5 ms·

Is piracy not a legitimate usage?

Nextgrid 5y ago
Piracy is something that some powerful entities would prefer you didn't do. Some people may consider it legitimate, some don't, but from a business point of view the problem is that you still have some big guys with big budgets against you.
Arainach 5y ago
No, it's not. You have no inherent right to others' work. You can pay the owners' requested price or you can go without. Piracy is neither legally nor morally defensible.
- probably_wrong 5y ago
  You can definitely make a moral argument in favor of piracy as a form of civil disobedience. Aaron Schwartz [1] and the book Free Culture[2] are the two bigger examples that come to mind. [1] https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/ipreports/swartzcase https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/ipreports/swartzcas... [2] https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/ https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/
  - Arainach 5y ago
    Lessig's point isn't what you're making it out to be. Lessening the length of copyright isn't endorsement of wholesale piracy. Artists need food, shelter, and comfort just like everyone else. Those things cost money. Even an artist who feels a need to create needs enough funding to survive and get materials. Great works of art require funding. This is particularly true for things like movies and video games - you can have some smaller indie passion projects, but the kind of funding for AAA games or blockbuster movies doesn't just appear out of thin air - it requires a return on investment. If piracy was widespread and universally acceptable, this content would not exist. Again, AAA games aren't a couple of passionate friends. George on the engine team doesn't want to spend 2 days hunting down an obscure collision detection bug if they're not getting paid.
  - monocularvision 5y ago
    Civil disobedience means accepting the consequences of your actions to affect public perception and motivate change. Using a VPN is the opposite of that.
- kroltan 5y ago
  Piracy does not even inherently inhibit the creators from getting their monetary compensation. Nowadays, I pirate games I paid for, so I don't have to run invasive and performance-degrading DRM software that makes assumptions about current computers that might not hold in the future. It's about convenience and archival, and the creator's compensation. Philosophically, it's also about protesting about the nature of private property and how in many cases nowadays, a "purchase" is in fact more akin to a lease.
- jdreaver 5y ago
  > nor morally defensible. I don't think this is accurate. There are plenty of legitimate critiques against intellectual property, for example: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/#GeneCritInteProp https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/#Ge...
- hyperman1 5y ago
  In my country, we pay a tax on all storage media which goes to content creators. We get to copy any content we legally own at the time of copying, even if borrowed from a friend or library. So yes, I have an inherent legal and moral right to others' work as I pay for it.
  - mercora 5y ago
    its like that in germany. well not really but it was supposed to be like this but later on it got illegal to circumvent digital protection regardless how trivial it was. the fees are still in place though...
- int_19h 5y ago
  Note that OP said "legitimate", not "legal". These are not the same. You have an inherent (natural) right to freedom of speech, which includes propagation of information. Intellectual property rights are an artificial construct that is created by society, effectively limiting freedom of speech and granting limited monopolies on distribution of certain information, ostensibly to achieve certain social goals. Both the goals themselves, and to what extent the arrangement is conductive to achieving them, is very much debatable.

Piracy is something that some powerful entities would prefer you didn't do. Some people may consider it legitimate, some don't, but from a business point of view the problem is that you still have some big guys with big budgets against you.

Arainach 5y ago

No, it's not. You have no inherent right to others' work. You can pay the owners' requested price or you can go without. Piracy is neither legally nor morally defensible.

probably_wrong 5y ago
You can definitely make a moral argument in favor of piracy as a form of civil disobedience. Aaron Schwartz [1] and the book Free Culture[2] are the two bigger examples that come to mind. [1] https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/ipreports/swartzcase https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/ipreports/swartzcas... [2] https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/ https://lessig.org/product/free-culture/
- Arainach 5y ago
  Lessig's point isn't what you're making it out to be. Lessening the length of copyright isn't endorsement of wholesale piracy. Artists need food, shelter, and comfort just like everyone else. Those things cost money. Even an artist who feels a need to create needs enough funding to survive and get materials. Great works of art require funding. This is particularly true for things like movies and video games - you can have some smaller indie passion projects, but the kind of funding for AAA games or blockbuster movies doesn't just appear out of thin air - it requires a return on investment. If piracy was widespread and universally acceptable, this content would not exist. Again, AAA games aren't a couple of passionate friends. George on the engine team doesn't want to spend 2 days hunting down an obscure collision detection bug if they're not getting paid.
- monocularvision 5y ago
  Civil disobedience means accepting the consequences of your actions to affect public perception and motivate change. Using a VPN is the opposite of that.
kroltan 5y ago
Piracy does not even inherently inhibit the creators from getting their monetary compensation. Nowadays, I pirate games I paid for, so I don't have to run invasive and performance-degrading DRM software that makes assumptions about current computers that might not hold in the future. It's about convenience and archival, and the creator's compensation. Philosophically, it's also about protesting about the nature of private property and how in many cases nowadays, a "purchase" is in fact more akin to a lease.
jdreaver 5y ago
> nor morally defensible. I don't think this is accurate. There are plenty of legitimate critiques against intellectual property, for example: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/#GeneCritInteProp https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/#Ge...
hyperman1 5y ago
In my country, we pay a tax on all storage media which goes to content creators. We get to copy any content we legally own at the time of copying, even if borrowed from a friend or library. So yes, I have an inherent legal and moral right to others' work as I pay for it.
- mercora 5y ago
  its like that in germany. well not really but it was supposed to be like this but later on it got illegal to circumvent digital protection regardless how trivial it was. the fees are still in place though...
int_19h 5y ago
Note that OP said "legitimate", not "legal". These are not the same. You have an inherent (natural) right to freedom of speech, which includes propagation of information. Intellectual property rights are an artificial construct that is created by society, effectively limiting freedom of speech and granting limited monopolies on distribution of certain information, ostensibly to achieve certain social goals. Both the goals themselves, and to what extent the arrangement is conductive to achieving them, is very much debatable.