4 ms·

Pirates could go to prison for pirating content they cannot legally obtain in their country. Pirates are going to prison for providing a better service at lowe

by zaarn 7y ago

Pirates could go to prison for pirating content they cannot legally obtain in their country. Pirates are going to prison for providing a better service at lower cost, the core essential of capitalism.

pas 7y ago
Protection of property and property rights is seen as part of capitalism though. Intellectual Property is a strange concept, but there is something going on, after all movies and TV shows have enormous budgets and they depend on revenue, which is still basically made from individual cinema goers and TV channels (ads), and subscribers (no ads). The never expiring copyright is the problem, and the very strict fair use (eg sampling, and fanfics are illegal unless proper licences have been attained). This leads to relatively few complex and kind of efficient for-profit content producers, and a lot of very small not-for-profit enthusiasts (who are probably hyper-efficient in some dimensions, but since their competence is naturally limited, they will not be that efficient in all the relevant/required domains). So we have Hollywood, a few independent filmmakers doing the small budget creative stuff, the regional markets with their respective woods (eg India, China, Japan), plus usually countries have some funding for local productions, but that's it. And maybe even this would be more than enough weren't almost all of the content locked up in archives. (And only available maybe on torrent, or maybe on a random on-demand pay-per-view site.)
- zaarn 7y ago
  I'm not arguing against IP and friends here, just pointing out that pirates offer a better service that people increasingly like to use and are punished for it.
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    Another thing about piracy that isn't brought up enough is the preservation of media. Historically, most companies are awful at preserving history. And copyright lengths have been pushed to such extremes that it will easily outlive the company that owns it.
  - pas 7y ago
    Property rights are very much also at the core of capitalism, and piracy only works in a hybrid environment. Of course it works marvelously, for example there are shows that otherwise are inaccessible to many. (Animes come to mind.) If there were some kind of pay as you wish backchannel probably a lot of people would happily give more than zero to content creators.

by zaarn 7y ago

pas 7y ago

Protection of property and property rights is seen as part of capitalism though. Intellectual Property is a strange concept, but there is something going on, after all movies and TV shows have enormous budgets and they depend on revenue, which is still basically made from individual cinema goers and TV channels (ads), and subscribers (no ads). The never expiring copyright is the problem, and the very strict fair use (eg sampling, and fanfics are illegal unless proper licences have been attained). This leads to relatively few complex and kind of efficient for-profit content producers, and a lot of very small not-for-profit enthusiasts (who are probably hyper-efficient in some dimensions, but since their competence is naturally limited, they will not be that efficient in all the relevant/required domains). So we have Hollywood, a few independent filmmakers doing the small budget creative stuff, the regional markets with their respective woods (eg India, China, Japan), plus usually countries have some funding for local productions, but that's it. And maybe even this would be more than enough weren't almost all of the content locked up in archives. (And only available maybe on torrent, or maybe on a random on-demand pay-per-view site.)

zaarn 7y ago
I'm not arguing against IP and friends here, just pointing out that pirates offer a better service that people increasingly like to use and are punished for it.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  Another thing about piracy that isn't brought up enough is the preservation of media. Historically, most companies are awful at preserving history. And copyright lengths have been pushed to such extremes that it will easily outlive the company that owns it.
- pas 7y ago
  Property rights are very much also at the core of capitalism, and piracy only works in a hybrid environment. Of course it works marvelously, for example there are shows that otherwise are inaccessible to many. (Animes come to mind.) If there were some kind of pay as you wish backchannel probably a lot of people would happily give more than zero to content creators.