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It’s immoral, regardless of what you call it, as it’s a violation of the social contract.
by WendyTheWillow 3y ago
It’s immoral, regardless of what you call it, as it’s a violation of the social contract.
- j_maffe 3y agoMonopolies and price-gouging are a violation of the social contract.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoFirstly they are not (and presupposing the latter claim begs the question anyway), and secondly if you think that then don’t participate in the use of the ill gotten goods. Nobody died because they couldn’t hear a song or watch a movie.
- monkeywork 3y agoBy your logic who died when someone downloaded a non approved copy?
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoThat isn’t my logic, but the artist is harmed, for one…
- majkinetor 3y agoArtists are not harmed, for sure. If you don't have money, you wouldn't buy it anyway. By pirating in that scenario, you are promoting it, and thus artist benefits.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoYou’re presuming all pirates only pirate what they otherwise would not purchase, which is impossible to claim credibly.
- virtual_void 3y agoAnd you are presuming that no pirates do by claiming that all piracy is immoral. How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that still immoral?
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoNot at all, I’m claiming piracy generally is immoral. I’m sure you can find exceptions, but the general case is the problem.
- virtual_void 3y agoWithout a clear definition of morality that is considered universal you cannot make any claims about generality. There are many examples of piracy where no one loses out yet someone does benefit. Painting such a complex subject with such a broad brush makes it seem like we’re just talking about your particular feelings rather than something universal. Which is fine, but you’re making claims of generality without presenting a cogent argument.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoSorry but no, this is not a vague concept that we do not share; morality is indeed agreed upon in large strokes, by the very virtue of us interacting in this forum, we already are implicitly agreeing to a number of shared values. For one, you’re not calling me insulting names, you’re accepting I have a point of view, etc. What I am claiming presumes only that you live in a modern society, and therefore you participate in the social contract. Given that, what I am saying is then a conclusion of that.
- virtual_void 3y agoYou’re claiming that all piracy is immoral or breaches a social contract. Then you claim exceptions are ok. Thus not all piracy is immoral. I am trying to get to specifics but you keep waving your hands about this stuff.
- alpaca128 3y agoArtists aren't the ones getting millions in salary bonuses each year.
- gchamonlive 3y agoThat is a fallacy. The artists tend to gain with it, for one piracy boosts concert sales (https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-concert-ticket-sales-hurts-box-office-revenue-180731/ https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-concert-ticket-sales-...). Box office revenues are hurt but the last Hollywood strikes just showed us the corporations couldn't care less about the artists. Only business models that rely on monopolies are harmed.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoIt wouldn’t be a fallacy, it’d just be wrong, except it’s not wrong, and very basic concept that you can’t eat public goodwill demonstrates why. And the entire concept of property is built on monopoly. Are you saying you don’t believe in property?
- Juliate 3y agoAre you saying that there's no difference in nature between physical and immaterial? Or that intellectual property and physical property are the same, with the same working principles, and follow the same rules?
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoNope!
- johnnyanmac 3y agoThere in fact are. And I think it's silly how people always resort to physical metaphors whenever the digital realities inconvenience them. And vice versa. Ditigal media isn't physical, and in this case the physical media was on a closed ecosystem and attached to a server to stream or at least check in to verify. You wouldn't need all this with a plain ol' DVD, but you got advantadeges in that that movie played on any PS device you logged into. If you want DRM free digital media, don't buy the above.
- gchamonlive 3y agoWhat are you talking about? A fallacy is a "mistaken belief", so of course it is wrong. And you should look more into the concept of free riding. For that a good introduction would be The philosophers arms episode about free riding. And what is that about private property? Where did that come from? We are talking about different concepts here, it is about markets and business models. As long as we don't honestly debate how outdated our modes of consumption are, piracy would be a natural response to artificial scarcity.
- leptons 3y ago>and secondly if you think that then don’t participate in the use of the ill gotten goods If a company has a monopoly on something, you cannot just go somewhere else to get something equivalent - that's the thing about monopolies, in a lot of cases, you simply don't have a choice.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoYou do have a choice; do not consume the product. You are not entitled to art because you want it.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoThis idea creates a lot of chance inequality in society and excludes many people from good parts of life.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoYes, inequality in society will exist, but such is the nature of the concept of property. Not everyone gets to access all property.
- leptons 3y agoThis isn't about "art". That's a disingenuous argument. What if the monopoly is keeping a live-saving medicine prohibitively expensive, because people are just greedy. Or some other thing that modern lives are based around - not "art". In some cases the choice is buy the thing from the monopoly, or die, or be jobless or some other kind of calamity. We're not talking about hanging art on a wall to look at.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoIt is literally about art. People need to stop exaggerating piracy to life essentials if they want to be taken seriously. No, I will not blame a homeless dude who grabs a few pieces of food from a grocery store. It can be literal life or death. I can't say the same about someone who "needs to play GTA V" (it was already free at some points. So you're not just entitled but inefficient in your frugality). we can take down big pharma first and then worry about DRM on media you want to consume. It's not all or nothing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- j_maffe 3y agoHow can a student not participate in the use of the ill-gotten goods of textbooks for their studies? For a researcher in a developing country for research papers? Nobody dies, but a lot of people fall behind. It doesn't beg the question when it's so obvious which industries have abused copyright law, gained over 100% in profits, and manipulated the market to gain absolute control over what is offered. Of course, pirating an indie band's song is a lot more in the questionable area (and not done nearly as often, since piracy by nature focuses on the more necessary/popular products) but that's not what's under discussion.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoYes, the piracy is an indie song is precisely what’s under discussion.
- j_maffe 3y agoPiracy is so much more than that. If that is your concern you should specify it. Even then the morality is still debatable but in my view discussion of it is a distraction from the bigger issues.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoAnd in my view, the casual nature of piracy enabling the breakdown of the social contract is one of the many things tearing society apart, so to me it’s pretty important.
- justinclift 3y ago> to me it’s pretty important. What other things do you feel are "tearing society apart", and how important are they to you compared to this?
- atq2119 3y agoSocieties are usual torn apart from the top, because that's where there are people with power to make impactful decisions.
- idle_zealot 3y agoViolating a social contract is not necessarily immoral, in the same way that breaking the law is not necessarily immoral.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoIn this case it’s clearly immoral however, as the stakes for the pirate are so incredibly low.
- alpaca128 3y agoStakes have nothing to do with morality
- andybak 3y ago"clearly"... That's the bit we're disputing. It's not "clear" and it's not "obvious".
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoThen dispute it. I’m claiming it is, and giving lots of reasons. Plenty of angles to approach this, for you.
- andybak 3y agoI did in my other comment.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoThen why make two?
- Juliate 3y agoA more specific, practical and workable discussion than questioning the morality of it is on the perspective of how (and why) the law should balance, in the short and in the long term those interests that should be converging: artists, general public, production/distribution/rights management companies.
- andybak 3y agoIt's a violation of copyright which has been around for a lot less time than "th social contract" however you define it. So - prior to the existence of copyright - was it immoral? And how do laws related to fair-use etc affect it's morality? "Immoral" implies something fairly clear-cut and universal, not the kind of thing where there are complex provisions defining a range of exceptions, differing between jurisdictions. In summary - you are massively oversimplifying a complex topic so I'd have to disagree almost entirely with your formulation.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoImmoral is in no way clear cut, but in this case it is as universal as the agreement to abide by copyright rules are at the time of the exchange between the licensee and owner. The violation of the social contract comes when you agree to terms you intend to our letter decide to violate, or in the case of the consumer pirate, when your benefit from the ill gotten gains of the person you know to have deceitfully obtained to copied work from its owner.
- orwin 3y agoSo it's immoral for the license owner to share it, not for a random person to download it?
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoIt’s immoral for the person who made the implicit agreement (via the social contract and the presumption of the appointment of copyright law) with the owner claiming they wouldn’t share it, and then proceeding to share it.
- elashri 3y agoI don't think "made" is really true here. I did not make the choice to be born in this particular country with this particular social contract. And the copyright law for most part get established before I was even born and I had no say in that. I get the point of social contract, but most people do not form it because it was established before in most cases. Not to mention that this assume you live in a democracy and that social contract is not of sort (it is what it is or we will kill and prison you). So I don't think it is appropriate to make it appear like this was a choice everyone makes. It is not immoral to violate social contact (slavery was social contract but the moral thing was to oppose it -just example not comparison-)
- afiori 3y agoIt is also immoral to delete bought content from users' devices
- johnnyanmac 3y agoif you want to be pedantic, they can't delete it off our device. They just delete it off their server and then when you phone home to verify your movie they can say "sorry we can't play this". Or at least, that's the streaming way. If this was a digital download with on need to phone home it will in fact be stuck on your PS3/4 unless they force you to update to do anything with your PS3/4. From there they can probably delete it during a patch. but the PS3 is well past EoL for that.
- afiori 3y agoMany DRM systems do not work offline or at least require a login/reconnect every few days and even if it would work offline the kind of users that would buy a movie on a playstation are also the kind of users that would connect it to the internet.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- virtual_void 3y agoThere is no singular conception of The Social Contract, nor indeed of morality. You’re making a point about how you feel about it without presenting an argument. The discussion of harms or lack of harm from piracy has been raging for a long time. It’s not going to be solved by appealing to the idea of right and wrong. It’s not universal in this instance which is why the argument continues. You would have a point if everyone agrees it is wrong but some people do it anyway. However, that is not the case.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoIt’s extremely well understood that the social contract covers “don’t lie to get stuff”, which is what pirates do to obtain the copy they then make available, as the social contract presumes those engaged in a sale of a copy of a work won’t turn around and give it away for free. Pirates are thus “free riders” to the social contract.
- virtual_void 3y agoYour argument is based on the terms of a conceptual social contract which is ill defined and not universal. You seem convinced that your system of values are the same set everyone else has. That doesn’t make for a useful argument.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoIt’s actually very important that we agree on the structure of the social contract, and this is not “my” system at all, but a description of the system we both rely on to not get stabbed in the street for our lunch money.
- virtual_void 3y agoAre you are relying on that terminology because you believe piracy to actually be stealing? Depriving a person of something they already own.
- haunter 3y agoWhere I can read this social contract?
- majkinetor 3y agoExactly. People are overthinking this in vain. There is nothing you can do about it, take it as a fact of life - as long as there are digital goods, there will be piracy. Take this into account, do not fight against it.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoA very “is” argument, but the conversation around morality concerns whether you “ought” to.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoGlad you asked: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/
- Tryk 3y agoHobbes was not the last (nor the first) person who thought about the social contract. As you put it in another comment: Allow me to blow your mind https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contemporary/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contempo...
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoSo you understand now what makes piracy so uninterestingly immoral? So clearly a violation then, enacted by free riders who wish only to benefit from the effort and concession of others?
- Jochim 3y ago> enacted by free riders who wish only to benefit from the effort and concession of others? You mean like doing something once and then expecting to be paid for it in perpetuity? Expecting to be paid for the efforts of others, decades after their death? Redefining the legal system in order to prevent others from carrying out the, distribution? I'm much more concerned about those free riders than a teen with no way to pay for digital goods, someone who couldn't afford it, or someone who'd like to keep the things they pay for.
- colinsane 3y ago> social contract 1. a contract is just an abstraction over a commitment to give it more salability. if every contract violation is a sin then so is me committing to meet you for dinner tonight but canceling because i'm feeling under the weather. 2. show me this contract. where/when did i sign it, and was i under duress when i did so?
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoNo, that’s not how the social contract works. You “sign” it by being born into the society where it applies, and you refuse it by leaving that society.
- Juliate 3y agoThat's a very peculiar understanding of what a contract is, and even of what the ill-named implicit "social contract" is. There's the law, that applies upon everyone in a society. There are treaties that try to make laws from countries work together. No morality in that, just practical, time-tested and updated (and updatable) rules & codes. No need to leave a society to refuse and change its laws, hopefully.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoMy man allow me to blow your mind: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/ This is neither my idea, nor is it peculiar in any way. It’s a term used to describe the agreement we all commit to in order to interact in a shared environment.
- colinsane 3y agogreat, now read his counterpart, Rousseau. these are both just stories, and in as much as their conclusions rely upon their assumptions about the "state of nature" they're both flawed: with every decade anthropologists unearth more of human history and find more evidence that neither portrayal comes close to representing the actual ways in which humans interacted at any point before or distant from the English society we and they knew.
- hakdbha 3y ago[dead]
- redeeman 3y agotraditionally contracts have to be signed by both parties to be valid
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoYou signed it when you were born, and you benefit from it every waking moment of your life. The least you could do is abide by it in turn…
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- MrVandemar 3y agoThat's very black and white thinking. Copyright is broken, and in many cases actively impedes accessibility. For example, I have many DVDs that have no subtitle options. If I were hearing impaired, and if piracy were "immoral", I would be shit out of luck if I wanted to watch a film I'd, you know, paid for. In this day and age I can go to OpenSubtitles and find a subtitle track, enabling me or someone who was in genuine need to actually enjoy what they purchased. (Except in Australia, Open Subtitles is blocked! Its considered by the lobbyists to the Government to be piracy and of course, piracy as you point out, is "immoral regardless" and a "violation of the social contract"). There are many other examples of copyright impeding the creation of accessibility options for media where there is no economic motive or legislative requirement to produce such things, such as in the case of Audio Described content for blind and low-vision users for older films. If you're blind and want to watch, say, the Special Edition of ALIENS (1986) then there's no official option to do so, and the only way to be able to enjoy that is via (illegal) volunteer efforts on an "immoral" pirate-archivist website.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoThe false presumption you make here is that you are entitled to these works; you are not. Furthermore, your example isn’t piracy! If you own Aliens, go watch it. If you’ve lost it, you no longer own it I guess then, do you?
- MrVandemar 3y agoMy response was nothing to do with owning something and losing it. It was about the problem of rigid copyright when accessibility options are missing, and the measures that a disabled person might need to resort to to have the same access that everyone else does, especially when the copyright owners decline to make those options available. It was about being inclusive, and inclusivity is absolutely part of our modern social-contract. I'd love it if you re-read my earlier post, and respond to the points as made. It's an interesting and engaging debate. Thank you.
- WendyTheWillow 3y ago
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> a violation of the social contract. Wallstreet feeds on daily violations of the social contract, from 2008 to asset stripping to consolidation to the point where therr is no competition, etc.
- crote 3y agoI also have the right to copy and extract parts of the content under Fair Use. If content providers are making this technically impossible - thus depriving us of the possibility of using it for teaching, research, news reporting, or criticism - how are they not violating the social contract?
- johnnyanmac 3y agoyou do. You can do this without extracting the entire work. >If content providers are making this technically impossible - thus depriving us of the possibility of using it for teaching, research, news reporting, or criticism - how are they not violating the social contract? they aren't? They don't need to provide you with a DRM free copy for that. screen record your tv with your phone camera, you got the footage. Fair Use doesn't entitle you to pristine quality footage. But to go line by line: - education and meusums has ways to request copies legally. It's a pain and money is probably involved but the process exists. - news reporters don't need to necessary show you footage of a copyright movie to review and critique it. They will simply descibe it in text, as they have for decades before the internet made it possible to show clips. This happens even with video reports as they will simply put up other footage as they describe, or use whatever footage is fair game (usually from trailers).
- pastacacioepepe 3y agoNo. Given the current situation, as explained by the article, the moral thing to do is piracy, as a form of resistance at the very least.
- caditinpiscinam 3y ago"Don't pay for something you can get for free" is about as strong a social contract as you'll find under capitalism
- johnnyanmac 3y agoI'll be pedantic: it's unethical (ethics are set by the society you are in). It's questionably immoral (based on personal values) depending on your views of piracy.
- DirkH 3y agoSo is protesting against any unjust law then. How is protesting a law you don't like by violating it not also an immoral breach of the social contract?