this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago

I bought a quite expensive piece of animation software (that cost over $1000) to use professionally. The specific term it was sold to me under was a "perpetual license." I took this to mean "never ending", which is the dictionary definition of the word "perpetual." You can probably guess where this is going.

A few years later, in the middle of a professional project, it stopped working. I contacted support, and was told that they changed the way they were doing licenses so I'd have to buy a new one (at almost double the price) or eat shit. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

So yeah, if you're thinking of buying a Toon Boom Harmony perpetual license, maybe save yourself a lot of money and hassle and just pirate it instead. Or tell them to get fucked and use their direct competitor. I have done both.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Longer answer: easily yes.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

French Answer: Mais Oui 🥖🥸

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

German answer: jawohl!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes. Next stupid question.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)
  1. It's morally good when people access information, culture, and entertainment.
  2. It's morally good when the author of a work gets rewarded by their work.

Piracy is morally justified when 1 is a more pressing matter than 2. As such, it's justified in situations like this:

  • If, in the absence of piracy, the pirate would still not pay for the goods - because #2 is set up to zero (the author of the work is not rewarded anyway).
  • If it's impossible to obtain the goods without piracy. For example, abandonware.
  • If the author of the work would get breadcrumbs of the money used to access legally the goods, and the pirate compensates the author directly (e.g. donation).
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Nuance seems rare in these posts sometimes, I appreciate your post!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Huh. Based on the community this was posted in, I can assume that the answer the video comes to is "yes" and not watch it. But according to Betteridge's law of headlines the answer is "no." I need to argue about this without watching it but I don't know what stance to argue about.

Ah! I'll use the Orbit plugin to get an AI to summarize the video for me. Hm. The AI-generated summary says the video describes an anecdote about music copyright violations, talks about some ethical considerations about both music and software piracy, and then:

The speaker concludes by acknowledging the complexity of the issue and the importance of considering the perspectives of all parties involved.

So I guess the answer was "Maybe?" How am I supposed to have a pointless Internet argument about "Maybe?"

Bah. Someone attack me for using AI, at least that's a debate I can sink my teeth into.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Lazy prick! Should have just put the video on in the background while doing dishes, or do what I did and briefly skim the comments for someone to fight with! AI is dumb, it's not even named effectively and you're dumb for using it and a sheeple for calling it AI in the first place!
Fight me! ❤️

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Joke's on you, I have a dishwasher machine! Robots do my dishes for me too! It is you who is the dumb one, having to labor manually as you do!

Ah, there we go. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And now I'm here to fight with both of you, not about what you're arguing about, but I'm going to police your tone and call you both stupid because you didn't argue in the arbitrary fashion I've determined is "correct!"

This is the least helpful contribution I can make, while simultaneously attacking you both!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Is it to early to drop in and call everyone Nazis or nah?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

You used the wrong word for "two early!" Worse than Nazi!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I am not stealing. It's there, I take it and it's still there. Don't know why these posts keep popping up in piracy communities. Same plague was there on reddit too. Like seriously it's 2025.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Its almost like you think pirating something has no effect on anything.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (7 children)

I want the stuff, the stuff is there. I take it. The stuff is still there, nothing was lost, nothing was stolen.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What's the justification for not allowing me to make a copy? Those who decry piracy call it theft, but it's not theft since they aren't losing anything. Not a physical product they could run out of, nor a potential sale as has been shown time and time again; people who pirate a thing generally wouldn't have purchased the thing anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Everyone has already given their response so there's nothing really to add other than, well, there's lots of reasons to justify piracy. Most of them are even provided by the publishers / distributors themselves!

Also it's weird to browse the top 10 responses or even below, and NOT see this xkcd posted or even linked. What is going on, Lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It's always moral to steal from billionaires

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Most Billionaires don't write much code.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Usability and user experience. I've been on irc, newsgroups, dc++, etc etc. hell i traded d2 items for game keys on d2jsp.

Why? Convenient as fuck. From my perspective, fuck anyone who is gonna tell me how to consume media. Give me a better experience than i can give myself or fuck off. I'll give my money happily (i have subscriptions) if it's a good service. If it's the only service, meh AND if it sucks ass well, fuck off again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Why do I sneeze when I’m not even sick?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Can proprietary software be justified?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Can purchasing anything within the system of monstrous exploitation called global capitalism be justified?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Why would anyone need to justify their piracy?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hey wow! A headline that isn"t answered with "no".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is there a need for justification?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

We reject the premise of the question: the onus sits with copyright holders to justify copyright protection.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

why is anyone still trying to justify piracy? that's step 2 of a conversation that even non-criminals are on step 9 in

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Believe it or not, I've met people like this. I know a guy who was worried about showing a movie to our Meetup group.

Not because he was afraid of getting caught. He thought it might be unethical.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

it's crazy how worried normal everyday people are worried about accidentally hurting the feelings of corporations. especially post-covid.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It IS justified lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

if they put in DRM that makes the plugins 10x as big (looking at you, Acustica. I don't even use their plugins because of that), or they make the legit version have some bullshit always-online "all-in-one" software (i.e Native Access) which in turn makes the software a bit of a faff to get working in Linux (to install legit libraries for legit kontakt, native access stores those libraries as .iso files and does some virtual drive fuckery a la DAMEONTools), then yes, if the pirated version is quicker to set up and run (and install libraries for), it is justified imo.

Also i hate theaters and streaming services. I'd rather watch whatever movie I think is cool in the comfort of my PC rather than having to drive to the theater (if it's even on there in the first place), or paying for 9000 streaming services now and only watch like a couple of things. The wait for a good webrip (even more so for a BluRay) is worth it.

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