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Zoolander @ dpkonofa @lemmy.world Posts 1Comments 920Joined 2 yr. ago
Zoolander @ dpkonofa @lemmy.world
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they spend their time on the work and then relinquish the product of that work at the time and price of their choosing
...to the people who have paid for that work.
An creator doesn't possess the less by their work being copied.
Yes, they do. Otherwise, you'd have to pay for it. Without paying for it, you would't be able to consume it.
Copying is not taking.
The media itself is not what's being stolen. It's the income being stolen by ingesting/consuming the media. If you don't pay for it, you don't consume it unless you steal it.
Is art only valuable if it can be profited from?
I have never made that argument nor that point.
What harm has been done to a baker if I take a loaf of bread from their trash?
You didn't pay for a loaf of bread. This is disingenuous anyways because bakers bake their goods in order to get paid for them.
system depends on it, not because it's ethical or justified.
An entirely different argument than what I'm making. A different system that what we live in doesn't exist currently so that entire argument is meaningless and piracy doesn't somehow magically bring about that other system.
We produce gratuitous surplus, we can provide the means of living to everyone without concern for exchanging it for labor.
Again with the fantasy. I agree with your fantasy. I would love that. We don't live in a world where people don't need money to survive. Full stop.
You just said that it wasn't a straw man (a term whose definition is 'arguing against a point that wasn't made') and then admitted that I never made that point. If I never made that point, then it is, by definition, a straw man argument.
It's not just the legal sense, it's the core definition of the term you're misassociating.
It is not. We're simply disagreeing on what is being stolen. You're arguing that, because the media itself isn't stolen (it is infinitely reproducible), it's not theft. I'm arguing that it's income that's being stolen.
Your argument is flawed, because piracy is different to theft.
No, my argument is specifically that piracy and theft are not different. My argument can't be flawed because they're different if the argument is that they're different. That's circular reasoning. You can't just say that they are different without pointing out how they are materially different in a way that a creator is properly compensated for the content that they created since that is the entire crux of my argument. If a creator isn't getting paid for someone consuming their work, then that's theft. We don't allow people to consume anything else they haven't paid for in any other context so, unless you can make a meaningful distinction for a creator, you haven't actually addressed the central premise of my argument.
There is a potential loss with piracy, but that isn't theft.
It is not a potential loss, though. If someone consumes that media then it is a real, tangible loss. They consumed the media without paying for it. The idea that they may not have paid for it anyways is unresolvable with the idea that, if they hadn't paid for it and piracy wasn't an option, then they wouldn't have been able to consume that media.
Man, I feel so privileged in that I didn't have any mandatory texts to buy for my degree.
How in the world is that possible? How could a teacher possibly assign any sort of assignment if you didn't have a shared textbook or curriculum? Or is this another semantic argument where you didn't have to buy it but were allowed to rent or otherwise borrow the books?
Or, at least, the level of piracy occurring is a good indicator of how bad the product/service is,
That's not true in the slightest. If it was, none of the games on Steam would be pirated. Games that cost 99 cents wouldn't be pirated. The fact that both of those situations exist is proof that piracy as an indicator is completely detached from both of those things.
I'll give a personal example but fear it will just lead to more needless pedantry. My studio used to create mobile games. We initially charged 99 cents for the game because we didn't want to do microtransactions or any of that other nonsense. Within the first week, the app showed up on piracy sites but we had code that detected when the dial-home for analytics was bypassed. We had no DRM on there, we didn't restrict the pirated versions and, in some cases we actually uploaded copies to these sites ourselves. When we looked at analytics for months afterward, the people playing the game the most were the people that pirated it. They can't claim that they didn't find value in the game because they were playing it every day and yet they didn't pay for it. In the end, we had to stop producing games because we couldn't get people to pay for the game despite them playing it regularly. I'm not sure how someone can resolve the idea that the game was bad and so they didn't think they should pay for it with the fact that they played it as much as they did (more even than the players that did pay for it).
Comparing Steelbook movies to piracy is a bit of a false argument. That's a physical good. I'm sure the movies themselves do suffer some amount of piracy - however the product is so good that people do buy it.
That is entirely my point with the example, though. With Steelbooks, it isn't the movie in the case that's the good. The case is what people are paying for despite being able to pirate the movie within.
The limited physical good is the plastic circle.
This is just dishonest, yet again. Without that physical good, you cannot distribute the file copied on that disc indefinitely. The entire reason the current situation exists as it does is because of the distinction between tangible and intangible goods which, again, you keep ignoring.
Your definition is wrong, because your definition of theft is incomplete.
It is not. The author is deprived of something tangible. They are deprived of the cost that they are asking for the exchange of being able to consume what they created.
Copyright infringement only involves the potential profit. There is no actual loss.
We're not talking about copyright infringement. That is a legal term that only applies to the legality of the action. I am not discussing the legality.
There is a potential loss, but not an actual loss.
This is not true and, since you continue to try and argue the legal matter, it has already been determined that piracy is not a potential loss, even though that's not at all what my argument is about.
Digital piracy is not theft, it's less than that. It may be wrong, it may be similar, but it's not theft.
We'll have to agree to disagree. Whether something is tangible or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether someone who creates something should be paid by the people who consume the thing they created.
is shared publicly
Here's the flaw in this. It's not shared publicly. It's only shared to the people who have paid for it. That's why we have these stupid situations where distributors fall back on "licenses".
ideas have no natural property of exclusive ownership because they can spread and propagate at no cost.
This is the flaw in this part. Digital media is not simply an idea. It is the manifestation of an idea. It took real people real time and real work to create it. Just because it's intangible doesn't mean that it is an idea.
Different from labor, which is finite since it's limited by time.
If intangible media requires labor in order to be created then the media itself is, by extension, finite because it can't be created without the tangible labor in order to move it from being an idea into being a product or manifestation of that idea. The fact that the time of the creators is finite and has value is what transfers that value to the end product.
that work is shared publicly
Again, a misrepresentation of how it is being shared. The argument you're advocating for is that people who create digital media should only allow people to pay for temporary, physical access to that media in the same way that museums limit physical access to artwork. They shouldn't release their content online, they should only allow access to it in a limited fashion where people have to go to a physical location to view it so as to ensure that they get paid for their work.
I blame those who own and restrict my means of living from me in the first place
So your argument is basically that we should live in a fantasy world where this isn't the case?
It would be far more efficient if we didn't require problems to be solved over and over again, and far more efficient if the accumulation of capital didn't further alienate creators from their work.
It would. 100%. We don't live in that world or on that planet.
Once digital media is produced,
Again, the flaw in your argument is here. Their labor and time are limited, in the exact same way as the other examples, in order to create the work in question. If they're not compensated for that work, they can't continue to create more of it.
NO MATERIAL COST TO THE CREATOR.
...only if you ignore the material cost to the creator to make it in the first place.
without confronting the reality that it depends on the illusion of ownership.
It does not rely on that. It relies on the idea that, regardless of whether a good is tangible or intangible, the people creating it deserve to be paid for it by the people who consume it. Public domain can only apply after something has already been created.
Why should you be entitled to consume something that you haven't paid for?
They ingest the content by watching it. They do not ingest the DVD, nor the torrent file.
Their ingestion is limited by it being a DVD. It is not limited by a torrent file. There is a distinction but you're ignoring it.
I've already "ingested" the content, and paid the creator for it, like they asked. But my friend did not pay the creator, yet has "gained something from their work without compensating them".
Yes... of a physical item. 1000 random strangers can't all watch your DVD at the same time in their own homes. Creators of physical media create it with the understanding that it is a limited, physical good. That is not the case for digital, intangible media.
Don't move the goalposts.
I'm not. You're still ignoring the distinction between tangible and intangible goods as if they are comparable.
It's not a separate argument, though.
It absolutely is. I have not argued that piracy shouldn't exist nor have I made any argument about how much goods and/or services should cost. Both of those things are irrelevant to the point that I made and are distinctly different from the argument I made. The cost of something doesn't determine whether piracy is justified and my argument isn't whether piracy can or should be justified.
If you are the victim of copyright infringement, you've only lost the potential sale.
This is not true. While the loss would not be equal to a physical good, claiming nothing is lost assumes that people's time/effort/labor have no value and are free. They are not.
The two ideas are distinctly different. You claim they are the same. They are not. You're on the cusp of recognising this.
I do not claim they are the same. I already recognize they are different. You need to recognize that those are merely legal terms to differentiate how the legal system treats them. I am not arguing anything about the legality of the two nor am I arguing anything about copyright infringement. I am only talking about ingesting/consuming something without paying for it, regardless of how the law treats it (and that's not even considering that laws are different depending on where they are defined).
Not a straw man at all
It is a straw man. It is arguing a point that I never made.
Fair point.
I don't understand how you can reconcile this with what you just said above.
You're still wrong, though. Copyright infringement is not theft, the two are distinctly different.
Only in a legal sense and I'm not arguing the legality or legal distinction between the two things. This is another straw man. "Copyright infringement" only exists as a legal concept because of intangible goods and ideas and how they different from physical, tangible items. Both types have enormous amounts of labor/effort/time required to create them and yet we have to make a distinction because it is different from a legal perspective.
They are ignoring my argument. My argument is not flawed. We don't accept it in any other context with any other intangible items so I don't understand why it's acceptable here.
Stealing is different to pirating. You can say that both are wrong, but you can't claim that both are the same.
Yes, I can... and I am. They're both wrong because, whatever you call them, they're theft of something. Anything else is just a semantic argument. You're taking something and gaining a benefit from it without compensating the creator for it. We don't accept that in any other context, whether tangible or intangible.
You don't care what words you use, because you're talking about something else, an idea that's only in your head.
I'm not. I don't know how much more simply I can put this other than I feel that creators deserve to get paid for the work they create and piracy deprives them of that and is, therefore, theft. It's not theft of their product, it's theft of the right to be paid for that product. Ingesting/consuming a product without paying the creator for it is theft, unless that creator has explicitly allowed for that (like in the case of physical media where creators understand that it can be borrowed).
Theft is distinctly different from copyright infringement - even when you set aside that one is a crime and the other is a civil rights infringement. That's just how the law defines it, and the definition is pretty clear cut.
And I'm not arguing any of the legalities of it. I don't care about the distinction of theft and copyright infringement in a legal sense. I'm care about the practical effects of stealing something without paying for it.
If I pirate something, no one loses anything.
This is not true. The creator loses something. You may want to talk about specific situations where a creator is hired on a "for work" basis to create something and we could argue that ad infinitum but then you'd need to make the distinction about where the line is drawn. Is it ok only when it's work for hire? If so, why is not ok when it's not? Where do you make the distinction?
Maybe they lost a potential sale, but more likely I probably wasn't going to buy it either way.
That's irrelevant. If you weren't going to buy it then you're not entitled to consume it either. The entire problem is that you (and many people here) are trying to make the argument that they're entitled to ingest/consume whatever it is despite not paying for it. I'm making the argument that that's theft and that you're not entitled to it for precisely the reason that you didn't pay for it. Obviously, this doesn't apply if the creator is giving away that work for free.
it's also often the case that a 2nd wrong can at least, sometimes, make things better.
I have never argued, here or otherwise, that piracy isn't justified in some cases. I'm only arguing that, even when it's justified, it's still theft and that we should be honest about that.
I've maybe been a little harsh in my other comments, and for that I apologise.
Apology accepted.
Why is it that students are exempt from your position? It seems like there's a hard and fast line here, when really, I think, there is a great deal of grey area in between.
I don't think they're exempt. If they can afford to pay for it, I think that they should. The difference, at least to me, is that most students are required to use specific books and, as you've pointed out, are a captive audience. Students don't get to choose which book they use to learn a topic in class the way that they get to choose what movies they're going to watch in their free time. It's exactly that captivity that I think warrants that "exemption" (even though I wouldn't call it that). Money should not be a reason why someone should be limited in bettering themselves, especially when they are forced to not have an alternative.
A regular adult may also be priced out because they can't afford something and because the seller is charging too much, and has no other option for a similar product.
That's functionally not true. We live in an age where media is sooo prevalent and so accessible that adults have plenty of alternatives. FOMO is not a valid justification to claim "no other option".
why should piracy be an invalid choice?
Because we're dealing with something that's entirely optional. Piracy has no reflection on how bad pricing is. That's an entirely separate argument. As an example, I collect Steelbook movies. Some of them are outrageously priced. Their prices are not affected by piracy at all because you can't pirate the Steelbooks themselves. If their value was only in the movie inside the case, then maybe you could make that argument.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a "lifetime" license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn't work anymore?
That's wrong and fucked up but also has nothing to do with the argument and point I'm making. It's a total straw man.
You should pick your examples more carefully.
I didn't pick it, so... 🤷♂️
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
How am I not acting in good faith? I am taking an objective position. Please point out how anything I've said is not objective or not in good faith?
Who should they be paid by, then, if not the people who want access to that work?
Remove all your preconceptions about distributors and production studios and whatever other justifications you've used to condone piracy. At what point is it ok to not pay for an artists work? Is it ok if they're just a single person and you're taking it from them without paying? Is it ok if they work for a studio and you take it without paying the studio? Or is it ok if Amazon or someone else paid to have it made and is distributing and marketing it? What's the cut-off where it's ok and where people do deserve to get paid vs. where they don't deserve to get paid?
If they're selling a physical product, then you viewing the painting temporarily while you're in the store is not the same as being able to view it whenever you want or to physically have it in your home. You cannot buy "used" intangible goods. You can buy "used" paintings and those paintings can be materially changed by being "used".
Irrelevant. We're talking about the digital movie contained on the DVD, not the physical DVD itself.
It's not irrelevant. You never mentioned that the friend was ingesting this in any way other than taking a physical disc from you. You've moved the goalposts and pretended that you scored.
If we're talking about the digital movie contained on the DVD then you don't need to lend your friend the DVD. You can just rip it and send it to them and that is theft because you've made a copy of the content without paying the creator of that content. The entire distinction is whether you're lending (which itself implies a temporal nature to the idea and a physical limit) or a duplication of someone else's effort without compensating them for that.
Explain how 3 is stealing and 2 is not.
I already have. One is physically limited, the other is not. One is created with the physical, temporal, and material limitations inherent to it while the other is not. If your friend has your DVD, you can't watch it while they have it in their possession. Something being intangible doesn't mean it's not worth compensation.
thus should be priced far lower than physical goods
This is a completely separate argument, that's why it's not valid. I'm not arguing about the price that content producers are charging for their products. If people don't think it's worth that price, then they shouldn't buy it. What I am arguing, though, is that, whatever the perceived value of that work, people should not be entitled to consume/ingest that product simply because they disagree with the price. They just shouldn't consume/ingest it.
With digital piracy, they've experienced no extra cost...you claim is suffering a loss?
One is infinite. The other is not. The scope of the loss matters. The time it takes someone to produce a physical good may be greater than an intangible good but there is time and effort taken in either case. You can make the argument that those differences should be reflective of that, and I would probably agree, but that's not the point that I'm arguing so it's irrelevant to the argument.
Maybe not entitled for the cost of accessing a place, eg a museum could charge entry (although the best ones don't), but viewing art itself should be free and a natural part of the human experience.
You're advocating for something you yourself would not participate in. If this was an actual situation that you'd be supportive of, then you'd just be advocating for exactly the situation you're in - DRM and other bullshit that limits the access to a "place". It's just not a physical place. No one wants that, including you, so there has to be some middle ground where artists can get paid for their work by the people who view it without having to needlessly restrict that access to physical places.
viewing art itself should be free and a natural part of the human experience
This would be great in a society where people can create art freely without needing to make a living. We do not live in such a society nor even such a planet.
Most people involved in making these products get paid only once, they don't get paid per copy sold - the ones that do get paid this way actually, by and large, have very little hand in producing it.
Again, a different argument from the one I'm making. This is only the case because people pay the distributors rather than paying the creators directly. The distributors have the money and so they're the ones that have the massive piles of funds necessary to produce these products.
You seem to be skirting around any of the valid negative points that the industry itself creates.
No, I'm not. I'm not arguing anything about the industry. This is yet again a completely separate argument.
Edit: And yet you left the original text in there for some reason... 🧐
You have not. I brought up a foundational argument that you have yet to refuse. You just keep repeating they're different as if it's a factual statement, completely ignoring that I've pointed out a fundamental way in which they are not that is outside of any legal or semantic meaning.
It is not. If someone ingested that media then it ceases being "potential revenue". In the same way that a "potential" theft of a physical good isn't the same as the realized theft, the only situation where there is no loss is one where the person didn't pay for the good and didn't make use of/get the benefit of the good.
Yes, I have. You said "copyright infringement" which is a legal term only. Copyright infringement and theft are not the same. Piracy and theft are. You can't conflate copyright infringement and piracy because that only is meaningful in a legal sense.
Again, you're just making a semantic distinction and yet my distinction and argument are far more foundational than that.