Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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What would you considered "Ethical Piracy" (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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".