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Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (pluralistic.net)

submitted 11 months ago by db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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[-] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I still don't get where you're going with that. Pointing out that in the past physical media did a little bit of the same, draining fans of money with re-releases that just added what's been cut or were enhanced in other ways? Then that's same as, say, DLCs: a small amount of work draining much more money than it's worth, just as means of squeezing more cash from fans while making the base thing affordable for a wide audience. It's just about maximizing profit way beyond the point of payback. Greed, essentially, and nothing else.

As per How I Met Your Mother, I kinda felt the ending to be somewhat natural, even though it seems like they didn't think it through well to begin with. And yes, it's super cruel to kill Ted's wife - she's extremely nice and suits him better and I get your feelings. But this is also a very logical plot twist, and the ending feels...like it should've been. I just knew it'd end up there.

And as per ethics, everything I produce (I work in scientific field) I hold no rights to, and they either belong to a company, sadly (on one job that actually pays me enough to survive), or are in the public domain (open access scientific articles, available for everyone in full text). I wish it would all be the latter. I do not want to retain copyright on anything I make, and I wish for it in general to be abolished. And until that's not the case, I'm comfortable breaching it forcefully.

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip -3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The point is that all media is transient. Whether it is a book you own (that may have yellowed because even the hardcovers used the shitty paper) or a movie you are watching.

To put it more personally: Let's pretend that you get paid for journal publications (because it is the easiest to abstract. For something more realistic imagine I am talking about your field's equivalent of processes, equipment, etc). Your employer paid you to get four papers published last year, and you did. Awesome. Except now we are ten years in the future, you work somewhere else, and that same boss wants you to futz with the latex to change the format for a book someone is writing or update them to the web format for the journal or whatever.

You, rightfully, tell your former boss to go fuck himself and that if he wants you to do it he can pay you for it.

Except... if there is no expectation that you are going to provide lifetime support for those papers, why would he have paid you in the first place? Should have just stolen your work and stiffed you on the bill.

Same here. There is this expectation of a lifetime license of something that we have more or less never had. Even when it was just fat white dudes in wigs using a printing press.

[-] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Your analogy is not entirely correct.

As a viewer, I do not demand producers to create remakes or enhanced versions. They do it themselves - to take profits off relatively easy work, compared to, you know, producing a new great film or whatnot.

The correct comparison would be me writing a book and selling it, and then writing an appendix to this book and selling it separately with a solid price tag.

If I'm an honest author, I'd post updates freely, so that people who already own the book would have important data and wouldn't use incorrect results from there. It would affect my reputation if I'd do otherwise, too.

In my real case, I can publish an update, and yes, it will be free. This is a standard for scientific articles, open or not, and many even have easy links for version updates, containing all corrections.

And my boss pays me because otherwise I wouldn't be able to produce the first result to begin with.

Also, the very idea of digital media is to be accessible and not transient. You can save and backup data and it will be there, in its original form, forever. Updates in art are entirely optional and often unasked for.