the same physical object at the same time, etc.
I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws. I don’t need to “justify” at all. I rarely even pirate anything, but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong when I do.
Wow look that’s 3 strawman in a row, you guys are exceptional at fabricating fictional arguments to tear down.
If you’re going to use that word you should at least know what it means so you don’t sound stupid.
Ah, it’s an idea, not a thought. Gotcha. Glad you cleared that up.
Who the fuck cares? Dinner also takes a great deal of time to make.
That’s not true. People have been telling stories and creating art since humanity climbed down from the trees. Compensation might encourage more people to do it, but there was never a time that people weren’t creating, regardless of compensation. In addition, copyright, patents and trademarks are only one way of trying to get compensation. The Sistine chapel ceiling was painted not by an artist who was protected by copyright, but by an artist who had rich patrons who paid him to work.
Maybe “Meg 2: The Trench” wouldn’t have been made unless Warner Brothers knew it would be protected by copyright until 2143. But… maybe it’s not actually necessary to give that level of protection to the expression of ideas for people to be motivated to make them. In addition, maybe the harms of copyright aren’t balanced by the fact that people in 2143 will finally be able to have “Meg 2: The Trench” in the public domain.
Why should an artist not be paid but a gardener or someone who build your house is supposed to be paid?
After all, humans build stuff and make stuff with plants without compensation all the time.
You just sound like a Boomer who thinks work is only work when the product isn’t entertaining or art.
Why are you making up a story about an artist not getting paid?
People who are not human fucking garbage care. If your position is that you simply don’t care about stealing from someone else what they spent years of time and money to create, you’re just a trash person and this conversation is moot.
Removed by mod
It’s abundantly clear at this point that you don’t think people are entitled to compensation for work performed or the products they create so it makes perfect sense that you feel that way.
Nobody said that, just that copyright infringement isn’t stealing.
“Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.”
Just telling on yourself 😂
What is that supposed to mean?
Removed by mod
Honestly that’s only because people are intimidated by big words.
Don’t know, never heard of it.
Removed by mod
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/HmZm8vNHBSU?si=wlEnYZKREf8L_E-o
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
My guy I think maybe you don’t realize how old you are because that campaign is 25+ years old 🤣
That is just typical corporate disinformation and not reflective of modern opinions held by real people.
Removed by mod
Yeah but not in a LOOOONG time 🤣
Real people don’t believe this. It’s just corporate propaganda.
If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?
Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.
…huh?
…no? What are you talking about? All it involves is illegally copying someone else’s work.
Isn’t ‘theft of intellectual property’ taking someone else’s work and try to pass it off as your own?
No.
Intellectual property is a scam, the term was invented to convince dumb people that a government-granted monopoly on the expression of an idea is the same thing as “property”.
You can’t “steal” intellectual property, you can only infringe on someone’s monopoly rights.
This feels like an easy statement to make when it applies to Disney putting out new Avatar movies. Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took, instead of re-printing it without your permission.
“InfORMaTioN wANts tO Be FrEe, yO.”
That’s a pretty specific example. Probably because in many cases photographers are paid in advance. A wedding photographer doesn’t show up at the wedding, take a lot of pictures, then try to work out a deal with the couple getting married. They negotiate a fee before the wedding, and when the wedding is over they turn over the pictures in exchange for the money. Other photographers work on a salary.
Besides, even with your convoluted, overly-specific example, even without a copyright, a magazine would probably pay for the photo. Even if they didn’t get to control the copying of the photo, they could still get the scoop and have the picture out before other people. In your world, how would they “reprint” it without your permission? Would they break into your house and sneakily download it from your phone or camera?
This is the kind of situation I’m citing:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/one-mans-endless-hopeless-struggle-to-protect-his-copyrighted-images/
A lot of photography is not based on planning ahead before being paid (a person requests Photo X, and then pays on delivery). Nature photographers, and in fact many other forms of artists, produce a work before people know/feel they want it, and then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website, and then requests use of that work themselves.
The struggles of the above insect photographer are even with the existing IP laws - they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into, and VERY MANY media outlets don’t bother; to say nothing of giving a charitable donation.
So, they choose to rely on copyright, when they could do work for hire instead.
No, they ask for unfair compensation based on copyrights.
No - they CAN’T do work for hire. Are you listening?
“Hi. I do really cool photos. Please hire me to take one, and after you’ve paid me, you can see it.”
According to you, that’s a comprehensive resume and advertisement for a photographer, absent of a single graphic. According to you, a client could come to a consult about buying a photo, sneak their phone camera up to the print, and say “Never mind about payment! I just copied it. You can keep the print! So long, loser.”
You’re not even trying to imagine the impossible hurdles such a craft would have trying to earn enough to eat food every day, much less have a roof over their head. If you have nothing substantive to add, everyone on this site should be done with you.
Your inability to imagine anything other than the status quo is really depressing.
That is absolutely 100% a completely insane position. The fact that you feel entitled to literally everything someone else creates it’s fucking horrific and you are a sad person.
For someone who bitches all over this thread about people strawmanning their position, this is a pretty fucking great reply.
Hint: one can be pissed about people throwing around the not-based-in-legal-reality term “intellectual property.” One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft, a strategy which has apparently worked mightily well on you. One can be all of those things, and yet still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”
What you posted was a textbook definition of a straw man.
No, you have it wrong, one is part of a strategy to confuse the public into thinking it’s not, because it justifies doing whatever they want.
But they don’t feel that copyright infringement is wrong. How closely did you read the previous statements?
They literally said “Intellectual property is a scam”. I don’t know how else you could possibly interpret that
I don’t know how the original poster meant it, but one possible way to interpret it (which is coincidentally my opinion) is that the concept of intellectual property is a scam, but the underlying actual legal concepts are not. Meaning, the law defines protections for copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, and each of those has their uses and are generally not “scams,” but mixing them all together and packaging them up into this thing called intellectual property (which has no actual legal basis for its existence) is the scam. Does that make sense?
So it’s just a classic case of someone saying something entirely unrepresentative of what they actually mean, then arguing it to death…?
Could we stop having this meta-debate about what a person who is not either of us meant, and instead could you comment on the substance of my post?
Exactly, “intellectual property” doesn’t exist. It’s a term that was created to try to lump together various unrelated government-granted rights: trademark, copyright, patents, etc. They’re all different, and the only thing they have in common is that they’re all rights granted by the government. None of them is property though. That was just a clever term made up by a clever lobbyist to convince people to think of them as property, rather than government-granted rights related to the copying of ideas. Property is well-understood, limited government-granted rights to control the copying of ideas is less well understood. If the lobbyists can get people to think of “intellectual property” they’ve won the framing of the issue.
Imagine if startrek was written with IP in mind. Instead of all these wunderkinds being all gung ho about implementing their warp field improvements on your reactor you’d get some ferengi shilling the latest and greatest “marketable” blech engine improvements.
Fiction is much better without reality leeching in.
Star Trek was set in a future utopia. One of the key things about the show is that it’s a post-scarcity world where even physical objects can be replicated.
They definitely wrote the series with IP in mind… in that their view of a future utopia was one where not only did copyright etc. not exist, but nobody cared much about the ownership of physical objects either.
Nah, if I stole their IP, they wouldn’t have it anymore
Nah, that’s not how that works.
So you also believe people shouldn’t need a ticket for a concert, for example?
The performers time is not infinitely reproducible so your argument is apples to oranges.
But the time to create a novel, a videogame, or a news story is not infinitely reproducible, either. So when you are pirsting one of those things, you are actively reaping the benefits of someone’s time for free, like going to a concert without a ticket
There’s a difference between the performer’s time to create not being infinitely reproducible, and an user’s time to use the product being or not infinitely reproducible. Whether I’m pirating or buying a TV show, the actors were already compensated for their time and use for the show; my payment for buying actually goes to the corporate fat: licensors, distributors, etc.
Whereas when pay a ticket into a live concert, I’m actually paying for something to be made.
And where do you think that money comes from…?
It just magically appears /s Its disingenuous to try and justify piracy on the basis that the performers have already been paid. I don’t agree with studios either of course, customers are being scammed
From the investors who are paying the cheques of course. They are corporations, they can afford to spend some coins on [checks notes] living wages.
That’s exactly it. Investors. They are not donations. They expect a return on their investments.
And such “return” comes after the work, not before. So there’s no reason to condition the wages to do the work, on the potential that the work might be sold or not and to what amount of people. Now that would be air-quotes “stealing”!
This only applies to cases where the artist/actor/whatever gets paid upfront. Most of the times, that does not happen. The creator of something only gets money when somebody buys what they have created (books, videogames, music, etc)
Even if they were paid upfront, they were paid off the idea that the company could make bank on their (ready yourself for the word in case it triggers): Intellectual Property.
In a future world where people have achieved their wish and the concept no longer exists, companies have no reason to pay creators ahead of time.
I can get that they’d not necessarily be paid upfront, but there is no possible legal contract in which they are to be paid only in the future, in causality, according to the performance of a ~~third~ ~ fourth party who is not in the contract. What, are the actors paying their weekly groceries with IOUs?
Every artist in every field get MAYBE paid a tiny bit upfront, and then a percentage of the sales. That’s how books and music work, for instance
Yeah, this is the real issue. That said it is a shame and a waste for the results of these efforts to be artificially restricted. I do really hope that one day we can find a way to keep people fed and happy while fully utilizing the incredible technology we have for copying and redistributing data.
I mean, we’ve kinda already found a way, and it’s ads. Now it’s obvious that the ad market as a whole is horrible (it’s manipulative, it has turned into spying, it does not work really well, it’s been controlled by just a handful of companies etc), but at least it’s democratic in that it allows broader access to culture to everyone while still paying the creators.
Personally, I would not be against ads, if they were not tracking me. As of now, though, the situation seems fucked up and a new model is probably necessary. It’s just that, until now, every other solution is worse for creators.
But it is though: via the power of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television?wprov=sfti1
Though you could charge for the experience of other sweaty humans, bad ventilation in some cases, and the thrill of potentially being trampled
I don’t see anything wrong with paying for software or music or digital media. I don’t think that not doing so is theft - like I also don’t think that getting into a concert without paying is theft. By the way a concert is also not digital data, at least an irl one.
Why do you hate libraries?
A library card is your ticket there and libraries are paid via taxes, which is why they’re free at point of use.
Attending a free concert is not stealing. Breaking into the Eras tour is.
The library buys once and allows multiple people to read/watch each item without each person needing to individually purchase. Just like one person buying something and sharing it with others.
The main point is that digitization distribution is not a concert
Digital distribution is a service. You can steal a service.
If you fuck a prostitute and then don’t pay them, you are stealing from them.
If the prostitute uses a technique, and then you use the same technique without paying hem for reuse, is that stealing or does their direct involvement matter?
If you’re going to retype the code of a program from scratch, then your analogy is valid. If instead you are taking the production created through someone else’s labor without compensating them, then you are stealing from them.
Stop reading my comments if you aren’t going to pay me.
Prostitutes don’t become prostitutes because they know secret techniques.
The metaphor is describing the service provided, and that not paying for said service is indeed stealing.
Trying to make it a different metaphor requires a new framework from you, because you copying their actual service would be you pimping them, under this metaphor.
Someone sharing content on a peer to peer distribution network is not using the digital distribution service of whoever sold the content. They are not ‘stealing’ HBOs bandwidth to share Game of Thrones.
They are sharing a thing that they initially paid for from HBO at no cost to others, similar to letting your friends watch it with you on your TV at the same time. The only difference is scale.
It’s okay I won’t use their digital distribution system to pirate their stuff.
It’s just like falling to pay a prostitute you never fucked
You’re not using their distribution service when you pirate something. That’s the whole point.
Libraries get money via tax. What people here are arguing for is that others should work for them or free. Because game studios, for example, are overwhelmingly not paid via tax money. They are depending on people buying their software. And many software has ongoing costs.
I have never had a problem with people taking a tape recorder to a concert, even if it’s against terms of service
But you do understand that if nobody would buy a ticket, there wouldn’t be concerts?
Do you think I should be forced to pay for a ticket if I’m standing next to the concert venue on the sidewalk but can still hear the performance?
Removed by mod
Still not theft.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Not a lawyer, but most of what you said is true, except:
We’re talking about the theoretical value the creator might get if you decide to pay for something. If you never had any intention of paying to access something if you couldn’t find a pirated copy, no value has been lost by the creator due to copying the data and therefore no harm has been done. The requirement for criminal liability should be that a harm has been inflicted by you beyond any reasonable doubt. Piracy as a deprivation of monetary value can not ever meet this requirement. Of course, the actual requirement is that you have committed a crime beyond reasonable doubt, so if corrupt legislators make piracy a crime, the justice system can obviously charge you with it despite it being victimless, hence the scam.
Removed by mod