Let me explain here, as just one example. There was a tv show that was broadcast in the late 2000’s - early 2010’s. About 5-6 years ago, right when I felt nostalgic and wanted to watch it again, the tv show in question was pulled from all major streaming services, and DVDs of the show were not produced (or if they were, I was never able to get my hands on them). The only way that this cartoonish show was watchable for a time was via second-hand archives on YouTube, dailymotion, etc. However, despite the fact that the show was made inaccessible, the copyright holder’s official website states even to this day that the show is copyright, which means that unofficial uploads on YouTube should be in violation of copyright (the YouTube channels were just amateurish accounts and not credible, official accounts, just to be clear). As such, it was ambiguous as to whether the production company was going to lease the rights to the show. Whilst interest in the show has gone now, it did make me wonder: is it ever justifiable (either legally or ethically, or morally) to pirate media that has been completely pulled from circulation despite the original owner maintaining copyright (and therefore ownership) of? Or, is it (legally, ethically or morally) justifiable to pirate media where the copyright status is ambiguous (i.e. you don’t know if anyone owns it) [classic case study I always hear about: British PSAs, icons of 70’s 80’s and 90’s kids childhoods, yet locked behind copyright doors whose keys may lie in the hand of legal ambiguity]
Media piracy is always justifiable.
Unless you’re using it to train AI. Then you should either have to pay so much that your company goes bankrupt, or just be put to death, cause fuck you, Mark Zuckerberg.
Don’t pirate books from living authors.
Writing pays so little, and book tours are exhausting and pay even less.
A good book is a massive gift of energy and talent to the few people who will read it. Thank them for it with your dollars.
As a musician, I say do it, pirate away, come to the shows, tell your friends. And also, it’s only $9 so maybe buy it when you can
Edit : change – to , I am a hooman
Can you explain in what terms?
Sure:
Nothing is actually being stolen. This is to say, if I copy a movie and give it to you, I still have the movie, my neighbor probably still has their copy of the movie, the store down the street still has the same number of movies, amazon still has its copy it uses for streaming, etc.
The entertainment industry, like most others, is a parasitic entity that stifles creation and attempts to maximize shareholder profit at the expense of any/everything else, including the well-being of the artists, creators, and those who actually do the work of making things, as well as the consumer, who consistently has to pay more and more to receive less and less for things that are cheaper and cheaper to produce / reproduce.
It’s becoming incredibly common for a digital item you “purchase” to be deleted from your account at the whims of whichever company “sold” it to you. At this point, most digital things you “purchase” you don’t actually own. This includes movies, music, books, audiobooks, TV shows, games, PC software, apps, etc. If I’m not allowed to own anything without the risk of someone arbitrarily deciding I can’t have it any more, even if I pay “full price” for it, why should I bother paying for it in the first place? It’s not like 90% of that money isn’t just going to some corporate asshole’s 3rd house while the creators and laborers make a comparative pittance. (me purchasing it isn’t going to fix that problem.)
By the time a quality version of a product is piratable, the majority of the profit has likely already been made by whatever corporation has packaged and sold it before they gave the smallest amount they possibly could to the creator(s) and the people who helped make it happen. If you really want to support someone because you like their work, it’s probably more ethical all-around to pirate said work and then donate directly to those that made it a thing than it would be to squander the majority of that money on fuel for the CEO of Sony’s new jet.
Despite all of this, many others will never agree with me and will continue to pay into this shit system, which is to say, no one is going to “kill the industry”. If artists are hurting, it’s because the rich aren’t paying their fair share to those who made them rich. Let’s look at Netflix’s executive compensation:
Starting the counting over b/c either idk any numbers higher than 5 or b/c I don’t understand markdown. Take your pick. 6. There are lots of things I simply wouldn’t have watched / known about were it not for online sharing. Why should I be denied entertainment and shared cultural experience just because I can’t afford a thing? My awareness of my inability to afford much keeps me from actively looking at things that would cost money in the first place. I am also consciously boycotting industries and companies for the shitty treatment, overwork, and underpay for workers. This means I’m not spending money on streaming services regardless of whether I get to watch anything or not, so what money are they “losing” when it was never going to be theirs to begin with?
If I give a friend a copy of a DVD, or even a USB with copies of 100 movies I own, should I really be fined $100,000 (per offense, iirc) and/or be put in jail for a year? That’s pretty fucked up.
I’m sure there are other reasons, but I’m tired now.
Anyway, go nuts, just use a VPN.
I think the problem might be that if the numbered list is broken by bulletpoints or non-list paragraphs, it restarts the numbering from 1.
Ha thanks. I figured it was something like that but was also too lazy to figure out how to rectify the issue while still keeping a block quote and another bullet / paragraph where I wanted them.
There is no moral obligation to obey copyright laws
Spoken like a true AI company CEO
They have other stuff to answer for
Once media (any media) has been digitized and the cost of producing a duplicate is negligible, even in capitalist economists own terms, the price of further copies of the thing should trend towards zero over time. It’s only through extreme greed and state enforcement (which in theory goes against capitalist economics, though we all of course know that to be a lie) that the ability to sell individual digital goods is possible.
In other words, it is more ethical to “pirate” resources that it doesn’t cost anything to produce than it is ethical to prevent people from accessing that media for monetary reasons. If a particular artist feels that someone shouldn’t consume some media they created for some other reason, then I would respect that. But it’s not artists or creators who ever have a problem with that, it’s the production studios that exist to turn art into profit who care, artists themselves tend to be very OK with people accessing their work for free.
Ideally, we would have a system in place (UBI, cultural enrichment programs, etc) which funded art creation directly as a collective effort rather than through individualized personal purchases.