That’s… a good argument. I never thought of it like that.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for the cinema? You don’t own anything new after.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for your haircut? You don’t own anything new after.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for your car service? You don’t own anything new after.
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.
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
Yes, Captain obvious thanks for pointing out that a service and a product are different things. After all why would I pirate porn when fucking a hooker doesn’t get me anything new after?
Is this for movies? Because you can always just buy the DVD lol. Then you would own it
Even then, your rights are limited. You can’t show it publicly, or make a copy except for personal backup, for instance.
Unskippable bullshit before you can even get the DVD to play cured me of my DVD buying habit.
internet piracy? i never ever would do such a thing, it is illegal. instead i will pay for 5 streaming services and never own anything. remember, you wouldn’t steal a car.
The only thing I would (totally naively and magically) wish for is some kind of really well organized and curated time capsule mainly for movies and music preservation.
I don’t want all the music and movies for myself, I wouldn’t be able to watch/hear it all but I wish for anyone from any time in the future — to have a simple/legal option to just dig anything out, public domain or whatever will work best.
People have created some amazing gems.
Well, yes. This exist — I am really grateful for that, but… This audio library now contains 15M positions. It is a big number, no doubt about it.
Then, Spotify has over 80M files in the library with around 4M podcasts.
Estimated existing music amount is unclear but around 90-200M and growing all the time.
And suddenly 15M is getting somehow small in terms of preserving, and this is with music only.
With movies I even remember some interviews with Tarantino and Nolan talking about how badly some movies are being mistreated, lost cuts, not even close to proper/safe long time storing, fires, accidents and so on…
“Harry Potter is no longer available on this platform”
This statement feels so wrong yet also feels so correct. If companies can’t let ppl own what they paid they shouldn’t complain when ppl pirate.
I’m gonna show this to my landlord before I kick his ass
While I appreciate the sentiment, theft of service is a crime. You don’t have to be able to own something to be able to steal it.
When evil hides behind legality, there’s no moral imperative for good people to follow laws.
Exactly! So many authoritarians pretend that every law is sacrosanct to the same degree as the ones against murder and meanwhile we have motherfuckers outlawing water breaks in triple digit degrees weather and mandating discrimination!
One might argue that software developers deserve to be paid fairly for their work.
That argument falls flat, though, when their products include user-hostile misfeatures like performance-ruining DRM and obnoxious in-app advertising, which pirates remove. By including such misfeatures, software companies are basically punishing their customers for not pirating their products.
Why even pirate the game if you don’t agree with the mechanics?
You shouldn’t have to pay for something which there is no scarcity of. A haircut takes time and effort, so you should pay for it. Food is not unlimited, so you should pay for it. Software can be duplicated an unlimited number of times, so you should not have to pay for it. That’s just giving people passive income.
