One of the biggest successes of the music and movie industry is getting everyone to call unlicensed distribution “piracy”.
It equates a completely non-violent act with a very violent act that was once a capital crime.
It equates a completely non-violent act with a very violent act that was once a capital crime.
> piracy
> 2. fig. The appropriation and reproduction of an invention or work of another for one's own profit, without authority; infringement of the rights conferred by a patent or copyright.
> 1771: Luckombe Hist. Print. 76 “They..would suffer by this act of piracy, since it was likely to prove a very bad edition.”
> 1808: Med. Jrnl. XIX. 520 “He is charged with `Literary Piracy', and an `unprincipled suppression of the source from whence he drew his information'.”
> 1855: Brewster Newton I. iv. 71 “With the view of securing his invention of the telescope from foreign piracy.”
https://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-video-urges-advertise...
So exactly what should happen with regard to consumption of digital content that's expensive to produce but basically free to distribute? I'm not really sure, nothing that's been done yet seems quite right.
Old-school pay big $$$ to own a copy doesn't seem to work very well, when most of the money is going to fatcat corporations that don't add any value, and "own" in the context of digital services that get turned off or moved on a whim doesn't seem very good.
Piracy channels work great for the end-user, but nobody knows how to get money to the artist and producer when distributing through these channels.
Subscription services seem kind of okay. At least until they either split into hundreds of them and you end up paying even more, or it consolidates into a couple of big ones who exert the same forces, especially regarding effective censorship for lack of willingness to take a chance on something risky, as the old guard did.
*from the 1660's https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/462700/what-is-t...