this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.

Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it's old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.

Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that's very different from stealing something.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The irony is, you pirating today has been shown to influence you buying it later on in a sale. And there’s a good argument to be made about your word of mouth praise helping their sales.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As every musician knows, exposure is always better than payment! This is why you shouldn't offer payment to musicians at your wedding, since they're getting great exposure already. /s

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's two very different cases. Using exposure to extort services out people is different than copying something to see if you'd enjoy it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's really not that different. The main difference is the audience size. For an independent musician selling merchandise, it would be equally insulting to them to tell them that they will be repaid in exposure if they give you one for free.

Making a copy of something "to see if you'd enjoy it" or because it's somehow great for their exposure is mental gymnastics to justify piracy. Let's just call it intellectual property theft and stop beating around the bush.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Copying isn't theft. You're about 40 years late to this conversation and you're starting from the taste of boots? You're equating an instantly reproducible, finished product with a service; your analogy sucks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The entire goal of my comment was to avoid mincing words. As somebody who has first hand experienced copyleft violation, it sure doesn't feel different on the receiving end. I feel this very personal experience is equivocal to copyright infringement. I'm not licking any boots—thanks for that accusation.

It's easy to excuse illicit behavior from your armchair by gaslighting with the choice of words, because after all, violating copyright is just sticking it to the man, right? In truth, I feel that my software was stolen for profit and just for me as the little man, there's no other word that comes to my mind than "theft."

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You should write an open letter to hobbyists. It worked for Gates. If your software was "stolen for profit" and that didn't result in more people trying it and buying, I have bad news: it didn't seem like it was worth the money to the people who tried it. JRC does many studies on piracy and the data shows that total sales are not displaced by piracy volume, again and again. You can make the argument that this is only true for games and music (typically the subject of these studies) but this hardline attitude of it being the same as stealing sucks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Lovely, so your rebuttal is that not only is my emotion wrong but my software sucks, too. I would suggest putting yourself in my shoes and envisioning what a shitty thing that is to say.

To offer a bit of background: the clone my game published itself on Google Play with ads removed. Aside from simply the confusion of a game with verbatim the same name, this further entices users to install it, because Google Play displays a label when an app contains ads.

What is the worth to a user? This is a terrific question, and I have spent years narrowing down the right valuation of ad content and in-app purchase pricing to remove ads. The game currently has 15M historical installs with fairly industry standard retention rates, so it can't be completely off. But the thing is, that valuation will always be higher than 0.

So where does the steal come from? The cloned app only offered the ad-free experience long enough to gather enough installs, to then revert the change with a swapped out AdMob account number.

I think most of this has been offset by that change now as I've seen a similar growth return to my app. But those losses in the interim period are gone forever. Somebody took my code base, republished it in blatant violation of GPL, causing me to lose revenue. I feel robbed and your apathy genuinely perplexes me.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think piracy is copyright infringement. But like who cares if some big corpos get infringed upon by some dudes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I think a compromise on copyright could be a good middle ground in future. In the same way that I'm happy to wait for a game to go on sale before I buy and play it, I'd be happy to wait until a movie or series enters the public domain so I can consume it without paying. Obviously not for hundreds of years, or 56 years. But if Netflix/HBO etc shows and movies became free to watch after 6-7 years, most piracy traffic could be easily captured by legal platforms that are more convenient and accessible to more viewers. I struggle to see how it would not further relegate piracy to a niche activity done by very few, or be bad for the content producers in any significant way

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What does that even mean?

Ownership is compromised a bundle of rights. If it's your bundle, you can split them up however you want, sell whatever kind of limited or unlimited licenses that can come up with, and this applies to real, personal, and intellectual property.

If it's not theft, why does the greed and unfair practices of the industry matter? Why does there need to be any justification or excuse?

Should definitely have a right to repai; with any other property right you generally have a duty to maintain the access to your interest. I recently unlocked a bunch of premium features in my car. HD radio, comfort window roll down (rolls down 2" with a tap") auto tailgate close (had auto open, but not close, had to hit a button on the lid to close), auto side mirror tilt down in reverse, roll down windows from keyless entry, close tailgate from keyless entry.

If I understand the interface at all, it's pretty openly accessible (if you have the right OBDii port adapter and software, which ironically you need to buy a license for). Code looked fairly straightforward, and by that I mean it looked like other computer code I've seen. Wonder what the original price was for those extras were from the dealership, probably over 10k.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If it’s not theft, why does the greed and unfair practices of the industry matter?

Because it tears at the fabric of Humanity. It's a 'death by a thousand cuts'.

Humanity constantly needing to be on guard and pushing back against being taken advantage of by people who want to charge them multiple times for the same thing in different ways, especially the ones that used to be free, over and over again.

Fighting that is pushing back against unfairness, which is one of the root beliefs of Humanity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I look forward to this gem being repeated along with "enshittification" by the dunning krugers at large

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pirated valheim, played 20 hours, bought the game.

Pirated baldurs gate 3 on early access, bought the game with only act 1, that's how good it is.

Pirated Valhalla, played 5 hours, uninstalled that trash forever.

Started pirating streaming services when they told me that I can't watch shit anymore because streaming service b and c took the shows, and now I have to pay two different streaming services if I want to keep watching.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's probably worth pirating games just to test play them before buying the good ones for online play

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's also great to check if my aging pc is even capable of running it somewhat smoothly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can just return steam games within 2 hrs tho

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

True, which again brings us back to "piracy is a service problem" which imho it totally is. I never pirate steam games.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Heads up! Plex media server with the Plex clients on all your devices is such a smooth experience. Highly recommended. And their “Watch together” feature is so nice for people that prefer to stay in bed and spend the winter binge watching next to a warm body.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

Heads up! Plex is garbage and enshitefying their own services to make more money.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Use Jellyfin. Stop relying on corps' services.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would if it had most of the features that Plex does.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't work on Samsung TVs, I tried

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You're inputs broken? Who the fuck cares about TV OS support?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Who the fuck cares about TV OS support?

Me with my limited budget

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I spent 30 dollars on an orange pi zero 2 and installed android TV on it.

Can you afford 30 dollars? The privacy alone is worth the cost. Those samsung TVs are spyware central.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sorry I can't justify that cost

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

I dont believe you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Piracy was never stealing. It’s copyright infringement, but that’s not the same as stealing at all. People saying it’s stealing have always been wrong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

One of the great modern scams, was to convince society that unauthorized copying of data is somehow equivalent to taking away a physical object.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Jesus didn’t ask for permission to copy bread and fish. It’s a clear moral precedent that if you can copy you should.

What would the Jesus do?

Checkmate Atheists!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Jesus was the first pirate.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't the idea and origin story of Jesus stolen from previous texts and religions lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

They forked Judaism

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Nah, that would be Prometheus.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I bet you aren't a software developer.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm a software developer, and I endorse the grandparent comment.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And you all just were happy and bro fisted people who ignored the licensing terms?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes.

Well, not literally, both because I'm more inclined to "high five" and you can't do either gesture over the Internet. But figuratively, yes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why don't you just gift away your software than? That's an honest question. You obviously aren't expecting to be paid for it, do you think in general developers shouldn't earn money with software or is it just you?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

I am a system engineer who works on a project that is open source, AMA

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A PURSE

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