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I think, semantic pedantry aside, we might agree with each other on the principle behind this even if we disagree on the definition of theft.
I agree. I'm simply saying that I don't care whether you call it "stealing" or "leeching" or whatever other term you want to use. The fact that we're even using the term "pirating" instead of just "acquiring" or whatever other term may be better suited gives up the game that piracy is stealing. If it wasn't, we'd just call it that.
I'm not pro-piracy for the sake of saving money.
I'm not either but I am pro-piracy in the context of people having access to things that they wouldn't normally because they're financially unable. School textbooks being pirated? Go for it. Fuck the exorbitant costs that these companies are charging students, of all people. If educators/writers could sell to schools directly, they should. Otherwise, students attempting to learn shouldn't be limited in their education/enrichment because they can't afford it. That's not the same situation, at least to me, with someone pirating a popcorn flick because don't want to pay for it.
The way I view it is that piracy is a useful tool and necessary means to combat unfair agreements favoring the rights holder. It's not a first step, it's a last resort.
I agree 100%. I am not advocating for the system as it is nor am I saying that the situation in the OP is fair. It's not, nor is it fair for rights holders to remove legal ways for people to consume media (like Nintendo going after people for pirating content that can't legally be purchased anymore). In those cases, I agree that piracy is justified and even necessary to preserve certain types of media. But that doesn't make it something other than stealing or theft. It's justified theft but it's still theft. Just look at the amount of "lost media" that's been preserved because of justified theft/bootlegging/whatever.
I generally try to use "one" to refer to individuals in the general sense, as it's harder to accidentally misinterpret.
That is much clearer and I will try to use that going forward. I can see how using "you" is confusing and it wasn't my intention to confuse or belabor that point.
I don't believe the people advocating for piracy as a money-saving measure are delusional like sovcits. It's far more likely that they simply don't care.
They definitely don't care... because it benefits them not to. I'm just making the plea that we should be honest about what we're saying, not whether it's justifiable or not.
I've maybe been a little harsh in my other comments, and for that I apologise. I understand that you've been getting a lot of hate (including from myself) but it's good to see you have a line in the sand.
I’m not either but I am pro-piracy in the context of people having access to things that they wouldn’t normally because they’re financially unable. School textbooks being pirated? Go for it. Fuck the exorbitant costs that these companies are charging students, of all people.
Why is it that students are exempt from your position? It seems like there's a hard and fast line here, when really, I think, there is a great deal of grey area in between.
A student is priced out because they're poor and a captive audience. A regular adult may also be priced out because they can't afford something and because the seller is charging too much, and has no other option for a similar product.
You've argued that the regular adult should just go without, but, when that option doesn't enact any meaningful change, why should piracy be an invalid choice? If anything, piracy (and the levels at which it occurs) provides a clear indicator of how bad the pricing is for the given product.
I've maybe been a little harsh in my other comments, and for that I apologise.
Apology accepted.
Why is it that students are exempt from your position? It seems like there's a hard and fast line here, when really, I think, there is a great deal of grey area in between.
I don't think they're exempt. If they can afford to pay for it, I think that they should. The difference, at least to me, is that most students are required to use specific books and, as you've pointed out, are a captive audience. Students don't get to choose which book they use to learn a topic in class the way that they get to choose what movies they're going to watch in their free time. It's exactly that captivity that I think warrants that "exemption" (even though I wouldn't call it that). Money should not be a reason why someone should be limited in bettering themselves, especially when they are forced to not have an alternative.
A regular adult may also be priced out because they can't afford something and because the seller is charging too much, and has no other option for a similar product.
That's functionally not true. We live in an age where media is sooo prevalent and so accessible that adults have plenty of alternatives. FOMO is not a valid justification to claim "no other option".
why should piracy be an invalid choice?
Because we're dealing with something that's entirely optional. Piracy has no reflection on how bad pricing is. That's an entirely separate argument. As an example, I collect Steelbook movies. Some of them are outrageously priced. Their prices are not affected by piracy at all because you can't pirate the Steelbooks themselves. If their value was only in the movie inside the case, then maybe you could make that argument.
The difference, at least to me, is that most students are required to use specific books and, as you’ve pointed out, are a captive audience. Students don’t get to choose which book they use to learn a topic in class the way that they get to choose what movies they’re going to watch in their free time.
Man, I feel so privileged in that I didn't have any mandatory texts to buy for my degree. I did buy one or two, and I got good use out of them - they were just the right height to raise my monitor up to eye level.
Piracy has no reflection on how bad pricing is.
It absolutely does. Or, at least, the level of piracy occurring is a good indicator of how bad the product/service is, for the given price point. If it's good enough, people will pay for readily, and there will be very little piracy.
Comparing Steelbook movies to piracy is a bit of a false argument. That's a physical good. I'm sure the movies themselves do suffer some amount of piracy - however the product is so good that people do buy it.
Man, I feel so privileged in that I didn't have any mandatory texts to buy for my degree.
How in the world is that possible? How could a teacher possibly assign any sort of assignment if you didn't have a shared textbook or curriculum? Or is this another semantic argument where you didn't have to buy it but were allowed to rent or otherwise borrow the books?
Or, at least, the level of piracy occurring is a good indicator of how bad the product/service is,
That's not true in the slightest. If it was, none of the games on Steam would be pirated. Games that cost 99 cents wouldn't be pirated. The fact that both of those situations exist is proof that piracy as an indicator is completely detached from both of those things.
I'll give a personal example but fear it will just lead to more needless pedantry. My studio used to create mobile games. We initially charged 99 cents for the game because we didn't want to do microtransactions or any of that other nonsense. Within the first week, the app showed up on piracy sites but we had code that detected when the dial-home for analytics was bypassed. We had no DRM on there, we didn't restrict the pirated versions and, in some cases we actually uploaded copies to these sites ourselves. When we looked at analytics for months afterward, the people playing the game the most were the people that pirated it. They can't claim that they didn't find value in the game because they were playing it every day and yet they didn't pay for it. In the end, we had to stop producing games because we couldn't get people to pay for the game despite them playing it regularly. I'm not sure how someone can resolve the idea that the game was bad and so they didn't think they should pay for it with the fact that they played it as much as they did (more even than the players that did pay for it).
Comparing Steelbook movies to piracy is a bit of a false argument. That's a physical good. I'm sure the movies themselves do suffer some amount of piracy - however the product is so good that people do buy it.
That is entirely my point with the example, though. With Steelbooks, it isn't the movie in the case that's the good. The case is what people are paying for despite being able to pirate the movie within.
How in the world is that possible? How could a teacher possibly assign any sort of assignment if you didn’t have a shared textbook or curriculum? Or is this another semantic argument where you didn’t have to buy it but were allowed to rent or otherwise borrow the books?
Not in the US. The content of my courses (I had a total of 9 years of undergraduate study lol, in 2 different universities, in both science and engineering) was all in the lecture slides/notes. There were recommended textbooks that were very good, but ultimately learning was better delivered to me by attending and engaging with scheduled lectures and tutorial sessions. They wrote the lecture notes, they wrote the tutorial questions, they wrote the exams. Hell, my favourite lecturer would just work on the fly with a marker pen and a roll of acetate on a classic overhead projector, making shit up and performing the calculations as he went along. Said lecturer was in his 80's when I had him - his wife was like 40, and she was his former PhD student lmao (she wore the pants in the relationship, apparently). Dude was a legend. His PhD project involved him building an oscilliscope, and apparently he spent about 3 weeks getting the bearings just right so he could spin the nobs and it would go peewwwwwwww.
That’s not true in the slightest. If it was, none of the games on Steam would be pirated.
Oh the irony. https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/
Piracy will occur regardless. However, that doesn't mean you have suffered a loss. It just means you haven't yet found your market.
Gamers, in general, are cunts though, I'll give you that. They'll hurt themselves before they push for a better world. Case in point: a Youtuber is contemplating suing Ubisoft for shutting down an ostensibly single player game (with vague multiplayer functionality). The game even has a hidden developer mode that allows offline play. And yet, on gaming communities where his video has been shared, there is an unhealthy dose of people saying "that's the way it is, if you don't like it, don't buy it" as if the game wasn't sold full price with no expectation that it wouldn't or couldn't continue on. "I'm getting screwed in the ass, how dare you suggest it should be more consensual".
Mobile apps is an even tougher business - which, by your pricing, is where I expect you've been working. It doesn't help that most apps are merely avenues for spyware infections. The vast majority of mobile apps are simply wrappers that use the system web browser, delivering web services that could have been provided through a url - but if they did that, they wouldn't be able to bundle in code that steals user data without paying them for it. (And no, use of a service that's offered free at the point of sale is not a fair exchange for user data, that's two separate transactions, with the valuable transaction of user data fraudulently hidden in the terms and conditions such that the user cannot make a fair value assessment).
Breaking out in games is akin to breaking out in Hollywood. It's more luck than anything else, or maybe knowing the right people. Incidentally, Hollywood accounting is an endemic disease that is harming the world over - just like Warner Bros Studios makes a film at a loss, while Warner Bros Productions reap all the profits, public facing businesses all over the world are operating at a loss so that the intermediaries can reap insane profits - all at the expense of the consumer and the actual producer.
The middle man kills good business far more than any pirate. I'm sure Google and Apple made a satisfactory profit off your apps, even if you suffered a loss.
That is entirely my point with the example, though. With Steelbooks, it isn’t the movie in the case that’s the good. The case is what people are paying for despite being able to pirate the movie within.
The movie is good, so you're willing to pay for it. The movie is good, so fewer people pirate it, because they're also happy to pay for it.
Not in the US. The content of my courses (I had a total of 9 years of undergraduate study lol, in 2 different universities, in both science and engineering) was all in the lecture slides/notes.
Ok, so as I suspected. If your classes weren't lecture based, you'd probably be in a similar situation then. That's not really a refutation of the point, though.
However, that doesn't mean you have suffered a loss
This is the entire crux of my argument, though. If they're playing the game, then you have suffered a loss because, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to play the game. The alternative is that the game has to be DRM'd or somehow otherwise inconvenienced and that's just bullshit. Why is it so hard to just admit that you shouldn't be able to play something that you haven't paid for and that, if you do, you're stealing? There's no judgement on that. I don't care if that's what you want to do. I just think people should be honest and admit that that's what they're doing.
The middle man kills good business far more than any pirate. I'm sure Google and Apple made a satisfactory profit off your apps, even if you suffered a loss.
Agree with this and everything above that you wrote. I feel like that explicitly disproves your argument, though, that piracy is only a service/quality issue. I'm very familiar with what Gabe has said and mostly agree with his position but that's an entirely different argument, yet again, than what I've been making. Gabe doesn't pretend that people pirating games aren't stealing them. He's just arguing that there are service reasons for why people might pirate them that have nothing to do with just the cost of the game.
The movie is good, so fewer people pirate it, because they're also happy to pay for it.
Again, if this were true and this simple, no good movies would be pirated. And yet they are.
If your classes weren’t lecture based, you’d probably be in a similar situation then.
Lol if my classes weren't lecture based I'd have an Arts degree, not Science and Engineering degrees. Said degrees have far more scheduled hours, rather than relying on "reading time".
I wasn't refuting any points, I was subtly pointing out how the US university system seems to be corrupt such that the people running courses require you to buy their books. None of the textbooks that were recommended in my courses were written by the people teaching them - and yet, the courses were among the top in the UK.
If they’re playing the game, then you have suffered a loss because, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to play the game.
That is simply not true. Them playing the game is not you suffering a loss.
Let's make a fair use example. Let's say their friend bought the game, and described it to the "infringer" in explicit detail. There's nothing wrong with that.
Then let's say this person took that description and wrote their own game. Said person happened to be the Shakespearian monkey with a typewriter who wrote an identical game to yours. So long as they don't publish or distribute the game, they're not infringing on your copyright. They've never even seen nor experienced your game, so they can't be "stealing it" either. They made their own unique creation, which, by chance, is the same as yours.
They played the game, but they did not pay you for it. Why should they? They don't know who you are, they don't know what you're selling, they just enjoyed the fruits of their own labour - which by pure chance happens to be the same as yours.
Are you entitled to money from them? No. That would be ridiculous. That principle was established before you were born.
Again, if this were true and this simple, no good movies would be pirated.
There will always be some level of piracy. There always has been. Copying computer data is so trivially easy that prohibiting it is only a losing battle.
Your statement that "no good movies would be pirated" is thus completely false. You can only measure the amount of piracy and correlate that with the quality of the work. On the whole, good quality work is pirated less than poor quality work.
The fact that you experienced rampant piracy is perhaps a better indicator of the quality of your work, more than anything else.
Their prices are not affected by piracy at all because you can’t pirate the Steelbooks themselves.
My limited metalworking experience says otherwise....