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Buying something is owning. That has never changed.
You don’t purchase digital goods. You buy a license to use them, under the conditions you agreed to. Piracy explicitly breaks those conditions 99.9% of the time.
So no, it isn’t stealing. It’s just plainly illegal. And it hurts everyone from the original artist to the multi-billion dollar company that distributes it. Whether you think that is immoral or not is up to you.
Yes, that is the small text they use to justify it, but that’s not how they advertise it. When Amazon Prime wants me to pay for a movie it doesn’t say “License it now!” It says “Buy it now!”
If you go digging into the EULA you’ll see it being called a license, but no effort is made to actually make that clear to the customer.
Furthermore, being technically legal doesn’t make it acceptable. If someone opened a bookstore, and put some treatment on all their books that caused them to suddenly disintegrate after a year, it doesn’t matter if they have on all their receipts that “books are not guaranteed to last longer than a year” or that they “aren’t doing anything illegal”. It’s still a bullshit business practice that shouldn’t be tolerated.
You can buy those movies on physical medium though.
BRB in my to keep a rental car without paying.
“Piracy isn’t stealing? Does that mean stealing also isn’t stealing? Checkmate!”
I’m not owning the car after payment. And I have to follow criteria when using the car.
So why is that not ok?
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Possessing a physical object is different from digital media. You aren’t copying a car, your possession of it prevents someone else from possessing it.
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Renting a physical object does not mean the option to purchase the physical object and own it does not exist. Nobody was upset with the existence of video rental stores because they also had the option to buy and own the videos. If you purchased a movie from Walmart, Walmart didn’t come to your house and take the DVD away once they stopped stocking it.
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1 and 2 are obvious, so you’re either an idiot and not worth trying to explain every simple concept to, or entirely disingenuous. Either way if you’re going to continue to JAQ off then it’s a waste of time to continue responding.
“if buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing”
I’m still confused how this only applies to digital media. In both cases I am agreeing to terms of services.
You don’t see how “piracy” only refers to digital media? What do you think “piracy” is?
What you seem to are saying is that specifically and exclusively people who work on software, music and digital art should give away their labour for free.
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Frankly this catch phrase never made any sense to me, from a logical point of view.
It assumes that:
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If buying = owning then pirating* = stealing, because you own it without buying.
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And if buying =/= owning then pirating =/= stealing, because you can’t own it otherwise.
But the justification in the second statement is completely irrelevant to the first statement. You still own it without buying. It’s still stealing.
UNLESS - we examine what “stealing” is. This is where the arguments about being in a digital space vs. a physical space comes in. Where the question is raised: Is making an exact copy really “stealing”? Or, consider what is being “stolen”? The original item? The idea? We need to think about this more.
But it’s here the argument should be made and here the debate should be. That’s where “pirates” have a chance of winning. Let’s get rid of this flawed, easily repeatable, but fundamentally incorrect catch phrase and come up with a better one already. One that makes sense.
*(Nevermind that most of you technically aren’t even pirating, you’re just downloading the fruits of someone else that pirated.)
What field uses
=/=to mean!=?It’s a shorthand way of writing ≠ digitally without needing to know the alt code or where it is in your mobile devices keyboard
Yeah in programming we just use
!=:!: NOT=: EQUALIt is not a composite expression but a single expression made up from 2 letters. And this is not a widespread notation.
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Ignoring all options to actually buy something to pirate something because you also find offers were you can rent it is just a capitalist mindset. Denying workers money because you want stuff as cheap as possible.
Now… Wait.
Is the argument here that something must be owned to be stolen? I don’t think ownership is contested, just who is the owner. Or is the argument that pirating also isn’t owning… Or… What? Just tit for tat and it looks like the thoughts should be related somehow? I’m all for sailing the high seas and for right to repair / software ownership, but the two concepts are independent as far as I can see.
Idk, if I’m going to try to reproduce this mental gymnastics I should really stretch first: I don’t want to pull something and end up a sovcit.
They just don’t want to consider that it’s possible to steal from the people who made the game even if paying for it doesn’t guarantee you’ll own it forever.
The copyright troll known as “publisher” just will pocket all money you think you paid to people who made the game.
So I hope you check beforehand if that’s actually the case for the specific product you pirate. What I am seeing is that people just pirate everything because they do not respect the creators. From digital art, to indie works in movies, games and music. People pirate because they have the deeply capitalist mindset that if you can pay less (or nothing) for something you should. Even if that means the person that put in the labour and skills has less because of your behaviour.
Nah bro, piracy because we don’t wanna pay.
We don’t mind paying. If it is actually owning and convenient.
Agreed if you have enough financial stability to do so.
Digital Piracy is always right when you are poor when a sale to acces a copy isn’t possible no one loses anything from acquiring it for free and if anyone deserves free game and movie entertainment to distract them from perpetual hardship its the poor.
There is enough open source and free and dirt cheap content available already that you can’t play in a lifetime. While I agree that stuff that’s too expensive for the majority of people shouldn’t even exist, I don’t see why creative content should be free for the taking in a society that doesn’t support that way of life yet. Unless you also agree that people should be allowed to take everything else for free as well.
A lot of games for example you can buy on GoG, and archive the installation file. That is probably the closest you can come when it’s about owning closed source software. Pirating games that are buyable on GoG is simply stealing money from the creators for no other reason than being greedy and cheap.
It’s because people do not want to pay creatives because you can’t physically touch stuff creatives produce.
