Corporations make decision that are predatory and then complain when people avoid them. For example, there has been much talk about "bad" passengers on airplanes. But there is little discussion about the increasingly inhumane people must endure to fly. Somehow the corporations expect people to endure over crowding, exasperating loading conditions, angry and surly "attendants", delays, bad food and more. Then when some passenger loses it, the problem is never the conditions, it is the passenger.
The same is true for digital content. Amazon "sells" you movies (as do others like Apple), but do you "own" the movie? No. Amazon can just tell you it is no longer available. You cannot "sell" the movie you "bought" to some other person. But you bought it right? People in general are of good will. But if you treat them as prey at some point they recognize these corporations are simply predators. In my opinion there is a very strong case to be made that people who decide not to be victims are of better character than these predatory corporations.
[edit: removed the line "May their travels ever be delayed." because it was not clear I meant predatory corporations]
BLKNSLVR 440 days ago [-]
There's a 'concentration' (of people / power) effect by the creation of a business or company or corporation that makes said entity more appealing to cater to by government than individuals; centralisation is more efficient than decentralisation.
There's also the fact that, historically at least, business entities were created to serve a public need, and therefore these business entities should be encouraged to grow their service to greater satisfy the need.
Government still acts as if this is the case despite that many business entities are the grotesque offspring of that old idea, having evolved through perverse incentives into todays unrecognisable mutants of 'responsibility to shareholders' that are hideous to look upon.
meiraleal 440 days ago [-]
> bad food and more
What's more? Have in mind that an airplane is not a restaurant. It should not even serve food. Although the food industry wants people to believe we need to eat every 3 hours, that's very far from being true.
Besides that, most delays in flights happen because of bad weather. I agree with what you are saying but you really got a bad example to highlight the problem.
science4sail 439 days ago [-]
> What's more? Have in mind that an airplane is not a restaurant. It should not even serve food. Although the food industry wants people to believe we need to eat every 3 hours, that's very far from being true.
Have you traveled with friends or a family before? If you go on a 18-hour cross-ocean flight and forgo in-flight meals because eating is food industry propaganda, then you're going to have a lot of hungry/angry travel companions.
reverendjames 440 days ago [-]
I live in Asia. Passengers are treated with respect, I've never seen a 'surely' employee, nor do I remember seeing a misbehaving passenger, other than a drunk Russian guy who had shit himself by 9am while checking in. His wife didn't look happy.
petertodd 440 days ago [-]
If I could actually buy movies and TV shows for download I would; I buy all my music as sites like bleep.com allow you to easily buy mp3s, probably thousands of dollars over the years. I've tried buying shows a handful of times before. But I travel a lot and they're geolocked - WTF can't I watch my fully paid for episodes of Rick and Morty on youtube wherever I happen to be?
Since studios have made purchasing impossible, I don't, and I don't give them any money via streaming services either.
There is one exception I can think of: https://www.teamstarkid.com/ They've made their (awesome!) musicals available for purchase, with a true video download. So they've gotten a well-deserved $50 from me.
mazambazz 440 days ago [-]
I believe if businesses want to stop piracy, they need to start making superior products and platforms. If we put away cost completely for a service, allowing it to be any exorbitant amount, the final question is: Is this a better experience than I could have gotten for free?
It makes zero economical sense why you would pay for an inferior experience, such as being geo-locked. Netflix apparently throttles your bitrate/resolution if you're not watching from a smart TV. Sony can revoke at will media that you "bought".
Steam is a great example of what to do. Could I have pirated all my games? Absolutely, but having them on Steam--crucially--makes life easier. I get automatic updates, social integration, achievements, steam cloud saves, remote play, centralized screenshots, easy linux support via proton, etc.
I have no interest in having to buying something that might want me to pay extra premium on top just for a 4K version, or a streaming service that cycles films in and out that leaves me unable to watch a great title I saw 2 years ago. The biggest sin of all is not letting you download titles. F** me I guess if I want to download & watch a movie offline while sitting in transit. F** me if I want to download a title on WiFi to watch later when I'm out and about as to not use cellular data.
loufe 440 days ago [-]
I really enjoy Graphic Audio's audiobooks (full voice cast, music, SFX, high quality production). Their titles can all be bought outright, which is great as I spend a lot of time on a plane or away from a cell signal or internet capable of streaming even audio. It's a great approach, but I'm sure there are not a ton of folks who end up buying episodes, it's an expensive way to approach media, certainly.
loremm 440 days ago [-]
I agree, they are both good and expensive. Audiobooks are in general, which is unfortunate although makes sense considering you need, in this case, so many people producing 10-20 hours of content
Audiobooks.com can be much cheaper, click through from Google shopping
fy20 440 days ago [-]
The fact that geolocking also affects "downloads" really sucks. On our last holiday I prepared a tablet with downloaded content from Netflix and Disney for my 5 year old. But when we got there we couldn't play it, as it was geolocked. Next time I'll just use torrents.
PrismCrystal 440 days ago [-]
"If I could actually buy movies and TV shows for download I would"
I wouldn't for one simple reason: the canon of classic cinema that one needs to watch and rewatch in order to have a solid knowledge of the art form, consists of many hundreds of films. Multiply that by the cost of purchasing individual films, and you arrive at a total cost that even most people in highly paid countries would find unbearable, let alone less fortunate regions of the world. And while some very lucky people might have access to public libraries that can supply rips, you can't expect the rest of the planet to go without culture, so torrenting it is, just like how Anna's Archive and LibGen have opened literature still under copyright to all.
mazambazz 440 days ago [-]
Agreed completely, and you touch upon something very poignant.
Those living in poverty already fall short of fulfilling their hierarchy of needs in many ways. They certainly do not have the money to access film and media, so it's not like the production company is losing out on sales.
Do we really want to take the position of putting forth a monetary requirement for cultural enrichment (by condemning piracy)? It isn't like stealing someone's movie or concert ticket, where it deprives someone else of their enjoyment. It's a societal net-positive in all regards.
When it comes to mediums of knowledge such as books, the argument becomes even stronger. There are so many books that are either exorbitantly priced or just completely unavailable. We live in an age where we can send robots to other planets, create AIs that beat the Turing Test, and communicate with (almost) the entirety of the global population from a small rectangle in our pockets--but you're telling me I can't read this book because either I don't have $200 or because there's only 10 physical copies and they're all rented out? The hill that knowledge and information should be accessible to everyone is the hill I'm willing to die on.
meiraleal 440 days ago [-]
Isn't it interesting how the advertising monetization model didn't take over movies the same way Google took over TV, newspapers, etc. with free services? Like how a movie could be full of advertisements like cars, restaurants, tech and then be distributed for free
petertodd 440 days ago [-]
In the VHS and DVD days it was common for people to have large video collections that cost them thousands of dollars to obtain; as I said, I personally have probably spent a few thousand on music in my lifetime.
Artists - and even movie studios - do deserve to get paid. I have no qualms with paying them so long as the arrangement is reasonable. Paying for downloads that I actually own is reasonable; streaming is not.
As for everyone else... I could pirate my music too. But I don't because I can afford it, so I should pay for it.
theandrewbailey 445 days ago [-]
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing, so...
squarefoot 440 days ago [-]
When someone tells me that downloading a song or a movie is like stealing, I usually encourage them to download a new car.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> When someone tells me that downloading a song or a movie is like stealing, I usually encourage them to download a new car
Now do social security benefits. Or hell, money in a bank account.
xyproto 440 days ago [-]
Information being free and the ability to change information are two different things.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> Information being free and the ability to change information are two different things
A bank CEO adding zeroes to their own account doesn't deprive any specific person of anything. We still consider it stealing because of its systemic effects.
xyproto 439 days ago [-]
That both changes information and has measurable systemic effects.
If a 12 year old kid with no income copies a floppy disk or two with Monkey Island, no money were lost. He might even spend more money on LucasArt products as an adult.
6SixTy 440 days ago [-]
For creative works, there's always a license behind it post the invention of copyright. It wasn't as obvious in the past now that DRM and digital/streaming only has given studios/publishers/etc the ability to cancel your access at their discretion. Though complicating matters is that there's increasingly nothing worth spending money on in the first place anymore.
theandrewbailey 440 days ago [-]
> It wasn't as obvious in the past now that DRM and digital/streaming only has given studios/publishers/etc the ability to cancel your access at their discretion.
And that right there is the crux of the argument. Cancelling access to physical media was never a thing, because you "bought" it. Digital media shouldn't be any different. If I buy a file and someday it doesn't work because of something you did, you're responsible for it, but corporations have been able to get away with no responsibility. Example:
Not true. If you buy a book, it is yours. You can literally do anything you want with it. They cannot reclaim it. You cannot create a copy of the book, but that has nothing to do with owning an individual book.
potsandpans 440 days ago [-]
Your point is incoherent.Could you restate?
Are you suggesting that we never had ownership, it just wasn't obvious? If so, please cite your sources.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing, so...
This is a bad argument for piracy. (There are good ones.) Plenty of things that can't be bought and sold without restriction can be stolen.
WastedCucumber 440 days ago [-]
It's not only about restictions on buying and selling, it's also about restictions on using (where, for how long, can it be inherited) which are dictated by the vendor.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> it's also about restictions on using (where, for how long, can it be inherited) which are dictated by the vendor
Sure. Again, this is true for a wide variety of things. Many of which we commonly consider to be stealable.
WastedCucumber 440 days ago [-]
Such as?
thechao 440 days ago [-]
I've always thought there was a clever hack to get out of deed restrictions through the use of adverse possession.
howard941 440 days ago [-]
Won't work, recorded deed restrictions run with the land.
exe34 440 days ago [-]
he didn't say stealing isn't piracy, in which case your point would stand - he says piracy isn't stealing. piracy could be a lot of things, but stealing isn't one of them.
So are cars, it’s still a sale and actual ownership.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> it’s still a sale and actual ownership
What makes it actual versus pretend ownership? Remember, ownership is a social construct.
Retric 440 days ago [-]
Finality. Does the seller or creator having a say in what you do with something after the transaction? If so it’s not a sale.
If the dealership can still repossess the car you haven’t bought it yet. New house requires being an HOA member? Not a sale.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> Finality
No real estate is bought and owned without restrictions. And between taxes and bans, one’s relationship with other owned property is similarly revocable.
> the dealership can still repossess the car you haven’t bought it yet
If you bought your car with financing, it cannot be stolen?
> New house requires being an HOA member? Not a sale
So if your house has an HOA it cannot be stolen?
Retric 440 days ago [-]
> owned without restrictions
Society has a say in what you can do with a gun you just bought, the manufacturer and gun shop doesn’t. Thus restrictions by the seller is what matters here.
> if you bought your car with financing, it can’t be stolen?
It can be stolen from the bank. Walk away from a loan and you are not out the full value of the item as the bank can only repossess the car from whoever stole it.
EMIRELADERO 440 days ago [-]
> Remember, ownership is a social construct.
But the argument about you not really "owning" stuff even when the button says "buy" is a legal one.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> the argument about you not really "owning" stuff even when the button says "buy" is a legal one
Ownership is a stack of rights. It's a social construct--you can't lab test for ownership. It's meaningless to say what "really" owning means without specifying which of those rights you view to be essential in this situation.
bdangubic 440 days ago [-]
in some states (e.g. Virginia) you don’t get to own a car. you have to pay for the right to own a car each year in October via 4+% tax on your car’s current value. ‘merica at its finest :)
thayne 440 days ago [-]
Ok, so there is one similarity there. If you pay for an organ transplant you can't sell that organ again, because it is illegal to sell your own organs. Although you might be able to donate it on your death depending on the circumstances.
But the reasons for prohibiting resell are very different. For organs, selling organs is prohibited in order to protect individuals from being pressured or otherwise exploited into selling their organs. But for media, publishing and distribution companies are using technical measures and what is, IMO, an abuse of copyright law to maximize profits.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> Such as?
Tickets to a live performance. Health information. Public benefits. Tax refunds. Rental cars.
Retric 440 days ago [-]
You just listed things that are regularly resold.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> You just listed things that are regularly resold
Yes? I said "things that can't be bought and sold without restriction."
Are you saying it's not pirating if there's a resellable DVD available?
Retric 440 days ago [-]
Stealing a physical DVD has meaning. Making a copy of a purely intangible set of data doesn’t deprive someone of that data.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
> Making a copy of a purely intangible set of data doesn’t deprive someone of that data
You’re making an argument on the non-rivalry of digital content. This is one of the good arguments I referenced.
Digital content is currently a club good, like broadcast television. (Excludable.) You’re arguing for treating it like a public good, like a park. (Not excludable.)
Ownership being a social construct makes statements like stealing X has meaning somewhat useless, particularly when it comes to rules.
meiraleal 440 days ago [-]
> Digital content is currently a club good, like broadcast television. (Excludable.) You’re arguing for treating it like a public good, like a park. (Not excludable.)
Digital content was public good when I was growing up as everything published in the internet. When did it change? Did it change in the whole world at the same time or just in the US?
Retric 440 days ago [-]
Marriage is a social construct, but that doesn’t make the word meaningless.
Buying a fork isn’t a marriage.
JumpCrisscross 440 days ago [-]
Social construct != meaningless. Money and laws are also social constructs. But you can’t argue for money or laws or marriage by beginning and ending with whether you feel like it has meaning.
Retric 440 days ago [-]
I’m using the definition of sale here. Court cases have required companies not to call something a sale when it isn’t one.
cess11 440 days ago [-]
Plutonium.
Retric 440 days ago [-]
Plutonium does get sold, look up certified reference materials.
cess11 440 days ago [-]
"without restriction"
Retric 440 days ago [-]
The seller isn’t restricting you on what you can do with your 0.1 gram sample of plutonium.
boomboomsubban 440 days ago [-]
Saying "piracy supports organized crime" as a scare tactic is a new one to me, and doesn't seem like a very effective campaign. What would be their motivation, shitty ad revenue?
kibwen 440 days ago [-]
Know what supports organized crime? The copyright-supported media titans that closed ranks to cover up the career-spanning crimes of all the Weinsteins, Cosbys, Diddys, and Saviles of the world.
thih9 440 days ago [-]
Interestingly, Diddy shares a cell (dormitory-style room) with SBF; small world.
> [Diddy] was arrested and indicted in the Southern District of New York in September 2024 on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking by force, and transportation for purposes of prostitution. He is awaiting trial in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. His cellmate is Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence.
Not to mention their cover ups and distractions from far larger crimes - decades of cheerleading the 'war on terror', stirring up Islamophobia, ignoring Israeli atrocities, spreading climate change FUD, etc etc.
Saville was mind-meltingly evil, but in terms of the damage done, even he pales in comparison to Cheney, W, Obama, Netanyahu, Biden, Murdoch, etc.
Many people won't like these facts, and will reject them with prejudice. And that's largely because of corporate media :/
So yeah, the hypocrisy really stings when they try to blame online piracy for the state of the world. It's staggering weaponized hypocrisy.
kibwen 440 days ago [-]
The news media and the copyright cartels are different evils. News media aren't the ones going after torrenters.
mandmandam 440 days ago [-]
Over 90% of news AND entertainment in the US are owned by just 6 companies.
Same companies, same investors, same incentives, same evils.
meiraleal 440 days ago [-]
This can't be true. I agree with what you are saying but I think that's not the case anymore. Popular entertainment is too diverse now.
mandmandam 440 days ago [-]
I briefly verified this before posting, and it appears to still be true [0].
The diversity is an illusion; like how 10 food companies own basically all the world's brands [1].
Youtube, netflix, tiktok, instagram isn't entertainment then? You are talking about last century media that holds just a small fraction of people's attention currently.
mandmandam 439 days ago [-]
So add four more companies to the list.
Six, ten - either way the point stands: same investors, same incentives, same evils.
Plus, those entertainments are mostly used by younger generations. Boomers are the ones with the wealth and in positions of power, and they still generally believe every shadow play the legacy media put on.
meiraleal 439 days ago [-]
I can go on and add 10 more, Steam, twitch, twitter, ...
mandmandam 439 days ago [-]
Yes, but can you get the point?
Like, adding Twitter as an example of non-evil entertainment is just ... And Twitch is just Amazon, already on the list.
meiraleal 439 days ago [-]
They are all capitalist companies, not "evil". Are capitalist companies evil? Yes, most of them. Complaining about them 'monopolizing' the market without questioning free market (which is actually oligarchy market) doesn't make much sense. So the entertainment cartel and the copyright cartel are different ones but both part of the oligarchy market and they will protect each other to protect themselves.
This market isn't small or owned by 6 companies, they are hundreds, even thousands, including all YC-funded projects.
mandmandam 439 days ago [-]
> They are all capitalist companies, not "evil".
The companies named are conclusively evil. I briefly described the crimes - promoting illegal wars, covering up atrocities, spreading FUD for fossil fuel co's, etc.
> Are capitalist companies evil? Yes, most of them.
So you do get it?
> the entertainment cartel and the copyright cartel are different ones but both part of the oligarchy market and they will protect each other to protect themselves.
I might not be understanding you here. How exactly are they different?
Do Sony and Paramount etc not own their copyright, aggressively protect it, and make unsubstantiated claims about piracy hurting their business?
> This market isn't small
No one said it was.
> or owned by 6 companies
Again, no one said it was.
The claim was that over 90% of news and entertainment media in the US (clearly not including games and social media, if you read the original link) is ultimately owned by 6 companies. Can you prove otherwise with actual numbers or sources?
meiraleal 439 days ago [-]
> The claim was that over 90% of news and entertainment media in the US (clearly not including games and social media, if you read the original link) is ultimately owned by 6 companies. Can you prove otherwise with actual numbers or sources?
Streaming: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock, HBO Max
Tech companies: Google/YouTube, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Reddit, Tencent, Dancebyte
Independent digital media: Substack, Medium, countless news sites
Traditional media: Local TV stations, newspapers, radio stations
Digital native news: Vox, BuzzFeed, Vice
Games: Sony, Nintendo
We agree in most things, you are just completely wrong with this claim that 90% of news and entertainment media in the US is owned by 6 companies. And no, the fact that many of them share some of the same investors doesn't make you right.
mandmandam 439 days ago [-]
... How do you quote my words and still not understand them? I don't know how I could possibly be more clear.
Listing games companies and Substack, with no numbers or market share or source, does not disprove the quoted claim.
I'm out, best of luck anyway.
meiraleal 439 days ago [-]
Don't get mad just because I'm calling you out on your bullshit. You can't just fake statistics to prove a point even if I agree with it. Try better next time.
johnnyanmac 440 days ago [-]
well, the bleeding heart "you make indies unable to operate" didn't work. So you gotta move to fear, no matter how bad the argument. Everyone responds to fear when done right.
telgareith 440 days ago [-]
Private trackers might he considered organized crime.
some_random 440 days ago [-]
I was guessing stuff like counterfeit DVDs, which also doesn't really have much to do with torrenting
dotcoma 440 days ago [-]
What’s wrong with the other half ?
jowea 440 days ago [-]
I'm surprised it's not higher. Are the results unusual for an Western country?
baud147258 440 days ago [-]
other just think pirating is an acceptable way to stick it to the Man.
ramon156 440 days ago [-]
I never understood why it's all collected under the term piracy. Do we just classify illegally acquiring as piracy?
johnnyanmac 440 days ago [-]
illegally acquiring? Yes, technically. Otherwise it wouldn't be illegal.
corporation, no. the small people, yes. You can take a lot of losses when you have a billion dollars in the bank. Not so much when you got maybe 1000 (on a good day).
mikeocool 440 days ago [-]
I used to download torrents of tv shows less because it was cheap, and more because it was way more convenient than watching them through legal means — I could download them and then watch them when/wherever I wanted.
For me, the content providers have now basically solved for that with streaming services, I find that way more convenient than dealing with torrents.
It’s definitely not cheap, I’m paying for at least five streaming services right now, but it’s fast and easy and for me that’s worth it.
lillecarl 440 days ago [-]
Torrents UX isn't uTorrent anymore, there are Netflix like UX solutions to piracy 2024. Feel free to pay, I'm happy to freeload off faceless megacorps profit margins.
I pay for YouTube Premium and Spotify premium, I'd probably pay for Netflix if I didn't need D+, Showtime, Viaplay etc... To access all I want to watch.
blackeyeblitzar 440 days ago [-]
I am not sure. I think piracy does deprive others of revenue. The only reason it feels acceptable is because it concerns information instead of something physical. The gray area for me is how ownership isn’t real even when you legally purchase something. For example, when Amazon deleted copies of digital books from customers’ Kindles.
mschuster91 440 days ago [-]
Surprise, that's what you get for ... half a dozen worth of streaming services these days with none sharing their catalogue?
It's not that hard. Spotify and Apple Music both have all the music one can ever want, why the fuck didn't the movie/TV industry consolidate on Netflix... greedy morons.
codr7 440 days ago [-]
Warms my heart, living in Norway atm.
fldskfjdslkfj 440 days ago [-]
Vikings gonna viking.
metalman 440 days ago [-]
digital copys can not be considered real property,and therefor able to be "stolen"
with legal repercusions, until and only when digital copys of music can be bought,sold,resold,traded,and,returned, and insured against loss, and of course reposesed in the case of theft.
matsemann 440 days ago [-]
As a Norwegian just above 30, I guess I'm a bit outside. But my impression is that most people don't pirate movies or music to the same extent we did when I was younger. What's being pirated now is often live sports.
Watching Premier League costs about $75 a month. Why? Do the multi-millionaire soccer players really need that much? What happens with the sport when a whole generation of new fans can't afford to watch?
I also wanted to watch the Alpine World Cup today, but due to weird licensing issues with winter sports from Austria it's not on any channel I can buy.
scotty79 440 days ago [-]
> Do the multi-millionaire soccer players really need that much?
I think that's how they got their millions.
lofaszvanitt 440 days ago [-]
Get together with your friends and watch stuff.
johnnyanmac 440 days ago [-]
Friends, in this economy? Surely you jest.
There was a brief post COVID period where we hung out. It got a lot harder to contact them when almost all of us got laid off in different companies. I still do reach out (I was laid off too. I think I was the first in my circle), but it quickly became COVID hard again.
Workaccount2 440 days ago [-]
Watching people square this mentality with training LLM's on art has been fascinating, and really highlights that people are by and large just in it for themselves.
drpossum 440 days ago [-]
No one you're complaining about would care if people were training LLMs on pirated material for their own private use.
slyall 440 days ago [-]
What do you mean "their own private use"? OpenAI isn't letting me download the material they train on.
If you mean because OpenAI is selling access to the LLMs then an artist is doing the same selling art which was painted using skills they gained from consuming pirated material
Of course some Copyright Fans want to give artists cuts of AI revenue if the material was used for training. Laws that will absolutely never be used on human artists of course...
stavros 440 days ago [-]
Why would it be hard to square the mentality of "pirating art to watch is acceptable" with the mentality of "pirating art to train LLMs on is acceptable"?
CaptainFever 440 days ago [-]
It depends. If your premise for "pirating art to watch is acceptable" is "information should be free to be replicated and reused", then it is also obvious that "pirating art to train LLMs on is acceptable".
What premise that can infer "pirating art to watch is acceptable" can also simultaneously infer "pirating art to train LLMs on is not acceptable"? "Information should be free to be replicated and reused as long as you're not making a profit"? This would rule out OpenAI, but Stable Diffusion would be acceptable (it's a true non-profit).
What other premises could there be? "One should be able to watch all information, but not replicate it"? But you can't pirate without replicating the information. "You shouldn't repost stuff without consent"? But this rules out piracy.
"Information should be free to be replicated and reused as long as it comes from a big corporation"? But piracy from indie games is a thing, too. And how do you define "big"? Also, is training stuff solely on Getty, Shutterstock etc okay, then? What about books3? "But even though publishers own the rights to the book, individual authors wrote it." But the same is true for piracy from big corporations. People worked on it.
This is why it's so hard to square it, because I cannot see any rational moral foundation that simultaneously condones piracy (possibly indie games too) while condemning Stable Diffusion and the hobbyist AI ecosystem. The only other explanation is that it is irrational, or as the GP put it, "that people are by and large just in it for themselves". Piracy for me but not for thee.
yieldcrv 440 days ago [-]
GenAI content isn’t afforded copyright protection so that feels like a coincidental good tradeoff
I’ve made money from genAI content but i don’t care if someone copied it, it’s a risk I took, they don’t have the network and community I do which is the value.
Newlaptop 440 days ago [-]
Copyright has always allowed for educational usage.
Writers read other author's books. Artists study other painters and sculptors. Actors and directors watch other movies. Musicians learn to play other artists songs before they ever start composing their own.
The big media copyright cartel has tried to steal that right from the public good by pretending that they're entitled to even more payments for training usage, but thankfully it's clear that no regular people agree with them.
johnnyanmac 440 days ago [-]
The alternative is that "not playing media you can't buy" is also an acceptable way to save money. There's so much free media out there these days that you could spend your life ethically consuming media without ever spending a dime.
I'm no snitch, so do what you need to do. But I feel this mentality of it being "acceptable" only further devalues art. And the endgoal isn't some utopia where we all make art for free. Just look at the mobile industry for this race to the bottom. Tons of "free" mobile games, after all..
akomtu 440 days ago [-]
Imagine if someone bought a royal permission to "own" the image of Mt. Everest, hired a bunch of gangsters and tried to chase and beat up everyone who dared to look at the mountain without paying a fee? That's the modern copyright holders, the wannabe aristocracy of the digital world.
MattPalmer1086 440 days ago [-]
Imagine if someone built a huge, impressive thing, and a whole load of people tried to avoid paying to see it and claim they had some moral right to do so.
downrightmike 440 days ago [-]
No wage. Only buy!
445 days ago [-]
Rendered at 04:27:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The same is true for digital content. Amazon "sells" you movies (as do others like Apple), but do you "own" the movie? No. Amazon can just tell you it is no longer available. You cannot "sell" the movie you "bought" to some other person. But you bought it right? People in general are of good will. But if you treat them as prey at some point they recognize these corporations are simply predators. In my opinion there is a very strong case to be made that people who decide not to be victims are of better character than these predatory corporations.
[edit: removed the line "May their travels ever be delayed." because it was not clear I meant predatory corporations]
There's also the fact that, historically at least, business entities were created to serve a public need, and therefore these business entities should be encouraged to grow their service to greater satisfy the need.
Government still acts as if this is the case despite that many business entities are the grotesque offspring of that old idea, having evolved through perverse incentives into todays unrecognisable mutants of 'responsibility to shareholders' that are hideous to look upon.
What's more? Have in mind that an airplane is not a restaurant. It should not even serve food. Although the food industry wants people to believe we need to eat every 3 hours, that's very far from being true.
Besides that, most delays in flights happen because of bad weather. I agree with what you are saying but you really got a bad example to highlight the problem.
Have you traveled with friends or a family before? If you go on a 18-hour cross-ocean flight and forgo in-flight meals because eating is food industry propaganda, then you're going to have a lot of hungry/angry travel companions.
Since studios have made purchasing impossible, I don't, and I don't give them any money via streaming services either.
There is one exception I can think of: https://www.teamstarkid.com/ They've made their (awesome!) musicals available for purchase, with a true video download. So they've gotten a well-deserved $50 from me.
It makes zero economical sense why you would pay for an inferior experience, such as being geo-locked. Netflix apparently throttles your bitrate/resolution if you're not watching from a smart TV. Sony can revoke at will media that you "bought".
Steam is a great example of what to do. Could I have pirated all my games? Absolutely, but having them on Steam--crucially--makes life easier. I get automatic updates, social integration, achievements, steam cloud saves, remote play, centralized screenshots, easy linux support via proton, etc.
I have no interest in having to buying something that might want me to pay extra premium on top just for a 4K version, or a streaming service that cycles films in and out that leaves me unable to watch a great title I saw 2 years ago. The biggest sin of all is not letting you download titles. F** me I guess if I want to download & watch a movie offline while sitting in transit. F** me if I want to download a title on WiFi to watch later when I'm out and about as to not use cellular data.
Audiobooks.com can be much cheaper, click through from Google shopping
I wouldn't for one simple reason: the canon of classic cinema that one needs to watch and rewatch in order to have a solid knowledge of the art form, consists of many hundreds of films. Multiply that by the cost of purchasing individual films, and you arrive at a total cost that even most people in highly paid countries would find unbearable, let alone less fortunate regions of the world. And while some very lucky people might have access to public libraries that can supply rips, you can't expect the rest of the planet to go without culture, so torrenting it is, just like how Anna's Archive and LibGen have opened literature still under copyright to all.
Those living in poverty already fall short of fulfilling their hierarchy of needs in many ways. They certainly do not have the money to access film and media, so it's not like the production company is losing out on sales.
Do we really want to take the position of putting forth a monetary requirement for cultural enrichment (by condemning piracy)? It isn't like stealing someone's movie or concert ticket, where it deprives someone else of their enjoyment. It's a societal net-positive in all regards.
When it comes to mediums of knowledge such as books, the argument becomes even stronger. There are so many books that are either exorbitantly priced or just completely unavailable. We live in an age where we can send robots to other planets, create AIs that beat the Turing Test, and communicate with (almost) the entirety of the global population from a small rectangle in our pockets--but you're telling me I can't read this book because either I don't have $200 or because there's only 10 physical copies and they're all rented out? The hill that knowledge and information should be accessible to everyone is the hill I'm willing to die on.
Artists - and even movie studios - do deserve to get paid. I have no qualms with paying them so long as the arrangement is reasonable. Paying for downloads that I actually own is reasonable; streaming is not.
As for everyone else... I could pirate my music too. But I don't because I can afford it, so I should pay for it.
Now do social security benefits. Or hell, money in a bank account.
A bank CEO adding zeroes to their own account doesn't deprive any specific person of anything. We still consider it stealing because of its systemic effects.
If a 12 year old kid with no income copies a floppy disk or two with Monkey Island, no money were lost. He might even spend more money on LucasArt products as an adult.
And that right there is the crux of the argument. Cancelling access to physical media was never a thing, because you "bought" it. Digital media shouldn't be any different. If I buy a file and someday it doesn't work because of something you did, you're responsible for it, but corporations have been able to get away with no responsibility. Example:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/02/playstatio...
Are you suggesting that we never had ownership, it just wasn't obvious? If so, please cite your sources.
This is a bad argument for piracy. (There are good ones.) Plenty of things that can't be bought and sold without restriction can be stolen.
Sure. Again, this is true for a wide variety of things. Many of which we commonly consider to be stealable.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodi...
What makes it actual versus pretend ownership? Remember, ownership is a social construct.
If the dealership can still repossess the car you haven’t bought it yet. New house requires being an HOA member? Not a sale.
No real estate is bought and owned without restrictions. And between taxes and bans, one’s relationship with other owned property is similarly revocable.
> the dealership can still repossess the car you haven’t bought it yet
If you bought your car with financing, it cannot be stolen?
> New house requires being an HOA member? Not a sale
So if your house has an HOA it cannot be stolen?
Society has a say in what you can do with a gun you just bought, the manufacturer and gun shop doesn’t. Thus restrictions by the seller is what matters here.
> if you bought your car with financing, it can’t be stolen?
It can be stolen from the bank. Walk away from a loan and you are not out the full value of the item as the bank can only repossess the car from whoever stole it.
But the argument about you not really "owning" stuff even when the button says "buy" is a legal one.
Ownership is a stack of rights. It's a social construct--you can't lab test for ownership. It's meaningless to say what "really" owning means without specifying which of those rights you view to be essential in this situation.
But the reasons for prohibiting resell are very different. For organs, selling organs is prohibited in order to protect individuals from being pressured or otherwise exploited into selling their organs. But for media, publishing and distribution companies are using technical measures and what is, IMO, an abuse of copyright law to maximize profits.
Tickets to a live performance. Health information. Public benefits. Tax refunds. Rental cars.
Yes? I said "things that can't be bought and sold without restriction."
Are you saying it's not pirating if there's a resellable DVD available?
You’re making an argument on the non-rivalry of digital content. This is one of the good arguments I referenced.
Digital content is currently a club good, like broadcast television. (Excludable.) You’re arguing for treating it like a public good, like a park. (Not excludable.)
Ownership being a social construct makes statements like stealing X has meaning somewhat useless, particularly when it comes to rules.
Digital content was public good when I was growing up as everything published in the internet. When did it change? Did it change in the whole world at the same time or just in the US?
Buying a fork isn’t a marriage.
> [Diddy] was arrested and indicted in the Southern District of New York in September 2024 on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking by force, and transportation for purposes of prostitution. He is awaiting trial in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. His cellmate is Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Combs
Saville was mind-meltingly evil, but in terms of the damage done, even he pales in comparison to Cheney, W, Obama, Netanyahu, Biden, Murdoch, etc.
Many people won't like these facts, and will reject them with prejudice. And that's largely because of corporate media :/
So yeah, the hypocrisy really stings when they try to blame online piracy for the state of the world. It's staggering weaponized hypocrisy.
Same companies, same investors, same incentives, same evils.
The diversity is an illusion; like how 10 food companies own basically all the world's brands [1].
0 - https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/c...
1 - https://www.good.is/this-infographic-shows-how-only-10-compa...
Six, ten - either way the point stands: same investors, same incentives, same evils.
Plus, those entertainments are mostly used by younger generations. Boomers are the ones with the wealth and in positions of power, and they still generally believe every shadow play the legacy media put on.
Like, adding Twitter as an example of non-evil entertainment is just ... And Twitch is just Amazon, already on the list.
This market isn't small or owned by 6 companies, they are hundreds, even thousands, including all YC-funded projects.
The companies named are conclusively evil. I briefly described the crimes - promoting illegal wars, covering up atrocities, spreading FUD for fossil fuel co's, etc.
> Are capitalist companies evil? Yes, most of them.
So you do get it?
> the entertainment cartel and the copyright cartel are different ones but both part of the oligarchy market and they will protect each other to protect themselves.
I might not be understanding you here. How exactly are they different?
Do Sony and Paramount etc not own their copyright, aggressively protect it, and make unsubstantiated claims about piracy hurting their business?
> This market isn't small
No one said it was.
> or owned by 6 companies
Again, no one said it was.
The claim was that over 90% of news and entertainment media in the US (clearly not including games and social media, if you read the original link) is ultimately owned by 6 companies. Can you prove otherwise with actual numbers or sources?
Listing games companies and Substack, with no numbers or market share or source, does not disprove the quoted claim.
I'm out, best of luck anyway.
For me, the content providers have now basically solved for that with streaming services, I find that way more convenient than dealing with torrents.
It’s definitely not cheap, I’m paying for at least five streaming services right now, but it’s fast and easy and for me that’s worth it.
I pay for YouTube Premium and Spotify premium, I'd probably pay for Netflix if I didn't need D+, Showtime, Viaplay etc... To access all I want to watch.
It's not that hard. Spotify and Apple Music both have all the music one can ever want, why the fuck didn't the movie/TV industry consolidate on Netflix... greedy morons.
Watching Premier League costs about $75 a month. Why? Do the multi-millionaire soccer players really need that much? What happens with the sport when a whole generation of new fans can't afford to watch?
I also wanted to watch the Alpine World Cup today, but due to weird licensing issues with winter sports from Austria it's not on any channel I can buy.
I think that's how they got their millions.
There was a brief post COVID period where we hung out. It got a lot harder to contact them when almost all of us got laid off in different companies. I still do reach out (I was laid off too. I think I was the first in my circle), but it quickly became COVID hard again.
If you mean because OpenAI is selling access to the LLMs then an artist is doing the same selling art which was painted using skills they gained from consuming pirated material
Of course some Copyright Fans want to give artists cuts of AI revenue if the material was used for training. Laws that will absolutely never be used on human artists of course...
What premise that can infer "pirating art to watch is acceptable" can also simultaneously infer "pirating art to train LLMs on is not acceptable"? "Information should be free to be replicated and reused as long as you're not making a profit"? This would rule out OpenAI, but Stable Diffusion would be acceptable (it's a true non-profit).
What other premises could there be? "One should be able to watch all information, but not replicate it"? But you can't pirate without replicating the information. "You shouldn't repost stuff without consent"? But this rules out piracy.
"Information should be free to be replicated and reused as long as it comes from a big corporation"? But piracy from indie games is a thing, too. And how do you define "big"? Also, is training stuff solely on Getty, Shutterstock etc okay, then? What about books3? "But even though publishers own the rights to the book, individual authors wrote it." But the same is true for piracy from big corporations. People worked on it.
This is why it's so hard to square it, because I cannot see any rational moral foundation that simultaneously condones piracy (possibly indie games too) while condemning Stable Diffusion and the hobbyist AI ecosystem. The only other explanation is that it is irrational, or as the GP put it, "that people are by and large just in it for themselves". Piracy for me but not for thee.
I’ve made money from genAI content but i don’t care if someone copied it, it’s a risk I took, they don’t have the network and community I do which is the value.
Writers read other author's books. Artists study other painters and sculptors. Actors and directors watch other movies. Musicians learn to play other artists songs before they ever start composing their own.
The big media copyright cartel has tried to steal that right from the public good by pretending that they're entitled to even more payments for training usage, but thankfully it's clear that no regular people agree with them.
I'm no snitch, so do what you need to do. But I feel this mentality of it being "acceptable" only further devalues art. And the endgoal isn't some utopia where we all make art for free. Just look at the mobile industry for this race to the bottom. Tons of "free" mobile games, after all..