7 ms·

It's not all black and white though. Pirating torrent site realistically don't care if pirated stuff is from copyright hoarder or content creator. It's easy to

It's not all black and white though. Pirating torrent site realistically don't care if pirated stuff is from copyright hoarder or content creator. It's easy to say "those corporate money grabbers are evil" but in reality nobody cares who to pirate from. I've seen one writer who was relatively popular, beg his readers to buy his books instead of pirating it, because publisher was going to end his contract, because it was just not very profitable with all the pirating. I fail to see glory for pirating in that. One programmer I knew decided to do shareware in early 2000-s. His program became pretty successful in several months (2-3x times larger revenue than average salary in the country at the time), he could live off it. First time he got cracked and program went on pirating sites his sales were damaged considerably, he added some protection, new features etc. After some time he got cracked again and sales were damaged again. This time he said "screw it", stopped working on the program and got regular job. I fail to see glory for pirating in that. Of course I understand the appeal of pirated content, sometimes it's the only usable way to get something, especially for some old movies/series. And it put pressure on large media companies for content delivery technologies etc. But it's not all fun and giggles, it's a complex issues requiring global discussion and compromises.

netzone 9y ago
I agree. And this is why I no longer pirate stuff, if I can get it legally in a reasonable way. For me as a non-american though, there is a serious lack of content available to me, which means that if I want to watch something, sometimes the only available option is to pirate it.
- barking 9y ago
  Or when the legal way is unpleasant. I couldn't watch GOT on sky Atlantic with its ad breaks every ten minutes.
  - delecti 9y ago
    That's a much less sympathetic position. It's one thing if there's literally no way to consume a piece of content. The copyright holders aren't losing money there. It's another if there's a perfectly viable method available but you want to put on your toddler voice and say "but I don't want it that way."
    - lovich 9y ago
      I wouldn't call forcing ads in as "a perfectly viable way" to watch something, especially on an already paid service. Is it a perfectly viable way to eat dinner at a restaurant if the chef takes your plate away from you mid bite several times so that you can listen to his friend try and sell you shit? If it's free + ads I could agree, but most content sellers are just trying to get paid twice
      - delecti 9y ago
        > I wouldn't call forcing ads in as "a perfectly viable way" to watch something, especially on an already paid service US Cable television already fits that description. Almost 100 million Americans pay a monthly subscription for television content which still includes ads. For that matter, HBO itself is already an extra additional fee on top of that prior subscription. Your restaurant comparison seems particularly disingenuous considering commercials are a pretty normal aspect of television consumption.
        lovich 9y ago
        I don't know if you're aware, but cable was billed as an adless way to get the because you were _already_ paying for it. Then the companies flip flop Ed and started putting ads in. Just because they've gotten away with it for a long time doesn't make it ok. It's not ok for me to punch you in the face even if I've been doing it for 20 years with no consequence. If we take your argument as well, then piracy is perfectly fine because people have been doing it for a long time and it's become a normal aspect of the consumption.
- freeflight 9y ago
  > sometimes the only available option is to pirate it I once had to pay 500€ for torrenting an episode of The Americans that I had no way of buying legally, at least in my country at that time. The only thing I regret? Using torrent and not some alternative where they can't get you for "illegal distribution".
  - striking 9y ago
    Consider paying for a seedbox or VPS instead.
    - freeflight 9y ago
      Nah, these days I mostly stick with DDL, I pay for 1-2 year subscriptions for 1-2 different providers and I'm pretty much set for all my needs.
Feniks 9y ago
I've developed my own golden rule: if something is 5 years or older its public domain. TPB and digital piracy in general functions as a library of Alexandria. Nobody in our society gives a shit about keeping things available. It's all about NOW and MONEY. So much entertainment would be lost without the internet.
- eli 9y ago
  Are there other areas besides digital media where you think it's acceptable to take copies or something to which you are not legally entitled?
  - tazard 9y ago
    Are there areas other than digital media where you can make copies so cheaply and easily?
  - JohnBooty 9y ago
    Does that question make sense outside the domain of media?
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    > legally entitled? When discussing the validity of copyright laws, using legal entitlement as an argument is pretty circular, don't you think?
    - greiskul 9y ago
      Some people really don't get the distinction between moral vs legal. I have actually seen a law student say that they were against legalizing pot, because smoking it is immoral because it's illegal. And he couldn't see how that argument made no sense.
      - rcoveson 9y ago
        While that argument may make no sense to you or me, it makes just as much objective "sense" as any other moral basis. Some people are strict utilitarians, some people have a deontological code, some people's morals come out of a holy book, and some people equate moral with legal. None of them are "correct" or "incorrect," and they absolutely do not make "sense."
croon 9y ago
> It's not all black and white though. Pirating torrent site realistically don't care if pirated stuff is from copyright hoarder or content creator. It's easy to say "those corporate money grabbers are evil" but in reality nobody cares who to pirate from. Some do, some don't. I don't doubt your anecdotes, but I doubt it's true as a pattern. Something being pirated 1M times never means 1M lost sales. It could mean 2K lost sales or it could mean 200K lost sales. The book your writer wrote, did it build on a genre, area of expertise, setting that inherently draws inspiration from earlier works? Where do we draw the line on what you can borrow? If copyright law was as established and enforced 400 years ago as it is today, Shakespeare wouldn't exist (in our knowledge). For two reasons: He wouldn't have read as much as he did, and he couldn't have borrowed as much as he did for his works. We want some kind of middleground. Creators should be compensated, but complete all-encompassing DRM means only a fraction of people would've watched Game of Thrones to discuss it at the water cooler, Kanye West (regardless of what you think of his music) wouldn't be able to release most of his music, etc.
- aquadrop 9y ago
  > Some do, some don't. I've never seen a torrent site which wouldn't let torrents because "oh, it's individual developer's program, we don't allow those". I would say that overwhelming majority of people who created pirate sites (or created/sold illegal compact discs before that) didn't care about who to pirate from. And practically all shareware developers felt it. > Something being pirated 1M times never means 1M lost sales. It could mean 2K lost sales or it could mean 200K lost sales. I've never said it did, and of course it doesn't. And I think pretty much everyone here understands it. I don't know why you've put this sentence in your reply. > The book your writer wrote, did it build on a genre, area of expertise, setting that inherently draws inspiration from earlier works? Where do we draw the line on what you can borrow? I think it's ridiculous to compare outright pirating and "borrowing from genre", everyone sees the difference. If we put that arbitrary line at absurd 90% (less than that "borrowed" is ok), than everything on the torrent sites is still crossing that line, because everything there is full copy... And there's a lot of areas where it's hard to pin point the exact place for some dividing line, but everyone can see the difference between entities: like where you put exact line between colors on a rainbow? But you know that green isn't yellow and red isn't blue, you don't need to know where that line is exactly. > If copyright law was as established and enforced 400 years ago as it is today, Shakespeare wouldn't exist (in our knowledge) I don't how that would make Shakespeare read less, since he couldn't download a book on his phone anyway, and he probably read many books which weren't owned by him, since they were pricey and that price was mostly behind materials of the book and work to create this physical object. But he might or he might not exist, it's hard to say. It's not certain that writing would be less developed, if there were more effects of copyright. Being able to benefit from writing more could motivate more people to write, so it's hard to say what would have happen. Would we will be on the same level of technical progress if there were not patents (yes, there's a lot of ridiculous and bogus things about it now, but I'm talking about history) in previous 200-300 years, when inventors were motivated to create new things by legal protection of the right to benefit from it? Hard to say with certainty (though I incline to the "less advanced" answer).

netzone 9y ago

I agree. And this is why I no longer pirate stuff, if I can get it legally in a reasonable way. For me as a non-american though, there is a serious lack of content available to me, which means that if I want to watch something, sometimes the only available option is to pirate it.

barking 9y ago
Or when the legal way is unpleasant. I couldn't watch GOT on sky Atlantic with its ad breaks every ten minutes.
- delecti 9y ago
  That's a much less sympathetic position. It's one thing if there's literally no way to consume a piece of content. The copyright holders aren't losing money there. It's another if there's a perfectly viable method available but you want to put on your toddler voice and say "but I don't want it that way."
  - lovich 9y ago
    I wouldn't call forcing ads in as "a perfectly viable way" to watch something, especially on an already paid service. Is it a perfectly viable way to eat dinner at a restaurant if the chef takes your plate away from you mid bite several times so that you can listen to his friend try and sell you shit? If it's free + ads I could agree, but most content sellers are just trying to get paid twice
    - delecti 9y ago
      > I wouldn't call forcing ads in as "a perfectly viable way" to watch something, especially on an already paid service US Cable television already fits that description. Almost 100 million Americans pay a monthly subscription for television content which still includes ads. For that matter, HBO itself is already an extra additional fee on top of that prior subscription. Your restaurant comparison seems particularly disingenuous considering commercials are a pretty normal aspect of television consumption.
      - lovich 9y ago
        I don't know if you're aware, but cable was billed as an adless way to get the because you were _already_ paying for it. Then the companies flip flop Ed and started putting ads in. Just because they've gotten away with it for a long time doesn't make it ok. It's not ok for me to punch you in the face even if I've been doing it for 20 years with no consequence. If we take your argument as well, then piracy is perfectly fine because people have been doing it for a long time and it's become a normal aspect of the consumption.
freeflight 9y ago
> sometimes the only available option is to pirate it I once had to pay 500€ for torrenting an episode of The Americans that I had no way of buying legally, at least in my country at that time. The only thing I regret? Using torrent and not some alternative where they can't get you for "illegal distribution".
- striking 9y ago
  Consider paying for a seedbox or VPS instead.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    Nah, these days I mostly stick with DDL, I pay for 1-2 year subscriptions for 1-2 different providers and I'm pretty much set for all my needs.

Feniks 9y ago

I've developed my own golden rule: if something is 5 years or older its public domain. TPB and digital piracy in general functions as a library of Alexandria. Nobody in our society gives a shit about keeping things available. It's all about NOW and MONEY. So much entertainment would be lost without the internet.

eli 9y ago
Are there other areas besides digital media where you think it's acceptable to take copies or something to which you are not legally entitled?
- tazard 9y ago
  Are there areas other than digital media where you can make copies so cheaply and easily?
- JohnBooty 9y ago
  Does that question make sense outside the domain of media?
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  > legally entitled? When discussing the validity of copyright laws, using legal entitlement as an argument is pretty circular, don't you think?
  - greiskul 9y ago
    Some people really don't get the distinction between moral vs legal. I have actually seen a law student say that they were against legalizing pot, because smoking it is immoral because it's illegal. And he couldn't see how that argument made no sense.
    - rcoveson 9y ago
      While that argument may make no sense to you or me, it makes just as much objective "sense" as any other moral basis. Some people are strict utilitarians, some people have a deontological code, some people's morals come out of a holy book, and some people equate moral with legal. None of them are "correct" or "incorrect," and they absolutely do not make "sense."

croon 9y ago

> It's not all black and white though. Pirating torrent site realistically don't care if pirated stuff is from copyright hoarder or content creator. It's easy to say "those corporate money grabbers are evil" but in reality nobody cares who to pirate from. Some do, some don't. I don't doubt your anecdotes, but I doubt it's true as a pattern. Something being pirated 1M times never means 1M lost sales. It could mean 2K lost sales or it could mean 200K lost sales. The book your writer wrote, did it build on a genre, area of expertise, setting that inherently draws inspiration from earlier works? Where do we draw the line on what you can borrow? If copyright law was as established and enforced 400 years ago as it is today, Shakespeare wouldn't exist (in our knowledge). For two reasons: He wouldn't have read as much as he did, and he couldn't have borrowed as much as he did for his works. We want some kind of middleground. Creators should be compensated, but complete all-encompassing DRM means only a fraction of people would've watched Game of Thrones to discuss it at the water cooler, Kanye West (regardless of what you think of his music) wouldn't be able to release most of his music, etc.

aquadrop 9y ago
> Some do, some don't. I've never seen a torrent site which wouldn't let torrents because "oh, it's individual developer's program, we don't allow those". I would say that overwhelming majority of people who created pirate sites (or created/sold illegal compact discs before that) didn't care about who to pirate from. And practically all shareware developers felt it. > Something being pirated 1M times never means 1M lost sales. It could mean 2K lost sales or it could mean 200K lost sales. I've never said it did, and of course it doesn't. And I think pretty much everyone here understands it. I don't know why you've put this sentence in your reply. > The book your writer wrote, did it build on a genre, area of expertise, setting that inherently draws inspiration from earlier works? Where do we draw the line on what you can borrow? I think it's ridiculous to compare outright pirating and "borrowing from genre", everyone sees the difference. If we put that arbitrary line at absurd 90% (less than that "borrowed" is ok), than everything on the torrent sites is still crossing that line, because everything there is full copy... And there's a lot of areas where it's hard to pin point the exact place for some dividing line, but everyone can see the difference between entities: like where you put exact line between colors on a rainbow? But you know that green isn't yellow and red isn't blue, you don't need to know where that line is exactly. > If copyright law was as established and enforced 400 years ago as it is today, Shakespeare wouldn't exist (in our knowledge) I don't how that would make Shakespeare read less, since he couldn't download a book on his phone anyway, and he probably read many books which weren't owned by him, since they were pricey and that price was mostly behind materials of the book and work to create this physical object. But he might or he might not exist, it's hard to say. It's not certain that writing would be less developed, if there were more effects of copyright. Being able to benefit from writing more could motivate more people to write, so it's hard to say what would have happen. Would we will be on the same level of technical progress if there were not patents (yes, there's a lot of ridiculous and bogus things about it now, but I'm talking about history) in previous 200-300 years, when inventors were motivated to create new things by legal protection of the right to benefit from it? Hard to say with certainty (though I incline to the "less advanced" answer).