8 ms·

If the media streaming market reaches a price I'm willing to pay, I might stop torrenting and streaming from other sources for the very limited non-free media I

• jfk13 7y ago
  Do you steal things from shops if the asking price is higher than you're willing to pay? Is "media" special, such that the producer/distributor isn't entitled to set their price in the way vendors of other things do?
  • scotty79 7y ago
    I would if I could do it from home with zero chance of getting caught and shop wouldn't loose the thing I stole. If you say you wouldn't I think you are lying, mostly to yourself.
    • Endy 7y ago
      As an inveterate and unrepentant pirate, I can tell you that I would not. It is depriving someone else who deserves a thing just as much as I do. I am not paying my grocer for today's goods that I buy, I'm paying him to keep bringing goods in and having stocked shelves for myself and others. I have no such compunction toward any particular artist in any medium. If they keep creating stuff I like, good on them. If they do not, I'm totally unconcerned; because there will be others along to create something new.
      • johntiger1 7y ago
        This is a brutal world viewpoint
  • JudgeWapner 7y ago
    it's just the consumer's version of Hollywood Accounting: sorry, but there's just no money left to pay you :(
  • filoleg 7y ago
    It is special, because when you steal a physical thing, the owner doesn't have that physical thing anymore. If you pirate something that you weren't gonna buy anyways, the owner still has the digital file in the exact same way they had it before you pirated. I cannot even call pirating "stealing" in good conscious tbh.
    • mr_toad 7y ago
      Legally, copyright infringement (and IP infringement in general) is treated more like trespassing than theft, in that you may be infringing on the owners enjoyments, rather than depriving them of property.
  • Endy 7y ago
    Stealing implies deprivation, not duplication. Digital copying is entirely the latter. And very few physical goods are part and parcel to culture - which should be free in any event. We are losing our ability to create mythology, because it's all being crafted for money and shoved out from corporations. Consider the case of Don Quixote - the author felt he had to write a sequel and a "closing" of the story because so many others wrote their own stories of the Man of La Mancha. Bacon pirated from Goethe, Shakespeare from a score of others. Without free duplication and access to media, there is no common conversation - we'd each be trapped in our paywalls. I refuse to accept that; and I believe that culture is more important than money ever will be. A person who creates a seminal work that gets pirated far and wide would be better off accepting it and creating another work to make something off. Either that or having a real living while he creates. The idea of "artist" as a career, especially a prestigious and high-paying career, is one of many missteps of our modern world.
    • brokenmachine 7y ago
      > The idea of "artist" as a career, especially a prestigious and high-paying career, is one of many missteps of our modern world. So you don't think there is anyone who is accomplished enough at being an artist that they should be able to make it a profession? I want to experience the best artists being able to spend the time doing the best work they can possibly do, not a generation of office workers who can only afford to produce mediocre art for a maximum of a couple of hours per day, like me. :(
      • incompatible 7y ago
        We need to try some different economic models for information. Is there any reason to think that treating it as private property, with artificial scarcity, is the only way that things can be organized? The laws of physics don't require it.
        • brokenmachine 7y ago
          I agree in principle, but what are some other economic models that can work in the real world? Artists need to pay their bills, so the way I see it, they need to be paid by some mechanism.