• Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    It’s fine to pirate every piece of media. From books, to movies, to music, to textbooks, to newspapers, to my own comments online.

    Information and art is meant to be shared and enjoyed. Pay walling a distraction from reality does nothing but make reality worse.

    • kinkles@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Soooo people shouldn’t get paid for taking time to create books, movies, music, textbooks, newspapers?

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        5 months ago

        Eh, there’s a difference between compensation for work and using laws and legislation to sew up something tighter than a cats arse for personal exploitation

        • kinkles@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          I would argue that someone saying “every piece of media” doesn’t care about that distinction.

    • fathog@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      What about people who need money to not only survive but to continue making art? What separates art from, say, coding, as a form of labor that is not worth compensation? Is an artist’s work not worthy of adequate compensation?

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        This is why concepts like UBI would be so transformative to society.

        Imagine a world where no one had to choose between creating and surviving. Where writers and artists and coders and musicians could just make beautiful things and give them to the world for nothing.

      • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻@aussie.zone
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        5 months ago

        Something interesting I’d like to point out, the videogame Mindustry is open source and copyleft (I think either GPL or AGPL). You can get a build off GitHub or FlatHub completely for free. However there is a Steam version with Steam multiplayer and achievements as well which is $9.99 USD on Steam, estimated ownership is around 846.7k [1], the price hasn’t always been $9.99, but assuming that isn’t the case the game has made around $8 million, I haven’t taken out Valve’s cut and I don’t know how much tax they’re paying but that’s pretty good. It could be a lot higher if all of the FlatHub and GitHub users paid for their copy. I initially discovered the game on FlatHub, loved it and now have it on Steam. I wouldn’t have bought the game if I hadn’t tried it for free.

        It feels counterintuitive that freeloaders can help with sales, but consider a physical artwork like a painting. People don’t tend to buy these things without seeing them first, and seeing it is experiencing, so there’s very little benefit to buying it, but people do anyway to support the artist, because they want more.

        [1] https://steamdb.info/app/1127400/charts/

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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        5 months ago

        People who can’t pay experiencing their creative work doesn’t take anything away from them. Complain about the lack of funding for art instead

      • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        Don’t do work that requires uploading your work to the internet before being paid if you’re not okay with some people experiencing it for free.

    • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Isn’t a car a form of art since it was designed? So you should steal a car too?

      Come on.

      • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’m not an advocate for unlimited pirating, but this is a poor analogy. Stealing is taking something from someone, as in the previous owner no longer possesses that item. Pirating digital media is not taking anything from anyone, as it’s digital and thus still exists. This is why the courts do not call pirating theft, they call it copyright infringement.

        • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I disagree completely.

          What about pure digital releases? Where 100% of the profits come from sales?

          My analogy was spot on, and I don’t care if all your feelings are hurt so it’s downvoted.

          Stealing is stealing, stop trying to justify it in the name of art and sharing.

          Textbooks don’t only get digital releases. If everyone started to pirate it all the time, the author would not make any money at all.

          Keep lying to yourselves about why you steal things.

          • Nelots@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            To preface this, I do agree it’s not morally correct to pirate. At BEST it’s morally neutral, and usually it’s not even that. I don’t know why people think they’re entitled to another person’s work without paying just because it’s “art”. They’re not.

            However…

            I completely disagree that your analogy is spot on. If I have zero plans to ever buy a certain car, but then one day decide to just steal it to see if it’s fun to drive, that car can no longer be sold to somebody else and the dealership or whatever just lost a lot of money.

            On the other hand, if I have no plans to ever buy a game, but decide to pirate it to see if it’s actually fun, the developers don’t lose money from that. I never would have bought it in the first place, and they can still sell it to others because I didn’t actually take it from them.

            That’s the difference. Now, if I had already planned on buying it but decided, “nah I’ll just pirate it instead”, then I would agree they’re losing out on a potential sale. That’s still different from losing a car though, because the dealership isn’t only losing a potential sale, they’re also losing an item in limited supply that takes physical time and labor to make (as opposed to just fabricating another Steam key).

            • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Ok, I do agree with your updated statement, that if you pirate something to see how it is then buy it, that you’re still buying the item and giving money to the creators.

              But the sentiment in here seems to be that “art and creation should be shared among all for free”.

              • Nelots@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                I mean, maybe it should be. Maybe the government should be paying artists instead like somebody else suggested somewhere. Idk, it’s an interesting topic. But that’s in these peoples ideal world that we clearly do not live in. I am in complete agreement that, pirating all forms of art being the morally just thing to do (like the very first commenter suggested), is very incorrect. At least in our timeline it is.

          • Zeroxxx@lemmy.id
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            5 months ago

            Yep, stealing is stealing. This mob mentality exists on self-declared righteous people on Lemmy.

            I can even totally understand ‘I pirate because I don’t have moneh, it’s not the right thing to do but alas!’

            At least the thief acknowledges, unlike these Lemmy people.

          • Thelie@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Textbooks don’t only get digital releases. If everyone started to pirate it all the time, the author would not make any money at all.

            Maybe you should start looking into academic publishing and the amount of money authors get for their work in this field. Spoiler: It’s a laughable fraction of the book prices.

          • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Reading comprehension is key. I wasn’t advocating anything, I was simply pointing out that even the law disagrees with you. Pirating digital goods is not theft, it is copyright infringement.