Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Devil’s advocate: “If you copy it, the [original] owner doesn’t lose anything…”

They loose the right to distribute it or not distribute it to who they choose. As the owner, it’s technically their right to deny access to the work, and you are taking that right away from them.

I’m not a shill, and I am never going to be a customer of big media. If I can’t get it without charge, I’d rather go without. But, I am taking that right away from the owner. I sleep ok.

Using the term "piracy", instead of "filesharing", was always pro-corporate framing. In his 2010 essay "Ending the War on Sharing", Richard Stallman wrote:

When record companies make a fuss about the danger of "piracy", they're not talking about violent attacks on shipping. What they complain about is the sharing of copies of music, an activity in which millions of people participate in a spirit of cooperation. The term "piracy" is used by record companies to demonize sharing and cooperation by equating them to kidnaping, murder and theft.

non-commercial file sharing is not piracy, the industry just re-defined it because they don't want anyone to share stuff.

At this point digitally downloading things needs to just stop being called piracy and start being called digital archival. WiFi went down, luckily I have my digital archive.

All the people who made the content already got paid for their hours in large media. If you're pirating from a studio that is 1 to 10 people you probably know that and probably know it's lame. The money we're paying to view/listen is literally just the corporation trying to "make money back", even though the CEO and execs are probably a few tonnes richer than the rest of us, and the regular working class is getting paid hourly.

We've really got to be moving away from restricting knowledge, honestly even the idea of a $/hr type thing. Imaging being charged 15c every time you heard 40 seconds of a song or TV show. I like the idea of artists being paid royalties but our current system is such a scam with us, the core creator, getting hardly anything after the corporations get their cut. FFS, audiobook producers get more share of royalties than musicians do (most audiobooks are ~40% royalty share and musicians are lucky to get 25%.

It's hard as an artist. I want to be able to make money off my music, and be able to live from just that. The very real reality is that piracy (digital archival) would have almost ZERO affect on me due to the scale of it. People would be more likely to hear about me through its word of mouth than they are currently trying to buy my music with my advertising (none). I'm also not making music for money, but so that it can be listened to. Making money from it is more of a benefit than the goal, despite how nice it would be to do nothing but make music.

So, really, if I am hardly affected by people archiving my work, why in the fuck would HBO be? And if it were true, why would they remove hundreds of movies and shows from their service, lost forever. How are the royalties from those being lost when I archive it?

No, there is none.

There is only one reason to not digitally archive something. One alone.

Metrics.

If you like something and you want it to survive, fucking pay to watch it. I love It's Always Sunny. I have all of it archived, and mostly watch it there. But I will put money into Hulu once in a while just to stream Sunny, for the new season, for whatever. Because those guys have more hours of my life than any other show, and I want them to be able to continue making it, and they can only do that if FX sees that enough people watch them to justify continuing. I don't agree with everything Hulu does, like their showing ads for networks even on the "Ad free" tier (the network contracted for it, which leads me to wonder when other networks won't leverage for the same deal), and something else that I had on my mind but just escaped me due to the late hour. Those guys all already got paid, the crew and teams, everything is taken care of. But for another season to happen enough people have to have seen it on a platform that matters to them, so the only thing that really matters is the metrics.

Of course, if you're HBO even that doesn't matter and it can be all thrown out anyway... so...

to digital archival I go

So, please read this as serious and no ulterior-motivation.

I'm hoping to release a game in a few years, and naturally I would like to sell it.

I am also supportive of this community and understand somewhat about the release date underground release.

I'd rather either get the revenue from my work directly, or give it away in exchange for donations, trade, or even nothing at all.

All this especially in light of how often independent creators get their shit stolen by megacorps.

Is there something I should be keeping an eye out for, or preparing for so everything goes smoothly at least with regards to this community?

Copying was never piracy

Who cares. Piracy is its own thing. People will still do it and creators will still hate it whether it's classified as "stealing" or not.

Now you know corporations and government departments will lie to children to benefit the ownership class and harm the labor class.

Let your kids know who authorities really work for, to question everything.

Heck, let the grown-ups know too. Many didn't get the memo.

Depends on how you define stealing.

If you say it's taking something away from the original owner then you're right, but if you say it's not paying your share of the costs of a good you're using then you're wrong. E.g. if you go to a concert and don't pay the entrance fee then the concert will probably still happen, but you're not reimbursing the artists and crew for their costs and effort.

I wasn't gonna buy it anyways. Unless I'm a big fan. Then I'll buy it. But it needs to be a decent price and the merch has to be worth it.

Who cares? Why the reach for moral superiority? I don't have an issue with stealing IP. Because the concept of IP is stupid. But I'm not going to rub myself off over what to call it.