Uriel-238

We also get little conversation about how copyright extensions and patent trilling robs the public use of public-domain content, especially when the Mouse is lobbying the federal government to extend rights further.

It’s part of how I remember id est versus exempli gratia

The problem is noted by Karl Marx, the capitalist inevitably captures the government and its regulating departments so that the body of laws will be revised in their favor. Remember that the point of copyright laws in the Constitution of the United States, to promote science and the useful arts was killed when IP was extended. Every year that someone owns an idea is year that the rest of us does not.

I don’t know the solution, but corruption of the temporary monopoly was inevitable.

I assume UBI. Already quality of product is not cultivated by the current publishing system. People who get their books published do so by affording a good agent with connections, which rules out the black kid using a manual typewriter her brother rebuilt.

Maybe capitalism doesn’t work, except for the richest capitalists?

Most IP owners didn’t create what they have, but bought it off someone else. I have little pity for rich people.

I’d say society is better off with no IP related temporary monopoly than the system we have. There are enough instances where creators die penniless and publishers make all the profits to suggest there already is no financial incentive for an inventor to invent. Like Goodyear, they do it more as a hobby or in the interest of society.

Maybe if we had social safety nets so everyone not rich wasn’t desperate, we might be able to have a robust innovation sector that was less focused on using law to screw competitors and consumers.

Billions typically paid for by government subsidy, id est taxpayers. I’m not sure what the justification is for private IP rights when the capital is socialized.

This iceberg goes deep.

Youtube’s ad policy is abusive, and online ads are not always safe. Regardless of whether adblocking is legal or fair to Youtube, not doing so puts you at greater risk of malware insertion so is a necessary safety precaution.

As YouTube profits from your engagement through more than ads, YouTube still benefits even when you watch videos without ads.

Does the game just disappear if it was never cracked?

Considering there are tons of games that are no longer supported, the answer is yes, the game customer is left to the elements when the publisher decides they’re done. And with the current DMCA, we’re not even legally allowed to break DRM for legal purposes (such as to play games we bought when the DRM is no longer supported.)

Curiously, it does send a message for the determined end user that legality is only for suckers (or for companies who have to operate within the constraints of licensing). Curiously, Windows 10 and 11 depend on the ignorance of upper management regarding the degree to which Microsoft has surveillance access, since companies don’t get to medium-sized without having a few skeletons in the accounting closet. I’m surprised so few companies haven’t switched to Linux Red Hat (which has a similar support package) but then Red Hat is going through its own scandals right now.

Anyway, if your game is popular, you can expect the old version to be supported until the redux comes out. If it’s a niche game produced by a company that the publisher bought a while ago and would like to forget, yes, it’ll disappear into the aether as you watch.

Right now we already have aluminum printers and arrays that will turn a stone (wood, ice, etc) block into a detailed sculpture.

The cool thing is that prototypes can be printed and then turned into dyes to be filled with steel and cast, and NGOs are using this tech to arm African villages against warlords.

About the same time we make fusion power viable, well be able to construct civil projects in a simulation, test it against the elements with an advanced physics engine and then send an array of constructor robots to build it from the ground up.

Just in time for humanity to get wiped back to the stone age from perpetual severe weather.

taking something that does not belong to you does not explain how it is obvious that piracy is stealing, and suggests you don’t actually know the difference.

Do you know the difference between copyright infringement / patent infringement and theft?

Care to try again?

You revised your text to change its wording. No footnotes.

And then you accuse me of ignoring or misunderstanding without acknowledgement that you’ve altered the thread.

I can no longer assume that you’re arguing in good faith.

ELI5 then. How is it obvious that piracy is stealing? How is piracy not moral?

You certainly asserted such by arguing piracy is morally wrong. If IP belonged to the public (id est there’s no patent or copyright) then everything would be in the public domain. Media piracy would not be a thing.

But you assert not only is it a thing but it is morally wrong.

So please, by what authority are you asserting puts IP in the hands of private interests, thus making piracy a moral wrongdoing?

Fair enough. By what authority do you assert intellectual property belongs to a private entity and not the public?

This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public – you and I – of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn’t have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.

Granted, some argue that creators would have no interest in creating, except that they do when they are given the means to do so. This is one of the threats social media has, in providing entertainment that is not sending its profits to the major players in the industry.

We’re not pirating from the artists. We’re not pirating from our neighbors. We’re pirating from giant corporations who’ve been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.

And given the government does not execute its function in good faith (that is, in service of the public, including protecting its interests from corporate capture), we have grounds to argue the authority of the state is forfeit, ruling the public by force rather than by consent (our elections allow us to choose from oligarch selects, and they have to obey plutocrats to keep their careers.)

Without the artificial construct by governing systems to make IP a thing to be licensed (and the use of DRM to control its distribution) neither patents nor copyrighted material would be a thing at all, let alone have been turned into the monstrosties that are US and EU IP law.

Piracy is always stealing. Y’all can keep trying to spin it if it helps, but its pure copium.

So you’re just being equivocal and trolling?

When we consume content and like it we have a tendency to want to patronize it, so yeah, if you pirated Wednesday season one, you’re more likely to watch season two buy T-shirts and other swag, look for more Addams related content, and so on.

A good example of this happened in Russia when Neil Gaiman’s books hadn’t yet been marketed there. There were some unofficial and crowdsourced translations (some Russians learned English just to read Gaiman!) and so when the market finally reached Russia, it exploded, because the fan base had already been established.

GoT was an unusual case because HBO was bought separately from normal cable packages, and so fewer people had it, so it depended on piracy and social contacts (groups gathering for viewing parties at their friend’s house). There were even public venues who would show the new episode (unofficially, so an unlicensed public performance) and by HBO ignoring these, it allowed the fanbase to swell to incredible proportions (at least until Season 8 which popped that bubble). Still, there are tons of spin-off markets from which HBO (now MAX) continues to profit.

When we like our content, we become invested in it. It becomes part of our lifestyle. We talk about it with friends. We make friends with folks who are also fans. And this is the point when we’re susceptible to collectables and spinoffs.

Also we^† pirate for one of three reasons:

• We can’t afford to buy the content but want to consume it. Or it’s not available in our region
• The official version is odious to use (has DRM, forces us to watch commercials, etc.)
• The company that makes this stuff is malignant (cruel to its employees, bigoted against marginalized groups in the society, is associated with dangerous sects and subcultures) and we don’t really want to support them.

So in those cases where these are not factors, most people are going to choose to not pirate content they like, or support it in other ways. (If you want to support musical artists, it’s far less important that you buy their songs on iTunes, and far more important that you go to their concerts when you can. And buy their concert t-shirt for $60. John Coulton also takes tips.)

† We in this case refers to the larger demographic of those capable of pirating. When a product is expensive or unavailable or whatever, people who sometimes buy will look for ways to pirate or obtain deals or whatever. Yes, there will be piracy enthusiasts who never buy, but that’s a slender demographic despite what the anti-piracy propaganda might suggest. Also if content is only pirated, that may mean it was never officially released, or the release version was really poor quality.