Yup. I’m about to suggest about half a dozen people to watch a movie on Netflix I pirated last night. Leave the World Behind. I highly reccomend you see this to understand my last statement here. I have “suggested” to a few dozen people to watch Hulu for Firefly.

They don’t get my money because I don’t give a flying fuck to support the extortion of the people this tyrrany that’s been running since Crowley and even longer. Looks free but there was never an end to slavery. It just stopped giving a shit about your color. To counter, goes over everyone’s head one way or another. Doesn’t matter. All life will die on this planet in less than a decade.

Biggest personal examples are Minecraft and FL Studio. I asked my parents to buy Minecraft for me after a week of pirating it, and I bought an FL Studio license when I could afford to, nearly a decade after I first used it. I don’t use it much, but it felt right.

yup, pirated jedi: fallen order. liked the game very much, but jedi: survivor wasn’t cracked yet. so i bought a key for 30€.

the problem is: it runs like shit, because it’s a bad PS5 port and denuvo probably also has an effect on that.

i will never buy from EA again.

As every musician knows, exposure is always better than payment! This is why you shouldn’t offer payment to musicians at your wedding, since they’re getting great exposure already. /s

It’s not really a rebuttal, but by that assessment, a person may not view a webpage, as the browser copies files from a distant server for viewing.

It’s not so much a rebuttal, but ask if they think stealing has any relation to depriving another person of something. Imo, they have a correct, though extremely narrow, definition of stealing that doesn’t leave any nuance for comparing different kinds of stealing. Piracy, or as they would say ‘stealing digital media’ is not a kind of stealing that deprives another person of that thing, so clearly it’s somewhat different than stealing money or physical property.

If they aren’t willing to entertain that there are different kinds of stealing then they’re ignorant of reality and it might not be worth your time to try to change their mind.

It’s because that’s not a common definition and it’s not even a good one. No normal person would call cloning stealing. Also, this completely misses lending, gifting, downloading a webpage or even renting. All of those would be stealing under this definition.

Who cares what your associate uses as a definition, stealing / theft has long established definitions. You can just point and laugh and say that your associate doesn’t actually understand the words he/she is using.

You could say that you define agreeing as “thinking someone is completely wrong”, and that you agree with your associate.

Hi, welcome to the Technology community here on Lemmy! Discourse is not tolerated here, so please just tack on your endorsement of piracy and leave your civility at the door.

Your last sentence sounds unhinged but I agree wtiu the rest

What would you call it if you make a contract with a gardener, they make your entire garden and then you don’t pay them. Since it’s not stealing, where is the harm, right?

Fuck them, they want our money and our data, while giving shit services.

Just for curiosity, how do you find Kobos selection compared to Libby/Overdrive (or similar), if that’s an option in your area?

I really can’t be happier with either, for audiobooks or ebooks, considering their price (free, through your public library). Drawback being that selections are limited depending on your library (but you can be linked to several, and you may be eligible for several…here in Massachusetts, anybody in the state is eligible for BPL plus the regional networks and colleges (I.e. COFAN). And there are libraries in other states that accept patrons from anywhere. And you can be on multiple waitlists

But, the limiting selection or not being able to get instant access when you want to scratch that itch. I bought my wife and I kindles on Prime day. Those each came with free Kindle Unlimited months. And then there’s Prime Reading as a benefit of being a prime member.

But, while I like ebooks, my wife greatly prefers audiobooks (she’s at 140-something for the year, and rarely uses her kindle because the phone is way more convenient for audiobooks. That’s entirely through Libby, but she’s also counting the Harry Potter books on her friends Audible account that we’ve been listening to with the kids). And the audiobook selection on kindle unlimited is terrible and clunky…they really want to push you to Audible. Though I do really like being able to toggle between reading and book in the same app. But while I do enjoy the occasional sales (been on waitlist for months for “To sleep in a sea of stars”, and then found it on prime sale for 99¢ or something), I can’t justify a “subscription” to “own” an ebook.

Would love a service that had a good selection of ebooks and audiobooks, and compatible with kindle and IOS

There are other book sellers besides amazon

imagine buying audiobooks in the age of Perfect Text to Speech

david johnes is my personal narrator now

It’s also great to check if my aging pc is even capable of running it somewhat smoothly.

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At least for piracy of streaming content, I believe what should become apparent to everyone is that convenience drove down piracy and greatly increased gains for everyone, and once corporations got greedy and started rolling out new platforms and fragmenting content between them, everything started going down the drain. Even without accounting for piracy, convenience was lost, multiple platforms mean more fees to get the same content that was originally in one platform, so less people willing to pay. Less income per platform drives down investment in content and drives up cancelations of ongoing projects. Less income than was originally observed when a single platform had condensed content means there’s greater incentive to drive ads and increases prices on all platforms, thus also potentially driving down users subscribing to said platforms.

None of that factors in piracy. If we do factor in piracy, it’s a fact that before fragmentation, subscription rates were high, and after fragmentation, there’s a lot more incentive to pirate content. In some instances, platforms shoot themselves in the foot even further by further charging rental fees or purchases of individual content, as well as region blocks and ads.

Piracy surely is a problem all throughout the history of streaming services (something that could still be argued as not actually something to worry about because those pirates were never going to be customers in the first place, and Netflix was still booming enough to incentivize other companies to roll out their own platforms), but it becomes a symptom of another problem later down the line due to lack of convenience. Even so, the current state of streaming platforms wouldn’t be much different if piracy wasn’t happening. People would simply consume less content due to budget constraints or due to being annoyed at lack of conveniences.

I personally hate depending on a platform that on a whim may decide to remove content I watch. There’s specific songs that have disappeared from my Spotify playlists for no good reason (a lot for geoblocking reasons), there’s shows that just get removed from Netflix, there’s all of game of thrones on prime which I couldn’t watch due to geoblocking and ended up having to pirate it even though I was paying for a platform which had the show. It’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, to pirate. The content is yours, instantly, until you decide to delete it from your computer. I didn’t mind paying for Netflix for years, and since they incentivized account sharing, I shared the account with 2 other friends and we split the cost. It was super convenient. Now, I have a plex library nearing the 50tb mark with about 40 people watching content on it, everything automated and everyone can request whatever they want, and I simply ask for donations to buy more drives. It’s still more expensive than subscription services due to energy costs, donations not being enough for the equipment needed to store content and run services, and costs of internet, static ips, and domain names, but I’m not planning to stop as it’s overall more convenient, not just for me, but for 40 other people.

Piracy isn’t costing these companies any money if people never intended on giving them money in the first place. This argument almost implies that these companies have an inherent right to our money whether we want to spend it with them or not.

Don’t forget adjusting for inflation and real money being given back not some shitty gift card

YES! This IS stealing!

Man does “Google Nest” come to mind. Buys company. Pushes it all over the place. “Eh, I think we’re done. Whole ecosystem useless now.”

Which is par for the course with Google and not at all a surprise, but sheesh.

Taking a product from the shop without paying and returning the item later is still stealing.

The issue here is that there is a period of time where the shop does not have the item.

I usually just assume that Im probably gonna agree with the thing so dont see the need to put more time into it. If it was something that I felt different about then maybe i might have, but as that is probably not the case there’s no need dragging it out for no reason.

Plus, they seem to be on top of the thing, so im gonna make sure to stay out of their way and leave them alone and let them do their jobs.

There’s little left to do at this point, and its not really my place to tell them how to do their jobs. Thatd be presumptious, as I might just as well know next to nothing about it compared to them. Why making it even more complicated than it already is? Its their job after all, not ours, and we have to respect that. Lol what would even the job be, that is not exactly information i would carry around so. Besides, i already have one other job anyway, so…

In the end, the important thing is that they are on top of it, and i bet i would feel more or less the same way even if the whole thing was another thing altogether, as long as i feel the same way as they do about it, and that theyre doing something about it instead of giving it time to grow, maybe into something even worse!

But regardless- something is being done, right now, by someone, right there. you dont see that sort of thing around much these days. Also doesn’t hurt that they could possibly have more insight into the details of the case than maybe anyone else.

I dont know how you guys feel about it, sometimes I’m not 100% sure myself, but i cant imagine i am going to feel any regret having maybe the best guys possible feeling more or less dead on the same way i do about it. Its practically guaranteed, think about it- if it werent for them, I could have never heard anything about it in the first place…

And as if that wasn’t all, here comes the icing on the cake- the same guys who first blew the lid off the whole thing to begin with can likely identify the deeper issues as well, and therefore should know how to change it for the better instead of some shmuck making it worse out lack of insight and proper research… Winnn!

At this point for all we know, literally any alternative could be a better option. In the end, regardless of every little detail of everything about this, they seem to be here to really do something- anything about it, and I think we might consider ourselves lucky that something is being done here at all.

If society agrees on something like that then houses will still get built as obviously we’ve entered the socialist utopia were all waiting for

Capitalist brains stuck on “buh peeps need money or not do nothin”

well, when reduced to those terms they so seem to be similar concepts but needs and luxuries are not exactly equivalent, not to mention the difference between a tangible possession vs an intangible “experience” which have wildly different relationships, transaction types, and even grey area over what is considered piracy.

also, claiming society has agreed on these exchanges being “right” isnt exactly accurate. society certainly tolerates these exchanges, but to what degree has changed significantly in recent years. theres a good debate over intellectual property ownership, and whether the original idea is more valuable than the creation of the work itself. certain aspects of filmmaking, for instance, are recognized as being more significant to the finished work than some other roles (directors, cinematographers, etc) but the fair compensation of other roles which make no less significant contributions to the relevance of any work is a subject on which society cannot make a fair judgment without knowing the details of every relationship.

in the end, i believe piracy is and should be viewed as an organic market force which should prompt corrections in order to minimize, but due to the nature of the transaction it will never go away.

If I’m pirating, it means I either can’t afford the item, it’s too hard to get, or the ways to get it have been made overly complex and frustrating. This means literally no money was ever going in anyone’s pockets to begin with.

How am I preventing a sale that was never going to take place to begin with?

i would see your point if my reasoning were extended beyond where my boundaries are set. my position is based on a lot of factors and isnt a blanket statement that piracy is never immoral or that everyone should pirate all the time regardless of circumstances. if everyone were to pirate, it would certainly change my perspective on it as a broad practice, though not absolutely.

my argument, at least from the perspective of my original comment, was more of a reflection of my feelings that the least deserving are making the most profit off of any given large studio property, and i advocated piracy as a reaction to that given current studio structuring and the state of the entertainment market. and i understand that the profit of previous properties are directly responsible for the amount invested in subsequent works, but there is a certain degree of profitability which makes me feel like any argument about how piracy is hurting business is petty complaining over what is comparitively loose change for those that continue to be paid. i dont quite get a pang of empathy for a few thousand or even tens of thousands of instances of piracy for a property with profits in the hundres of millions considering how many instances were from people priced out anyway.

No, I’ve just been living in American for the past 30 years or so and have an understanding of what inflammatory and dehumanizing attacks on individuals and groups does to society. And even if it’s permissible based on the rules of this community, it’s still garbage journalism.

Is it too much to ask for civil, level headed, and nuanced discussion or posts?

What if the company wasn’t trying to get you to rent the car? What if they tried REALLY hard to get you to think you were buying the car, but once you “bought” it, they start crippling things and telling you you can’t fix it yourself but instead need to pay exorbitant prices for them to “upgrade” it, since, now that you’ve “bought” it, you don’t technically “own” it

The analogy is that you buy a car (because if it breaks, the car and your entertainment stuff, you will buy a new one to replace it, you will also carry all maintenance) but suddenly you can’t drive backwards anymore because the manufacturer decided retroactively that you should pay extra for that (possibly in a subscription).

I would say it is your good right then to make your car drive backwards regardless of what it may take.

That company is also going to show you the agreement you signed that says they can do that, which is the current situation with digital goods. People are still buying them.

If that was a normal purchase, then that’s clearly theft.

If it was art leasing, there’s probably a long contract with details about a situation like this. No matter what the contract says, the local law might still disagree with that, so it can get complicated. The art company might be violating their own contract, although it is unlikely. The company might be within the rights outlined in the contract, but they might still be breaking the law. You need a lawyer to figure it out.

People are pirating products that can be purchased and owned.

I agree that the analogy isn’t perfect. As you pointed out, people sneaking in are taking space from people who would be willing pay for the service.

If you could somehow sneak into Netflix and take some of their bandwidth or their ability to provide the service to paying customers, then the analogy would work. In reality though, people pirate Netflix shows and movies by torrenting, and that has no impact on Netflix’s bandwidth.

The way I see it, circus and digital videos are a service. You are supposed to pay for both, but you can easily see both of them for free. Comparing these two with stealing just doesn’t work IMO.

You could also compare it with watching a football match from the other side of the fence. Although, in reality, you wouldn’t get a very good view of the game, whereas torrenting movies gives you a great view. Interestingly, the football example doesn’t involve trespassing, but you still get to enjoy a part of the service. All analogies break at some point.

It’s a thousand times better than this empty garbage. How does this have any upvotes?

Why is the argument bad? Please elaborate.

Thanks for reaffirming my bias that new cars suck.

I am really concerned the next car I need to buy, which is probably 20 years off, is going to be this trend cranked to 11. With software and hardware I can find alternatives and hack my way around the “you paid for it, but we own it and can do whatever we want to it” mentality that tech companies push, but cars seem like a whole different world when it comes to the “you paid for it, but we own it” mentality.

It’s shite like that is the reason why I’m planning on staying in the south, so I can just daily my 56 bel air. All it really needs is a AC and I can always just take the heater out and take a normal ac unit apart and put it in. At this rate I’m wondering if that car is going to be more practical than modern cars purely because you don’t have to pay to open the window. Sure it may not have the speed as modern car but like even in my z3 I rarely ever go faster than 60mph.