Why do people care about piracy?

[Insideout Ink Demon]

is there any point having a piracy debate on a site that will give you a warning for admitting to piracy?

 

[tiggerlator]

Imo it is human nature to take something for free if you can get it for free. Morally wrong or not doe's not matter. We have all probaly taken something for free at some point in our lifes.

 

[viranimus]

This is sort of all over the place.

First, No, artists should not have to do it for "love". If they can get someone to pay them for their work, they should be compensated.

Now that said, I am NOT in defense of this judgment, for several reasons. The largest of which is that the money for album/single sales typically NEVER compensates the artist. Only time it does is when they are doing the self label thing, or if the song was so astronomically popular that it sells heavily enough to earn enough royalties to go beyond the industry cut. Typically artists make more money for themselves from live shows and merchandise. So if you want to support the artist. Go see them live. Go buy their album from the merch tables.

Secondly. I know it sounds like the same point, but all this judgment was about was creating an example of one individual in a cruel and unusual punishment method so as for the recording executives to threaten the public with legal action. Again lets be clear. All this is for is to reward the people who ruined the music industry and failed to adapt to changing markets. This is to reward those who feel they are entitled to your money without properly keeping up with the flow of supply and demand.

Lastly, as for the people who defend this. Your heart is in the right place. You want to see the person who created something compensated for their creation. That in and of itself is a noble gesture. However you are ignoring all the various factors in between that point A and B. By agreeing with the RIAA your not helping or compensating the artists, your helping to perpetuate everything that is wrong with the music industry and in many cases exactly what the artists themselves are fighting against on a daily basis.

EDIT: Heres an example of a band who is painting a picture of what it is like to deal with these people.


So, Your rewarding with your support those who fostered and gave birth to the very thing they are fighting against. Your misplaced good intentions are doing more harm than good. Not only are you not helping the artists, your actually helping to perpetuate one of the largest root causes of how our economy is failing. This is just another instance where a corporation has enough money to utilize that money to use litigation to overturn the rights and freedoms of individuals in favor of the corporations greed centric interests. So please step out of your non existent world of black and white and enter into the world of grey because the issue is not as cut and dry as "stealing is wrong" or "artists should be compensated".

I am not supporting or advocating piracy. However I would have to be blind not to see that industries where the most grievous abuses of corporate money and interests over individual and even artists rights are most abused are also the exact places where piracy thrives. Piracy is not a disease on its own. It is a symptom of a system that was already infected long before the technology allowed it to thrive.

 

[Supertegwyn]

Big bankrupting numbers to dissuade your average part time pirate not to take all that hard-earned money out of their pockets, basically.

Never mind the multiple studies that show the hardcore pirates also buy the most shit.

Show me links and I will believe you. Right now, that statement sounds suspect.

 

[Supertegwyn]

Seeing as though I get ALL my music from Youtube using Realplayer (which just so happens to be FREE and LEGAL) pirates have no excuse.

Want it the easy way? Buy it
Want it the somewhat-harder-but-free way? Download Realplayer and use it.

 

[MrTwo]

You want the music? You buy the music. Its not your's to take, if the artists legitimately want to give it to you then they will. Its their job. Its like working an office job and taking a horrendous paycut because of a few kids that say "but I want it for free!". Sure, 675 grand is a bit excessive, but they are obviously trying to scare people off. It won't work, but you can't blame them for trying. And you can't just say "its the money-hungry record companies", because if the artists really wanted you to have their music for free, they would just rip up their contract once they have some publicity and post all their music on TPB.

Finally, if you were an artist, wouldn't you just be happy that people are enjoying your work? I mean, being compensated for your work is definitely nice, but isn't REAL art about the message and enjoyment of the viewers, not the money?

Yeah, definitely. If you were a REAL artist then you wouldn't need any money, you can just get sustenance of other peoples enjoyment, that makes perfect sense. Who needs money anyways? [/sarcasm].

Whole lot of illogical arguments

The basis of your arguments seems to be that creating art cannot be a job, and if you were a make art without the intention of making money then you aren't a proper artist. You seem to have the idea in your mind that art MUST be free, and if you sell it than it is just a "product". In the modern age, art is bought and sold for enormous sums of money, and plenty of them would've been created with the intention to be sold. You appear to have "evil big money-hungry corporations" syndrome, and people should be able to give their opinions without being called a "mindless automaton". Your vision of the future is nice, but totally unfeasible. Art is no longer a hobby or a sideline activity. It is an industry whether you like it or not. Industries are based on making money, and you want art to be released for free. If art is released for free, the industry collapses. Sure, I agree with you when you say art will still be made, but think of all the jobs lost. The low down workers at record companies will all lose their jobs. And piracy is not "technological progression", it is the use of the internet to bypass laws, laws set in place to protect the property of the creators. It is bullshit saying that people should not receive royalties for things that they create with the intention of selling. Also, I understand you probably feel very strongly on this subject, but seriously, calm the fuck down. Everyone has a right to their own opinion without being called a "mindless automaton".

Also, admittedly piracy isn't theft, its copying, but if you copy something you are much less likely to buy it again. Plenty of people do it, but many just want stuff for free and they will get it for free, damn the consequences. And people saying that it doesn't inconvenience the artist because they don't lose anything, that would be perfectly logical if it was THE ARTIST who was filesharing. They lose profits, and they need that money to live, even if the record companies take most of it, its better than nothing.

 

[Dark Knifer]

Doesn't anyone think that piracy spreads the art around, exposing more people to it and if they like it then they purchase it? I did that with most of my music and I know plenty others like that. If I was an artist I would be happy knowing people 'stole' my stuff and spread it around for people to find it because someone is going to buy it because they found it on the internet and they liked it.

 

[Vault101]

Just read a post about how the RIAA won an appeal to charge some kid $675,000 for sharing a few songs. I don't quite understand what the point is. How is that worth so much money? I doubt that the music industry actually LOST $675 grand. Also, I very much doubt a college student has $675,000 just sitting somewhere, so I very much doubt that the RIAA is ever going to see that money. Finally, if you were an artist, wouldn't you just be happy that people are enjoying your work? I mean, being compensated for your work is definitely nice, but isn't REAL art about the message and enjoyment of the viewers, not the money?

EDIT: Sorry about there not being a link, pages are taking FOREVER to load so I couldn't find it

see the thing is is this capitalist world if you want to devote yourself to your art and (generlaly) try and do the best you can do, then your going to have to devote some time to it, time you dont have if you have to work to eat and live...a pretty simple concept if you ask me

also piracy is the reason for DRM...fo fuck DRM and fuck piracy, the artists dont owe you me or anyone else anything, they make a product, its not our righ tot steal it, do you think its ok to steal food from a supermarket? just cause?

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Well, to elaborate on the tortured metaphor, it would be more like a broom factor and some sullied ponce stealing their brooms. Or rather reproducing them and selling them under the broom-makers name. You see we're not talking about them becoming obsolete, we're talking about one stealing from the other. As for saying their using an obsolete business model? I don't understand whee you're coming from.

No it's not stealing. You're so called "elaboration" here is pretty flawed but if we're REALLY going to elaborate, then the "ponce" you speak of wouldn't have "stolen" any brooms, but BOUGHT a broom and then found out a way to copy that broom at pretty much no cost at all and then share those copies for free.

And you're trying to tell us that being able to copy a broom (a physical object) an infinite amount of times is a BAD thing?

Remember the "supply and demand" issue once again. The only real reason why corporations are needed is because the demand for a given product is higher than the current abiliy to supply said product. Hence why someone is able and in the right to be able to ask for compensation to meeting the demands.

But when a method is discovered to meet the demands for a lot lower prices or even FREE, then the previous supplier no longer deserve any compensation since their method is too expensive and have thus become obsolete.

That's the way of the game, and each supplier better learn that fact and try to cope with it if they have the intention of staying in the "supplier"-business. Trying to STOP these superior methods of duplication and distribution just because it only proves exactly how obsolete you are is purely senseless and selfish and ulimately harms all of humanity since it leads to actions intended to stop progress.

They make the game, they sell the game, you buy the game. They give plenty of channels to buy the game, incentives to buy the game. None of this is obsolete, you will find almost all businesses operate off of the same business model. Make, set price, sell. If the game doesn't sell off that price, lower it until it does sell.

It is obsolete if you for once stop and consider what a game is. What is a videogame if broken down to it's constituent parts?

Is it a disc? No the disc is only a medium upon which the game is stored. So what is the game in it's most base form? That's right a set of "1's" and "0's" arranged in a specific order. Now what do we call written characters arranged in a certain order that can be interpreted as some sort of message? INFORMATION!

So videogames are simply information. Information that is read and interpreted by a computer or videogame console, which in turn sends other signals of information to a screen and a set of speakers, which in turn sends other signals of information (video and audio) which are intended to be percieved and interpreted by human senses.

Your "make, set price, sell"-method of spreading said information is obsolete in the extreme considering how often information is being made and distributed EACH AND EVERY DAY in the modern world. You can read a blog for free. Heck you can even read this forumpost that im typing for free. You can even go down to your local library and borrow litterature (fiction as well as scientific texts) for free.

Everywhere in the world, information is free and freely distributed and in massive quantities since internet was invented and used on a large and private scale.

And you still think that the videogame publishers aren't adhering to an OBSOLETE and OUTDATED businessmodel the way they try to hawk the INFORMATION that they create?

The progression in communication and exchange of information is giving a clear and obvious message: information can't be and SHOULDN'T be stopped. The way that the exchange of information of the modern day even circumvents local laws and restrictions just prove that fact. The way of the future is the free flow of information, regardless if it's digital, binary, verbal or alphabetical. And THE ONLY WAY to change that fact is to try and stop it. Which is exactly what these corporations are trying to do, BECAUSE THEIR BUSINESSMODEL IS OUTDATED AND OBSOLETE. AND TO STAND IN THE WAY OF HUMAN AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS IS WRONG SINCE IT ULTIMATELY BENEFITS MORE PEOPLE THAN TRYING TO STOP SAID PROGRESS DOES!

You might think that this is all harmless and argue that "they're only making videogames! We're not going to go extinct if we have to live without them", but consider this: what if a group of people manage do invent a cure for a deadly disease? Take AIDS for example. Say that a group of people, a sort of "pirates of the pharmaceutical indsutry" if you will, discovers a cure for AIDS. Heck they might even have "stolen" some corporate sponsored research in order to find this cure. ANd they intend to take this cure and spread it to each and everyone who needs it completely for free.

Would you argue that pharmaceutical companies are doing the "right thing" by SUING these people and trying to get the police and the courts to shut this worldsaving operation down because the pharmaceutical companies had the intention of continuing making profits forever and ever by never releasing a definitive cure and keep selling these HIV-inhibitor treatment drugs?

Because that's pretty much exactly what the record labels and major players of the videogame industry are doing. This is the kind of laws and legistations that they want enforced. And frankly there's no reason to care if people are "dying" because they lose access to videogames/music or not, because the principle is still the same. namely that it's somehow supposed to be "okay" to stand in the way of human- and technological progress if your profits are hurt by it. How is that reasonable or even SANE?

And even if we could fault them for a business model, this argument would be more effective and mean something if pirates were in legitimate competition with the game companies.

How so? If the pirates actually tried to SELL the illegal copies they would be just as bad as the companies themselves. By sharing for free they're being altruistic and further human progress. The companies however do nothing for progress unless they can turn a profit of it.

So one entity provides us all for free. The other will ONLY provide if they get compensated. It's pretty easy to see which one of these entities are more beneficient and altruistic. ANd I for one are going to go with the "nicer" one over the greedy one.

As it stands pirates are simply stealing the code and distributing it.

Stop using the word "stealing" because it's plain wrong. Someone STILL BOUGHT AND PAID for the game in question, it's just that they are producing copies of it because they can.

That's not stealing. That's copying. Totally different (even the law recognize a difference between stealing and copying, hence why there are different punishments for each respective act).

If we were talking about two businesses with two different strategies, then I would be inclined to agree with you, the one with the crappier model will fail, tough luck that's the nature of the beast. But as it is this isn't business against business, this is one side stealing from the other and pretending to have a moral agenda about it.

So what you're saying is that if Nintendo release a game, and EA sends a guy out to the store to pick up a copy of that game and then bring it back to the office so they can copy that game, package it and pretty much sell the copy but for a vastly reduced price, then EA is doing the right thing?

As long as someone is charging the customers for the games it's all okay?

I don't know about you but in my world "free of charge" is always better than some greedy bastard trying to force people to pay for everything, even when demanding payment is completely unreasonable.

Piracy has a moral agenda about it. The only people who try to claim that there isn't a moral agenda are people who realize that they can no longer suck money out of obsolete businessmodels.

The reason we have lawsuits in this country is to maintain civil order and rights.

yeah, like how that person SUED the McDonalds corporation because the apple pie burned that persons tounge. Oh what a great tribute to civil order and rights that lawsuit was! *facepalm*

Luckily, not every country is like the U.S where anyone can sue anyone for pretty much anything. Where I live, someone trying to sue a restaurant for burning themselves on a piece of apple-pie being to hot would have their case thrown out immediately, the judge pretty much saying: "Are you a fucking idiot? First of all, burning your tounge on hot food isn't going to disable you for life. Second: cooked food CAN BE HOT! Most of us learn this before we even learn to speak properly, that's why you DON'T just take a huge bite out of cooked food but actually USE YOUR SENSES a little to test if it's too hot to eat and perhaps blow a little on the piece of food to cool it DOWN before we put it in our mouth! Now get your retard ass out of here and don't bother us again unless a REAL crime has occured or I'll have your ass thrown in jail for misappropriation of tax payers money!"

That would be a reasonable reaction. But in the U.S that person got paid in the end, and McDonalds had to (to insure themselves from further ridiculous lawsuits) put warning labels on the packages for their apple pies warning the "poor, defenseless consumers" that cooked food is hot. *faceplam*

So please, excuse me if I take your statement about lawsuits being a "great tool" for maintaining civil order and rights with a huge grain of salt, and probably snigger a bit about that suggestion. *snigger*

Lawsuits are not about civil order or rights, it's all just another redundant, money-making industry keeping unscroupulous lawyers in business. And more often than not, those lawyers are in the employ of major corporations and used to oppress lone consumers or corporate rivales.

So if you refuse to believe in the genuine moral agenda of internet piracy, why should I believe that lawsuits are moral or even beneficient to civil order and rights when they clearly are not when put into practice?

If the company was stealing from your bank account or preventing you from gaining money and you wanted to sue them for it, I think it's well within your right and I'd like to think I would be defending that right as much as I defend their rights now. Their not suing because another company or even another person in taking their business, their suing because the other person of willful volition stole their source code and distributed it with out intent on compensating the preagreed upon price. That's tough, but that's the law.

It's no the same thing. Money is a financial record of the amount of man-hours you've worked and how much value of produced goods you are entitled to buy. You can't compare that to insubstantial information like videogames, because the price set on videogames is an arbitrary one.

No one's very survival is dependant on videogames or if the information that they are made of, but if you mess with my bank account and steal money, then you're not just causing me a "slight inconvenience", but you could actually cause me to starve to death since if I don't have money then I can't buy any food.

So the comparison doesn't really work, because money is not the same thing as wares or goods or even insubstantial information like videogames.

 

[Archedgar]

Internet "Piracy" is legal in my country.


/shrug?

 

[Something Amyss]

Just read a post about how the RIAA won an appeal to charge some kid $675,000 for sharing a few songs.

Any reason you couldn't have just posted there? Many of your points have been addressed in the comments on the news article. For example:

I don't quite understand what the point is.

To punish him.

How is that worth so much money?

It's not.

I doubt that the music industry actually LOST $675 grand.

They didn't. I don't think anyone really believes they did.

Also, I very much doubt a college student has $675,000 just sitting somewhere, so I very much doubt that the RIAA is ever going to see that money.

While officially, the premise of "debtor's prison" does not exist in the US, the concept of punishing someone effectively for life is pleasing to corporations and and still allowed by the government.

And as a warning.

Finally, if you were an artist, wouldn't you just be happy that people are enjoying your work? I mean, being compensated for your work is definitely nice, but isn't REAL art about the message and enjoyment of the viewers, not the money?

The RIAA doesn't really represent the artists. Most of these artists have sold away any meaningful right to their music.

i.e. Even if I am the artist you're pirating and I said you could pirate it, if I have a contract with Atlantic or Interscope, odds are you can get sued for piracy.

It's nice to argue what a TRUE artist REALLY wants, but that's pretending this is all about something it isn't. Artistry.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Finally, if you were an artist, wouldn't you just be happy that people are enjoying your work? I mean, being compensated for your work is definitely nice, but isn't REAL art about the message and enjoyment of the viewers, not the money?

This is an absurd mindset that damages many artists trying to make a living off their work, and is one of the many reasons artists as a whole are undervalued and exploited.

I am an artist, and while I love what I do, I have the right to make a living off my profession the same as any other field. You wouldn't suggest that doctors should not be compensated, as they're really only here to help other people and that should be reward enough for their work.

 

[Phoenix Arrow]

The title of this thread is incredibly misleading. Why do people care about piracy? Because it's theft, against the law and usually incredibly damaging to what industry is being stolen from.

As for the actual point, what they do is find a kid (it's always a kid) who's downloaded a lot of stuff, then fine their parents a sum of money they couldn't possibly pay. They never pay the full amount, but it's like saying "parents, watch what your kids are doing else we'll come for you too". It happened to me back when the first time something like this happened. My dad came all up in my business seeing if we had Limewire installed.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

The title of this thread is incredibly misleading. Why do people care about piracy? Because it's theft, against the law and usually incredibly damaging to what industry is being stolen from.

It's not theft. And it's not against the law in all countries. And even in the countries that do outlaw internet piracy, even THEIR LAWS recognize the "crime" of copyright violation as something different than theft. (different punishments, different definitions, different situations etc. etc.)

For fuck sake, just STOP calling it "theft" alright? Just because some of your convoluted and moronic opinions might consider it theft, it DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT'S ACTUALLY THEFT IN ANY LEGAL SENSE OF THE WORD!

Thank you, that would be all...

 

[Lesd3vil]

They aren't expecting to get the money. This guy is just an example to other potential pirates. Considering how much money is lost every day because of piracy, they're making quite a fair point; piracy really does do ridiculous damage to the industry in general. It's just that they're going about it in completely the wrong way >>

On the other hand, what other solutions are there? If you encode the songs on CDs so they can't be file-shared pirates will crack your encryption in minutes. If you try to shut down illegal file-sharing sites, new ones will just spring up. I mean, seriously, does anyone honestly believe that the proper authorities DON'T know about illegal torrenting websites?

 

[Jegsimmons]

heres the thing....you can make all the songs in the world...but it wont matter if you cant afford a bite to eat. not just the band but tons of other people who work to help produce or distribute it.

 

[b3nn3tt]

And even if we could fault them for a business model, this argument would be more effective and mean something if pirates were in legitimate competition with the game companies.

How so? If the pirates actually tried to SELL the illegal copies they would be just as bad as the companies themselves. By sharing for free they're being altruistic and further human progress. The companies however do nothing for progress unless they can turn a profit of it.

So one entity provides us all for free. The other will ONLY provide if they get compensated. It's pretty easy to see which one of these entities are more beneficient and altruistic. ANd I for one are going to go with the "nicer" one over the greedy one.

I largely disagree with your entire post, but I'm just going to focus on a few of the bits towards the end. Pirates are not doing some great service to the world by illegally copying and distributing games that people have invested their time and money into. You can claim that videogames are 'just information' all you like, but games are more than the sum of their parts. Also, just because some information is free (e.g. blogs) does not mean that all information should be freely available to all. If someone decides that they want to start charging people to read their blog, that is absolutely their prerogative, and what right do you or anyone else have to read their blog without paying?

As it stands pirates are simply stealing the code and distributing it.

Stop using the word "stealing" because it's plain wrong. Someone STILL BOUGHT AND PAID for the game in question, it's just that they are producing copies of it because they can.

That's not stealing. That's copying. Totally different (even the law recognize a difference between stealing and copying, hence why there are different punishments for each respective act).

OK, so it isn't stealing by a strictly legal definition, but most people here who are using the word stealing are using a more general definition, along the lines of 'acquiring something that would normally cost money without paying'. Arguing that piracy doesn't fit the legal defintion of stealing doesn't diminish the fact that people are still acquiring things for free that they ought to be paying for.

Piracy has a moral agenda about it. The only people who try to claim that there isn't a moral agenda are people who realize that they can no longer suck money out of obsolete businessmodels.

I call bullshit. Piracy is about getting something for free. Nothing more and nothing less.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Well the fine in punitive. Because he did wrong he was fined as a punishment. That's why I'm assuming the fine is so high.

 

[Chemical Alia]

If you gotta eat, then do what everybody else does: GET A FUCKING JOB!

Plenty of artists have normal jobs, and they still express themselves artistically through several different mediums.

There's absolutely NOTHING supporting the wishes of commercial artists that they are somehow supposed to have a "right" to be able to LIVE of their art. And the industry itself is a big sign of this since only tiny little fraction of all the artists in the world are actually popular and famous enough to actually be able to earn an entire living from their artistry.

Tha fact of the matter is that artists DON'T have any sort of inviolable "right" to get rich or even just be able to scrape by a living through their artistry. It's a PRIVILIGE which a select few of them are LUCKY enough to attain.

The majority of all artists still have normal jobs (or just spend their time in a very poor existence, more often than not because they cling to this delusional notion that the are going to "make it big" real soon if they just stick to it a little longer).

Im an artist myself, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of my artistic pursuits. But there is NO WAY IN HELL I'd just decide one day to quit my job and hope that my art is going to pay my bills and put food on my table. And it's not because im bad or incapable of creating art that could become popular, it's because it's an unrealistic expectation to think that artistry alone is going to be enough to earn a living.

If you're a real artist, you make art for art's sake, not for moneys sake. If you need money, then do what everybody else does and get a fucking job...

Any chance you're willing to share some of your art with us?