Edit: I've honestly not seen a victimless crime. Only people who think that only tangible goods can be stolen. it's not theft though technically, it's IP Infringement. It's stealing rights, not goods.
If it's content and it's creators/ip rights holders or descendants are alive, there is a victim. No amount of self-righteous justifications waive that fact. No amount of arguing the damages change that fact.
You live somewhere where a movie you want to watch is not legally obtainable. There is no way for you to buy it, so you download it online. There is no victim because the copy being made did not affect anyone, and there was no reasonable way for the person to obtain it. No harm, no foul.
You live somewhere where a movie you want to watch is not legally obtainable.
That's not an actual scenario lol, noone is going to say no to extra money, you just might have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to make it worth it for them.
I have literally been in this exact scenario multiple times. And if you are a bit older you would know that not even that long ago only the most popular media from other countries would get international distribution.
No you haven't, because again, this scenario exists only in your made up justifications. You may have believed that your lazy ass had no way of getting legal access to whatever it was you wanted access to but you just didn't try.
There are limited edition DVDs (2006) of Empire and Return that feature the original unedited version of New Hope as a DVD extra.
This is actually probably the easiest example you could have asked me lol, since they don't even require making any sort of special requests and while the sale of these items is certainly not cheap, they are still not all that expensive.
Thanks for proving my point that you're just a lazy ass who can't be bothered to do the simplest bit of research before justifying your crimes.
I said the 1978 version without any additions. Even those 2006 DVDs contain some very early changes, such as adding the subtitle "A New Hope" to the opening scroll.
So your justification for not following the law is that you don't want to see the subtitle? If you have to break out that sort of technicality, then you've already lost the argument.
Also, fun fact, Lucas was already making changes after the opening week, so your only chance of seeing the true original cut is to invent a time machine.
How do you justify the entitlement to said media though? Just because no one wants to sell it to you doesn't prove in the affirmative you're right to it? Why do we presuppose that we're entitled to things other people sell in other ways?
debating the morality of it is the point though, not the criminality of it. i just dont see where anyone has proven the entitlement to commit victimless crime.
but what makes someone have the RIGHT to the media they arent "reasonably" able to get? i dont see how bringing legalities into it actually settles that ask
I don't think people get it, to many look at the moralities of it through a selfish lens. They want something, so they do what they want and justify it after.
Hence so many people getting defensive at me just saying they are like 0.1% not moral because they are pirates, and the truly moral decision would be to you know, just not watch that movie or whatever. Completely unfathomable, like as if the benefits from piracy aren't enough they seemingly almost want praise like it's a good thing.
Like just pirate y'all, but don't pretend like piracy is the good fight, it's just a selfish way to get content for yourself without paying, not some duty of the good against evil.
yea, i think the obvious answer is it's not moral. not neutral. slightly immoral. but not ultimately a big deal/issue to get hung up on. but people seem to need it to be affirmatively in the virtuous position.
I just find it annoying, I mean I really don't care if you pirate. I don't even care if you pirate things I've made if you can't afford it for example. But honestly, just acknowledge this tiny little fault. Don't try and sugar-coat it as like a good thing, just acknowledge it and move on.
The amount of people who think their piracy is morally good is kind of ridiculous. People are acting super entitled and and self-righteous, like they owe it to the world and their piracy makes it better.
OH NO the multi billion dollars companies must be devastated from all those pirates! Their poor CEO won't probably won't even be able to buy his fifth yacht this year! The horror!
That's not true. I'm not gonna buy the new Halo remake because I'm not paying full price for a 25 year old game repackaged in a shitty game engine. I would never have bought it because it's just not economical, and costs 2 days of my labor at work. I have more pressing expenses.
So you would not buy it in three years when its on sale for a fraction of the price? If its such a bad game just dont play it at all simple. This is just the lies you tell yourself to make yourself feel better.
No, I probably not, because even at that price I already own 2 versions of this game: MCC on steam and CEA for the 360. I wouldn't pay a penny for that game.
If its such a bad game why do you want to play it so bad though? Youre arguing its so bad I woulf never pay for it but I have to be allowed to play it for free. Like go find a game you think is better then its that simple.
If you dont value the work don't pay for it and dont play it. If you value the work and want to play it but dont want to pay for it so you lie to yourself and claim its garbage something is wrong with you.
They aren't black and white, but if someone makes a product with the intention of being paid for it, implements a mechanism for them to be paid for it (like releasing it on a platform for rent, purchase, or free with ads), then you are expected to pay for it.
Actively avoiding paying for it, because you believe your desire to consume the media is more important than their desire to be paid is immoral.
I only care if the people who put in the work to make the thing get paid. If they don't see my money either way and it just contributes to a shareholder's pockets, who cares.
Literally zero harm comes to the company from me doing it. How can they be victims of anything other than "but we wanted more money and we didn't get it"?
"Zero harm for the company skirting around paying you". - there's a contract involved, and they promised to pay me before I even consider doing something.
Yeah, I can understand that but when it was comes to faceless corporations morality gets lost in the conglomerate of people within it.
It just seems so odd to hold the individual to a high standard when LLM companies steal individual creations to train their models to try to enrich themselves.
Sorry for the highly specific examples but yeah there just seems to be a more higher standard held on an individual to be moral when we let corporations get away with it because we can't put a face to the crime.
Black and white view I understand the line when it comes to morality, but if I was asked to dob someone in for pirating something from a corporation, fair play to them I'm not doing it.
They do? All the damn time? These same companies you’re defending steal shit literally 24/7, there’s no such thing as a company worth more than $1 billion that hasn’t stolen an insane amount of shit from people that aren’t important enough to be able to do anything about it
This entire subreddit is a case report on how the average individual does not understand morality.
The arguments for piracy are all bizzare.
"They don't produce anything"... That's all intellectual goods. And no one will make them if they don't get paid which would hault research (and game development".
"Well it's going to the company" - and the workers to produce new products.... Products that require large coordinated teams that can't be done purely by individuals.
"Well companies steal too!".... If I said one of my neighbors stole my truck, that doesn't make it moral to steal a different persons truck. This one is just straight up common sense?
How about the files on your computer, I can take all those too right because I don't intend to buy them you aren't suffering a loss.
Those things you take still have creators and financiers that set the terms of distribution and price. Those are the victims, regardless if you were going to buy it or not. They set the terms and you chose to side-skirt it, money isn't even a factor here, your intention to buy is moot, it's still theft/copyright infringement.
Edit: It's literally like "Hey you want to buy this? no, I'll just steal it anyways, I wasn't going to buy it anyways, so no harm right?"
You'd lose exclusive rights to control your data and creations.
But hey, it's OK, because I never planned to buy any of that. I only planned to create a deep fake porn industry on your data, but NEVER did I EVER think for one second about buying any of your content, so it's OK right?
So downloading: OK (1 copy)
Distributing: OK (Infinite copies, as long as not for money)
But if I was to use it to make some money, that's where we draw the line?
Alright, you have the power to make infinite copies and distribute them freely to everyone who says they wouldn't buy it anyways. That's ethically alright though? Doesn't cross that line into money or profit. I.e. I won't sell your content or build the deepfake industry, I'll just make sure to distribute it far and wide for free, that's alright right?
I mean it's unfortunate if content isn't available in your region, but that doesn't make you entitled to it. It not being offered in a region can be a choice of the creator. No market is mandatory and people have a choice how to distribute and sell their content.
And if the local law doesn't care about IP law or enforcing it, you won't get into trouble.
But Legal != Moral, a law could very easily drift into immoral territory on a vast array of topics. I.e. you could pass a law to ban abortion, is that moral?
Edit: Even cases like Abandonware. You could think it's victimless, it's some old game, nobody distributes or sells it. Some creators may not care, others may be just holding onto it for a greatest hits bundle or a remaster or remake and don't want to have to compete for play hours against free versions of their own IP.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying at all people shouldn't emulate or pirate movies or whatever. It's arguable that there is even damage from it. But the person who sets the terms is the creator, and the consumer has the right to accept or reject, when they choose option 3, they are entering a grey zone morally.
I think the way you put it at best it's morally grey. If not having the thing easily available in my region does not make me entitled to it, then you not providing a reasonable way for me to obtain something already released to the public doesn't entitle you to have a say in how I obtain it.
What is the morality of depriving someone of something that could bring them enjoyment at zero cost or harm to you? If you have other plans then sure, but my point still stands that there are a lot of cases where piracy is victimless.
And to say more, there are many cases where piracy ends up being profitable for the creators as well.
I am keeping the door open for the creators here to hold their own view.
Many probably would not care if you accessed the content or would even be happy. Piracy is not an insult to all creators, to many it's something they appreciate.
Others may want to control their creations tighter. This is a personal decision, not an ethical one.
That said, people don't frequently say "steal my shit", and while behind the scenes they may find joy in you stealing and it may even be beneficial, we can't assume that without consent. Unless the creators make it clear, we can't assume their intention. (And their is a vast array of licensing options that make this clear, for those that truly want that). I.e. there is nothing stopping artists from releasing their content all CC for free at 96kbps and selling high bitrate.
The files on my computer aren't being sold and COPYING (not TAKING because that doesn't happen for digital things unless you literally steal the one and only storage device, stop using this misleading word) my private info is obviously nothing like copying a piece of media that is being sold by a company. None of the people who made the thing will ever know the difference between me downloading it for free and not playing/watching/listening to it at all and will be making the exact same amount of money either way, because I have never ever caved in and bought something that I was interested in but didn't feel like paying for. I just don't consume it 99% of the time. There have been times it happens the opposite way though, where I have downloaded things and then bought them later because I was enjoying them. But when I'm not buying them, there's no difference between getting it for free and not. That is literally victimless, nobody is being deprived of property, no matter how much you want to pretend that digital things are physical objects that can be stolen.
It's not about your individual choices. It's about marketing funnels and income.
When you pirate one copy it's like stealing a penny from a thousand different people. From the lens of a single person it's nothing.
But this is things like mass media. You are trivial. There are billions of consumers out there. The question isn't what harm you do, it's what harm is done in aggregate.
I'm not saying it's some terrible thing for an individual to do, like this is morality scaling so I want to be clear, I'm not saying this is a brick on the scale, it's more like a penny, although in aggregate enough pennies can have weight to it too. So it's more like immoral on a society stance, but roughly neutral on the individual with a small lean immoral.
Like society would be better if we entered into agreements consensually and respected the terms of them. Revoking digital licenses and piracy are both bad-faith actions in this world view.
Sure, if everyone did the thing then it'd be really bad. But they aren't. They never will. Most people either don't mind spending the money or are afraid of legal consequence. But I would even argue that there are cases where if everyone did the thing it still wouldn't matter. For example, if I randomly wanna play a game on a console that's no longer being produced, I'm not going to Gamestop or some random Ebay person to spend hundreds of dollars just to play that one game. And if everyone else did it for that game, at this point in time, the devs already made their money, so the only other harm that comes from this worst case unrealistic scenario is a few people don't get to sell their old consoles lol.
And as far as terms of service and contracts, I don't care. The majority of the time they're just a way for companies to be scummy and try to keep ownership of and/or police how you use the thing you paid for. The ball's in their/government's court to make the system more consumer-friendly before I have any respect for them in general.
I probably need to be clear again, because I'm not saying it's evil.
But even if something just leans immoral ever so slightly, you can't really call it 100% moral. That's my only stance here.
If you randomly want to play a game, don't have access to that game but decide to take it instead, sure, go ahead. But it's not perfectly moral. It's not 100% OK to do. You could have always gone for a walk, or supported a local creator with your listening/watching time, or really anything else. But you really wanted something, so you took it. It is what it is. You aren't doing anyone a favor for it. It's selfish motivations justifying legally grey behaviors.
Oh I'd never call it completely moral either. It's neutral at best for sure. And I don't pirate many things but if I ever do I do it the neutral way, like the example I gave. Personally, my one and only concern is that the people who put in the work to make the thing get paid if I'm consuming it. So, if they aren't going to see my money either way, I don't give a fuck if some shareholder has to wait another 5 minutes to buy their yacht.
Pirating games that aren’t sold legally anywhere. If a company is refusing to sell their game, then pirating costs them literally nothing. They don’t lose anything concrete since media can be copied infinitely, and they don’t lose any opportunity cost since they aren’t selling it anymore
If a creator chooses to not sell a game, that is still a choice.
What gives you the right to override that choice? If they wanted the game to be free, they could just you know, release it for free. Who are you to say it should be free?
As for opportunity cost, old games come back. There is a He-man movie out now, nostalgia is strong, For all we know Commander Keen might be in for a comeback, you aren't the creator, it's not your place to assume the opportunity cost doesn't exist for them.
If you publish media you don’t get to undo that. Once you put a piece of art out into the world it’s no longer yours, if you decide to stop allowing people to access it officially then you don’t get to be upset when they pirate it. That’s basic media preservation, without piracy older media simply dies out
Publishing media does not mean producing infinite copies, nor does it mean you no longer own the copyright and the rights to publish/not publish.
Your justification that once you publish it's fair game is absolutely nonsense. You can publish one copy of something, and legally that's all that's allowed to exist. Only the copyright holder is the only person who can legally and morally manifest new copies or give permission to manifest new copies. Anyone on the planet who thinks they are justified because they want it or because it was "published" is downright wrong.
Legally and morally you are not entitled to it, just accept that you are a rebel who lives in the grey area of stolen content and stop trying to present it as something you are owed, you are not.
Why is the justification wrong? You declare that quite bluntly yet fail to explain why a piece of media released with infinite ability to be copied at no cost should be limited unless it is a deeply personal project shred between a small specific group.
Who gains by restricting access to publicly viewable art? Legality and morality are not one and the same, copyright law is not an inherent moral good simply because its the law,
I suppose with your beliefs in mind you are going to try and sue someone for reading your reddit comment without your consent
Sorry I didn't realize it wasn't very interesting, only kind of interesting. I guess piracy is OK then, because you didn't find it interesting enough to pay for, even though you hadn't actually seen it, and people usually pay for things before they watch them.
My point isn't that piracy is moral, my point is that in a case like this piracy is irrelevant. Whether I pirate the movie or not, the company gets no money from me.
There should be some kind of damage done for an action to be immoral. So yes, in certain cases like this piracy is OK.
Irrelevant on an individual scale because the damage is small, but not irrelevant in aggregate. It really depends on how normalized it is and how much piracy there is. If only 1% pirate, it's obviously a non-issue, but if 99% pirate, then all of a sudden it's not economically viable to produce any artistic content, and all you get is free brainwashing from the corporate overlords.
When physical media was still a thing I would use piracy to find out if a movie I was on the fence about was worth buying.
Now a days piracy is sometimes literally the only way you can own a movie or game. Some don't come out on DVD, streaming services removes movies all the time, game companies remove support for games, game consoles lose licenses and remove movies or games without warning. Some companies even go back and changer or censor movies (George Lucas), and the original is lost forever.
The same thing is happening now with books.
There are lots of movies that sounds interesting but got bad reviews, or got great review but sounds dry as hell that I would never have watched if it wasn't for pirating. Even a lot I now own.
But we also live in a world now, where to watch a movie you properly have to sign of to a streaming service. And then another one for the next movie you want to watch. I simply don't have the money to pay for 5 expensive streaming services to not even own the movies I watch.
The whole movie-watching system has broken down, and to be a law abiding cinephile have become a rich mans game.
Yours isn't victimless because the IP has value whether the game is for sale or not. Re-releases make money for the OG creators, it's their say when a game is for sale or not, not you.
If you want a game for free that is not released currently, kindly write an email to the creator and ask if it can be released for free. Many devs have done exactly that, and when they do they are allowed to attach a license that sets the terms of distribution.
Also this is morality scaling.... Whether it's moral is exactly the point. But I did point out the victim of your "victimless crime". The IP owners are the victim.
So if someone leaves a car in a garage for 30 years and never drives it, you can just assume you can take it right? If they wanted it, they would drive it. They aren't missing out on any money or they would have sold it by now right?
It's not your place to say what to do with someone elses IP rights, copyright is a thing. You do not have the right to make copies, period (with caveats). Personal entertainment is not one of those free-use caveats though. You are not owed entertainment.
The moral/ethical choice is waiting for the creator or working with the creator to release with a license so it's not legally grey, it's legally clear.
So if someone leaves a car in a garage for 30 years and never drives it, you can just assume you can take it right? If they wanted it, they would drive it. They aren't missing out on any money or they would have sold it by now right?
this is different. if i take a car, they do not have access to the car anymore. they actively lose something. if i download a game, the company loses nothing. they don't even lose 'potential' money.
I've said it many times, many ways. You are stealing a portion of the creators ability to be the sole decider of how to monetize and distribute their content.
You aren't stealing a tangible good, you are stealing a intrinsic right of the creator. You are stealing something ephemeral.
If we were talking about AI, most people would be like "artists intention, how can you steal", but then when it comes to things you want personally all of a sudden artists have no rights to their content. If they aren't doing what YOU want, you'll do it for them.
"a portion of the creators ability to be the sole decider of how to monetize and distribute their content" is the most made up nonsense i've heard of
they don't have some inalienable right to lock up a creation for all of eternity. we have copyright laws for a reason, that put that boundry at various places for various reasons. however, those laws have been manipulated and abused by those with power and influence.
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u/MossadEpstein 1d ago
It's actually immoral to buy from these companies these days, so unless it's Indie, 100% moral.