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Don't Make Me Steal

dontmakemesteal.com

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Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#111

Post by jacoblyles »

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…

What if the owner offers you the bread? Isn't that what happens when someone offers to let me copy a file from their harddrive over the internet?

If you look back over my comment history, you will see that I have argued the other side of this issue too. That is because it is a hard problem that doesn't fit well with the moral intuitions that we developed for other kinds of property.

To make matters worse, US copyright laws are way more strict than most people's moral intuitions of what intellectual property should be like. Even if you think the author should have some right to the content they produced, few people think creative works should be locked up until 75 years after the author's death. I have downloaded books illegally from authors that died in the 70s and I feel no moral qualms about it.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#112

Post by redthrowaway »

I agree with everything except yes to pay and no to ads. There really should be a way to provide free, ad-supported video, and premium, ad-free video. Once you purchase a movie it is free for all time, but every time you watch it for free it's ad-supported.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#113

Post by samstokes »

bena wrote: post #108
samstokes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

They've unfairly tipped the scales in favor of piracy though. That's why the entire thing reeks of entitlement and why no legal service satisfies their demands. It's deliberate. That and they provide no reasoning as to their points. They want the purchase price to not exceed the cinema price. But cinema price is dependent upon the area and theater, so it's not so easy to peg purchase to cinema. That and why should th…

The reasons you give for your disagreement with the OP are disagreements about features that the product (online movie delivery) should have: the price is too low or too high, sorting by IMDB ID is pointless. Feature disagreements are healthy. Yet you conclude with an ad hominem attack on the OP: they are immoral, they feel entitled, their concerns aren't real. Suspecting their motives (without much evidence, incidentally) doesn't justify dismissing their arguments out of hand.

If any of these were real concerns of pirates, movies out in theaters wouldn't be pirated.

Consider that "pirates" may not be a single uniform demographic.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#114

Post by bena »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #71

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 j…

Yes, I'm totally convinced by the words of the son of a professional concert flautist who gets paid 7 figures to make films and was able to buy that winery with those proceeds.

So for him to say, "Oh you can make money other ways, make films for art's sake. Look at me, I'm a wine-maker" is a bit disingenuous.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#115

Post by jacoblyles »

baggachipz wrote: post #78
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.

>"The page itself seems as if it was written by fifth graders"

or a bunch of redditors/chaners.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#116

Post by rdouble »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #71

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 j…

Coppola bought his winery with the proceeds from The Godfather.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#117

Post by bena »

samstokes wrote: post #113
bena wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've unfairly tipped the scales in favor of piracy though. That's why the entire thing reeks of entitlement and why no legal service satisfies their demands. It's deliberate. That and they provide no reasoning as to their points. They want the purchase price to not exceed the cinema price. But cinema price is dependent upon the area and theater, so it's not so easy to peg purchase to cinema. That and why should th…

The reasons you give for your disagreement with the OP are disagreements about features that the product (online movie delivery) should have: the price is too low or too high, sorting by IMDB ID is pointless. Feature disagreements are healthy. Yet you conclude with an ad hominem attack on the OP: they are immoral, they feel entitled, their concerns aren't real. Suspecting their motives (without much evidence, inciden…

I understand. But I'd bet that the vast majority of the signatories pirate first run movies.

They do not provide reasons. I posited several valid questions as to why would they want or demand those things. Because they do not provide reasons. They just make random demands and expect people to nod along and say "Yes, I agree."

I suspect their motives because they give no evidence or reason for their position.

Anything that can be asserted out of hand can be dismissed out of hand.

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#118

Post by Silhouette »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #95
tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$10.00 or $2.70, it's a moot point to the issue at hand. The baker has lost something. If I have the same pattern of bits on my hard drive that a movie studio has on theirs, the movie studio has lost $0.00. That's the fundamental difference between piracy and theft. If you want to assert that we, as a society, have made an agreement to limit people's freedom to configure their bits as they see fit in order to encoura…

> $10.00 or $2.70, it's a moot point to the issue at hand. The baker has lost something.

He has lost something of value only if he was going to sell that loaf of bread to a paying customer. How can you be sure that anyone was going to buy it? If no-one bought it before the end of the day then it would just be waste anyway, right?

Re: Don't Make Me Steal

#120

Post by jamesbritt »

citricsquid wrote: post #89
kijinbear wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you take $10 from your mom, your mom no longer has that $10. When you pay money to buy a magazine, the shop no longer has that magazine and you no longer have the money. Taking in the usual sense is moving . But pirates insist that they can "take" without depriving the owner of anything. That's copying , which is a different kind of taking. It gets even more complicated if somebody first purchases a legitimate c…

My usage of "take" is insignificant, it's just a word in my argument. You can "take help" you can "take ideas" and they're not physical. Please don't focus on the word "take", instead the actual argument :|

"Please don't focus on the word "take", instead the actual argument"

If I don't know what your words are supposed to mean, then I don't know what your argument is supposed to be.

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