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By reading the rest of this comment, you agree to give me all your money forever. (edited to emphasize "rest of" which OP apparently missed) Assuming you're s

By reading the rest of this comment, you agree to give me all your money forever. (edited to emphasize "rest of" which OP apparently missed) Assuming you're still here, what's the ethical difference between this and "by purchasing this DVD you agree to blah blah"? In neither case did anyone agree to anything.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago
I didn't have a choice in reading your "contract", but I do have a choice in purchasing a DVD.
- ineptech 3y ago
  See my edit: of course, as a benevolent Rightsholder(tm)(c)(R) I am only demanding your money if you continue reading after the "contract" you "agreed" to. The point, of course, is that there is no agreement in either case. You agree to do something when you agree to it, not when I claim that you agreed to it. You can argue the opposite legally, and you might even win, but you can't argue it ethically; absent a crisis of conscience halfway through, someone who intended to pirate a movie and then went on to actually pirate a movie did not agree not to pirate a movie a priori.
  - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
    Except there is a very clear agreement in the case where you purchase a DVD. You own the physical DVD, but you license the contents of that DVD. It's right there on the DVD box itself.
    - ineptech 3y ago
      ...yes, much like the very clear agreement in my comment where you agreed to give me all of your money. Why can you ignore the one, and I can't ignore the other? What, ethically speaking, is the difference between them?
      - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        The purchase is where you consent/reject the agreement. That's not the same as merely reading something.
        bluefirebrand 3y ago
        If you purchase a Disney movie on DVD from Walmart are you making an agreement with Disney? Absolutely not. That would be absurd.
        WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        Yes, you enter into an agreement with Disney that you will abide by copyright law. You would not have been sold the item if Disney were aware you did not agree to copyright law.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        ineptech 3y ago
        We're going in circles; why are they different? I understand that the movie studio would like them to be different, they put a sticker on the side of the DVD saying so, but I don't care about their opinion on the matter and even after four responses it's not clear why you think I ought to. I get why you're taking this position - If I agree to not do X and then do X, you can call me unethical even if X is harmless. So, if you can show that pirates somehow agreed not to pirate, you can declare that those pirates are unethical without having to show that piracy itself is unethical. The problem with this position is that it uses semantics to contradict reality. You're asking us to imagine someone who picks up a DVD in a store and reads the sticker on the side and loudly declares, "What nonsense, I'm going to go pirate this movie right now!", and claiming that ethically he is somehow agreeing to the license, and that when he goes home and uploads it, that he is somehow breaking a promise not to pirate it despite having explicitly promised do exactly that. That's an obviously contorted position. If piracy is bad, it's because of the ramifications of the actual act of piracy, not because a corporation fooled me into pinky-swearing not to do it. Companies try to tell us what to do all the time, you can just ignore them; boilerplate legalese has no moral or ethical valence. However, I will also say that I appreciate the time and patience you've put into this thread, you've been nothing but civil and in good faith, so thanks for that.
    - erik_seaberg 3y ago
      A valid contract requires a meeting of the minds, but the average customer has no idea that a legal fiction separates the movie he wanted from the plastic disc he just bought. It was a mistake to entertain dense contracts of adhesion with parties who were never really expected to understand them (who hires a lawyer before spending $15 on a movie?). UCC should add anything reasonable that copyright law doesn’t already cover. Infringement is a tort with statutory penalties even without any contract.
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  But you don't need to actually agree to the contract in order to purchase the DVD. It's a contract that the rights holder is trying to say you've agreed to implicitly by buying the DVD, but you've never actually agreed to anything. If I tell the checkout clerk at Walmart verbally "I refuse to abide by the terms of use for this DVD and I will make copies and distribute them as I please", that clerk has absolutely zero obligation to refuse to sell me the DVD and would probably just be like "sure man whatever" So it's not actually a condition of sale. It's supposedly a condition of viewing/usage of the content on the DVD, but I never agreed to it and the content is in my possession so...
  - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
    The Walmart store associate absolutely has a duty not to sell you that DVD; while we can argue over the nature of the implicit contract you consent to when you buy something, it's almost certainly an explicit clause in Walmart's contract with, say, Paramount that they take all effort to limit piracy of content they sell to customers.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      > it's almost certainly an explicit clause in Walmart's contract with, say, Paramount that they take all effort to limit piracy of content they sell to customers I've actually worked at retail stores that sold CDs, DVDs and Videogames. At no point during any kind of training was I told to take any action to limit piracy of content that we sold to customers. If this was part of Retailers contract, then it would certainly be part of sales associate training. Since it's not, I'm going to have to firmly assert that it is Definitely Not "almost certainly an explicit clause" like you claim.
      - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        Why would a store associate be aware of the language of the contract between your corporation and the supplier? Besides, even if it weren't in the contract, the product is covered by copyright law. No person who owns content that can trivially be made worthless absent copyright law would ever allow a copy of their work to be made. That's the agreement you enter into when you purchase a copy of the work.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago

I didn't have a choice in reading your "contract", but I do have a choice in purchasing a DVD.

ineptech 3y ago
See my edit: of course, as a benevolent Rightsholder(tm)(c)(R) I am only demanding your money if you continue reading after the "contract" you "agreed" to. The point, of course, is that there is no agreement in either case. You agree to do something when you agree to it, not when I claim that you agreed to it. You can argue the opposite legally, and you might even win, but you can't argue it ethically; absent a crisis of conscience halfway through, someone who intended to pirate a movie and then went on to actually pirate a movie did not agree not to pirate a movie a priori.
- WendyTheWillow 3y ago
  Except there is a very clear agreement in the case where you purchase a DVD. You own the physical DVD, but you license the contents of that DVD. It's right there on the DVD box itself.
  - ineptech 3y ago
    ...yes, much like the very clear agreement in my comment where you agreed to give me all of your money. Why can you ignore the one, and I can't ignore the other? What, ethically speaking, is the difference between them?
    - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
      The purchase is where you consent/reject the agreement. That's not the same as merely reading something.
      - bluefirebrand 3y ago
        If you purchase a Disney movie on DVD from Walmart are you making an agreement with Disney? Absolutely not. That would be absurd.
        WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        Yes, you enter into an agreement with Disney that you will abide by copyright law. You would not have been sold the item if Disney were aware you did not agree to copyright law.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - ineptech 3y ago
        We're going in circles; why are they different? I understand that the movie studio would like them to be different, they put a sticker on the side of the DVD saying so, but I don't care about their opinion on the matter and even after four responses it's not clear why you think I ought to. I get why you're taking this position - If I agree to not do X and then do X, you can call me unethical even if X is harmless. So, if you can show that pirates somehow agreed not to pirate, you can declare that those pirates are unethical without having to show that piracy itself is unethical. The problem with this position is that it uses semantics to contradict reality. You're asking us to imagine someone who picks up a DVD in a store and reads the sticker on the side and loudly declares, "What nonsense, I'm going to go pirate this movie right now!", and claiming that ethically he is somehow agreeing to the license, and that when he goes home and uploads it, that he is somehow breaking a promise not to pirate it despite having explicitly promised do exactly that. That's an obviously contorted position. If piracy is bad, it's because of the ramifications of the actual act of piracy, not because a corporation fooled me into pinky-swearing not to do it. Companies try to tell us what to do all the time, you can just ignore them; boilerplate legalese has no moral or ethical valence. However, I will also say that I appreciate the time and patience you've put into this thread, you've been nothing but civil and in good faith, so thanks for that.
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    A valid contract requires a meeting of the minds, but the average customer has no idea that a legal fiction separates the movie he wanted from the plastic disc he just bought. It was a mistake to entertain dense contracts of adhesion with parties who were never really expected to understand them (who hires a lawyer before spending $15 on a movie?). UCC should add anything reasonable that copyright law doesn’t already cover. Infringement is a tort with statutory penalties even without any contract.
bluefirebrand 3y ago
But you don't need to actually agree to the contract in order to purchase the DVD. It's a contract that the rights holder is trying to say you've agreed to implicitly by buying the DVD, but you've never actually agreed to anything. If I tell the checkout clerk at Walmart verbally "I refuse to abide by the terms of use for this DVD and I will make copies and distribute them as I please", that clerk has absolutely zero obligation to refuse to sell me the DVD and would probably just be like "sure man whatever" So it's not actually a condition of sale. It's supposedly a condition of viewing/usage of the content on the DVD, but I never agreed to it and the content is in my possession so...
- WendyTheWillow 3y ago
  The Walmart store associate absolutely has a duty not to sell you that DVD; while we can argue over the nature of the implicit contract you consent to when you buy something, it's almost certainly an explicit clause in Walmart's contract with, say, Paramount that they take all effort to limit piracy of content they sell to customers.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    > it's almost certainly an explicit clause in Walmart's contract with, say, Paramount that they take all effort to limit piracy of content they sell to customers I've actually worked at retail stores that sold CDs, DVDs and Videogames. At no point during any kind of training was I told to take any action to limit piracy of content that we sold to customers. If this was part of Retailers contract, then it would certainly be part of sales associate training. Since it's not, I'm going to have to firmly assert that it is Definitely Not "almost certainly an explicit clause" like you claim.
    - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
      Why would a store associate be aware of the language of the contract between your corporation and the supplier? Besides, even if it weren't in the contract, the product is covered by copyright law. No person who owns content that can trivially be made worthless absent copyright law would ever allow a copy of their work to be made. That's the agreement you enter into when you purchase a copy of the work.