Piracy

[Redhead]

What are your opinions on internet piracy?

[Lord Testicles]

I don't view it as a problem or necessarily morally wrong.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yar har fiddle di dee, being a pirate is alright to be.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I don't think I've paid to see a major blockbuster in around five years. Independent movies are different as I sometimes go with friends or family to watch them in a local arts cinema. I dislike some parts of the annoying 'hacktivism' that comes with internet piracy but I guess you have to put up with bullshit to get free stuff sometimes.

[Bala Perdida]

I think it's niiiiiiice!

[BIXX]

I do not engage in illegal activities

/paranoia

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I used to just support it because I liked free things, now I really don't partake in it but I cannot philosophically conceive of whats even being stolen. It's a bunch of 0s and 1s on a disk, nothing is lost..

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Yar har fiddle di dee, being a pirate is alright to be.
do what you want cos a pirate is free, you are a pirate

[Futility Personified]

From each to his bandwidth, to each of his taste.

I spoke to Sean from AJJ before a show and asked him about piracy, his words were a quote from someone else. "Do you like it when it's raining?" and I can understand that. We live in capitalism, and gratitude and good-will will not deter the rent-baron or put food in your stomach.

I've downloaded my fair share of stuff, depending on how much I like the artist, i'll make an attempt to buy what I enjoyed off them. Fundamentally, people are being screwed. But we are all being screwed; building up my cultural capital is one of the few things that I can do to empower myself. Without piracy, I would not be the person I am now. I would not have been inspired, I would have felt thousands of times more alone, I would be unenriched.

The free availability of all art is something that I have complete faith in happening in a post-revolutionary society; the fact that it can defacto happen now is a sign of that. To only use piracy as a method of consuming culture however is putting the cart before the horse. Corporate music can go swivel, there'll always be another sucker with the way things are at present, and some music is alright to be suckered by (and some I think isn't, but I really can't stand contemporary pop music so call me a stick in the mud, it's music, remember? The ultimate subjectivity?)

To sound like one of those tedious people who insist on supporting their local petit-bourgeoisie, it's important to support musicians. Torrent, torrent like your lives depend on it, but try and put something back to the band or the group if you like it. Unless you want to get into some crazy criminal shit and start a theft clique to support bands.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

From each to his bandwidth, to each of his taste.

I spoke to Sean from AJJ before a show and asked him about piracy, his words were a quote from someone else. "Do you like it when it's raining?" and I can understand that. We live in capitalism, and gratitude and good-will will not deter the rent-baron or put food in your stomach.

I've downloaded my fair share of stuff, depending on how much I like the artist, i'll make an attempt to buy what I enjoyed off them. Fundamentally, people are being screwed. But we are all being screwed; building up my cultural capital is one of the few things that I can do to empower myself. Without piracy, I would not be the person I am now. I would not have been inspired, I would have felt thousands of times more alone, I would be unenriched.

The free availability of all art is something that I have complete faith in happening in a post-revolutionary society; the fact that it can defacto happen now is a sign of that. To only use piracy as a method of consuming culture however is putting the cart before the horse. Corporate music can go swivel, there'll always be another sucker with the way things are at present, and some music is alright to be suckered by (and some I think isn't, but I really can't stand contemporary pop music so call me a stick in the mud, it's music, remember? The ultimate subjectivity?)

To sound like one of those tedious people who insist on supporting their local petit-bourgeoisie, it's important to support musicians. Torrent, torrent like your lives depend on it, but try and put something back to the band or the group if you like it. Unless you want to get into some crazy criminal shit and start a theft clique to support bands.


I agree with the need to support artists, but piracy isn't the root problem. I of course don't need to explain that on this site though. It's only happened once so far, but I enjoyed a 'stolen' book enough to mail the author $20.

[Slavic]

There hasn't been a single video game or movie since the 90s due to piracy.

Are you happy now? This is why we can't have nice things.

up863eQKGUI

[Os Cangaceiros]

I used to just support it because I liked free things, now I really don't partake in it but I cannot philosophically conceive of whats even being stolen. It's a bunch of 0s and 1s on a disk, nothing is lost..

That's why the "enclosure of the internet commons" has been so difficult a task to achieve.

[Slavic]

I used to just support it because I liked free things, now I really don't partake in it but I cannot philosophically conceive of whats even being stolen. It's a bunch of 0s and 1s on a disk, nothing is lost..

If your going to break digital media into its base components, you can go on and also say that food is just a bunch of carbon and hydrogen atoms.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

If your going to break digital media into its base components, you can go on and also say that food is just a bunch of carbon and hydrogen atoms.
this is the kind of positive attitude we need. The means of production is also mostly just atoms so really...

[The Intransigent Faction]

I'm kinda paranoid about bittorrent and other more sketchy sources.

Ethically speaking, I've listened to countless songs on the radio that I never paid for. I've read books I didn't pay for. I've watched movies I didn't pay for. The simplest and best way I've heard this point is: "Music is an art, not a commodity". Short of making media impossible to borrow or share (which seems very unlikely), people will continue to have access to media they do not pay for, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Most of the money tends to go to a record label rather than an artist, and piracy has actually greatly expanded the audience of smaller labels far more than would otherwise happen.

In the case of independent labels or lesser-known or underground artists who make music or whatever for a living, I do feel an urge to buy their stuff if I like them, because I want to hear or see more and they depend more on some kind of income from it than, say, Metallica would to make that happen.

As for breaking it down into its components, the RIAA tried to sue LimeWire not just for every song illegally downloaded, but for each individual copy of every song. The result was a lawsuit for more money than exists in the entire world, and naturally that was rejected. So even the American courts have declared it impractical to commodify each set of zeroes and ones in favour of at most commodifying the particular piece of art generically. Yet doing that presents its own problems because there are 'free' copies floating around out there and we're able to move between formats easily enough.

That's a bit of a rant, but in short, paranoia aside, I've got no compunctions about piracy and it's not going away regardless, although I would choose to actually support certain artists, personally. Artists should be able to live and maximize their creative avenues, but the root of that problem isn't consumer behaviour. It's capitalism.

[Creative Destruction]

I undersyand the need for artists to eat, so I'll pay for music or a flick if it is available. I pirate the shit out if school textbooks, though.

[Illegalitarian]

The piracy of music takes money from record labels that more often than not squash artistic freedom and are a great detriment to music

The piracy of movies takes money not from the actors or directors, but from the producers who are more often than not guilty of the same thing.

No sympathy

[Creative Destruction]

The piracy of music takes money from record labels that more often than not squash artistic freedom and are a great detriment to music

The piracy of movies takes money not from the actors or directors, but from the producers who are more often than not guilty of the same thing.

No sympathy

this isn't true for artists who produce music for independent labels. all the bands on Ipecac Records probably do not pull much money from anything except for their records, for example. show promoters don't pay shit and people don't often buy enough merchandise for them to break even on tours.

[Slavic]

I'm kinda paranoid about bittorrent and other more sketchy sources.

Its honestly extremely rare that any legal action would be brought against you given the amount of people and to quantity of torrents that exists. The probability of an agency specifically targeting you for a specific download going all the way to court is probably up there with winning the lottery odds.

I've torrented hundreds of files over the years and have only received one letter from my ISP telling me that Blizzard Entertainment was *****ing at them about one of my downloads.

[consuming negativity]

>assuming that piracy equates to lost revenue

I pirate even when I can afford shit because it's 10 times easier, but most of the time, there is no revenue being lost in the first place because I'm poor as fuck. The only difference is that I'm getting to enjoy shit I wouldn't be able to otherwise. And you can't even pirate good shit anyway... all of my records I had to buy, for example. And I used to have Netflix too, which was cool, but they don't even support Linux so I canceled that shit too.

[MarxSchmarx]

Hi NSA

[The Intransigent Faction]

Its honestly extremely rare that any legal action would be brought against you given the amount of people and to quantity of torrents that exists. The probability of an agency specifically targeting you for a specific download going all the way to court is probably up there with winning the lottery odds.

I've torrented hundreds of files over the years and have only received one letter from my ISP telling me that Blizzard Entertainment was *****ing at them about one of my downloads.

Haha, not what I'm worried about, but okay.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Hi NSA

Actually I think it's the Department of Homeland Security that is the current government agency responsible for intellectual property crime, not the NSA

[Lord Testicles]

Hi NSA

Yes, I'm sure it's the intellectual property rights that the NSA is concerned about not the people advocating the violent overthrow of the US government.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

If your going to break digital media into its base components, you can go on and also say that food is just a bunch of carbon and hydrogen atoms.

The point is that carbon and hydrogen atoms can't be copied (in a very precise arrangement) with almost no effort.

[Redistribute the Rep]

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