this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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I fully agree with the general message, but this particular anecdote doesn't really make sense to me and can easily be waved off by anyone who disagrees with it.
If buying isn't owning, that means it's renting or borrowing.
If you pirate it, they get no money and therefore cannot rent it out to you. You cannot just steal a movie from the movie rental store or a car from a car rental place. That's stealing.
Sure, it's infinitely reproducible but that's not what this meme says. That's an unrelated argument for piracy. It draws a direct connection between the 2 relationships of buying + owning and pirating + stealing. However, one has nothing to do with the other.
When someone owns something, they are allowed to rent it out and take it back at any time. It's always been that way and that's valid.
The real argument should be "if there was no intention to buy in the first place, then piracy isn't stealing" or something like that.
Let me rephrase. I agree that piracy isn't stealing, but the fact that buying isn't owning does NOT prove that at all, nor does it have anything to do with it. It's a reason people pirate, sure, but it in no way proves that piracy isn't stealing. The phrase is an if;then statement. If one thing is true, it MEANS the other is true, which just isn't the case. Both can be true sure, but proving the first half does not prove the second half. Making one true does not instantly make the other true.
This will not make anyone at ubisoft mad. In fact, they will be glad that such a poorly crafted argument is being used against them, since it's 0 effort to disprove and dismiss it. We should raise other arguments that are logically sound if we want to convince anyone - friends, family, lawmakers - of anything.
Am I completely missing the point or is this analogy completely nonsensical?
On a side note, I condone piracy and nobody should ever give money to large media corporations. But if we use stupid arguments like this it makes us easier to dismiss.
Edit: I'm looking for discussion here. If you're going to downvote me, at least tell me why you think my argument is wrong. I'm here to learn.
It's about them missrepresenting the transaction. If you go to the store and rent a movie then it's an agreement that it's temporary. If you buy it then they can't take it back, what they are doing is fraud and complaining that we don't want to deal with them.
I agree with everything you said, however that has nothing to do with piracy. It's a shitty thing they're doing that we should be mad at, but it in no way sets the definition of piracy, which is what they're going to try to defend against in any argument.
What we should demand is that they properly define buying, owning, and renting so that we own our products. Piracy is piracy no matter what the definition of owning is. Only the reasons change. One reason is that they treat buying as renting, but it does not change the definition of piracy, no matter what we think the definition is.
I agree with you here, piracy isn't theft for reasons unrelated to buying and owning. The reason lies with the infinite reproducibility of the product. While I may agree with the sentiment behind the post, it's not technically a sound argument.
Okay, I can copy anyone's painting, or art, or make a model of their sculpture and make copies. What does the infinite reproducibility have to do with anything?
Why should both the original creator and I be allowed to sell those pieces?
Jumping the gun a little there, aren't you? Nobody said anything about selling the pirated content. With art that's considered forgery, and that's a different crime.
If you steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, the Mona Lisa is then gone. Nobody else gets to have it or see it. That's theft. If I pirate your software, you won't even know I've done it, and any person with a copy of that software keeps it, including you. That's piracy. You see the difference?
Okay I'll take your example. I replace the Mona Lisa with an exact copy and steal the original. Stealing or not?
Apparently the argument is that as long as a copy is left behind, it's not theft, right?
Well, not exactly; you're comparing apples and oranges because the original Mona Lisa has value inherent to it being the original, which the copy does not retain. But say you show up and exact copy the Mona Lisa and then take your copy home, that's not only not theft, it's perfectly legal. People take photographs of it all the time.
In software there's no difference between a master copy and the one you've downloaded, there is no additional value inherent to being the "original file" so this comparison doesn't really work.
If you can't tell the Mona Lisa isnt real because its a perfect copy then there is no value lost. The one thats on display in the museum is very likely not the real one, and yet people still feel all of the feelings of seeing an original.
If noone knew I made the copy and swapped it, noone would ever be harmed by it, right?
I don't see why not I suppose.
Well, I'd still call it stealing much the same as I do piracy.
Well, then you'd be incorrect. Have you been paying attention at all? Even your own argument illustrates why this is. Think about why theft is illegal and it should be immediately apparent why they are different.
You have a cow, I take the cow from you, you starve and die and I make money. That's theft.
You have a cow, I create a perfect copy of that cow and take it home, we both get milk and beef, we both survive in our post-scarcity Star Trek like utopia. The fundamental definition of theft, the taking away of something that belongs to someone else, is impossible here.
If you steal a piece of art that devalues that art for everyone, which then deprives the producers of the art of income, they then starve, and I get to have a bit of fun that I could have gotten elsewhere for free, real free.
That seems to fit your parameters there, no?
Look, the point here isn't that piracy is some magical guilt-free action that gets everyone free stuff for no downside. I'm not arguing that it should be legal. I'm not arguing that it's moral. But it is a fundamentally different crime than theft. We've been talking in circles about this for two days and it's pretty clear that neither of us is going to move off our opinions on the matter. Agree to disagree, then?
I actually didnt know how you felt about it until this last post, and I mostly agree. Ive been seeing an aversion here from people to acknowledge the downsides of it though and thats been frustrating. And I even pirate stuff myself.
That phrase means "if you will make an enemy out of me and won't let me buy the kind of ownership I want, I'll take it and ignore paying you".
But notice that the full explanation is longer? That phrase captures perfectly well the antagonizing perspective, and nobody goes around making sure they pay fairly the people that treat them as enemies. It also fails to capture any other bit of the logic, but it's ok, the logic is simple and automatic once the antagonism is explicitated.
"You disrespect me when you use the word BUY when you mean RENT, I'll show you the same disrespect by denying you any monetary gain that you normally get from ghosting your customers"
Sometimes I wish I could have the skills to hack these websites - change every "Buy" to "Rent", add a " Why am I seeing this?" and then explain that the transaction is for "Digital key revocable at any time by (insert scummy corporate here)".
Then I'll happily laugh and watch their profits drop , while they try to publish a statement defending their position.
I can see that, that's a good point. However, it's so easy to misconstrue that phrase into an objective statement of "the relationship between buying and owning directly creates the relationship between piracy and stealing" and the average person, lawmaker, etc can easily get confused when the "ones who own all the content" try to disprove that statement even though it's not the statement we're trying to make.
What is literally said in the meme is incorrect, even if it means something completely different. We need to say what we mean, not make a catchy analogy that's technically incorrect and easily used against us.
Yeah, I can agree with that. And somebody will eventually find some way to use that mismatch against people.
But the correct language doesn't have an impact, and we don't decide what gets popular anyway. I don't like that phrase either (I think it's too conservative), but it's here to stay.
basically if you get to be a scumbag so do I
2 wrongs don't make a right, this phrase just points out how piracy is a service issue
I agree that it's a good reason to pirate, but the meme/phrase is ostensibly trying to use the definition of owning to change the definition of stealing.
It doesn't prove anything, it just gives a good reason why people are pirating, when it looks like it's trying to prove some logical relationship of the concepts.
if my property can be taken without fair compensation so can theirs.
pretty cut and dry logical relationship.
my opinion: it's not stealing in the Classic sense because if you copy something you don't take it away from its owner. it might be against the law because intellectual property is a concept.
I find interesting that I remember buying a game in Brazil in 1995 (the 11th hour, sequel to The 7th Guest) and in the receipt it was written “license to use”. So, even back then we were already told that it was a permission, not ownership.
Exactly. This has always been a problem to some extent, but back then no company ever revoked that license or even cared what people did with it unless they sold pirated copies. So it wasn't a problem for us either.
I know what you mean and I agree. It's always seemed to not really make logical sense when I hear it. It isn't quite right. Like you, I also agree with the actually message behind it though.