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Don't Make Me Steal

dontmakemesteal.com

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Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#71

Post by lotusleaf1987 »

Francis Ford Coppola:

Q: How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?

A: We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it's only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n' roll singer being rich, that's not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I'm going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you'd be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, "Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money." Because there are ways around it.

http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O...

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#72

Post by SoftwareMaven »

tyhjnmyh wrote: post #55
eli wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that authors of digital content deserve to get paid, right? Then it doesn't really matter what you call people who manage to avoid paying. This debate over semantics does not help advance the discussion.

Sure - I would love the creators of the content to get paid. Unfortunately the writer of Forrest Gump didn't get paid because the movie made a loss, Stan Lee didn't get paid for Spiderman because the company that made it sold it their distribution arm for $1. Peter Jackson and various actors didn't get paid properly for LotR because the studio can keep the accounts secret.

And you stealing the movie helps them how? Two completely independent wrongs do not make a right.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#74

Post by tptacek »

endtime wrote: post #67
tptacek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you aren't. The response to your silly analogy is, "if I throw a black drape over my organic bread and allow you to see it only after paying for a loaf, you cannot legally enter my shop and remove the drape". The fact that nobody would set up such a system is evidence that your analogy is unproductive, not that your argument is strong.

The very point of my comment is that such analogies are silly and unproductive.

I said your analogy was unproductive. I don't agree that all of them are.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#75

Post by tyhjnmyh »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #72
tyhjnmyh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - I would love the creators of the content to get paid. Unfortunately the writer of Forrest Gump didn't get paid because the movie made a loss, Stan Lee didn't get paid for Spiderman because the company that made it sold it their distribution arm for $1. Peter Jackson and various actors didn't get paid properly for LotR because the studio can keep the accounts secret.

And you stealing the movie helps them how? Two completely independent wrongs do not make a right.

Neither does movie studios calling me thief for watching a movie I bought on DVD on my tablet - while at the same time claiming $Bn grossing movies made a loss when it comes to paying the author.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#76

Post by tptacek »

citricsquid wrote: post #69
kijinbear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People aren't judged for stealing because it costs the store owner money, they're judged because it's immoral! I'm not sure it's as simple as that. One could always ask: "Why is it immoral to steal?" and the answer usually revolves around how stealing deprives the owner of something he had a legitimate claim to, etc. etc. That's how our moral intuitions have evolved over thousands of years. The fact that this age-o…

I must be completely insane then, because I don't see stealing as wrong because it deprives the owner of their property, I see it as wrong because you're taking something you don't own on your own terms, not the terms of the person who owns it. If John the shop owner wants to sell bread for $10/loaf and you take it for free, that's immoral because it was his bread and he wanted $10 for it. If Tony the musician wants…

In fact, you can look at most real physical theft in the same terms and see how silly this "copying, not stealing" argument is. If I steal a $10 loaf of bread, how have I harmed the baker? Most people would say, "you took $10 worth of goods from the baker". But of course you didn't, says the pirate: you took $0.50 worth of flour and water and yeast from the baker, $0.20 in energy costs, and $2.00 in labor costs; you owe $2.70!

The grim rhetorical reality of this argument is that most of the people on the pro-piracy side of the argument will go you a step further. "$2.00!", they'd say. "Why, everybody knows it should only cost you $1.00 to bake a loaf of bread."

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#77

Post by samstokes »

rubidium wrote: post #10

I really don't like the "don't make me steal" attitude. It undermines a good society. The creators of this campaign decided that "Purchase should not exceed the cinema price." Really? What if we did that for, say, organic bread. "I won't buy organic bread unless it's x3 or less than the cost of the generic white bread. If it is more expensive, I'm entitled to steal it." Sorry folks, you're entitled to not buy it, not…

The way the "manifesto" is worded does unfortunately reek of entitlement, but they do make a valid point. If you see their bullet points as rows in a product comparison table between legal movie distribution channels, most of them score badly on most of those points, whereas piracy ticks nearly all of them. (It would of course be a fairer comparison if there was a row for "is legal".)

They're making the point that legal movie distribution channels are worse products - by those criteria - than piracy. Put another way, there are other reasons for choosing to pirate a movie besides not wanting to pay for it. It's unrealistic to demand all of the things this manifesto does, but actually the sum of their demands doesn't seem like a bad ideal to aim for.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#78

Post by baggachipz »

jonpaul wrote: post #56

This name is awful. 1)It implies that copyright infringement is stealing. 2)It implies lack of responsibility, as in someone is making you do a certain action. You have a choice.

The page itself seems as if it was written by fifth graders: "Movies are delivered adds free."

No streaming movie I've ever purchased has required me to pay for the privilege of doing arithmetic.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#79

Post by jamesbritt »

citricsquid wrote: post #51
rubidium wrote: post #10

I really don't like the "don't make me steal" attitude. It undermines a good society. The creators of this campaign decided that "Purchase should not exceed the cinema price." Really? What if we did that for, say, organic bread. "I won't buy organic bread unless it's x3 or less than the cost of the generic white bread. If it is more expensive, I'm entitled to steal it." Sorry folks, you're entitled to not buy it, not…

"Sorry folks, you're entitled to not buy it, not to steal it." EXACTLY. Yes, downloading a movie isn't exactly stealing, but it's still taking something without permission and it should be frowned upon just as much as stealing is. If a person pirates a movie they're taking something without reimbursing the rights owner with what they want. People aren't judged for stealing because it costs the store owner money, they…

"but it's still taking something "

taking ? Or copying?

Something? Or some representation?

A problem with these discussions is that people use common words as if everyone had the same understanding of their meaning and application.

If I download a movie, I'm not taking that movie. And what I end up with is not a thing; if I then move it over to another drive, no thing has moved, yet the movie can be watched.

Now, in the end, this action it may or may not be wrong or immoral or whatever, but arguments based on physical notions of "take", "thing", "own" are putting the cart before the horse.

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