Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (08 Dec 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net

The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you’ve already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

  • @SCBEnglish
    -3•1 year ago

    Prostitutes don’t become prostitutes because they know secret techniques.

    The metaphor is describing the service provided, and that not paying for said service is indeed stealing.

    Trying to make it a different metaphor requires a new framework from you, because you copying their actual service would be you pimping them, under this metaphor.

    • snooggums
      3•1 year ago

      Someone sharing content on a peer to peer distribution network is not using the digital distribution service of whoever sold the content. They are not ‘stealing’ HBOs bandwidth to share Game of Thrones.

      They are sharing a thing that they initially paid for from HBO at no cost to others, similar to letting your friends watch it with you on your TV at the same time. The only difference is scale.

      • @SCBEnglish
        -1•1 year ago

        HBOs service is “provide access to GoT”

        If you provide access to GoT, by acquiring their content and then redistributing it, you are stealing the same way you pimping your prostitute is stealing.

        Idk why people here love stealing but hate admitting it. It’s fuckin weird. Like the literal word used is “piracy” for shits sake lol

        • snooggums
          3•1 year ago

          Piracy is used to equate copyright infringement with theft.

          Is drawing your own Mickey Mouse and selling it theft? You did all the work and took nothing from Disney.

          If you make a copy of Mickey Mouse at no cost to Disney and sell it, is that theft? You took nothing from Disney.

          If you have a really good hamburger at McDonald’s, make your own copy and sell it at your stores is it theft? No, and that is where the Big Mac came from, a copy of someone else’s work.

          Copyright infringement is not theft. Not all copies of something are copyright infringement. Pimping someone is human trafficking, not theft.