4 ms·

I actually have more respect for people who pirate to get things for free than people who pirate and claim that they're only doing it because X condition isn't

I actually have more respect for people who pirate to get things for free than people who pirate and claim that they're only doing it because X condition isn't met. X could be that it's not in the format you want, that it's not at the price point you want, or any number of other things. The publishers business model is their business model, good or bad. Own up to your decision to pirate.

Deezul 15y ago
It's this line of thinking that will eventually send old media to the grave. They’ll hang on for a while, grasping at the golden years of yore, but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. It’s not about “excuses”, it’s about reality, facts. If technology and the convenience it affords isn’t used as a medium to enhance customer experience it will be its demise.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  > but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. No business can meet all demands. I think this is what annoys me the most about the "I pirate because I'm underserved" crowd. They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not. People in all walks of life, in all times, have had to deal with not getting everything they want. Had to deal with making compromises. In this particular case Fred had several options to see the basketball game. He has season tickets. He could have chosen a different way to pay for television (I don't live in NY but I'm assuming it has DirectTV or Dish Network or some other option besides just Time Warner). He made the choice that he made, but was unwilling to accept the downside it came with. In the business world we call these entitled customers. These are the types of people who bring back clothes 2 years after the purchase and get huffy when the store won't return them.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    These are the types of people who bring back clothes 2 years after the purchase and get huffy when the store won't return them. But in this case, it doesn't matter if the store accepts the return or not, he gets his money thanks to the pirates. When you are competing against free, it's bad business sense to turn away paying customers like this guy. (The retail analogy is: this guy buys some clothes. He wants to return them, and you say no. The cash register opens and gives the guy his money back anyway. So you might as well take the clothes he's trying to return.)
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      Show your math. It's easy to say Fred's pirating is a net loss for the NBA, much harder to prove it. For example if they were to do away with League Pass blackouts (which I pay for, by the way), surely this would have a great negative effect the next time they negotiate with MSG, WGN, etc.
  - hxa7241 15y ago
    This whole 'entitlement' spiel is bogus. People expect to be able to get stuff because they know it is available. If each piece of TV/music/whatever had to be dug out of the ground, or hand-made, at great expense, they would not be available easily. People would want them, but hardly anyone would be providing them. But that is just not the case here. These things are trivially available. It is that they are being witheld by certain providers -- because the whole market rests on a made-up artificial scarcity. That is the basic underlying physical fact, and people feel it. If people expect to be able to easily get stuff that is actually easily available, they are absolutely right!
  - Bobby_Tables 15y ago
    Actually, he probably didn't have any other option to watch the game on TV. NYC (and especially Manhattan) residents very rarely have a choice of cable providers. If you're in a Time Warner building, no other cable company can provide service there, and it's very rare to live in a cable building where DirecTV or Dish service is also available. So really, his choice is to move into a building with a different cable provider and hope that provider doesn't get into a similar spat.
  - Androsynth 15y ago
    In the business world we call these entitled customers. These are the types of people who bring back clothes 2 years after the purchase and get huffy when the store won't return them. Then Zappos comes along and eats your lunch. The fact is that this is an outdated business model that is still around solely because of govt control and interference. If these laws were changed, dozens if not hundreds of people from this community alone would be eating their lunch.
  - Deezul 15y ago
    You're missing my point and getting caught up in the fact that entitlement annoys you. Regardless of how you feel and regardless of the consumers state of mind, this is happening. > No business can meet all demands. Absolutely, but it isn't being met. The demand of universal access is being fulfilled elsewhere. >They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not. What's unique to our time and the internet is that I can get what I want and it's more convenient than the conventional way. That's the problem I was trying to highlight, hopefully this doesn't come across as snarky.
MichaelGG 15y ago
Isn't pirating to get things for free just a special case of X condition not being met (where X = (price = $0))?
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Absolutely, but usually in that case the person doesn't have the sense of entitlement that I see from piraters who claim "i wanted to receive the content by carrier pigeon but because the option wasn't available I was forced to pirate".
  - freehunter 15y ago
    That's quite the hyperbole there. Not sure it's completely warranted. I've never heard anyone seriously making outrageous claims about what they'd like, it's mainly "I want to watch one show/channel without being forced to pay for 199 channels I'll never watch." That's pretty reasonable, I'd say. I subscribed to MLB.tv this spring and cancelled after one month because my market was blacked out the entire time. The technology is there, it works, and people are willing to pay for it. $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller. I used to pirate music. I'd usually only listen to an album a few times, then put it on the shelf to listen to more new music. Buying a song didn't make sense in that regard. Then the Zune Pass came along, $10/mo for unlimited music, virtually no restrictions. I could listen to a song once or twice, shelve it, and grab another. I got my Zune in 2009, and that was the last time I ever pirated a song. Now if only the rest of the entertainment industry could catch up.
    - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
      > $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller. It's obviously not a better deal for the MLB or they wouldn't be blacking out the games. If you're going to make the claim that a company is not acting in its own financial self-interest please show your math. I think people here are drastically underestimating the cost to a sports league breaking cable contracts to better serve high-maintenance customers.
marknutter 15y ago
Your respect would be nice, but being able to watch my favorite sport without subscribing to cable television is nicer. I'm at peace with my decision to pirate. Feelings and morals aside, at the end of the day the NBA and their customers are losing ad-revenue because it's more convenient for people like me to pirate live events than it is to legitimately pay for access to them. Self-righteousness doesn't put money in the bank (unless SOPA passes, of course).
mitchellhislop 15y ago
He was - he pirated because there was no other way to get the content he had paid for. In some cases, there is no other way, period. When X condition is "Getting something I paid for", I have respect. Look at what happened here - a rather well known person openly admitted to pirating. You are saying you would rather he just said "I wanted it for free?"

Deezul 15y ago

It's this line of thinking that will eventually send old media to the grave. They’ll hang on for a while, grasping at the golden years of yore, but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. It’s not about “excuses”, it’s about reality, facts. If technology and the convenience it affords isn’t used as a medium to enhance customer experience it will be its demise.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
> but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. No business can meet all demands. I think this is what annoys me the most about the "I pirate because I'm underserved" crowd. They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not. People in all walks of life, in all times, have had to deal with not getting everything they want. Had to deal with making compromises. In this particular case Fred had several options to see the basketball game. He has season tickets. He could have chosen a different way to pay for television (I don't live in NY but I'm assuming it has DirectTV or Dish Network or some other option besides just Time Warner). He made the choice that he made, but was unwilling to accept the downside it came with. In the business world we call these entitled customers. These are the types of people who bring back clothes 2 years after the purchase and get huffy when the store won't return them.
- jrockway 15y ago
  These are the types of people who bring back clothes 2 years after the purchase and get huffy when the store won't return them. But in this case, it doesn't matter if the store accepts the return or not, he gets his money thanks to the pirates. When you are competing against free, it's bad business sense to turn away paying customers like this guy. (The retail analogy is: this guy buys some clothes. He wants to return them, and you say no. The cash register opens and gives the guy his money back anyway. So you might as well take the clothes he's trying to return.)
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Show your math. It's easy to say Fred's pirating is a net loss for the NBA, much harder to prove it. For example if they were to do away with League Pass blackouts (which I pay for, by the way), surely this would have a great negative effect the next time they negotiate with MSG, WGN, etc.
- hxa7241 15y ago
  This whole 'entitlement' spiel is bogus. People expect to be able to get stuff because they know it is available. If each piece of TV/music/whatever had to be dug out of the ground, or hand-made, at great expense, they would not be available easily. People would want them, but hardly anyone would be providing them. But that is just not the case here. These things are trivially available. It is that they are being witheld by certain providers -- because the whole market rests on a made-up artificial scarcity. That is the basic underlying physical fact, and people feel it. If people expect to be able to easily get stuff that is actually easily available, they are absolutely right!
- Bobby_Tables 15y ago
  Actually, he probably didn't have any other option to watch the game on TV. NYC (and especially Manhattan) residents very rarely have a choice of cable providers. If you're in a Time Warner building, no other cable company can provide service there, and it's very rare to live in a cable building where DirecTV or Dish service is also available. So really, his choice is to move into a building with a different cable provider and hope that provider doesn't get into a similar spat.
- Androsynth 15y ago
  In the business world we call these entitled customers. These are the types of people who bring back clothes 2 years after the purchase and get huffy when the store won't return them. Then Zappos comes along and eats your lunch. The fact is that this is an outdated business model that is still around solely because of govt control and interference. If these laws were changed, dozens if not hundreds of people from this community alone would be eating their lunch.
- Deezul 15y ago
  You're missing my point and getting caught up in the fact that entitlement annoys you. Regardless of how you feel and regardless of the consumers state of mind, this is happening. > No business can meet all demands. Absolutely, but it isn't being met. The demand of universal access is being fulfilled elsewhere. >They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not. What's unique to our time and the internet is that I can get what I want and it's more convenient than the conventional way. That's the problem I was trying to highlight, hopefully this doesn't come across as snarky.

MichaelGG 15y ago

Isn't pirating to get things for free just a special case of X condition not being met (where X = (price = $0))?

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Absolutely, but usually in that case the person doesn't have the sense of entitlement that I see from piraters who claim "i wanted to receive the content by carrier pigeon but because the option wasn't available I was forced to pirate".
- freehunter 15y ago
  That's quite the hyperbole there. Not sure it's completely warranted. I've never heard anyone seriously making outrageous claims about what they'd like, it's mainly "I want to watch one show/channel without being forced to pay for 199 channels I'll never watch." That's pretty reasonable, I'd say. I subscribed to MLB.tv this spring and cancelled after one month because my market was blacked out the entire time. The technology is there, it works, and people are willing to pay for it. $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller. I used to pirate music. I'd usually only listen to an album a few times, then put it on the shelf to listen to more new music. Buying a song didn't make sense in that regard. Then the Zune Pass came along, $10/mo for unlimited music, virtually no restrictions. I could listen to a song once or twice, shelve it, and grab another. I got my Zune in 2009, and that was the last time I ever pirated a song. Now if only the rest of the entertainment industry could catch up.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    > $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller. It's obviously not a better deal for the MLB or they wouldn't be blacking out the games. If you're going to make the claim that a company is not acting in its own financial self-interest please show your math. I think people here are drastically underestimating the cost to a sports league breaking cable contracts to better serve high-maintenance customers.

marknutter 15y ago

Your respect would be nice, but being able to watch my favorite sport without subscribing to cable television is nicer. I'm at peace with my decision to pirate. Feelings and morals aside, at the end of the day the NBA and their customers are losing ad-revenue because it's more convenient for people like me to pirate live events than it is to legitimately pay for access to them. Self-righteousness doesn't put money in the bank (unless SOPA passes, of course).

mitchellhislop 15y ago

He was - he pirated because there was no other way to get the content he had paid for. In some cases, there is no other way, period. When X condition is "Getting something I paid for", I have respect. Look at what happened here - a rather well known person openly admitted to pirating. You are saying you would rather he just said "I wanted it for free?"