this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Are we talking things, or intellectual property? Not the same.
I feel like the same kind of argument can probably extend to either intellectual property or real physical objects. With physical objects certain limits have to apply of course (like me withholding things you need to survive could potentially justify your theft).
With intellectual property, if you write stories for yourself to pass the time you aren't obligated to share/sell those stories to me and it would be wrong for me to break into your home and make copies of them if you chose not to sell/share them with me.
Why breaking into someone's home?
See, since I'm your buddy, you tell me bits and pieces of the stories you're writing for fun. And I, a Hollywood mogul, take those ideas, hand them off to a development crew and put out a movie based on your ideas. You get nothing.
This is normal in Hollywood. Also, I underpay my development crew because capitalism. They hate me but my stockholders think I'm okay. Original content creators like you? Well, there's a reason the writers are on strike, since screenwriting pays so poorly it's downgraded to hobby.
It's a problem especially in the record labels, in which most artists have their content signed away for a pittance because that was the only way to get heard which is changing through the internet, which is why the RIAA is eager to speed up enshittification of social media. And there are some interesting conspiracy theories about why Kim Dotcom was arrested in 2012 days before he rolled out a new music distro system that had dozens of major Hip Hop artists involved that allowed artists to get music out for free and then keep all their touring proceeds. But that died with the Megaupload seizure. Remember that?
If you really want to shill for folks like Disney and Sony and Time Warner, feel free, but you can expect your content to enshittify as well (as it has been for years now). I'm sure Fast and Furious XIII will be awesome.
Yeah, I don't think that's what I'm doing. I think you're misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding my point. My point is that the argument below needs more details to justify why/when piracy is acceptable. I'm not claiming piracy is totally unethical or anything like that, nor am I shilling for anything.
For what it's worth, I don't think your point about ethicality problems in the entertainment industry makes for a very satisfying argument either. If my neighbor steals from somebody else, am I justified in stealing from my neighbor? Maybe? But that reeks of self-interest and doesn't actually help the real victim.
If my neighbor steals a pound of sugar from somebody and I steal their car, to me it seems like I'm still doing something unethical. If my neighbor steals somebodies life savings and I steal their car, it feels like at best I'm doing something morally neutral, if not still outright wrong.
I'm not saying piracy is unethical, nor am I saying people shouldn't pirate. What I'm saying is that certain arguments for piracy being ethical aren't very good.
This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public -- you and I -- of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn't have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.
Granted, some argue that creators would have no interest in creating, except that they do when they are given the means to do so. This is one of the threats social media has, in providing entertainment that is not sending its profits to the major players in the industry.
We're not pirating from the artists. We're not pirating from our neighbors. We're pirating from giant corporations who've been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.
And given the government does not execute its function in good faith (that is, in service of the public, including protecting its interests from corporate capture), we have grounds to argue the authority of the state is forfeit, ruling the public by force rather than by consent (our elections allow us to choose from oligarch selects, and they have to obey plutocrats to keep their careers.)
Without the artificial construct by governing systems to make IP a thing to be licensed (and the use of DRM to control its distribution) neither patents nor copyrighted material would be a thing at all, let alone have been turned into the monstrosties that are US and EU IP law.
Firstly, the neighbor comment I made is an analogy. Nobody is claiming this is about literal neighbors committing wrongdoings in a community. I'm not sure if you've missed my point with that analogy or if you're choosing to willfully misunderstand it here?
Second, what you're claiming here isn't correct when you talk about "what this is about". My comment which you are replying to was not about whether "the system itself, and the edifices holding it up are conducting themselves in good faith" or anything like that. My whole point is about whether "If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase … I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas." is good reasoning or not. Nobody is debating you on whether the modern media industries, the government, etc are corrupt or acting in good faith. That has nothing to do with my actual point.
You keep jumping back to these points of "well the media corporations, the government, etc did X wrong by us, so we're automatically justified to pirate", that's not how this works. The whole issue is why does that justify piracy? Doubling down and trying to say "BUT I WAS WRONGED!" is not a good argument here. Being wronged in some way does not make it morally acceptable to just do whatever you like.
I believe they mean not that they were wronged, but that the system is wrong. Ala MLK just laws and unjust laws. They disagree with IP law and thus feel piracy is fine as such.
Personally, I pay for my music and don’t use streaming services. I support bands by going to shows and buying merch. However I also don’t listen to big name artists and shit, and think most really don’t give a shit if you pay for the music or not if you’re supporting them in some way often. Plenty of bands have a “steal this record” or “steal this album”, or end up putting out stuff where they’d urged people to pirate their shit example: Streetlight Manifesto had done so because victory was refusing to send CD’s to the band to distribute to those who had preordered, wasn’t paying them for purchases made through victories site, etc. The (bigger label) music industry is fucked. They extort bands. They extort venues. They extort anywhere that plays music. They extort anything they can for money while the content creators barely get shit.
I don't think the system being wrong is very good justification either. You still run into the same problem I'm pointing out. If some local store near me has an inherently fucked up return policy, I'm probably not justified in shitting in the middle of an aisle or trying to fistfight a cashier in response. Something being wrong isn't an immediate justification for whatever action a person takes in reaction.
Of course you wouldn't be justified in harming a minimum wage worker because the policy of the corporation. That is like the opposite of the point. Its more like, say my neighbor owns a company and exploits immigrants to do lawncare. Maybe I'd pay for it if I knew he was actually taking care of his workers and not exploiting them, but he sucks, boo. So while he is away on vacation I borrow his equipment without asking to do my own lawn. Does it hurt him? I mean technically there is more wear & tear on the equipment. Will he notice? No. Do I give a shit if it causes it to break faster than it would have otherwise? Nah, fuck him.
That's a pretty obvious example of the point I was making when I said: "Something being wrong isn’t an immediate justification for whatever action a person takes in reaction."
This feels like very self serving reasoning. I don't think you're actually justified in doing something along these lines. Even worse, you can actually cause more harm by doing this. Your wear and tear on your neighbors tools can make the jobs of the already exploited immigrants harder and if the tools break the immigrants may be blamed for it. This actually feels like another good example of my point above that a wrong does not automatically imply justification, regardless of how much it might benefit you personally.
Lol what? Goddamn how big is your estate that one single use of a lawnmower is going to so significantly destroy it that it’d be noticeably harder to use? This is like putting 10 miles on a car. Not putting sugar in the gas tank. Jesus.
Point is, if someone is a piece of shit I could care less about inconveniencing them. Which is all stealing from large corporations amounts to.
(Again, large corporations, not smaller shops which even if shitty will do shit like take losses out of cashiers pay checks where it is legal [or not, they often don’t care] to do so, so it’s best not to steal from them either way.)
It seems plausible to that a manager that is already abusing people would go out of their way to do things like docking pay over pretty trivial things like relatively minor tool damage? It doesn't even have to be at the same scale as actually breaking the tools to cause the kinds of harm I'm talking about.
I can sort of get behind the idea that large corporations do a bunch of bad shit, we have an obligation to try and oppose/prevent bad shit from occurring, piracy harms large corporations hence is an act of opposition/prevention, so piracy is justified in that sense. But I don't think this kind of position is free from issues either.
Fair, I think you’re taking it too literal and too concerned about damages where I mean, I know how to use a lawnmower and such without damaging them, so I’m not worried about that lol. But yeah, I don’t think it’s a moral obligation or anything, just definitely an understandable position for people to take given the context rather than stealing just cuz.
Fair enough. By what authority do you assert intellectual property belongs to a private entity and not the public?
That isn't something I claimed.
You certainly asserted such by arguing piracy is morally wrong. If IP belonged to the public (id est there's no patent or copyright) then everything would be in the public domain. Media piracy would not be a thing.
But you assert not only is it a thing but it is morally wrong.
So please, by what authority are you asserting puts IP in the hands of private interests, thus making piracy a moral wrongdoing?
No I didn't. You are either ignoring or misunderstanding what I'm saying. My claim is that certain arguments don't justify why piracy is permissible. Not that piracy is morally wrong.
I'm not making any claims about who IP belongs to.
I can't give you any authority on this because if you reread what I actually said, I'm not claiming piracy is morally wrong and I'm not claiming anything about IP ownership.
You revised your text to change its wording. No footnotes.
And then you accuse me of ignoring or misunderstanding without acknowledgement that you've altered the thread.
I can no longer assume that you're arguing in good faith.
For your reference, here is a comment that I will edit.
Edit: Here is the edit.
I'm pretty new to lemmy, but in the web interface comments which have been edited show a little pencil icon with their edit time where the post time used to be. If you look through our comment exchange you'll notice, none of my comments to you have that icon. I did edit a comment to somebody else, in that comment I added a footnote asking for more details about a point they were making, this had nothing to do with our exchange.
Notice also, in my original message (which has not been edited), my point was "I don’t think this particular line of thought makes for a very good argument without more info", this is exactly what I have been telling you my point was this whole time, whether or not I edited any comments.
It's pretty ironic to assume the other person is not acting in good faith while you continually respond to a misrepresentation of their position. This is very literally a strawman fallacy. If you aren't intentionally misunderstanding what I'm saying, then you should work on your reading comprehension skills.