this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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inb4: The Internet Archive took a dumb decision
yeah we know that they went too much against the powers that be. That was stupid, they could have lived to fight another day, but still, if you're a pirate you must know their actions were ethically correct.
Its hard to justify stealing entertainment. Most arguments are centered around the fact the artist usually makes almost nothing so you aren't even paying them for it.
Copyright makes sense to protect creativity to an extent, until we figure out some other way artists can make a living.
It isn't theft, it's copyright infringement. Otherwise known as a bullshit crime that corporations invented to force the state to protect their bottom line. An individual infringing on a corporations copyright is, at worst, neutral. The artists working on these movies, games, albums, etc are either salaried, contracted, or having the majority of their profits siphoned off from their publisher. If you really care about supporting artists, throw independent artists a few bucks where you can and "steal" to your hearts content from the companies that already exploit their creative workforce.
Honestly, I wish pirating measurably hurt corporations bottom lines. They need to go down and that would be the easiest way to do it. But decades of rampant piracy have shown that piracy actually helps these companies in most instances, as people who have pirated a product and like it are more likely to purchase the product in the future compared to someone who simply hasn't used the product in question.
Additionally, many smaller or independent creators either don't give a shit about piracy or actively encourage those without the means to pay to pirate it anyway. People who are doing it for the love of their craft aren't profit centered ghouls who only care about enriching themselves and create things to contribute to our shared culture and entertainment. Pull your head out of your ass
People don't understand: we already outlawed "theft" and "stealing"—we wouldn't need COPYright laws if they prevented theft or stealing 😂 they only prevent copying, aka not theft or stealing.
But people keep strawmanning "stealing is bad mmkay???"
Well you did just state my first point in more words, so yes I agree, since artists aren't getting paid in most cases anyways, stealing their work is sort of morally grey, but mostly because its not their work anymore.
But thats not true across the board, and its impossible to know which companies are the ones that do treat their employees well enough that it would affect them to steal it.
So why don't we maybe repair that bond between an artist and their work so that it makes sense not to steal art from people again? Copyright could be changed to do this couldn't it?