this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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All piracy is ethical because Intellectual Property is a lie.
I will pirate from megacorps and indies, anyone who sets up a demand based distribution system for products.
The only products I will not pirate are those that have a needs based distribution system and are finite.
Question about this: if there's no IP, what is the motivation for creating media or game content?
Modders do it all the time by passion. It's the introduction of IP and money that removes passion and turns it into an industry (see also: YouTube)
Creative drive, I'd say. Some people simply like making stuff
But even people who like making stuff would be able to devote more time to their work if they were given the means to sustain themselves through their work without needing to work another job, wouldn't they?
@Sentrovasi @matey @Schooner @vis4valentine @Parched_Monkey abolish capitalism
Sounds like your issue is with capitalism, not the removal of IP.
Star Trek.
I would say the motivation to create is simply to create. Dwarf Fortress authors allowed donations but until they had health issues did not outright sell the game. Even now it's optional though as only the UI is sold, base game is still free.
I would argue that if your motivation to do anything is money, then whatever you create is always going to be inferior.
It obviously isn't true that people motivated by money build inferior products... There may be a loophole here where you can claim that the absolute best of a category might be built by an individual driven only by the desire to create, but I feel like that is a shitty argument. I would argue that the vast majority of quality products are only produced by those who seek monetary compensation.
I would argue the opposite, in that monetary compensation enables the creator to put in the time and effort required to make a product with high quality. Without monetary support in a capitalist system, they are forced to spend their time doing other meaningless work to eat, and can't spend the time they want on the project their passionate about.
Looking at the current state of Hollywood, the drive to make a profit is actually ruining movies for me in the past 5 years. Full of bad writing and old remakes of remakes trying to get money from old IP. Nothing new or original has been written for some time and it's getting old.
Okay, I would say my argument probably breaks down at small individual projects. For larger corporations though I think it's still stands true. Anyone who's worked in JIRA is probably familiar with the status "Won't Fix". For essentially any bug incoming you would weigh the user impact versus the revenue impact. You prioritize based on severity but also prioritize based on revenue. Your Sprint cycles by very nature can't be oriented to producing the best possible product if the best possible product is only what makes you the most money.
EDIT: I would also say that this largely depends on how you define what a good product is. Is a good product one that makes you a lot of money? Is a good product one that is high functioning and provides good use?
I think people have already answered your question. Just to add on, think about stuff that happened before the creation of an IP regime. Were people not creating things back then?
I would also like to clarify that I'm not talking about forcing people to reveal their secrets. If you want to keep your thing a secret, you're welcome to. But, there should be no state prosecution if that thing gets made public.
And I do buy things if I enjoyed them and want to reward the creators. When I was a poor kid with no funds, I pirated a lot of videogames. Now that I'm a slightly older kid with some funds, I buy the games that I enjoy and my game piracy has gone down a lot. Without piracy, these future sales from me would have been lost because I probably wouldn't care about videogames. Not a justification, just my feelings.
As a digital artist I can say it's for the love of the art.
I imagine it's similar for modders and anyone with basically any hobby.