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I'm done with Google

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Re: I'm done with Google

#241

Post by swores »

veltas wrote: post #105
usui wrote: post #16

> So I pirate the movie (please don't arrest me, it's google's fault) I really like the frank tone of the article and I wish people in general would just write unabashedly more often when it comes to stuff like this. Writers online love to dance around the idea of "pirating" their digital goods when communicating on the topic: "Ooh my 'friend' may or may not have downloaded 'xyz' movie from 'abc' website, but I don't…

I ask for open mindedness that I bring religion here, I feel it necessary to discuss this question of ethics/morality: "Who gives a fuck?" I quote Mark 12:15. > But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Render…

I can understand how Christianity-based morals might lead to thinking that digital piracy is immoral.

I can't understand how that particular bible verse could be a genuine influence on deciding whether or not illegally downloading copyrighted material is acceptable, at all. Can you explain what logic led from reading that text to deciding it meant you shouldn't pirate things?

And I'm also curious, if you hadn't read that verse would Jesus' other teachings, as told in the new testament, not have left you considering digital piracy to be immoral?

Re: I'm done with Google

#242

Post by JodieBenitez »

comprev wrote: post #188
JodieBenitez wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even a hardcore pirate like me tried to do the right thing when it comes to music - I got Spotify. This is not the right thing to do. Spotify is peanuts to artists. If you want to do the right thing, buy music at Bandcamp: you get files you can keep forever and artists get a fair share of your money.

Bandcampers forget the platform is for underground artists and those not tied by contract to the heavyweight labels. You'll never see mainstream pop artists on there. I love to promote Bandcamp where possible but have to remember what it can offer to "Average Joe"

True... but I would argue the average Joe was never inclined to "do the right thing" anyway, he would just do what's more convenient for him (back in the days it was listnening to the radio, these days it's spoteezer). That's what made me react in the first place... conflating a spoteezer subscription with "do the right thing" is just... bizarre to me. You can only do so when you ignore the truth of the revenue share behind these platforms

Re: I'm done with Google

#243

Post by JodieBenitez »

yellow_lead wrote: post #118
JodieBenitez wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even a hardcore pirate like me tried to do the right thing when it comes to music - I got Spotify. This is not the right thing to do. Spotify is peanuts to artists. If you want to do the right thing, buy music at Bandcamp: you get files you can keep forever and artists get a fair share of your money.

The artists I listen to don't all sell on bandcamp (most don't).

You're the lucky one, because there's a whole universe for you to discover ;-)

Re: I'm done with Google

#244

Post by danbulant »

djhworld wrote: post #207
gorgoiler wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pirate something for which you’ve already bought a license, is it even pirating? If the license is for a particular set of bits then unless you are pirating those exact bits I guess so. You licensed Lemonade.drm.mp4 so downloading Lemonade.mp3 is pirating. But then again it’s not pirating to re encode your audio files once you’ve downloaded them. So I feel more confident in saying it’s not the bits that are li…

IANAL but I think the license you buy from google play or apple or whatever is not a license for the content, it's a license to access the content from the provider through a specific player/app. So getting content from musicbackups dot com or whatever would not be a transferable right or gray area. People will do it anyway though

Not sure about US, but for example in Czechia, you can download any content legally - as long as you don't share it, it's fine. Torrents do share it though, so that is a gray area.

You also have a right to make a personal backup/copy of the content, again, as long as you don't share that copy (projecting for multiple people is also sharing in this context).

Re: I'm done with Google

#245

Post by gorbachev »

gleenn wrote: post #28
gundamdoubleO wrote: post #10

I'm always reminded of Gabe Newell's quote on piracy[1]: >Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem And by in large I still agree with it. For me I've only ever turned to piracy when the legitimate service has become a complete mess of red tape and user frustration. [1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-pir...

Honest question, what's the difference between a pricing and service problem?

For me pirating "services" (torrent trackers, Usenet, etc.) simply offer better choices.

For mainstream content it's available around the globe, in all kinds of different formats / bitrates, with community sourced subtitles, usable on any device (hw performance limitations notwithstanding) and in my possession forever after downloading should I choose to keep the content.

Another service improvement on piracy is better availability of more obscure content. Live shows, foreign movies/music or anything out of the mainstream is usually accessible better when you're pirating content.

The only content class traditional media companies and online streaming offers a better service for is live broadcasting, and even then geographical restrictions f*ck you over depending on the licensing agreements.

Re: I'm done with Google

#246

Post by gorbachev »

prakhar897 wrote: post #77

It's even worse on youtube. I used to save songs/videos on youtube playlist but they randomly started vanishing. Google doesn't even provide the name of the content it removed so we can search it again. Even worse, some songs actually got replaced by another version (i think due to copyright issues). The result is I started downloading everything I loved and "liking" the content to track what I already have. There's…

Try listening to old playlists you saved or created on Spotify. It's "interesting".

I just logged in to Spotify for the first time in about two years and checked out a few playlists I had saved. Most of them skipped every song. Absolutely ridiculous.

Re: I'm done with Google

#247

Post by teddyh »

userbinator wrote: post #136
usui wrote: post #16

> So I pirate the movie (please don't arrest me, it's google's fault) I really like the frank tone of the article and I wish people in general would just write unabashedly more often when it comes to stuff like this. Writers online love to dance around the idea of "pirating" their digital goods when communicating on the topic: "Ooh my 'friend' may or may not have downloaded 'xyz' movie from 'abc' website, but I don't…

I really like the frank tone of the article and I wish people in general would just write unabashedly more often when it comes to stuff like this. I still remember when not pirating would get you strange reactions, and it was considered polite to share (on a USB drive or similar) the media you had recently consumed; some PMPs even had a USB host mode, which let users exchange files with others easily, and P2P was als…

https://www.little-gamers.com/2001/12/13/372

Re: I'm done with Google

#248

Post by flandish »

snowwrestler wrote: post #80
scambier wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Piracy is a service problem" means that most people pirate because they don't have access (or difficult access) to the product/service they want. They would gladly pay for it, but they can't, or can't be hassled to. I don't know if it's been backed up by real data, but services like Steam and Spotify tend to confirm this intuition.

Spotify confirms that piracy was in fact a pricing problem. With a Spotify subscription, you get way more music for a far lower price than under the previous “buy it to hear it” model a la iTunes or CDs. And artists make way less money now from recorded music than they used to. Studios only agreed to the Spotify pricing model because the alternative was rampant file-based piracy. They figured that getting something i…

Not entirely - one problem I had with piracy, and I did it from the 90’s on, was finding new music. Spotify opened up catalogs with algorithms that piracy never could. Short of going to Strawberry’s and looking around… for cds to copy from friends, piracy never really had that same Spotify algo service that said “if you like this you’ll like that.”

Re: I'm done with Google

#249

Post by jemmyw »

jl6 wrote: post #141
snowwrestler wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify confirms that piracy was in fact a pricing problem. With a Spotify subscription, you get way more music for a far lower price than under the previous “buy it to hear it” model a la iTunes or CDs. And artists make way less money now from recorded music than they used to. Studios only agreed to the Spotify pricing model because the alternative was rampant file-based piracy. They figured that getting something i…

Another thing to consider is that there is so much more music today than 20 years ago in the Napster era. There has been an explosion in content creation, as the means of production have become ever-more accessible, and it all accumulates over time, so the older stuff never goes away. The supply of music only ever increases, and naturally when the supply of something increases so dramatically, we would expect the pri…

I wonder if we're moving back to an older way of consuming music where many or most people have musical ability and play for themselves and family. Perhaps not quite to that degree but you're more likely to know several people who create music and share it without being or expecting to be a musician by trade.

I personally listen to less music and play more. Rather than looking for the new thing I'll examine songs in quite a lot of detail to understand them.

Re: I'm done with Google

#250

Post by veltas »

swores wrote: post #241
veltas wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask for open mindedness that I bring religion here, I feel it necessary to discuss this question of ethics/morality: "Who gives a fuck?" I quote Mark 12:15. > But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Render…

I can understand how Christianity-based morals might lead to thinking that digital piracy is immoral. I can't understand how that particular bible verse could be a genuine influence on deciding whether or not illegally downloading copyrighted material is acceptable, at all. Can you explain what logic led from reading that text to deciding it meant you shouldn't pirate things? And I'm also curious, if you hadn't read…

(To be clear: this is not a comment on Google's broken platform or the article, that's just awful. It's a response to the question "who gives a fuck?" regarding torrenting generally.)

> would Jesus' other teachings...not have left you considering digital piracy to be immoral?

Romans 13 calls Christians to be subject to authorities, that would be most Christians' given reason. It's one of my reasons, but it was not the reason that first convinced my heart.

> I can't understand how that particular bible verse could be a genuine influence on deciding whether or not illegally downloading copyrighted material is acceptable, at all. Can you explain what logic led from reading that text to deciding it meant you shouldn't pirate things?

Enemies of Jesus asked (paraphrasing) "Is it righteous to pay Caesar's tax, or not?". They were trying to trap him into saying something either illegal in the eyes of the Romans, or unrighteous in the eyes of the Jews. This is why Jesus says to bring him a coin, and asked "Who's head is on this coin?", and then says therefore "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God the things that are God's". This is the answer to the question of what is right with conflicting authorities, because on reflection it is not controversial that God's ownership should take precedence, but that otherwise in Caesar's land and with Caesar's money you must play by Caesar's rules.

Furthermore, for a free man of those days, this principle would have been a precursor of the social contract: you partake in Caesar's money (or live in his land), then you pay Caesar's tax; the same way that you might argue that people who benefit from society owe a debt to society.

Thinking of it this way, now think about media that is 'owned'. It bears someone's mark. You watch completely freely, you are far more free and flexible to choose what media you consume than what economy you engage with. Nobody in the free world is oppressed into watching movies. I find it now actually principled to defend therefore that the 'owner' of some media (especially the creator) can expect payment in return for a copy of the media. We can certainly debate about reasonable scope of copyrights, but I think copyrights themselves are reasonable to an extent.

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