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I also happily pay for Netflix. And Amazon. And HBO. and Disney+. So, if something isn't on one of those services, yeah, I'm going to pirate it. I've already ti

by imgabe 7y ago

I also happily pay for Netflix. And Amazon. And HBO. and Disney+. So, if something isn't on one of those services, yeah, I'm going to pirate it. I've already tithed more than enough to the entertainment industry. Most of the time the thing I want to watch isn't available on the services yet, but will be in 3-6 months. Like movies that just came out on video and they want to milk people who will pay $20 to watch it right away before it goes to all the streaming services. Nuts to that.

BoorishBears 7y ago
It’s your choice. If we were on any other forum I would get this mentality a little more but a tech forum of all places. “I paid this one developer and this other developer and all of them are selling copies of the binaries so it’s not like each copy is worth anything anyways, and it’s ok if I steal a copy of this third developer's software because paying these developers means I deserve all the software that isn’t made by them too because developers in general want way more money than I think their software is worth” ??? It’s kind of like, most of us get to see how the bacon is made, and should get all of this nonsense about “the marginal cost of a movie” is silly. A lot of people here make very good money because 1000 hrs of development can become 1,000,000 dollars of revenue because the output of that 1000 hrs can be sold again and again and again ad nauseum. To me the movie industry and the software industry are two sides of the same coin, if anything we have the more extreme version of their setup with much better margins. If you want to steal a movie because you can’t afford it or you feel entitled to have “all the stuff I wanna see right now immediately how dare they make me wait for my movie that I deserve or give me the choice to pay more for earlier access so they can squeeze all the profit from the multi million dollar investment they made” and tell other people what they have the right to price their creative product go right ahead. That entitlement coming from technologists will still get me though.
- imgabe 7y ago
  That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Lots of software that's for sale also only exists because of open source work that the creators released for free. Some of it is probably even used in the movie industry. I'm not against making a profit and it doesn't look like the movie industry has any trouble doing that. Entitlement has nothing to do with it. I don't believe that the movie industry owes me anything. It's just that this option exists and when they make it harder (or in some cases impossible) to pay for something than it is to get it for free, what do you think is going to happen? Suppose each grocery story required everyone who entered to submit to a body cavity search and complete an application detailing their entire credit history before anyone was allowed to shop at the store. Meanwhile, Fat Tony has some groceries that "fell off a truck" that anyone can walk up and buy. Who are people going to shop at? Again, I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying, what do you think is going to happen when you make it harder for people to buy your stuff than it is to steal it? Your options are 1. make it harder to steal - which doesn't really work for digital works. This is the industry's main strategy. 2. make it easier to buy. The music industry seems to have figured this out and it's no longer worth pirating compared to simply subscribing to Spotify. Once they felt that the only way anyone should get their music is by paying $20 for a CD (which was really a price-fixing cartel but that's neither here nor there). They had to come to terms with the fact that nobody is going to pay whatever fantasy price they think they can charge when it can be had for free and the movie industry is going to have to learn the same lesson.
  - penumbra2000 7y ago
    FOSS - fully agreed. It's at the core of many industries (movie-relevant example... guess how many encoders are based on ffmpeg? Answer: practically all of them. Patent restrictions around codecs are so complex that it takes a questionably-legal product used in quiet ways to get real business done). At least tw0 different perspectives here I think, requiring two different thought processes. When viewed as a collective social issue, gray- and black-market forces are part of the panoply of market forces, and that is a good thing. If every human on the planet voluntarily conformed to white market forces no matter what the terms, we would be completely, totally screwed. At the very least, the work required to tune the legal system to accommodate everyone's needs satisfactorily would produce a big mess. To some degree, it's the corruption, work arounds and back room dealing that enable the system to keep functioning, given that legislators and enforcers are flawed humans just like the rest of us. When viewed as an individual, personal issue, we need to draw the line somewhere with our own behaviour. We need to decide when we're going to take the risk and go around the system as it exists, based on our feeling of how fair the system is, and we should consider things like what harm we're doing, and whether we're being hypocritical, as part of that. There is most certainly some hypocrisy in creating and defending IP controls on software products, but calling an open season on digital media; but it's also obviously not 1:1. I believe, morally, that it's important to really think about what the impact might be when you pirate something. Basically I think as a participant in the system you need to be aware of both. Perspective #1 helps defuse the rage, and perspective #2 directs your personal actions. Personally, with media, I draw the line at failing to find a reasonably-priced option. In my country, digital delivery platforms are hamstrung, and cable packages are foolishly assembled. I'm caught in a gap created by distribution contracts that mean I need to pay minimum $50/mo cable to watch the one or two shows I actually want to watch with no direct-buy or digital delivery service available. I don't accept that as reasonable, and I'm not going to get in line with it. I'd pay $20 a season/movie, easy. Give me the option and I'll do it. But, one last note. I work in video tech, and I can assure you that the TV and movie industry is up to its eyeballs in IP negotiations, ownership disputes, technical obstacles and oppressive pre-existing distribution relationships. Content producers have to negotiate with Netflix, theatres, ISPs and cable companies, many of which are co-owned in weird ways and create serious conflicts of interest. Sony needs to negotiate with Warner/AT&T to get their show distributed, but Warner produces their own content, competing for the same pool of eyeballs, and AT&T owns massive portions of the US cable distribution and ISP space, not to mention much of the hard infrastructure those services are deployed over. It's a minor miracle that distribution rights are even negotiated successfully in the first place... I sometimes wonder if MPAA lawyers shouldn't get invited to hostage situations. So have some compassion for the corporations too, they actually can't just up and fix this thing.

by imgabe 7y ago

BoorishBears 7y ago

It’s your choice. If we were on any other forum I would get this mentality a little more but a tech forum of all places. “I paid this one developer and this other developer and all of them are selling copies of the binaries so it’s not like each copy is worth anything anyways, and it’s ok if I steal a copy of this third developer's software because paying these developers means I deserve all the software that isn’t made by them too because developers in general want way more money than I think their software is worth” ??? It’s kind of like, most of us get to see how the bacon is made, and should get all of this nonsense about “the marginal cost of a movie” is silly. A lot of people here make very good money because 1000 hrs of development can become 1,000,000 dollars of revenue because the output of that 1000 hrs can be sold again and again and again ad nauseum. To me the movie industry and the software industry are two sides of the same coin, if anything we have the more extreme version of their setup with much better margins. If you want to steal a movie because you can’t afford it or you feel entitled to have “all the stuff I wanna see right now immediately how dare they make me wait for my movie that I deserve or give me the choice to pay more for earlier access so they can squeeze all the profit from the multi million dollar investment they made” and tell other people what they have the right to price their creative product go right ahead. That entitlement coming from technologists will still get me though.

imgabe 7y ago
That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Lots of software that's for sale also only exists because of open source work that the creators released for free. Some of it is probably even used in the movie industry. I'm not against making a profit and it doesn't look like the movie industry has any trouble doing that. Entitlement has nothing to do with it. I don't believe that the movie industry owes me anything. It's just that this option exists and when they make it harder (or in some cases impossible) to pay for something than it is to get it for free, what do you think is going to happen? Suppose each grocery story required everyone who entered to submit to a body cavity search and complete an application detailing their entire credit history before anyone was allowed to shop at the store. Meanwhile, Fat Tony has some groceries that "fell off a truck" that anyone can walk up and buy. Who are people going to shop at? Again, I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying, what do you think is going to happen when you make it harder for people to buy your stuff than it is to steal it? Your options are 1. make it harder to steal - which doesn't really work for digital works. This is the industry's main strategy. 2. make it easier to buy. The music industry seems to have figured this out and it's no longer worth pirating compared to simply subscribing to Spotify. Once they felt that the only way anyone should get their music is by paying $20 for a CD (which was really a price-fixing cartel but that's neither here nor there). They had to come to terms with the fact that nobody is going to pay whatever fantasy price they think they can charge when it can be had for free and the movie industry is going to have to learn the same lesson.
- penumbra2000 7y ago
  FOSS - fully agreed. It's at the core of many industries (movie-relevant example... guess how many encoders are based on ffmpeg? Answer: practically all of them. Patent restrictions around codecs are so complex that it takes a questionably-legal product used in quiet ways to get real business done). At least tw0 different perspectives here I think, requiring two different thought processes. When viewed as a collective social issue, gray- and black-market forces are part of the panoply of market forces, and that is a good thing. If every human on the planet voluntarily conformed to white market forces no matter what the terms, we would be completely, totally screwed. At the very least, the work required to tune the legal system to accommodate everyone's needs satisfactorily would produce a big mess. To some degree, it's the corruption, work arounds and back room dealing that enable the system to keep functioning, given that legislators and enforcers are flawed humans just like the rest of us. When viewed as an individual, personal issue, we need to draw the line somewhere with our own behaviour. We need to decide when we're going to take the risk and go around the system as it exists, based on our feeling of how fair the system is, and we should consider things like what harm we're doing, and whether we're being hypocritical, as part of that. There is most certainly some hypocrisy in creating and defending IP controls on software products, but calling an open season on digital media; but it's also obviously not 1:1. I believe, morally, that it's important to really think about what the impact might be when you pirate something. Basically I think as a participant in the system you need to be aware of both. Perspective #1 helps defuse the rage, and perspective #2 directs your personal actions. Personally, with media, I draw the line at failing to find a reasonably-priced option. In my country, digital delivery platforms are hamstrung, and cable packages are foolishly assembled. I'm caught in a gap created by distribution contracts that mean I need to pay minimum $50/mo cable to watch the one or two shows I actually want to watch with no direct-buy or digital delivery service available. I don't accept that as reasonable, and I'm not going to get in line with it. I'd pay $20 a season/movie, easy. Give me the option and I'll do it. But, one last note. I work in video tech, and I can assure you that the TV and movie industry is up to its eyeballs in IP negotiations, ownership disputes, technical obstacles and oppressive pre-existing distribution relationships. Content producers have to negotiate with Netflix, theatres, ISPs and cable companies, many of which are co-owned in weird ways and create serious conflicts of interest. Sony needs to negotiate with Warner/AT&T to get their show distributed, but Warner produces their own content, competing for the same pool of eyeballs, and AT&T owns massive portions of the US cable distribution and ISP space, not to mention much of the hard infrastructure those services are deployed over. It's a minor miracle that distribution rights are even negotiated successfully in the first place... I sometimes wonder if MPAA lawyers shouldn't get invited to hostage situations. So have some compassion for the corporations too, they actually can't just up and fix this thing.