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timwaagh
motbus3
One extra detail. They reserve the right to revoke your license but they still reserve the right to keep selling the product if the laws allow.
This allows the following hypothetical situation: 1. You buy content A from producer X through a company 1 2. Producer X and company 1 decides to finish the distribution agreement for whatever reason 3. Company 1 revokes your access to content A. 4. Now producer X seals a deal with Company 2 for distribution rights and company 2 has no obligation on giving you access to content A, because why would they. 5. If you want access content A now you have to buy it again from company 2 without guarantee that it will still exist.
RecycledEle
That is not a hypothetical.
A company I can not mention because I am certified by them 14x over did that to me, many times.
RecycledEle
They revoke a license I paid for, then demand I buy another license for the exact same thing.
The licenses were NOT supposed to expire.
dirtyhippiefree
I smell Microsoft…
neycoda
> If you want access content A
Right, _access_. To the companies selling cloud content, like a movie or song that can only be used with the internet, you're just buying _access_ to the content.
Because the TOS means they can restrict that access or remove the content, you're really just paying for a key to a door that may or may not exist, to something in the building that may or may not be there, and that building may someday not even be there.
You're really paying for the right to access something as long as the underlying capability enabling that right exists. It's the kind of thing that allows a lot of wiggle room for the sellers and holders of the content.
This is why I prefer buying physical copies of media, like DVDs and CDs. It's mine for as long as I can manage it or a personal copy of it.
hooverd
There needs to be a truth in labeling act so every DRM'd e-book and digital download clearly states that you're buying a license to it and not it.
the_gastropod
Yeaaa. This bothers me, too, on a conceptual level, and I’ve been thinking about setting up a NAS and doing the whole Plex thing. But on a practical level, I’ve “owned” movies and tv shows on (the service formerly known as) iTunes for like 15 years without issue. I question whether, on average, I’d be able to do as good a job, and how much effort it’d take.
insane_dreamer
The reason why I stopped buying digital media; I buy physical books, vinyls etc. (mostly second-hand). That said I do have an Apple One subscription that includes Music, for the convenience of having access to a large catalog of music from any of our devices (mostly my kids use it, in the car, etc.). But if it's something I care enough about to actually own or listen to in the future, I get a physical copy. Also, the authors/artists get more that way too. (Edit: As for video, I only do streaming, and that's because I rarely if ever watch a movie or TV show a second time, so I don't care about owning it.)
Joeri
I have an album that I bought digitally in itunes that was revoked and republished identically by the publisher (i think by accident). The consequence is that as far as apple music is concerned, that album is not in my account. The physical files will still activate and play, but I have to copy them manually to every device. Apple support was unable to help.
Microsoft has also multiple times started an ebook store only to later shut it down and prevent the purchased books from being read. The first time this happened in the mid-2000’s I lost over a dozen ebooks.
insane_dreamer
> The physical files will still activate and play,
at least you still have this option (doesn't justify the system, but just saying that some devices don't even allow that)
smugma
When did you buy that album? iTunes went DRM free 15+ years ago.
interestica
They don't need to revoke a license. They can say the "license verification servers are too expensive to keep running" so you need to rebuy the product. This is literally what Adobe has done with previous versions of their Creative Suite.
seanp2k2
And this is also why Adobe software is some of the most frequently-pirated software of all time. After all these years and all the other examples of the correct way to do this, they still refuse to see the light of “free for personal use” licensing to get more people trained on and in love with your software, so those that do go on to use it commercially will demand it and have their companies pay the license fees.
Sakos
This is why I can never accept the idea that we're just buying a license. Laws need to be made that ensure once you buy the rights to access a piece of content, that you keep that right regardless of who the current owner is or if the distribution method changes. If I buy a book, I never have to worry about it being taken away or what happens if somebody else gains ownership of a property.
eek2121
For movies, this is mostly a solved problem. If I buy a movie on iTunes, I can access it on other participating platforms.
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thewileyone
Using a similar logic, deleting the pirated content absolves you of the action as well.
stcg
It's not stealing. It's communication. You can't "steal" ideas, information or facts. To steal means to physically take someone's property without their consent.
tim333
This is obviously a bit about the definition of words but I've only really heard it called stealing in the US where I think the narrative is pushed by corporate interests. In the UK where I live the offence is generally called copyright infringement because under UK law that's what it is.
seabass-labrax
You're correct that it's called copyright infringement, but it's not strictly an offence - it's a tort. Copyright holders can in certain circumstances sue for damages, but you cannot be prosecuted by the crown. Making an illegitimate copy for profit or in order to harm the copyright holder, though, is a criminal offence (see section 107 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988[1]).
[1]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/107
kybernetikos
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” ― Thomas Jefferson
rusk
But why giveth when you can chargeth
gentleman11
Jefferson wasn’t scrambling to pay his mortgage with those ideas. See also: Amazon and open source, why should Amazon be the only one able to make a profit? If the ideas have no value, then all that matters financially is manufacturing and infrastructure
sk11001
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
I don't even know what my personal stance on piracy is but the subject is clearly more complex than saying that theft applies only to physical objects.
fmbb
The fact that some powerful organizations are trying to complicate a matter does not make it complicated per se.
In my country the law criminalizing theft begins thus:
> Stöld
> Stöld beskrivs i 8 kap. 1 §. Stöldbrottet förekommer i tre allvarlighetsvarianter:
> * Ringa stöld (tidigare snatteri): 8 kap 2 § > * Stöld: 8 kap 1 § > * Grov stöld: 8 kap 4 §
> Skyddsintresset vid stöld är äganderätten. Endast lösa saker samt del till fast egendom kan ägas.
The third sentence defines property as physical.
Reading texts on international property rights it’s always quite clear what everyone is talking about. “Intellectual property” is sometimes mentioned as an aside with an extra caveat that it is not widely recognized.
tkfu
Yes, but people are allowed to express a strong opinion on a complex subject without also specifically mentioning all the caveats and possible counter-arguments to their position.
By all means argue back and add the nuance you think is missing, but it's intellectually dishonest and lazy to just say "ah, but it's more complicated than that".
dvfjsdhgfv
I remember one RMS lecture that made me think. He pointed out that the so-called "intellectual property" doesn't really exist. What exists are certain laws, such as patents, copyright, trademarks and so on. Each of these recognizes the benefit to society of temporary restriction of freedom of others to use the ideas that were invented/transmitted by others.
simbolit
If you want to know how bullshit intellectual "property" is, ask the simple question of who owns the personal information the ad company collected about me?
Of course, the ad company owns it, because of their hard intellectual work of collecting it.
Me? No, why would I own information about me? What logic of property is this?
amelius
You are confusing what they think is justice with what some people have decided is justice.
dahart
That’s incorrect. One absolutely can steal ideas, it’s even used explicitly in the definition of multiple dictionaries: “to claim credit for another’s idea” [1]; “to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment” [2]. The word steal has many definitions that don’t involve taking physical property, e.g., stealing elections, stealing liberty, stealing base, stealing a kiss, making fraudulent deals, etc., etc..
trinsic2
It may be used in that context in our society, but you can't deprive someone of an idea or a expression of any idea.
The root of Stealing is to deprive:
deny (a person or place) the possession or use of something.
seanp2k2
Metallica made sure that argument doesn’t hold water in court back when they were suing all their fans for downloading their music on Napster. To this day I remind everyone who will listen why I refuse to listen to them ever again whenever their name comes up.
Sai_
Yeah, I can’t believe Metallica recovered from that. In my mind, they’re up there with Volkswagen - their brand has a stigma attached to it.
type0
they are greedy hateful bunch, I'm always wary of their fans flashing with Metallica t-shirts and expect them to be the same greedy hateful bunch as well
bregma
Information wants to be free.
eatrocs
information wants to be wrong!!!
- sam & max
gentleman11
What about information about your medical records?
neycoda
"Stealing" has been used as a common word for "copying without permission" in the digital age. To try to play word games by trying to walk back the definition of stealing to mean only "taking someone's physical property" is completely pointless and futile unless you're just trying to feel OK with yourself copying without permission.
If I produce and distribute content like music or videos, it's fair for me to want people that want to rent or own it to pay for it. I put a lot of time and effort into it, I have to manage and market it, maybe store it, and I want to make a living at it.
If people are stealing it, ahem, copying without permission, it undercuts my living. I have a right to earning from my work, and you don't have a right to just download it or copy it or distribute it to others without me getting paid for it. It's literally preventing earnings for me that would otherwise happen if you didn't copy it without permission (ahem, stealing).
vehemenz
"Stealing" is morally charged and too associated with the loss of property to be a fair or accurate term here. It's not word games; it's conceptual analysis and a basic understanding of rhetoric.
Digital piracy, broadly speaking, is unauthorized copying. Depending on the context, it could be theft. Sometimes that theft is legal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Other times that theft is illegal, but people feel it shouldn't be on moral grounds. Sometimes, it's just not theft at all.
partitioned
Yeah but if you sell them something and they click “buy” or “purchase” and not “rent” and then you revoke the license years later you’re the thief, not the person downloading what they purchased on utorrent.
scotty79
> I have a right to earning from my work
You really don't. If you don't work on things that are profitable at the moment you don't have any innate right to earn anything from your work. Right to earn comes from specific agreements with employers. Earning might also come from innate profitability but it's not a right then as the profitability is ephemeral thing.
Sakos
When the people who sell it to us are free to revoke access at any time, then there's no walking back being done by us. We're just recognizing that the accepted state of things was reneged on by one party and they can't insist on being in the right when we decide we're not obligated to follow their arbitrary rules anymore.
polartx
This is why you’re wrong:
[Dowling v. United States](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/473/207/)
Tl;dr: Supreme Court ruled bootlegged/pirated media does not constitute theft as it does not deprive the legal owner of his/her property. That’s why they had to invent the term—“Copyright infringement”
Barrin92
Of course you can steal information, there's no reason why the notion of theft ought to be limited to physical goods, we're not living in the stone age. 90% of what we do and own exists in digital form. We can take possession of it, protect it, lock it away, attribute ownership to it as much as we can do to any physical property. If you disagree I'd appreciate if you could tell us your credit card information.
People just try to rationalize their behavior and play silly word games because they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.
Kant gave us a good principle, universalizability. If everyone pirated, creators would not get compensated, therefore they could not sustain themselves and it would be obvious that the value of their work is being stolen. Evidently, pirates are free-riders and their theft just isn't evident because enough people usually compensate for it.
newt_slowly
If everyone pirated, the only people who would create content would be people doing it purely for the sake of art or their own enjoyment, far more people would be personally involved in creating art (in music for example, there would be far more people going to see local performances if there were less music produced as mass media due to loss of profitability), mass media would be reduced and more art would be local (and still physical), increasing the richness and diversity of the media landscape.
In my opinion, that would be a far superior world to the one we live in.
stcg
> If you disagree I'd appreciate if you could tell us your credit card information.
I'm not talking about being obliged to share. Of course people should have the right to not share their credit details. My point is that if you receive information from someone, then choosing to share it with a third party is not stealing.
Actually, an obligation to share information is a restriction on freedom just like copyright, which can prohibit sharing information.
giantrobot
> they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.
It's not. A pirate is just another non-customer. There's robbing involved when someone chooses not to buy something. Watching a movie at a friend's house isn't robbing the producers of anything. Neither is buying something second hand. These are all non-customers of the original creator.
ineptech
If everyone pirated music, musicians would make all their income from merch and touring and it's not clear that they'd be worse off.
walteweiss
It works very differently, as getting a free digital copy of anything don’t leave others without it. There’s no shortage of the product. If I steal a piece of bread from a shop, it won’t be there. If I pirate an episode of whatever tv show, it won’t disappear for others who were to buy it. Company won’t see a difference if I won’t buy the product otherwise. Even the opposite, it’s net positive for the company, as more people familiar with the product may come back to it later and buy it, or make others buy it. See Windows, Photoshop. Or for books, I may download expensive books to read, and if I see the book is worth buying, I may buy it if I can afford it. And/or I may tell others the book is great, so they will buy it. And in the end it gives the company more benefit then me not ever touching their product in the first place.
yjftsjthsd-h
> piracy is robbing other people of their labour.
That's a coherent position, but it is also perfectly reasonable to argue that it's not because you have a copy and have not removed the original.
Edit: Note that this doesn't inherently make piracy okay, since it may deprive the owner of revenue or other benefits; there's a difference between objecting to piracy and saying that it's exactly theft.
beej71
After someone steals a movie, the studio can no longer stream that movie as they do not possess it any longer.
ElongatedMusket
Teach a man to buy and you sucker him for a day. Teach a man to rent and you sucker him for a lifetime.
jalapenos
Copyright itself is the root of the problem.
It's a completely fictitious right, akin to converting elementary school playground "stop copying me!" into a cause of action.
The solution to bad legislation isn't more legislation, it's throwing those statutes in a bonfire and reverting to common law.
neycoda
All rights are fictitious. All laws are made up. They're simply defined to provide a guide for liberty and order. They're not always enforced. People's defined rights are different over countries and years. Slaves had their rights defined by others throughout history, and many groups considered slavery justified where the master had rights to the slave and the slave had rights defined by the master. Saying copyright itself is fictitious doesn't mean anything.
Copyright rules make sense in protecting inventors and product owners. Maybe you've been neither and can't understand how the lack of this protection harms inventors and owners to the benefit of plagiarists. It's much easier to plagiarize than invent or produce, so without copyright protection, inventors and product owners basically become giant fat cash cows ready to plunder by passers-by that can just copy and paste. Removing copyright would turn the market completely feudalist and chaotic.
Throwing copyright statutes away is also chaotic. Reverting to common law? I'm not sure what you mean there. Just however people feel at the time? We've already evolved past the caveman era.
fknorangesite
> Reverting to common law? I'm not sure what you mean there.
Maybe you're not familiar with the term? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
> The defining characteristic of common law is that it arises as precedent. Common law courts look to the past decisions of courts to synthesize the legal principles of past cases
Or was it that you were unclear what _rm specifically was saying?
jalapenos
My man, what was this
marcosdumay
Things were always this far. There has been almost 2 decades since Amazon deleted the book 1984 from every Kindle. Since then, those things never stopped.
The only thing that is different right now is that some large and powerful corporations are being defrauded too, instead of just people.
stillwithit
Stop hiding reality behind euphemism.
The rich are just people.
The sooner we accept that and dispose of the bizarre “deification” of the rich the sooner we can discuss deprecation of their influence and reach.
The apathetic kowtow to a handful of aging out government brown nosers who lobby to insulate themselves is sad.
1980s Reagan economy is not immutable physics and we have no obligation to believe the stories of the rich about their success. There’s a whole lot of behavioral science being leveraged, and intentional PR propaganda tossed around to obfuscate the rich are “just people”
andrewflnr
You're conflating "large and powerful corporations" with "rich people". This is a mistake. Your post is not really wrong, but doesn't address anything in the one you replied to.
marcosdumay
On this case, the rich were defrauded too, just like every person.
Some of them were also doing the defrauding, and got a positive net profit, while many weren't. Things are way more complex than "the rich did it".
virgilp
It's also relatively easy to write this legislation. If you:
- sold licenses that are no longer usable to access the work (i.e. if you invalidate by any means already sold licenses)
- don't put work in the public domain/don't make it freely usable without a license when the copyright expires
then you lose the protection of copyright & associated (DRM/reverse engineering) laws for said works. Multiple violations can extend that to "all your works".
megous
Pirates had been morally in the clear ever since everyone buying any blank storage media had to pay a tax to entertainment companies...
caslon
A pirate didn't steal content, though. Nobody lost any content! There was no transaction involved. Piracy isn't zero-sum.
zxt_tzx
Instead of getting into a shouting match over whether piracy is or isn’t stealing, here’s an interesting story.
Bill Gates made an interesting comment regarding software piracy in the 1990s. At that time, software piracy was rampant in China, and Microsoft’s Windows operating system was one of the most pirated products. In response to this situation, Gates remarked that if people were going to pirate software, he would prefer they pirate Microsoft’s software.
His rationale was strategic: if people in China became accustomed to using Microsoft’s Windows and Office software, they would be more likely to continue using these products in the future, including in business environments where legitimate software licenses are more commonly purchased.
(Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)
ozim
Not so fun part is that this discussion goes on about „generic” idea.
I can already see that what works for software does not work for movies.
Other topic is also devices supporting DRM.
I would say paying for software new versions makes sense there is work to be done to keep it working on new devices etc.
Paying for the same book or movie again because distribution rights between corporations changed is messed up.
lstodd
> (Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)
Well, actually they did, at least in ex-USSR, and I think in Eastern Europe too.
After not ever having a single legitimate license in 1990s and early 2000s (and being laughed upon if you had one), by late 2000s Microsoft business took off handsomely.
veidr
> (Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)
But also the key point, right? Although I suspect he was correct.
(Also, has very little to do with the purchasing dynamics of movies or music, etc., although those special interests can fuck off...)
tuetuopay
the same goes for most professional software, like the adobe suite. if people pirated, it's because they're not professionals yet. once they are, they're more likely to buy the software they're used to and not the competition.
omeid2
Piracy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, there is a cost associated with it. Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground to stand on; now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different question, with interesting arguments for how or why modern copyright might not provide the intended outcomes.
tpoacher
It's not even as straightforward as that. Most serious studies on the topic have demonstrated that piracy not only does not lead to lost sales, but in fact it leads to increased sales instead.
Fricken
Weird Al recently made a video to point out 300k streams of his songs on Spotify earned him a lousy 12 bucks. It seems there are costs either way.
amelius
Life isn't fair. If I didn't like a movie, I can't unsee it and get my money and time back. That's just a fact of life. In the same way, people can share content since physics doesn't prevent it. We should just accept these limitations of how we can control each other.
Ekaros
I think this is reasonable stand. Piracy does affect revenue, but probably quite a bit less than anyone makes it out to. I believe most that pirate would not have paid in first place, either because they don't value it high enough or they do not have enough money to pay for it.
Not that actions of those selling does not likely contribute much more to loss of revenue, mainly by making content unavailable. Availability or pricing compared to product is often sub-optimal.
brnt
Every study done on the matter shows piracy correlates with sales. If we are to stop pretending, we should start with ending the myth that piracy hurts sales. There is no evidence whatsoever of that.
ekianjo
Artists can make money during live concerts instead. As it has always been. The artist that writes stuff once and reaps benefits forever is a horrible heresy.
rewmie
> Piracy isn't exactly a zero-sum game, but there is a cost associated with it.
There is zero cost associated with piracy. Zero.
At best, there's an expectation of profit that's not met. To argue that, you need to show how copying a file translates to a potential sale being converted to a no-sale, and there are plenty of evidence that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted work drives demand up.
> Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground to stand on
Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts anyone. You're trying to pass off your personal assertions as axioms, but it's on you to prove that copying a file without the consent of someone hurts anyone.
Go ahead.
> now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different question
If anything, artists are the least impacted counterpart as they literally get paid a small fraction of the whole income.
>
moffkalast
In fact games that get pirated more statistically also earn more revenue overall compared to those that don't. QED, piracy causes sales.
FranGro78
So you’re saying that the more popular a game is, the more likely it is to be pirated?
Sounds like it has more like the desirability of the game driving piracy than the other way around.
buybackoff
Not only sales, but market share/power. Imagine if J3QQ4... did not work for Windows 98... Linux on Desktop would be already perfect 20 years ago.
passwordoops
Correlation vs. causation: is it that games get pirated get more exposure therefore more sales, or games that are already popular get pirated?
I have to admit I haven't looked at these studies in their original form, but I guess sales revenue per install is the best metric to tell
dindobre
The social contract is so broken that I'm not surprised that piracy is rampant. I justify it (and I make games). It has all become a matter of leverage, I truly believe that if some companies (or people) could point a gun to our heads they would, and it shows in the way they operate.
And no, it's not always "it's just profit", sometimes it's a shortsighted chase of the next stock value high with complete disregard for the future since lack of accountability is pretty much built-in into the higher classes of managers
flohofwoe
It can't be worse than in the mid-90's (at least in relative numbers, of course absolute numbers will be much higher because the market is so much bigger now).
Ever since services like Steam existed I have pretty much pirated zero games, it's just too much hassle compared to clicking the Buy button on Steam (and if it's too expensive, the next season sale is always just around the corner). In comparison, my 90's self owned pretty much zero bought games.
Or as our Lord and Saviour Gaben ;) said:
"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."
Still spot on.
dindobre
I also appreciate Gaben, but we can't rely on enlightened despots, it just leaves room for bad actors to eventually ruin things.
flohofwoe
Of course, but since the Steam model works so well one wonders why everybody else is stumbling along instead of "just" copying it. Steam is pretty much the only platform where I don't care that I'm constantly bombarded with "targeted ads" for instance, I'm actually most of the time interested in what the Steam recommendation algorithm has in store for me.
crashmat
The problem is it's incredibly hard to create a semi-ethical company like steam without an enlightened despot.
redman25
Valve can take away software you've rightfully purchased as well. I don't know that they are the holy grail either even though they're commendable for what they've done with gaming on Linux. I bought CS GO years ago but after the CS 2 transition, I was no longer able to play the game since it became Windows and Linux only.
satvikpendem
> it's just too much hassle compared to clicking the Buy button on Steam
Game piracy today is still easier than clicking the buy button, and it's also free. We're not ripping individual files from sites anymore these days, most games are neatly packaged up into one-click install repacks.
raincole
Yeah, of course Gaben will say that (while providing developers a Steam DRM mechanism). A good PR example: he knows the importance of antipiracy, but he also knows the importance of downplaying it to not irritate the gamers.
flohofwoe
DRM is optional for Steam games, I think that's a pretty good balance between the interest of game developers vs the interest of user, it's an issue between users and game devs, not between users and Steam.
The more important point is though that the Steam DRM is hassle-free for the user. For instance games (with macOS ports) I already bought for PC I can also just install on my Mac, with save games automatically shared between the two. I don't have to buy a separate Mac version (as would be the case with Xbox vs Playstation), nor do I need to pay extra, so there's no incentive to pirate the Mac version.
unaindz
The steam drm is a joke and I think it's on purpose. It takes a few minutes to use a steam emulator and overcome it.
m12k
Gabe Newell rightly pointed out that piracy is a service problem. People pirate if getting access the legal way is prohibitively expensive or too much of a hassle. I can easily get access to any game I care about at a reasonable price on Steam. I can listen to any music I care about at a reasonable price on Spotify.
The same could almost be said of movies and TV series on Netflix years ago, but hasn't been remotely true for a while now, ever since the splintering of streaming into warring content owner kingdoms.
Guess which types of media I haven't even considered pirating, and which media I've given up on getting legally.
tuetuopay
I'm on the same boat as you. I don't pirate games or music anymore, and I've not done so for years. However, for movies and TV shows it's another story. I don't watch enough of them to warrant a single subscriptions, let alone multiple to watch the few shows and movies that do interest me and never are on the same platform.
paledot
I've been in your camp on all fronts for a while, but Spotify has been getting worse and more expensive, and there are some meaningful gaps in their catalog. I got rid of my CDs a decade+ ago, but I think it's time to start buying and ripping music again.
Unfortunately, Plex also wants to charge me to stream my own music, so the first step to find a new media player that isn't subject to enshittification.
pavel_lishin
> Unfortunately, Plex also wants to charge me to stream my own music, so the first step to find a new media player that isn't subject to enshittification.
Shit. I was considering switching my music library over the Plex, since they already both live on the same hard drive...
csydas
It's endemic for sure -- I download pirated stuff yes, but as I got older, I really did try to make an effort to use streaming services, movie/media stores, app stores, etc. Everything about it was so awful and ridiculous that it just wasn't worth my time to deal with the frustrations and more importantly the ever increasing costs and advertisement non-sense. Having an entire TV series I was watching suddenly vanish from the provider library in between episodes, shows/music I had used the applications own "download to local device" feature vanished just because I was traveling and suddenly I was not approved to watch/listen to the stuff I had paid for, constant advertisements and pushes for more subscriptions, it was absolutely asinine.
I do continue to download some pirated items but largely I just checked out of modern media mostly because the cost of participation is too much. At least online there are some services that video essayists release on which aren't too bad (Nebula isn't horrible, but still is a bit annoying).
I'm fearful of the day that searching "[some specific functions I want] + FOSS" and looking for repositories that have what I'm hoping for will stop working, since it's been fairly successful for me to find software that doesn't come with all the modern tech world non-sense. Some of the most simple applications like DaisyDisk for macOS or the Redirector plugins for browsers are absolute gems that have made my life objectively better and more convenient, and the teams behind these programs have shown repeatedly they aren't interested in anything else besides just having their programs work. It was very easy decision to donate to these teams/buy the apps because it was the most simple transaction ever, and the programs work as well or better than they did when I first installed them. Same with games from GOG -- I love that I have bought HoMM3 one time, and I think more than a decade later, I can still use the same installer, get the installer again, and enjoy my game wherever I want, and it's a completed game that can be further improved by mods.
Real and workable models for selling tech exist and it works without DRM -- I know for corporations it's not enough money coming in and they "need" to monetize every last drop of blood out of everything, but it's not like these business models are impossible or even bad; just different and a bit calmer than the corporate non-sense we have today. And the alternative models without DRM and data pilfering are definitely something I am willing to buy into, since there looks to be a pretty damn good chance I'll be able to actually use the stuff I'm buying how I want to.
dindobre
I agree, real and workable models do exist. The problem stems from regulatory capture, unbalanced leverage, and long-term unaccountability of the "higher ups", in my opinion.
andrei_says_
> I truly believe that if some companies (or people) could point a gun to our heads they would,
Just look at the industrialization of healthcare in the U.S. - and especially at the prices of some life saving medications. A gun to the head is the business model.
ReptileMan
I buy games, but not until there is a way to pirate them first. I just want to be sure that I can play what I buy forever and ever and the way I like it.
throwawayqqq11
Profit or stock value is what is measured, sociopathy is what's driving it and lack of accountability enables it.
kibwen
Precisely. Corporations are purely sociopathic entities; they would kidnap us off the street and blend our bodies into bloody slurry if they thought it might make them a single penny of profit. There is no use treating your relationship with corporate entities as anything other than strictly adversarial.
UberFly
This quote from the author is my favorite. This is so spot-on:
These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further."
carom
The CEO of the last startup I was at was like that. Very much an archetype in my mind now. I will never work with someone like that again.
odyssey7
This video from Y Combinator, “How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer,” is full of great tips.
pierat
Wow, that's hella tone-deaf.
EVERYBODY under Capitalism, aside the owner class, is getting exploited.
It's not 'if you're getting screwed'. It's 'how much'.
ryloric
Great video, thanks for sharing
phendrenad2
Piracy isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement. The copyright lobby overplayed their hand with those infamous cringey "you wouldn't steal a car" ads, and trying to claim that every copy made of their product was a "lost sale".
jonathanstrange
The worst thing about this campaign was that nearly every person on Earth would download a car if that was possible, e.g. with an affordable advanced 3D printing robot.
hazbo
I recently learned that it had been reported that the music for those ads was stolen and used without permission.
sonicanatidae
Because of course it was. smh.
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quickthrower2
Piracy isn’t piracy either :-). No sailors were harmed in the watching of this torrent.
npteljes
Yeah, IT is a funny world where there are rockstars, architects, pirates, and neither of them are what the name suggests. It's like when people were naming the sea things after the already established land-things, so we got the seahorse, sea cucumber, seaweed etc.
dgb23
We generally have to invent so many names it’s dizzying. No wonder we’re using analogies.
Also, terms like “pirate” and “rockstar” are fun to use. Maybe we like to use names that distract us from the purely abstract, digital reality.
realusername
I kind of liked they did that because now the whole "you would not download a car" became a joke and made the position of the copyright lobbies weaker morally.
thewileyone
By the same logic, if you just delete the content, then you're not stealing anymore.
vorticalbox
I always found these funny "you wouldn't steal a car" well I might under certain circumstances.
balderdash
It feel like some basic consumer disclosure/protections would be a good start - you can’t use the word “buy” unless the purchaser truly has perpetual irrevocable use of the asset - other wise you have to use the word “rent” and simple disclaimer box with the length of the rental period if and how it can be canceled, and what remedies (if any) are provided if the rental is terminated early.
Rent movie XYZ for $x
Rental period: perpetual
Cancelable: at will with x days notice
Remedies if cancelled early: none
johnnyanmac
you can, but the reality is that
1. most consumers don't care. For them if it's longer than some months it's basicaly perpetual. Buying for them is a raw deal because they treat media like a rental and forget about the purchase in the long run.
2. streaming services pretty much "solved" this problem already. There's no notion of owning anything on Netflix and people are fine with that. The age of digital purchases is fading (except maybe for games. But even then, there are more f2p models out there).
JKCalhoun
So easy to pile on this post.
I remember decades ago watching closely the new crop of televisions released each year — getting nerdy about the specs, features (back when TV's were dumb, expensive, and the new annual crop always exciting, shiny). I began to notice that a company like Sony would produce a suite of TV's that were the same in more ways than not — but there seemed to be features that were simply neutered on the lower price-tier devices.
I could imagine some marketing hack coming to the engineers and telling them which features to gimp on the base model, which ones to exclude on the next tier....
I must be both naive and old-fashioned to think that companies would compete by trying to both keep their prices lower than their competitor and their features superior. Sony (and of course others) decided to compete with themselves instead.
Then when I started amassing a huge DVD collection a couple decades ago, it became increasingly annoying that I would have to sit through ads on the DVDs before I could watch the film I had paid for.
Trailers, coming-attractions, also-available-from-time-warner are ads.
I finally started to rip my own DVDs and have done so ever since.
dleslie
The forced ads on DVDs remains an important inflection point in the rise of digital media, I think. Early on one of the most common points in favour mentioned by those advocating for digital-only media was that you simply weren't required to sit through advertisements.
I personally installed VLC for a number of folks simply because it allowed them to watch DVDs without advertisements. It was a meaningful draw.
Then Netflix came and offered a low-barrier service with a decent catalog and, importantly, no advertisements. I'm of the impression that the broadcasters and studios have hated that aspect of it the most, and are hell bent to return to forced advertisement views.
JKCalhoun
I think I read someone else say that, if libraries weren't a thing already, the publishers would have never allowed them.
johnnyanmac
ads are money, and very few businesses can avoid the allure of them.
It also comes down to the side of the consumer. Almost every-time people would pick free+ads over paid+no_ads. now, lower_pay+ads over higher_pay_to_remove_ads is a much more dubious premise, but the moder pricing tiers suggest that some do go for it.
overtomanu
It might be decoy pricing strategy..
veidr
He was right; it has now played out and this is a legitimate accounting of it.
It goes beyond the headline, though. We should rejoice that we have a writer that can make such boring-ass societal degradation interesting.
I never "bought" any TV shows on my Playstation (or any Pantone colors on my Adobe) because I knew this would happen, but... the key sentence fragment of the article:
this is the foreseeable, inevitable result
vcg3rd
Paying does not equal buying. If I lease a car, you can still steal it. If I rent a car, you can steal it.
If I subscribe to a daily newspaper, you can steal it off my driveway in which case you steal from me and not the publisher because I never owned the content. If you sell my newspaper then you've stolen from the publisher even though I paid the publisher for that printed copy.
It's really not that hard. Original pirates could steal from dozens of merchants, share holders, and sailors in various ways and degrees, monies paid to monies earned, to monies owed, to monies potentially gained, by seizing the cargo of one vessel.
CSSer
Let’s use your example. How would you feel if, due to a disagreement with the publisher over the quality of ink, the publisher was “forced” to break into your house while you eat breakfast and rip the newspaper out of your hands? This is what happens today. They’ve colluded to redefine the verb “buy” due to “licensing”, and it’s sick.
johnnyanmac
it would suck and it would make headlines. But that's not what happens today, so it's a nil argument. the GP's argument comparing it to rentals/leases makes sense since you aren't truly owning a purchase (and if you are that deadset on stealing a car they probably will literally break into your house). you're buying a license and licenses can be revoked.
Now, if that should be allowed without an explicit mention on the purchase page is certainly something to argue in court.
CSSer
It’s not just that. Physical copies are increasingly no longer available. Now I can only buy a license for the same price I used to pay for a physical copy. Moreover, this is for a good that has no substitute.
Matumio
Yes. And copying does not equal stealing. While we're rambling about broken metaphors, pirates have to physically get you and threaten violence. Imagine if they just copied your car or newspaper instead, without breaking anything.
the-dude
Piracy was never stealing to begin with.
r0ckarong
Digital piracy. Piracy was indeed piracy at one time.
codedokode
Piracy still exists.
LoganDark
Yep, shipping containers are stolen straight off ships to this very day, or ships are just straight-up hijacked. Real, actual piracy.
amelius
Speaking of which, here's a great piracy idea:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535109/
Interpret that how you want ;)
r0ckarong
Puts on my best Hedberg glasses and yet, it still was ... too.
PicassoCTs
Piracy is to increase big time. All it takes is a remote-autonomous drone canoe with explosives and a protection money racket.
moffkalast
Look at me. I am the captain now.
tommiegannert
Perhaps part of the problem is that even the pro-copying side keeps calling it "piracy." I'm pretty sure it's meant to induce negative feelings in the listener.
idle_zealot
Maybe I'm just sheltered, but "pirates" to me evoke goofy adventures and hijinks more than hardened criminals hurting innocents. So describing copyright violations as "piracy" emphasizes how comical the laws being broken are.
civilitty
Same. When I think of “pirates” I think of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY
totetsu
Piracy was never piracy
WendyTheWillow
It’s immoral, regardless of what you call it, as it’s a violation of the social contract.
andybak
It's a violation of copyright which has been around for a lot less time than "th social contract" however you define it.
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.
resonious
If someone says "I spent a lot of resources making this digital content. please pay before consuming it" and you consume it without paying, then that seems kind of like a social contract violation to me (though I may be using an overly broad definition of social contract).
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.
WendyTheWillow
Immoral is in no way clear cut, but in this case it is as universal as the agreement to abide by copyright rules are at the time of the exchange between the licensee and owner.
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.
j_maffe
Monopolies and price-gouging are a violation of the social contract.
WendyTheWillow
Firstly they are not (and presupposing the latter claim begs the question anyway), and secondly if you think that then don’t participate in the use of the ill gotten goods. Nobody died because they couldn’t hear a song or watch a movie.
virtual_void
There is no singular conception of The Social Contract, nor indeed of morality.
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.
WendyTheWillow
It’s extremely well understood that the social contract covers “don’t lie to get stuff”, which is what pirates do to obtain the copy they then make available, as the social contract presumes those engaged in a sale of a copy of a work won’t turn around and give it away for free.
Pirates are thus “free riders” to the social contract.
afiori
It is also immoral to delete bought content from users' devices
johnnyanmac
if you want to be pedantic, they can't delete it off our device. They just delete it off their server and then when you phone home to verify your movie they can say "sorry we can't play this".
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.
idle_zealot
Violating a social contract is not necessarily immoral, in the same way that breaking the law is not necessarily immoral.
WendyTheWillow
In this case it’s clearly immoral however, as the stakes for the pirate are so incredibly low.
MrVandemar
That's very black and white thinking.
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.
WendyTheWillow
The false presumption you make here is that you are entitled to these works; you are not. Furthermore, your example isn’t piracy! If you own Aliens, go watch it. If you’ve lost it, you no longer own it I guess then, do you?
ClumsyPilot
> a violation of the social contract.
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.
DirkH
So is protesting against any unjust law then. How is protesting a law you don't like by violating it not also an immoral breach of the social contract?
eimrine
I hope one day it will be a country somewhere on Earth who will have a ban for non-free software in the Constitution. The reality has changed too much to trust some people in govt to protect us from megacorps. We really need Richard Stallman kind of guy as a president of at least a tiniest country in the whole mad world.
dottedmag
Open source is a technical detail. One can see a less drastical change that will have the same effect.
1. Update the laws so that the shenanigans of the companies are finally named as they are:
- Retroactively removing a feature is stealing from the owner.
- Deleting bought digital content is also stealing from the owner.
- Spying on a user is an unlawful search.
2. Make these transgressions be investigated by the prosecutor's office, so that a citizen only needs to report it to them and not figure out how to get a class lawsuit going. This will allow security researchers to do their job.
3. Classify devices with unpatched and unpatcheable security bugs as "unfit for use" and eligible for a full unconditional refund, and extend warranties on them to, say, 15 years.
4. Obviously, make any kind of security research legal and protected from intimidation by the companies.
anonymousab
> bought digital content
The fundamental problem lies here: you haven't actually bought anything useful. You didn't buy content, you bought a license, and that license is merely "you might be able to view content in a very specific way for an unspecified amount of time that is completely at our discretion".
You still have what you bought when they revoke the license, it's just in a different and less useful state.
That whole system needs to be crushed into dust to make a real difference. Make it so that buying a license to content isn't a thing - that you are now actually buying content - and all of the things that come with ownership will follow.
But I don't see any viable path to that happening. A sightly more possible outcome would be to have a minimum standards/requirements for digital content purposes - a set of required rights/restrictions/components for any digital purchase the all licenses must incorporate or cannot compromise on.
dottedmag
Exactly: this "license" thing has to be changed to buying digital content.
ozim
I branch off company close branch down because it was unprofitable - I don’t have to support device.
Other approach, only huge companies start making devices because medium size companies cannot take the risk of the refunds.
Users are worse off, companies are worse off everything with the outlined rules is worse. Making law is hard.
fifteen1506
Agreed. Still, reverse engineering unsupported software or hardware should be made legal.
dottedmag
Make managers personally responsible.
Flameancer
That seems like a sure fire way to hamstring your country. Does that also include firmware for devices? Will this government have a large dev team to make software that its populace can use? Would you install trackers and block the internet in general so citizens can’t get software that’s open source. Would you demand visitors to surrender their devices while visiting so the authorities can check for non-free software installed?
cturner
These are fair criticisms of the proposal. A similar but more workable path would be a constitutional clause to 1. limit the concept of property to scarce goods and 2. outlaw the creation of legal mechanisms like copyright.
9dev
We tried something similar once. It broke down quickly, led to the rich owning everything, required a surveillance nightmare to function, and left a permanent scar on the world. I don’t think we should in engage this idea again.
eimrine
> Does that also include firmware for devices? Will this government have a large dev team to make software that its populace can use?
The law I proposed has to be working against governments and semi-government institution such as banks, not about random Joes.
The firmware question is interesting, because there is no such thing as FLOSS hardware except of some low-end microcontrollers, thank you for noticing.
The most decent way of achieving this state seems like to prohibit only import of new devices and don't even bother about user's ones or anything second-hand. I have an observation that if you have 2 identical laptops but one with Nvidia/Amd and one with Intel HD then the former laptop will die naturally, such as any laptop with Ati today, while the latter laptop keeps serving until the physical death. You can install Ati driver for Windows 7 but can not for Windows 8 and never; also proprietary Ati driver fails to work with modern Linux stack while free Ati driver uses to much energy to consider the device as a laptop. This is an example of natural death of proprietary hardware/software, just stop import new proprietary devices.
Any authorities checking user devices for anything is a way of tyranny/authoritarism/totalitarism, nowadays the governmenns are working into totally another way, elusive to see for us the adults. In XXI governments use to propagate this or that ideas in schools. Teach them to have their fun and games in GNU/Linux distros and prohibit teachers to propagate Microsoft, Zoom, Viber, Google without restricting usage of these service for leisure. When the proprietary devices will start begging to buy a new hardware but it will not be available inside of the country then we will found ourselves in a new world.
> Will this government have a large dev team to make software that its populace can use?
There is no such thing in XXI as an independed government without a large dev team.
bambax
Like the original article explains well, the question isn't technical, it's legal. You don't have to inspect users' devices if you make selling licences illegal, because then nobody can legally make money selling them.
jorvi
I’ve always dreamt of at least the EU and China (yes I know of Kylin) mandating libre software for governmental use.
Could you imagine the gigantic amount of flow of money that goes into Microsoft enterprise and Office support instead flowing into open source? And the amount of bug that amount of eyeballs would catch.
Both the Linux desktop and things like LibreOffice would see meteoric improvements within the year.
Right now there is already some chances budding (in Spain’s regional governments, Munich, France’s military), it just needs to be pulled together into a comprehensive plan and get a good push.
pbhjpbhj
Germany offered the UK a "test and trace" app during the corona virus pandemic. The UK government of course refused, because producing an app was an opportunity to divert £37 Billion (!) from taxes to their associates. The delay in not taking the completed app also would have cost thousands of lives.
In short, the first thing you need is people who care about their countrymen. People often propose ideas that start from an assumption that politicians want to make the World better, but the ones in power in the UK at least are more motivated by other things: greed for example.
DaiPlusPlus
It's an idealism, for sure; but after reading about experiments like Hamburg's maybe we'll get there eventually.
But what's far more important (and practical) than mandating libre software is mandating libre file formats, and this is what we've seen happen somewhat successfully around the world: governments requiring official documents to be primarily available in PDF/A and/or OpenDocument (c.f. OpenOfficeOrg/LibreOffice) instead of (say) MSFT's Office OOXML formats.
em-bee
china is actually trying, but it is not easy to get every governmental employee to listen and enforce such a change.
in europe on the other hand the issue is entirely political. a city switches to linux. when the leading party changes it switches back because microsoft promises some benefits like jobs or worse kickbacks, or the new leader is simply ignorant and actually believes that windows is better.
wizardforhire
Yes and…
We need a figure head with a strong moral and ethical compass who lives in private as if they are in public. Whom is capable of addressing all situations with grace, elegance, respect, compassion, and humility in that order only in reverse. One whom is frugal, well read, and courteous. One whom in being frugal is able to think of all and is able to stand fast in the face of corruption as they deep down truly experience the interconnectedness of life and by proxy society… and through experiences, travels and interactions has attained a working understanding of the all pervasive ripple effect.
Oh yeah, and this person has to be willing to martyr themselves as the public life sucks!
TotalCrackpot
Yeah, we need a good dictator (...) or we need to create federated horizontal power structures with consensus decision making as an alternative to current systems.
wizardforhire
Who said anything about a dictator? What I was describing is the hypothetical dream traits of what I perceive are a necessity to be an effective leader in this era.
It’s a tall ask but someone embodying those traits would scoff at the notion of wanting, let alone keeping power!
If you’d like to see what federated horizontal power structures with consensus decision making looks like and how it feels to participate in I challenge you to join a local planning commission in your city if you haven’t already and if you live in america of course…
tacocataco
How about everyone self organizes into 2000ish person communes, all structured in the way they feel life is best lived?
buzzert
I don't understand, why is it not enough to just... use free software? Why must the government be involved at all?
timwaagh
[flagged]
eimrine
Where are the lunches going from? I can bet a few dollars that you as a hired dev are mistreating your users making their computers to do a lot of things they are not aware of for the sake of cancer like growing of your favorite industry. RMS is Clair Patterson of our world and programmers like you are equivalent of those guys who unfairly claim that leaded fuel is OK and a lot of lead in the air was since the creation of the world.
timwaagh
You lost your bet. I don't abuse our users. How much did I earn?
I'm not sure what you have against hired developers. We just want to earn money for coding, is this a crime?
muzani
Where I come from, both parties have to consent. The buyer says "I purchase this for $10". The seller says "I purchase for $10." You have a valid sale. Modern forms involve giving the money, then getting a receipt.
Here's the problem - the seller can be a thief. The common forms of seller theft is selling something of less value than marketed, or with conditions that were not brought up earlier (like no repair).
Being illegal isn't be the only measure of theft, not in some societies. You can pirate something without theft -- as long as the seller consents to it. It won't be legal if there's no written agreement of consent. Some companies have this model where you can illegally use their software forever, but have to pay for a license. They want some of the richer people to pay, but the law doesn't recognize this selective consent, so it's enforced selectively.
But in OP's case, there's no valid transaction possible in some situations. They're not pirating nice guy WinRAR. The seller doesn't want to consent and the buyer won't consent. Because there's no possible option, the pirate assumes it belongs to nobody and takes it.
Thieves will often justify a theft, either by saying nobody owns it or that it belonged to them. There's a whole hill of philosophy here about what private property means. Taking back your homeland is not theft, because it's yours. That's why we have laws so a third party can judge these things.
But you know, maybe just come to terms that stealing isn't always unethical. Instead of saying piracy isn't stealing, it's more like piracy isn't unethical. It's pedantic, but solves a lot of the nitpicks people have on the topic.
dorfsmay
Google lets you "buy" movies online. The movie is attached to the email account. You cannot transfer it to a different email account.
The very same google that offers Gmail but is also known to block accounts for perceived violation of contract and which will now close Gmail accounts that aren't used for a number of months.
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I didn't know things had gone quite this far yet.
I have to agree. There should be legislation preventing this, or the pirates will be morally in the clear. Which does not help copyright owners. Yes, the pirate stole your content, but since you were going to revoke access anyhow he was stealing from a scammer which is justice.