Is it stealing if we can't pay for the thing in the first place?
December 4, 2023 2:38 PM Subscribe

posted by simmering octagon (193 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite

so i'm gonna do a thing: i'll try to preëmptively make all the statements x that people will say "no one here is saying anything unhinged like x, we're just arguing for sane, reasonable ideas like y and z" about. then, when someone tries to say no one is saying x, people can point them to this comment at the top of the thread and say well actually empirical proof exists that there is indeed someone saying x, and moreover that at least one person actually believes x.

here we go:

piracy is an unmitigated social good and people who pirate and especially people who facilitate piracy are doing a service for all of humanity. the more legal pressure is brought to bear against pirates, the more important piracy becomes
piracy is good regardless of how much or how little the streaming services charge
piracy is good regardless of how much or how little the streaming services pay
piracy is good even if destroys the companies from which pirates are pirating content
piracy is good regardless of whether or not the creators want their works pirated
piracy is good even if it makes making a living as an artist impossible
piracy is good even if (or especially if!) it completely removes all ability to buy or sell creative works on the market
piracy is good even if (or especially if!) it completely removes all ability to buy or sell creative labor-time on the market
piracy is good because it's the one thing that we can all do to most dramatically expand generalized access to information and culture, access here understood as both access in terms of consumption and access in terms of production
piracy is good and everyone should pirate everything all the time
even if not pirating is easier than pirating
no one needs an excuse for doing piracy. people who don't pirate are the ones who need to make excuses for their behavior.

these pronouncements are bombastic, these pronouncements are lowercase, and i stand by each and every one of these bombastic lowercase pronouncements.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:59 PM on December 4, 2023 [77 favorites]

I'm voting for x!
posted by lefty lucky cat at 3:05 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

bombastic lowercase pronouncements for head of the FCC at a minimum
posted by mhoye at 3:07 PM on December 4, 2023 [22 favorites]

I don't agree with x, but I believe it should have equal time in the interests of free speech.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:08 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

The FPP argues that digital purchases address “licenses, not products”, which doesn’t have to be the case. (Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat, itch, and VHX sell downloads that you can do whatever you want with.) Sadly, we seem to be at the pessimistic nadir where this isn’t being prompted as feasible. (Bandcamp is a victim of its own success, even, and shows that this could be the model.)
posted by Going To Maine at 3:16 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

bombastic lowercase pronouncements is just here to show everyone that my id is smarter than me
posted by busted_crayons at 3:24 PM on December 4, 2023

I have taken to pirating things again after a long while of not doing so. Part of this is feeling poor, but part of it is just sheer annoyance at how the entire game is being played at the moment.

Doesn't mean I'm not also buying things, but I'm not just throwing money around like I was for a while, either.
posted by hippybear at 3:24 PM on December 4, 2023 [20 favorites]

If anything is going to turn me towards piracy, it's the trend towards not being able to fully own the things that you've paid for.
posted by LionIndex at 3:27 PM on December 4, 2023 [49 favorites]

A long time ago some journalist was writing about what it was like to torrent music on the internet, and they mentioned having accidentally left a vinyl copy of a particular album on the floor by the urinals in Grand Central Terminal in the 80s. "I figured I owned that one, fair and square," they said.

THAT kind of makes sense to me - I paid for it already, so I don't feel bad about "stealing" it later. Like when my Google Books collection (which AFAIK I can only access temporarily) becomes defunct, I certainly wouldn't feel bad about downloading new copies of the same titles from that Russian book piracy site.

Same with shit that's just out of print - if you *can't* buy it, getting a copy is basically a victimless crime.

However, "you will only license it to me temporarily, and I don't like that" doesn't seem to be a sufficient reason to just not pay for shit.
posted by anhedonic at 3:28 PM on December 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

The commentary around this stuff is always so focused on fans and access to media. There is little commentary on the why of it. Suits aren't taking things away because they want to deny people and twirl their mustaches. It's because the streaming model doesn't work and has cannibalized the revenue streams and lifecycles of media.

These projects don't bring in anywhere near their production costs in new subscription numbers. They don't make money per stream. They don't sell physical media. They don't sell theater tickets. They don't sell ad spots. They don't get syndicated. Their only value is in how many new subscribers they can attract and originals don't bring in subscribers anymore. They churn them at best, but churn ain't growth.

Fine, make an argument that piracy is not only ethical but an imperative because businesses can't be trusted as reliable stewards of media. Countless movies and shows have been destroyed for the same reason long before digital ever existed. Business is gonna business. Projects will be destroyed if it makes sense to destroy them. By all means, let's talk about preservation and stewardship, but that's a different conversation than whatever this confused opinion piece is. Piracy and data hoarders can't save what is never released.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled snarking.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 3:28 PM on December 4, 2023 [12 favorites]

I remember one time we had a thread about piracy and some alleged content creator came in to cry that everyone arguing for loosening IP laws was LITERALLY doing LITERAL violence against them and LITERALLY advocating for their LITERAL death.

Oh man metafilter, always a fun one around here
posted by Krawczak at 3:29 PM on December 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

However, "you will only license it to me temporarily, and I don't like that" doesn't seem to be a sufficient reason to just not pay for shit.

This also seems fairly conditional: if YouTube suddenly tells me that a bunch of media I licensed from them for streaming is no longer available, I’m going to probably be miffed enough to do some searching. There’s a real difficulty with vibes-based personal law.

The essay hits on a few different rights issues in a messy way, but I do think there’s a sense of betrayal from the big companies because they have sold their video as “all the content, forever” and not just “some of the content, some of the time”. It feels like we’re still sliding into the new phase of streaming, when maybe the contracts will be more nakedly bad.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:42 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

The solution, as I have said every time this topic comes up, is to make it illegal for rights holders to also be distributors. There’s a reason the government stepped in in the ‘30s (movies) and again in the ‘60s (broadcast television) to stop it. It’s bad for creativity and bad for society and bad for people.
posted by rhymedirective at 3:45 PM on December 4, 2023 [15 favorites]

So really, this post is just an editorial by the OP and not about the link?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:46 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

So really, this post is just an editorial by the OP and not about the link?

The OP for this post has made the least editorialized post possible, simply the title of the linked article with a link to that article, and then a link to an archive of the article. They also have not commented since they posted the OP.

So... I'm not sure what you're talking about?
posted by hippybear at 3:51 PM on December 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

As a musician whose music is readily available on Bandcamp, I will be upset if you choose to pirate my music in order to stick it to Spotify.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 3:51 PM on December 4, 2023 [20 favorites]

> the streaming model doesn't work and has cannibalized the revenue streams and lifecycles of media.

Streaming alone is not wholly responsible. I can’t wait for music labels to discover that the ”paying money” model doesn’t work very well at all anymore either, due to wage suppression versus inflation. I bet ninety-five percent of Taylor Swift tickets are still balance on a credit card somewhere, as a “once in a lifetime” purchase that won’t be repeated for any future artist. I don’t envy the music labels their view of the economic meteor aimed squarely at their businesses, but at least it’s likely to be a spectacular free show when it hits.
posted by Callisto Prime at 3:54 PM on December 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

Piracy is when you hike your way onto a ship and take by force of threatened death someone's material possessions. After you take them, if the people are still alive, they don't have their possessions anymore. That's what stealing is. It's violence and the harm it does is the victims lose their possessions.

Unauthorized copying of or watching a goddamn recording of a song or tv show is utterly unlike that. It's not piracy or anything like it and I utterly reject the premise.
posted by fritley at 3:59 PM on December 4, 2023 [60 favorites]

I bet ninety-five percent of Taylor Swift tickets are still balance on a credit card somewhere, as a “once in a lifetime” purchase that won’t be repeated for any future artist.

Debt scales almost linearly with income, so I seriously doubt that. Of course there are outliers, but the majority? They spent money they were comfortable spending. Unless you just mean the movie tickets.

Of course because debt scales with income and so many things require debt to purchase due to inflation, I am completely comfortable with most forms of piracy, including buying a normal priced movie and sneaking in to see the Taylor Swift movie, which was almost $20 a ticket.
posted by The_Vegetables at 4:05 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

What is it when a company uses artwork without permission or payment? Is that piracy in the sense of it being theft? It's only a copy, after all...

FWIW I don't think that me (not a big company) making a copy is fundamentally different, just on a different scale.
posted by aesop at 4:06 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seems like it's the same ol' "I want cool shit and I don't want to pay for it." conversation that always happens, with some vaguely new (that really aren't that new) justifications about licensing or capitalism or whatever.

I'm sure we can find some people arguing on a tablet full of Sanskrit about how some dude had lots of cows, so it was OK or even morally required for I, the cow-wanter, to go over and take one of his cows.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 4:06 PM on December 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

So getting to an example that actually IN the article, there are people who have PURCHASED music through a service, not renting it but actually paid money to buy the songs, but now the licensing agreement between the music publisher and that online service is ending so those people are simply losing their purchases. They are being offered nothing in compensation.
posted by hippybear at 4:09 PM on December 4, 2023 [44 favorites]

there's a bus stop near me where people leave books free for the taking. I've spent ~$150 dollars buying books as a direct result of reading those free books.

i'm gonna pirate when something isn't available, and that may lead to me spending money, or not, just like i'd pick up a book at a friends house and ask if i can borrow it. not sure why we're still arguing about this in 2023 tbh
posted by Sebmojo at 4:18 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yes, and in fact, given that stealing a cow deprives the original owner of a cow, while copying a file does not deprive the original owner of the file, what the article discusses streaming sites doing to customers (unilaterally depriving them of their purchase with no recourse) is actually far MORE akin to actual stealing than so called piracy!
posted by Krawczak at 4:20 PM on December 4, 2023 [31 favorites]

If the cow-wanter takes one of those cows, the original owner is deprived of the use of that cow.

To quote Jefferson, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
posted by phliar at 4:21 PM on December 4, 2023 [12 favorites]

this jeff vogel (spiderweb software) is a good read
posted by Sebmojo at 4:23 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

FWIW I don't think that me (not a big company) making a copy is fundamentally different, just on a different scale.

This seems like one of those things where differences in scale are fundamental differences, to say nothing of the fact that the company is using artwork without permission for profit, and you presumably aren't. I don't necessarily disagree but there are obvious fundamental differences between a corporation profiting off the creator's uncompensated labour and you depriving nobody of anything by copying something for your own use.
posted by busted_crayons at 4:25 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Hello again. I have misunderstood the direction of this conversation and I regret my comment. Yeah, maybe it’s valid, but it’s not relevant: 100% of the affected people already paid. I self-classify it as a derail. Apologies.
posted by Callisto Prime at 4:28 PM on December 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

I sympathize with Gillian Welch's song "Everything is Free" because it would definitely be cool to make a decent living just creating cool stuff, performing, etc. There's a sadness that really creative and talented people have to struggle to be heard and then still struggle financially even if they do find a deserved audience.

But there's also something really joyful about letting go of those expectations and making stuff for love and fun. Running a role playing game with friends instead of writing a book. Creating fanfiction. Singing in a choir. Open source software. Fight for the UBI and make cool shit whenever you can.
posted by rikschell at 4:46 PM on December 4, 2023 [7 favorites]

piracy is good regardless of whether or not the creators want their works pirated
piracy is good even if it makes making a living as an artist impossible
piracy is good even if (or especially if!) it completely removes all ability to buy or sell creative works on the market
piracy is good even if (or especially if!) it completely removes all ability to buy or sell creative labor-time on the market

What? No, that's...just...incorrect. Piracy fucking sucks because it doesn't discriminate between small-time artists who are trying to make a living by directly selling their work--who get absolutely wiped out and sent into poverty because it's so easy to make copies of their stuff, and massive corporations who do not give a shit and can easily take the loss and will occasionally put a pirate through a legal meat-grinder just to remind everyone who has the power. But that's not all.

Whatever we might think about 'intellectual property' as a thing, piracy takes that property and commoditizes it. A work that means a lot to an artist becomes as small and pointless and replaceable as a woodscrew or a post-it note or something, because it's just one more thing that can be devalued and copied forever. Piracy takes the same moral stance to intellectual property that giant corporations do and thus is ethically bankrupt. It is inhumane.
posted by mittens at 4:50 PM on December 4, 2023 [28 favorites]

It's a very short article and there's virtually nothing in it to argue about.

A thought though: insurance.

If your house burns down, insurance is supposed to cover replacing your stuff, like all the books you'd bought and no longer have access to.
So digital insurance would cover all your digital stuff. Company loses a license? Insurance covers you getting a new digital copy somewhere else. I imagine this would be a workable business model if DRM was (more) insane and pirating was really difficult/dangerous. A delightful feature of a digital dystopia.
posted by Baethan at 4:51 PM on December 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

>Unauthorized copying of or watching a goddamn recording of a song or tv show is utterly unlike that. It's not piracy or anything like it and I utterly reject the premise.

Songs and TV shows are the products of somebody's labor. What shall we call it when you take the products of someone's labor without paying?

If you were trying to have a strike, and a scab came in and took your job, you would say, "hey, you're making it impossible for me to negotiate a fair value for my labor, and that sucks." Piracy makes it impossible for people who make songs, among other things, to negotiate a fair value for their labor, by distributing their work for free, without their consent, and without compensating them.

If piracy doesn't seem like a good name for that to you, then call it whatever you want. But I think it sucks no matter what you call it. If you can't tell the difference between striking a blow against the Unassailable Corporate Behemoths, and striking a blow against people who are barely hanging on, then maybe you should refrain from striking blows until you become more discriminating.

We've got a thread here with a first comment that says "piracy is good even if it makes making a living as an artist impossible." I make a living as an artist, and I come in here and read that piracy is good even if I can't eat, and then I read your comment which says "didn't nobody take nothin' valuable, it's just songs and TV shows," and you're offended that taking somebody's livelihood away from them might be called 'stealing'.

This is a funny place, people are real sensitive and thoughtful about some things, other things not so much.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 4:53 PM on December 4, 2023 [39 favorites]

it's simple really. people will pay for those things they want but can't get for free. Except poor people. Hands up everyone who thinks poor people shouldn't be allowed to see-hear-play things that rich people can.
posted by philip-random at 4:58 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

What? No, that's...just...incorrect.

Those are straw arguments, to keep the crows out of the corn, or something.
posted by Selena777 at 5:09 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

All this talk of cows reminds me of First Cow, a movie about cow piracy, which ended with the protagonists dea- I mean OPENING A BAKERY AND LIVING HAPPILY EVER AFTER, and definitely unrelated to those skeletons from earlier in the movie. (Currently available to stream on Amazon Prime.)
posted by surlyben at 5:10 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sometimes I'm a pirate.

Sometimes I pay.

I like to switch it up.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:17 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Everything is free now.
posted by cnidaria at 5:18 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember when I first got on the internet, and it seemed to me like all the information was there if you just looked hard enough! It wasn't, but the sense that the whole world was here was very real. It seems to me like Spotify and its competitors fulfill that early internet promise. I want to hear a song, there it is, no effort. Music Piracy did the same, but required some effort in searching, selecting music software, file storage, avoiding lawsuits, plus the social cost when people found out you were a pirate. I pay a fee to avoid those things, and I think it's worth it.

Steam offers a similar ALL THE GAMES feeling though you have to buy them individually. Sometimes those games stop being on sale, but I haven't had one disappear from the list of games I own. In one case the developer lost his goddamn mind to the point where he was kicked off Steam in a cloud of far-right insanity, hatred, and anti-Steam ranting, and his game is still available for me to play, though I've hidden it from my list. There are things like GTA removing songs, but I suspect that Steam imposes some contractual obligations on developers to force them to not delete their games. (I remember talk about how this could be an issue when Unity wanted to charge per install.) The point is that platform owners certainly ought to be able to stop purchases from disappearing.
posted by surlyben at 5:36 PM on December 4, 2023

One of the best arguments for piracy is distributing films/TV shows that simply are no longer available through other avenues, no matter how much you are willing to pay in order to buy them, rent them, or stream them.

For example, there are a lot of British TV shows and British films from the 1960s/1970s/1980s where it simply is not possible to get legal access to them in exchange for money, because the rights holders are no longer distributing them through any avenue.

(I know of some cases where the only legal access is for someone to go in-person to the British Film Institute and watch them in their private screening room - so of course people are illegally recording these and sharing them on the internet for people who can't physically get to the British Film Institute.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:39 PM on December 4, 2023 [13 favorites]

Whatever we might think about 'intellectual property' as a thing, piracy takes that property and commoditizes it. A work that means a lot to an artist becomes as small and pointless and replaceable as a woodscrew or a post-it note or something, because it's just one more thing that can be devalued and copied forever. Piracy takes the same moral stance to intellectual property that giant corporations do and thus is ethically bankrupt.

This is exactly backwards. Capitalism turned art into a commodity. Piracy is what we call it when art that has already been commodified gets distributed outside the ownership structures imposed by capitalism. Taking a moral stance against piracy is taking a moral stance in favor of capitalist property relations. In the absence of those relations, we would call it "sharing."
posted by Gerald Bostock at 6:00 PM on December 4, 2023 [28 favorites]

the only thing I steal is cat pictures.

I will burn in hell
posted by clavdivs at 6:05 PM on December 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

The fact of the matter is, the rights holders aren’t respecting the writers/actors/directors/musicians/grips/costume designers etc etc etc by throwing finished work into a coal mine for a tax write off, so why should anyone else?

Piracy, as Gerald Bostock so succinctly explained upthread, cannot by definition exist outside of capitalism, so let’s call piracy what it is: market failure.

With the existence of multiple services that will basically give you access to all commercially-available music in existence for a nominal monthly fee, music piracy is no longer something that normies engage in, because why?

The media corporations have the ability to neuter piracy. The reason(s) that they do not is an exercise I will leave for the reader.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:09 PM on December 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

> Piracy is what we call it when art that has already been commodified gets distributed outside the ownership structures imposed by capitalism.

Unfortunately the artist lives in a capitalist society, and can't pay the rent with a moral stance. (At least in my hypothetical situation.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:11 PM on December 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

To quote Jefferson, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

Somehow, I find the words of a brutal slaver rapist whose entire way of living was literally built on the taking of the labor of others to be entirely uncompelling here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:16 PM on December 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

what the article discusses streaming sites doing to customers (unilaterally depriving them of their purchase with no recourse) is actually far MORE akin to actual stealing than so called piracy!

YOU WOULDN'T STREAM A CAR
posted by flabdablet at 6:20 PM on December 4, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also, creative labor is not the same thing as ideas, and the conflating of the two in order to appear as if one is not advocating for the devaluation and theft of the former is getting tiresome.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:20 PM on December 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

In the absence of those relations, we would call it "sharing."

Taking without asking isn't exactly sharing.
posted by mittens at 6:22 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Songs and TV shows are the products of somebody's labor. What shall we call it when you take the products of someone's labor without paying?

If you were trying to have a strike, and a scab came in and took your job, you would say, "hey, you're making it impossible for me to negotiate a fair value for my labor, and that sucks." Piracy makes it impossible for people who make songs, among other things, to negotiate a fair value for their labor, by distributing their work for free, without their consent, and without compensating them.

I'm not really on the piracy-is-100%-fine bandwagon, but this is incorrect.

If I work in a factory making widgets and a scab takes my job, that doesn't mean the scab is able to make an infinite number of my widgets at no cost, it means that the cost of each widget is marginally smaller, so the profit from each one is marginally larger. It's not the scab who's stealing from me, it's the owner of the factory who's stealing from the scab. In that scenario, labour is fungible, after all. Someone is still getting paid to make the widgets and the widgets maintain their value, being individually created at significant labour and material cost.

Songs and TV shows are indeed products of labour, but a song or TV show isn't what's being stolen, copies of recordings of it are. If you can make an infinite number of copies, then the amount of labour that goes into each one is necessarily zero, and by your logic their cost should also be zero.

But then, you might argue, there would be nothing to reproduce and steal if you didn't put in the very real labour to produce the material that was copied in the first place. That's true, but if the only way you expect to recoup that cost is through the distribution of a potentially infinite number of items with zero production cost, you actually have no way to gauge what your labour's value should have been in the first place. The thing that gives you that knowledge is putting a price on something that can't be replicated (a performance, or a vinyl record) and seeing if anyone will pay it.

If a billion people will take something for free that only ten people will pay $10 for, your potential market is not ten billion dollars, it's something closer to $100.
posted by klanawa at 6:22 PM on December 4, 2023 [18 favorites]

I lost a lot of trust in "digital media license agreements" when I bought literal seasons of Burn Notice from Amazon Instant Video that worked on my linux computer when I bought them. I bought them, they worked fine, and that was great. They lived in "the cloud" or something but I could go to the website and watch them in my browser whenever I wanted, until one day when I couldn't do that anymore because Amazon changed their DRM stuff and it wouldn't work with my browser anymore.

Amazon told me that what I needed to do was install Internet Explorer so that I could be "Silverlight Compliant" and they rejected my argument that (a) the media worked when I bought it and (b) I had made no changes to my system and (c) the only reason I couldn't see what I "owned" was that they made changes AFTER THE FACT that made the media unwatchable by me, the putative "owner".

I've never "bought" another piece of digital media license. Thanks, Amazon, a valuable lesson cheaply learned.
posted by which_chick at 6:28 PM on December 4, 2023 [12 favorites]

So I used to pirate alot (particularly when I was too poor to afford to buy anything). I justified it by actually going to live performances and buying merch (included CD's of the music I'd already pirated), which I was told supports the artists better than buying a CD from the music store.

I don't pirate anymore, I buy pre-loved CD's. I still go so shows and buy what merch I can (and alot are stopping producing CD's at all, damn!).

My economic contribution to the artist is the same though. One is supposedly incredibly bad and other isn't but the only difference is for the used CD's someone else is making money from the artist. So is it better to pirate or buy used? To the artist, is there a difference?
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:30 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

To the artist, is there a difference?

If you buy used CDs, you have less money to go to shows or buy merch, so buying the used CDs seems worse to me.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:38 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Nice catch but let's assume at this point that the cost of the used-cd is negligible or I would forego the CD if the price kept me from going to the concert.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:44 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

entire way of living was literally built on the taking of the labor of others to be entirely uncompelling here.
it's a compelling argument but it should be noted that
"The piracy kindled on the internet have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism,”

"If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free"

-John Adams.

early empirical evidence on the fact that you have to make it illegal in order for society to acquire it for free.
posted by clavdivs at 6:47 PM on December 4, 2023

To the artist, is there a difference?

It's always been weird to me that authors are so gung-ho about libraries. Like, I get that libraries are a social good, I understand their many virtues and all, and I don't dispute any of that. But it's just sorta strange that authors are like, hooray, somebody's going to pay for my book once and a thousand people will then read it! But I wonder if it's the same for used bookstores--or, from your example, used music stores? Up until very recently, used bookstores were the only way I could ever afford to get books (even now I balk at paying full price for hardcovers, jeez), so the question occurred to me a lot, too. Would an author care? Would they be like, hey great, you're enjoying my stuff, or more like, hey great, I'm eating dollar-store ramen because you wanted to save ten bucks on a book?
posted by mittens at 6:49 PM on December 4, 2023

but a song or TV show isn't what's being stolen, copies of recordings of it are. If you can make an infinite number of copies, then the amount of labour that goes into each one is necessarily zero,

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the spherical cow model of creative economics.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:50 PM on December 4, 2023 [10 favorites]

Would an author care? Would they be like, hey great, you're enjoying my stuff, or more like, hey great, I'm eating dollar-store ramen because you wanted to save ten bucks on a book?

A take on this from mefi's own Charlie Stross
posted by flabdablet at 6:56 PM on December 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" is the best slogan I've seen this year.
posted by flabdablet at 7:05 PM on December 4, 2023 [28 favorites]

Sony Steals Customers' Purchased Content - Piracy is COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED! (Louis Rossmann, Piped/YouTube, 13m26s)
posted by flabdablet at 7:17 PM on December 4, 2023

Eventually they’ll digitize and commoditize genomes and you’ll be able to illegally download a cow. Actually that would make a great sci-fi novel. A group of anarchist hackers break into the network of Bovirion, a multinational corporation that designs genetically-modified cows. But they accidentally unleash an experimental bovine AI that replicates across the internet, producing an infinite number of cows that crashes systems worldwide, replacing all recorded media with the tortured sounds of digital mooing.
posted by dephlogisticated at 7:22 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

The porn parody of that will be _amazing_.
posted by delfin at 7:34 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

More from Stross: Why the commercial ebook market is broken

That piece is 16 years old.
posted by flabdablet at 7:37 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Streaming a car would flood the engine or possibly get the battery wet. That seems like a bad idea to me. Especially if you're trying to get away clean after stealing it.

This argument has never made sense to me.
posted by bonehead at 7:49 PM on December 4, 2023

I'm ok with citing founding fathers to oppose piracy if we also return to the founding 14 year copyright term, with registration required and one optional renewal.
posted by fings at 8:10 PM on December 4, 2023 [17 favorites]

I'm sure we can find some people arguing on a tablet full of Sanskrit about how some dude had lots of cows, so it was OK or even morally required for I, the cow-wanter, to go over and take one of his cows.

If you're starving (possibly because someone is hoarding cows), I do not think it is all that wrong to take a cow in that case. If it's just because you want a cow but could afford to pay for one, that's not so great.
posted by maxwelton at 8:40 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

What if you're completely satisfied with a photo of the cow? For what it's worth, that's why I bought Atom Heart Mother without having heard it first.

Bought it again very soon after the CD release.

I still have both that vinyl and that CD, but it was both easier and faster for me to get the AccuRip-verified FLAC copy that's now in my media library via BitTorrent than by ripping my CD.

Same applies to many other CDs I've owned for years and to which time has been unkind. I now have pirated FLACs of quite a large heap of stuff that wouldn't rip cleanly because of physical media deterioration, even though all my CDs have been stored in their original cases and treated with due care for the whole time I've owned them.
posted by flabdablet at 8:54 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Meanwhile, in downloading_a_car space: Games Workshop is routinely beaten to physical release now by people who are scanning, modeling, or otherwise reproducing the model (like a big stompy war robot) exactly so you can print the thing via resin (or FDM if you care more about playing NOW than it looking good).

I assume there's DM networks in Discord as the names of the files are bonkers to avoid take downs, which also makes them largely unsearchable.

So I wouldn't just download a car, I love printing and tinkering so I'd be handing the spares out on the street.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:58 PM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Taking without asking isn't exactly sharing.

No, but nobody is taking without asking. They are taking what is being freely offered. If I photocopy a magazine and hand it to my friend, they are receiving something I am sharing. Nobody is stealing from National Geographic or whoever - my friend and I didn't morally 'owe' them a sale. Nobody took anything without asking here. I made an unauthorised copy, sure, but no taking is happening.

In my creative world, piracy affects nothing. Nobody was making a living off CD sales before, nobody is making a living off streaming now. Where there used to be people making a living, it was getting paid to do regular live shows, selling merch, etc. But developers priced out all the fun venues, the few that remain spend their entire budgets on a couple if big out-of-town names and won't put locals on, at least not without getting paid, certainly won't pay them. This used to be how local bands made money. Now it's pay-to-play.

None of us make money if you stream shit on Spotify anyway. I'd rather you pirate my music than pay someone for it. I'm not seeing a penny of it regardless, so why should Spotify or Amazon or whoever?
posted by Dysk at 9:31 PM on December 4, 2023 [11 favorites]

'Piracy' protects my intellectual integrity in a content distribution environment polluted by DRM encryption. I can verify my memory and check my past influences with the exact content that I prior consumed. Commercially available content is commonly edited and rereleased without notice, DRM blocks efficient access, and physical media introduces waste and degrades over time.

Accessible, editable content enables aspiring editors to hone their skills and style, and create what can be new artistic expression/critique by editing/remixing existing works. Where free expression is concerned, the first amendment limits State authority to manage the intellectual property market.

People should be rewarded and encouraged in their beneficial efforts for others, so I pay for the IP that I've enjoyed.
posted by grokus at 10:33 PM on December 4, 2023

Streaming alone is not wholly responsible. I can’t wait for music labels to discover that the ”paying money” model doesn’t work very well at all anymore either, due to wage suppression versus inflation.

Clearly you missed the Great Brain Robbery, when a group of investors convinced a large number do private equity funders to commit billions to buying song catalogues at enormous and encouraging prices from artists many of us know and love. Now, these same catalogues are being flogged at 40%-60% less. A lot of artists are now so rich they'll never need to make music or tour again. Which is okay with me, Guy Mann Dude.
posted by parmanparman at 12:12 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Re: libraries
But it's just sorta strange that authors are like, hooray, somebody's going to pay for my book once and a thousand people will then read it

A number of countries (that number being 35) pay authors based on the library rentals of their books. It looks like it's a pittance, but a pittance and people reading it is probably better than no money and it not being read.
posted by entity447b at 1:23 AM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course?
posted by snofoam at 4:15 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m excited to follow the precepts of the first comment to build my video essay audience on YouTube!
posted by Captaintripps at 4:51 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is a somewhat complicated issue (evidence: this thread), but, back when I was a bookseller, I carried a magazine that catered to a pretty niche fetish/body image population, and the publication closed up shop because subscriptions and store sales plummeted when the internet made scanning and posting the images for free possible. So, while there’s moral nuance, it isn’t a victimless act in all cases.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:19 AM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

I regret my one-liner at the beginning of this thread. After further reading and gaining a better understanding of both sides of the issue, I am now certain of one thing:

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and this includes piracy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:52 AM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

Artists expected payment for their work long before capitalism existed. And copyright and royalties continue to exist under anti-capitalist systems (e.g. the Soviet Union).
posted by Klipspringer at 6:11 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Artists expected payment for their work long before capitalism

Respectfully, how long before? Surely not as early as say Lascaux[SLWp]?

YOU WOULDN'T STREAM A CAR

I will turn this stream around so fast!
posted by riverlife at 7:00 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Prior to streaming, free versions of media in libraries, radio, or TV served the purpose of making people aware something exists, and if they love it, chances are good they'll buy it eventually. Better than the chance of people buying something they never heard of. Which is why authors, many of whom first found books they loved at libraries, are ok with it.

Most of us grew up reading authors who grew up before the internet, and you find many loving depictions in those authors' books about the magic of libraries, or used bookstores, or borrowing or being given their friends' books or music. Some later authors wrote lovingly or nostalgically about copying a friend or sibling's tape, or recording songs from the radio, or making mix tapes for others.

I'm young enough that I have the same kind of loving associations and nostalgia about piracy, which was (and is...) how I discovered so many things I loved. Especially around the Napster days, there were music piracy sites that would not only show you what songs they had by the artist you searched for, but would also suggest similar artists - long before any of the streaming sites started to push content at you. It was like browsing the world's best library - and the most enthusiastically helpful one! - without worrying about how to get back there in time to return things before they were overdue (libraries and bookstores were not regularly accessible to me growing up, and they aren't for many others either).

Piracy is less accepted socially than libraries and used book stores, and also less than copying someone's music tape or taping a song off the radio. And it's technologically "complicated" enough that a lot of people never try it (maybe a little like how copying VHS tapes was much less common than copying music tapes was). Still, now that many writers are ones who grew up with access to fast internet, I wonder when loving literary descriptions of the magic of piracy will start to show up, by authors who first discovered things they loved that way. Maybe they already have.
posted by trig at 7:48 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Piracy panic is for stupid panicky dickheaded greedbrains who've devoted their entire neurology to moneyseeking and therefore cannot see the obvious fact that they're totally safe. They are safe because pirating something and then owning the pirated thing are both a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. You or somebody has to find the thing you want to pirate and pirate it, and then you or somebodyt has to store the thing for the rest of their life and store all the hardware requisite to engage with it. And then you or somebody has to physically do stuff, not just gently press a button or yell shit at Siri. You have to put things into things, find specialized devices, interact in new ways with devices, even get up off the couch, sometimes. Hell the fuck no to all of that. Most lazyass lazies like me will continue to stream and pay for streaming, bitching and moaning all the while about the terrible perfidy of the svcs, because they're too lazy to go to the effort to acquire the physical thing or the digital thing and then keep it somewhere forevermore and keep it from getting broken and keep all the various mechanisms of consumption intact and unbroken so as to consume whatever it is. Somebody gave me Reservation Dogs* on a thumbdrive and we had to get a whole new Roku to be able to play it. (The TV is very old from pre-smart era and nevertheless miraculously still lives.) That precious thumbdrive is of course tiny and lamentably easy to lose. Who knows, I could Tennessee Williams it and destroy both it and me in a wild bout of screen-addiction-driven insomnia. Meanwhile the new Roku will rapidly age and something will replace thumbdrives, or they'll simply stop making thumbdrives and not replace them with anything, and eventually the TV will one day burn out and I'll have to go get a horrible new smart one and eventually I will age out of the capacity to adapt to the everchanging kaleidoscope of new ways to consume and will just have to gnaw on the crusts I have lying around from the previous century. I guess I'll have to learn to read again so I can peruse whatever books remain uneaten by silverfish.

*Can you buy a DVD or something of Reservation Dogs? I would if I could, as a kind of act of worship, given that it is the single best thing in the world.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:52 AM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Piracy may be justified if:

- the media is not available to purchase (eg the mid-20th century TV referenced upthread)
- the creators are all deceased (ditto)
- the creator is morally reprehensible (JKR, R Kelly, etc)
- You already bought the media legitimately in another form, and need a version compatible with your current tech

Piracy is not justified if:

- Hey, you know that thing you put hours/days/months of your labour into making? Well, I want it for free, and then I wanna give it to everyone else for free.

If you love a thing and you want to pirate it, consider the labour of the people who made it. Also consider: sales figures often dictate whether more of that thing gets made, and the future employment prospects of the worker/s involved.

Arts work is work and arts workers are workers. We just had a whole goddamn series of strikes about it. If you showed solidarity then, show solidarity now.
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:57 AM on December 5, 2023 [12 favorites]

I've always filed movies and television under "morally reprehensible", which covers the article's focus. I avoid them mostly these days.

Artists needed paytronage before capitalism existed, not exactly payments per se, while paytrons expected recognition, so vaguely like some blockchainers' NFT schemes. I suppose NFTs resenble cave paintings kinda, although NTFs fit better the typical capitalist usage for visual arts: tax avoidance. lol

I'd tacitly assumed art served as one primary driver in the development of human intelegence, like some peakcock tail. Art should historically speaking foresee "reward in nature", at least subconsiously.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:06 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

In reading this thread, I keep feeling echoes of buying a ticket to a concert for $140 from a "legitimate" scalper that I could buy from the venue for $50 had the scalpers not already bought them up in blocks. My first thought is that the performer gets none of the markup. That activity works well within any general concept of capitalism. The artist receives the fee they've negotiated with the venue (usually a guarantee + a percentage of the gate). Only people who can afford to pay these inflated ticket prices can enjoy attending the live concert.

But maybe it also smacks of some of capitalism's more odious features: the good stuff is only for those who can afford it. To use the gentrification of a neighborhood as an example, let's move out the lower classes in a neighborhood and raise the prices of real estate, and while we're about it, let's not pay the carpenters who renovate the buildings.

I realize I've tortured my analogies, but I am unclear how piracy strikes a blow at (whatever). Would that be sort of like sneaking into a concert without paying? Okay, I've screwed a scalper out of his profit, but wouldn't I have also screwed the performer out of his percentage of the $50 ticket?

The issue of Amazon disabling the buyer's ability to enjoy something they've bought is a whole other issue than simply obtaining through the back door what one must pay at the front door.
posted by mule98J at 8:26 AM on December 5, 2023

Part of the challenge is that the definition here of "capitalism" expands and contracts as necessary. Capitalism operates on market exchange, so transactions of non-market exchange (theft, gifts; feudalism, slavery and forced labor, co-ops, unpaid caring labor, etc.) operating 'within' capitalism (is there an outside?) are not recognized as having value under capitalism's principles of fair market exchange—and neoclassical economists brush this off as "externalities" rather than recognizing that their account of economic activity is incomplete and flawed.

Then there's the "problem" (with the W. E. B. Du Bois sense of that word) of indigenous knowledge systems not fitting into capitalism: see Kim Christen's "Does Information Really Want to Be Free?", which suggests that some culturally motivated ways to protect the ownership of knowledge are, indeed, valuable and valid.
posted by vitia at 8:50 AM on December 5, 2023

People seem to be in search of a simple, morally and logically consistent answer to copyright infringement they can hang their hat on for every scenario but it does not exist.

I mean, you can take the stance that you will never ever under any circumstances infringe copyright even a little and do everything by the book. But then you get ripped off when stuff like this happens and you've actually paid for something with the expectation of continued access and it's removed without any compensation.

You also entirely forfeit the ability to watch, read, or listen to works that have gone completely out of print with no legitimate way to pay the publisher or artist(s) involved. If you hunt down a physical copy of something that's already been bought, the rights holder is no better off, only the original purchaser. (This is why Garth Brooks and others sought to forbid resale of CDs many years ago. Thankfully they failed...)

Also worth noting that the corporations who collect your money do their level best to avoid it winding up in the hands of the actual creators. On the front end they try to screw artists with disadvantageous contracts, and on the back end they play accounting tricks and more contractual shenanigans to hold on to the money they've received.

People freak out about "piracy" and then brag about not buying books and getting everything through the library instead. While that's legal and results in some money to the authors or artists, it's hardly the same as just buying a book or record or movie directly. I'm not sure it's morally correct to stream all your music without buying anything, given the way the royalties work even though it's legal.

I could go on, but... I find the whole thing very situational and just try to do the right thing in each case. I prefer to buy physical books and then "pirate" the ebook and read it on my e-reader. If a book is out of print and/or the author is long, long dead I may just download it without remorse if I can find it. If I'm not sure I will enjoy a book, I may download it and then buy it if I make it more than 30 pages in. Is that awful? I dunno. God knows I paid a pre-tax on this buying tapes and CDs in my teen years that only had one decent song...

If music is out of print I have no guilt about downloading. If a movie or show cannot be streamed or rented or purchased on DVD, the same.

In any event I try to give money directly to the artist or creator when possible. VIP show tickets, t-shirts, limited edition vinyl, etc.
posted by jzb at 8:50 AM on December 5, 2023 [11 favorites]

because businesses can't be trusted as reliable stewards of media

I'm late to the conversation but one example I recently encountered was the TV series Willow. I remember the movie from way back and thought it'd be interesting to see an update, but hadn't gotten around to it. I looked it up on wikipedia, which includes this timeline in the introductory paragraphs: premiered Nov. 30, 2022, canceled March 2023, removed from streaming May 26, 2023. That's a total of about 5 months and 3 weeks that a brand-new series was made available to the viewing public before being hidden away.

I guess in the past before streaming, if you didn't catch the initial airing of something, you might never get a chance to see it again, but the speed with which Willow was disappeared makes no sense to me in the streaming era.
posted by msbrauer at 9:39 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you don't believe that people should be compensated for their efforts, or that artists have the right to control the distribution of their works, you can skip this.

First, let's be real; this is about videos and music, not food* or shelter. (You recall that recorded music and radio absolutely decimated the job market for musicians, right? Ok with that? Carry on.). Yes it's vexing to some that the rental/streaming model is replacing the "owning media" model. And I'd be pissed too if something I thought I owned (ebook, media file) was later taken from me. Special case.

Media in general is like fashion; the majority of users want to listen to or watch what's trending now. For the smaller markets for older/niche tracks or shows, most seem happy with curated channels that still have a bigger library than the average fans. For both of these, subscriptions fit like a glove. By contrast, the market for owning physical media is shrinking, crushed by the convenience and lower per-track cost of streaming. (No one seems to mind the slightly lower quality of streamed music, since most music is now experienced as sonic wallpaper. A rant for another time)

(Also, older stuff that's still under copyright, but the holders can't/won't make it available is a special case, and here, unlawful possession IS a form of preservation. A bunch of lost early Dr Who episodes have surfaced because of BBC dumpster-divers. But it's very niche. )

So. Ignoring the special case of "owned"" media files that were later withdrawn, the case for music piracy as per the thread title, is "I can't afford my tunes". Yet one can still afford the smartphone, the phone plan and Bluetooth earbuds to consume the tunes, as well as the computer and internet services to find and rip the music? And the $200 sneakers, and weed?

The case for music piracy is further weakened when you consider the Internet. For every top-charting pop artist behind a paywall, there are like 99 struggling artists begging you to listen to their tunes, for free. And, there's still this thing called "radio", and most radio stations also stream now. With so much free, why u gotta steal?

So, music piracy is hardly fighting the good fight, or sticking it to the man. It's a petty transgression, like not stopping fully at a stop sign at 3 AM. No one was hurt, we all do it, but it's still not ethically justified.

* No one's gonna steal a cow if they're hungry, would they? Kind of wasteful for one meal. Unless you're absolutely savage, you'd starve before you managed to get dinner on the table. If you could, you are probably a trained butcher and could work anywhere, and you'll never be hungry.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:41 AM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

the last time i wandered into a public library it was pretty awful. their actual holdings were sparse, and a lot of it was airport fiction and professional preparation books. mmmaybe it would be possible to ILL better material, but you'd actually have to know what you're looking for to request it - no chance of stumbling on interesting new stuff.

like it used to be understood that people should have access to cultural products without being expected to purchase them. the legitimate delivery methods have been steadily eroded to the point where they are functionally useless. if you're poor and can't afford to buy books, well, you just don't get to participate in society in that way.

there should probably be free workshops in impoverished areas offering hands-on piracy tutorials
posted by logicpunk at 9:43 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

With so much free, why u gotta steal?

I mean, it's free without stealing as well. Non-premium Spotify account with an adblocker doesn't generate any revenue for musicians either, but it's legal.
posted by Dysk at 9:51 AM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

the case for music piracy as per the thread title, is "I can't afford my tunes".

I don't think that's what was meant by "can't pay for the thing". It's not that people don't have money (although, yes, for some people, that's relevant), it's that nobody will exchange the money for a possession. You can rent or stream or even get a "digital purchase" (which can be taken away from you at any time for any reason), but you can't pay for "the thing". You only pay for "access to the thing".
posted by jackbishop at 9:57 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

the last time i wandered into a public library it was pretty awful.

That's a shame. Chicago has an incredible library system.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:57 AM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Is there a way I can pirate the battalion sized array of strawmen in this thread and heat my house with it?

Because I'd do it.
posted by Sphinx at 9:59 AM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

logicpunk: there should probably be free workshops in impoverished areas offering hands-on piracy tutorials

no, there should be better libraries. Or people pooling their media collections and sharing them around.

jackbishop:You only pay for "access to the thing".

Sure... but as I tried to point out, for most people, that's satisfactory, because in 6 months they want to listen to something different, eg the new thing their friends are on about. Even among the media-owning listeners, most will play a new acquisition like crazy, for a month or three, then it gets filed and maybe pulled out a few times a year, at most? Or forgotten. Til it shows up in estate sales and charity shops, and is snaffled up by folks like me.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:07 AM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

"people pooling their media libraries and sharing them around" is piracy, right? Just with nicer words?
posted by sagc at 10:18 AM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

No, I don't think so. Libraries aren't piracy.

If we think that resources should be distributed more equitably, then we (aka society) should be prepared to help make that happen: by sharing our own collections, or contributing to a fund to obtain the media to be shared. Just saying "It's right that you should have something. Go steal it" is hardly an ethical position, is it?

(yes i understand that the right to share is contentious and many distributors wanna block that)
posted by Artful Codger at 10:30 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

people pooling their media collections and sharing them around

is exactly what public BitTorrent indexing sites like The Pirate Bay were set up to facilitate.
posted by flabdablet at 10:55 AM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Is it ethical to share a digital artifact as long as you coordinate so that only one person experiences it at a time?
posted by Pyry at 11:34 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bit-torrent sites GAVE away material, much of it stolen/cracked. But, ok, lets just stick to the idea of creating more libraries that LOAN material that was legally obtained.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:36 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

A number of countries (that number being 35) pay authors based on the library rentals of their books. It looks like it's a pittance, but a pittance and people reading it is probably better than no money and it not being read.
posted by entity447b at 3:23 AM on December 5

I'm registered with the Canadian version of this, and get paid every November. I don't get paid much nowadays because I foolishly ran a small press for a decade instead of continuing with my own writing, but back when I was actively writing and publishing, I made about $500-800/year from Access Copyright, and two of those years it was the difference between being able to pay my rent and being homeless.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:43 AM on December 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

Is it ethical to share a digital artifact as long as you coordinate so that only one person experiences it at a time?

Ethical, perhaps. Definitely still illegal under US law, because courts decided that ephemeral copies necessary to the basic functioning of computer systems still constitute copyright infringement.

Not getting into the arguments over the general propriety of unauthorized sharing of digital content, I think we would all be better served if mere copying was expressly legal and the regulation applied to the sale or use of the material. It should be legal to archive anything you can access, full stop.
posted by wierdo at 11:45 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Artful Codger, don't libraries give away material? Is the only difference that you think most music/TV/books on torrent sites has never been paid for once?
posted by sagc at 11:45 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

And what's the functional difference between giving something away, and just taking out a "loan" repeatedly?
posted by sagc at 11:46 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'll leave answering that to librarians. I don't know that torrent sites are good examples for ethical distribution. They're sort of like being part of a crowd scooping up coins from an overturned Brinks truck.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:49 AM on December 5, 2023

Bit-torrent sites GAVE away material, much of it stolen/cracked. But, ok, lets just stick to the idea of creating more libraries that LOAN material that was legally obtained.

With digital assets, there's not really any difference between giving and loaning. Loaning is just giving a new copy, with a pinky swear to delete the copy when you're done with it. DRM mostly consist of various efforts to enforce that pinky swear.

It's also the case that torrents do mostly originate with legal purchases. Most movie releases are either Blu-Ray rips, or streaming rips. Someone paid to license the video, and then added it to their library afterwards instead of deleting it. Like if you checked a CD out of the library and made a copy of it before you returned it, then let friends and neighbors make copies of your copy.
posted by Carcosa at 11:59 AM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Bit-torrent sites GAVE away material, much of it stolen/cracked.

Bittorrent sites gave people infrastructure to share their media, by operating trackers and torrent indexes. They did/do not generally distribute material directly, they enabled peer-to-peer distribution.
posted by Dysk at 12:06 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

Understood, but the distinction doesn't change the effect. You might as well have been linking to the world's largest Dropbox.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:14 PM on December 5, 2023

So... you don't actually want people to share their media libraries? That's what people are trying to figure out.
posted by sagc at 12:20 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Libraries.

Ok, I got nuttin.

Anyway, this is getting away from the "it's OK to pirate" theme.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:23 PM on December 5, 2023

Lending someone your CD so they can rip it to listen to on their iPod is functionally equivalent to just sending them the mp3. And I'd posit that that is what lending or sharing your music collection has actually meant (in various analogous forms) since the days of home cassette recorders.
posted by Dysk at 12:27 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Give or take several orders of magnitude, i suppose that's true.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:52 PM on December 5, 2023

So it should be arbitrarily hard to access some media, basically?
posted by sagc at 12:55 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Agree that there are far too many straw men and too much handwringing in this thread.

How about: I think people should go ahead and steal actual physical goods from corporations whose CEOs make, say, more than ten times their lowest-paid employee. Which is most of them. I think that people should torrent Taylor Swift instead of "buying" it. I think license agreements and EULAs longer than 5 lines are fucking awful. I think if we actually socially want creators to keep creating, we need to figure out ways to pay for their labor and work without this whole ridiculous layer of rent-seeking on the top. I think far too many of the creators arguing against "piracy" have been sold a bill of goods that it's the consumer screwing them instead of the publisher.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:11 PM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Not that this is at all a solution, but if it became the norm for artists to publically post a company name and PO Box for anyone that wants to mail them a check directly for...any reason, I would mail some checks.
posted by VTX at 3:13 PM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Taylor Swift
c/o Taylor Swift Enterprises
242 W. Main St. #412
Hendersonville, TN 37075

(tongue firmly in cheek here, but the top artists are the ones most frequently pirated)

Assuming that you are as intrepid and discerning as the average MeFite, and like to seek out interesting new artists to support, I linked to a starting page earlier. On each of those sites, there are usually direct links to the artists or their labels, with opportunities to make purchases or give other support. And some of the sites themselves are non-profit and need support. In any event, you're no more than two or three Google searches from connecting with most such artists.
posted by Artful Codger at 4:21 PM on December 5, 2023

I don't want to live in the timeline where libraries are generally thought of as being on some ethical fringe. I did, however, notice a growing sense among Ordinary Folk (tm) that activities that do not involve currency making its way up the wealth gradient, always in the direction of the ownership class, are somehow... suspect on an instinctual level. "What do you mean you just made one? Is that legal?"
posted by tigrrrlily at 5:16 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

"What do you mean you just made one? Is that legal?"

The versions I've heard are "There's no way they just made that - they did it to weaken a competitor/monetize it later/use it as a loss leader/..."
posted by trig at 6:28 PM on December 5, 2023

People have been arrested, imprisoned, and harassed for making copies.
No direct harm can be demonstrated from making copies. If you can demonstrate such a harm, I invite you do try it here.

"piracy" is a euphemism designed to dehumanize people for making fucking copies.

A "moral stance" on making copies is a sham. People deliberately and accidentally make copies; machines make copies all the time with or without direct human intervention. Do you know how many caches sit between you and metafilter.com? Cache misses don't result in money flying out of your linked slyt creator's pocket.

Copying is a fundamental part of everything computers do and is intimately and inextricably involved in nearly everything we do. It's bad and wrong to single out some copies you don't like and call them "piracy" and lock up real people for doing it.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 8:59 PM on December 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

activities that do not involve currency making its way up the wealth gradient, always in the direction of the ownership class

I am firmly convinced that this is the wrong mental model of the economy.

The way I see it, money creates its own gravity field and any large body of it attracts more. So it doesn't so much make its way up a gradient as exhibit a natural tendency to find its own level and collect into the stagnant pools where the self-important bottom-feeders live.
posted by flabdablet at 9:16 PM on December 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's bad and wrong to single out some copies you don't like and call them "piracy" and lock up real people for doing it.

If we're discussing tossing people in jail over it, absolutely. If you're talking about people who make unauthorized copies as a business, though, let's please force them to disgorge all profits. That is precisely what copyright exists to prevent, after all. Copyright is a perfectly legitimate concept that has been made absurd by copyright maximalists, mainly large and very profitable corporations who use artists in a cynical ploy for sympathy.
posted by wierdo at 9:51 PM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Theft is property.
posted by y2karl at 11:30 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Abstraction is obfuscation.
posted by flabdablet at 11:49 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Physicalization is tragedy.
posted by nobody at 4:41 AM on December 6, 2023

Physicalization is tragedy.

The second time as farce.
posted by mittens at 5:04 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

> So I wouldn't just download a car, I love printing and tinkering so I'd be handing the spares out on the street.

one way to think about this: information goods are (pure) public goods -- non-rival and non-excludable -- which breaks capitalism (as we know it!), requiring public financing and/or differential pricing where "the marginal willingness to pay should be equal to marginal cost" for optimal allocation :P

if we are living in an attention economy, where the fundamental economic problem is attentional scarcity, after transitioning from food scarcity (forager/tribal-based societies) to land scarcity (agrarian/feudal) to capital scarcity (industrial/national*), it seems that would require a wholesale reimagining of the institutions that govern it.

take money :P the price of it -- interest rates -- has been hovering near zero for most of the last two decades (of increasingly zero-marginal-cost production). capital is abundant -- for those who have access to it. the institutions of capital (esp post-gold standard) are designed to guard that access zealously. but that is a political constraint, not an economic one anymore. how do you distribute the gains from increasing returns to scale? i would say liberally!

---
*and attendant subvarieties: capitalist/socialist, democratic/fascist...
posted by kliuless at 5:38 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

If you're in Austin, go check out https://www.weluvvideo.org/
posted by blendor at 8:05 AM on December 6, 2023

Old stale thread, but one thing I've always bemoaned is the way we've set up a load of straw arguments in the very language we use. We talk about "piracy" and "theft" to describe illicit copying and transfer, which is just...I feel like it begs the question.

It presumes that this is all analogous to physical larceny, which starts the usual unhelpful battle between Thomas Jefferson's metaphorical candle and choose-your-artist's income. You don't have to take one side of this or the other to simply see that this is a terrible analogy.

Copyright was originally framed as a "temporary monopoly". It's a gift from the state of a short period of what would otherwise be unfair, as a concession to the needs of those living under the economy that state endorses. It's a mess, and we haven't tried a better way, so we'll never really know if there is a better one.

But calling it "theft" is like starting your arguments about libel law by claiming it's a form of kidnapping, or tax evasion, or something else that doesn't fit. You may find a few intuitive places the concepts overlap, but from then on it's only going to confuse the issue.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:54 AM on December 6, 2023 [11 favorites]

Of course words like "piracy" and "theft" are deliberately embraced by those who stand to lose from the activity, but then you have others claiming the activity is morally justified. Both are distortions.

So, what terms would you use? And what's your position on the issue?
posted by Artful Codger at 9:21 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

There was a brief phase in human technological progress where it was possible for artists to make a work of art once and support themselves by selling lots of hard-to-duplicate copies of that artwork. That phase is ending.

Before the invention of sound recordings, a musician could only get paid by charging for performances or finding a patron.

After the invention of the internet and digitized music, a musician can only get paid by charging for performances or finding a patron. When recordings can be easily copied and shared, people who pay for recordings are essentially patrons.
posted by straight at 10:12 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

You can't tell a funny joke and expect that nobody who hears it will repeat it. That would be a ridiculous expectation. It would require an incredibly intrusive and draconian government intervention to prevent people from repeating jokes by making it illegal.

You can't draw a cool picture or record a great song and distribute digital copies of it and expect that nobody will duplicate and share those copies. That's a ridiculous expectation. It requires intrusive and draconian government intervention to prevent people from making/sharing copies by making it illegal.

It might be nice if you could distribute art in some form that can't be copied and shared so you could force people to pay you if they wanted a copy. It was nice for a while for some artists. But that technology doesn't exist anymore.
posted by straight at 10:26 PM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sorry, Artful Codger, you're not going to get me with that one. I'm talking about reframing our language around this to help encourage better conversation on the topic. I'm specifically avoiding being cast into some entrenched position on one side or the other of the poisoned debate.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:09 AM on December 7, 2023

A horse is a horse, a spade is a spade, and making unauthorised copies is making unauthorised copies, not piracy.
posted by Dysk at 2:15 AM on December 7, 2023

something something uphill linguistic battle something
posted by flabdablet at 2:56 AM on December 7, 2023

Sure, in casual speech. When discussing the actual topic of unauthorised sharing or copyright infringement, it's probably a good idea to be more precise and specific, though. And like, uphill linguistic battles have been won before. I'm not going to list a bunch of problematic language that was once considered just the standard neutral way to refer to things that is now not in widespread use, or socially unacceptable to varying degrees.

When the language use does come up (and it does and will, as you point out) it is still worth pushing back on it, and reframing the conversation away from the terms that bias the discussion toward a particular interpretation, not necessarily because you expect everyone to adopt those linguistic norms, but to influence the discussion you are currently in to be more specific and precise, and more fruitful.
posted by Dysk at 3:52 AM on December 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
posted by flabdablet at 4:18 AM on December 7, 2023

Giving up in advance is one approach that has certainly never achieved anything.
posted by Dysk at 4:51 AM on December 7, 2023

Giving up in advance is one approach that has certainly never achieved anything.

On the other hand, picking one’s battles has a pretty good track record.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:06 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

When it comes to language, I'm more than capable of having several "battles" - it's not like conscientious language use is a big struggle, it doesn't take anything out of me.
posted by Dysk at 6:16 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

> You can't tell a funny joke and expect that nobody who hears it will repeat it.

> When discussing the actual topic of unauthorised sharing or copyright infringement, it's probably a good idea to be more precise and specific, though.

they are public goods, which are non-rival (we can both enjoy fireworks together, but i can't eat your bite of the apple) and non-excludable (hard/impossible to gate). as @JohnQuiggin notes, without public/institutional support "pure public goods are generally under-supplied [by the market, left to its own devices], relative to the socially desirable level."

but the problem with 'intellectual property' -- given its endless zero-marginal-cost duplicability -- is its debatable 'oversupply' without some (politically-imposed) rationing/subsidy system. how do you coordinate and provide that system?

i think one reason we have a crisis in capitalism (or at least the industrial-era variety, which are current institutions arose from and are still geared toward) is because we live increasingly in an information 'economy' -- and markets can't price public goods properly.

of course there are other (pseudo-)public goods markets are crap at handling: parks/urban planning, housing, healthcare, education. these are all excludable -- and subject to political motivations on how and who they exclude. but to me -- and i think most -- the more people who have access to them, the more socially desirable it is. they are public goods.
posted by kliuless at 6:59 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wonder why The Pirate Bay is called The Pirate Bay and why their logo is a pirate ship. They should be called The Unauthorized Copy Bay and their logo should be anything but a pirate ship. Those fools!
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:14 AM on December 7, 2023

rum-soaked space hobo: I'm talking about reframing our language around this to help encourage better conversation on the topic.

So, reframe. What would be more appropriate language?

I'm specifically avoiding being cast into some entrenched position on one side or the other of the poisoned debate.

If you won't make or defend a position, there's no debate. But I do respect anyone who wants to gather more info before wading in.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:32 AM on December 7, 2023

the use of the adjective entrenched is relevant here and speaks to me of what's wrong with so much debate. Which I suppose is the point of a debate -- to win, to beat the other side. But do we really need that here? I'm personally way more interested in folks discussing what amounts to a very complex issue by yes, acknowledging they may be coming from a particular position, but maybe not so dedicated to it that it's worth trench warfare.

See also "poisoned"
posted by philip-random at 10:53 AM on December 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

My point was that the choice of language hurts both sides as they stand now: the people in favour of illicit copying have easy points to score about the ways in which the analogy is terrible, and the people opposed to it end up pulling at heartstrings instead of actually having to prove their argument. I just think we should take a step back, is all, and recognise that any solution to this conflict needs more subtlety than cops-and-robbers thinking.

I will address one snarky question above: The Pirate Bay is named as a sort of punk in-your-face send-up of the metaphor. It reaches their audience quickly, and is clearly comical. It evokes the old punk appropriation of "HOME TAPING IS KILLING THE RECORD INDUSTRY" slogans. Consider as comparison The War On Cars podcast, who chose that name to roll their eyes at the way safer streets advocacy always triggers bombastic complaints of "This is a war on cars!" in the press. It gets people's attention, and isn't some sort of endorsement of the analogy as fact.

The history of the term "pirate" in this context is itself an interesting one: originally authors used it to refer to small-time publishers who re-printed copies of their works without licensing. These days it's the vast conglomerated publishers using the term to malign people reading, listening to, or watching works. The shift in power dynamic there is probably more interesting a conversation topic than a blunt "should they"/"shouldn't they" full of point-scoring smugness.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:51 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

rum-soaked space hobo -- I agree with you and your initial wording. Though looking at my wording now, I can see how it may be a little vague.

It evokes the old punk appropriation of "HOME TAPING IS KILLING THE RECORD INDUSTRY" slogans.

or as we used to put it back in the day "Home Taping is Killing the Music Industry ... and it's fun", which actually became the slogan for a friend's recording project and label. And now I notice, it proved at least a little viral.

Overall, were this a strictly binary issue, I'd have to side with the pirates, I suppose because I was around in pre-filesharing days when large, powerful, industry heavyweights had a clampdown on pretty much all media, and it was beyond ugly. But, of course, it's not a binary issue. It's rather the definition of complex, and to suggest otherwise (I don't care what side you're on), is not exactly helpful or healthy.
posted by philip-random at 8:50 AM on December 8, 2023

Well it isn't THAT complex an issue, if you consider who's copying what. Much is being made of how illegally copying stuff makes something useful available to those lacking means, or preserving/sharing things not otherwise available...but for every such copy, there are 99 copies of Drake or Taylor or whatever the current hotness is. People just wanting free stuff.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:16 AM on December 8, 2023

So is the point that everyone copying those artists could afford to buy the music for themselves, that those artists are losing out on an opportunity to eke out a living, or that by liking that music the masses have lost the moral high ground?
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:59 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Let me put it this way:

"Papa, what did you do in the revolution?"

"Well, child, your mother and I downloaded music, books, movies and software without paying."

I'm saying that downloading illegal copies isn't exactly a morally superior position. You might take some pleasure in being a tiny burr under the saddle of big media. But you haven't helped anyone to eat, or to have shelter, etc. It doesn't right a wrong.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:10 AM on December 8, 2023

Eh, textbook piracy is huge, and piracy in general has let a lot of people in all kinds of socioecenomic situations all around the world access educational and cultural capital that they might not have been able to otherwise. It's not food in your hand, but it's not nothing either. And even as someone who did have access to a good education and plenty of educational resources, I don't think I'm the only one whose career has also benefitted from freely available educational materials and software. (Was it Adobe who used to turn a blind eye to piracy of their software, back before subscriptions, since that helped make it the default choice for young people just starting out, who were then able to get used to it and become professionally addicted to it?)

Also, having had some periods of less-secure food and shelter - not having to choose between food and music, or transportation and books, or rent and movies definitely made life much less hard, and much richer, than it could have been. So again not food or shelter, but while man might be able to live by bread alone, it makes an incredible difference not to have to.

Anyway, is anyone here firmly opposed to piracy-via-downloading but not, or less, opposed to things like the Wayback Machine or Metafilter's informal policy of supplying various paywall workarounds? Or to adblocking? If so, I'm interested in hearing what ethical distinctions people see between the two.
posted by trig at 3:14 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

you haven't helped anyone to eat, or to have shelter, etc.

I have literally been thanked for changing the life of somebody to whom I gave a copy of about a quarter of my music collection exported as MP3s (I would have given them more but their laptop ran out of HD space).

Before I did that, they simply did not realize that access to music, in 2023, was feasible in any way other than via an Internet connection and streaming subscriptions; that particular frog had been quite thoroughly slow-boiled.
posted by flabdablet at 3:24 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm interested in hearing what ethical distinctions people see between the two.

The same resentment at seeing undeserving people have nice things that turns people Republican when allowed to fester unexamined runs pretty deep in most of us.
posted by flabdablet at 3:29 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Reason studios demonstrates why piracy is completely justified (Louis Rossmann, Piped/YouTube, 19m6s)
posted by flabdablet at 6:49 PM on December 8, 2023

MetaFilter: rum-soaked space hobo -- I agree with you and your initial wording.
posted by y2karl at 7:30 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

A hungry person survives the weekend by stealing some food. We probably agree that this was a justified action. So, we're all now ok with shoplifting anywhere, by anyone?
posted by Artful Codger at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2023

But you're not shoplifting.

Why is that, Leon?
posted by flabdablet at 9:06 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Achungry person survives the weekend by stealing some food. We probably agree that this was a justified action. So, we're all now ok with shoplifting anywhere, by anyone?

This is not analogous. I'm not good with all shoplifting entirely because it deprives the victim of their goods.

I'm good with (non-commercial) piracy because it doesn't.
posted by Dysk at 11:42 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think things get confused by assuming that the overall tenor of a thread indicates a general agreement. That is, I was really shocked by how many people wanted to brag about shoplifting, in that grocery-scanner thread a while back. I'm less shocked by people talking about copying books and movies and software, although the lengths people go through to justify it are interesting. I linked the plagiarism thread in a snippy comment above because while Metafilter loves stealing it does not like the kind of stealing where you take credit for a thing.

Does Metafilter have an underlying general theory of stealing? Does that theory, maybe, resemble its rule for humor (i.e., jokes are only funny when they punch up, but not down)? Does it draw arbitrary distinctions between what counts as a material good and what doesn't? (Bread is composed of the wrong kind of electrons and so is bad to steal?) Is there a threshold below which it becomes less okay to steal a digital good? Is there an ethical difference between you making an unauthorized copy of the latest John Grisham novel, and you making an unauthorized copy of a novel-in-progress being written by an impoverished person? You have claimed these works as your own by stealing them--you own them, now--but why then does Metafilter regard it as a worse crime to say they are yours?
posted by mittens at 6:35 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

(I prefer the approach where we don't attribute any individual positions to some imaginary unified Metafilter. Here and elsewhere ;-)
posted by trig at 6:55 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

I mean, you can't claim that Metafilter as a whole believes any one thing. But a lot of people here subscribe to the theory that information wants to be free. Facts belong to everyone, fiction has a source but everyone gets to riff off it, physical things have ownership but if anyone (especially any corporation) has a lot of something people need, fuck em, they don't need it all, or need to profit from it all.

Not everyone has a well developed social theory, like about how TV will get made if nobody pays for it, but it's not fair to ask an individual to create a working system when it's clear the current system is broken.
posted by rikschell at 6:55 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Over here, we're canonizing the megastar who was just named TIME's Person of the Year, and here, we're ok with illegally copying and distributing her songs. Well, enough have paid in some fashion that she's a newly minted billionaire, so it's almost a duty to rip her off, right?

I get that there's still imbalance and inequity in the current music biz. It's in flux. But I would think that the more principled act would be to support artists and outlets that are working towards a better situation, instead of just trafficking illegal copies of "establishment" artists.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:46 AM on December 9, 2023

A lot of people do both.
posted by Dysk at 8:48 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

The vast majority do not. It's just "free stuff! gimme!".
posted by Artful Codger at 9:31 AM on December 9, 2023

Artful Codger, I feel like you're arguing entirely from your own, limited experience.

People do in fact both stream/download music for free and also contribute to artists. It happens, I swear! It's almost certainly more common than never, ever supporting the artist or label in any way, or never, ever doing anything that could be viewed as unlicensed reproduction.
posted by sagc at 9:42 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Professionally I've been on both the production side (recording technology), and the Internet side (programming). Lived thru napster etc. Yes I've downloaded stuff, but have come to realize that I don't have to do that to be inexpensively oversupplied with legally-obtained music, software, etc.

All I'm after is for people here to stop acting like unauthorized copying/downloading is neutral or virtuous. The transgression is very small, a lot of people do it, the impacts haven't (yet) killed the recording industry... but it's not without effect, and it's no substitute for deliberately choosing to support artists and systems that are trying to fix things. Be the change you want, etc.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:12 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Artful Codger, the system you were part of is rapacious and will devour and squander our cultural touchstones in exchange for a buck. It will displace and extinguish any popular culture it does not control, so that the overwhelming majority of people are only exposed to content it can then hold hostage. The idea that somehow I'm supposed to feel responsible for the living it denies the majority of artists is a cynical ploy to exploit my human decency to subsidize some of the worst robber barons in history.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:39 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]

I wasn't on the label/distribution side. I was involved with the technology (hardware) of recording. Which has been very much democratized and made affordable to just about any aspiring artist. You're welcome.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:43 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Let's not get into the supposed democratization of pro audio, you happen to be talking to a woman after all.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:59 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know of some GREAT female engineers. Prince's main engineer was a woman.

The hardware is indeed democratized. The pro-audio industry is still male-heavy, yeah.

The idea that somehow I'm supposed to feel responsible for the living it denies the majority of artists is a cynical ploy to exploit my human decency to subsidize some of the worst robber barons in history.

Well, I have said, above,

[Illegal downloading is] not without effect, and it's no substitute for deliberately choosing to support artists and systems that are trying to fix things.

So, I don't get how you think I'm in the pocket for the status quo.

Anyway, I'm done. Support your favourite artists.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:09 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I linked the plagiarism thread in a snippy comment above because while Metafilter loves stealing it does not like the kind of stealing where you take credit for a thing.

I think the fact that you're using the word "stealing" to describe both

1) claiming credit for someone else's work by telling lies about who actually wrote or created something; and

2) making a copy of my friend's Spinal Tap DVD instead of just borrowing it

demonstrates how muddled the "stealing" metaphor is when trying to discuss these issues.
posted by straight at 2:52 PM on December 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

It's just "free stuff! gimme!".

I think that is a perverse way to describe people enjoying art. If I walk by my neighbor's yard and enjoy the beauty of his flower garden without paying him anything for the experience, would you describe me as saying "Free stuff! Gimmie!"? Would you describe the desire to listen to a great song or see a great movie as greed?
posted by straight at 3:03 PM on December 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

All I'm after is for people here to stop acting like unauthorized copying/downloading is neutral or virtuous.

It may not necessarily be virtuous per se but I'd definitely call it morally neutral. I'm not going to start acting like something I think is patently false is true.

Especially in light of the examples you're using - who isn't getting shelter or enough to eat when someone downloads a Taylor Swift or Drake track? (And how are they harmed beyond what they'd be if someone instead did the legal and not piracy act of listening to the track on a non-premium Spotify account without listening to the ads, for example?)

the impacts haven't (yet) killed the recording industry...

Only being the tiniest bit facetious in saying that if it were killing the music industry, it would be a moral good.
posted by Dysk at 3:11 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

If I walk by my neighbor's yard and enjoy the beauty of his flower garden without paying him anything for the experience, would you describe me as saying "Free stuff! Gimmie!"?

Not equivalent. What if the neighbour ran a private park and you snuck over the fence to avoid paying admission?

The majority of downloaders don't give a rats arse about fixing things for anybody, including artists. It's just stuff they don't have to pay for.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:55 PM on December 10, 2023

The majority of downloaders don't give a rats arse about fixing things for anybody, including artists.

Why are you arguing with this strawman in your head rather than people actually in this thread? (And how exactly can you know what other people's motivations are like that?)

Besides that, who cares why they do it? It is either a problem or not. It doesn't become a problem only if you do it for 'bad' reasons. Whether downloaders give a shit about fixing shit is irrelevant - it's still not imperative to participate in a broken system.

...and if some people are motivated by wanting to fix things and can justify that, then it doesn't matter what motivates anyone else. You're not inherently a selfish bastard for voting Democrat (or Labour, or whatever party you like), even if a lot of people were to vote that way because of thinking it'd put more money in their pocket, did example. "Lots of people are motivated to do this for selfish reasons" doesn't actually address whether the action is awful.

What if the neighbour ran a private park and you snuck over the fence to avoid paying admission?

Again, not equivalent - you'd be putting wear on their paths, taking up a space someone else couldn't, etc. It's like if my neighbour charged admission to their garden, and I enjoyed it for free from my upstairs window. Which yeah, I don't owe my neighbour to support his business or business model.
posted by Dysk at 8:52 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

I am reminded of what a stoned friend once said. "people will pay for what they can't get for free."

everything else is philosophy and/or bureaucracy, I guess.
posted by philip-random at 10:54 PM on December 10, 2023

"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

...the main focus of this article. Not simply piracy for piracy's sake, so a lot of these arguments arent addressing this (like, "I don't want to pay for it").

Is it piracy if you already paid for the thing and the company now deleted it from their platform? If you download it illegally, after buying it, is that particularly wrong? I say no.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:37 AM on December 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Or download it for free when it's not available any more on any platform? That's fine with me too.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:02 AM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Or download it for free when it's not available any more on any platform? That's fine with me too.

Whether it's piracy or not depends on the contract you signed when you bought it.

--------------

Frankly all of the rest of this sophistry is so pointless as to be ridiculous. If you want to steal something just steal it. No one who believes it is stealing is going to read all of your self-justifications and think "Wow, I've been wrong all this time and these people aren't just outright stealing other people's work." The only ones who care are people who are trying to salve their own conscience.

At the base of all of this is "I want something and the rules say I can't have it." So just violate the friggin' rules and get on with your day.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:29 AM on December 11, 2023

It's true; legality always perfectly matches morality.

Or maybe it doesn't, and that's what both this article and this thread are about?
posted by sagc at 6:37 AM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Whether it's piracy or not depends on the contract you signed when you bought it.

Sure...but I'm not really talking about the legal aspect, but whether or not it seems morally wrong to me. It does not.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:43 AM on December 11, 2023

No one who believes it is stealing is going to read all of your self-justifications and think "Wow, I've been wrong all this time and these people aren't just outright stealing other people's work."

Ok? That's fine with me too. This is the discussion portion of MeFi, that's what we're doing.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:45 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

If you want to steal something just steal it.

I don't want to steal anything. I want to make copies.
posted by Dysk at 10:59 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's like if my neighbour charged admission to their garden, and I enjoyed it for free from my upstairs window.

Comparable, I guess, if you invited a few thousand people to use your window. ;-)

I don't want to steal anything.

You want to give away (or receive sans charge) copies of works for which there is a licence that says "You are not permitted to copy and share this".

Occam's Razor, folks. If a good can be obtained for free, with zero friction, and effectively no chance of being caught for "illegally" having it... people will take advantage of that. Duh. There's no need to struggle for edge cases that might plausibly justify the action. About nobody (outside of MeFi, I guess) cares. Point them to free files, most people would grab them. Human nature.

Ran across this the other day. Pretty heavy going and it's about 11 years old. One point made, which I think most of you will be happy about, is that downloading hits the major labels & corporations hardest, AND the new landscape is more favourable to small independent labels and startups (...is that cheering I hear?). The only thing I would add, is that this implies there will be a ceiling to their growth; when an independent gets popular/big enough that they need expanded sales to survive, downloading will bite into them too.

Since so many of you support musicians in other ways, like attending performances... next event, try to talk to a band member or one of their people. Ask them for a url where you can grab all of their stuff without charge. Don't stand too close.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:12 PM on December 11, 2023

Ask them for a url where you can grab all of their stuff without charge.

I too love Bandcamp, and hope that it survives the chaos of being acquired & sold as cats-paw and market ploy.
posted by CrystalDave at 2:07 PM on December 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

Comparable, I guess, if you invited a few thousand people to use your window. ;-)

How is me ripping one copy of a thing to live on my harddisk in any way equivalent to inviting several thousand people over?

You want to give away (or receive sans charge) copies of works for which there is a licence that says "You are not permitted to copy and share this".

You have no fucking idea what I want. There is a difference between even downloading and distributing. And what I said was "make copies" - it doesn't even have to involve the Internet.

Also: you're not a fucking mind reader, mate, clever as you think you are. Do not fucking tell me what I want, you have no fucking clue.

like attending performances... next event, try to talk to a band member or one of their people. Ask them for a url where you can grab all of their stuff without charge. Don't stand too close.

They'll give me their bandcamp link, or just hand me one if the CDRs they've brought to hand out. I don't know what music scenes you're in, but it sure as fuck sounds like they aren't mine.

You are making so many assumptions about everyone else in this thread. You're projecting so fucking hard, it's like you're a goddamn slideshow.
posted by Dysk at 2:12 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't think anybody, including me, has come out against copying your own music collection for archival or alternate personal use. Re uploading/downloading, I'm happy to listen to every Mefites own explanation for why they think it's ok for them to do that. I might disagree with some of the rationalizations. And it doesn't account for the other 100s of millions of downloaders and why they do what they do.

Downloading is still deemed a problem by most industry observers. Streaming music services (eg Spotify) has apparently made a dent in the impact of music downloading, as it's easier to do than seeking tracks or albums, and the greatest losses now come from the downloading of movies and TV shows.
posted by Artful Codger at 3:03 PM on December 11, 2023

you've absolutely failed to put together a coherent argument for *anything* and have mostly just been shouting at clouds. So... username checks out, I guess.

Also, aren't you the one who said "sharing around" a personal media library was a *good* thing?
posted by sagc at 3:06 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

No, I was saying that if you're concerned about making digital assets aveilable to the underprivileged, that you (and like-minded individuals and groups) can legally come up with a library structure for meeting that need.
posted by Artful Codger at 3:09 PM on December 11, 2023

>> next event, try to talk to a band member or one of their people. Ask them for a url where you can grab all of their stuff without charge.

> They'll give me their bandcamp link, or just hand me one if the CDRs they've brought to hand out. I don't know what music scenes you're in, but it sure as fuck sounds like they aren't mine.

You've just made one of my main points, thank you. There IS a lot of free music to be legally had, without having to resort to downloading. The band CHOOSES what to hand out, and when/where. The challenge I posed was to tell the band that you want everything of theirs, for free.... so that you could see how they feel about that, if you don't already know.

btw, if you've only been trying to explain your copying for personal reasons, then I've misread you. I thought you were trying to justify uploading/downloading in general. My apology if I'm wrong about that.
posted by Artful Codger at 3:46 PM on December 11, 2023

I don't think anybody, including me, has come out against copying your own music collection for archival or alternate personal use.

I was talking about making copies of other people's personal collections, not my own. Just like my friends and I used to copy each others' CDs to minidisc, or cassette before that. (I do not have thousands of friends - it would be like inviting some of my friends over to join me in watching the game with the view I have from my flat instead of buying a ticket to the stadium, not like inviting a town of strangers.)

And it doesn't account for the other 100s of millions of downloaders and why they do what they do.

I'm not trying to account for everyone else? Like, you're effectively saying that (as an analogy) inviting people over to your house it's wrong, because some people sometimes invite hundreds of thousands of people over to their flat overlooking the stadium as a means to watch the game without buying a stadium ticket. A bunch of us are saying that it is ridiculous and reductionist to say that it is wrong to invite people over. You keep talking about it line a defense of having friends over is a defense of something that people aren't talking about.

What other people do, how they rationalise it? Not my problem. Not my responsibility. Piracy as a whole is not wrong. You can concoct or even come across situations where it is. But that is about those specific circumstances, not about piracy. You seem to want to flatten copyright infringement down to "always bad or always a moral imperative" and treat anyone arguing that it isn't always bad like they're saying it's always a force for moral good.

I posit that by far most of the downloading that happens doesn't cause meaningful harm. You said it yourself - it's mostly Taylor Swift and Drake. Not making yet another million is not meaningful harm.

The challenge I posed was to tell the band that you want everything of theirs, for free.... so that you could see how they feel about that, if you don't already know.

Again, I think you're imagining that I go to very different shows and have very different relationships with the artists at them to what the reality is. Most of not all of the bands I go see would be overjoyed to hear that anyone wanted all of their shit. Money would not be part of that consideration for either party.
posted by Dysk at 4:00 PM on December 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

Whether it's piracy or not depends on the contract you signed when you bought it.

Also this is ridiculous. I have never signed a contract to buy anything (I don't own a house or a car), and it's certainly not anything anyone ever does for anything as small a deal as an album or film.

A click-through EULA is not a contract, certainly not one you sign, and you don't even have that on physical media.
posted by Dysk at 4:11 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was talking about making copies of other people's personal collections, not my own.

eg some friends sharing their collections with each other, not with the world? I confess that I missed this, if this was the main situation that you were making the case for. Again, my apologies.

We will probably continue to disagree on whether in general, music or other piracy is benign or not. Whatever - it goes on. If you have or had Minidisc, you know the lengths to which SONY and others were pressured to ensure you couldn't make direct digital copies. With files, that battle is now lost, and it was inevitable that unauthorized duplication and distribution of 100% perfect copies was going to be widespread. Yes, the stranglehold of physical media on music distribution has been broken. The music biz is changing and adapting; no other choice.

I've brought more heat than light to this thread, and will try harder to just leave it the fuck alone.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:29 PM on December 11, 2023

If you have or had Minidisc, you know the lengths to which SONY and others were pressured to ensure you couldn't make direct digital copies.

This was irrelevant, we had first been minidisc, not later netMD, so my friend group never ran into it found out about this bullshit.
posted by Dysk at 12:06 AM on December 12, 2023

(First gen minidisc, so we never encountered or found out about the later bullshit. God autocorrect is awful.)
posted by Dysk at 7:44 AM on December 12, 2023

Here's the other thing...I buy a movie on Amazon. They remove it from their platform. I do not get my money back. Why? Because I bought merely a license? That's annoying - they terminated their end of the deal. Pay me!
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:00 AM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Tiny Frying Pan, if Amazon had to give you that money back they'd have to take it out of the pockets of the lowest-paid production assistant and the lowest-paid person on the grip crew for that movie, 60/40. It's the only way they could possibly do it. Surely you don't want that?

☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰🍔☰
posted by tigrrrlily at 11:50 AM on December 12, 2023

Looks like you went a burger too far there, tigrrrlily...
posted by y2karl at 12:08 PM on December 12, 2023

« Older It's our 101st free thread! | "what makes me choose a motif are... the lines" Newer »

This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

MetaFilter

Is it stealing if we can't pay for the thing in the first place?
December 4, 2023 2:38 PM Subscribe

Tags

Share

Is it stealing if we can't pay for the thing in the first place? December 4, 2023 2:38 PM Subscribe

Tags

Share

Is it stealing if we can't pay for the thing in the first place?
December 4, 2023 2:38 PM Subscribe