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I’d like to solicit themotte’s thoughts on the ethics of piracy. Specificlly movies, software, and music.
Sharing copyrighted data has been a part of the internet landscape for as long as there has been networked computers. I know it traces back to the bbs days and likely even earlier than that.
Back in the early aughts I was involved in a forum where we would scan for unsecured FTP servers and then fill them with the latest movie music and software releases straight from the groups who actually created and distributed the files. The beauty of this is that you were transferring between commercial networks so the speeds were ludicrous.
This was not long after Napster popularized file sharing and typical online user was very much of the opinion that copying data and sharing it was not equivalent to stealing. Maybe it was the circles I traveled in and my age at the time, but nearly everyone was ethically fine with downloading media. The only reason one wouldn’t do it was that there you needed some minimal level of technical know how to find more than just music on p2p networks. The only folks opposed to it were media corporations, some artists, and a small amount of corporate shills.
Once iTunes, steam, Netflix’s, Spotify, and other commercial options became available, most people stopped file sharing and simply bought media. It was a common to hear the refrain that piracy was a result of lack of access to media online. If there was ease of access and a fair price, most people would be happy to purchase software. This sentiment is still common but I sense it’s become less prominent over the last few years. The streaming environment has become quite fracutured and has impaired both the ease of access and price point for legally consuming media online.
The point of this post is to suggest that people’s opinion on the ethics of media piracy is diametrically opposed to where it was for most of the internets history. The median online opinion that I see is that piracy = theft. Many of these people are young and have been thought from an early age that piracy is not ethical. I suspect that many have also changed their opinion as they age and perhaps are not working at software/medi companies where piracy not affects them directly.
From a personal perspective, I stopped pirating media when iTunes and steam hit the market because it was in fact easier to obtain things legally and I was happy to pay.
That changed about 4 years ago when I realized that I could not in good conscience pay money to Hollywood and leftist game developers. I am happy to pirate their software and steal their movies because the alternative is so distasteful to me. I will occasionally really enjoy something and find the creators to be acceptable enough to support. In those cases I will purchase something after the fact to support people that I agree with. I encourage everyone to do the same. Enforcement of file sharing these days is non-existent. You can pretty much use the the pirate bay without worry and ignore the occasional email from you isp asking you to stop. Though there are many other alternatives out there that don’t take long to find.
These are the situations where I endorse piracy;
There is no reasonable way I can purchase the media in question such that any profit at all would go to the original developer or IP owner. Yes, I could pay hundreds of quid for a secondhand console and game copy to play whatever retro thing I fancy that hasn't been ported... but the developer doesn't get any of that cash, so why should they care if I just... don't?
There is some kind of unreasonable caveat that means I don't feel comfortable engaging with terms as presented. "Free trial" software that wants my payment info anyway before I can use it? Anything at all that demands my phone number for verification before I can use it? No dice, I'm getting a cracked version.
There is no physical version available and I don't trust the developer/publisher's intentions for the future. Always-online and servers could go offline at any time? Pirate. Chance you could remotely "update" my books to censor them? Pirate. (This one has become more relevant in recent days.)
If the DRM noticeably degenerates the quality of the product (crashes, nukes the framerate, disables mods, etc).
I hear this justification a lot but I don't think it actually holds up. The original developer of the IP sold that IP for money or in some other way profited from the assumption that the IP would continue to be paid for. That's all part of value chain. If that breaks down it has the same basic impact as not paying the original developer.
I mean the example given was secondhand sales, not a transfer in ownership of the IP, for a reason. It literally doesn't benefit a developer if I buy a secondhand copy of something off ebay for an exorbitant price.
If I purchase a copy of The Adventures of Scrimblo Bimblo for the Atari Jaguar in year 1995, most of the value that I consider that game to have is my own enjoyment, but a (very) small part of that assessment is the resale value that I will get later on. The publisher of the game knows this, and sets the price of the game—and the compensation paid to the developer—accordingly.
I am skeptical that the publisher is going to set the price in 1995 taking into consideration how much it will sell for on ebay in 2023.
If you were totally unable to transfer ownership would that really not reduce your belief in the value of a game at least on the margin? If it took zero extra effort for me to get a version of a game on steam that was able to be resold over one that wasn't I'd definitely take the transferable one, I'd probably pay some increased amount for it.
Basing one's price based on the possibility that someone will invent a whole new way of selling in a couple of years is like setting a price now based on the possibility that it might get bought by space aliens in 2051.
Also, copyright extensions aren't accompanied by price changes.
huh? This was not present in the hypothetical.
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