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I’m amused at these statements these ‘wannabe’ pirates make to justify piracy. A smart person would pirate quietly without letting the world know or justifying it.
I know why I do it & I don’t want some validation, internet points, 2 minutes of fame to sound / look cool.
You’ve just let the world know you’re pirating though
oops lol
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Because for some piracy isn’t simply about being a cheapskate but also about activism
Theres some truth to this, but a lot of people do use this as a shield against the general cultural acceptance that piracy is stealing or otherwise morally underhanded. I do it, but I don’t have any illusion I’m one of the activists. I just get indignant and refuse to pay someone for content or entertainment who I think is damaging to the medium or predatory in general. I feel like if I really wanted to make a statement, I just wouldn’t consume their work at all – but life is short and I want to have my cake and eat it too.
It’s possible to do both, I consume plenty of pirated media simply because it’s unavailable due to pathetic capitalist imposed digital distribution limitations and lack of equitable paid access.
I also consume other pirated media because I wouldn’t spend my resources for access because I don’t yet know the value of the content and won’t pay just for an opportunity to be disappointed, been there enough times to have learned that lesson. I’m happy to spend my time to find out your media sucks, but not my money, because that’s also my time with the addition that I’ve put actual effort into converting it into fungible assets.
I also deliberately pirate media that I would pay for and do understand the value of, both because I can’t always afford to purchase said product from a company making billions of dollars in exploitative corporate profits and because I have no interest in caring about that over my own personal satisfaction in life.
Wouldn’t it achieve more to boycott things instead? If you won’t even give up watching a tv show, you aren’t an activist you are just complaining on the internet.
Your wrong. It’s what Jesus did, when the baker and fisherman couldn’t meet market demand.
I don’t want some validation, internet points, 2 minutes of fame to sound / look cool.
No, you just need everyone to know you don’t care about sounding/looking cool to sound/look cool. Totally different.
Too cool to be cool syndrome.
How did you do formatting injection in your username?
On the website you can modify your user display name with any font set you like. I used a random fancy font website and simply copy and pasted.
Nice, thanks!
I believe its just a display name, which I assume probably doesn’t have as more lax rules on valid characters (such as emojis) than usernames do.
So true! Here, have some internet points and validation!
“A smart person would pirate quietly without letting the world know” While posting “I do it & I don’t want some validation…”
Hypocrisy doesn’t make them incorrect. If you’re going to be a pedant get better at it.
As much fun as setting up a torrent box is, being an argumentative asshole is even better.
You’re so right! Here have an internet point.
Especially when the statement makes no sense
They are screaming because they rather pay for convenience, but that is not how it works.
I think some still feel some level of guilt about it and naturally, whether consciously or subconsciously, rationalize it with ideas like this. I guess the progression from that is posting about it to show that “yes I pirate, but I’m not a bad person because rationalization”.
Pirating is like church sins, less about avoiding causing harm and more about preserving hierarchy and tradition, even though abuses and theft by intellectual property holders cause way more harm and economic cost than infringement, by multiple orders of magnitude.
You just said admitted to pirating, you little muppet.
Until we live in a world where people have equal access to information and essential technology piracy is a moral imperative.
Should something which costs a few hours worth of work in the developed word cost three weeks worth of work in a less developed country, just to make a publishing company worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a few extra bucks? Of course not!
Every other argument is a moot point to me. If I hadn’t pirated Photoshop and other software when I was a poor kid I wouldn’t have the six figure career I have today. The ultrarich steal from us every day in more ways than I can count. Maybe when they start being held accountable I will start caring about their bottom line.
Here I am wondering why there is still a downvote button in the YouTube comments… it does nothing!
The same reason that a lot of crosswalks have fake buttons. So you feel like you have control.
While simultaneously undermining your sense of trust in the world
and why elevators have non functioning close buttons
Some elevators.
All the ones near me have fully functional close buttons.
true, it definitely depends where you live. If you’re in the US then it’s definitely a case of most don’t work, because most elevators at this point have been made after 1990, but if you live somewhere else then it can definitely be a case of some, or even none
but that said there definitely are functioning crosswalk buttons that work so being pedantic about some, most, etc, is irrelevant because as long as there are any that dont work its relevant to the topic
Actually it’s worse than nothing. Youtube promotes comments based on engagement, so while only an upvote increases the tally, voting at all still makes it more visible.
The downvotes are still counted, just not displayed. You can re-enable it via browser extensions.
For videos. The commnt dislike has done nothing for years
Oh, didn’t realize it was referring to comments. Yeah, that one’s pointless!
Pretty sure those extensions all use some sort of estimate methodology, the dislikes aren’t available via any apis or anything
some sort of estimate methodology
Hey GPT4 watch this video and tell me what its ratio of likes to dislikes would be
Interesting, I wonder exactly how they work, then?
I’ve never used one myself but I’ve heard talk of various ones either A) taking the public (real) like number and extrapolating the dislikes based on an old like/dislike ratio available for the video from before the dislike removal (doesn’t work on new videos) or B) the extension includes a feature where the user can like/dislike the video within the extension and then the dislike number is extrapolated using the public (real) like number and the extension’s private like/dislike ratio. In either case the number is not connected to the “real” dislike count that YouTube would have access to internally
Do we really need excuses for pirating media?
I pirate movies because I think digital access to them is overpriced, goes to the copyright holder instead of the creators, it’s convenient and most importantly because I can.
I can’t pirate going to the cinema, nor can I afford to build my own, therefore I gladly pay to have a seat and enjoy a movie there.
Edit: I thought this may be relevant to the movies example I gave. I don’t think movie studios, giving nothing back to society after massive profits are the ones we should debate the morals of stealing with.
But all of those are excuses?
I just want to point out to anyone who thinks this is a viable legal defence, It isn’t.
You would be considered to be stealing from the rights holder. The rights holder authorises your use of their property when you pay the license fee. If you don’t pay the license fee you are considered to be stealing their property.
Just to be clear, I agree with the sentiment of this post. Legally speaking though, this defence would be cut down in moments.
I just want to point out to anyone who thinks this is a viable legal defence, It isn’t.
Of course it isn’t. Copyright laws were written by the same kind of people who decided that corporations gets to “people.”
Legally speaking they’re not going after you solely for piracy pretty much ever, at least not in America, unless you’re making a profit from it.
I think this logic is silly.
Employers don’t own you, so witholding wages for services you provided isn’t stealing. Getting a haircut and not paying isn’t stealing.
I think the better justification is: rights holders make it a pain in the arse to access content affordably, so fuck you, just going to steal it.
You’re only partly right. You example services. Of course it is not possible to own services. Piracy is only applicable to products. The point of the Twitter guy is, that companies intentionally stop selling their software etc. as products to sell you the same thing as a service, so that you cannot own it.
Not only that. Remember when Sony said that you don’t own the PS4 you bought for several hundred bucks but just purchased the right to use it as intended so you’re not allowed to tinker with it and for example install another operating system or figure out how their security works.
That’s what is meant by buying is not owning anymore.
I could go on about cars with subscriptions for heated seats that are already installed but not turned on etc.
It’s true that SaaS does stop you from owning software… But what good does “owning” a piece of software do you if you can’t get updates anyway? Back in the pre-internet era we got used to software existing as discrete versions but it hasn’t been like that for a LONG time. As soon as patching became a regular occurrence, “ownership” became a service contract with a CD attached. Then the CD vanished, and it just became a service.
While I do dislike needless “as a service” stuff, that model does genuinely suit a lot of people. It’s not a conjob; companies offer this stuff because a lot of customers want it. Most of the companies that are selling you SaaS stuff themselves use SaaS things in-house.
Yeah, it sucks to hear it, but this guy is right.
It’s also (typically) modeled in such a way that your software is consistently updated to new versions on release. You get active hotfixes, patches and improvements as they are released.
Most people jump software versions in stages of about 2-3 years. You’ll find a lot of SaaS packages will be priced as if you were instead purchasing the software at those stages.
All in all, if you have every intention of using the software regularly, it’s priced well and typically makes for a much better user experience.
Indeed. And that’s without considering that a lot of SaaS stuff on the consumer level lets you cancel at any time. Ok, you can get burned for 30 bucks if it turns out not to be all that useful, but the full packages are typically priced somewhere between eyewatering and “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?”, and they always have been.
A perfect example here - GeForce Now costs like 20 per month, cancel whenever you like. A 4080 gpu costs way over a grand. It’s up to you whether you prefer to own, rent or not bother at all, but it doesn’t take a lot to convince me to spend 20 bucks, but it does take a lot to get me to stump up for a whole new PC.
I am stealing this line for future references
Can we not become subreddit by posting this shitty screenshots trying to justify our reasons? Just share your media and enjoy it.
what do you mean trying to justify? discussion of shitty anti consumer tactics in digital media is perfectly valid
A screenshot of some comment is not really discussion though. This is a pretty base level understanding of the concept, which is why I say it’s more cope then actual discussion.
This is one of the most popular posts this week here with more than 4 HUNDRED comments. I don’t know what you view as a discussion but I think this was a pretty successful attempt at creating one.
I will say this thread had way more discussion then I was expecting when I originally posted this. My point about the screenshot still stands, I would much prefer we discuss something new related to sharing media, instead of recycling the same discussion about why its justified to copyright infringe.
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I completely agree. However posts of a screenshot of some shitty comment very much screams cope. That’s what I say enjoy ya loot, cause the reasons don’t matter.
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Our current system of copyright is flawed and only serves the interests of corporations.
This is what I’ve been saying. We don’t even own digital products, all it takes is a server to be taken down or an account to be lost and all you bought is taken away. Pirating also can’t be stealing because we aren’t taking something away from someone else, other people are not deprived of the chance to have this just because we downloaded it.
Nature wants information to be Free!
Piracy is Good:The Moral Imperative of Sharing Knowledge
This is some cope shit. We’re stealing, it’s not morally correct for most of us. No one cares enough to stop though, that includes me.
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- wrong. 2) you’re not paying for the right to use something, that’s theft. You can cope all you want but it won’t change what it really is.
I don’t think piracy needs to be justified because different people have different reasons.
Sure you could argue that you’re not actually stealing but creating/downloading a copy of something it already exist. I always found that anti piracy commercial “you wouldn’t steal a car” ridiculous as that’s not how piracy works.
For example, I do it because I don’t agree with how segmented the video streaming industry has become in recent years with this many different services that force you to buy a bunch of subscriptions while continuosly pulling content. Unlike the music streaming industry where all the most popular content (the majority of it) can be found on pretty much every serivce. You could have Spotify or Apple Music, not much difference (if any at all) in content or quality.
When I was a teenager I did it because I couldn’t afford to buy any sort of media content and options were limited. Pretty much everyone that owned an MP3 player was pirating music.
Here’s my justification:
I paid for a product. I’m getting that product, by hook or by crook.
The entire issue with these arguments, though, is that the opposition parties just answer those claims with “then you shouldn’t be ingesting that content”. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, then you don’t have the right to view/listen/stream it. Free market a-holes will always, correctly, bring up that the market works by putting out products and people paying for what they support and not paying for what they don’t support. The problem is that you can’t pick and choose which pieces or parts you support or don’t and there’s no way to give companies that type of feedback because they don’t care.
That’s a fine argument that they might have, but piracy still isn’t stealing. If someone steals something from me, I am deprived of that thing. If someone copies my intellectual property, I am hypothetically impacted by loss of income, but I can still use that information.
They can say it’s morally wrong for someone to use or copy information against the owners wishes or without paying. They are welcome to that argument. None of us are obligated to care about their opinion.
If they can claim customers don’t own something, especially physical items, after purchase because they are being pedantic over how people interact with intellectual property, we can and should absolutely use the same distinction to distance piracy fromt theft.
That’s a dishonest argument. You are stealing. It’s just not the media that you’re stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator.
Imagine there’s an amusement park ride that you want to go on. If you find a way to sneak onto the ride, are you “stealing” the ride? You’re not stealing the physical ride but you’re entitling yourself to the experience without paying the person who has to create, run, maintain, and sell that experience.
Digital content is the same way. You’re justifying it because, in today’s day and age, most content is provided by giant corporations and financial assholes but don’t pretend that you’re not harming the creators of said work and potentially keeping them from making a living. If we lived in a perfect world where everyone was honest, we would have all this content be free and people would pay for it if they enjoyed it and wanted more of it and they’d just refuse to pay for things they thought were shit. This insistence that you’re not stealing because you’re not stealing the vehicle of entertainment is stupid and dishonest, though.
Just admit you’re stealing and leave it at that. Attempting to justify the morality of it (or whatever you’re attempting to do here) just makes you look silly. You’re taking the “benefit” of the content without reciprocating.
I’m willing to pay for it, but I’m not allowed to do so
For example, Amazon/MGM still don’t allow me to pay to watch Stargate
Then you don’t get to ingest it. “I want it” isn’t any more of an argument than if it was a physical item.
For me, personally, piracy in this case is justified and can even serve as preservation of art. But to pretend that people are somehow entitled to it is childish.
Edit: If Stargate was the only thing you were pirating, you might have a point but let’s be honest… it’s not. People don’t pirate one show because they can’t watch and the subscribe to a piracy forum.
Then you don’t get to ingest it
Says who? You? MGM?
Says the “free market a-holes” I mentioned in the comment you replied to… In this case, they’re also right if we’re being honest and acknowledging that piracy is depriving the creator of income for their work.
I mean if I am not paying either way me ingesting that content or not makes 0 difference to the producer. It is the same logic as throwing excess food to the trash so homeless can’t eat it.
It does, though, by the argument they’re making. If you could only ingest it by paying for it, you’d have to have paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to.
The very fact that you’re watching it without paying kind of proves that point.
The producer and publisher paid a cost for you to have heard and develop an interest in their products. So yes, it makes a difference to them if that investment turns into you using the content but not paying for it. You’re suddenly a target audience without returns.
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It does matter though - The price paid to the creator was based on the prospect of X number of sales or Y numbers of adverts. Almost everyone who presently is trying to get their creative works seen is hoping that being seen helps them to “make it” and be able to write or sing or whatever as a full time job.
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He who pays the piper calls the tune. Don’t complain that modern media is garbage that doesn’t cater to you while also saying middle class soccer moms can sponsor everything.
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Says the guy not paying for shit that he’s still enjoying. What an entitled child.
Nonsense. It matters to the person who made it if they’re getting paid for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to watch it.
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That’s irrelevant. If everyone pirates the content, then that creator doesn’t get hired and paid again/anymore.
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So you’re entitled to do it just because everyone isn’t? What a crock of shit. What makes you special and exempt from what others have to do?
I’ve never understood the “piracy is morally acceptable” argument, personally. Best I can agree with is that piracy is not morally bad in some cases. Especially since me pirating something has no impact if I never would have paid for it in the first place. But it can often times be morally wrong (people who refuse to buy games from indie studios despite having the money to do so would usually fall into this category imo), and I can’t imagine any scenario outside of the preservation of media where it’s actually morally good to pirate things.
Like, I’m all for people not buying things that they don’t support. And I feel no sympathy for large companies that make more money in a day than I’ll make in a lifetime losing out on sales. But when did it become my right to play Hogwarts Legacy or watch a show without paying for it?
“If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”
- Eben Moglen
I think imposing artificial scarcity on art, information, and tools; and rationing based on those with the ability to pay is immoral. I mean sure, most art that people pirate is just empty entertainment. But imposing artificial scarcity on tools (software such as OSs, CAD, productivity software, etc), news, and academic papers behind expensive licenses that many cannot afford to pay is objectively immoral. If piracy did not exist, I am positive the world would be without many of the technological advances we have today.
As a Muslim, it is already forbidden to implement artificial scarcity. So as a Muslim, it’s not an opinion, but objectively wrong, because God said that it is wrong.
Not to mention the fact that oftentimes pirated content is just better. DRM free games run better and some work people have put into remastering media in general is outstanding.
I found a collection of the DBZ anime which is color corrected, proper aspect ratio, higher resolution, improved audio (from a different home release with better audio) made by fans for no profit. Even if you wanted to you couldn’t purchase that but piracy made it possible.
Unofficial remasters of some old, poorly mastered songs have made a difference for me and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them without resorting to piracy.
Exactly. IP isn’t rivalrous like land or goods, so it has no place being artificially restricted. Property rights are a solution to human conflict in the natural world.
This is a pretty sorry justification. Just cut the shit and steak what you want, don’t blow smoke up our ass about segmentation.
Like segmentation isn’t an issue…
It is, but it doesn’t justify your actions.
To you perhaps, I’m perfectly fine with it.
galaxy brain
That’s my YouTube comment. You and so many others are making me feel like a badass. 😎
The real piracy was the friends we made on the way.
And also the cargo ships I robbed.
The real friends were the piracy we undertook along the way.
Remember: friends come and go, but pirated media is forever (as long as you have good backups).
This is inaccurate. You are not buying it (the media), you are buying the right to stream it (as long as the seller provides the media as a stream). You don’t “buy” a movie unless you are paying for it’s ownership, which would be millions of dollars. For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM). And you generally don’t have a right be able to “buy” or have access to all media.
But all that doesn’t automaticly make it amoral.
this comment is gonna be downvoted to helledit: There are probably gonna be more responces, so this will address everything else I have to say. What I wrote is how things are legally, more or less. I don’t like that either. I do consider piracy stealing (under current laws) and morally right. Stealing is just not that great term for digital stuff. Please don’t try to (uselessly) sway me and don’t infight
this meme is a criticism of that. it shouldn’t be like that. if I buy a chair, I own the chair. I can then choose to sit on it, burn it, or give it to my neighbor, whatever. if I buy a movie, it’s suddenly not like that – but not because of some inherent quality that would make it impossible, but only because they say it is like that. but they have one weakness: it’s only like that if we actually stick to those rules. they’re all arbitrary anyway! we can therefore treat a bought movie just as it should be: a physical copy that we actually own. we can then decide to watch it, to lend it to our neighbor, to play it for everybody to see on the street, to cut it and remix it and do something new with it. will they come and claim we’ve “pirated” their media? yes of course, but this is nonsensical, dead law, that has to be broken again and again by just – ignoring it, and making it not so. if I buy a movie, I do own the movie, and the company that says otherwise can get fucked. that’s what this is about.
For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM).
I’d like to point out German law (maybe this expands to EU and other countries) with traditional media.
Traditionally you bought movies and music on physical discs. You had a guaranteed right to be able to sell it to other people, as well as make personal copies of it for private use/backups.
DRM has always tried to oppose this right. And obviously, in the last decade(s) a lot went into service-oriented streaming and temporary access instead of owning even on a partial or theoretical level.
That’s kind of their point, because we are not in fact buying the media the argument is that piracy has some moral element. Put another way there is no option to own it outside of piracy.
Piracy is always stealing. Y’all can keep trying to spin it if it helps, but its pure copium.
Is it stealing when they don’t lose anything?
Well first of all, yes it is stealing to take something that does not belong to you. The definition of stealing is not beholden to the consequences of the actions itself.
Furthermore, if you pirate to avoid paying a subscription, then yes they are losing something. I’m a massive pirate. I steal all my media. I feel no guilt and I also have no delusions about what I am doing. I do it to save money.
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Yes you are taking something. Of course you are. You are a taking a video file which you do not have the right to. Why do you need to convince yourself there is nothing grimy about doing? Like jesus christ, just be grimey. Wht you gotta lie to yourself?
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And yet you still shared something. Those files exist. This is an extremely weak argument honestly.
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Something is being tranferred, and that is the picture which you do not own nor have any right to own.
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If I’ve bought the right to play the game, what’s “the game” that I’m entitled to if they decide to take away what makes it the thing I agreed to have access to?
There are lots of cars you can’t get parts for dude.
There aren’t literally any cars that I can’t get parts for.
