• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In those three cases, you’re receiving a service (showing you the movie, cutting your hair and servicing your car), so yeah, you’re stealing their work, which is arguably much worse than stealing objects.

    In contrast, copying a copy of a movie or a game or whatever without removing the original or even a copy of it is not stealing.

    And before you chime in with “but future income!”, those profits are hypothetical, so even in the most uncharitable rational definition, you have stolen something that someone MIGHT have gotten.

    Copying is not theft and you can’t steal something that doesn’t and might never exist.

    • fuck reddit@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The gray area where I live is that streaming is not piracy. I didn’t pay for it, but I also didn’t retain a copy.

      Putlocker and Wootly were my go-to spots in college because I wouldn’t get a piracy warning from my internet provider.

      If there are better places these days, please let me know. I miss seeing new movies the same day they hit the digital marketplace

      • dingus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah once internet speeds got good enough, I stopped pirating movies and shows and started just watching them on streaming sites. The quality is usually slightly worse, but not enough for me to care that much. Stops your ISP from threatening you about piracy and makes it so you don’t have to fill up your hard drive space.

        Putlocker was my go to years back as well. But in recent years I’ve been using movies7 dot to. I don’t know if Putlocker has changed at all, but I remember long ago it was a bit difficult to search for the content you wanted. More modern dedicated streaming sites like the one I mentioned are much easier to search.

        There was another site that I had run into a recommendation for recently that might be better than the one I mentioned…but unfortunately I can’t remember what that one is.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nope. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never tried to pay for goods or services with a pirated copy of Shrek 2, much less one I was trying to pass off as the “real deal”.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No. The work that went into making the movie has already been paid for. The vast majority if not all of the profits from selling and renting the movie goes to the billionaire movie studios.

        At the cinema, there’s a projectionist showing you the movie and maintenance crew making sure you can do so in a pleasant environment, people working the concession stand etc.

        Those are services. Owning the “rights” to something that someone else made isn’t.