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Why I'm a Pirate

ploum.net

31–40 of 527 posts

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#31
I bought all the albums of my favourite performer and don't want to scratch the CDs or waste my time to rip the music from CDs, hence I download them from the web.

Does that count as piracy?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#32
post #26

This is a series of pretty poor arguments. The author seems to be looking for reasons to justify their own piracy and conflates anger at the approach of the "copyright industry" with infringement upon peoples' rights. One of the final lines of the article, in particular, is jarring: "If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time has come for you to fuck off." It's fine to be angry about t…

"with infringement upon peoples' rights" People's rights are man made, so they are debatable.

That's one of my problems with his argument. The author seems to think he has a fundamental right to access the produce of media companies... but only on terms he finds reasonable, of course.

As you say, rights are often malleable - and reevaluating and redefining them (from both sides of this debate) should be an ongoing process.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#33

This is such bullshit, I really wish I could downvote this sort of post. If you don't agree with the methods used by companies to sell their products DON'T then take it anyway, you're showing people WANT the product but aren't willing to pay, so what's the best solution? Make it harder to pirate / try to block pirating. This guy and everyone else who refuses to just not consume media they can't get on terms they and…

When I started making enough money to buy everything I was consuming, I put an end to my piracy habit for some time. I had Netflix, used Rhapsody (then Spotify), bought season passes on iTunes (I used iPlayer a couple times but being in the US I had to use Tor to get around the region filter to watch a Louis Theroux documentaries, I guess that's "piracy"). I stopped when I realized that while I could afford it, all o…

When I started making enough money to buy a car I put an end to my car stealing habit for some time.

See how silly this sounds?

The problem with digital media is that it's very easy to copy. You can't just copy a car.

There are tons of website offering free music. So just support those artists instead of the ones charging too much for an inferior service.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#35

This is such bullshit, I really wish I could downvote this sort of post. If you don't agree with the methods used by companies to sell their products DON'T then take it anyway, you're showing people WANT the product but aren't willing to pay, so what's the best solution? Make it harder to pirate / try to block pirating. This guy and everyone else who refuses to just not consume media they can't get on terms they and…

When I started making enough money to buy everything I was consuming, I put an end to my piracy habit for some time. I had Netflix, used Rhapsody (then Spotify), bought season passes on iTunes (I used iPlayer a couple times but being in the US I had to use Tor to get around the region filter to watch a Louis Theroux documentaries, I guess that's "piracy"). I stopped when I realized that while I could afford it, all o…

I was in the movie theatre three weeks ago and paid almost 10€ for the ticket only to be forced to watch - I kid you not - 30 minutes of commercials + another 20 minutes of movie trailers before the movie even started. And when you reserve a ticket, you are forced to be there 30 minutes before the movie begins, otherwise they released the seats.

That was a waste of 50+30 minutes of my time, which was more than half of the entire movie. And I even paid 10 freaking bucks for it.

This was the moment when I realized that I probably won't go to a movie theater more than once a year from now on.

This doesn't mean that I now will go on and pirate the movie. There's still iTunes and I don't need to see a movie on release day, but it was a great example for how companies mess up the user experience.

The irony is that some theaters show something like a self-commercial with the saying "Cinema - that's what movies are made for".

Disclaimer: This happened in Germany. The movie-watching experience in the US was way better to me. No commercials, only a few trailers.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#36
post #17

When I was living in the United states I was able to use services like Netflix and spotify and get the content I wanted whenever I wanted where ever I wanted. Now, I that live in India, I cannot get that content legally. I cannot watch the TV shows I want to watch as they are aired (I have to wait 2-3 years for stuff to come on TV). The ONLY option I have is to download tv shows via torrents / find some online stream…

zalthor: You've highlighted a very important point here. One which a lot of people overlook and that is the unavailability of the content in most south-east-asian countries. Piracy, I believe, is the norm there and if it were not for piracy most of the countries over there would be severely lacking in terms of knowledge and awareness of a specific domain (for e.g: cultural awareness in terms of movies and music piracy).

Having said that I think it is also quite difficult for the "greedy" companies to sell in these countries at the price points that would have suitable returns. This is because of the fact that the masses in these countries simply cannot afford to pay that much. This does not necessarily mean they should suffer for it.

So, pirates are actually heroes in these regions no matter what anybody says because a genuine audience/market for them exists in poor/sanctioned countries around the world. SOPA or whatever other concoction they have in the rabbit hat, would do very little to affect the usual business of the day.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#37
post #19
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no right to the media they produce They have no right to force everyone else to conform to absurd rules made to preserve their profits.

Do they force you? Do you have to buy a Rihanna album?

Some people would consider popular music to be part of their culture. It's much like asking if you have to buy Microsoft Office when it has such a hegemony. You can of course not buy it, but there is pressure to do so.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#38
"I launch a search and I click. In less than 10 minutes, I've a full movie on my disk. In 20, I've the complete discography of an artist."

When I hear about stuff like this, along with people's multi-terabyte arrays of content, I wonder if they actually listen/watch much of it. Movie/Record companies are worrying that this all got "stolen" but if it was never viewed was it actually "stolen"?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#39

This is a series of pretty poor arguments. The author seems to be looking for reasons to justify their own piracy and conflates anger at the approach of the "copyright industry" with infringement upon peoples' rights. One of the final lines of the article, in particular, is jarring: "If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time has come for you to fuck off." It's fine to be angry about t…

    > It might make you feel better about it, but it really
    > doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something
    > of value 
Copyright infringement is not stealing.

Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been long since dead).

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#40

I used to be this guy, i would pirate software, music, tv shows, films, games etc. I did it mainly because it was easy. Innovation has changed my ways, not completely, but mostly. I no longer pirate music, ive paid for spotify for over 2 years now, i get music wherever i want on any device and its great, i wish they had metallica and acdc but theres youtube for that. I no longer pirate software, linux got good at "ju…

Plus, you can even get unlimited cinema passes (in the U.K. at least):

http://www.cineworld.co.uk/unlimited

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