The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

  • Rough_N_Ready@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Piracy was never stealing. It’s copyright infringement, but that’s not the same as stealing at all. People saying it’s stealing have always been wrong.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.

    Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.

    Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that’s very different from stealing something.

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      The irony is, you pirating today has been shown to influence you buying it later on in a sale. And there’s a good argument to be made about your word of mouth praise helping their sales.

      • poopkins@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        As every musician knows, exposure is always better than payment! This is why you shouldn’t offer payment to musicians at your wedding, since they’re getting great exposure already. /s

        • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          That’s two very different cases. Using exposure to extort services out people is different than copying something to see if you’d enjoy it.

          • poopkins@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            It’s really not that different. The main difference is the audience size. For an independent musician selling merchandise, it would be equally insulting to them to tell them that they will be repaid in exposure if they give you one for free.

            Making a copy of something “to see if you’d enjoy it” or because it’s somehow great for their exposure is mental gymnastics to justify piracy. Let’s just call it intellectual property theft and stop beating around the bush.

            • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              Copying isn’t theft. You’re about 40 years late to this conversation and you’re starting from the taste of boots? You’re equating an instantly reproducible, finished product with a service; your analogy sucks.

              • poopkins@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                The entire goal of my comment was to avoid mincing words. As somebody who has first hand experienced copyleft violation, it sure doesn’t feel different on the receiving end. I feel this very personal experience is equivocal to copyright infringement. I’m not licking any boots—thanks for that accusation.

                It’s easy to excuse illicit behavior from your armchair by gaslighting with the choice of words, because after all, violating copyright is just sticking it to the man, right? In truth, I feel that my software was stolen for profit and just for me as the little man, there’s no other word that comes to my mind than “theft.”

                • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  You should write an open letter to hobbyists. It worked for Gates. If your software was “stolen for profit” and that didn’t result in more people trying it and buying, I have bad news: it didn’t seem like it was worth the money to the people who tried it. JRC does many studies on piracy and the data shows that total sales are not displaced by piracy volume, again and again. You can make the argument that this is only true for games and music (typically the subject of these studies) but this hardline attitude of it being the same as stealing sucks.

  • iamtherealwalrus@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’ve seen this quote repeated over and over these past few weeks, while noone brothers to actually explain what it means and why. This article is no different unfortunately.

    • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      People want at the same time that wages are higher but they also do not want to pay, for example, software developers appropriately.

      No one wants to be part of the problem, though. So some people justify their copyright infringing by claiming it’s some sort of movement for justice and rebellion against corporations.

      • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 months ago

        Have you ever bought something online (movies, games) that you can’t save/download and then the company you have the money to removed that? That is stealing from you. Simple.

  • Blue@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Pirated valheim, played 20 hours, bought the game.

    Pirated baldurs gate 3 on early access, bought the game with only act 1, that’s how good it is.

    Pirated Valhalla, played 5 hours, uninstalled that trash forever.

    Started pirating streaming services when they told me that I can’t watch shit anymore because streaming service b and c took the shows, and now I have to pay two different streaming services if I want to keep watching.

    • psud@aussie.zone
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      11 months ago

      It’s probably worth pirating games just to test play them before buying the good ones for online play

      • Huschke@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        It’s also great to check if my aging pc is even capable of running it somewhat smoothly.

          • Huschke@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            True, which again brings us back to “piracy is a service problem” which imho it totally is. I never pirate steam games.

  • greedytacothief@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I think piracy is copyright infringement. But like who cares if some big corpos get infringed upon by some dudes.

    • gila@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I think a compromise on copyright could be a good middle ground in future. In the same way that I’m happy to wait for a game to go on sale before I buy and play it, I’d be happy to wait until a movie or series enters the public domain so I can consume it without paying. Obviously not for hundreds of years, or 56 years. But if Netflix/HBO etc shows and movies became free to watch after 6-7 years, most piracy traffic could be easily captured by legal platforms that are more convenient and accessible to more viewers. I struggle to see how it would not further relegate piracy to a niche activity done by very few, or be bad for the content producers in any significant way