No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.
“stealing” a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you’re stealing from a store is infinitely copyable. Like the replicator from star trek…or that one episode of Sabrina the teenage witch with that box that can make a perfect copy of everything you put inside of it.
Of course I personally would never pirate anything, no matter how much streaming services increase their prices or how much they crack down on VPN usage to get around geo-restrictions, PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.
I’ve never pirated anything in my whole life!
There are people who understand what I’m saying…but apparently most people don’t get it.
Of course that means I still would never pirate anything. That would be horrible to “steal” a copy of a movie or a TV show
People try to boil these things down to incredibly simplistic rules in an effort to justify what they’ve already decided they’re going to do.
I am pro piracy, as I imagine virtually everyone on this community is. But I also think people get way too reductionist because that is easier than engaging with the nuances of what it means to “steal” or “pirate” or when we are or aren’t hurting a creator.
I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons, the “victims” are few and far between due to it being so rare/situational as to make it ok to functionally treat it like there are none, and I also think all the people arguing they are “doing media preservation” who don’t even know what a proper 3-2-1 backup is are full of shit lol. I also think people need to accept the fact they just want free shit sometimes and trying to dress up their motivations/sense of entitlement to free media with high minded arguments about sticking it to corporations or whatever is disingenuous - just own the decision!
I use my server because it is convenient and because I don’t want my kids being visually assaulted and manipulated every time they turn on a tv. I used to watch one of them visibly become panicked when all the tiles of a streaming service would pop up in front of him, it was just so overwhelming. I went a solid seven or eight years without the high seas because there was a time when streaming services were reasonably priced, convenient, and not dominated by ads. Now that that is no longer the case, I have gone back to my server. Simple as that.
I don’t mind paying for a service, I don’t even mind the occasional advertisement in my life. But what we have right now is absolutely ridiculous and easily justifies so many reasons for pirating.
All of this is to say you’re not gonna find people here who disagree with your decision to pirate. But you’re also not going to find some airtight philosophical argument that works 100% of the time. You have to consider the ethical implications of your actions in your day-to-day life, there are no simple rules to avoid that.
I do mind any and all advertising, I want zero advertising in my life. Except the ads from Apeldoorn insurers, those are the best.
Having said that, I don’t mind paying but then I want to pay and be able to see everything. The problem now is that in a world where all companies consolidao into one per market, on the media provide lr side, very conveniently, everything is fracturing into dozens of provii, each with their exclusive content. Totally not conspiratorial, just a convenient coincidence that makes then a boatload of extra money.
Fuck. That. Shit.
I want one provider with everything or aaaarr going to have to go to alternative sources
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No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.
I’d argue stealing physical items from massive corporations is also morally acceptable. If you shoplift from a small mom & pop store, you’re actively hurting your community, however, if you shoplift from Wal-Mart, you’re actively hurting an entity which is hurting your community, therefore helping your community.
Shoplifting from Walmart hurts my knees because the boss won’t believe that our onhand numbers are wrong and makes me check high and low before I can nil pick it 🥲
This isn’t an ethical argument against shoplifting btw, this is an ethical argument in favor of nuking Walmart
Stealing sustinence from societal cancer is practically an immune response.
If you shoplift from a small mom & pop store, you’re actively hurting your community
Unless you’re part of a riot, then it’s okay.
Terrible bait. I’m disappointed.
If “buying” is not owning, then “piracy” is not stealing.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If buying isn’t owning, then pirating can’t be stealing.
perhaps the only ethical consumption under capitalism is that which denies capitalists their profit.
So long as people are starving under the system while others have yachts, the system is unethical, and thus following its rules – insofar as they perpetuate this inequity – is unethical.
I mean…if the movie is good you should support it. Vote with your wallet.
If the movie is good, you should support it by making a donation to the strike fund of the unions that represent the artists that actually create the movies. You can support artists without supporting the amoral companies that produce these works.
Honestly if it’s a big setup like Spotify or Netflix or etc, “royalties” don’t mean shit to the production team / artists / whoever. Unless they’re Mariah Carey levels of replayed every year everywhere to the tune of sitting on millions in checks yearly, they aren’t going to get shit. Personally I’d rather support them in other ways such as buying merchandise, going to live shows etc but that’s just me.
Remember though this is in minecraft, don’t pirate irl because that is very bad and you will personally prevent executives at warn-a-brother from buying another learjet. Remember: “pirating is bad and you should feel bad” 😂
Even buying albums never netted the artist more than 20 or 30 percent unless they also owned the record label.
Buying their merch is the only real way to support an artist. They’ll make way more out of it than any other way.
It is always morally acceptable?
Morality is, literally, subjective. There is no universal answer to that question.
I personally consider anything being sold by a distributor to be fair game, no questions asked. If I pay for mainstream music, films or games, most of the time, zero of that money goes to the workers who created those artworks. It just makes rich owners richer, because they legally own rights. I would go as far as to say it’s morally wrong to pay for those things, it’s not neutral, it’s supporting a cycle of abuse at your own expense. So that’s my perspective on your ‘giant corporations’ question.
Digital copying isn’t stealing, unfortunately, because those giant companies deserve to have their hoard of capital expropriated.
But if not a lot of sales are made, they won’t work with the same people again and will play more safely, and we’ll get less diversity
Piracy is great because it helps you not support corporation’s greed. They can’t profit off of you 😄
But of course, piracy is bad. That’s why you shouldn’t ever do it! Why do you think every corporation has to get government handouts from the tax payers? Because we keep stealing from them…I mean…You keep stealing from them. I would never do that and I certainly don’t ever do that. I haven’t paid for any movies in over 10 years, so obviously that means I just don’t watch anything that costs money to see.
I use a privacy friendly VPN that allows P2P because I play games online and no other reason
Given that no one makes a fuss about it when corporations do the stealing, I think so.
I’m not going to say piracy is right or wrong.
What I will say is if everyone had access to that replicator, and everyone replicated everything in the store and left, the store would close down, and the products would stop being made.
Likewise, piracy is only viable because not everyone does it. If literally every person pirated the games or movies of any given company, that company would no longer be profitable and would close down.
Piracy is getting something for free because other people pay for it.
Except there are people who buy something AND want to have offline backup copies of it.
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No but I think it’s me.
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I didn’t even notice you typed hell, I read it as how. lol
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Pirates constantly trying to “morally” justify their action is by far the worst part of all pirate forums.
Its embarrassing how many pirates need the validation of strangers on the internet.
Isn’t there a philosophy forum that these people could spam instead?
It’s good because otherwise we would have only shady characters and kids and that would be even more annoying to read. We have this illusion of doing something right, part of some greater philosophical stance and thanks to it you can read the comments without digging through slurs. The piracy forums are usually very hard on the eyes.
I mean people could just stick to actually discussing piracy instead of how people feel about piracy.
The community is a massive echo chamber. Its not like there is a vocal minority seriously arguing piracy is immoral or unethical. So its just copy pasta of a million other posts.
As I said I am glad they do that instead of some other things that often fly in the space where we don’t care about the morals at all. Those places are tiresome and draining much more than some random philosophy post. Good, if they think about those things that means they are human. Someone who no longer cares about anything what they do and its effects and consequences is truly lost and more like an animal than a human.
Me: this place is an echo chamber.
You: let me repeat the exact same thing I just said.
I am not super good at text communication with strangers online in non native language, I am afraid we will not understand each other properly this time
My moral is always on match with that of the company so in most cases everything is acceptable.
I decided on my moral beliefs on piracy back during the days of Kazaa and Limewire. Back then the RIAA was shaking down teenagers, threatening them with statutory liabilities of a quarter million dollars per song, simply because the law allowed it. They would threaten low-income families with lawsuits in the millions and get them to settle for a still-ridiculous settlement of few thousand dollars. Even the settlements were far in excess of the full retail cost of purchasing these songs.
I decided then that if the law allows this kind of thing, then copyright law as it exists now is fundamentally immoral. And immoral laws are not worthy of respect.
I mostly take a pragmatic approach to copyright. Whether I pay for something is a combination of the quality of the work, the reputation of the company selling it, the customer service provided by the legitimate product, the probability of getting caught for violating copyright law, etc. An indie publisher that treats their people well? I’ll buy it. Mass market schlock made by criminally underpaid artists for rent-seeking megacorps? I’ll pirate that all day, every day.
But morality literally plays no part in it. I learned long ago that copyright law exists outside of the realm of morality. The decision to buy or pirate is an entirely practical one; morality simply isn’t a factor.
I mean, the replicator is making food out of SOMETHING. I’m guessing it’s some kind of waste produce from the engine room. It needs matter to operate. It can’t create ex-nihilo.
The replicator from Star Trek makes matter out of pure energy, not out of other matter. It can make almost anything out of matter, so long as it has the molecular pattern on file, and the ship has enough energy available to power the replicators. That energy comes primarily from energy storage dedicated to replicator production, but in emergencies where a massive amount of matter need fabricated, additional power can be provided by the warp core.
So they’re using several hiroshima’s or nagasaki’s worth of nuclear bomb’s energy to produce a cup of Earl Gray, hot? Seems like using garbage or human waste would save a lot of energy?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the power required to produce a small amount of matter?
While we’re at it, is a transporter actually transporting me? Or is it technically really replicating me?
Because what I assumed was happening was they essentially had a transporter like device that would take some matter (say a big pile of human dung) transport it (i.e, convert it into the atoms/energy/whatever the transporter uses run it through a pattern buffer that’s stored in the transporter for say, Earl Gray hot) and beam it into the Captain’s quarters as Earl Gray hot instead of poop.
