You're saying this is the moral and legal option, but the copyright holders lobbied hard to make this illegal. That's why there are no stores in my country offering imported DVDs for sale. It's illegal to import these if you're a business. I have to go to a foreign company and import the disc strictly for personal use.
So, I get a DVD / BluRay from a different region. How do I play this? The shop where I bought the player is forbidden, by law, from telling me how to convert my player into a multi-region player.
People aren't saying "I want this for free". They're saying "allow me to pay for it". They're also saying "the easier it is to pay for something the more people will pay for it".
participating in culture is required by many, esp. the young. If they can't easily get it via a legitimate means, piracy is the default.
Not watching it is not an option.
If you create a culturally relevant work then prohibit people from legally participating, you probably deserve disparagement and the forfeiture of your rights.
Unless everyone pirates it.
In the past, when localized media is the only option, locking out regions from purchases wouldn't have been an issue (since nobody would've known about it).
But now the internet exists, and information being global means that literary media must also be global. To be denied an opportunity to participate in its consumption is to deny the right to participate in cultural exchange and communication. I think that's wrong, and therefore, this justifies piracy for those individuals who would otherwise be denied due to cost/availablity reasons.
i m sure the complaints exist. I m also sure that english works is more popular than non-english works (due to english simply being the international language). My view isn't anglo-centric at all - you can make the same argument about anime.
I watch anime on crunchyroll, but i used to use torrents. The illegal method is the only option as a high-schooler who cannot afford the prices required to get a DVD set. I m glad that crunchyroll has worked to a legal means for this media.
The argument here is that streaming companies (esp. disney) is attempting to restrict their works, which has significant cultural impact, by making _their_ streaming service the only way to consume this work. This mechanism makes the price of the media higher, and people would need to pay multiple services to get the full coverage of all media they need to consume.
This is be being unable to buy the show in Russian, in the united states. Region locking doesn't just prohibit US content from being played elsewhere, it prevents Americans from seeing a lot of amazing things produced around the world just as readily.
There is a big difference between failing to facilitate (not making a translation) and actively preventing participation. Your import example to avoid piracy is not a great example because they DRM and or geolock those physical copies as well to prevent exactly what your solution is. The only legal recourse to access that media would be to travel to the country of origin and consume it "on site."
Or maybe it is? Different people have different views on what counts as rights and I've yet to hear of a case of God clarifying which group of people is right. Some people believe it is their God given right to keep others from modifying their own equipment in certain patterns by sharing information. Others disagree.
Consider libraries. If I built a file sharing system that allowed only one person to watch the movie at a time, but allowed as many people as wanted to watch it if they were willing to wait their turn, how is this any different than what a library does? Yet that would also be considered a form of piracy. Is running a library not a God given right.
'Copyright infringement'? 'Piracy' is a bit of a loaded term.
Given that importing is often intentionally blocked by region-locking, it’s a straight choice between “don’t get it” and piracy.
If some corporation isn't selling the rights to view a file in your country, and it's a pain to get them the 'legal way', I think a lot of people would look at the situation and think-
"well, nobody's going to prosecute me for this. Even if I think piracy is immoral in general, this entity has made it a pain for me to get their product without pirating- they obviously aren't counting on my money. They've waived their moral right to complain about me not paying to look at their tv show- and in the lack of enforcement of the law, that moral right is all that matters to me. I'll just pirate it. If they don't want my money, they won't get it."
If the content holder is not making their content available in a reasonable way, they should have no such protections.
People used to say exactly that about music, and then Spotify came around - along with multiple DRM-free download stores. Now these things are very much seen as "God-given rights" by many.
Yes, video is especially complicated because of how costly it is to create in the first place - this is why the closest thing to a plausible solution is going to come in the form of disruption from below. Some sort of "Netflix 2.0", focusing on a somewhat more heavily-curated experience than YT does today, and skimping on challenging technical details - maybe not even providing full-HD content of any sort! Vimeo could easily enter that space.
It's also not media producers god given right to gouge customers and have the government enforce a monopoly on their products, or to even exist. Ideally we can reach a compromise that suits everyone, but at the moment it's media companies that are over reaching, they'll even happily gimp their own products so that pirated versions are better.
There are people who pay for HBOgo, do so through some forwarder which makes their credit card appear to come from a US bank, and then have to find a VPN service to actually watch it with.
Multiple steps in this transaction - completely unncessarily due to the nature of the underlying technologies - cost the consumer money, to circumvent protections implemented by HBO (or more likely whatever BS contract their parent company signed), for the express purpose of preventing the consumer paying HBO to lawfully watch their content.
No loss has occur.
We’re willing to pay.
Following the letter of the law isn't always the right thing to do.