• skisnow@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    The problem with almost every pro-piracy argument like this is that they fundamentally require a significant percentage of the population to disagree with it. “People who can pay will pay and I’m not taking anything from them” only works for as long as both the general population and retailers regard piracy as wrong and keep funding all those games, movies etc for you.

    Heck, all you pirates should be upvoting anti-piracy posts like this, we’re the ones keeping your habit funded…

    • Oniononon@sopuli.xyz
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      25 minutes ago

      Its true. Ops argument is basically same as calling ai prompters real artists. Its better to support who you can in good faith to keep funding projects that you like. Sure theres a point in pirating call of yearly remake: basic bitch 6 or yet another disney owned copy paste as low effort slop gets funded no matter what with the people working on it being compensated and fired after end of a project anyway. But I try to compensate to smaller outfits whenever I can and at the very least advertise them.

    • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 hours ago

      The idea is that you support creators out of the appreciation and not because you’re forced to.
      This seems to work as a model for YouTubers and podcasters. They usually have most of their stuff available for free, and people pay them money, and more often than there is no reward for the money, other than satisfaction of supporting the creator.
      This is obviously one example, and it only works for periodic installments, but it is a working alternative to the system, where people who don’t want or can’t pay don’t do that

  • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 hours ago

    I wouldnt download a car, but that’s only because im fanatically anti car.

    Because cars are bad. There should not be cars.

  • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 hours ago

    The amount of people that take these moral high roads is fucking ridiculous.

    Well, the faceless mega-corp made it difficult to purchase or stream

    I don’t like that I have to play the game on Steam

    Akshually I’m just copying it, so it’s not theft

    There are too many streaming services, so I shouldn’t have to pay for ANOTHER service

    I’m not depriving the content creator or publisher from any money, since I wasn’t going to pay for it regardless

    Just fucking own it. You are downloading content that you did not pay for. I don’t take some enlightened stance when I download a movie; I just do it. What I’m doing is not right, but I still do what I do. I don’t try to justify it with some bullshit political take.

    We all have our line on what we deem acceptable or not. The only piracy that, in my opinion, could have a leg to stand on is when it is actual lost media. No physical copies available, no way to stream or pay for it. Anything else is just the lies we tell ourselves to justify our actions.

    Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.

    • zeca@lemmy.eco.br
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      3 hours ago

      I think pirating scientific papers is a good thing all around. The research isnt funded by the selling of access to those papers, much on the contrary.

    • Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 hours ago

      Just admit that you could pay for the content if you wanted to, you just choose not to, because you are a pirate. You are depriving someone somewhere from a sale or some other form of revenue.

      I usually can’t, actually. Not immediately anyway. But that doesn’t stop me from paying for it when I can. Done it with plenty of games. And if I didn’t have that option, which I primarily use for games I’m not entirely sure I’ll stick with, well… I just wouldn’t buy it. Full stop. Wouldn’t be a consideration at all. There is no lost sale here, only the potential to fall in love with it enough to buy it when I eventually can.

      Not saying this is some moral high ground. It’s not. But plenty of folks just can’t afford to gamble on whether or not they like something and end up paying it forward when they can.

    • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 hours ago

      When I return from the library instead of the bookstore it is with the deepest shame.

      • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        This is a specious analogy. e-books from libraries are already heavily controlled and are usually quite expensive to provide. Physical copies have their own inbuilt limits to distribution.

        You’re treating copyright like it’s some sort of hardline moral stance against consuming any media you haven’t directly paid for, when actually it’s more like a very long list of compromises to balance the conflicting requirements of creators’ needs to be compensated for their work versus society’s need to benefit from that work. This is why lending libraries, fair use etc are legal and piracy isn’t.

        • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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          3 hours ago

          No, I’m providing a counter-example and rejecting the argument that only lost media entitles you to consume media for free.

          • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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            2 hours ago

            And I’m saying that it’s a strawman, because that’s not the principle copyright law operated on in the first place.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      Yeah, OP’s take is like that of petulant child arguing semantics as though it changed a thing. Doubly cringe for adding that second section at the bottom where he depicts his opponent giving up and agreeing with him.

  • k1ck455kc@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    Disclosure: I have been sailing the seas for years, but…

    This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.

    The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied. The intent of that data is to be copied for profit. Now that the data has been copied against the creator/owners will, they do not receive the profit from that copy.

    Yes yes the argument is made that the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways, but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data. At the very least it gives people an option not to pay for the data, which is not what the creator wanted in creating it. They are entitled to fair compensation to their work.

    It is true that pirating is not directly theft, but it does definitely take away from the creator’s/distributor’s profit.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      5 hours ago

      Adding on to say: no. It doesn’t cost the creator anything when a pirated copy is made. They potentially miss a sale, but if their item wasn’t in a store where someone may have made a purchase you wouldn’t call that actively harmful, right?

      In addition, most media the creators don’t actually make money from the profit. Most of the time they’re paid a salary, maybe with a bonus if it does particularly well. The company that owns the product takes the profit (or loss), not the actual creators.

      Also, a lot of media isn’t even controlled by the same people as when it was made. For example, buying the Dune books doesn’t give money to Frank Herbert. It goes to his estate.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 hours ago

      Devil’s Advocate: Many pirates would have not paid for access to that media so to say it takes away from the creators profit isn’t exactly true since one act of piracy does not equal one lost sale.

      Devil’s Advocate Part II: There is s significant amount of research that supports the notion that pirates actually spend more money on media than the average person.

      I personally am an example of part II. I pirate a lot of music but I refuse to use Spotify because of how little it pays artists and I have also spent significant amounts of money buying music from artists I enjoy via Bandcamp or buying from the artist directly because I know they get a bigger cut of the profits that way.

        • IllNess@infosec.pub
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          8 hours ago

          Because people don’t want to pay for shit content. Let’s take pirating out of the equation. If I read a book I borrowed and I really like it, I would buy. If the content was trash then I wouldn’t. Same goes if I watch a movie, listen to an album, or eat a microwavable burrito at a friend’s or family member’s house.

      • tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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        10 hours ago

        Ditto on Spotify. I have big love for piracy of FLAC for my personal music server, but I also have a decent rack filled with physical offerings from my favorite bands.

        My Bandcamp collection is also getting up there, since a few of my favs say they are treated well there, and it’s FLAC friendly as well.

        Physical media or merch directly from the band is absolutely the way to go every time if possible.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 hours ago

          I’m having trouble finding a link to substantiate it, but I remember in the early 2000’s a group of artists having to sue their record labels because of the lawsuits on file-sharing users. The record labels said they were doing it for the artists, but the artists had to sue the record labels to even ever see a penny from the fruits of those lawsuits. The record labels were just pocketing the money for themselves while saying it was “for the artists.”

          Anyway, long story short is that kind of behavior from the recording industry made me want to give money directly to the artists and cut out these selfish middlemen who did nothing but claimed all the profits.

    • greenskye@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      Piracy is somewhat similar to vigilantism to me. My ability to consider it a negative is directly related to how fair I consider the legitimate methods available to be.

      If similar efforts were focused on consumer protection laws as we do IP protection, I don’t think pirates would have much leg to stand on, and they’d be seen in more of a negative light.

      But since consumers are regularly fucked by corporations, all I see is two sides both doing bad shit and I’m not feeling all that charitable for the faceless megacorp. I also dislike pirates who pirate from small time creators. But that’s about as far as I can care given the state of things.

      We should be focusing on stronger consumer rights to truly fix the problem for all sides.

      • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        3 hours ago

        There’s another comment further up about a statistic showing that people who pirate content are more likely to spend more money on content as well compared to people who don’t pirate content. It seems that there’s a correlation between people who pirate things and people who care about the ethical treatment of creators. Stuff like people who pirate music from Spotify and then spend money to buy the music from the band on Bandcamp.

        In that context, I have an even harder time caring about people pirating from the megacorps when they’re supporting creators at the same time. That’s closing in on Robin Hood style activities at that point.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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        9 hours ago

        There is absolutely a connection between how shitty corporations are treating their customers with how likely those customers are likely to stop paying and start sailing.

        Netflix in its prime was the GOAT, showing a very significant decrease in piracy. We’re only seeing a rise now because of the proliferation of streaming companies. No one wants to pay for 4+ streaming services.

    • tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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      10 hours ago

      Cool argument, except a huge quantity of pirated works aren’t “owned” by the creator or even a group that funded it, but instead by parasitic companies that abuse capitalistic tools to actually steal value from those creators.

      I have thousands of purchased games. 3 categories here:

      1: obtained as part of a pack (humble gog etc)

      2: purchased AFTER trying out via pirate copy to know if it is my kind of thing

      3: picked up early access due to demo or general interest from being a known smaller dev/studio (hare brained for example)

      With less and less access to shareware and viable demos, piracy is often the only conduit to prevent me getting ripped off of $80 for something that looks like a shiny sports car but end up being another “buy $800 in dlc for the full story!” Ford pinto.

      Additionally, I now flat refuse to fund the likes of Denuvo, and wish that piracy actively hurt the bottom line of companies deploying that kind of anti-user shit.

      • CybranM@feddit.nu
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        7 hours ago

        I dislike investors as much as anyone but someone had to fund development. At least until we get UBI

        • bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip
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          7 hours ago

          Eh, to an extent. If they are original funders, I agree. But when you have people or groups buying rights to music/movies/tv/etc to claim royalties in perpetuity, especially after the original creatives die, those people can fall into a pit of uncapped rusty rebar.

        • tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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          7 hours ago

          or even a group that funded it

          I noted I’m ok with investors.

          I’m against parasitic groups that feed on properties and prevent money getting to the actual dev folks.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        They get paid. They just don’t get a share of profits. They are usually paid a salary or, increasingly more commonly, are paid as a contractor.

        • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 hours ago

          Yeah but me streaming doesnt get them more paid, and it’s a fucking pittance anyway. Ive kniwn people who couldn’t really afford to live, working on projects that made ridiculous profits. Sorry, union too weak, cannot use to bludgeon me into the absolute shit show tgat is paying for media.

          • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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            4 hours ago

            Investors became investors by paying creators for their work in advance without knowing what they’d produce. It’s incredibly short-sighted to say “hey, the creator already got their paycheck so my purchase makes no difference now”.

            Maybe it would help to think of it as paying the creator for their next game.

            • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 hours ago

              Thats a pretty story, but completely unconnected to reality. If it worked like that, id be okay with it.

              Also, when you pay for stuff, abd like it, and want to revisit it later you usually cant. And that always makes me feel like a fool. I don’t like feeling like a fool. I don’t like paying to feel likeva fool. I don’t like expecting a thing i like to be there then it not being there; that ruins my day. And the sheer fucking regularity of this makes. Me think it’s going to keep happening.

              When you steal it, they cabt steal it from you, 'cuz they don’t know you have it.

              • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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                4 hours ago

                Thats a pretty story, but completely unconnected to reality. If it worked like that, id be okay with it.

                What do you think an investor is then?

    • taco@piefed.social
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      10 hours ago

      This logic does no justice to the objective financial harm being done to the creators/owners of valuable data/content/media.

      It does though, since no harm is being done.

      The original creator/owner is at a loss when data is copied. The intent of that data is to be copied for profit. Now that the data has been copied against the creator/owners will, they do not receive the profit from that copy.

      They also don’t receive profit from not copying, unless there’s a purchase made. By your logic, watching something on Netflix or listening to it on the radio is actively harmful to creators, which I think most people can admit is absurd.

      but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data.

      You made this assertion, but don’t really back it up. If you were correct here, being able to copy cassette tapes or burn cds would have killed the music industry decades ago. Piracy is the original grassroots promotional method.

      At the very least it gives people an option not to pay for the data, which is not what the creator wanted in creating it.

      That’s a separate argument and doesn’t relate at all to the supposed financial harm.

      They are entitled to fair compensation to their work.

      That’s a loaded assertion. If I sing a song right now, what am I entitled to be paid for it? And you’re ignoring that most of the “work” of being a musician (in most genres at least) is playing live performances, the experience of which cannot be pirated.

      It is true that pirating is not directly theft, but it does definitely take away from the creator’s/distributor’s profit.

      I don’t think it’s definite at all. Most of what musicians make these days is from merch and ticket sales, which piracy contributes to by bringing in new fans.

      • CybranM@feddit.nu
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        7 hours ago

        You have some very entitled opinions, if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media. You’re free to not watch movies or listen to music but it’s pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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          2 hours ago

          if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media

          This is obviously incorrect.

        • taco@piefed.social
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          6 hours ago

          You have some very entitled opinions

          Nah, the entitled opinions are coming from the “pay me, but you can’t own media” folks.

          if everyone thought like you no one would create digital media

          Ff everyone thought like me, people could buy digital media in convenient formats at reasonable prices, and buying media would probably still be a lot more popular. My Bandcamp library is in the tens of thousands and growing. I support digital purchasing more than most, when it’s done well.

          but it’s pretty asinine to take things without compensating the creator and claim no wrongdoing

          As the whole crux of the thread makes clear, no taking is involved. You might want to go re-read the OP again, speaking of asinine.

        • sqgl@sh.itjust.works
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          6 hours ago

          People do it for clout or for love. Sure, the Hollywood blockbusters would cease being made but that might be an overall social good IMO.

          I agree with Brian Eno who describes how, if we had a universal basic income, we would see more artists creating content just for the hell of it. He also explains how there is no “genius”, there is instead what he calls “scenius” where it is an entire artistic scene which breaks new ground but only one or two happen to go viral.

    • FUCKING_CUNO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire for people to obtain paid copies of the data.

      According to who?

      • k1ck455kc@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        I guess herein lies the potential fallacy of my statement. Decreased desire is a Subjective observation.

        One cannot draw a direct correlation, but there is data to conclude that not having a piracy option will boost sales of data initially, at least when it comes to games. (Hence why publishers continue to use Denuvo)

        https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game-piracy-20-percent-of-revenue-according-to-a-new-study/

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 hours ago

          Counterpoint: When Louis CK (prior to being outed as a sex pest) released one of his comedy specials on his website DRM-free for $5 he became a millionaire almost overnight.

          https://boingboing.net/2011/12/22/drm-free-experiment-makes-loui.html

          Price point matters, too.

          It also jives with early Steam Sales when Valve would cut titles like Left 4 Dead Counter Strike down to 90% off, and they would sell so many digital copies that they were actually making more money off the lower price.

          https://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/

          Now we did something where we decided to look at price elasticity. Without making announcements, we varied the price of one of our products. We have Steam so we can watch user behavior in real time. That gives us a useful tool for making experiments which you can’t really do through a lot of other distribution mechanisms. What we saw was that pricing was perfectly elastic. In other words, our gross revenue would remain constant. We thought, hooray, we understand this really well. There’s no way to use price to increase or decrease the size of your business.

          But then we did this different experiment where we did a sale. The sale is a highly promoted event that has ancillary media like comic books and movies associated with it. We do a 75 percent price reduction, our Counter-Strike experience tells us that our gross revenue would remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40. Which is completely not predicted by our previous experience with silent price variation.

          Then we decided that all we were really doing was time-shifting revenue. We were moving sales forward from the future. Then when we analyzed that we saw two things that were very surprising. Promotions on the digital channel increased sales at retail at the same time, and increased sales after the sale was finished, which falsified the temporal shifting and channel cannibalization arguments. Essentially, your audience, the people who bought the game, were more effective than traditional promotional tools. So we tried a third-party product to see if we had some artificial home-field advantage. We saw the same pricing phenomenon. Twenty-five percent, 50 percent and 75 percent very reliably generate different increases in gross revenue.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      the pirate would not have bought the copy anyways, but having free copies of the content available on the internet decreases the desire

      Also, the person deciding whether or not they “would have” paid for it, has a strong incentive to kid themselves that they wouldn’t. Imagine if cinemas worked that way, and you could just walk in and announce that you weren’t going to buy a ticket anyway and since there’s a seat over there still empty it’s not going to cost them anything for you to sit in it. They’d go out of business by the end of the week.

      Also also, either the thing you’re copying has value that arose from the effort of creating it, or it doesn’t. If it’s of value, then it’s reasonable to expect payment for it. It’s it’s not of value, then you shouldn’t miss not having it.

      • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 hours ago

        Podcasters and medium to small youtubers work like that (bigger also get some money from ads, but for medium to small, Patreon is the main source of revenue). You can get their shit for free, but they would like you to give them some money after if you can.
        The scale is a bit different, but the scheme works.

        • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          It works for anything small scale enough for its creators to be able to do is as a side hustle that may or may not pay off. Try funding a triple-A game that way and see how far you get.

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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    10 hours ago

    I for one would definitely download a car, if I did not already own one I really like.

    I’d happily let’s others download mine, if it didn’t affect me or my car in any way.

    • Derpenheim@lemmy.zip
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      7 hours ago

      Same. Its not a fancy car, but its had no problem in almost a decade and gets good mileage. Download it all you like

  • limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    11 hours ago

    I attempted to download a car once, but front wheel got stuck in my router. Was huge mess

    • Zier@fedia.io
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      7 hours ago

      In 1992 I started downloading a car, the server is still downloading…

    • salacious_coaster@infosec.pub
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      11 hours ago

      I’m picturing a guy sighing with his hands on his head, staring at most of a car with the front wheel stuck in the router. Like, he can figure this out, just give him a minute. Maybe he needs a walk to clear his head. The pieces are there.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    10 hours ago

    Now make the exact same meme but substitute “AI training” for “piracy” and watch the downvotes flow in.

    • _AutumnMoon_@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 minutes ago

      Because AI isn’t creating a copy of the original thing, it is attempted to replace the original thing for a profit. It would be like if a publishing company took some book, removed random parts of it then replaced them to parts from other books, then sold that instead of paying authors to write books.

      • BurgerBaron@piefed.social
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        2 hours ago

        In Canada it’s very hard to get into trouble for piracy unless you make a profit from your piracy.

        Or well…until these LLM showed up. That’s the part I take issue with.

    • Nelots@lemmy.zip
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      7 hours ago

      This is an interesting argument. I don’t think the two are completely analogous, and the whole thing falls apart once you go beyond consumer level usage due to piracy’s inability to make new things like AI can. While piracy isn’t going to get any game developers or musicians fired, AI image gen very likely will. The more it improves, the harder it will be for companies to continue justifying paying real artists.

      That said, you do make a good point that many pro-piracy arguments can be used all the same to be pro-AI image gen. At least at the individual consumer level.

    • owl_herd@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 hours ago

      hold on let me use my 50 different materials 3d printer that has to be bigger than a car to print one. or for me to learn how to make a car from its parts

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    9 hours ago

    I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.

    Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.

    Theft still took place. You’re probably still getting paid. Maybe it got taken up by insurance and everyone’s premium goes up a tiny fraction, maybe it got taken up by the bank or by your business.

    It’s still an incomplete analogy but it’s a little bit closer.

    That’s not to say that the vast majority of piracy isn’t people who wouldn’t pay anyway. And back in the day, you certainly got more visibility in your games from people who were pirating.

    But now that advertising is on its toes and steam exists, I won’t think they’re getting any serious benefit from piracy and I don’t think that they’re not losing At least modest numbers of sales.

    • taco@piefed.social
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      9 hours ago

      I am 100% down for sailing the high seas. But let’s not sugarcoat it, this analogy is always been kind of crap.

      It’s less an analogy than the literal legal definition of theft.

      Somebody went to your mailbox took out your paycheck, made a copy of it, put the original back in your box, went to the bank and cashed it.

      This analogy is crap. When they took your paycheck, that was theft. Even if temporarily, you didn’t have the check. If they cash the fraudulent check, they’re not copying the money; it’s coming out of your account. That’s also theft. Both cases, the original is being removed, whether it be the physical check or the money from your account. The only reason there might be a “copy” in your analogy is some sort of fraud protection by the bank, at which point it’s the bank’s money getting stolen. Still theft though.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
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        9 hours ago

        Theft is more than just physically removing a non-fungible item. Depriving owed earnings is also considered theft, hence why piracy is considered theft because there is a debt owed for the pirated media. If you believe in wage theft, then you believe in IP theft.

        • taco@piefed.social
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          6 hours ago

          hence why piracy is considered theft because there is a debt owed for the pirated media

          This is objectively false in any meaningful way. It’s certainly not considered theft (at least in the US), and there’s absolutely no debt owed for pirated media (unless you count seeding it forward).

        • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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          7 hours ago

          Depriving owed earnings is also considered theft.

          I mean, so is not doing anything… wait i better not give them any ideas.

    • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      This is a horseshit analogy.

      Stealing money from your account is theft, it’s not still there afterwards.

      The concept I think you might’ve been looking for is opportunity cost in that pirating deprives an artist of potential sales. Which is a fair point, but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.

      It’s also all done in the context of a system that is not run by artists and does not primarily benefit artists, but is instead run by and benefits middlemen.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
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        7 hours ago

        but it is still not the same as stealing since it does not deprive the artists of their original copy.

        The artist has ownership rights to all copies, not just the original; it’s literally in the word “copyright”.

        • sqgl@sh.itjust.works
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          6 hours ago

          It is coming for artists to not own their own work. Taylor Swift bought back her own work, Michael Jackson bought Paul McCartney’s work from the record company (which annoyed Paul because he would have done it otherwise).

        • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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          7 hours ago

          Yes, which is a distinctly different concept from stealing. It’s copyright. Note how copyright violation isn’t in the Bible. Note how the Bible itself would never have existed if copyright existed at the time given that it is a collection of passed down stories.

          Copyright is a dumb as fuck concept. Its a scarcity based system, for stuff that is not scarce.

            • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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              6 hours ago

              Capitalism itself is a scarcity based system, and it falls apart somewhat when there’s abundance.

              In capitalism, stuff only has value if it’s scarce. We all constantly need oxygen to live, but because it’s abundant, it’s value is zero. Capitalism does not start valuing oxygen until there are situations where it starts becoming rare.

              This works for the most part in our world because physical goods by and large are scarce, but in the situations where they aren’t, capitalism doesn’t work. It’s the classic planned obscelesence lightbulb story, if you can make a dirt cheap light bulb that lasts forever, you’ll go out of business because you’ve created so much abundance that after a bit of production, you’re actually not needed at all anymore and raw market based capitalism has no mechanism to reward you long term.

              The same is even more true for information. Unlike physical goods, information can flow and be copied freely at a fundamental physics level. To move a certain amount of physical matter a certain distance I need a certain amount of energy, and there are hard universal limits with energy density, but I can represent the number three using three galaxies, or three atoms. Information does not scale or behave the same, and is inherently abundant in the digital age.

              Rather than develop a system that rewards digital artists based on how much something is used for free, we created copyright, which uses laws and DRM to create artificial scarcity for information, because then an author can be rewarded within capitalism since it’s scarce.

              • Chozo@fedia.io
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                6 hours ago

                Unlike physical goods, information can flow and be copied freely at a fundamental physics level.

                The electricity and silicon required to make this happen are not free, on a societal or physical level. There is a tangible cost to this transfer, even if you’re ignoring the social construct of copyright.

                I think this issue comes from a misunderstanding of “free”, possibly conflating it for “trivially easy”.

                Rather than develop a system that rewards digital artists based on how much something is used for free

                Feel free to come up with such a system. I think you’ll find that a rather difficult task.

                • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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                  56 minutes ago

                  The electricity and silicon required to make this happen are not free, on a societal or physical level. There is a tangible cost to this transfer, even if you’re ignoring the social construct of copyright.

                  Completely irrelevant.

                  If I already have a computer and an internet connection then I’ve already paid the costs, prior to initiating that particular request.

                  I think this issue comes from a misunderstanding of “free”, possibly conflating it for “trivially easy”.

                  In the context of pricing resources, those are the same thing.

                  Feel free to come up with such a system. I think you’ll find that a rather difficult task.

                  The model is the same one used by streaming services. It’s one of reward and attribution rather artificial scarcity. Rather than having streaming and advertising middlemen you have a public system that lets everyone access what they want and rewards creators based on usages. Youtube without Google’s exorbitant profits.

                  Copyright has no basis in human culture or history. Our literal entire history is based on a tradition of free remixing and story telling, not copyright.

    • Caketaco@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 hours ago

      You can tell it’s made the rounds because it has a reaction image nearly the size of the image itself shoved onto the bottom superfluously

  • Lectral@lemmy.ca
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    10 hours ago

    Piracy is making a child share toys with the kid who has none.

  • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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    11 hours ago

    Isn’t it more akin to stealing money though? Or to be more precise stealing the potential of money since not everyone who pirates would ever have paid for it on the first place.

    • Steve@communick.news
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      7 hours ago

      That assumes you were entitled to something that nobody owed you.

      If the money was never yours, can you say it was stolen from you?