Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it.
Basically my line is if I have the capacity of paying for something and is more convinient that pirating, ill pay. It happens to me a lot when I wanna watch a movie with my boyfriend. I like original audio, but he likes dub, so instead of scrapping through the web looking for a dub, I just select the language on the streaming platform. That is convinient to me.
In what situations do you think is not OK to pirate something? And where is 100 justified and everybody should sail the seas instead?
I would like to hear you.
As someone who grew up in the “golden age of piracy” who remembers those stupid FBI warnings on VHS tapes, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that point of view. To me, it’s always been propaganda that creates this so-called anti-piracy morality.
The idea that piracy is stealing is so foreign to me. Stealing/theft is a very specific behavior. Nobody called it Theft when competitors followed around Shakespeare and made copycat plays. Nobody STILL calls it theft when we see stupid copycat movies come out. Nobody called it theft if you got a “copy painting, signed by actual painter” before modern copyright law. Now they call it things (not usually quite theft).
To me, piracy just lacks all the hallmarks of stealing. Hell, I’ve been in lawsuits. In every other realm, the Law draws some very clear lines between real damages and potential ones, and in many cases if I have to sue somebody, the law might even PREVENT me from seeking the latter. So what’s so special about piracy that so many people’s headspace have this attitude the “how the world works” goes out the window and it’s really stealing?
To me, it’s always going to be a matter of propaganda. Very successful propaganda. And I think your last sentence backs that. The big media IP owners started pushing the bubble of “it’s stealing” to libraries as well, and only backed off when it didn’t work. They were somewhat more successful with “used games” and have largely succeeded in killing the used game market off in some domains. I consider it stealing if a game company locks a physical product behind a single-use code so that they can seize part or all of the product if you purchase it used.
But here’s my counterpoint to all of the befuddlement. The companies don’t call these things products anymore, but licenses (so they can seize them at will from people who paid for them). How can you steal something that you can’t own in the first place?
>The idea that piracy is stealing is so foreign to me.
It’s literally the definition. Do you think pirates were invited on board to take a ship’s volume of goods without compensation? I’m at a loss how you believe the acquisition of something with a price tag on it without paying for it is not theft.
Your Shakespearian example is very clearly theft. If you sit down at a theater and transcribe the entire show then produce the exact same show, you have stolen intellectual property. What example of “copycat movies” are you considering? I’ve never heard of such a thing nor can I comprehend how it might exist. If someone is literally copying the exact same movie, if someone is producing a movie with the exact same script, it’s theft. Intellectual Property is a thing that can be stolen (hint, it’s in the second word).
You’re right in regard to licensing. We no longer purchase a product but a license to consume that product for a period of time. This was established in the DMCA as media moved from physical to digital formats. When you buy a DVD, you purchase the license to view the content on that medium. If you sell or give away that medium, you are transferring that license to the new owner. There’s a company called Kaleidescape that takes all your physical movies and rips them to a local server. You have to sign an agreement that confirms you own a physical copy of that movie and if you give that movie away you must delete the file from your server. So, you can watch the movie however you like on whatever medium you like, provided you’ve paid for and currently hold the rights to that license.
I’d like you to further explain your philosophy of original content being of no value and everything being free.
I can’t count how many times I have to explain to people that etymological roots of words are not a foundation for an argument. The term “Piracy” was adopted by movie studios back when it wasn’t really illegal… the same ones who also tried to make used media illegal (and eventually succeeded in a way).
> Your Shakespearian example is very clearly theft
Except it’s not, nor was it ever. Here’s my metric. Anyone more property-focused than Adam Smith is wrong by default. If you’re more capitalist than the founder of capitalism, maybe you have a problem. It’s like Marx looking at someone and going “OMG is he too communist for me”.