3 ms·

I'm sure you yourself can come up with counter-examples for that.

by Dban1 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago
And, furthermore, piracy isn't stealing. It is a major point here that the initial owner of the thing still possesses the thing. They're trying to assert some unnatural right of control over what other people do. It isn't even all that clear why this is a good idea. I can see how it makes sense for legislators because of the presumably significant kickbacks they get from lobbyists; but there is a still an open question of whether this is a good system. It looks like it has had a big negative impact on our ability to sustain a shared culture. If people have to buy in to a culture, a bunch of people won't. People still can't freely distribute Lord of the Rings for example. That isn't helping to get people reading it. J.R.R Tolkien has been dead for a while. Anything less famous than that has little chance to stick.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  The original owner no longer possesses the commercial value of the thing. That's what you steal when you pirate. People have been buying into shared cultures for centuries. Sometimes being able to afford access to a certain culture - and excluding those who can't - is part of the culture itself. In a bottom-up cultures people are happy to pay because they feel part of the scene and they want to support it. A big part of that is user/costumer/fan experience and a feeling of community. Top-down cultures feel exploitative and predatory - because they are. They separate the culture into producers and consumers and enforce strict gatekeeping of the relationship between them - which usually means a one-way financial obligation that feels like extortion, and unnecessary complications and frictions in the experience. The real issue here is the insistence by the media-cos that movies can only ever be top-down. The predictable outcome is there's now a shared culture of piracy in which people willingly support the pirate sites instead of the official distributors, and running a pirate site can be incredibly profitable.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > The original owner no longer possesses the commercial value of the thing. The pirate hasn't gained any commercial value though. I'm pretty sure that "stealing" involves a valuable thing getting transferred from one person to another. Operative word being transfer. Everything the copyright holder had to start with is either retained by them or not possessed by the infringer. So it can't be (and isn't) theft.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    > The original owner no longer possesses the commercial value of the thing. Not exactly: the original owner still has all the commercial value, as decades of piracy has shown that commercial pieces still exist. What the owner has lost though is monopoly over distribution and thus money exchange. It is possible to get the content from other places, and maybe, maybe not give some money back. The proliferation of exclusive content on numerous platforms only confirms that.

I'm sure you yourself can come up with counter-examples for that.

by Dban1 3y ago

I'm sure you yourself can come up with counter-examples for that.

And, furthermore, piracy isn't stealing. It is a major point here that the initial owner of the thing still possesses the thing. They're trying to assert some unnatural right of control over what other people do. It isn't even all that clear why this is a good idea. I can see how it makes sense for legislators because of the presumably significant kickbacks they get from lobbyists; but there is a still an open question of whether this is a good system. It looks like it has had a big negative impact on our ability to sustain a shared culture. If people have to buy in to a culture, a bunch of people won't. People still can't freely distribute Lord of the Rings for example. That isn't helping to get people reading it. J.R.R Tolkien has been dead for a while. Anything less famous than that has little chance to stick.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
The original owner no longer possesses the commercial value of the thing. That's what you steal when you pirate. People have been buying into shared cultures for centuries. Sometimes being able to afford access to a certain culture - and excluding those who can't - is part of the culture itself. In a bottom-up cultures people are happy to pay because they feel part of the scene and they want to support it. A big part of that is user/costumer/fan experience and a feeling of community. Top-down cultures feel exploitative and predatory - because they are. They separate the culture into producers and consumers and enforce strict gatekeeping of the relationship between them - which usually means a one-way financial obligation that feels like extortion, and unnecessary complications and frictions in the experience. The real issue here is the insistence by the media-cos that movies can only ever be top-down. The predictable outcome is there's now a shared culture of piracy in which people willingly support the pirate sites instead of the official distributors, and running a pirate site can be incredibly profitable.
- roenxi 3y ago
  > The original owner no longer possesses the commercial value of the thing. The pirate hasn't gained any commercial value though. I'm pretty sure that "stealing" involves a valuable thing getting transferred from one person to another. Operative word being transfer. Everything the copyright holder had to start with is either retained by them or not possessed by the infringer. So it can't be (and isn't) theft.
- rakoo 3y ago
  > The original owner no longer possesses the commercial value of the thing. Not exactly: the original owner still has all the commercial value, as decades of piracy has shown that commercial pieces still exist. What the owner has lost though is monopoly over distribution and thus money exchange. It is possible to get the content from other places, and maybe, maybe not give some money back. The proliferation of exclusive content on numerous platforms only confirms that.