By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
Creating a competitor is not the same logic at all. That competitor gets paid when someone buys their product.
The issue is that time and effort are put into something that is being made to get compensation for that time and effort, not to be given away for free. If you’re going to a competing product, you’re not ingesting the initial product without paying for it.
I’m not arguing legal definitions. I’m arguing against the bullshit mental gymnastics that piracy is not stealing. It is. Just admit it and move on. I don’t care if people pirate. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of trying to justify theft. If you ingest something that an artist made to try and make a livelihood and don’t pay them, you’re stealing that livelihood.
The argument that digital piracy is theft is predicated on the idea that pirating is depriving the creator of their rightful property: the money from a sale. In the absence of said sale, that money wasn’t their property to begin with, however. The only way to reconcile this is by treating potential income as property.
In doing so, a number of stupid things can be argued for:
Creating a new product is theft because it deprives the competition of their potential income.
Boycotting a company is theft because it deprives them of potential income.
Not purchasing a new phone is theft because it deprives the manufacturer of potential income.
Not hiring Tom because Bob was a better candidate is theft because it deprives Tom of potential income.
There’s a reason that piracy legally falls under copyright infringement rather than theft. You aren’t depriving the creator of property by making a new digital copy of their media, but you are violating their copyright by creating an unauthorized copy.
It is not the same logic. You are not ingesting the work of the creator by going to a competitor. The issue is that you are gaining something from the labor of the creator without compensating them for that labor (which they gain from). It is an unequal exchange that both parties have not agreed to. It is theft. Going to a competitor and buying from them is an equal exchange - you’re paying money for the product of their labor.
Everything else you’ve said continues to be dishonest because it is based on this very simple, fundamental flaw in your original argument.
You are still off the mark. Profiting off someone else’s work is not theft. Maybe a crime, maybe immoral, but it’s a separate concept. Theft specifically is bad because you lose something you have. Copyright infringement is considered bad because we want people to be incentivised to create original stuff, and we want people to feel like if they create original stuff, they get to have special rights over it.
You don’t steal an IP by piracy, you infringe on it. If you stole it, the original owner would not have it. The whole argument around theft and piracy is that by equating theft with piracy, we get to a false dichotomy that if we don’t prosecute the random pirate or OpenAI for infringing on copyright, we can’t prosecute car thieves or wage thieves or whatever either in all fairness. Which is not true. Societies with the concept of property but without the concept of copyright did and do exist.
It’s all fair if you say copyright should be protected, and infringement punished, but it’s as much not theft as it is not murder. I mean, since you harm IPs by piracy, and one can argue excessive piracy can “kill” an IP, would making a pirate copy be assault with a deadly weapon? Or vandalism? That’s why words have meanings, and different things have different names.
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the productandnot paying for that use.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
You should pick your examples more carefully.
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
That’s wrong and fucked up but also has nothing to do with the argument and point I’m making. It’s a total straw man.
You should pick your examples more carefully.
I didn’t pick it, so… 🤷♂️
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
How am I not acting in good faith? I am taking an objective position. Please point out how anything I’ve said is not objective or not in good faith?
How am I not acting in good faith? I am taking an objective position. Please point out how anything I’ve said is not objective or not in good faith?
You may well be arguing in good faith, I’ve started to see that. You’re still wrong, though. Copyright infringement is not theft, the two are distinctly different.
It is a straw man. It is arguing a point that I never made.
Fair point.
I don’t understand how you can reconcile this with what you just said above.
You’re still wrong, though. Copyright infringement is not theft, the two are distinctly different.
Only in a legal sense and I’m not arguing the legality or legal distinction between the two things. This is another straw man. “Copyright infringement” only exists as a legal concept because of intangible goods and ideas and how they different from physical, tangible items. Both types have enormous amounts of labor/effort/time required to create them and yet we have to make a distinction because it is different from a legal perspective.
It is stealing income. You’re taking advantage of the result of someone’s effort and time without compensating them for it. No one is ok with that in any other context but y’all bend over backwards to justify it unilaterally here as opposed to denouncing this behavior (the Crunchroll behavior, to be clear) as its own issue that is also wrong.
That’s irrelevant. That’s not the case with all media, especially anime, when the creators are the owners and executives of many studios. Even if it was, it doesn’t change the calculus that the work is being sold.
That’s just factually untrue. The ‘creators’ are just animators that work for animation studios that get paid by companies like funimation, amazon and Netflix to publish content and those middle men reap the majority of the benefits. Very very rarely do actual individual people make a percentage of whatever a work earns. It’s just middle men executives that earn that.
I would argue that piracy helps make them more money anyways. The actual money is in merchandise. If I’m able to pirate an anime and really like it I’m more likely to spend money on merchandise VS me not bothering to watch a show and not buying merch.
Here’s an article proving that the actual creators don’t make much money at all and it’s not because of piracy.
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
The very thing keeping the situation the way it is very much not piracy or can it be placed at the feet of the general consumer. That you think the mess of giant distributors we have today is the fault of digital piracy is actually madness.
My guy, with anime 90 percent of the content comes from light novels or Manga. The reason they get turned into anime is because they’re popular. Netflix Amazon funimation and other distributers often just bid on anime projects and don’t specifically order one particular series.
Of course they deserve to be paid but I’m arguing that pirating doesn’t cut into their pay because they’ve already been paid before the anime even comes out.
If buying digital products isn’t owning then pirating isn’t theft. Funimation just said fuck you to all their consumers who ‘bought’ their digital products.
If you weren’t gonna buy it anyway and since the creator doesn’t lose anything, how can it be stealing?
And on top of that, it offers the creator exposure and creates new fans who one day might buy some of their products.
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries. But painting has been a thing for thousands of years, we’ve had time to adapt to it. Not the same thing with digital media. It came about after all these definitions and laws. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And because corpos are greedy, we’ll probably keep having this conversation forever
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries.
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of art galleries are not free. And, they tend to rotate their content regularly, so you have no control over what you have access to. Pretty much everything this thread is complaining about Crunchyroll doing.
Well, your analogy is even more flawed. I hardly think a painting store is going to be OK with you treating their stock like you own it. Also, once they sell a painting, it’s gone and you no longer have access to it. Just how exactly do you propose an artist make an income if their output should be free for all to peruse as they see fit? Exposure doesn’t put food on the table.
Not that I am in any way defending the fine art business which is nothing more than a giant money laundering scheme for the filthy rich.
Yeah, the downvotes in here scream of “I can’t refute your point, so I’m just going to downvote you!” Do they think creators should just give away their creations and hope money falls on them from out of the sky?
It’s stealing because you watched it. If you didn’t watch it and didn’t buy it or steal it, then nothing has been stolen. The entire crux is that you’re consuming and ingesting the product they’re selling without paying for it.
Additionally, if you’re making the argument that you can’t count “potential” sales of something as theft then you can’t also make the argument that “potential” exposure is valid. Either both potentials are valid or neither is and, if they both are, then it’s theft.
And you’ve just proven my argument for me with your art gallery examples. Art galleries explicitly give people that access. You pay for that access. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get to look at those paintings without buying anything because you already had to buy something to even get to look at the paintings. Unless the creator is explicitly giving you access for free, you’re stealing if you’re ingesting or consuming something that they made for which they are charging.
No, of course not. They’re explicitly allowing you to have it for free. It can’t be piracy if they’re not selling their work. The entire premise is that, if they’re selling it, then the trade is payment in exchange for their work.
That’s both dishonest and factually untrue. If you’re ingesting the creation without paying for it, then you’ve stolen it from the artists because they didn’t create it for free (unless they explicitly have). The creator sees a difference because you wouldn’t have been able to ingest their creation without paying them for it.
Theft requires you to deprive the original owner of their property.
Creating a digital copy does not prevent the creator from accessing or selling their property. Potential income is not property; it was never in their possession to begin with.
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
The legal definition is not the definition. That is just nonsense. There are an innumerable amount of terms that have a literary definition that is not the same as the legal definition.
That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying the definition isn’t relevant. I don’t care if you call it “stealing”, “leeching”, “pirating”, or any other word. The fact that people are attempting to make a distinction proves that pirating is not a standard acquisition of content. It’s implicitly admitting that it’s stealing from someone.
You don’t care what words you use, because you’re talking about something else, an idea that’s only in your head.
I’m using the specific definitions, because we’re talking about a specific and complicated problem.
Theft is distinctly different from copyright infringement - even when you set aside that one is a crime and the other is a civil rights infringement. That’s just how the law defines it, and the definition is pretty clear cut.
When you steal from someone, they no longer have the thing. If I steal a DVD, the store no longer has that DVD. Not only have they lost a potential sale, but they had to buy that DVD, so they’ve lost the money they used to buy it. They’ve also definitely lost a sale, because they can’t sell it to anyone else
If I pirate something, no one loses anything. They haven’t lost a tangible object, they haven’t even paid for the bandwidth to deliver it - that came from someone else. Maybe they lost a potential sale, but more likely I probably wasn’t going to buy it either way. They still have just as much ability to sell to others.
The two concepts are distinctly different. Theft is different from copying. You can argue that copying is wrong - and I’d agree with you - but it is different from theft.
The issue boils down to “two wrongs don’t make a right”, I suppose. However, I put it two you that while this statement is true, it’s also often the case that a 2nd wrong can at least, sometimes, make things better.
You don’t care what words you use, because you’re talking about something else, an idea that’s only in your head.
I’m not. I don’t know how much more simply I can put this other than I feel that creators deserve to get paid for the work they create and piracy deprives them of that and is, therefore, theft. It’s not theft of their product, it’s theft of the right to be paid for that product. Ingesting/consuming a product without paying the creator for it is theft, unless that creator has explicitly allowed for that (like in the case of physical media where creators understand that it can be borrowed).
Theft is distinctly different from copyright infringement - even when you set aside that one is a crime and the other is a civil rights infringement. That’s just how the law defines it, and the definition is pretty clear cut.
And I’m not arguing any of the legalities of it. I don’t care about the distinction of theft and copyright infringement in a legal sense. I’m care about the practical effects of stealing something without paying for it.
If I pirate something, no one loses anything.
This is not true. The creator loses something. You may want to talk about specific situations where a creator is hired on a “for work” basis to create something and we could argue that ad infinitum but then you’d need to make the distinction about where the line is drawn. Is it ok only when it’s work for hire? If so, why is not ok when it’s not? Where do you make the distinction?
Maybe they lost a potential sale, but more likely I probably wasn’t going to buy it either way.
That’s irrelevant. If you weren’t going to buy it then you’re not entitled to consume it either. The entire problem is that you (and many people here) are trying to make the argument that they’re entitled to ingest/consume whatever it is despite not paying for it. I’m making the argument that that’s theft and that you’re not entitled to it for precisely the reason that you didn’t pay for it. Obviously, this doesn’t apply if the creator is giving away that work for free.
it’s also often the case that a 2nd wrong can at least, sometimes, make things better.
I have never argued, here or otherwise, that piracy isn’t justified in some cases. I’m only arguing that, even when it’s justified, it’s still theft and that we should be honest about that.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Lemme use a different, better example. Say I buy used copies of everything I watch. How is that different from watching shows on sketchy streaming websites? Either way I consume the media and the people who made it get nothing. If anything, it seems worse to me for me to lose money and the creators to gain nothing, while some random person on the internet profits from reselling their work after they’ve already consumed it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product.
And you’re ignoring the fact that the producer treats their digital product with no real scarcity as if it was a physical product that cost a significant amount to produce and distribute. By your own reasoning, the digital product should be much cheaper.
If it wasn’t for piracy, the product (digital or physical) would be even more expensive. As it is, producers know that if they price too high people will turn to piracy, if that wasn’t an option then there would be nothing holding them back.
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing.
That is literally the situation I’m discussing. I want to watch Haibane Renmei. My options are a) find whatever streaming service has the rights to it, pay them their toll, and have temporary access to it, b) find a streaming service that doesn’t have the rights to it, don’t pay them anything, and have temporary access to it, c) find a new copy of it that gives money directly to the original creators, or d) find a used copy of it, and give money to some random person on the internet. Edit: there’s also e) renting the DVD from Family Video. Functionally the same as D, re: the creators getting their money from me watching their show.
The only one of these that you seem to have a problem with is B, and I don’t think that’s morally consistent. You’ve been saying time and again that piracy is wrong because I gain something while the creators gain nothing, and that’s exactly what happens when I buy a used DVD.
That’s not true. It is not “literally the situation you’re discussing”. You don’t “lose” money if you’re paying for access to something. Paying for a ticket to a museum to see artwork isn’t you “losing” money just because you don’t walk out of the museum with something tangible.
You’re just arguing semantics about the word “creator” now. The other options you’ve provided are still basing your choice on a tangible good which is not the situation here. You can’t buy a “used” version of an intangible good so the rest of your argument is irrelevant to the situation actually being argued.
Now we’re arguing semantics and I’m not going to do this. I PAID money. I GAVE SOMEONE money. I HAVE LESS money. If you can’t engage with the actual ideas behind what I’m saying, then what are you even doing?
I see no distinction between the tangible and intangible goods here. They are all methods for displaying a show on my screen for the express purpose of me seeing it with my eyes. What difference does it make if that method involves a tangible object? The moral argument you’ve been making this entire time is that by pirating a show, I consume it without the people who made it getting compensated.
In another thread, you said
At the end of the day, the argument is that someone is taking the value of the work/product when they consume/ingest it without compensating the creator of that work/product.
If this is why you believe piracy is theft, then you must necessarily believe that buying used copies, borrowing discs from friends, and renting from video stores are all also theft, because the statements you’ve made regarding why piracy is theft applies to all of those situations.
You gave someone money who had permission to sell that thing to you. You have less money and, in exchange, you have access to consume the media/intangible good in question. This is not semantics. This is the literal situation that you were arguing.
The fact that you don’t see a distinction between tangible and intangible goods is exactly why you keep making arguments that make no sense and don’t logically hold up against the point I’m making. The difference matters because, even in your other irrelevant examples of buying used copies, borrowing discs, or renting, someone had to pay for that physical item or you would not have access to it. Intangible and tangible matters here because you can’t buy a used copy of an intangible item!
So… no. I don’t have to believe any of the other things you’ve mentioned because, in every single one of those cases, there is a tangible good that someone paid for which the author/creator was compensated that is physically limited that doesn’t exist for an intangible good. Your argument is still fundamentally flawed and, therefore, not a valid argument against my point.
It is. You’re stealing income from the person that created the thing you took and didn’t pay for.
By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
Creating a competitor is not the same logic at all. That competitor gets paid when someone buys their product.
The issue is that time and effort are put into something that is being made to get compensation for that time and effort, not to be given away for free. If you’re going to a competing product, you’re not ingesting the initial product without paying for it.
I’m not arguing legal definitions. I’m arguing against the bullshit mental gymnastics that piracy is not stealing. It is. Just admit it and move on. I don’t care if people pirate. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of trying to justify theft. If you ingest something that an artist made to try and make a livelihood and don’t pay them, you’re stealing that livelihood.
No, it’s exactly the same logic.
The argument that digital piracy is theft is predicated on the idea that pirating is depriving the creator of their rightful property: the money from a sale. In the absence of said sale, that money wasn’t their property to begin with, however. The only way to reconcile this is by treating potential income as property.
In doing so, a number of stupid things can be argued for:
Creating a new product is theft because it deprives the competition of their potential income.
Boycotting a company is theft because it deprives them of potential income.
Not purchasing a new phone is theft because it deprives the manufacturer of potential income.
Not hiring Tom because Bob was a better candidate is theft because it deprives Tom of potential income.
There’s a reason that piracy legally falls under copyright infringement rather than theft. You aren’t depriving the creator of property by making a new digital copy of their media, but you are violating their copyright by creating an unauthorized copy.
It is not the same logic. You are not ingesting the work of the creator by going to a competitor. The issue is that you are gaining something from the labor of the creator without compensating them for that labor (which they gain from). It is an unequal exchange that both parties have not agreed to. It is theft. Going to a competitor and buying from them is an equal exchange - you’re paying money for the product of their labor.
Everything else you’ve said continues to be dishonest because it is based on this very simple, fundamental flaw in your original argument.
You are still off the mark. Profiting off someone else’s work is not theft. Maybe a crime, maybe immoral, but it’s a separate concept. Theft specifically is bad because you lose something you have. Copyright infringement is considered bad because we want people to be incentivised to create original stuff, and we want people to feel like if they create original stuff, they get to have special rights over it.
You don’t steal an IP by piracy, you infringe on it. If you stole it, the original owner would not have it. The whole argument around theft and piracy is that by equating theft with piracy, we get to a false dichotomy that if we don’t prosecute the random pirate or OpenAI for infringing on copyright, we can’t prosecute car thieves or wage thieves or whatever either in all fairness. Which is not true. Societies with the concept of property but without the concept of copyright did and do exist.
It’s all fair if you say copyright should be protected, and infringement punished, but it’s as much not theft as it is not murder. I mean, since you harm IPs by piracy, and one can argue excessive piracy can “kill” an IP, would making a pirate copy be assault with a deadly weapon? Or vandalism? That’s why words have meanings, and different things have different names.
What if I don’t sell it? If someone opts to use FreeCAD instead of Fusion360, did FreeCAD steal income from Autodesk?
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the product and not paying for that use.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
You should pick your examples more carefully.
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
That’s wrong and fucked up but also has nothing to do with the argument and point I’m making. It’s a total straw man.
I didn’t pick it, so… 🤷♂️
How am I not acting in good faith? I am taking an objective position. Please point out how anything I’ve said is not objective or not in good faith?
Not a straw man at all, but I’ll let it slide.
Fair point.
You may well be arguing in good faith, I’ve started to see that. You’re still wrong, though. Copyright infringement is not theft, the two are distinctly different.
It is a straw man. It is arguing a point that I never made.
I don’t understand how you can reconcile this with what you just said above.
Only in a legal sense and I’m not arguing the legality or legal distinction between the two things. This is another straw man. “Copyright infringement” only exists as a legal concept because of intangible goods and ideas and how they different from physical, tangible items. Both types have enormous amounts of labor/effort/time required to create them and yet we have to make a distinction because it is different from a legal perspective.
I wish piracy was stealing income, I need some of that income.
It is stealing income. You’re taking advantage of the result of someone’s effort and time without compensating them for it. No one is ok with that in any other context but y’all bend over backwards to justify it unilaterally here as opposed to denouncing this behavior (the Crunchroll behavior, to be clear) as its own issue that is also wrong.
The workers already got paid. It’s executives that are being “stolen from.” ( I’m too broke to buy it anyways)
That’s irrelevant. That’s not the case with all media, especially anime, when the creators are the owners and executives of many studios. Even if it was, it doesn’t change the calculus that the work is being sold.
That’s just factually untrue. The ‘creators’ are just animators that work for animation studios that get paid by companies like funimation, amazon and Netflix to publish content and those middle men reap the majority of the benefits. Very very rarely do actual individual people make a percentage of whatever a work earns. It’s just middle men executives that earn that.
I would argue that piracy helps make them more money anyways. The actual money is in merchandise. If I’m able to pirate an anime and really like it I’m more likely to spend money on merchandise VS me not bothering to watch a show and not buying merch.
Here’s an article proving that the actual creators don’t make much money at all and it’s not because of piracy.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/7/2/20677237/anime-industry-japan-artists-pay-labor-abuse-neon-genesis-evangelion-netflix
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
The very thing keeping the situation the way it is very much not piracy or can it be placed at the feet of the general consumer. That you think the mess of giant distributors we have today is the fault of digital piracy is actually madness.
My guy, with anime 90 percent of the content comes from light novels or Manga. The reason they get turned into anime is because they’re popular. Netflix Amazon funimation and other distributers often just bid on anime projects and don’t specifically order one particular series.
Of course they deserve to be paid but I’m arguing that pirating doesn’t cut into their pay because they’ve already been paid before the anime even comes out.
If buying digital products isn’t owning then pirating isn’t theft. Funimation just said fuck you to all their consumers who ‘bought’ their digital products.
The same disturbers that regularly drop content that people pay for and the same disturbers that claim you own something?
If you weren’t gonna buy it anyway and since the creator doesn’t lose anything, how can it be stealing?
And on top of that, it offers the creator exposure and creates new fans who one day might buy some of their products.
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries. But painting has been a thing for thousands of years, we’ve had time to adapt to it. Not the same thing with digital media. It came about after all these definitions and laws. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And because corpos are greedy, we’ll probably keep having this conversation forever
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of art galleries are not free. And, they tend to rotate their content regularly, so you have no control over what you have access to. Pretty much everything this thread is complaining about Crunchyroll doing.
I’m talking about stores that sell paintings, not museums. Unless you pay to go to those where you live. I’ve never paid to enter a store before
Well, your analogy is even more flawed. I hardly think a painting store is going to be OK with you treating their stock like you own it. Also, once they sell a painting, it’s gone and you no longer have access to it. Just how exactly do you propose an artist make an income if their output should be free for all to peruse as they see fit? Exposure doesn’t put food on the table.
Not that I am in any way defending the fine art business which is nothing more than a giant money laundering scheme for the filthy rich.
They’ll never admit this because it invalidates their entire point.
Yeah, the downvotes in here scream of “I can’t refute your point, so I’m just going to downvote you!” Do they think creators should just give away their creations and hope money falls on them from out of the sky?
It’s stealing because you watched it. If you didn’t watch it and didn’t buy it or steal it, then nothing has been stolen. The entire crux is that you’re consuming and ingesting the product they’re selling without paying for it.
Additionally, if you’re making the argument that you can’t count “potential” sales of something as theft then you can’t also make the argument that “potential” exposure is valid. Either both potentials are valid or neither is and, if they both are, then it’s theft.
And you’ve just proven my argument for me with your art gallery examples. Art galleries explicitly give people that access. You pay for that access. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get to look at those paintings without buying anything because you already had to buy something to even get to look at the paintings. Unless the creator is explicitly giving you access for free, you’re stealing if you’re ingesting or consuming something that they made for which they are charging.
Ok, what if the creator says it’s ok to pirate their stuff. Is that still stealing?
No, of course not. They’re explicitly allowing you to have it for free. It can’t be piracy if they’re not selling their work. The entire premise is that, if they’re selling it, then the trade is payment in exchange for their work.
That’s not stealing lol. If I pirate something or if I don’t, the creator sees no difference.
Stealing income would be reducing the income for the author (piracy doesn’t alter it) and you getting it instead (you don’t).
That’s both dishonest and factually untrue. If you’re ingesting the creation without paying for it, then you’ve stolen it from the artists because they didn’t create it for free (unless they explicitly have). The creator sees a difference because you wouldn’t have been able to ingest their creation without paying them for it.
Theft requires you to deprive the original owner of their property.
Creating a digital copy does not prevent the creator from accessing or selling their property. Potential income is not property; it was never in their possession to begin with.
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
I’m not arguing the legal definition of this so everything you’ve said is irrelevant.
The legal definition is THE definition, it’s literally what the word means, and where the concepts of both originate.
What you’re saying isn’t irrelevant, it’s just completely ignorant and wrong.
The legal definition is not the definition. That is just nonsense. There are an innumerable amount of terms that have a literary definition that is not the same as the legal definition.
You’re trying to say that your definition is the only valid one, which conveniently is one that your argument is entirely reliant upon.
It isn’t valid, you’re wrong, your argument does not hold water.
That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying the definition isn’t relevant. I don’t care if you call it “stealing”, “leeching”, “pirating”, or any other word. The fact that people are attempting to make a distinction proves that pirating is not a standard acquisition of content. It’s implicitly admitting that it’s stealing from someone.
You don’t care what words you use, because you’re talking about something else, an idea that’s only in your head.
I’m using the specific definitions, because we’re talking about a specific and complicated problem.
Theft is distinctly different from copyright infringement - even when you set aside that one is a crime and the other is a civil rights infringement. That’s just how the law defines it, and the definition is pretty clear cut.
When you steal from someone, they no longer have the thing. If I steal a DVD, the store no longer has that DVD. Not only have they lost a potential sale, but they had to buy that DVD, so they’ve lost the money they used to buy it. They’ve also definitely lost a sale, because they can’t sell it to anyone else
If I pirate something, no one loses anything. They haven’t lost a tangible object, they haven’t even paid for the bandwidth to deliver it - that came from someone else. Maybe they lost a potential sale, but more likely I probably wasn’t going to buy it either way. They still have just as much ability to sell to others.
The two concepts are distinctly different. Theft is different from copying. You can argue that copying is wrong - and I’d agree with you - but it is different from theft.
The issue boils down to “two wrongs don’t make a right”, I suppose. However, I put it two you that while this statement is true, it’s also often the case that a 2nd wrong can at least, sometimes, make things better.
I’m not. I don’t know how much more simply I can put this other than I feel that creators deserve to get paid for the work they create and piracy deprives them of that and is, therefore, theft. It’s not theft of their product, it’s theft of the right to be paid for that product. Ingesting/consuming a product without paying the creator for it is theft, unless that creator has explicitly allowed for that (like in the case of physical media where creators understand that it can be borrowed).
And I’m not arguing any of the legalities of it. I don’t care about the distinction of theft and copyright infringement in a legal sense. I’m care about the practical effects of stealing something without paying for it.
This is not true. The creator loses something. You may want to talk about specific situations where a creator is hired on a “for work” basis to create something and we could argue that ad infinitum but then you’d need to make the distinction about where the line is drawn. Is it ok only when it’s work for hire? If so, why is not ok when it’s not? Where do you make the distinction?
That’s irrelevant. If you weren’t going to buy it then you’re not entitled to consume it either. The entire problem is that you (and many people here) are trying to make the argument that they’re entitled to ingest/consume whatever it is despite not paying for it. I’m making the argument that that’s theft and that you’re not entitled to it for precisely the reason that you didn’t pay for it. Obviously, this doesn’t apply if the creator is giving away that work for free.
I have never argued, here or otherwise, that piracy isn’t justified in some cases. I’m only arguing that, even when it’s justified, it’s still theft and that we should be honest about that.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Lemme use a different, better example. Say I buy used copies of everything I watch. How is that different from watching shows on sketchy streaming websites? Either way I consume the media and the people who made it get nothing. If anything, it seems worse to me for me to lose money and the creators to gain nothing, while some random person on the internet profits from reselling their work after they’ve already consumed it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
And you’re ignoring the fact that the producer treats their digital product with no real scarcity as if it was a physical product that cost a significant amount to produce and distribute. By your own reasoning, the digital product should be much cheaper.
If it wasn’t for piracy, the product (digital or physical) would be even more expensive. As it is, producers know that if they price too high people will turn to piracy, if that wasn’t an option then there would be nothing holding them back.
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
“If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.”
Good idea, I’ll pirate it instead.
Why should you be entitled to consume something that you haven’t paid for?
That is literally the situation I’m discussing. I want to watch Haibane Renmei. My options are a) find whatever streaming service has the rights to it, pay them their toll, and have temporary access to it, b) find a streaming service that doesn’t have the rights to it, don’t pay them anything, and have temporary access to it, c) find a new copy of it that gives money directly to the original creators, or d) find a used copy of it, and give money to some random person on the internet. Edit: there’s also e) renting the DVD from Family Video. Functionally the same as D, re: the creators getting their money from me watching their show.
The only one of these that you seem to have a problem with is B, and I don’t think that’s morally consistent. You’ve been saying time and again that piracy is wrong because I gain something while the creators gain nothing, and that’s exactly what happens when I buy a used DVD.
That’s not true. It is not “literally the situation you’re discussing”. You don’t “lose” money if you’re paying for access to something. Paying for a ticket to a museum to see artwork isn’t you “losing” money just because you don’t walk out of the museum with something tangible.
You’re just arguing semantics about the word “creator” now. The other options you’ve provided are still basing your choice on a tangible good which is not the situation here. You can’t buy a “used” version of an intangible good so the rest of your argument is irrelevant to the situation actually being argued.
Now we’re arguing semantics and I’m not going to do this. I PAID money. I GAVE SOMEONE money. I HAVE LESS money. If you can’t engage with the actual ideas behind what I’m saying, then what are you even doing?
I see no distinction between the tangible and intangible goods here. They are all methods for displaying a show on my screen for the express purpose of me seeing it with my eyes. What difference does it make if that method involves a tangible object? The moral argument you’ve been making this entire time is that by pirating a show, I consume it without the people who made it getting compensated.
In another thread, you said
If this is why you believe piracy is theft, then you must necessarily believe that buying used copies, borrowing discs from friends, and renting from video stores are all also theft, because the statements you’ve made regarding why piracy is theft applies to all of those situations.
You gave someone money who had permission to sell that thing to you. You have less money and, in exchange, you have access to consume the media/intangible good in question. This is not semantics. This is the literal situation that you were arguing.
The fact that you don’t see a distinction between tangible and intangible goods is exactly why you keep making arguments that make no sense and don’t logically hold up against the point I’m making. The difference matters because, even in your other irrelevant examples of buying used copies, borrowing discs, or renting, someone had to pay for that physical item or you would not have access to it. Intangible and tangible matters here because you can’t buy a used copy of an intangible item!
So… no. I don’t have to believe any of the other things you’ve mentioned because, in every single one of those cases, there is a tangible good that someone paid for which the author/creator was compensated that is physically limited that doesn’t exist for an intangible good. Your argument is still fundamentally flawed and, therefore, not a valid argument against my point.