Buying something is owning. That has never changed.
You don’t purchase digital goods. You buy a license to use them, under the conditions you agreed to. Piracy explicitly breaks those conditions 99.9% of the time.
So no, it isn’t stealing. It’s just plainly illegal. And it hurts everyone from the original artist to the multi-billion dollar company that distributes it. Whether you think that is immoral or not is up to you.
Yes, that is the small text they use to justify it, but that’s not how they advertise it. When Amazon Prime wants me to pay for a movie it doesn’t say “License it now!” It says “Buy it now!”
If you go digging into the EULA you’ll see it being called a license, but no effort is made to actually make that clear to the customer.
Furthermore, being technically legal doesn’t make it acceptable. If someone opened a bookstore, and put some treatment on all their books that caused them to suddenly disintegrate after a year, it doesn’t matter if they have on all their receipts that “books are not guaranteed to last longer than a year” or that they “aren’t doing anything illegal”. It’s still a bullshit business practice that shouldn’t be tolerated.
It’s worth stating this has basically always been true for books. You can buy paper. Buying bound paper with words on it is not quite the same. You can’t produce a movie from that idea, and state “I invented this idea from a bundle of bound pages I bought, that already had some words on them.”
You never owned the original reproduction rights to the book’s content. That never mattered much until copying and pasting became so easy.
Huh. Never quite looked at it that way, but you are right. I can see how physical book is a form of a license to read a literary work. It is however naturally impossible to revoke. It would be the same if digital content had no DRM - which is generally not the case.
So I guess DRM and you not being able to download and use content outside the company’s ecosystem is the real issue here.
Were you under the impression that Amazon was going to assign you the copyright to the song or movie that you purchased? No? Then you understood that you were buying a license and you’re just playing pretend about the confusion.
It’s got nothing to do with copyright. It’s about ownership of a copy. You buy a CD, you own it. You “buy” digital media, it can get taken away from you. That should not be permissable. Yes, I know it’s legal, but it shouldn’t be, and in a just society, it wouldn’t be.
Bro is just incredible how there is people defending this multibillions dollars companies. The studios don’t care about the author or the creator. They don’t care about the actresses or the singers. They don’t care about you as the consumer of this media. They only care about PROFIT.
As you can see these executives are not compensating the actors , the writers. The actual creators of these movies and series you said " wE sHoUldN’t pIrAtE" are not even getting their good deal and let’s not talk about the music industry which is the same or worst situation for the creators.
Some pirates just want a free demo before they buy it, others pirate stuff they already bought for convenience reasons, or decide to pay for a license if they like it and want to support the creators, and the third type of pirate never would’ve bought anything to begin with, so no lost sales in any conceivable way.
It’s just my impression of things based on what I’ve seen, but if that’s objectively wrong, I want to learn why
And on the general topic of rationalizing piracy:
Don’t get me wrong here, it is within the sellers rights to impose rules and restrictions about how the product is to be used. That’s not a bad thing per se.
But some of these restrictions are just stupid, and only hurt legitimate customers.
Yes, I said from the start that it might not be moral.
But that’s exactly the point: companies sell movies to theaters, and then those theaters sell tickets to each viewer. That’s the license they each agreed to. A theater buying a movie off Amazon and then selling tickets to everyone who watched it would probably make some people upset, and would very clearly be illegal.
Buying something is owning. That has never changed.
You don’t purchase digital goods. You buy a license to use them, under the conditions you agreed to. Piracy explicitly breaks those conditions 99.9% of the time.
So no, it isn’t stealing. It’s just plainly illegal. And it hurts everyone from the original artist to the multi-billion dollar company that distributes it. Whether you think that is immoral or not is up to you.
Yes, that is the small text they use to justify it, but that’s not how they advertise it. When Amazon Prime wants me to pay for a movie it doesn’t say “License it now!” It says “Buy it now!”
If you go digging into the EULA you’ll see it being called a license, but no effort is made to actually make that clear to the customer.
Furthermore, being technically legal doesn’t make it acceptable. If someone opened a bookstore, and put some treatment on all their books that caused them to suddenly disintegrate after a year, it doesn’t matter if they have on all their receipts that “books are not guaranteed to last longer than a year” or that they “aren’t doing anything illegal”. It’s still a bullshit business practice that shouldn’t be tolerated.
When it says “buy it” you asuume the it refers to the content - they’d probably argue it refers to the license.
It’s worth stating this has basically always been true for books. You can buy paper. Buying bound paper with words on it is not quite the same. You can’t produce a movie from that idea, and state “I invented this idea from a bundle of bound pages I bought, that already had some words on them.”
You never owned the original reproduction rights to the book’s content. That never mattered much until copying and pasting became so easy.
Huh. Never quite looked at it that way, but you are right. I can see how physical book is a form of a license to read a literary work. It is however naturally impossible to revoke. It would be the same if digital content had no DRM - which is generally not the case.
So I guess DRM and you not being able to download and use content outside the company’s ecosystem is the real issue here.
You can buy those movies on physical medium though.
Yes, scams exist. I never claimed that things like your hypothetical situation would be moral, or should be tolerated.
Yet you think the shit corpos are doing isnt just scamming you out of your money?
deleted by creator
Were you under the impression that Amazon was going to assign you the copyright to the song or movie that you purchased? No? Then you understood that you were buying a license and you’re just playing pretend about the confusion.
It’s got nothing to do with copyright. It’s about ownership of a copy. You buy a CD, you own it. You “buy” digital media, it can get taken away from you. That should not be permissable. Yes, I know it’s legal, but it shouldn’t be, and in a just society, it wouldn’t be.
Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha.
Bro is just incredible how there is people defending this multibillions dollars companies. The studios don’t care about the author or the creator. They don’t care about the actresses or the singers. They don’t care about you as the consumer of this media. They only care about PROFIT.
Sources :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hollywood_labor_disputes
https://apnews.com/article/actors-strike-ends-hollywood-5769ab584bca99fe708c67d00d2ec241
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/17/business/hollywood-actors-sag-aftra-strike-by-the-numbers/index.html
As you can see these executives are not compensating the actors , the writers. The actual creators of these movies and series you said " wE sHoUldN’t pIrAtE" are not even getting their good deal and let’s not talk about the music industry which is the same or worst situation for the creators.
I don’t see how piracy hurts anyone.
Some pirates just want a free demo before they buy it, others pirate stuff they already bought for convenience reasons, or decide to pay for a license if they like it and want to support the creators, and the third type of pirate never would’ve bought anything to begin with, so no lost sales in any conceivable way.
Yes, there’s a million reasons to rationalize piracy to yourself.
I think it’s fair to say that, at least occasionally, one of those reasons isn’t true and it hurts the creator.
It’s just my impression of things based on what I’ve seen, but if that’s objectively wrong, I want to learn why
And on the general topic of rationalizing piracy:
Don’t get me wrong here, it is within the sellers rights to impose rules and restrictions about how the product is to be used. That’s not a bad thing per se.
But some of these restrictions are just stupid, and only hurt legitimate customers.
Sure, take me for example: I’ve pirated movies which I very well could have paid for, but just didn’t want to.
Yes, I agree that sellers can impose those restrictions. Yes, I agree that those restrictions can hurt legitimate customers.
We have another one.
Slavery used to be legal. So it was okay?
Right now „selling“ stuff and saying its just a license you fool is legal so it is okay?
That is a false equivalence, and I think you know that.
Feel free to point out where because thats exactly what people mean by the phrase in the post.
Comparing slavery to purchasing digital media might be a good place to start.
Its unimportant which example you use.
The underlying principle is legal ≠ correct. Just because something is legal, its not necessarily morally or otherwise correct.
Selling a movie to someone and calling it a license is highly manipulative and I think you know that.
Yes, I said from the start that it might not be moral.
But that’s exactly the point: companies sell movies to theaters, and then those theaters sell tickets to each viewer. That’s the license they each agreed to. A theater buying a movie off Amazon and then selling tickets to everyone who watched it would probably make some people upset, and would very clearly be illegal.
Talk about mental gymnastics.
You cant sell a limited time license. That is rent, plain and simple. If you pay 3 years rent at once or monthly, its still rent.
If you pay for something and have to give it back, you dont actually become the „owner“.
And thats why people say if buying isnt owning, piracy isnt theft, plain and simple.
Renting generally refers to physical goods, with the following property: when it’s being used by one party, it’s unavailable to everyone else.
For intellectual property, things that can be used by N people without interference between them, the term limited license is correct.