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Making a digital copy of something is not the same as stealing. In many instances, the occurrence of piracy is actually beneficial to the party releasing the digital product.
Paying for a service actually doesn't mean you own lifetime access to that service.
I'm all for boycotting on the basis of greedy monopolies attempting to extract more cash without any added value, but this argument doesn't really make a lot of sense.
if that's what you think, I have a bridge to sell you.
It's worth $6.7billion but the lowest I'll go is $3.50
once you pay me you can have that bridge, but don't you dare copy it.
I'm not arguing against piracy. It's obviously not stealing. That was my first point.
My whole thing is that embellishing the obvious factual statement that "piracy is not theft," doesn't really drive the point home any more effectively. I find this specific argument needlessly clunky when the first point remains true in any context.
if owning a product is based in ownership of the product and buying proves ownership then, you can't own their product by "buying" their product when they can revoke your ownership anytime.
so, if you can't buy the product and can't own the product, you can't steal the product because they never gave you possession of it.
they didn't lease me the use of the product according to the law, they sold it to me. from a legal perspective, there are contracts, signatures, and other documents that must be filed for every lease to determine the structure of the lease. TOS is not a binding contract strong enough for leases.
funny thing, that's one of the fights going on right now with companies like Disney and Doordash. their argument that the victim agreed to their (broad) TOS, releases them of any legal liability.
should the corpos win those cases, TOS for the most mundane bullshit will likely end terribly for consumers.
Old-fashioned high seas pirating may have been stealing, but the modern copyright infringement form has never been stealing.
A key aspect of stealing is that you're depriving the owner of some kind of property. While you have that property, they don't, and they can't use it. Copyright infringement doesn't deprive the owner of anything. The only thing they lose is the government-granted monopoly over the right to distribute that "idea". If copyright infringement is like an old fashioned crime, it's like trespassing. The government granted someone the right to control who has access to some land, and a trespasser violates that law.
The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money they feel entitled to every time [Party B] appreciates & consumes A's media. If hundreds & thousands of B's are appreciating & consuming A's media, the financial losses begin to add up after A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion & resources into it, only to not get paid for all that effort.
How would you feel if you worked your ass off at work then didn't get paid because your employer felt invisible & untraceable and felt like they could get away with not paying you?
The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money
No, the media producers aren't deprived of money, they're deprived of control. They often do use that control to make money.
If hundreds & thousands of B’s are appreciating & consuming A’s media, the financial losses begin to add up
There are no losses. There may be missed opportunities to make sales, but that isn't the same thing as losses.
A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion
Sure, "passion". I'm sure that a lot of people pirate things passionately too.
As for how I'd feel? I'd probably feel bad if I depended on the current crooked copyright system to make money and then I wasn't making as much money as I hoped. But, that doesn't make the current crooked copyright system right. Similarly, if I were a manor lord in the middle ages and depended on peasants to work my land and the peasants ran away, I'd feel like I was being cheated. That doesn't mean that that was a good system either.
Interesting how you quoted "work, effort, training, time, and passion," while you conveniently disregarded the "work, effort, training and time" that media producers invest. You think they don't deserve to earn money for their work & effort & training & time?
Do you feel that YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?
I know you think you already answered that question, but you really didn't. So I'll ask you again:
Do you feel like YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?
Last Ubisoft game I bought was Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
When did you buy it?
When it came out.
lol as if ubisoft games are worth pirating. I pay for my internet connection and I'd rather use it on something that isn't slop
They have a few indie titles that are fun.
I really liked Grow Home and Grow Up
there's a small rebel group inside ubi who escaped the rituals where the rest sold their souls to Satan. they made things like rayman and the prince metroidvania... I don't think of them though when i think ubi tbh.
I have 2TB of music and 7TB of videos but I rarely pirate a game.
Almost never, sometimes I'm extremely interested in something but want to try it out first. Games are such time sinks that if I can't shell out $20, then I have bigger problems and probably shouldn't be playing it.
That said, I get a lot of content isn't available in some countries and piracy is the only way some people can experience something, so, different strokes.
"No your honour, I liberated it"
I can see the other argument though I don't agree with it.
Paying is obtaining a license to use a product. You own the license for as long as that payment is valid. If the validity of the license expires for some reason, you no longer have rights to use the product, whether you physically have it or not.
The difference is in licensing. Having a license to use a product that someone else created.
This is becoming a much more prevalent theme especially in computing. With physical goods, for the most part, ownership/possession of the item implies that you own the required rights to operate, use, or otherwise possess that item. Usually a license doesn't physically exist, it's more of a concept that is inexorably tied to the thing. With software however, the idea of license keys exists. If you have a license key for software, you can use the software regardless of where you got it from. Since the software can be copied, moved, duplicated, etc. The source of the actual bits the compose the software that runs doesn't matter. As long as you have a valid license key, you "own" a valid license to use the software which you paid for.
With online platforms, including, but not limited to, steam, epic Games store, Ubisoft connect, whatever.... They manage your licenses, and coordinate downloads for you, etc. The one thing I'm aware of with steam that's a benefit here is that you can get your product keys from the program and store them separately if you wish.
The problem is that not all platforms support the same format of product keys, especially for games. There's no universal licensing standard. This makes it tricky to have a product key that works where you want it to.
There's layers to this, and bluntly, unless there's wording in the license agreement that it can be revoked, terminated, invalidated, or otherwise made non-functional at the discretion of the developer that issued it, they actually can't revoke your ownership of a game, or at least the license for that game.
Application piracy (specifically for games), is when you play something without a license to do so.
They've stacked the entire system against you. Using wording in their license agreements that allows them to invalidate your license whenever they want to, and gives you no means to appeal that decision. Setting you up for litigation for piracy by using a software that you paid for when that license is revoked.
It's an insane thing to happen in my mind and there should be legislation put in place that obligates companies to offer a permanent, and irrevocable, license to software (looking at you Adobe), and also makes it much harder for companies to revoke that license. In addition, there should be a standardized licensing system, owned and operated independently from the license issuers, which manages and oversees the distribution, authentication and authorization of those licenses for them and you, something like humble bundle's system or something, where you can get license keys compatible with various platforms which can supply the software that constitutes the game you have a license for.
It should go beyond gaming.
Until such a time that the legal part of this is figured out, we'll be left with an unfair playing field, legally speaking, and piracy will be a way to have the software without a license (which is arguably illegal).
I don't like this system. I didn't ask for it. I think it should change. But legally, piracy is still illegal. The system is consumer hostile, and unfair. That fact, in and of itself, should merit something to be done about it. So far, nothing has even been proposed by governments. I'm hoping the EU makes the first move on this, and everyone follows suit. I can see them doing it too.
I think the point of the saying is that they don't recognize the licensing a consumer product as a valid exchange of money for goods or services.
Or we just go back to the old way; where a company sells a product and consumers just own it. Why does a static piece of software/video require a license? Updates used to be optional, but then company's started selling broken stuff and writing out exclusions until we had no other options.
I'm not opposed to the idea, but license keys for software have existed for a very long time.
License keys also don't always represent an application or software, they extend the rights of use beyond the initial purchase.
As a simple example, you can get license keys for Windows that do not change what version of Windows is installed or how it operates. I work in IT, and when setting up remote access systems, we need to buy remote desktop license keys to allow users to connect. You're not getting anything you couldn't otherwise, but you're allowed to have more people connected at a time while the system is running.
There's similar examples across the board, this is just one that's pretty fresh in my mind right now. One of my clients is hitting the limit of their RD licensing.
For less complex software, like games, there used to be a physical component, usually an installer disk or something that would need to be validated when the game launches (though disk burning made this ineffective). With digital resources it's nearly impossible to validate someone has a licence without some kind of license key system in place.
I'll say again, I see their argument here. I don't necessarily agree with any of it.
IMO, it's a challenging subject, and one that we the people, via our elected representatives, should be pushing for legal representation on, by implementing laws that govern how all this works and limiting how much companies like Ubisoft can fuck us over because it's Tuesday, and that made them mad.
why did i think pic 2 would say "adobe ceos"?
I'm not pirating, I'm merely copying data without involving license transfers and subscription platforms.