• TehPers@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    If everyone who would buy a digital product pirates it instead, then itā€™s clear that they have been harmed by the piracy. This whole ā€œownā€ vs ā€œrentā€ vs etc argument is completely tangental as is the definition of ā€œstealā€, unless pedantry is the purpose of this post. Itā€™s clear that piracy can be harmful.

    ā€œBut they lost nothing physicalā€ is an extremely shallow argument that ignores that not everything with value is physical. If I copy your idea as-is and make a product out of it before you, you can always come up with new ideas, right? Itā€™s not like you lost something physical. Clearly you havenā€™t been harmed, right?

    If someone who wouldnā€™t purchase a digital product pirates it, then itā€™s less obvious whether the creator got harmed by it. Also, to be clear, the discussion over digital ownership is still important.

    • jeremyparker@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      Itā€™s got nothing to do with whether itā€™s physical. Cars are different from movies because the movie can be reproduced infinitely without resource cost (or, very minimal). If you steal a rental car, they have to buy a new one. If you pirate a movie, they havenā€™t lost anything.

      • TehPers@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        If you pirate a movie, they havenā€™t lost anything.

        Surely the sale of that copy of the movie has value? Otherwise if everyone pirates the movie, then they lose nothing and have no incentive to enforce that people purchase it before watching it.

        There are a lot of ways to justify pirating digital content. Pretending as though digital content has no value is not one of them, unless you really and truly believe that creators of digital content deserve no compensation.

        • jeremyparker@programming.dev
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          11 months ago

          First off, I was specifically addressing your concern about the car & itā€™s physicality. Value of physical objects is directly related to the scarcity of the resources; digital content pricing is skeuomorphic (sp?) at best and absolute bullshit at worst.

          Surely the sale of that copy of the movie has value

          Secondly (and thirdly in a sec), this is the fundamental misapprehension that surrounds piracy. Each instance of piracy does not mean one lost sale. In terms of music (I read a study about music piracy a few years ago), this is rarely the case, and in fact, it was the opposite: the study found that the albums that were pirated more resulted in more sales, since the albumā€™s reach was extended.

          Thirdly, one of the core issues with the entertainment industry at the moment is that the streaming services have no way to gauge the draw of a specific show, movie, or song, since subscribers just donā€™t approach their subscription that way - you donā€™t subscribe to Spotify because your want to hear Virtual Cold by Polvo; you subscribe because you want to have access to their entire collection, as well as all the other awesome 90s noise/math rock - even though, letā€™s be honest, you really just listen to Virtual Cold over and over.

          As a result of this clusterfuck, streaming services canā€™t correctly apportion payment to their content - they do an elaborate split of the profits. So - the best way for the ā€œcontent providersā€ (ie copyright holders) to increase profits is to reduce the amount of content on the streaming service - so the profits are spread over fewer titles.

          This is massively hurting the production companies - please note none of these fuckers are getting any sympathy from me, this is just an explanation - theyā€™re having a hard time finding a balance between how much they can spend given that half of their productionsā€™ profits are pennies. (Oops, forgot one element: because of streaming tech, no one buys films in tape or DVD or whatever - which was half of a filmā€™s profit.) Do they make a bunch of huge budget action movie sequels that fill the theater seats? Or do they make smaller-budget films with smaller profit margins?

          Itā€™s a shitty situation, and I donā€™t know what the answer is - but I know that the answer isnā€™t whatever the fuck this is. And, until they figure their shit out, Iā€™m just going to step outside the market for a bit.

          Iā€™m not living in some dream world where piracy doesnā€™t reduce profits. I know that the underground bands that I like are usually supportive of piracy because it helps them more than it hurts - and when it comes to film and TV, when those companies complain about piracy , itā€™s just like those bullshit shoplifting claims - attempts to turn their ā€œline not go upā€ on poor people. Piracy is a grain of sand in the Sahara - they have way bigger problems than that - though I do think increased piracy metrics might help encourage them in the right direction.

          Anyway, if you got this far, I appreciate your time.

          • TehPers@beehaw.org
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            11 months ago

            To be clear, Iā€™m not against piracy as a whole, but at its core if a potential buyer pirates something, then that is an opportunistic loss, and thus there exists a value to what was pirated (or rather the sale of it).

            digital content pricing is skeuomorphic (sp?) at best and absolute bullshit at worst.

            There are a number of ways to price digital content. You could price it based on cost of production split among an estimated number of sales plus a premium, or based on what others in the industry price it at. Regardless, to the creator of that digital content, each sale of that content has value, and while the copy itself might not, the transaction does.

            Each instance of piracy does not mean one lost sale.

            I ā€œdemoedā€ Minecraft before buying it, and you can bet I recommended it to others as well. There are plenty of instances where piracy can be a good thing, however I was never trying to state otherwise. In my original response, I had called out that piracy by people who would not otherwise purchase a product was less clear. There are also people who ā€œpirateā€ content theyā€™ve already purchased, and those who pirate like I did to demo a product before buying it later. In your case, you also have a justification for it when it comes to music. However, the point was that piracy can be harmful (as is shown by my extreme example of everyone pirating something), and therefore the sale of the content being pirated has value. They arenā€™t charging just because they feel like it, theyā€™re charging because theyā€™re selling a product, and the product had a cost to produce, even if it was mostly just an initial cost.

            The debate around digital product ownership is an important one, and if youā€™re voting with your wallet by pirating the content, then by all means I wonā€™t stop you. However, the idea that you arenā€™t ā€œstealingā€ because you pirated digital content rather than purchasing a license to it is a distraction from the real problems of digital ownership that the article covers extremely well, most of which stem from lack of control over your copy of the product. Using piracy to try to effect change makes sense, but only because that piracy can harm the creators/distributors. If it didnā€™t harm them, then they wouldnā€™t care about the piracy and wouldnā€™t be interested in changing.

            Anyway, if you got this far, I appreciate your time.

            Ditto.

      • Sonori@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        So by that logic, if I were to hack your computer, copy the data, and put sell it to some group for them to use, would that be theft. You still have your data, you havenā€™t lost anything directly, and while the group I sold it to may use a saved credit card or password to harm you I didnā€™t, so would what I did be considered theft?

        Similarly, if I just sold the information gained by it to advertisers, marketers, your friendly neighborhood stalker, etcā€¦ Would that have been theft? You werenā€™t harmed, the demonstrably valuable information was just taken without your consent and given to a third party that wanted it.

        • jeremyparker@programming.dev
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          11 months ago

          I just wrote like a 10 page response to another comment on that same post I made so I donā€™t think I have the energy to go too deep on this - so, to keep it short:

          1. I was just rebutting that personā€™s claim that a car and a digital object have the same relationship to value, and they donā€™t; physicality requires resources that ā€œdigitalityā€ doesnā€™t.

          2. I feel like you mightā€™ve agreed with me in the second part? Or, if not, I think you managed to destabilize the entire data economy in like 2 sentences, so, fuck yeah.