No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.

“stealing” a digital copy of a movie, tv show or a game is like if the item you’re stealing from a store is infinitely copyable. Like the replicator from star trek…or that one episode of Sabrina the teenage witch with that box that can make a perfect copy of everything you put inside of it.

Of course I personally would never pirate anything, no matter how much streaming services increase their prices or how much they crack down on VPN usage to get around geo-restrictions, PIRACY IS BAD AND ONLY BAD PEOPLE DO IT.

I’ve never pirated anything in my whole life!

There are people who understand what I’m saying…but apparently most people don’t get it.

Of course that means I still would never pirate anything. That would be horrible to “steal” a copy of a movie or a TV show

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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    19 days ago

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If buying isn’t owning, then pirating can’t be stealing.

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
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    19 days ago

    It is always morally acceptable?

    Morality is, literally, subjective. There is no universal answer to that question.

    I personally consider anything being sold by a distributor to be fair game, no questions asked. If I pay for mainstream music, films or games, most of the time, zero of that money goes to the workers who created those artworks. It just makes rich owners richer, because they legally own rights. I would go as far as to say it’s morally wrong to pay for those things, it’s not neutral, it’s supporting a cycle of abuse at your own expense. So that’s my perspective on your ‘giant corporations’ question.

    Digital copying isn’t stealing, unfortunately, because those giant companies deserve to have their hoard of capital expropriated.

    Two screenshots. The first is a headline: "The world's richest countries came up with just $22 million to fight the Amazon fires.", the second lists the budget for The Emoji Movie: $50 million.[src]

  • Evkob (they/them)@lemmy.ca
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    19 days ago

    No, it’s not like stealing a physical item from a store.

    I’d argue stealing physical items from massive corporations is also morally acceptable. If you shoplift from a small mom & pop store, you’re actively hurting your community, however, if you shoplift from Wal-Mart, you’re actively hurting an entity which is hurting your community, therefore helping your community.

    • Alice@beehaw.org
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      19 days ago

      Shoplifting from Walmart hurts my knees because the boss won’t believe that our onhand numbers are wrong and makes me check high and low before I can nil pick it 🥲

      This isn’t an ethical argument against shoplifting btw, this is an ethical argument in favor of nuking Walmart

    • Ulrich@feddit.org
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      19 days ago

      If you shoplift from a small mom & pop store, you’re actively hurting your community

      Unless you’re part of a riot, then it’s okay.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    perhaps the only ethical consumption under capitalism is that which denies capitalists their profit.

    • Mr. Zeus@feddit.orgOP
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      19 days ago

      I mean…if the movie is good you should support it. Vote with your wallet.

  • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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    18 days ago

    I’m not going to say piracy is right or wrong.

    What I will say is if everyone had access to that replicator, and everyone replicated everything in the store and left, the store would close down, and the products would stop being made.

    Likewise, piracy is only viable because not everyone does it. If literally every person pirated the games or movies of any given company, that company would no longer be profitable and would close down.

    Piracy is getting something for free because other people pay for it.

  • FPSXpert@discuss.online
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    18 days ago

    Honestly if it’s a big setup like Spotify or Netflix or etc, “royalties” don’t mean shit to the production team / artists / whoever. Unless they’re Mariah Carey levels of replayed every year everywhere to the tune of sitting on millions in checks yearly, they aren’t going to get shit. Personally I’d rather support them in other ways such as buying merchandise, going to live shows etc but that’s just me.

    Remember though this is in minecraft, don’t pirate irl because that is very bad and you will personally prevent executives at warn-a-brother from buying another learjet. Remember: “pirating is bad and you should feel bad” 😂

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      Even buying albums never netted the artist more than 20 or 30 percent unless they also owned the record label.

      Buying their merch is the only real way to support an artist. They’ll make way more out of it than any other way.

  • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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    16 days ago

    People try to boil these things down to incredibly simplistic rules in an effort to justify what they’ve already decided they’re going to do.

    I am pro piracy, as I imagine virtually everyone on this community is. But I also think people get way too reductionist because that is easier than engaging with the nuances of what it means to “steal” or “pirate” or when we are or aren’t hurting a creator.

    I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons, the “victims” are few and far between due to it being so rare/situational as to make it ok to functionally treat it like there are none, and I also think all the people arguing they are “doing media preservation” who don’t even know what a proper 3-2-1 backup is are full of shit lol. I also think people need to accept the fact they just want free shit sometimes and trying to dress up their motivations/sense of entitlement to free media with high minded arguments about sticking it to corporations or whatever is disingenuous - just own the decision!

    I use my server because it is convenient and because I don’t want my kids being visually assaulted and manipulated every time they turn on a tv. I used to watch one of them visibly become panicked when all the tiles of a streaming service would pop up in front of him, it was just so overwhelming. I went a solid seven or eight years without the high seas because there was a time when streaming services were reasonably priced, convenient, and not dominated by ads. Now that that is no longer the case, I have gone back to my server. Simple as that.

    I don’t mind paying for a service, I don’t even mind the occasional advertisement in my life. But what we have right now is absolutely ridiculous and easily justifies so many reasons for pirating.

    All of this is to say you’re not gonna find people here who disagree with your decision to pirate. But you’re also not going to find some airtight philosophical argument that works 100% of the time. You have to consider the ethical implications of your actions in your day-to-day life, there are no simple rules to avoid that.

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    19 days ago

    I mean, the replicator is making food out of SOMETHING. I’m guessing it’s some kind of waste produce from the engine room. It needs matter to operate. It can’t create ex-nihilo.

    • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 days ago

      The replicator from Star Trek makes matter out of pure energy, not out of other matter. It can make almost anything out of matter, so long as it has the molecular pattern on file, and the ship has enough energy available to power the replicators. That energy comes primarily from energy storage dedicated to replicator production, but in emergencies where a massive amount of matter need fabricated, additional power can be provided by the warp core.

      • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        18 days ago

        So they’re using several hiroshima’s or nagasaki’s worth of nuclear bomb’s energy to produce a cup of Earl Gray, hot? Seems like using garbage or human waste would save a lot of energy?

        Maybe I’m misunderstanding the power required to produce a small amount of matter?

        While we’re at it, is a transporter actually transporting me? Or is it technically really replicating me?

        Because what I assumed was happening was they essentially had a transporter like device that would take some matter (say a big pile of human dung) transport it (i.e, convert it into the atoms/energy/whatever the transporter uses run it through a pattern buffer that’s stored in the transporter for say, Earl Gray hot) and beam it into the Captain’s quarters as Earl Gray hot instead of poop.