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Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Stealing involves depriving the original owner of access or possession of the item. Duplication is not stealing because the item being duplicated is not taken away.
Even if you consider it stealing, then what defense do you have for the people who paid the price that would supposedly allow them to have it permanently and suddenly it still gets taken away? That's not stealing? Even if we accepted that piracy by people who didn't pay is theft, why should people who already paid for the media not be able to access it from somewhere else if their original access is denied?
By duplicating, you're depriving the company to the exclusive right to copy that thing. But I don't think stealing some nebulous concept of a monopoly like that is wrong.
The keywords: company and monopoly.
There is more nuance to it than that. The copyright holder still owns whichever copies are made, whether or not they are made with their permission. One could argue that by making a duplicate, you have taken possession of a copy without consent from its owner.
As for your other example about a copyright owner revoking access; this is completely subject to the terms of sale of that item. Without details of the license agreement it's impossible to say if the terms were breached.
That is an extremely recent construct largely promoted by the big media companies themselves. For the vast majority of human history, intellectual property was not a thing and works could be freely copied, modified, redistributed, etc and it was considered normal. When copyright first came into effect, it was for a fixed period that was relatively short, after which anyone could use the work however they wanted. That was the original intent of copyright, which was only to give artists an exclusive period to profit from their work without competition, not exclusive rights for all eternity. Disney was the one that lobbied for copyright terms to be extended, then extended again, then again, and critically, extended to include the life of the "person" that created it, but since corporations are also "persons" under the law and just so happen to not have bodies that can die, effectively corporate media is copyrighted forever.
Also, those media companies claim to be such big proponents of intellectual property protection, they would never, ever do the exact same goddamn thing to independent artists, with the only difference being that they actually profit from it when the vast majority of "piracy" is for personal use, and that they know for a fact that independent artists rarely have the resources or time to actually do anything about it, right? Riiiiiiight?
https://mashable.com/article/disney-art-stolen-tiki
https://insidethemagic.net/2023/12/disney-under-fire-for-allegedly-stealing-furry-fanart-ld1/
https://insidethemagic.net/2021/01/super-nintendo-world-stolen-art-ad1
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/27/dbrand-is-suing-casetify-over-stolen-designs/
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/looks_like_nintendo_accidentally_used_a_fan-made_mario_render_on_its_website
https://www.thegamer.com/microsoft-joins-sony-in-stealing-art-for-commercials/
https://gamerant.com/sony-stolen-art-playstation-network/
https://ganker.com/sega-stole-from-an-artist-608965/
If anything, shouldn't small independent artists get more protection under the law if copyright was really meant to benefit artists and safeguard the creative process like it claims it does? The FBI can arrest and jail you for pirating a movie, but when a corporation commits the same crime there isn't even a whiff of consequences. At this point we really ought to ask what the real purpose of copyright is after all the changes made to it and who it's actually meant to protect.
Gee, it almost sounds like the laws regarding what they can and can't put in those terms of sale are nowhere close to fair and were specifically written by the giant media holding companies to exclusively benefit them and screw over the consumer! Laws and regulations can't possibly be immoral and corrupt right?
To separate the worker from owning the means of production?
Especially telling when it's the corporation that owns the copyright, and not the actual artists and other workers that actually created it.
Accidentally deleted my comment. Spelling...
To separate the worker from owning the means of production?
I mean, at the low level, sure. “Bart Simpson”, the concept, was created by a person. Bart Simpson, the character, was developed and built as a collaborative effort of several people spanning the course of decades, and continues to be developed by teams of people.
The copyright shouldn’t belong to an individual. The rights to the intellectual property need to be protected, but so too do the rights of everyone who contributed to building it.
Unfortunately, corporations are really the closest proxy we really have.
Thats what’s really exciting about new media, and small time collaborators, and niche content. HomeStar Runner doesn’t belong to Disney, or Fox, or Viacom. He belongs to the small group of people who created him and his friends. The same could be said for Kurzgesagt, or The Lockpicking Lawyer, or both the Nostalgia and Angry Video Game nerds.
The corporations exist to extract as much ownership as possible from the creative class, it is not a proxy ownership by those doing the collaborative work. See the recent WGA strike as an example. Unions and co-ops are the proxies, not corporations.
[citation needed]
The closest thing we have to "representation proxy to a community of people who helped author a thing" is an author's guild, for example. And things like the Writers' Guild already exist, I'm sure there's a Drawers' Guild too. Not as close, but more solidly defined, would be a union, oh guess what? We have those, too.
In comparison, a "corporation" has a whole lotta fat.
Corporations don't need you to shill for them.
I think my point is getting lost in the one pro-corporate part of it…the corporation is responsible for nearly all of the risk, and that investment is what ultimately creates the content. They absolutely do deserve some stake in its IP, just not necessarily nearly as much as they currently have.
This is why I love new media. Low enough startup costs that small individuals and small groups could easily creat and own their own content and IP. It’s really the big investments that complicate everything.
It used to be necessary to sell your soul to the establishment to get your content in front of a large audience, but it’s not anymore.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s only in this specific context and conversation that I would call Google the good guys, or at least the lesser of two evils. Obviously context matters.
No and no.
The creators take more of a risk by going with a corporation. Corporations have hella money, they can afford to spend some on [checks notes] living wages.
Once again no. The creators do.
I’m not saying the creators don’t. You’re saying the people who bankroll it don’t. I say that’s a bit unfair.
Yeah, the creatives don’t get reimbursed nearly as much as the (top) talent, and them not as much as the owner class. That’s a tale as old as time. I don’t think that copyright is really the demon you’re making out to be here though. It’s also worth noting that only the top talent really gets the good money. Most of the cast is also pretty unequally paid. That goes to the creative side as well…for every Spielberg or Tarentino or Vince Gilligan there are tens of hundreds of very skilled writers not getting their fair shake.
And I think we’re mostly in agreement, I just think that whoever bankrolls should get a fair share of the profits. I think that’s a fair take. The problem isn’t the copyrights, it’s that the bankrollers are getting way more than a fair share.
And again this is the problem new media solves. You don’t need to bend to the studios to get your content in front of a big audience…and even better, you can get your content in front of a niche audience, too, which is something the studios couldn’t really do very well. They used to be the roadblock and you had to play by their rules, and that’s no longer the case.
Dude, thank you for reminding me I'm not fucking insane.
I absolutely agree with you that the arguments you put forward is the way it should be. However, currently, as we see here in the case of Sony, there is a perceived unfairness in what consumers expect from a license agreement and what is in fact in them.
Time will tell if our judicial system acknowledges that it's reasonable to assume that if you are offered a digital good "to buy" that it will remain available ad infinitum and hence Sony held to be liable.
In a strict legal sense I think you are right. There is some good rationale for copyright, going all the way back to the 1700s, I think. Most artists pretty much need copyright in order to survive. Also, yes, companies should have the ability to freely negotiate contracts, and to have legal protection against someone breaking those contracts. And, yes, these slogans about piracy not being stealing are legally unsophisticated and facile. That said, you can probably sense the "however" coming...
HOWEVER, the context is important. All law is based on an implied social context. When companies engage in practices that poison the market, they break the implied social contract underlying the laws that protect them. The result is retaliatory behavior by consumers. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about media and games or food prices. People will steal when they feel the law, as applied in a particular social context, is no longer fair. It isn't morally right, but it isn't exactly wrong either. It's more of an inherent market mechanism to curtail shitty corporate behaviour, and that's why governments tend not to interfere too much with individual downloading.
When there is no easy way for consumers to fight back, that's when governments need to get involved. Ridiculously high drug prices being a good example.
I believe we are arguing the same side of the argument.