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ATV and piracy
- Thread starter DrEnalg
- Start date
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A year ago, I barely downloaded movies/music illegally. I didn't see the point and was quite happy to go down to the shops and buy a bunch of DVD's.
What made me stop was South Park season 13. It came out in Australia months after it aired on TV here (which I didn't watch on TV due to work). I was excited to finally watch it, after all my mates that had downloaded it quoting the crap outa it, went down to buy it, low and behold its on BluRay only.
WTF? its South Park, I dont want to watch South Park on BD, what a waste! And I want to watch it in my bedroom sometimes, I dont have a BD player in there. Plus they where charging $50 for it, AND the DVD version wasn't coming out for another three months!
So it was a big **** you to them for screwing me around, the loyal customer who was quite happy to buy everything legit.
Not only that, I was getting pissed off with every DVD I buy having trailers on it, non skippable menu's and intros etc etc, I just want to watch my movie I bought!
Basically I will now buy a BD for a really good movie to have it in all its glory. I never download a movie that is in a cinema already, I will go and see it.
IF the movie studios where to:
Make the movies reasonablly priced when they come out
Bring them out more quickly than they are
IF they are on TV, bring them out ASAP after the season has finished airing. And dont charge me $40 for it.
DONT make all movies BD exclusive for a while just for the sake of it.
Get rid of all the BS trailers and info before the movie starts, just have the main menu and thats it AND LET ME SKIP ANYTHING I WANT!
I will gladly go to the shops and buy them all again.
But they wont.
What made me stop was South Park season 13. It came out in Australia months after it aired on TV here (which I didn't watch on TV due to work). I was excited to finally watch it, after all my mates that had downloaded it quoting the crap outa it, went down to buy it, low and behold its on BluRay only.
WTF? its South Park, I dont want to watch South Park on BD, what a waste! And I want to watch it in my bedroom sometimes, I dont have a BD player in there. Plus they where charging $50 for it, AND the DVD version wasn't coming out for another three months!
So it was a big **** you to them for screwing me around, the loyal customer who was quite happy to buy everything legit.
Not only that, I was getting pissed off with every DVD I buy having trailers on it, non skippable menu's and intros etc etc, I just want to watch my movie I bought!
Basically I will now buy a BD for a really good movie to have it in all its glory. I never download a movie that is in a cinema already, I will go and see it.
IF the movie studios where to:
Make the movies reasonablly priced when they come out
Bring them out more quickly than they are
IF they are on TV, bring them out ASAP after the season has finished airing. And dont charge me $40 for it.
DONT make all movies BD exclusive for a while just for the sake of it.
Get rid of all the BS trailers and info before the movie starts, just have the main menu and thats it AND LET ME SKIP ANYTHING I WANT!
I will gladly go to the shops and buy them all again.
But they wont.
CEO of godaddy kills elephants. That's worse than pirating. Go find a new host. And no, I'm not kidding
The point is, you were willing to gamble much more money on those items with no guarantee of satisfaction but it's too painful for you to risk $15 on a movie OR wait until you can rent it via a $1 Redbox rental before buying it. Your argument doesn't hold water when there are so many ways to cheaply determine whether you want to own a movie if you would only delay gratification a few months. Surely, as a film student, you can gauge by the caliber of the director, the cast, the cover art, etc. whether a film will probably be good or not. I'm not a film student and I have pretty good "turd-dar"
Are you really going to try justify stealing the entire Adobe suite to someone like me who actually paid for it (and has been upgrading further for years)? I was just a student when I paid for it and it was painful to my pocketbook. Boo hoo, you can't afford it. There are a million cheaper ways to do what you did to make money for your father's business. BTW- if you actually know what you're doing, you don't need an Adobe product to do any of it properly to industry standards. If you weren't going to buy it, how were you going to get what you were going to do done, had there not been a means to steal it? Just because you want the Adobe products doesn't mean you can steal them. I'd like to drive a Lexus but that doesn't mean I can steal one when all I can afford is a Neon. Both drive me to the store but only one of them I can afford. You really make me mad and have a lot of nerve trying to justify what you do!
Just out of sheer curiosity; do you support industries which kill animals other than elephants?
did you read my comment, not interested in free/cheaper software.
i wasn't, my father was going to pay a graphic designer to do the job. why shouldn't his son do it to save costs, yea times are tough? (btw the adobe suite was a fantastic learning experience
)again, read zin's logic.
yeah and the latter makes you look like a douche driving to the store. again, not interested in the free/cheaper items.
again, read zin's logic, and besides i don't even get updates
,actually i do, just change the host file and clear the cache functionskinda hard when big corps get to have all of the fun while bending over the middle class consumer.
The word "piracy" comes from the pirates of old who inflicted physical harm and plundered/stole actual real property. IOW, it was stealing, plain and simple. Making a copy of something is not stealing, it is copying. So let's dispense with the term "piracy" as it is best classified as newspeak.
Now for some examples demonstrating the absurdity of it all...
I have a great recipe for a cocktail I just invented:
The Bloody Pirate
- 3 parts Vodka
- 2 part tomato juice
- 1 part squid ink
- 1 spritz of lemon juice
You may look at this recipe for free (aren't I generous?) but if you ever choose to make it, you need to send me a check for $100 for the first time you make it. If you choose to make it a 2nd time, you need to send me your firstborn. If you neglect to do so, make no mistake, you are stealing from me, and are an immoral person. Since I created the recipe, I get to define the "price" in whatever obscure terms I decide, and you have to live by it. Oh well. Oh, and if you happen to have thought of this exact same recipe independently, you'd better have clearly documented evidence of it. It matters not how obvious my invention might be...if I documented it first, I own it.
And if you spot me on the street, please do not take a photograph of me. I own myself and do not permit photos of my person. I will sell you a 6x8 photo of myself for $50. If you take a photo of me, or scribble a pencil drawing of me, you are, as far as I am concerned, *stealing* from me. You owe me $50 plus pain and suffering and may even be subject to imprisonment.
If you can follow all of this and are in agreement that it makes perfect sense, then you have truly drunk the kool-aid. You are a good citizen! [pat on head]
Now for some examples demonstrating the absurdity of it all...
I have a great recipe for a cocktail I just invented:
The Bloody Pirate
- 3 parts Vodka
- 2 part tomato juice
- 1 part squid ink
- 1 spritz of lemon juice
You may look at this recipe for free (aren't I generous?) but if you ever choose to make it, you need to send me a check for $100 for the first time you make it. If you choose to make it a 2nd time, you need to send me your firstborn. If you neglect to do so, make no mistake, you are stealing from me, and are an immoral person. Since I created the recipe, I get to define the "price" in whatever obscure terms I decide, and you have to live by it. Oh well. Oh, and if you happen to have thought of this exact same recipe independently, you'd better have clearly documented evidence of it. It matters not how obvious my invention might be...if I documented it first, I own it.
And if you spot me on the street, please do not take a photograph of me. I own myself and do not permit photos of my person. I will sell you a 6x8 photo of myself for $50. If you take a photo of me, or scribble a pencil drawing of me, you are, as far as I am concerned, *stealing* from me. You owe me $50 plus pain and suffering and may even be subject to imprisonment.
If you can follow all of this and are in agreement that it makes perfect sense, then you have truly drunk the kool-aid. You are a good citizen! [pat on head]
All you've proven is that not enforcing copyright, if you can even copyright a recipe you've freely made available to the public (unlike the movie studios), only encourages stealing of said product. It has already been established that photos taken of people in public are not an infringement of privacy so that argument is invalid. All of your lame arguments are yet another sad attempt to justify your breaking the law. Just because something is easy to steal doesn't make stealing it justifiable.
The point of my example was to demonstrate the absurdity of "stealing" a non-tangible item. Read it again.
Today maybe. But it would be completely consistent with the absurdity of the existing copyright legislations if they passed a law making one's visual appearance the "property" of the person. If they did that, would you now be on board with thinking that was perfectly good, or would you then start to see how the entire concept defies common sense?
One cannot have an intelligent discussion with you if you're going to continue to misuse terms. Copying is not stealing. You may believe that copying is immoral, but do not continue to call it stealing. Stealing is theft and involves the taking of physical property. If I walk into Best Buy and walk out with a Blu-ray disc without paying for it, they now have one less disc to sell. I have actually *stolen* from them. If, while in the store, I somehow make a copy of the disc and walk out, they still have their original disc. I have not *stolen* anything from them.
Here is a good article on the subject (key points addressed in the first half of the article, but the entire article is worth reading):
Modern Day Protectionism
And here is an excellent, but lengthier, essay on the subject:
Against Intellectual Property
I can understand people pirating films. What I can't understand is people thinking that they are doing no wrong when they do so.
Back when I was in high school, I pirated a lot of music. I feel guilty about that to this day, and am buying back all of it, one album at a time, even the stuff I will probably never listen to again. I don't understand how people can shut off their moral compasses, or even convince themselves they are in the right.
Back when I was in high school, I pirated a lot of music. I feel guilty about that to this day, and am buying back all of it, one album at a time, even the stuff I will probably never listen to again. I don't understand how people can shut off their moral compasses, or even convince themselves they are in the right.
This is the most bogus part of the argument you people cling to. You choose an arcane narrow definition of stealing, created before there was such a thing as digital entities, easily manufactured in mass by anyone with a computer. You conveniently ignore the ramifications of millions of people getting movies for free rather than buying them legally. To the vast majority of people, stealing is getting something you are supposed to pay for, for nothing, without permission. Even a child knows that but people like you refuse to acknowledge it. Sneaking into a movie theater or a concert is also stealing by any common definition but you would argue it's not. It's only convenient that what you want to steal can be had without taking something physical (although one could argue that gigabytes of 1s and 0s is a physical thing since it takes up space somewhere).
Why would movies continue to be made if, by your logic, they should be available for free to everyone? How about books and music for that matter? If everyone thought the way you do, there would be no incentive to spend millions to make the movies you want so badly that you are willing to throw away your morals to get them. I don't get some kind of special pleasure out of paying for a movie I want to see. I do it because it's what I'm supposed to do as a law-abiding person who wants to see more great movies in the future. The studio created something of value and it's at a price I will pay. If I feel the price is too high, I say "No, thanks" and live without it. We're not talking oxygen here.
I don't know why you can't just admit you are doing something wrong and just don't care. Like welfare and tax cheats do. You will NEVER convince honest people that what you do is ok so just stop already. Live with your actions and how they make you look to other people.
Guess you're ok with counterfeiting money, too. Same thing. Making copies of $20 bills doesn't take any real bills out of circulation so what's the big deal? The economy crashes if everyone does it but, hey, who cares? You got what you want so that's all that matters.
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Actually no. Unless you've copyrighted this and even then the IDEA itself cannot be copyrighted so as long as I alter your formula slightly I would be fine. This does not apply to the situation of copying movies.
Again, this is wrong. At least in the USA. I can't speak for other places. If you are in a public place I can take a picture of you. You are in a public place. I cannot harass you or photograph anything that could be construed as illicit. I also have to be VERY careful about how I display/use your image since, yes, you have a right to your own image but there are not rules against street photography. In fact if the image I take of you cannot be clearly identified as YOU or if you are celebrity all bets are off for the most part.
What you've demonstrated in this post is that the moral ground here is slippery and complex and while the internet has made it more so, it has always been slippery and complex. The USA has certain rights for content creators and inventors built in to the constitution because this was such a fundamental issue back at the founding of the country. Not all countries are like this but if you are a US citizen the rights of the content creators and whom ever they have designated those rights to are fundamental to your country's moral code and as a citizen you are expected to adhere to those precepts and principles. You may not agree but then you deserve to suffer the ill consequences of your actions.
Now I also don't agree with the policies of film companies and software companies and recent actions and technologies do make the issue more hazy. However the justifications you've provided do not apply and merely show a lack of understanding.
If your father's business increased revenue, then surely you could have taken money out of the profits?
But really, where the argument breaks down: If you would never have paid for it because you couldn't afford it, and you needed it and couldn't steal it, then you would have looked for some other software that is maybe not quite as good but that you could afford. The people making that software is who you are stealing from.
Interesting....
Pretty pathetic seeing some of the rationalizations for theft.
If you take something that is not your without paying for it, it is theft. Plain and simple. No way around it.
Not to call people out, but bluemonkeyguy is the worst kind of example. Making a profit from his theft. Just about made me pass out reading his post.
blunemonkeyguy- You need to realize- what you did/will likely continue to do is hurting EVERYONE. By stealing the software and "learning" it yourself, you have effective hurt at least 4 parties already:
-You have hurt the Adobe employees who work tirelessly to improve their products. You have hurt the Adobe stockholders (assuming it is a public company) that provide the backing for adobe to continue to put out CS5, CS6, etc...
-You have hurt the graphic designer who likely overpaid a small fortune to go to school, as well as invested a small fortune in legitimate software to create the "industry standard" work. This designer, like many other creatives may have to lower his price to stay afloat.
-You have hurt the design industry as a whole. All the other designers will probably have to lower their price to stay competitive with the designer you neglected to hire
-Most importantly (for you, at least) is the potential hurt you can cause your father. Ever heard those commercials on the radio to report software piracy for a $1000 reward? Well, it would be all too easy to find out your father's business and report you.
So in conclusion: Someone might just turn your fathers business in. I'm no lawyer, but
Sure seems like larceny, conspiracy to commit larceny, etc... to me. But after all, SOMEONE was going to report you anyways, so according to zin's logic, I'm not going to lose any sleep over any future legal troubles you have. Not with such an incredibly cavalier attitude towards property rights, at least.
Pretty pathetic seeing some of the rationalizations for theft.
If you take something that is not your without paying for it, it is theft. Plain and simple. No way around it.
Not to call people out, but bluemonkeyguy is the worst kind of example. Making a profit from his theft. Just about made me pass out reading his post.
blunemonkeyguy- You need to realize- what you did/will likely continue to do is hurting EVERYONE. By stealing the software and "learning" it yourself, you have effective hurt at least 4 parties already:
-You have hurt the Adobe employees who work tirelessly to improve their products. You have hurt the Adobe stockholders (assuming it is a public company) that provide the backing for adobe to continue to put out CS5, CS6, etc...
-You have hurt the graphic designer who likely overpaid a small fortune to go to school, as well as invested a small fortune in legitimate software to create the "industry standard" work. This designer, like many other creatives may have to lower his price to stay afloat.
-You have hurt the design industry as a whole. All the other designers will probably have to lower their price to stay competitive with the designer you neglected to hire
-Most importantly (for you, at least) is the potential hurt you can cause your father. Ever heard those commercials on the radio to report software piracy for a $1000 reward? Well, it would be all too easy to find out your father's business and report you.
So in conclusion: Someone might just turn your fathers business in. I'm no lawyer, but
Sure seems like larceny, conspiracy to commit larceny, etc... to me. But after all, SOMEONE was going to report you anyways, so according to zin's logic, I'm not going to lose any sleep over any future legal troubles you have. Not with such an incredibly cavalier attitude towards property rights, at least.