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Why I'm a Pirate

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Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#111

Post by ravenheart »

ravenheart wrote: post #107
tomp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, does this tax then mean that I can pirate songs/movies? After all, I have already paid for them (through the tax). (Fiction, I know, but one can dream...)

Discliamer: IANAL. No, it's not fiction. I live in Spain and we have a similar tax. It taxes private copys, which are defined as 1. The work must be publicly available. 2. It must be done by a physic person (as opposed to an organization) 3. For private use, i.e. not broadcasting to an open audience allowed (but I can play it in my house with my friends). 4. Access to the work must have been obtained legally. 5. Must…

On a tangent topic, I hate to buy videogames nowadays, with all the DRM crap and other nasties. But if I pirate them, everything works without effort, despite the industry marketing advertising the opposite (you know: beware! virus!, et cetera). I won't pay for losing my time with their nonsense. So a couple months ago I decided to only buy DRM-free games from Humble Bundle.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#112

Post by mitsche »

mgkimsal wrote: post #69
tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright infringement is not stealing. I assume there will be counter-arguments/downvotes, so to elaborate on this point using my own arguments: If you steal something from me, I don't have it (as in "steal a car"), so you're putting me in a worse-off position. If you copy/pirate something that is mine (properly copy, with attribution, and not out of context), I am not worse-off (possibly even better-off, as I get…

"Copyright infringement is not stealing." Sure, let's have a very pedentic notion of stealing and keeping framing the debate around 'stealing'. OK... "taking something which isn't yours and/or you don't have permission to take". In most minds, that's the same as stealing, hence the standard use of the word 'stealing'. But substitute the phrase above for 'stealing' and, imo, it becomes harder to justify. Just because…

It's not pedantic to differentiate between two completely different things.

If you ever have something stolen from you, you'll quickly realize the difference between theft and copyright infringement.

Debates such as these keep orbiting around the definition of stealing because the term keeps getting used for copyright infringement out of lazy thinking or in order to facilitate an agenda.

Stealing is intrinsically "wrong" from a societal perspective because it puts those who take by force into a better position than those who earn by earning it, which is not sustainable.

Whether anyone is put into a worse position by copyright infringement (e.g. in the form of illegal downloading of music) is up for debate. But any serious debate should avoid the term stealing to describe the issue at hand.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#113

Post by asb »

andrewingram wrote: post #57
TamDenholm wrote: post #7

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…

Interestingly, I still pirate shows that are available on iPlayer. Simply because the iPlayer experience is inferior to pirating it. Why? Well, let's see... * iPlayer runs through Flash, it has to because of DRM (the iPhone version gets around this I think). I use a relatively recent Macbook Pro and the playback performance is dreadful. Even on my beasty iMac the HD versions of shows were stuttery at best, so I was f…

Check out get_iplayer http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html and play the downloaded flv in VLC.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#114

Post by njs12345 »

city41 wrote: post #103
tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright infringement is not stealing. I assume there will be counter-arguments/downvotes, so to elaborate on this point using my own arguments: If you steal something from me, I don't have it (as in "steal a car"), so you're putting me in a worse-off position. If you copy/pirate something that is mine (properly copy, with attribution, and not out of context), I am not worse-off (possibly even better-off, as I get…

If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it. In the end, it always boils down to pirates being spoiled. People never pirate to make ends meet. There is no digital content that is essential to anyone's life. People pirate because they want to be entertained but they don't want to pay for it.

What's the difference? In both cases the pirate is deriving an economic benefit without directly causing an economic cost.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#115

Post by ssgrfk »

Downloading music for free that is available to buy, is immoral.. If artists can't earn money from their art, there will be less art and more lady GaGa VS justin bieber shit.. Do you want to live in that world?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#117

Post by nickik »

MengYuanLong wrote: post #28
zalthor wrote: 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…

China is equally fun. Piracy is simply a fact. Universities use pirated windows XP. Street vendors sell every sort of game in plastic sleeves for a few kuai (approx 0.50 USD). Computer shops and tech markets do the same. I suppose I could set out to buy the "real thing" but I honestly wouldn't know where to start. I could go by price but even then... Even alcohol seems questionable often times. I am fairly confident…

Its an intressting casestudy. What would happen if the hole world would be like in china. Basiclly no copyright. Hard to imagen nowdays.

Countries like china often start copying everthing an then start to innovate themselfs skip a century (or half) and its the other way around.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#118

Post by DirkScheuring »

wladimir wrote: post #97
Silhouette wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When copying information on the other hand, nothing happens, you don't feel it when your information is copied. But you surely felt the months of work that went into writing your book in the first place, or the months of practice that allowed you to give that one great performance in the recording studio. > It is all about scarcity. Some of us prefer quality to quantity. Sadly, producing good quality usually requir…

Some of us prefer quality to quantity. Sadly, producing good quality usually requires a significant amount of hard work, and that isn't going to change any time soon. You just validated my point. The people that prefer quality still pay for people to work (hard?) for them. Without needing any violent enforcement or censorship. Don't fetishize information, focus on what you (and other people) can do with it. Until bra…

There surely are a lot of people who obtain quality content through TPB without paying for it. However, from what I could observe, attempts at making this group of people pay anyway have been largely fruitless so far, while at the same time they often appear to inconvenience paying customers, e.g. through intrusive "copy protection" schemes. So as a content producer, I tend to think of what I might "loose" through TPB as "promotion expenses".

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#119

Post by MaxPresman »

phzbOx wrote: post #89

He's good a point about the easiness of downloading/watching. Here's a real story: In Canada, it seems like all streaming music websites are illegal. (Spotify, pandora, ). But, I still wanted to be legal. So, at the end, I had to "hack" my way to download spotify and listen to it. Isn't that stupid? If they decide that spotify is illegal, at least give me a better solution.

Rdio has Canadian content, and there isn't a law against streaming music in Canada, the reason most music services do no bother is because of the expensive and complicated structure of the paid royalties. It's hard to get the initial license and almost impossible to satisfy the royalty payments,

Most music startups that stream music do not bother with canada, and that's sad.

Read the article why pandora decided to quit the Canadian market, sad true story

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JgGeRC_...

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#120

Post by ravenheart »

junto wrote: post #64
cientifico wrote: post #24

I wan't to buy "How I Meet your Mother" on English with spanish subtitles. I am from Spain and live on Germany. The only option to get the content I am looking for is through megavideo/piratebay. With the films, happen the same. If I use my iTunes spanish account, the content is delayed 6 months, no tv shows and all of them in spanish. If I use a German account, I only get German content. I pay spotify premium since…

I feel your pain. Unless you are English speaking in the USA, Spanish speaking in Spain, or German speaking in Germany then you are an edge case. I pity the 14 million "edge case" Catalan speakers in Spain.

14 million?

Accordingo to this:

http://www.caib.es/conselleries/educacio/dgpoling/user/catal... (sorry, spanish) there are around 7 million Catalan speakers in all europe (including Spain, Andorra, France and Italy).

Your argument holds, still. Indeed, I'm pretty sure most content is available in Catalan here in Spain. I would be more worried about the italian ones, or even the french.

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