this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Imagine a cinema has a peeping view from the outside. Is it immoral to peek through the view? I.e: is it considered stealing to do that?

If instead of the cinema, the place was a classroom. Or a workshop, are you considered a theive?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a drive in cinema in my city surrounded by residential houses. If you look over your fence you can see the screen, and if you have a radio you can tune into the audio. Free movies nearly every night of the week.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I love this.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It's more important to me to consider the ethics or morality of the situation rather than the legality. Laws, especially in the US, are built to protect those in power, aka those with money. In all of those situations, you'd be considered a thief. But the idea that education is a commodity is immoral in the first place. So I have no qualms about the classroom and workshop. The cinema either.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine owning a farm where you grow the same crop as your neighbor's farm, the only difference is that you're using natural seeds, but your neighbor is using genetically modified seeds that were licensed from a mega corp. Wind comes along and your neighbor's plants cross pollinate with yours, you know, nature being nature. Guess what, you're now being sued by the mega corp for stealing their IPO.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Well a lot of people think there is no moral consumption under capitalism anyway, so what's the difference?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How I've dealt with morals is that if you steal a book from a bookstore, the bookstore now has one less book. But if you took a notebook and went to the bookstore and started hand copying, word for word, when you're done, you can leave with your notebook but the bookstore owner haven't lost anything. I know hand copying a book is implausible, but what if you had superhuman writing speeds? Therefore, using technology like cameras shouldn't be any different than hand copying it.

So I concluded with: Digital Piracy =/= Theft.

Now whether digital piracy is moral or not, I don't care. I'm not stealing, I ain't a theif. Whether I pirated a book, or if I never even existed in the world, the result is the same: The bookstore never loses anything.

[–] azayrahmad -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They lose a potential buyer, that is, you. Which is why books are plastic sealed.

Now if you don't have the means to pirate the book, would you buy it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Now if you don't have the means to pirate the book, would you buy it?

That's the question, really. Would one just buy it or would one just go "welp, guess I'm too poor for that!" and just never watch the movie or read the book? I can tell you which one I am, I am poor, so I would just not watch, read, or listen to shit. No art for the poor I suppose.

But also, it's hard to feel bad when you're torrenting stuff like Mars Needs Women, I'm not even sure the production company still exists, most people involved in making it are likely dead, and I don't have the energy much less the money to try and track down the ONE streaming service it may be on. I don't watch things made after '09, and I don't watch popular things at all, for some of this stuff the only way to get it is piracy or buying a used DVD or VHS from some schmuck on ebay who thinks his VG+ copy of Petey Wheatstraw on VHS is worth Shantae money (it isn't.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not the other guy but piracy isn't an automatic loss of sale. I've bought plenty of things I originally wouldn't have, because piracy was my "skimming the book" before buying. Not being able to pirate is like seeing the plastic wrapped book and going "I'll just look for something else then, I don't want to waste my money on something I'm not sure I'll like".

If someone has decided to pirate something, they had already decided it wasn't worth buying to begin with, they were already a "lost" sale.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was recently able to achieve the Pinnacle of my movie going career with a little planning ahead. Went and bought tickets to Evil Dead Rise, then it ended with enough time that if we waited for the credits to roll most of the way through, we could walk right into the Mario movie, and then did the same into John Wick 4.

And because the theater will let you choose your seats, all you have to do is check before you go how full they are and if you really want to know, check maybe thirty minutes before the next movie starts, and see what seats are available. They're usually static web pages, so you can just have a tab open and refresh it. Then there's no conflicts... you just walk in and sit down in seats you know are empty.

Theater employees don't give a fuck, they're too underpaid to care.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You wouldn't download a car, would you?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Everyone decides their own morals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

what would you be stealing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nope. Why would it be?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't say that peeking through the view is immoral.

But it is probably immoral to drill a hole into the cinema wall to create this peeping view without the permission of the cinema owner.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thou shalt not drill a hole the cinema wall