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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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You know what say: if buying isn’t owning then pirating isn’t stealing.
Here’s my risky comment of the day.
I think piracy isn’t like stealing, but it’s still wrong in some interesting and nuanced ways. Just so you know, I’m in no position to judge people for pirating, because I’ve done my fair share of sailing the high seas. However, I would still like to discuss the ethical aspects of piracy and how it compares with stealing.
IMO, calling it stealing is completely wrong, but free-riding or trespassing could be more suitable words for this. Obviously, the movie industry would love to compare it with the most severe crime they can come up with, but they certainly have financial incentives behind that reasoning. I’m looking at it from a more neutral perspective.
Stealing has clear and direct harm associated with it, whereas the effects of piracy are more subtle and indirect. Free-riding a bus or sneaking into a circus (AKA trespassing) are somewhat similar, but there’s clear indirect harm. If you watch a football match from the outside of the fence, it’s probably still considered free-riding, but I would put that into a completely different category. IMO it’s also closer to piracy than the other examples.
Most pirates shouldn’t be counted as lost customers, so the argument about depriving the creator of their rightful income is only partially correct. If pirating wasn’t possible, but paying for the movie was, vast majority of these people would prefer to do something else like, go outside and play football with friends. To some extent, piracy still does reduce the demand for the pirated material, so there’s an indirect harm associated with it, and that’s what makes it unethical IMO. Still not wrong enough that I would stop doing it, especially considering what the alternatives are. Again, I have no moral high ground in this situation, and I’m willing to call my own actions unethical. You can call yours whatever you want.
Piracy isn't stealing, the same way riding the subway without a ticket isn't stealing.
Riding the subway without a ticket would be called, in many jurisdictions, theft of services
It’s nice that they made the distinction between regular theft and theft of services. The harm associated with them isn’t the same, so it would make sense to treat them differently. However, I still think that describing free-riding as a theft of any kind is a bit too harsh.
I get your point, especially when it concerns smaller/independent artists. But how would a "fair compensation" look like? Do top selling artists deserve the millions (or even billions) of dollars? Does someone even deserve hundreds of thousands of dollars? Does any artist deserve more money for doing something they love and where they can express themselves than a nurse working night shifts? Is it fair to keep earning money for some work that was done years ago? Does that mean a nurse should get a percentage of the income of every person's life they helped save?
I think the only ethical thing to do is to decouple consumption and support. E.g. I might support some artist by buying their album (or going to their shows), because I think their voice is important, not because it's an album I listen the most to. Or I might not pay artists at all and give money to political causes or other people that need support. Or I might support them in some other way etc.
This is a very tricky subject, because determining the value of entertainment is highly subjective. One song might be nothing more than background music to you, but it could be a life changing experience to someone else.
Performing music, theater, circus or something else is in the simpler end of the spectrum, but recordings changed everything. If I come up with a new song and perform it in a club, a one time compensation seems fair. If I record it, that’s when things get messy, and I don’t have a clean answer to those situations.
If I have to draw the line somewhere, I would say it’s fair that the artist gets compensated as long as they’re alive. It’s difficult to compare a recording to other types of transactions, because it’s just so different. Physical recordings are straightforward, but digital ones can get complicated due to how easy it is to copy them.
Nurses working night shifts is a good example of a situation where the compensation does not accurately reflect the importance of the work. How did we even end up in a situation like this? Maybe supply and demand just doesn’t always lead to a fair outcome, or maybe the government didn’t support the right parts of the economy. I really don’t know, but this situation needs to be fixed urgently.
Your idea of decoupling consumption and support is a really interesting one. It seems pretty good, but the more I think about it the more I feel like it might not be sustainable. Every time you watch your favorite movie, you’re getting some unquantifiable amount of entertainment out of it. As long as you feel like you’re getting something, shouldn’t you give something in return? If donations through Patreon were the only way for artists to get money, I don’t think we would have very many high quality movies, series, albums, paintings or sculptures.
Capitalism ;)
This sounds obvious, because if people don't need to worry about money they can invest more time and effort into their art.
But a. this does not mean it's fair. Not within the art scenes (because a lot of people are working hard but don't have the luck for a breakthrough) and certainly not compared to other jobs.
And b. while a movie like Lord of the Rings or a series like the Sopranos do need a lot of money, many expensive movies are actually rather boring because they have to play it safe in order not to risk a fuckton of money. On the other hand, many great movies had a rather small budget. Avengers: Endgame could have paid for 100x Whiplash or Trainspotting, and I'd rather have more of those. And I think movies/series are the outlier - music is much cheaper to make.
But it's hard to solve or even discuss all this in some lemmy comment ;-)
The current system however is definitely not sustainable.
Clearly, it's rape and murder.
You are raping their digital bits by taking them without their consent.
And you are murdering the money they should have had.
Then again, it is traditional to hang pirates.
Source: Pirated pirate movies
It's literally right in front of them. Why would they not make pirates walk the plank?