this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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This is a lie, this was disproven. It even benefits them.
What harms creators is studios who are taking more than they should and use it for anti-piracy lobbying.
It honestly depends. It definitely harmed musicians before streaming platforms arrived. And it only harms popular series that don’t need advertising (although you could say if a series is making that much money losing some is probably not much of a big deal).
Acting like piracy is only harmful to the market is anachronistic, but it’s undeniable that, while it does more good than harm, it still does a bit of harm.
Piracy is being proliferated by government's inability to enforce anti-trust laws and protect consumers. We need another Roosevelt to come in and break up the monopolies corrupted by power and greed. When the government is too weak and corrupt to represent people's interest they find another way to take care of themselves. I'm personally quite liberal and inclined to socialism, but I as write this comment I can feel some connection to the libertarian creed of not depending on a centralized authority to take care of things that could be handled more effectively at the individual or community level.
Huh? What could libertarianism do to help here? You're not going to trust bust during a local town hall.
Libertarianism is a broad ideology that means different things depending on who you ask. The notion that an authoritarian government can be controlled by billionaires and corporations is certainly viable. Undermining those forces and resisting their control by by not paying for content and controlling your access to said content by having your media library is exercising personal liberty.
The comment I made was quite nuanced and I mentioned that I'm personally more inclined to socialism and liberal views, but hopefully not too ideological that I can't see value in different ideas.
Frankly I think a moderate amount of piracy helps industrys as when we have companies like Nintendo who provides terrible service making it impossible to access old games piracy helps as blokes can use piracy to get shit that ain't even sold honestly it's probably more accurate to consider piracy a gauge for how terrible the industry service standards are
Yes, it does more good than harm. If it didn’t exist a lot of games would be unplayable and stuff like anime and manga would be way less popular in the west.
…but it still does some harm in certain cases. If it was decently regulated (i.e. you can freely download stuff that isn’t currently being sold in your language through official channels) the harms might outweigh the pros, but since an English-speaking person downloading a translated rom for Torneko no Daibouken is still considered “piracy”, we definitely need it as things currently stand.
Its up for debate how much it actually hurt musicians, there is an argument saying that before the advent of streaming the music industry was headed for the dogs anyway, and that piracy was just one of the many things that contributed to the decline of the cd-sales based music industry. If you want to help out the actual artists, go to live shows and buy merchandise.
When it comes to the TV industry, more streams dont translate into more money into the actors or creators pockets, they only line the pockets of the executives at netflix, hulu, etc.
Depends. More streams means more money for the executives, so they’re encouraged to fund new seasons/new similar projects to get more money, resulting in more money for the creators/actors too. If a series doesn’t get streamed it’ll hardly get renewed and the creators/actors can’t make a name for themselves.
Although as I said, piracy doesn’t really hurt under that aspect since if a series isn’t that known it might help in getting it popular, and if it’s already known it doesn’t need additional incentives for renewal.
how does piracy benefit creators? that sounds unlikely
Pirates who obtain games they did not intend to purchase become more likely to either buy that game later on, or buy one of its successors later on.
Pirates also tend to enjoy the games they pirate, and arent often quiet about it. So a pirate is still usually giving free word-of-mouth advertising to non pirates.
i have pirated games before, usually games i wanted to buy but couldn't at the moment. for example: minecraft, which i played pirated for much time until i could buy it.
honestly, now that you said it it's really more obvious to me how it could potentially end up benefititng creators. i wouldn't have bought minecraft if i hadn't played it before.
Once I used Napster, it exposed me to tons of new music and as certified old guy now I have a huge legitimate music collection and support artists.
It serves to get their name/content out there to more people who would otherwise not have been interested in paying for it initially. For instance, you may be more willing to pirate a game than to buy it without knowing you'll be interested, but after playing it, you may decide it's worth buying.
Also, in areas where legal means to watch just fucking suck, piracy can increase the amount of fans interested in things like merchandise.
It also helps to gauge interest in regions and territories where the media was never put up for sale in the first place. If the distributer is clever and can track where their pirated media is consumed then they can find out where their product might sell better
How does piracy help creators?