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

  • Xed@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    Piracy is great because it helps you not support corporation’s greed. They can’t profit off of you 😄

    • Mr. Zeus@feddit.orgOP
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      5 days ago

      But of course, piracy is bad. That’s why you shouldn’t ever do it! Why do you think every corporation has to get government handouts from the tax payers? Because we keep stealing from them…I mean…You keep stealing from them. I would never do that and I certainly don’t ever do that. I haven’t paid for any movies in over 10 years, so obviously that means I just don’t watch anything that costs money to see.

      I use a privacy friendly VPN that allows P2P because I play games online and no other reason

  • FPSXpert@discuss.online
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    7 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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      6 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.

  • Evkob (they/them)@lemmy.ca
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    9 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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      9 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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      8 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.

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

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

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

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

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        8 days ago

        I mean…if the movie is good you should support it

        What is ‘it’? The movie is a published work, it can’t be financially supported. Who is being supported with the money you pay?

        Vote with your wallet.

        Unfortunately, consumer boycott (and conversely, support) usually isn’t an effective strategy at this scale you’re talking about. Unless you and all your friends are voting with a few thousand dollars, it’s hardly going to make a dent in the numbers.

      • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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        8 days ago

        If the movie is good, you should support it by making a donation to the strike fund of the unions that represent the artists that actually create the movies. You can support artists without supporting the amoral companies that produce these works.

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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      7 days ago

      So long as people are starving under the system while others have yachts, the system is unethical, and thus following its rules – insofar as they perpetuate this inequity – is unethical.

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
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    8 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]

    • azalty@jlai.lu
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      8 days ago

      But if not a lot of sales are made, they won’t work with the same people again and will play more safely, and we’ll get less diversity

      • caesaravgvstvs@feddit.org
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        8 days ago

        But maybe the people who were working in big studio movies would shift to independent film making with lower budgets and more diversity.

        Obviously it’s also not a good solution, but do we need the big studios to make yet another avengers or minions?

  • noorbeast@lemmy.zip
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    9 days ago

    I would like to suggest an alternate perspective, that digital media be beholden to protocols not platforms.

    In other words lets focus on the drivers of competition…most evidence suggests that piracy goes down in response to easily accessible and affordable market conditions.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      8 days ago

      most evidence suggests that piracy goes down in response to easily accessible and affordable market conditions.

      The assholes know this too. We’re about due for another round of deshitifcation, just long enough to restore complacency.

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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    8 days ago

    Worrying about “property” of any parasite is something that I never bother to do.

    Giving money to your enemy is idiotic tho.

    There is a class war out there and normies are too busy funding their oppressors

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      Giving money to your enemy is idiotic tho. There is a class war out there and normies are too busy funding their oppressors

      Absolutely. At the end of the day, most of the moral ideals being thrown around are, at the end of the day, nice ideas.

      Giant corporations exist to get more money and, history shows, media companies will happily brainwash us and buy oppressive politicians just to push their profits up. Furthermore, they serve as a megaphone for the ideas of the owner class, who are historically the core force behind fascism when society is in crisis.

      Giving them your resources is fucking suicidal.

    • Mr. Zeus@feddit.orgOP
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      8 days ago

      And of course, they did go out of business. That’s why they need welfare from the government now.

      You should never pirate anything, that would be bad.

      There are people who understand what I’m saying, and then there’s the idiots that downvoted me on some of the comments I posted