Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Considering the speed at which society and entertainment is changing and being produced, at some point it ceases to be "unlawful" to become legitimate preservation.

I've noticed an uptick on reruns of old series and films, especially late seventies, eighties and nineties. On films, I'm seeing even earlier production, going back to the sixties, and even of minor cinema like italian, spanish and french.

I have no illusions that these older productions are probably cheaper to license than current day productions, but recent production gets aired once, maybe twice, and is just gone.

Some will argue this is due solely to most not having rewatching value, others that it is predicated on the shorter attention span audiences have nowadays. Other arguments exist.

Regardless of those, not seeing current series being re-run, for me, is a sign that there is no interest keeping those works around.

It would be extremely satisfying if somewhere in the future some of those productions had to be rescued from private copies, as it has happened before with others.

Tried to read an e-book from the local library. No problem downloading it, but the file was encrypted, and only an Adobe app that does not run on Linux could decrypt it. I used Wine in Linux to run the Windows version of this app, and it worked right up to the point of actually decrypting the file. Couldn't read the e-book I'd checked out. So I pirated the book.

I went to some trouble to download and install Wine and the Adobe software, and I resent that. Tried to do things the legal way. Could've saved myself much bother by pirating first and skipping the public library. I also deleted the Adobe garbage.

Piracy has never been stealing.

When you steal something, the real issue is that the other person is deprived of some tangible item they used to have.

When you "pirate", you're merely violating a copyright. The government granted someone a monopoly on the expression of an idea, and you're not respecting the government's decision on that item's exclusivity.

Piracy isn't stealing anyway

I cannot stand piracy, but my computer recently escaped its containment and started downloading all these movies and TV shows that I like to watch. Does anyone know how to stop this behavior? So far I've tried nothing

it's there, its free, just take it and enjoy it

It’s never been stealing, it’s infringement of copyright, which aught to carry much less of a penalty since the original owner was not deprived of their property.

But we live in hell, so capitalism literally bankrupts families when they film their kid dancing to music that was playing on a public broadcast on FM radio.

Audible pulled the same shit to me when i was in the middle of reading How to Hide an Empire. only half way through, suddenly “no longer available”, yet no credit refunded to my account. Fuck you Jeffery

If they could kick in your door and take away your DVDs, they would. Fuck em, pirate away.

It's interesting how we jumped from owning physical media to "buying" permission to stream the file through the cloud.

Is there no service for people who are willing to pay for a downloadable, DRM-free copy of the file? It might be a bit niche, but it could at least make more than the $0 they make on each pirated copy.

If there is DRM, you’re only renting it. You may be renting it until further notice for a one-off payment, but your lease could be unilaterally revoked at any time. The supplier framing your lease as a purchase is at the very least being misleading.

Honest question, if the movie reappears in the catalog on Google does the "ownership" return to the customer? My money is on no they would have to repurchase

How to recruit new pirates to the cause. Thank you goofge.

They don't claim that after the fact, it's their terms of service to begin with. Just another reason to never buy anything on these services. Even paying for streaming is less of a scam since at least you aren't being misled.

(I can feel my huge steam library giving my hypocritical ass mad side-eye right now)

Piracy isn't stealing, period.

It was totally ok to pirate movies before this practice ever took place. Information had always wanted to be free.

Piracy isn't stealing, period.

It was totally ok to pirate movies before this practice ever took place. Information had always wanted to be free.

It should say rent instead of buy and give the expiration date corresponding to the date on which the license term ends.

"Rent. Unlimited viewing until January 1, 2027."

I know it doesn't fit the Piracy narrative, but there's actually more to this story. I've never actually heard this story, but at some point, Google gave everyone that same movie (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) for free. Anybody who saw the deal could claim it. I still have it. I'd gift it to this guy if I could, because I've since bought the extended edition trilogy in 4K. The Fellowship copy is locked to 1080p, and it's the theatrical version. I have no reason to ever watch it. But I still have it.

So I don't know what happened with them losing the rights, but they did kinda try to make it right by offering a giveaway. It would have been awfully nice of them to email everyone who lost their original copy and tell them they could claim it, though. That rarely happens with giveaways. They had a few of them back then. I also got Happy Feet and Big, maybe one or two others.

Make no mistake though. While I do have quite a nice collection of 4K movies in Apple TV (call them rentals if you want, but I won't pay more than $5 for them, so rental is fair since I paid rental price), I have easily 10-15 times as many on my Plex server (not all 4K though, but still).

Don't do business with google for starters. You just know you're gonna get screwed one way or another.

Fun fact: in my country (Slovakia) it’s totally legal to download things. It’s the uploading it back that’s seen as illegal, so as long as you have a paid private torrent site where you can hit’n’run you are not breaking any laws.

I think people should be paid for their work. I was happy to pay for music and movies and games. But I am not going to pay for something just to have it ripped away at a moments notice just because of corporate greed.

Additionally, I fully understand why someone would pirate when the thing they want isn't available to them to purchase, or is out of their price range.