It’s immoral, regardless of what you call it, as it’s a violation of the social contract.
So - prior to the existence of copyright - was it immoral?
And how do laws related to fair-use etc affect it's morality? "Immoral" implies something fairly clear-cut and universal, not the kind of thing where there are complex provisions defining a range of exceptions, differing between jurisdictions.
In summary - you are massively oversimplifying a complex topic so I'd have to disagree almost entirely with your formulation.
The violation of the social contract comes when you agree to terms you intend to our letter decide to violate, or in the case of the consumer pirate, when your benefit from the ill gotten gains of the person you know to have deceitfully obtained to copied work from its owner.
I get the point of social contract, but most people do not form it because it was established before in most cases. Not to mention that this assume you live in a democracy and that social contract is not of sort (it is what it is or we will kill and prison you).
So I don't think it is appropriate to make it appear like this was a choice everyone makes. It is not immoral to violate social contact (slavery was social contract but the moral thing was to oppose it -just example not comparison-)
The very fact that you pirate the work demonstrates you buy into the social contract at least enough to benefit. And if you benefit without contributing/consenting, you're considered a "free rider".
So we're shifting to "taxation is theft" now? Maybe one day we can explore the cosmos and truly settle our own land (given that 99%+ of earth's land has been claimed by some social contract). Alas, born too early.
>So I don't think it is appropriate to make it appear like this was a choice everyone makes. It is not immoral to violate social contact (slavery was social contract but the moral thing was to oppose it -just example not comparison-)
hyperbolic metaphors aside: sure, if you oppose the social contract and your government allows it, try to change it. But I think "make digital purchases ownership" is a very small tree to bark up in modern society.
All good then. :)
Again, you're imagining something to exist in some kind of concrete form when it really doesn't. That you want the world to operate in some perfect way is ok, but not being able to comprehend that's not the reality just sounds like mental issues. :/
Be honest: how much did you know about social contract theory before this conversation?
So are you saying that a provider "selling" some content and then removing it from your library is as bad as you pirating it in the first place?
Besides the remediation is not to pirate the copy back, that’s vigilantism. You would need to find a way to prove they took something they shouldn’t have.
That seems unbalanced to me. Why is the onus on the customer to prove that, rather than they just pirate it and the onus is on the seller to prove that they took something they shouldn't have?
That seems to be the attitude taken towards people making copies (aka Pirates). I'm suggesting that if the company is assumed to be innocent when actually stealing by removing the customers' copies, then it would be appropriate to assume that pirates are also innocent, especially as they are not stealing anything and just making a copy which is alleged to be unauthorised.
The consumer pressed a button labelled "Buy" and paid their money.
Yet later on they've been deprived of this same said item - which they purchased - yet you're claiming it's not "moral" of them to fix the problem by alternative means.
You've a strange sense of morality. :(
Doubly so for something like a garage sale. They might ask if you can share other things with them.
Of course, per the article it seems the sellers are often turning around and saying "hey I know I sold you this, but now I'm going to change/revoke it remotely" which is also a breach of social contract. So an eye for an eye I guess.
Pieces of paper/text shouldn't be able to dictate what is moral outside of common sense. The world I describe above would become a worse place for everybody.
Here, the problem is that the artist put a lot of time into making the song because there is the expectation of that term and the ability to extract money out of it. Without this expectation, none of it would feel immoral for either of both side.
Consent is a really hard thing to guarantee. You have already lost. There is no moral stance to have here, its all made up agreement.
And you can claim I've "lost", but you have no justification for it.
Futher, it’s debatable whether clicking “I agree” on a pages-long EULA where there is no realistic expectation that people actually read the text, is really agreement.
There's such a high power imbalance there that I find it intellectually dishonest to say that it is a free-willing contract between two entities. In my decades of Internet use, I haven't once set a single clause on a contract I've "agreed to" with a service. Those agreements were always even more one-sided than Treaty of Versailles, and the upper limit of how far they'd push was almost always what the local regulations permitted.
Therefore I ask, can you exist on this digital world without ever accepting one EULA in your life? or moving the goal post: can you exist on this world without accepting one-sided agreements, like, all the time? It's not an agreement if you had no real choice to begin with.
The insidious nature of piracy is that it's so completely unnecessary. There are no "but I'm starving" kind of arguments to be had here.
In practice, new entertainment entices more people into consuming it. For example lets say your group of friend suddenly became huge fan of some unknown show, you didn't see it but they keep talking about it for days. You then notice that it costs $500. You indeed have the choice to not watch it, its not like you ever felt the need to before it has been mentioned to you, but won't you?
This example is a bit excessive but these kind of events happen all ever the case for entertainment that cost a fraction of it. The problem is that it stacks up.
As for your immoral accusation, its perfectly fine if you think this way, but I also believe that it is perfectly fine to think the opposite way. The only things companies can lose from piracy are potential sales, and ultimately if people aren't willing to pay for it I believe that it is fine for the company to shut down. Why should they be forced to pay for something they can access without causing any harm?
>For example lets say your group of friend suddenly became huge fan of some unknown show, you didn't see it but they keep talking about it for days. You then notice that it costs $500. You indeed have the choice to not watch it, its not like you ever felt the need to before it has been mentioned to you, but won't you?
sure, life is all about compromises. I had plenty of rich friends take things for granted in grade school that my parent literally could not afford. I probably "lost" some rich friends because I could not engage in such actiities. Such is life.
I grew up not expecting to get everything I wanted when I wanted it. Practicing restraint and prioritizing my needs over my wants is a core part of my character. So hearing people act like they need to watch Game of Thrones but can't pay HBO or whatever falls on deaf ears. I simply never watched Game of Thrones, life did move on.
>As for your immoral accusation, its perfectly fine if you think this way, but I also believe that it is perfectly fine to think the opposite way.
I care more about hypocrisy than morals, and a lot of the "pro-consumer" arguments come off a hypocritical. They compare it to people breaking into your house but are happy in most other contexts treating the digital commons as different from a physical one, despite that cost of the commons coming from some often non-government entity.
And honestly, it's just the dishonesty that bothers me the most. Some just don't want to say they do bad things. At least own up to it. I pirate, sometimes I just don't care. I'm not a good person. There, easy.
>and ultimately if people aren't willing to pay for it I believe that it is fine for the company to shut down. Why should they be forced to pay for something they can access without causing any harm?
logistically, the company shutting down hurts the people who caused it the least. So I do feel bad. CEO has a million dollar eject button and the rest of the airplane of underpaid artists are stuck in a nosedive. Maybe I couldn't save it, but I at least don't want to say I didn't chip in.
morally, a company that produces value that has all of what is valued stolen is a downer.
Sometimes you indeed have to cope, not everything can be accessible. But in the case of digital data it is definitively possible, and people are independently distributing torrents, not like movie studios have to distribute their own work for free.
More digital piracy would also overall mean less production, and so less expectation from consumers, and less barriers for the people who cannot afford everything (or anything really). Going back to a more "organic rate" of story telling. Stories have always existed after all.
> And honestly, it's just the dishonesty that bothers me the most. Some just don't want to say they do bad things. At least own up to it. I pirate, sometimes I just don't care. I'm not a good person. There, easy.
Maybe that I am a bad person too then. But its a pretty quick reasoning, am I really to blame for downloading bytes over the internet? Why couldn't you blame all the creators for expecting this sort of income? am I to blame if their work only has value when imposed?
what kind of awful logic is this? We have decades of free (and "free" as in beer) knowledge and media alike available with no ethical quandries. Why do we need to pirate the copyrighted stuff? For all its gripes, Youtube and Tiktok have indeed provided ore entertainment than one can consume for "free".
But for traditionally premium media, Look no further than the music industry to see how this leads. Spotify is a race to the bottom and artist basically don't get any money from their actual music anymore. Great for consumers (it's all free with ads or paying a one time subscrption to remove ads), awful for those wanting to sing professionally.
We're seeing it in gaming as well, and people hate it more than ever despite the "game" itself becoming free these days (can't pirate what's ultimately a thin client that companies give away for free). The value comes from exploiting scarcity of resources. People say it's ruining gaming, but it seems to be the exact kind of endgame for someone who can't afford $40-60 games but wants to play the latest and greatest. You spend your time or your money. Or both.
>But its a pretty quick reasoning, am I really to blame for downloading bytes over the internet?
yes. you're not entitled to all bytes. This decomposition of media to "just data" doesn't work at all in the favor of respecting art. are you really to blame for "just grabbing trees?", or "just grabbing reverbs in the air"?
> am I to blame if their work only has value when imposed?
Yes? If you value a product and you choose to not pay for it but consume it anyway, how are you not to blame? You didn't haggle with the creator, you didn't leave any feedback suggesting to make it cheaper or more accessible, you didn't offer any argument to how contributing this to a metaphoical library would benefit them.
You saw a piece of candy on the shelf and chose to pocket it. That would be considered unethical. No survival mechanism to appeal to (you don't need candy to survive), on extra context to justify your action. Many do it because risk is low and they value the item.
And honestly I don't care when people do it. I'm no snitch and Nestle already took into account X% of theft when pricing the item. But the worst thieves are the ones that whine that "well I deserve this I had a hard life". Just accept you did a bad thing and reflect on if you want to repeat those actions again. Don't pretend society owed you a butterfinger or that you're toppling the Nestle empire by grabbing a single piece out of some 7-11.
Are consumers responsible for encouraging people to sing professionally? If they aren't being paid enough, maybe that they should choose a different career. Its a rough thing to say, but this wouldn't have happened to begin with if the music industry didn't become that big due to copyright.
> This decomposition of media to "just data" doesn't work at all in the favor of respecting art. are you really to blame for "just grabbing trees?", or "just grabbing reverbs in the air"?
Trees are physical. I don't believe that I should dig up your tree to put it in my garden. But I should have the right to take its picture and try to grow the same.
Bytes are bytes, you are the one imposing their values. Copying more files doesn't steal money from its author.
> Yes? If you value a product and you choose to not pay for it but consume it anyway,
These are only products because we have laws allowing them to be. It is mostly an artificial market. Without copyright these authors would probably do something else. Just because they decided that their work is worth money doesn't mean I should give them. Otherwise maybe that I should bill you for looking at my eyes if I decide so, would be unethical not to.
> You saw a piece of candy on the shelf and chose to pocket it. That would be considered unethical.
If I could duplicate that candy and leave with it, I would. Is it unethical? You are really trying to make the comparison between intellectual property and physical matter, but one can be duplicated and freely shared while the other cannot.
The problem is that you assume that author must be a job, while I do not believe that they should be particularly protected. There will be less of them and its not necessarily a bad thing. If you wanna get paid get funding beforehand.
So you end with victim blaming? They can sell their art however they want, for whatever price they want. And traditional capitalism say they will succeed or fail based upon those dynamics. Theft is a factor that well, cheats the entire system.
I think it's ironic you have such a stance on a web site made for getting that exact funding. You think those VC's are funding stuff that can be easily stolen and produce no profits back for them?
Ideas should just not be treated the same as physical properties. They aren't. The market will adapt.
I don't see how to interpret this as anything other than performative asceticism. Once you've judged that you cannot or will not pay, you've put yourself in a situation where watching vs. not watching has no material impact on anyone in the world. You'd have to explain why it makes you a bad person to download it from someone who willingly shares it with you (and who you might even make feel good for having shared). What exactly is the part where you've done something bad?
Where does the bad action happen? If you download it and delete it without watching, was that bad? All you've done is tied up a pirate's capacity to upload, so if anything you're the good guy, right? And it's the actual watching (which affects no one) that carries moral weight? Is watching at a friend's house (or borrowing their DVD) okay? What if your friend had ripped it to their computer, and you stream it from them, but you make sure not to watch at the same time as them, so they never "had more DVDs being used than they owned"? Or was it the creation of a copy? What if you just send all of the incoming packets straight to /dev/null and never have more than ~1500 temporary bytes at a time?
What if I get all of my entertainment value from simply downloading everything I can because I'm such a rebel (or because I'm someone on /r/datahoarder), but I never actually watch it, so in principle it didn't really matter whether I even downloaded the right thing?
It's hard for me to see how the "morality" doesn't essentially boil down to the axiom that what is morally permissible is to follow the law and impermissible to break it, which is IMO a pretty weak perspective. The law seems to be a little too full of special-cases here to think it got it precisely right morally (e.g. if you can borrow but not stream; convenience is immoral?), and surely most people wouldn't agree that e.g. drug use or abortion are immoral because they are illegal in some jurisdictions.
For reference, I don't have a TV and have never watched GoT because I'm just not interested in it. I entertain myself other ways like pondering this sort of nonsense. I don't really see much difference with some counterfactual world (or with some hypothetical person) where I find it worth my time to watch, but not worth (my time + $50) to buy it on ebay and watch. Or (my time + $120) to get the UHD one.
The people who most caused the company to shut down would be people like me that just weren't interested in the thing at all, and yes we are affected the least, and I don't see why anyone should feel bad about that. That's how it should be. People who pirate, if they have any effect at all, will create mindshare by talking about it to people who will buy it. That is still preferable for the company over me changing the subject when someone talks about GoT.
I would love for all of these media companies to go out of business though so they would stop pushing for treacherous computing.
Well value is subjective. You couldn't pay some people to consume certain media and other have people spending hundreds on virtual skins.
That's all the invisible hand is about. Finding the sweet spot and accepting that some will not value what is offered. Or at all.
>The people who most caused the company to shut down would be people like me that just weren't interested in the thing at all, a
Sure, but at the same time you aren't their paying audience. Why should you be frustrated when a company metaphorically locks their door? As a thief that is just a basic expectation of the "job". Find an easier target or get better tools. If people didn't steal to the point where it impacted business, the act of selling door locks wouldn't be a million dollar industry. That now extends to the digital realm.
I can sympathize with greedy practices, but I don't know how you expect someone to bemoan your lack of ability to obtain free media (especially when there's ALREADY so much free media out there).
>I would love for all of these media companies to go out of business though so they would stop pushing for treacherous computing.
Don't like it, don't buy it. I don't like making that dismissal but I also don't line imposing my personal will on society. Which you're doing at this point. There will be people who just want convinence over free media and companies found an audience. Adapt to that or find media you do want to support.
Or just steal, I guess. Again, I don't care. Just don't be pompous about it like youre defending the integrity of software.
I complained that e.g. my computer has functionality in it that's designed to disobey me, its owner, and instead obey them, some unrelated party I have no business with. These sorts of chips do not belong in my computers, but you can't buy ones without them. Similar functionality will no doubt be used in the next 10 years to force you to use a compromised OS (e.g. with built in adware and spyware) if you want to do e.g. online banking. The trend is obvious to anyone paying any attention.
My house doesn't come with someone else's locks. All of the locks are mine. I and only I have the keys. And I can change or remove them whenever I like. There's no access door for Disney to come in and inspect my bathrooms.
And yes I think it should be illegal to sell a product that's designed to sabotage itself. I don't own a Blu-ray drive (no reason to, again I'm not interested), but my understanding is that a disk can tell the drive to revoke its keys and essentially brick itself. That should be criminal, and is actual destruction of property.
Anyway, I'll note that I still don't see an answer of what precisely is morally wrong with filesharing. Which of the acts I listed is the bad one? Or is it something else?
What is worse about downloading a movie than e.g. deciding to spend your $20 on marijuana (which is illegal everywhere in the US, and is in fact a crime, unlike downloading a movie, which is a civil matter) and watch the clouds go by?
For what it's worth, I don't do drugs or these days even drink. I've never found marijuana to be appealing. But I don't think people who do partake are bad for doing so. I feel much the same about people downloading movies. It doesn't affect anyone else, so I don't see an issue. If anything, the drugs have more of an impact on others. Some of my neighbors stink up the whole street, which is unpleasant on my walks.
> you agree to the terms when you license the song.
that agreement is a law, no?
i agree to the copyright because a metaphorical gun is held to my head by law — if i break the copyright agreement then law has power to persecute me. i don't see how that's any different to a layperson.
you can split hairs all you want about agreement vs law, i'm not interested in that. there's a reason i didn't go to law school, those sort of debates are boring and annoying. yet here i am...
The law isn't relevant here. The agreement you make is.
this is just a pointless exchange now.
In the current world it’s rarely like this. Now it’s “we as a production conglomerate loaned an artist 500k to produce some content that we expect to make a profit on, made them use our very expensive in-house resources (at MSRP), and we pay them $0.03 for every $1 we make until they pay off that loan”.
The perception those conglomerates want to spread is that there is a direct social contract between you and the artist who’s work you are pirating, but the real contract is between you and the conglomerate themselves. Even if (and usually especially if) that conglomerate screws over the artist.
Only business models that rely on monopolies are harmed.
And the entire concept of property is built on monopoly. Are you saying you don’t believe in property?
Ditigal media isn't physical, and in this case the physical media was on a closed ecosystem and attached to a server to stream or at least check in to verify. You wouldn't need all this with a plain ol' DVD, but you got advantadeges in that that movie played on any PS device you logged into.
If you want DRM free digital media, don't buy the above.
A fallacy is a "mistaken belief", so of course it is wrong. And you should look more into the concept of free riding. For that a good introduction would be The philosophers arms episode about free riding.
And what is that about private property? Where did that come from? We are talking about different concepts here, it is about markets and business models. As long as we don't honestly debate how outdated our modes of consumption are, piracy would be a natural response to artificial scarcity.
My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice. And that is what I think, that the current state of how the market is configured is anticonsumer, and therefore piracy is a natural response to it. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong. Everything is less than ideal in this whole affair.
Who decides what is "morally" ill gained? There's quite a good case that benefiting without work, e.g. through capital gains, is ill gained.
Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a social contract.
so rising physical theft over the pandemic means that stealing is legal? School shootings are going to be legal in the US overtime? What a horrible model for a social contract.
>Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a social contract.
Sure. But fact is that CEOs do do a lot of work to direct companies. We can question if that deserve whatever their pay is or their competency, but I hope no one thinks CEOs literally sit around doing nothing all day. Can we at least agree that burning a company down to the ground takes a non-zero effort?
Stockholders profit from ownership. CEO's salary is a salary (although stock and options maybe not).
No. The content of the social contract is whatever benefits those who adhere to the social contract. It's not a popular vote, what is good isn't up to what the most people think it is.
pointing out flawed reasoning with flawed reasoning is well, a fallacy by your words?
Your link there is an obvious one: it doesn't take into account colluding data over if the most pirated stuff comes from the most popular artists who have the most demand for tours. It doesn't take into account artists who can't afford tours (so, most of them) and how too much piracy will just get them cut out of the publisher's already crappy deal.
>My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice.
okay, I believe piracy would exist even if media was dirt cheap and we were in an economic boom. Some people just don't value media and if they want to take the time to pirate it over spending the money, they would. I'm pretty tired of the Just World Fallacy here that people never steal out of convenience.
How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that still immoral?
There are many examples of piracy where no one loses out yet someone does benefit.
Painting such a complex subject with such a broad brush makes it seem like we’re just talking about your particular feelings rather than something universal.
Which is fine, but you’re making claims of generality without presenting a cogent argument.
What I am claiming presumes only that you live in a modern society, and therefore you participate in the social contract. Given that, what I am saying is then a conclusion of that.
I am trying to get to specifics but you keep waving your hands about this stuff.
And I’ve given lots of specifics. It’s just not a complex concept.
I'm very confident that in the majority of cases, people who download stuff would not have bought it at any price that the publisher would accept, if piracy wasn't an option. Which means that by the definition of harm I think you are using, the majority of cases would not be immoral. It seems to me the immoral cases would be the exception.
I guess it makes more sense if you also say that consuming something without paying for it is immoral even if you would never have paid to consume it. I find it hard to agree with that though, as I don't see who's harmed.
Besides, "harm" here is not the core of my argument. Doing moral wrong is. It is wrong to lie to obtain something, and it is wrong to benefit from ill gotten gains.
These acts are wrong themselves, regardless of whether or not they cause pain directly. This is not a hedonist argument, the cause of pain through harm in all or even many cases is not necessary for the act to be wrong.
I suppose I could say everyone that disapproves of piracy is just a copyright lawyer
Also I didn't say I'm not wrong in the comment you replied to. So what are are you talking about?
But keep on denying reality, as it's working out so well for you... :)
immoral, no. Unethical, yes.
That said, I'm glad libraries of all kinds (lending, little free, bookstore giveaways) help give more ethical access to such resources. You don't need the latest and greatest textbook to obtain knowledge.
With all that said, were talking about deluxe media, not foundational knowledge. why does the topic always shift to hyperole when talking about a song/movie/game being pirated? Are we really comparing pirating The Avengers (2012) to finding a way to learn arithmetic?
They suffer the same problem though in that morals and ethics do not have one universal standard. So something may be unethical to you but not to me but both be in the bounds of reason, or indeed the law.
You seem to accept that there is indeed ambiguity if you believe there to be a difference between a book pirated for a reason that helps someone, and a movie for entertainment in terms of piracy.
In addition, whilst you and i have access to libraries, this is very far from being common the world over.
Why then is it hyperbole? It’s just a simple example to show that piracy can in some cases harm no one and help someone. To wit: not all piracy is bad.
You claim that is unethical - which is all well and good, we do not share quite the same set of ethical values.
If a company has a monopoly on something, you cannot just go somewhere else to get something equivalent - that's the thing about monopolies, in a lot of cases, you simply don't have a choice.
I can't say the same about someone who "needs to play GTA V" (it was already free at some points. So you're not just entitled but inefficient in your frugality).
we can take down big pharma first and then worry about DRM on media you want to consume. It's not all or nothing.
Of course, pirating an indie band's song is a lot more in the questionable area (and not done nearly as often, since piracy by nature focuses on the more necessary/popular products) but that's not what's under discussion.
What other things do you feel are "tearing society apart", and how important are they to you compared to this?
IP, and specifically copyright are fairly new legal additions. The redefinition of time limited copyright to something extending past normal lifetimes especially so. EULAs and DRM enforcing copyright beyond book-style possibilities is new, and ongoing as we speak.
I'd say we see the public at large rejecting part of the law because it is not consistent with the social contract in their heads.
Powerfull entities trying to force the law outside the social contract's support is working, but not completely, and that's what's tearing society apart.
The line of reasoning is that copyright falls outside current social contracts. So the general rule of piracy is that it is illegal but amoral. Morality of copyright violations should be determined by other criteria.
Besides, the fact that piracy is rampant is a demonstration of copyright's necessity. If the works were so worthless that trying to charge for their consumption would be pointless, then why are so many people determined to illicitly gain access? And if the works would be made anyway, why weren't they until it was profitable to do so?
The argument you're making dies on a number of fronts, but the one I tried to address originally was the only legitimate line of inquiry. Your ad populum redefinition of the social contract doesn't work, as what is good/bad doesn't get voted on or collectively decided. The best rational argument is what wins in an ethics conversation.
Yes they do. Copyright and patent trade agreements kill and they kill a lot people.
If anyone is interested in the topic, a good first entry point paper to understand how this works and impacts:
> "What is the impact of intellectual property rules on access to medicines? A systematic review"
> "With very few exceptions, the articles in this review found that the introduction of patents following implementation of TRIPS rules and pharmaceutical-related TRIPS-plus IP provisions are associated with an increase in drug prices, consumer welfare losses and increased costs to consumers of pharmaceuticals and national governments."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9013034/
This paper alone should probably get you depressed, but if that gets you going, read "Information Feudalism" by Peter Drahos, then you'll understand how people in power truly have no respect for human lives in developing countries.
rent from the library, ask for a friend's copy, take out more loans.
>For a researcher in a developing country for research papers?
contact other researchers and ask directly. Maybe they can also share some stuff with you, especially if they are the author.
These are speedbumps not roadblocks. People can and have gotten around them even with little resources. Universities obviously have these resources, researchers generally want to encourage other researchers (even if only to validate their own research).
>Nobody dies, but a lot of people fall behind
Yes, an unfortunatle reality of all life. If I had to choose, free media is not even in the top 20 things I'd try to make more accessible to such people, though.
You’re making a point about how you feel about it without presenting an argument.
The discussion of harms or lack of harm from piracy has been raging for a long time. It’s not going to be solved by appealing to the idea of right and wrong. It’s not universal in this instance which is why the argument continues.
You would have a point if everyone agrees it is wrong but some people do it anyway. However, that is not the case.
Pirates are thus “free riders” to the social contract.
You seem convinced that your system of values are the same set everyone else has. That doesn’t make for a useful argument.
The post states that piracy isn’t stealing and you agree.
There must be some other thing in your mind that is equivalent.
We've agreed it's not stealing. We've agreed that not all piracy is immoral, for some definition of immoral.
I think we can agree that this specific tort does not apply.
Which specific thing in the social contract, some simple verb such as "stealing" are you equating piracy with. Then we'll have something concrete to discuss I think.
Also that's not what trespass means. You don't "deprive" someone of their land when you walk on it without permission, and you don't "deprive" someone of their song when you pirate it.
Re trespass, that’s not what the specific tort you referred to means. A chattel is a moveable form of property. You’re talking about the colloquial version of trespass. Happy to talk about that conception of it.
Is the idea of trespass the specific thing you feel is being violated in the social contract? If not, what is?
So when you look at a comment that clearly a) is intended to diminish your position and b) seems to completely ignore what you've actually written, it's not "perceived hostility" it's simply bad faith engagement.
You still have not answered the very simple question though, and i might be a bit slow off the mark but i don’t see it answered elsewhere in this thread.
A lack of trust is not a reasonable reason to refuse to state a single verb or noun. Trust isn’t really a part of this - we are strangers on the internet.
I don’t believe that you are engaging with the discussion honestly because this is an extremely simple question to answer.
I believe this is because you have realised that you cannot defend the position you have taken.
It’s been an interesting discussion.
I just don't trust you.
It goes entirely against how humans think, strangling creativity and innovation. An artist is harmed far more when they're forced to spend years in court, debating whether their chord progression is too similar to a song written by someone who's been dead for 50 years.
Have you ever actually published anything for others to purchase?
So, evidence please. :)
Hopefully you'll be able to understand the world a bit more and contribute meaningfully to it when you're older.
Best of luck. :)
I suspect you are either not proud of your published work, or providing a link or examples would diminish rather than strengthen your position in this debate. It's easy to argue about morals and social contracts if you've published a literary work; less so if, for example, it winds up being a fan DnD extension module on DriveThruRPG.
Someone is querying your credentials to learn about you, where you're coming from, what perspective you have, what skin you have, so to speak, in the game. Dodging behind some notion of having to "earn" your credentials when you have taken a very strong and contrarian position is disingenuous.
What you must earn is my respect, and the person I replied to has lost that.
I've observed there's a lot of them about.
Unlike say... someone making claims but unable to provide evidence.
> To throw out intellectual property is to throw out art itself.
Art is older than intellectual property.
"To throw out intellectual property" wouldn't stop anybody to continue making art, it would at most challenge the way we build an economy around it.
Finally you've raised what could be an interesting point. :)
Is there usefulness in the quantity of film / television / music being created today?
Would we be better off as a society if there was... less?
Maybe turning off the fountain of crap would be an improvement? :)
Either way, it's not up to you to decide utility arbitrarily. Besides, if the art is bad, why are you pirating it in the first place? The problem is that people want the art too much, and are willing to break the social contract in order to obtain it.
That's a bold claim. My opinion is different though.
> Besides, if the art is bad, why are you pirating it in the first place?
Why are you accusing me of doing so? Are you basing it upon my not having the same viewpoint as you?
Umm you do realize that some of the greatest works of art were created LONG before "IP" was a thing right? The patronage system did pretty well....
But you don't seem to value art...?
Since you seem to be a stickler for rules and agreements I'd urge you to re-read the guidelines for posting comments on this site (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) as looking through this thread you are definitely flirting with the edges of them.
I'm not sure why piracy is the internet hill you've decided to die on regarding arguments but I'm going to choose to disengage, give zero cares to your views on my morality, and use my own best judgement on when it's moral to pirate or not.
Besides, nobody asked you to reply to me in the first place. You engaging/disengaging was always at your own impulse. Nobody was requesting you say anything at all, so returning to that state concerns only you.
Maybe start reading a few books about it, or take a class? You're trying to argue that ethics literally does not exist, which is quite a tall order.
I think you are making the mistake of applying social contracts that can work well on a person to person level to person vs corporation situations. With the latter, one party has way more leverage than the other. On top of that corporations have proven again and again that they will mislead, lie to you and abuse you to the extent permissible by law, or even more if they think it's lucrative to so. On a person to person level that would be a very toxic relationship. They certainly didn't uphold classical inter-personal social contracts, so why should you?
Genuine question, did you fully read the article before commenting here?
The problem here is probably that most folks can’t separate what “is” and what “ought” to be. For example you’re discussing how corporations behave despite it being wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not piracy is immoral. The argument is one of “oughts” and you’re trying to talk in terms of “is”, despite the gaping crevasse separating the two of them (Hume's Guillotine).
This isn’t where ethics is ambiguous or debated; it’s very obviously immoral to pirate, for a whole host of reasons, some of which I’ve already mentioned. From there you surely can concoct scenarios where a baby would die if it doesn’t hear a Metallica album or whatever, but the general point will stand.
In some kind of perfect world there would be no need for violence. Yet we live in a complex and ambiguous world, where the widely accepted moral view that killing is a bad thing is sometimes the "right" thing to do. Or would you argue the Ukrainian people should just roll over because the social contract says killing is bad? My point is, I don't see how the notion that piracy is bad in a world we don't live in helps this discussion. To me it feels more like an argument one could use to demand people stop doing this immoral thing now.
>If so, that'd be vigilante justice and still immoral.
Also I don't want to get to off topic, but I want to challenge your premise that vigilante justice is always immoral. (Is it immoral for a parent to punish a child for jaywalking instead of calling the police?)
And I didn't say it was always immoral, I said it was generally immoral. One should assume "generally" rather than "always"... in general.
At what point does a party become free from the obligations of their social contract with the corporate media company then?
>And I didn't say it was always immoral, I said it was generally immoral. One should assume "generally" rather than "always"... in general.
My apologies, based off your previous comments I assumed you were taking a firm ethical stance here. With that said then, I just want to point out that the claim "vigilante justice is immoral" is far from being ethical consensus among philosophers. (Communitarians vs Forfeiturist)
Ultimately this is outside the scope of our conversation so I'd rather not get hung up on it... the tone of your claim just struck me as oddly bold.
And I am taking a firm ethical stance; it's just not an absolute ethical stance.
by the law as media companies would wish us to understand it, this is piracy. but when and by whom was a contract broken during this chain of events? i shared the content with my friend, but my purchase of the DVD wasn't conditional upon any agreement not to, so it couldn't have been me who broke a contract. was the contract broken by the person at the garage sale who sold the DVD without verifying that the recipient wouldn't pass it on to another recipient who would then duplicate it? if so, doesn't that same logic imply the DVD manufacturer broke a contract? if this is how you imagine the contract to function, it would seem the existence of piracy _anywhere_ in this chain means that the entire industry is criminal.
this isn't a hypothetical, btw. there actually is a Bebop DVD out there with a chain of custody that complex (actually more complex by now).
There are other gray areas related to property and copyright. This is not one of them.
Or at least, that's the streaming way. If this was a digital download with on need to phone home it will in fact be stuck on your PS3/4 unless they force you to update to do anything with your PS3/4. From there they can probably delete it during a patch. but the PS3 is well past EoL for that.
That's the bit we're disputing. It's not "clear" and it's not "obvious".
I hope you do realize that it’s your own opinion.
First, I never violated a license agreement I signed by buying a product.
Also, my moral isn't yours, clearly. In my mind, sharing information is moral, withholding it is immoral. I think there is degree to this (clearly a State, or government officials, or state agents withholding non-vital information is extremely immoral, whereas it's less immoral to do so for a company), but clearly, I think of proprietary code, unshared patents and copyright of a song or artistic creation immoral.
And you very clearly benefit from all those things you claim are immoral, and the systems that brought them about, so I find myself skeptical to your claim they’re bad. It seems more like you disapprove of your inability to satisfy your sense of entitlement. After all, if you dislike these concepts so much, why do you want the very things they’ve produced?
Listen, the only social contract I have is respecting the laws of my country, and the contracts I agreed to sign. No laws in my country prevents me from downloading whatever piece of art or content I want. None. I just cannot share it outside of friends and family. Which I don't.
Also, I think I've download 3 pieces I didn't have a license for: Skyrim, Mass effect 1 and 2. I now own them all on steam. So my sense of entitlement is great, thank you. I was never into TV or movies, and my father digitalized his 500 CDs and probably trice that number from the public library, so even early 2010s when I was a broke student, I never had to find download links for the music I wanted to listen at the time (now I find out that this isn't enough and just download the music from YouTube).
When you pirated those works, you committed an immoral act, as the owner of the work did not give you permission to access those works. Broke students don't get to play games for free just because they want to. You're not entitled to whatever you want, especially when the alternative is that you are in no way harmed. You would have survived, thrived even, if you didn't have those games.
Because I had the permission from the first, and a bit earlier when I bought oblivion in a second hand game store, the work producer didn't gave me permission either.
Also, I just thought about it, I'm on a plex server owned by a college friend since 2017, did I broke the social contract by uploading my CDs on it? Or by listening to CDs my friend group put on it. Let's be honest, it's mostly my CDs, I have a truly huge collection, but it was also music we got from the school's nfs, on /share/music. Did that broke the social contract too? Knowing that we have a law that tax every sales of storage, even reconditioned HDD or smartphones.
I am quite certain you do not really hold this position, otherwise you would almost certainly pulbish your real name, home address, bank account balance and other information on your profile. Withholding all this information would be quite immoral.
Also, software and art are not "information", they are a separate thing. And copyright and patents don't prevent anyone from disclosing said "information", on the contrary. They allow artists and software companies to share this information without worrying that others will profit from their work.
Everyone imagines that Disney or Microsoft wouldn't exist in a world without copyright, but the opposite is true. They would freely copy any competitor while using their marketing and sales teams to convince everyone to give them (most of) the profits from their work. It's a lot easier for Disney to make money off your original screenplay than it is for you to make money off Mickey Mouse.
And I'm not equating art and information. I agree that art have the right to be reserved for the artist. I disagree that the recordings themselves have the same rights. And especially the 'master recording' concept that can prevent an artist to play his own songs on stage. I'm on Swift's side against Scooter Braun basically.
It is not immoral to download content illegally when the alternative is a revocable digital token being sold fraudulently.
By officially asking for new Terms of Service maybe?
That hasn't been working out so well lately, thus the whole "alternative methods" thing being pretty popular in some circles these days.
There's no better moral standpoint in either, it's always a case by case basis.
Perhaps you need to re-read things a bit? :)
Heh Heh Heh
Guess that's what we're both thinking about the other person then. No worries. ;)
Either way, when one party breaks their contract, you sue them in a court of law. You don't seek remedies on your own.
Copyright is broken, and in many cases actively impedes accessibility. For example, I have many DVDs that have no subtitle options. If I were hearing impaired, and if piracy were "immoral", I would be shit out of luck if I wanted to watch a film I'd, you know, paid for.
In this day and age I can go to OpenSubtitles and find a subtitle track, enabling me or someone who was in genuine need to actually enjoy what they purchased.
(Except in Australia, Open Subtitles is blocked! Its considered by the lobbyists to the Government to be piracy and of course, piracy as you point out, is "immoral regardless" and a "violation of the social contract").
There are many other examples of copyright impeding the creation of accessibility options for media where there is no economic motive or legislative requirement to produce such things, such as in the case of Audio Described content for blind and low-vision users for older films. If you're blind and want to watch, say, the Special Edition of ALIENS (1986) then there's no official option to do so, and the only way to be able to enjoy that is via (illegal) volunteer efforts on an "immoral" pirate-archivist website.
It was about the problem of rigid copyright when accessibility options are missing, and the measures that a disabled person might need to resort to to have the same access that everyone else does, especially when the copyright owners decline to make those options available.
It was about being inclusive, and inclusivity is absolutely part of our modern social-contract.
I'd love it if you re-read my earlier post, and respond to the points as made. It's an interesting and engaging debate. Thank you.
Besides, as I’ve already said, we can come up with exceptions all day, the general case of piracy, the one being discussed, is immoral. If you tie a baby to a railroad and only agree to let the baby go if it hears a Metallica song, yeah piracy would be justified. That doesn’t mean much in this conversation however.
Indeed, in many places there is legislation that formally grants exemption from copyright for this exact reason, but it's mostly a bit on the weak side and doesn't address the systemic problems, which is the big one.
Nothing immoral going on here.
If what you're describing isn't part of the social contract (e.g. as you say exceptions to copyright law), then what you're describing is vigilante justice, where you decide what harms to dole out to others arbitrarily, and that's another part of the social contract we all agree is not worth it.
Yes, and no? you are discriminating, but you may not be doing it in intentionally. Some options make it easy, where for some other arts you need dedicated specialists who know of how those disabilities navigate and then make new software or work to enable such things. An indie dev isn't going to have the references or time or even talent to make sure the blind, deaf, and physically handicapped can play their game.
>Nothing immoral going on here.
we've gone so far off the script that I think people forgot we're still talking about deluxe entertainment. Not every socetal wrong under captialism.
That's not true. If a publisher refuses to publish a book in braille because they see no profit in that, but nevertheless sues everyone who does the conversion to braille and publication on their own, then this directly deprives blind people of their cultural rights.
Yes, a company can sue over a reference to their works outside of fair use cases. a translation is not a case of fair use. Companies usually won't go after such things unless they already have immediate plans to translate, but they can. Similar to how they can go after fanart but usually leave it be as easy, free, organic advertising.
It's not a contrived example, but an actual problem with converting books to braille. The only entitlement I see here is the expectation by authors to have absolute control over their work, even if there is no profit to be made (remember: copyright was established to protect income streams).
> And what the hell is "cultural rights"?
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27. The same article that established groundwork for copyright also establishes the right to access protected works for the well-being, education and enjoyment of others. Current standards are heavily out of balance in favor of all-encompassing copyright, which was never intended as such, and has become increasingly detrimental to the right to participate in culture.
The right to participate in culture is infringed upon, for example, when essayists are unable to publish video essays about movies and illustrate their ideas with a few seconds from each movie, because they get caught in overzealous copyright protection. I don't see a good reason why the full force of the state should back movie studios against scholars, historians and critics; it is not in our best interests.
Well they are the author or funder of said art. They should feel entitled to how it's distributed. If they are working on a braille translation and someone else pops up, you can understand why they should have the power to make sure the latter can't make money off their IP, no?
But my point is that this is contrived because most people downloading a torrent are not doing transformative work. A few may make mods or fan translations or entire overhaul of the game, but well over 99.9% just want to consume as is. And well, those 0.1% can just buy the work?
>Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27.
That article has 2 parts. The 2nd:
>Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Pretty much defends copyright, so the goal here isn't to turn all of media into a commons. They acknowledge that art and science is something society benefits from, but also that the authors of such culture have some protection against being leeches upon.
>The right to participate in culture is infringed upon, for example, when essayists are unable to publish video essays about movies and illustrate their ideas with a few seconds from each movie, because they get caught in overzealous copyright protection.
I mean, they do? The overzealous one is YouTube in this case who has no legal incentive to push their luck, not the law which is why DMCA's aren't even more aggressive.
I get your point here, but that specific example is more a problem with the YouTube monopoly than the word of the law. I think we all agree that DMCA abusers should be punished, even if the question Of DMCA as a law us valid.
Wallstreet feeds on daily violations of the social contract, from 2008 to asset stripping to consolidation to the point where therr is no competition, etc.
>If content providers are making this technically impossible - thus depriving us of the possibility of using it for teaching, research, news reporting, or criticism - how are they not violating the social contract?
they aren't? They don't need to provide you with a DRM free copy for that. screen record your tv with your phone camera, you got the footage. Fair Use doesn't entitle you to pristine quality footage. But to go line by line:
- education and meusums has ways to request copies legally. It's a pain and money is probably involved but the process exists.
- news reporters don't need to necessary show you footage of a copyright movie to review and critique it. They will simply descibe it in text, as they have for decades before the internet made it possible to show clips. This happens even with video reports as they will simply put up other footage as they describe, or use whatever footage is fair game (usually from trailers).
Allow me to blow your mind https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contempo...
You mean like doing something once and then expecting to be paid for it in perpetuity?
Expecting to be paid for the efforts of others, decades after their death?
Redefining the legal system in order to prevent others from carrying out the, distribution?
I'm much more concerned about those free riders than a teen with no way to pay for digital goods, someone who couldn't afford it, or someone who'd like to keep the things they pay for.
Besides, the concern isn't pirating The Sound of Music. The concern is pirating Game of Thrones or Euphoria. That's what's being discussed here. You can obviously find exceptions to the general rule of "piracy is immoral" but it is the general rule.
Doesn't sound like he's held in high regard, except possibly to take a position to debate against.
And then there's this ...
1. a contract is just an abstraction over a commitment to give it more salability. if every contract violation is a sin then so is me committing to meet you for dinner tonight but canceling because i'm feeling under the weather.
2. show me this contract. where/when did i sign it, and was i under duress when i did so?
There's the law, that applies upon everyone in a society. There are treaties that try to make laws from countries work together.
No morality in that, just practical, time-tested and updated (and updatable) rules & codes. No need to leave a society to refuse and change its laws, hopefully.
This is neither my idea, nor is it peculiar in any way. It’s a term used to describe the agreement we all commit to in order to interact in a shared environment.
Supply/demand is also a story/theory trying to model, imperfectly, a reality. Or several ones.
They are both largely contextual, open to critique, and have been. Just take the time to enlarge your horizon, it makes it much more enjoyable and satisfying.
I know what this is used for. It's still ill-named (you don't sign it, it would be a "de facto" instead), and still debatable a theory (which states that in an ideal, invented state of nature, without such a contract enforced by an authority, violence would be the natural relation between individuals).
There's more (especially since the times of Hobbes) to describe how societies have functioned/could/should function.
Social contract theory is not much more solid than the homo economicus one: it has its points, and its flaws.
None of this is my idea; your problem is with the strength of the argument, not with my "opinion".
It IS a recent theory in the face of human history (and even more prehistory).
Those people were NOT smarter than you are, or can be. You’re terribly limiting yourself and your capacity for understanding and growth thinking they were (it’s not about humility, but submission, there’s a nuance).
It's insanely hubristic to think I (or you) are going to casually outthink many many thousands of scholars over the course of hundreds of years in a series of HN comments. To even think you may know better, without even fully understanding what it is social contract theory is, puts you firmly on the wrong side of Dunning-Krueger.
So, you're going with the old "appeal to authority" approach then?
You might want to pick a different direction, as that doesn't really work around here. :)
if i formally opt out of this "contract" (i.e. renounce my citizenship), then there are no woods i can recede to without being considered an illegal alien.
Many copyright provisions survive only because too few people are affected by them in practice. For example, publishing a photo of Eiffel tower at night is illegal in France, because the illumination is a work of art still under copyright protection. This does not mean universal acceptance of these provisions.