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AITAH for pirating games before buying them?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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If intellectual property is not real, then why do you support the idea of paying small developers instead of large developers? Their intellectual property is just as fake as large studios, right?
I really wish pirates were more honest with themselves. Just admit that you're taking something that doesn't belong to you and own it. I pirate content all the time, but I don't do the mental gymnastics to justify it. Just admit that you stole something and that you don't care, it's not that hard. I have an old PC in my closet that has about 200 movies and a bunch of cracked games on it that I've pirated over the years, and I don't care that I stole them. The Robin Hood complex some pirates have is just weird, imo. You're not sticking it to The Man; The Man is still bankrolling more per week than the team who made the content you stole is making in a year, regardless of your seed ratio.
By the way, large studios also have developers who rely on their jobs to put food on the table, just like the small studios. If you think anybody at EA aside from the C-Suite execs are significantly richer than the average indie dev, you'd be mistaken. Next time you're playing a pirated AAA game, look at your character; the guy who spent several weeks of his life sculpting and rigging that model is probably just as concerned about paying his rent on time as you are.
By the way, this isn't entirely directed at you, specifically. Just my thoughts on the general attitude I see in a lot of piracy communities lately.
You are not wrong, but maybe just a bit of perspective:
In my city, you can go to the public library, borrow a DVD, take it home, watch it. 100% legal. 100% free. No library membership fees. And they have multiple copies of most DVDs, so it's not like it's some lottery to use the service.
It feels a lot like downloading a movie without paying anyone to watch it. The only difference is you gotta go outside. Oh, and no guilt tripping.
Anyway, what's my point? Well piracy is only illegal because some people (not everyone) decided that everyone is going to pay an equal, but not necessarily an equitable, share to fund the development of said IP (unless you have a library in your area to counter this, partially). Worse, that everyone will keep paying a very small group of people money we'll after the development of said IP has been paid off. Even worse, that small group of people will use their profits to corrupt the legal system to ensure that that protectionism continues to serve their benefit, not others... Point being, you can pirate, and care... care a lot.
Victims are created when piracy affects small production houses struggling to make ends meet. Victims are created of everyone else when the law is abused beyond it's original purpose to squeeze consumers.
So you too should be honest and not call it theft. Piracy is piracy, good or bad. To compare it to the crime of theft is to perpetuate the marketing of those to stand from a black and white view on the matter.
It is theft, but the argument is better framed as to whether or not it's moral theft. Most people who pirate feel comfortable pirating from larger corporations over small time creators/groups, with the usual justifications you've provided above. Personally, I've justified it at times because I couldn't afford to purchase the thing, which leads to another argument of "if I wasn't going to buy it in the first place, is it actually effecting them".
There is no argument to be made, however, where it isn't true that if you were to have purchased it, the owner of the idea will make more off of it. Whether you care or not about that owner getting more is a different argument, but you are robbing them of value for the idea, however little that value might have been.
I'm not arguing for or against pirating, but people in the comments saying it isn't theivery really seem to be arguing whether stealing is wrong or not. Call it what it is and go back to the argument people have been having for thousands of years.
Which, I realize I didn't address libraries. Taxes pay for libraries to operate, and then the library pays to have copies of the works. If no one wants to read my book, libraries aren't going to just go out and buy thousands of copies. And trying to tackle libraries would also start to erode arguments for reselling something. And to bring it back to the OP, I've read books in a library before that I enjoyed enough to purchase a copy of my own. I've also read books I haven't. But someone purchased that book for me to rent, and in a small part, I've paid for that book myself by paying taxes.
No, the difference is that you're expected to return it. You're not supposed to keep it forever. That's why there's a "due by" date on checked-out materials.
Absolutely wild how stuff like this is downvoted here. People are disconnected from reality as if the world is a little hippy community. reminds me of this, have fun reading.
That link is chillingly hilarious.
Makes me think of a simple job like garbage man; they drive up the pay to encourage people into it. So what’s the incentive without capital?
In theory, you see the job needs to be done, you do it for the good of the community.
No worries, I am sure the local diaper boy will handle that.
Jesus Christ.
I think... I think I understand conservatives a little now.
I do not understand them - the same way I can not understand those delusional socialism nutjobs.
It's not mental gymnastics. Why is it so hard to believe that people genuinely don't believe in intellectual property? It has nothing to do with "sticking it to the man." I just do not believe in IP, full stop.
And piracy is not stealing, it is making a copy. When you steal a physical item the original owner is deprived of that item. When you copy something the original "owner" still has access to it.
Not everyone thinks the same way you do. In fact you sound like a terrible person if you genuinely believe that what you're doing is wrong but you're doing it anyway.
You can also believe in Santa, how does it matter, to the whole society, what you believe?
It's the same with FOSS. IP is just as fake as physical private property, but that doesn't mean we can't pay people for their labour.
If I find a really useful open-source licensed app developed by one or two people as a hobby, and they have a donation link in their repo, I might send them something.
If it's a really useful open-source licensed app developed by some corporation, there's no way I'm giving them money. The company has invested in developing the app as open source; they chose to (or were forced to by virtue of open source dependencies) make it public. The devs were already paid by the company. Whether the company takes in enough revenue by other means to pay for this open source project isn't my problem.