Uriel238

Fair enough. By what authority do you assert intellectual property belongs to a private entity and not the public?

This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public -- you and I -- of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn't have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.

Granted, some argue that creators would have no interest in creating, except that they do when they are given the means to do so. This is one of the threats social media has, in providing entertainment that is not sending its profits to the major players in the industry.

We're not pirating from the artists. We're not pirating from our neighbors. We're pirating from giant corporations who've been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.

And given the government does not execute its function in good faith (that is, in service of the public, including protecting its interests from corporate capture), we have grounds to argue the authority of the state is forfeit, ruling the public by force rather than by consent (our elections allow us to choose from oligarch selects, and they have to obey plutocrats to keep their careers.)

Without the artificial construct by governing systems to make IP a thing to be licensed (and the use of DRM to control its distribution) neither patents nor copyrighted material would be a thing at all, let alone have been turned into the monstrosties that are US and EU IP law.

Normies don't exist. Like birds.

Piracy is always stealing. Y’all can keep trying to spin it if it helps, but its pure copium.

So you're just being equivocal and trolling?

When we consume content and like it we have a tendency to want to patronize it, so yeah, if you pirated Wednesday season one, you're more likely to watch season two buy T-shirts and other swag, look for more Addams related content, and so on.

A good example of this happened in Russia when Neil Gaiman's books hadn't yet been marketed there. There were some unofficial and crowdsourced translations (some Russians learned English just to read Gaiman!) and so when the market finally reached Russia, it exploded, because the fan base had already been established.

GoT was an unusual case because HBO was bought separately from normal cable packages, and so fewer people had it, so it depended on piracy and social contacts (groups gathering for viewing parties at their friend's house). There were even public venues who would show the new episode (unofficially, so an unlicensed public performance) and by HBO ignoring these, it allowed the fanbase to swell to incredible proportions (at least until Season 8 which popped that bubble). Still, there are tons of spin-off markets from which HBO (now MAX) continues to profit.

When we like our content, we become invested in it. It becomes part of our lifestyle. We talk about it with friends. We make friends with folks who are also fans. And this is the point when we're susceptible to collectables and spinoffs.

Also we^†^ pirate for one of three reasons:

• We can't afford to buy the content but want to consume it. Or it's not available in our region
• The official version is odious to use (has DRM, forces us to watch commercials, etc.)
• The company that makes this stuff is malignant (cruel to its employees, bigoted against marginalized groups in the society, is associated with dangerous sects and subcultures) and we don't really want to support them.

So in those cases where these are not factors, most people are going to choose to not pirate content they like, or support it in other ways. (If you want to support musical artists, it's far less important that you buy their songs on iTunes, and far more important that you go to their concerts when you can. And buy their concert t-shirt for $60. John Coulton also takes tips.)

† We in this case refers to the larger demographic of those capable of pirating. When a product is expensive or unavailable or whatever, people who sometimes buy will look for ways to pirate or obtain deals or whatever. Yes, there will be piracy enthusiasts who never buy, but that's a slender demographic despite what the anti-piracy propaganda might suggest. Also if content is only pirated, that may mean it was never officially released, or the release version was really poor quality.

I find your pirate cred dubious. You came onto a pirate thread to throw shade, which smacks to me of Christian vigilantes wandering into a gay bar to start trouble. Or a guy online compelled to send his dick-pic to women online for internal insecurities he can't consciously fathom.

You're not here to protest the problems with stealing, not in the current economic clime. You're here because you need to shit on others, and are trying to justify it by opposing piracy when even the IP holders know it's losing game that only hurts themselves. It's the legal firms they've tapped who are over eager to show they're earning their pay.

You want to evade my assumptions, go crawl back into your hole, or do some proper fucking research. (Start here, and enjoy.).

But so long as you're raising a stink and I'm nearby, you're going to have to choke on the toxic vitriol of my ideology. I won't suffer your moralizing in silence.

The difference is, your culture is not getting out there.

The reason we all know Joffrey is a git of a king and the Red Wedding was a day to call in sick is because the GoT series was massively pirated and HBO ignored it. It also why we had a decade of gratuitous boobs on television. It also accounted for HBO being stupendously rich for a while.

It's kinda like depending on the wind for sailing, your crew on deck are going to be hot because there isn't much breeze. The more you tap consumption of your art for money, the narrower the gateway and the less it becomes culture, until you end up like Prince (the musician) with most of your work locked away in a vault, unknown to anyone.

But you seem like a the law's the law sort of fellow, and would be simping for the state even as it was torturing your fellow statesmen.

Besides which, rent-seeking (which taps from an economy without contributing) is a more harmful act than piracy. (I hesitate to use crime since the state has commonly shown to have sucky opinions on right and wrong.)

Why breaking into someone's home?

See, since I'm your buddy, you tell me bits and pieces of the stories you're writing for fun. And I, a Hollywood mogul, take those ideas, hand them off to a development crew and put out a movie based on your ideas. You get nothing.

This is normal in Hollywood. Also, I underpay my development crew because capitalism. They hate me but my stockholders think I'm okay. Original content creators like you? Well, there's a reason the writers are on strike, since screenwriting pays so poorly it's downgraded to hobby.

It's a problem especially in the record labels, in which most artists have their content signed away for a pittance because that was the only way to get heard which is changing through the internet, which is why the RIAA is eager to speed up enshittification of social media. And there are some interesting conspiracy theories about why Kim Dotcom was arrested in 2012 days before he rolled out a new music distro system that had dozens of major Hip Hop artists involved that allowed artists to get music out for free and then keep all their touring proceeds. But that died with the Megaupload seizure. Remember that?

If you really want to shill for folks like Disney and Sony and Time Warner, feel free, but you can expect your content to enshittify as well (as it has been for years now). I'm sure Fast and Furious XIII will be awesome.

For most of us sods it's a choice between pirating content or not engaging in it at all. While the upper management of Sony or Disney might live in their profit-focused bubble, everyone else involved with a product would rather we actually participate in their patch of human culture.

But I'm happy to not watch your show or listen to your music, if my presence offends you.

You're not familiar with Hollywood accounting, are you?

More harm is caused by propping up the media industry with draconian IP laws than by any amount of piracy, and actual content creators are overworked and underpaid not because of pirates but the mad pursuit of exponential short term profit growth.

If you care about developers, don't consume the media.

If you must consume the media, pirate.

Are we talking things, or intellectual property? Not the same.