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The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
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Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.
Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.
Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that’s very different from stealing something.
The irony is, you pirating today has been shown to influence you buying it later on in a sale. And there’s a good argument to be made about your word of mouth praise helping their sales.
Biggest personal examples are Minecraft and FL Studio. I asked my parents to buy Minecraft for me after a week of pirating it, and I bought an FL Studio license when I could afford to, nearly a decade after I first used it. I don’t use it much, but it felt right.
Yup. I’m about to suggest about half a dozen people to watch a movie on Netflix I pirated last night. Leave the World Behind. I highly reccomend you see this to understand my last statement here. I have “suggested” to a few dozen people to watch Hulu for Firefly.
They don’t get my money because I don’t give a flying fuck to support the extortion of the people this tyrrany that’s been running since Crowley and even longer. Looks free but there was never an end to slavery. It just stopped giving a shit about your color. To counter, goes over everyone’s head one way or another. Doesn’t matter. All life will die on this planet in less than a decade.
Holy moly that comment took a turn.
Yeah, but did you get it at the “counter?”
No, I don’t get it.
The counter is that the slavery of everyone doesn’t mean they’re “not racist” by applying slavery “to white people too.” They’ve been enslaving white people since way before we came to the US. I am, by family, English & Irish. So just because I’m blond, blue and white don’t mean I’m not ready to WAR against slavery by the corporations or any bullshit hedgemony. Democratic party is as guilty as the republicans and their claim to fight is just sucker lies. They don’t fight shit for real and Biden is just Trumps most active cock sucking bitch.
I don’t mean this in any disrespectful way at all, but I’m completely missing the context of what you’re trying to tell me and genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.
Jesse, WTF are you talking about?
Sucks being uneducated, especially when folks don’t care to help because you’re a condescending dick about it. Not to mention religiously expletive.
RIP
Ditto.
yup, pirated jedi: fallen order. liked the game very much, but jedi: survivor wasn’t cracked yet. so i bought a key for 30€.
the problem is: it runs like shit, because it’s a bad PS5 port and denuvo probably also has an effect on that.
i will never buy from EA again.
It likely was the fault of denuvo, which ironically piracy would strip improving the experience.
As every musician knows, exposure is always better than payment! This is why you shouldn’t offer payment to musicians at your wedding, since they’re getting great exposure already. /s
That’s two very different cases. Using exposure to extort services out people is different than copying something to see if you’d enjoy it.
It’s really not that different. The main difference is the audience size. For an independent musician selling merchandise, it would be equally insulting to them to tell them that they will be repaid in exposure if they give you one for free.
Making a copy of something “to see if you’d enjoy it” or because it’s somehow great for their exposure is mental gymnastics to justify piracy. Let’s just call it intellectual property theft and stop beating around the bush.
Copying isn’t theft. You’re about 40 years late to this conversation and you’re starting from the taste of boots? You’re equating an instantly reproducible, finished product with a service; your analogy sucks.
The entire goal of my comment was to avoid mincing words. As somebody who has first hand experienced copyleft violation, it sure doesn’t feel different on the receiving end. I feel this very personal experience is equivocal to copyright infringement. I’m not licking any boots—thanks for that accusation.
It’s easy to excuse illicit behavior from your armchair by gaslighting with the choice of words, because after all, violating copyright is just sticking it to the man, right? In truth, I feel that my software was stolen for profit and just for me as the little man, there’s no other word that comes to my mind than “theft.”
You should write an open letter to hobbyists. It worked for Gates. If your software was “stolen for profit” and that didn’t result in more people trying it and buying, I have bad news: it didn’t seem like it was worth the money to the people who tried it. JRC does many studies on piracy and the data shows that total sales are not displaced by piracy volume, again and again. You can make the argument that this is only true for games and music (typically the subject of these studies) but this hardline attitude of it being the same as stealing sucks.
Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it’s old.
https://youtu.be/Qi5GXwY7W_0?t=165
Not exactly. The original translation from Hebrew was closer to “thou shall not kidnap,” arresting control of a person’s personal boundaries and will, not a violation of personal property, which didn’t really exist as a concept at the time.
An associate of mine defines stealing as, “taking (either by cloning or removing) something (either digital or physical) of which is not of your original possession”
If anyone has a rebuttal, please help.
Edit: What’s with the downvotes? I’m on your side.
It’s not really a rebuttal, but by that assessment, a person may not view a webpage, as the browser copies files from a distant server for viewing.
It’s not so much a rebuttal, but ask if they think stealing has any relation to depriving another person of something. Imo, they have a correct, though extremely narrow, definition of stealing that doesn’t leave any nuance for comparing different kinds of stealing. Piracy, or as they would say ‘stealing digital media’ is not a kind of stealing that deprives another person of that thing, so clearly it’s somewhat different than stealing money or physical property.
If they aren’t willing to entertain that there are different kinds of stealing then they’re ignorant of reality and it might not be worth your time to try to change their mind.
It’s because that’s not a common definition and it’s not even a good one. No normal person would call cloning stealing. Also, this completely misses lending, gifting, downloading a webpage or even renting. All of those would be stealing under this definition.
Who cares what your associate uses as a definition, stealing / theft has long established definitions. You can just point and laugh and say that your associate doesn’t actually understand the words he/she is using.
You could say that you define agreeing as “thinking someone is completely wrong”, and that you agree with your associate.
Hi, welcome to the Technology community here on Lemmy! Discourse is not tolerated here, so please just tack on your endorsement of piracy and leave your civility at the door.
The war of semantics is about as intelligent as the tweet that went viral where someone criticized trains requiring tickets. “Why are you charging me to get on? You’re going that way anyway.”
Piracy was never stealing. It’s copyright infringement, but that’s not the same as stealing at all. People saying it’s stealing have always been wrong.
One of the great modern scams, was to convince society that unauthorized copying of data is somehow equivalent to taking away a physical object.
Jesus didn’t ask for permission to copy bread and fish. It’s a clear moral precedent that if you can copy you should.
What would the Jesus do?
Checkmate Atheists!
Jesus was the first pirate.
Nah, that would be Prometheus.
Wasn’t the idea and origin story of Jesus stolen from previous texts and religions lol
They forked Judaism
Pretty sure it was Marvel or something.
Athiests don’t have a problem with Middle-Eastern Socialist Jews, the ‘Christians’ sure do.
So you also believe people shouldn’t need a ticket for a concert, for example?
The performers time is not infinitely reproducible so your argument is apples to oranges.
But the time to create a novel, a videogame, or a news story is not infinitely reproducible, either. So when you are pirsting one of those things, you are actively reaping the benefits of someone’s time for free, like going to a concert without a ticket
Yeah, this is the real issue. That said it is a shame and a waste for the results of these efforts to be artificially restricted. I do really hope that one day we can find a way to keep people fed and happy while fully utilizing the incredible technology we have for copying and redistributing data.
I mean, we’ve kinda already found a way, and it’s ads. Now it’s obvious that the ad market as a whole is horrible (it’s manipulative, it has turned into spying, it does not work really well, it’s been controlled by just a handful of companies etc), but at least it’s democratic in that it allows broader access to culture to everyone while still paying the creators.
Personally, I would not be against ads, if they were not tracking me. As of now, though, the situation seems fucked up and a new model is probably necessary. It’s just that, until now, every other solution is worse for creators.
There’s a difference between the performer’s time to create not being infinitely reproducible, and an user’s time to use the product being or not infinitely reproducible. Whether I’m pirating or buying a TV show, the actors were already compensated for their time and use for the show; my payment for buying actually goes to the corporate fat: licensors, distributors, etc.
Whereas when pay a ticket into a live concert, I’m actually paying for something to be made.
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It just magically appears /s Its disingenuous to try and justify piracy on the basis that the performers have already been paid. I don’t agree with studios either of course, customers are being scammed
From the investors who are paying the cheques of course. They are corporations, they can afford to spend some coins on [checks notes] living wages.
This only applies to cases where the artist/actor/whatever gets paid upfront. Most of the times, that does not happen. The creator of something only gets money when somebody buys what they have created (books, videogames, music, etc)
Even if they were paid upfront, they were paid off the idea that the company could make bank on their (ready yourself for the word in case it triggers): Intellectual Property.
In a future world where people have achieved their wish and the concept no longer exists, companies have no reason to pay creators ahead of time.
I can get that they’d not necessarily be paid upfront, but there is no possible legal contract in which they are to be paid only in the future, in causality, according to the performance of a ~~third~ ~ fourth party who is not in the contract. What, are the actors paying their weekly groceries with IOUs?
But it is though: via the power of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television?wprov=sfti1
Though you could charge for the experience of other sweaty humans, bad ventilation in some cases, and the thrill of potentially being trampled
Why do you hate libraries?
Libraries get money via tax. What people here are arguing for is that others should work for them or free. Because game studios, for example, are overwhelmingly not paid via tax money. They are depending on people buying their software. And many software has ongoing costs.
I don’t see anything wrong with paying for software or music or digital media. I don’t think that not doing so is theft - like I also don’t think that getting into a concert without paying is theft. By the way a concert is also not digital data, at least an irl one.
I have never had a problem with people taking a tape recorder to a concert, even if it’s against terms of service
But you do understand that if nobody would buy a ticket, there wouldn’t be concerts?
Do you think I should be forced to pay for a ticket if I’m standing next to the concert venue on the sidewalk but can still hear the performance?
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There is no such thing as intellectual property - you can not own a thought.
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You seem to not understand what the word own means and the difference between material and not material goods.
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I have a thing and than someone takes it away, so I can’t use it anymore. If somebody copies that thing - it’s not really theft.
My point is more - concepts from physical world don’t nessessary apply to digital world.
I love how you guys play these mental gymnastics to justify this shit to yourselves.
I love how you bootlickers always deny that anyone could possibly have a principled objection to modern intellectual property laws. I don’t need to “justify” at all. I rarely even pirate anything, but I don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong when I do.
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If you’re going to use that word you should at least know what it means so you don’t sound stupid.
“Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.”
Just telling on yourself 😂
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Intellectual property is not a thought that you own. It’s an idea
Ah, it’s an idea, not a thought. Gotcha. Glad you cleared that up.
Something that actually takes time to make, often a whole lot of time.
Who the fuck cares? Dinner also takes a great deal of time to make.
Something you never would have dedicated as much time to if you couldn’t be compensated for it.
That’s not true. People have been telling stories and creating art since humanity climbed down from the trees. Compensation might encourage more people to do it, but there was never a time that people weren’t creating, regardless of compensation. In addition, copyright, patents and trademarks are only one way of trying to get compensation. The Sistine chapel ceiling was painted not by an artist who was protected by copyright, but by an artist who had rich patrons who paid him to work.
Maybe “Meg 2: The Trench” wouldn’t have been made unless Warner Brothers knew it would be protected by copyright until 2143. But… maybe it’s not actually necessary to give that level of protection to the expression of ideas for people to be motivated to make them. In addition, maybe the harms of copyright aren’t balanced by the fact that people in 2143 will finally be able to have “Meg 2: The Trench” in the public domain.
Why should an artist not be paid but a gardener or someone who build your house is supposed to be paid?
After all, humans build stuff and make stuff with plants without compensation all the time.
You just sound like a Boomer who thinks work is only work when the product isn’t entertaining or art.
Why are you making up a story about an artist not getting paid?
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Intellectual property is a scam, the term was invented to convince dumb people that a government-granted monopoly on the expression of an idea is the same thing as “property”.
You can’t “steal” intellectual property, you can only infringe on someone’s monopoly rights.
This feels like an easy statement to make when it applies to Disney putting out new Avatar movies. Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took, instead of re-printing it without your permission.
“InfORMaTioN wANts tO Be FrEe, yO.”
Then, suddenly, you realize how extensively it causes problems when you’re a photographer trying to get magazines to pay for copies of the once-in-a-lifetime photo you took
That’s a pretty specific example. Probably because in many cases photographers are paid in advance. A wedding photographer doesn’t show up at the wedding, take a lot of pictures, then try to work out a deal with the couple getting married. They negotiate a fee before the wedding, and when the wedding is over they turn over the pictures in exchange for the money. Other photographers work on a salary.
Besides, even with your convoluted, overly-specific example, even without a copyright, a magazine would probably pay for the photo. Even if they didn’t get to control the copying of the photo, they could still get the scoop and have the picture out before other people. In your world, how would they “reprint” it without your permission? Would they break into your house and sneakily download it from your phone or camera?
This is the kind of situation I’m citing:
A lot of photography is not based on planning ahead before being paid (a person requests Photo X, and then pays on delivery). Nature photographers, and in fact many other forms of artists, produce a work before people know/feel they want it, and then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website, and then requests use of that work themselves.
The struggles of the above insect photographer are even with the existing IP laws - they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into, and VERY MANY media outlets don’t bother; to say nothing of giving a charitable donation.
then sell it based on demonstration - a media outlet notices their work in a gallery or on their website
So, they choose to rely on copyright, when they could do work for hire instead.
they only ask for fair compensation from what they’ve put so much effort into
No, they ask for unfair compensation based on copyrights.
Imagine if startrek was written with IP in mind. Instead of all these wunderkinds being all gung ho about implementing their warp field improvements on your reactor you’d get some ferengi shilling the latest and greatest “marketable” blech engine improvements.
Fiction is much better without reality leeching in.
Star Trek was set in a future utopia. One of the key things about the show is that it’s a post-scarcity world where even physical objects can be replicated.
They definitely wrote the series with IP in mind… in that their view of a future utopia was one where not only did copyright etc. not exist, but nobody cared much about the ownership of physical objects either.
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For someone who bitches all over this thread about people strawmanning their position, this is a pretty fucking great reply.
Hint: one can be pissed about people throwing around the not-based-in-legal-reality term “intellectual property.” One can be pissed about people using it as part of a strategy to purposely confuse the public into thinking that copyright infringement is the same as theft, a strategy which has apparently worked mightily well on you. One can be all of those things, and yet still feel that copyright infringement is wrong and no one should be entitled to “literally everything someone else creates.”
What you posted was a textbook definition of a straw man.
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I don’t know how the original poster meant it, but one possible way to interpret it (which is coincidentally my opinion) is that the concept of intellectual property is a scam, but the underlying actual legal concepts are not. Meaning, the law defines protections for copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets, and each of those has their uses and are generally not “scams,” but mixing them all together and packaging them up into this thing called intellectual property (which has no actual legal basis for its existence) is the scam. Does that make sense?
If no one thinks that, why are you saying it right now?
Actual theft of intellectual property would involve somehow tricking the world into thinking you hold the copyright to something that someone else owns.
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Isn’t ‘theft of intellectual property’ taking someone else’s work and try to pass it off as your own?
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Nah, if I stole their IP, they wouldn’t have it anymore
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YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A PURSE
You wouldn’t download fish and bread!
Jesus: hold my wine……
I would infringe all over its copyright tho
I bet you aren’t a software developer.
If I made software that people cared enough about to crack and pirate, I’d be happy that it’s popular enough for that to happen.
I am a software developer but I’ve only worked on SaAS and open source projects.
I work on software which is pirated. It is even sold by crackers, who make money off my work. This does not make me proud.
What does make me proud is when a paying customer says they love a specific feature, or that our software saves them a lot of manual work.
Tell me which so I can develop a competing service and steal your userbase!
I’d be happy that it’s popular enough for that to happen.
of course you would. you would actually give them your house and wife, because you’re so proud now. right?
Ah yes, because downloading Shark_Tale.mp4 is exactly the same as someone taking your house away from you and obtaining your wife and owning her as personal property.
Get some fucking perspective. I usually try to be polite online but this is just straight up moronic and you need to be told so bluntly.
Lmao
I have been for over 20 years actually! What do I get for winning the bet?
Edit:
One of our games we actually ended up supporting a form of piracy. A huge amount of our user base ended up using cheat tools to play our game which meant that they could get things that they would normally have to purchase with premium currency. Instead of banning them, we were careful to not break their cheat tools and I even had to debug why their cheat tool stopped working after a release.
How did your employer pay your salaries? Or did your money perhaps came from those people who actually do pay for in-game currency in your games?
You need to disconnect the badness with the term stealing because you’re just wrong. Yeah it’s ip infringement. Yes it’s illegal. Yes people are impacted. And still… Not stealing.
You aren’t.
Yes I am. And the two companies I worked for both were small, offered their products for cheap and still had people pirating the modules or circumvent licensing terms. It’s a legit problem that a lot of people don’t see why they should pay for software simply because it’s sometimes easy to steal it.
circumvent licensing terms
So to be clear: was it possible to purchase and own the software? Or did users have to pay a subscription for a license? Because personally I’m getting sick of every piece of software thinking it’s appropriate to require a subscription.
How about you don’t use it if it is to be paid by subscription? How is it justified to go against an agreement just because you don’t like it?
So either way I’m not paying for it. In that case pirating is not a lost sale.
Naa, I’d just pirate it. Fuck the rent-seekers.
Are you against employees getting good wages?
I am.
I’m a software developer, and I endorse the grandparent comment.
And you all just were happy and bro fisted people who ignored the licensing terms?
Yes.
Well, not literally, both because I’m more inclined to “high five” and you can’t do either gesture over the Internet. But figuratively, yes.
Why don’t you just gift away your software than? That’s an honest question. You obviously aren’t expecting to be paid for it, do you think in general developers shouldn’t earn money with software or is it just you?
I am a system engineer who works on a project that is open source, AMA
If there is no easy way to own what you buy, then piracy becomes a moral obligation to preserve culture for future generations.
You want something, but you don’t want to pay the cost (either monetarily or because they have made it too hard) and so you take take it. Fuck these assholes companies who try to milk people for every last penny, so I have no moral qualms with piracy, I do it myself.
But, fuck, can we stop trying to paint it as some noble thing? Effectively zero pirates are doing it to perseve culture, instead it’s fulfilling personal desire.
This is chaotic neutral at best, not neutral good.
I think there’s an exception to be made in your argument for abandonware. There are classic arcade games that wouldn,'t exist any more but are widely available due to MAME support.
See also: The Despecialized Edition of the Star Wars Original Trilogy
The Nintendo eShop shutdown is another example of preserving software through piracy.
I pirated plenty when I was young and poor, I’m pretty sure that helped form a desire for that sort of stuff which I pay for now.
I bet if I had abstained when I couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t have spent the money on all the content I buy now
I believe the bulk of pirates are people who wouldn’t have bought the content if they had to pay for it
It doesn’t need to have been a noble goal to be a noble result.
For something to be actually and reliable preserved and win against random decay, data loss, disaster, and whatever else will statistically destroy copies, a thing will need to be stored by at least thousands of people. But there is no way to know how many, only that you increase the likelihood of perseveration by storing a copy.
I agree, most people are downloading a thing because they want it. But by keeping that thing, they are also preserving it.
People who are doing porting work to make Windows-entwined Ubisoft games available on Linux are helping to preserve media for the future. People booting up Limewire are doing nothing.
I have a Spotify subscription that I still pay, but built a library full of FLACs on the side specifically because I got fed up with “right holders” taking songs in and out of my playlists and having the right to deny me access forever.
It literally would be cheaper and easier for me to just use Spotify.
Like the latest controversy with the internet archives
If you pay to own a movie then yes, you should be allowed to make copies of it and keep it forever, even if the seller goes bankrupt in future. You are paying to own the movie.
If you subscribe to Netflix you are not paying to own the content, you are paying for access to their content. Therefore you cannot legally download a movie from Netflix and keep a copy forever.
However, if Netflix don’t make it possible to buy their unique content for permanent ownership, then piracy is the inevitable result and they should address that.
But let’s be honest here, none of you are intending to buy anything.
I spend way more money on streaming services than I ever spent buying DVDs or CDs.
To say that “I don’t intend to buy anything” is a BS accusation. You have no clue about another persons motives.
People are always on here arguing about whether pirating is stealing or not. I do think it’s stealing I just can’t bring myself to give a fuck about these large corporations. They have been stealing from the people for years.
Yeah I really don’t care if I’m stealing in this context, I care if I’m stealing from independent content creators. Another thing is I know I can’t afford all the music I listen to, but I can afford to go to shows of my favorite artists. Piracy is often completely transparent of any content distribution strategies so I find it a great way to explore music.
I’d probably argue digital piracy isn’t theft. It’s quality control.
you cant steal something that isnt fucking physically real
am i stealing smells and sounds from my neighbors
no democrat city judge would side with a corpo over a random joe with a bangin lawyer
Your last sentence sounds unhinged but I agree wtiu the rest
What would you call it if you make a contract with a gardener, they make your entire garden and then you don’t pay them. Since it’s not stealing, where is the harm, right?
You’re stealing their time. That’s not really comparable since the people who made the tv show or movie you’re pirating have already been paid.
Do you believe actors etc. would still keep getting paid if everyone would just pirate everything?
Do you believe there will ever be a time where everyone pirates everything?
Since the idea seems to be that pirating digital goods is a moral imperative, the question what are the consequences if everyone would do it is valid.
Er… first off, you signed a contract. Second, you’d be stealing their labor. Their physical labor.
Forget about features and prices, how about actual content?
2017 I buy this space shooter game called “Destiny 2”. It has some problems, but it’s decent enough. $60 buy in. The single player story missions took you through four initial planets/moons, the European Dead Zone, Titan, Nessus, and Io, recovering your power and kicking the asses of the space turtles who tried to kill everyone.
Expansion 1, 2, 3 and 4 come out widening the story, adding more locations, Mercury, Mars, The Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, the Moon… with all the associated story missions, strikes, raids…
And I bought in on those too. Some hundreds of dollars.
Roll forward to 2020, almost 2,000 hours in game. Bungie decides they’re done with story missions and removes them from the game. They also decide that the game is “too big” for new players to get into, and seeking a Fortnite, free to play style audience, removes 1/2 of the content from the game.
Existing players like me drop the game because content we paid good money for and hours we spent exploring, collecting and curating gear, just went up in smoke.
New players now have no onboarding point and are incredibly confused because there’s no story and no real way to get into the game.
So Bungie managed to completely alienate both their existing user base, and the one they hoped to attract.
Oh, and they have now promised not to do it again, but at the same time, haven’t brought the content back either.
It’s an online service as a game too, so piracy is not an option. The only way to experience the original content is through YouTube videos.
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The thing that absolutely kills me is that they did so much RIGHT with the first game, and then it was like they completely forgot how to design a game between 1 and 2.
For example:
In Destiny 1 you picked the story missions off the map and each story mission was marked with a light level so you knew the order to do them in. When you finished all the normal missions, there was a Strike to finish off the planet.
Destiny 2? Yeah, story missions, you can’t see them on the map, you have no idea how many there are or if you’re the appropriate level, and while there are strikes, you can only access them from a playlist and MAYBE it’s the one from the planet you’re on, maybe it’s not. Maybe you’ll get the same strike 4 times in a row because fuck you if there’s a specific one you want to play.
Everyone was talking about how good The Pyramidion was, I could never get it to come up. Bungie finally relented after a YEAR(!) and put them on the map, a feature D1 had on DAY 1.
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You still can, it’s up and running right now. Backwards compatible even.
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Buy a used disc for $5. :) Bungie gets nothing.
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This is exactly me. Started in d1 beta. I quit cold the day the removed my purchased content
Pirated valheim, played 20 hours, bought the game.
Pirated baldurs gate 3 on early access, bought the game with only act 1, that’s how good it is.
Pirated Valhalla, played 5 hours, uninstalled that trash forever.
Started pirating streaming services when they told me that I can’t watch shit anymore because streaming service b and c took the shows, and now I have to pay two different streaming services if I want to keep watching.
We pay for three video streaming services plus Spotify plus Kobo’s monthly plan for audiobooks plus a monthly Microsoft tax for apps and cloud storage plus regular Steam purchases.
Anyway, I just got back into piracy after a 15-year hiatus due to the enshittification of video streaming. It reminds me of how cable TV got ridiculous back in the 90s and so people figured out how to hack the satellite feeds and make pirated VHS tapes to pass around. As Gaben has said, piracy is always a service problem.
I’m still happy with Spotify and Steam. I’m mostly okay with audiobooks, too. However, Amazon is fucking with that service too by making some books Audible-only. For example, you can get Books 2 and 3 of Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time books on various platforms, but not Book 1 because Book 1 is Audible-only! Am I going to reward Audible for that kind of malicious licensing? Haha, no, of course not.
Fuck them, they want our money and our data, while giving shit services.
Just for curiosity, how do you find Kobos selection compared to Libby/Overdrive (or similar), if that’s an option in your area?
I really can’t be happier with either, for audiobooks or ebooks, considering their price (free, through your public library). Drawback being that selections are limited depending on your library (but you can be linked to several, and you may be eligible for several…here in Massachusetts, anybody in the state is eligible for BPL plus the regional networks and colleges (I.e. COFAN). And there are libraries in other states that accept patrons from anywhere. And you can be on multiple waitlists
But, the limiting selection or not being able to get instant access when you want to scratch that itch. I bought my wife and I kindles on Prime day. Those each came with free Kindle Unlimited months. And then there’s Prime Reading as a benefit of being a prime member.
But, while I like ebooks, my wife greatly prefers audiobooks (she’s at 140-something for the year, and rarely uses her kindle because the phone is way more convenient for audiobooks. That’s entirely through Libby, but she’s also counting the Harry Potter books on her friends Audible account that we’ve been listening to with the kids). And the audiobook selection on kindle unlimited is terrible and clunky…they really want to push you to Audible. Though I do really like being able to toggle between reading and book in the same app. But while I do enjoy the occasional sales (been on waitlist for months for “To sleep in a sea of stars”, and then found it on prime sale for 99¢ or something), I can’t justify a “subscription” to “own” an ebook.
Would love a service that had a good selection of ebooks and audiobooks, and compatible with kindle and IOS
I have never tried Libby or Overdrive, though one or both are an option in my area, I believe. I have this vague feeling of unease associated with only having a certain amount of time to listen to the book.
I chose Kobo because they are a smaller company competing with Amazon. They have a subscription where you pay about $15 per month to get 1 credit per month. Since most audiobooks are about $35, it’s pretty economical and I feel like I’m supporting the artists, too. Plus, seeing the new credit every month keeps me reading/listening to literature rather than just doomscrolling.
Kobo’s selection is very good. The very few times I haven’t been able to find a book on Kobo, it is because of some shitty Audible exclusivity problem. I mean, a person is almost compelled to pirate the book in that case, just to punish, in some miniscule way, Audible’s anti-consumer, anti-competetive practices.
There are other book sellers besides amazon
Yes, I know. I said in my comment that I am on Kobo’s monthly audiobook plan. My comment about Amazon is that they are fucking with the market by not allowing other companies like Kobo to sell certain audiobooks.
imagine buying audiobooks in the age of Perfect Text to Speech
david johnes is my personal narrator now
Oh man, you have to listen to Andy Serkis read LOTR. Or the full cast version of World War Z. These are full audio performances. At the moment at least, some narrators are much better than automatic text to speech.
It’s probably worth pirating games just to test play them before buying the good ones for online play
It’s also great to check if my aging pc is even capable of running it somewhat smoothly.
You can just return steam games within 2 hrs tho
True, which again brings us back to “piracy is a service problem” which imho it totally is. I never pirate steam games.
Not all games are on Steam
I haven’t pirated games in like 18 years
I’ve never paid for movies, showes, or music lawl. I’ll donate or buy merch if I love a musical artist tho
I think piracy is copyright infringement. But like who cares if some big corpos get infringed upon by some dudes.
I think a compromise on copyright could be a good middle ground in future. In the same way that I’m happy to wait for a game to go on sale before I buy and play it, I’d be happy to wait until a movie or series enters the public domain so I can consume it without paying. Obviously not for hundreds of years, or 56 years. But if Netflix/HBO etc shows and movies became free to watch after 6-7 years, most piracy traffic could be easily captured by legal platforms that are more convenient and accessible to more viewers. I struggle to see how it would not further relegate piracy to a niche activity done by very few, or be bad for the content producers in any significant way
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There is a third party that cares: those of us who pay subscriptions that finance the content that pirates steal. Due in part to rising rates of piracy, our subscription fees go up and/or production budgets go down. In turn, pirates should care, too, because then there’s less in quantity and quality to steal.
At least for piracy of streaming content, I believe what should become apparent to everyone is that convenience drove down piracy and greatly increased gains for everyone, and once corporations got greedy and started rolling out new platforms and fragmenting content between them, everything started going down the drain. Even without accounting for piracy, convenience was lost, multiple platforms mean more fees to get the same content that was originally in one platform, so less people willing to pay. Less income per platform drives down investment in content and drives up cancelations of ongoing projects. Less income than was originally observed when a single platform had condensed content means there’s greater incentive to drive ads and increases prices on all platforms, thus also potentially driving down users subscribing to said platforms.
None of that factors in piracy. If we do factor in piracy, it’s a fact that before fragmentation, subscription rates were high, and after fragmentation, there’s a lot more incentive to pirate content. In some instances, platforms shoot themselves in the foot even further by further charging rental fees or purchases of individual content, as well as region blocks and ads.
Piracy surely is a problem all throughout the history of streaming services (something that could still be argued as not actually something to worry about because those pirates were never going to be customers in the first place, and Netflix was still booming enough to incentivize other companies to roll out their own platforms), but it becomes a symptom of another problem later down the line due to lack of convenience. Even so, the current state of streaming platforms wouldn’t be much different if piracy wasn’t happening. People would simply consume less content due to budget constraints or due to being annoyed at lack of conveniences.
I personally hate depending on a platform that on a whim may decide to remove content I watch. There’s specific songs that have disappeared from my Spotify playlists for no good reason (a lot for geoblocking reasons), there’s shows that just get removed from Netflix, there’s all of game of thrones on prime which I couldn’t watch due to geoblocking and ended up having to pirate it even though I was paying for a platform which had the show. It’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, to pirate. The content is yours, instantly, until you decide to delete it from your computer. I didn’t mind paying for Netflix for years, and since they incentivized account sharing, I shared the account with 2 other friends and we split the cost. It was super convenient. Now, I have a plex library nearing the 50tb mark with about 40 people watching content on it, everything automated and everyone can request whatever they want, and I simply ask for donations to buy more drives. It’s still more expensive than subscription services due to energy costs, donations not being enough for the equipment needed to store content and run services, and costs of internet, static ips, and domain names, but I’m not planning to stop as it’s overall more convenient, not just for me, but for 40 other people.
Your frustrations with streaming services are very relatable and I completely agree that the space has become increasingly fragmented. I, too, have cut down on some subscriptions where I feel that I don’t get my money’s worth.
I believe your case is a perfect example of intellectual property theft: your 40 customers are paying you instead of paying the copyright holders. If you hadn’t offered them with this solution, it’s not unreasonable to think that they would be more willing to spend that money on purchasing it directly from the legitimate owner. Consequently, it can be argued that your shared library is incurring damages through missed revenue. By extension, even by an iota of a percentage, the service provider or the production studio will need to recoup that in the ways I’ve mentioned.
So while I completely understand your rationale for pirating, surely we can agree that in cases like these, there is some—no matter how little—degree of legitimacy to the assertion that piracy is detrimental to those of us who pay for our subscriptions.
We can agree about piracy being detrimental for sure! We just disagree on how detrimental it is vs corpo’s own actions.
Regarding the donations, it’s “give whatever you want, even 0, and inly when I say we need new gear”, so I wouldn’t say it’s lost revenue since barely anyone donates and it all goes directly to covering part of the cost of new hard drives. I’ve asked for donations twice so far, and none of the times have seen enough donations to cover for 100% of equipment expenses. Just thought I’d clarify on the “donations” thing :)
Do you give those 40 people back their donation money if you ever close your service? Since in the end, they never got any of the hardware or media they watched over your Plex for their money.
They’re called donations for a reason, it’s a contribution to keep the service growing (not going since I’m personally invested in keeping it going for as long as possible) and nobody is forced to give a dime if they don’t want to.
Have you considered giving Netflix a monthly donation for all the great content they continue to create for your collection?
I’d have to give Amazon, HBO, Hulu, Disney, crunchyroll, etc. Donations as well since they’re contributing just as much, if not more than, Netflix to my collection now👀
Piracy isn’t costing these companies any money if people never intended on giving them money in the first place. This argument almost implies that these companies have an inherent right to our money whether we want to spend it with them or not.
There will be a portion of pirates that never intended to spend money, but surely there will also be at least some pirates who deliberately stopped paying a subscription in favor of consuming content for free.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that corporations have some unalienable right to take our money; what I’m saying is that with the recent increase in digital piracy, it’s not unthinkable that it has had some, however small, financial impact on their bottom line.
I feel this is a very nuanced take and genuinely don’t understand how this community has taken offense to it.
Netflix and Amazon prime simply won’t work with VPNs active, which I use for work and privacy towards my ISP.
I won’t compromise my security for their bad services. Living in a non US country, we are also always several years behind on content being offered.
Yeah, nah. The paying customer always pays for the percieved sins of non customers.
Set sail.
With the right VPN they do. Mostly no problems with Proton VPN
Good topic, good point, terrible writing. I couldn’t finish the article with the author’s ego and personal bias butting into his great story.
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket - you are stealing.
- When you take 5 eur from my pocket, make a copy and put my original 5 eur back to my pocket - this is not stealing.
Further to that, paying for a product then the seller taking that product away from you without refunding your payment is stealing.
Don’t forget adjusting for inflation and real money being given back not some shitty gift card
YES! This IS stealing!
Man does “Google Nest” come to mind. Buys company. Pushes it all over the place. “Eh, I think we’re done. Whole ecosystem useless now.”
Which is par for the course with Google and not at all a surprise, but sheesh.
Put 5 eur in my pocket and i have to dance
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Taking a product from the shop without paying and returning the item later is still stealing.
The issue here is that there is a period of time where the shop does not have the item.
If you are trying to make an analogy to digital copies, this still doesn’t hold water. The copyright holder does not have ownership of your copy.
The copyright holder should never have ownership of my copy. If I purchase it it should be mine to use. The shop should not be allowed to come to my house and take it away.
The key difference here is that you only own the copy when the copyright holder sells it to you. I don’t know if you’re being obtuse, but this shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp. If it helps in understanding, try replacing “copy” with “product” and “copyright holder” with “store.”
The key difference here is that you only own the copy when the copyright holder sells it to you
Right, I should own my copy. I have purchased this copy and it’s mine now. It’s bullshit for a store to say “now that we no longer sell the thing your purchased previously you’re not allowed to own it anymore.”
Ownership is one condition that a copyright holder might offer, but that’s not guaranteed. Video rental shops would allow unlimited consumption for a limited time period, for example. We can argue all day about the differences and what consumers want versus the conditions under which content producers currently operate. I am personally also extremely frustrated by that, and I vote with my wallet: I do not subscribe to services that I find too restrictive or too expensive.
Where I am in the minority, however, is my position that copyright infringement is illegal, unethical and can in any way be legitimized.
The “taking a physical object” analogy doesn’t even give us anything useful.
Most stores of perishable goods don’t want to hold onto their stock; they want to give it away, ideally in a way that makes them money. In many countries, they will even give away the last excess to homeless people that would not reasonably be able to afford it.
If there’s one orange seller in a town that’s put effort into a supply train to bring oranges there, but someone has shared a magic spell that lets them xerox oranges off the shelf, then that orange seller never gets paid, and has no livelihood; it doesn’t help him that he still has all of the oranges he brought to market, he’s not going to eat them all himself.
I expect the morally deprived will answer “Not my problem.” Yet, it’s going to be an issue for them when they try to run their own business.
The fact that no product is missing anywhere means it’s not stealing.
If you rent your car from Mercedes and I make a copy of it, the only change is that I’ve not copied your car, I’ve copied Mercedes’.
By this logic no services should be paid. Are you really just hung up on the word “stealing”? It is wrong to go against an agreement or to take the work of others and not pay for it simply because it’s easy to do that when the work isn’t tangible.
Are people really that fucked up today?
I’m not talking about payment, I’m talking about if it’s stealing or not. It might be copyright infringement depending on local law, but it’s not stealing. Selling a copy might be counterfeiting.
I never made an agreement but to copy things without paying. That agreement was made on my behalf, and if you look into the history of it, it’s really fucking shady. Copyright in the US originally lasted 20 years (IIRC), and I would be ok with that, but big copyright holders successfully bribed lawmakers to extend the term until now it’s effectively infinite.
So tell me, was it immoral to ignore copyrights after 20 years when that was the law? Did changing the law change what’s moral?
the way i see it, on big budget productions anyone who is relying on their paycheck to survive already got paid for their work, and the ones collecting royalties or sales percentages are rich enough that i couldnt care less. smaller independent studios or individual creators are the ones that i will always support, and in cases like itch.io games that are pwyw i will take the free download and figure out how much i will pay based on how much i like the game.
That’s Like saying I don’t pay rent to the landlord, the house has already been built.
If a society agrees on this being right, no more houses will be built. And no movies will be made.
If society agrees on something like that then houses will still get built as obviously we’ve entered the socialist utopia were all waiting for
Capitalist brains stuck on “buh peeps need money or not do nothin”
well, when reduced to those terms they so seem to be similar concepts but needs and luxuries are not exactly equivalent, not to mention the difference between a tangible possession vs an intangible “experience” which have wildly different relationships, transaction types, and even grey area over what is considered piracy.
also, claiming society has agreed on these exchanges being “right” isnt exactly accurate. society certainly tolerates these exchanges, but to what degree has changed significantly in recent years. theres a good debate over intellectual property ownership, and whether the original idea is more valuable than the creation of the work itself. certain aspects of filmmaking, for instance, are recognized as being more significant to the finished work than some other roles (directors, cinematographers, etc) but the fair compensation of other roles which make no less significant contributions to the relevance of any work is a subject on which society cannot make a fair judgment without knowing the details of every relationship.
in the end, i believe piracy is and should be viewed as an organic market force which should prompt corrections in order to minimize, but due to the nature of the transaction it will never go away.
Don’t you see the problem in your reasoning? When everyone would just pirate, nobody would be able to get paid. The money that pays the wages for the workers isn’t willed into existence, it ultimately comes from the consumer. Bigger studios pay their workers before the project is finished. That money comes from ongoing sales they produced before.
If I’m pirating, it means I either can’t afford the item, it’s too hard to get, or the ways to get it have been made overly complex and frustrating. This means literally no money was ever going in anyone’s pockets to begin with.
How am I preventing a sale that was never going to take place to begin with?
i would see your point if my reasoning were extended beyond where my boundaries are set. my position is based on a lot of factors and isnt a blanket statement that piracy is never immoral or that everyone should pirate all the time regardless of circumstances. if everyone were to pirate, it would certainly change my perspective on it as a broad practice, though not absolutely.
my argument, at least from the perspective of my original comment, was more of a reflection of my feelings that the least deserving are making the most profit off of any given large studio property, and i advocated piracy as a reaction to that given current studio structuring and the state of the entertainment market. and i understand that the profit of previous properties are directly responsible for the amount invested in subsequent works, but there is a certain degree of profitability which makes me feel like any argument about how piracy is hurting business is petty complaining over what is comparitively loose change for those that continue to be paid. i dont quite get a pang of empathy for a few thousand or even tens of thousands of instances of piracy for a property with profits in the hundres of millions considering how many instances were from people priced out anyway.
If this rhetoric was used in a conservative opinion piece instead of a pro piracy opinion piece, I’m pretty sure it would be banned for calling for violence towards specific individuals.
Guillotine preview image and quotes like:
Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.
Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery.
What a trash article and site. How is this permitted.
What does that even mean?
Ownership is compromised a bundle of rights. If it’s your bundle, you can split them up however you want, sell whatever kind of limited or unlimited licenses that can come up with, and this applies to real, personal, and intellectual property.
If it’s not theft, why does the greed and unfair practices of the industry matter? Why does there need to be any justification or excuse?
Should definitely have a right to repai; with any other property right you generally have a duty to maintain the access to your interest. I recently unlocked a bunch of premium features in my car. HD radio, comfort window roll down (rolls down 2" with a tap") auto tailgate close (had auto open, but not close, had to hit a button on the lid to close), auto side mirror tilt down in reverse, roll down windows from keyless entry, close tailgate from keyless entry.
If I understand the interface at all, it’s pretty openly accessible (if you have the right OBDii port adapter and software, which ironically you need to buy a license for). Code looked fairly straightforward, and by that I mean it looked like other computer code I’ve seen. Wonder what the original price was for those extras were from the dealership, probably over 10k.
I recently unlocked a bunch of premium features in my car. HD radio, comfort window roll down (rolls down 2" with a tap") auto tailgate close (had auto open, but not close, had to hit a button on the lid to close), auto side mirror tilt down in reverse, roll down windows from keyless entry, close tailgate from keyless entry.
Those “features” are all so pointless they’re bordering on absurd.
Thanks for reaffirming my bias that new cars suck.
Thanks for reaffirming my bias that new cars suck.
I am really concerned the next car I need to buy, which is probably 20 years off, is going to be this trend cranked to 11. With software and hardware I can find alternatives and hack my way around the “you paid for it, but we own it and can do whatever we want to it” mentality that tech companies push, but cars seem like a whole different world when it comes to the “you paid for it, but we own it” mentality.
Yes, like everyone today, they don’t want to get your money once. They want reoccurring revenue and to farm and sell all of your data.
It’s shite like that is the reason why I’m planning on staying in the south, so I can just daily my 56 bel air. All it really needs is a AC and I can always just take the heater out and take a normal ac unit apart and put it in. At this rate I’m wondering if that car is going to be more practical than modern cars purely because you don’t have to pay to open the window. Sure it may not have the speed as modern car but like even in my z3 I rarely ever go faster than 60mph.
I probably pay less for fuel and subscribed features in my electric car than you do for fuel in your '56 bel air. I definitely pay less for maintenance
Window opening, seat heating, auto tilting wing mirrors are all standard. My subscription covers games, streaming video, always connected internet, self driving features - so I get all the features of yours and more for the base price and just luxuries on subscription
Not all new cars are bad
Car subscription features 😭😭😭 are people really genuinely ok with this?
The ones I want, yes for me, no for others. That’s one of the things I like about the company I bought from, the base model is fine, extras are available that are a genuine ongoing cost (like streaming audio and games) so a subscription is reasonable
Why in the name of fuck do you need games in your car? Jfc
Charging on road trips. It takes half an hour and often it’s best to stay with the car
Don’t you have a phone to play games on?
Yep, but big screen is good
If it’s not theft, why does the greed and unfair practices of the industry matter?
Because it tears at the fabric of Humanity. It’s a ‘death by a thousand cuts’.
Humanity constantly needing to be on guard and pushing back against being taken advantage of by people who want to charge them multiple times for the same thing in different ways, especially the ones that used to be free, over and over again.
Fighting that is pushing back against unfairness, which is one of the root beliefs of Humanity.
Normally people pay to see the circus, but you could just sneak in though. It’s not exactly stalling, so what do you call that? The circus is still there, but you didn’t pay for it.
If lots of people start doing that, the circus probably won’t have enough money to keep on performing. Maybe they’ll get rid of the more expensive bits and just keep the cheaper ones in the future.
What would you call it if you buy a piece of art and hang it on your wall, then a couple months later the company that sold you the art comes into your home, takes the art away, and says you don’t own it anymore?
If enough companies do that people are going to stop paying for art.
That company is also going to show you the agreement you signed that says they can do that, which is the current situation with digital goods. People are still buying them.
That company is also going to show you the agreement you signed that says they can do that
Nobody said otherwise. The argument isn’t “this is illegal”, it’s “this is bullshit.”
People are still buying them.
And the argument being put forward is that people shouldn’t be.
If that was a normal purchase, then that’s clearly theft.
If it was art leasing, there’s probably a long contract with details about a situation like this. No matter what the contract says, the local law might still disagree with that, so it can get complicated. The art company might be violating their own contract, although it is unlikely. The company might be within the rights outlined in the contract, but they might still be breaking the law. You need a lawyer to figure it out.
Well it was sure we fuck presented as a normal purchase. Adding legal text to where you sign the cheque saying “you may come to my house and take this away at any time” doesn’t make it less bullshit.
The world is full of bad contracts. It’s truly sad that we decided to accept them without making numerous alterations here and there.
It’s not possible to make changes to a digital contract. The only option is to not make the “purchase” and acquire it elsewhere.
More people should let the service provider know that their contract sucks and that they refuse to pay for the service under the proposed conditions. Most people don’t even read the contract, so I don’t think the situation is going to improve any time soon.
People are pirating products that can be purchased and owned.
People are also shoplifting from stores. That’s irrelevant to what is being discussed here
Then the example about the painting is also irrelevant.
The example about the painting was analogous to what the link article is talking about.
That’s a bad analogy because there’s finite space for people to watch the circus, meaning that seating for the show they conforms to fire codes, etc. is finite.
It’s also a bad analogy because someone who sneaks into a circus trespassing, not stealing.
I agree that the analogy isn’t perfect. As you pointed out, people sneaking in are taking space from people who would be willing pay for the service.
If you could somehow sneak into Netflix and take some of their bandwidth or their ability to provide the service to paying customers, then the analogy would work. In reality though, people pirate Netflix shows and movies by torrenting, and that has no impact on Netflix’s bandwidth.
The way I see it, circus and digital videos are a service. You are supposed to pay for both, but you can easily see both of them for free. Comparing these two with stealing just doesn’t work IMO.
You could also compare it with watching a football match from the other side of the fence. Although, in reality, you wouldn’t get a very good view of the game, whereas torrenting movies gives you a great view. Interestingly, the football example doesn’t involve trespassing, but you still get to enjoy a part of the service. All analogies break at some point.
I’m legit unsure whether your argument is purposely bad or you just don’t know that it is.
Why is the argument bad? Please elaborate.
Because the issue at hand is more like if you bought tickets to the circus, but when you went to go see it you were told the circus isn’t there anymore and you don’t get a refund.
That I would definately call stealing, and if I wanted to see the circus the next time it was in town I would absolutely sneak in.
It’s like you bought a circus membership to watch the circus at a particular venue as many times as you want. You watched the circus a few dozen times, then one day the circus announces they won’t be going to that venue anymore and you can’t watch it anymore.
This is where the analogy breaks down, because the circus requires people and an area to operate in. Digital movies and TV shows should just require my device to watch it on.
To strain the metaphor further: The Circus leaving the venue isn’t leaving town, they’re just moving across the street. But your tickets are only valid for the old venue. Do you expect people to purchase new tickets or just sneak in?
There’s also the people who purchased a lifetime membership to the circus and then were told the next day “The circus will no longer be going to that venue anymore after the end of the month.”
The expectation is that I purchased this media and can watch it as much as I want, whenever I want, for the rest of my life. When companies say “Lol, no. Fine print” reasonable people aren’t going to shrug their shoulders and say “You got me, I guess I’ll purchase more things.” They’ll say “screw that, I can get it for free and keep it forever, what service are you providing that’s better?”
A more honest analogy for the situation was that there are very few incidents of circuses doing that and now people demand it’s morally justified to get free entrance to every circus, concert, fair, museum, …
Not enough workers exploitation.
It’s a thousand times better than this empty garbage. How does this have any upvotes?
