The starving (and recent gutting) of the public domain demonstrates the institution of intellectual property persists in bad faith. Therefore media piracy is a legitimate means to acquire and consume media.
As the C-suite and its political and paramilitary minions have shown us crime is not about behavior and consequences, but who you are and to whom you bend the knee.
Well, aren’t you quaint. Next thing you’ll be asking for is seed corn that you can replant year after year from the corn it grows, heated seats in your cars without a subscription payment, replaceable batteries in your battery powered electronics.
Don’t forget a subscription free garage opener/motor camera.
I think I got the last one of those, but mine did come with a “free” phone app to open/close the door. The app turned into an advertising platform about 3 years after I put the opener in - no options out, gotta see the ads if I want to use my opener via app.
This hasn’t bothered me at all. I’ve been _Arr_chiving a lot lately.
Beyond the obvious problem of paying but not owning, it’s impossible to watch/listen without that data being stored on a massive corporation’s server and likely sold to hundreds of advertisers. Last I saw Spotify had over 300 venders they share data with. I’ve seen sites with over 1000.
So you’re not only paying for something you don’t own, but you’re also paying to have a larger profile in the surveillance capitalism machine.
have a larger profile in the surveillance capitalism machine.
This is why, when I’m not watching, I’ll set Netflix to stream movies I like.
I do! I own CDs and vinyls. I collect mainly CDs because they are smaller and need less storage.
Do you just collect the CDs or do you also play them with a CD player? I feel like it’s not even worth the hassle of getting a system set up to play CDs compared to a record player because the quality won’t be as good.
I’ve got a good couple dozen of CDs I bought over the years when I hadn’t used Spotify yet - moved to self-hosting now - and I was always wondering if I should work on actually playing CDs instead of just burning them
Beyond the “experience”. If you rip the CD into something lossless, it should be audibly the same. Vinyl versus CD. People claim “warmth” difference.
It’s always been hypocrisy. The media companies only say what part you actually own based whatever is most profitable to them.
Technically, back in the day, when you bought any music wether it be 8-track, LP, cassette, or CD, you were purchasing a single-user license for the music and the media was just how the record companies delivered it to you. That’s why Napster and all the piracy that followed it was/is illegal, because you don’t own a license when you copy the digital file.
HOWEVER… Over the many decades I’ve been alive I’ve scratched, twisted, demagnetized, or just plain old lost hundreds of LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Do you think if I requested a new copy of the music that the record companies would send me a replacement?
No, they would not. So I obtained digital replacements by…other means.
Now that we’re all used to digital copies, suddenly that’s been the important part all along.
That’s why if you want to support artists, you can buy the shit locked down files so they get the artist gets paid, and then just never use them. Pay for them but get your actual files from piracy.
Better yet, if the artist has a website or something like Bandcamp buy from there so they actually get a decent chunk of the money you give instead of the pittance left over after the distributors and record companies have taken their cut.
Listen, me hearties…
We are pirates, yar har fiddle me dee
Yo ho, all together, hoist the colors high
Heave ho, thieves and beggars
Never shall we die
Aarrggh matey!
Gahhh! You two barnacles best be keeping quiet about the high seas, or it’s the plank for yee!!
If buying isn’t owning, then pirating cannot be stealing. These corporations are literally herding people back onto the seas. I need to go get myself a new flag with a skull and bones, since I tied my boat to the pier about fifteen-twenty years ago.
That’s just it with most of these services - you never bought 'em. You pay a subscription fee each month to use their service.
That is not buying, nor is it ownership.
Pirating is not and never has been stealing. You do not deprive anyone of anything when you make a copy of something.
Copyright is a dumb as shit system of artificial scarcity and always has been.
Its kinda true. I like to think of gog and gog-games. One is a storefront. One is a clean ui with all the games downloadable for free.
I think many would still use the free one vs paid. Myself, there’s something about owning it.
I pirated doom eternal back in the day. I was enjoying it so much I just bought it instead. 🤷
I get what you’re saying with “copying” vs “stealing”, which is true. But if you could clone your friends car for free you don’t need to buy a car and the business loses a sale.
For digital media, pirating increases the number of sales
So sad that gog-games will be shutting down soon. Are there any plans for forks?
doom eternal
back in the day
Oofff, I felt that
The business loses a sale of what though? A copy they never created or had possession of in the first place?
If I go home and build a PC, can Dell claim that I deprived them of a sale of a copy of one of their computers?
“Pirating” isn’t stealing regardless of anything. It is unsanctioned copying.
I’m stealing this.
And not removing the product from anyone.
That’s the other part of it. How will you pirate when they no longer sell hardware to us?
Their whole idea is for the production of technology to be exclusive to them and their “AI” datacenters. Besides being used to spy on us and everything we do, think, create, and opine - they will force us into walled gardens on locked down tablets and we will use their software they way they intend for the time they allow us, only.
It’s a prison.
No worries we will always have the hardware. It may not look shiny or new, but we can go to scrape yards and another places to find what we need. And we will build our internet. It be true cyberpunk. Hell with 2 dollar saw blade I can gather some materials needed.
It’s the only way to be sure.
I have no fear that Amazon will come to my house and remove the books I bought. If they were DRMed ebooks, on the other hand, that would be something to worry about.
I was always more angry about them editing digital publications after the fact. That’s some Grade A “Ministry of Truth” BS right there. Dead Tree Media forever.
I mean, a Kobo + Anna’s Archive also works without dead trees.
Never forget: Han shot first.
I like the 4K77 versions.
Only way I feel I can push back is by also saving it locally 🏴☠️
I do, raise the black flag and you can too.
🏴☠️
We got frog boiled in the 2010s to accept renting out media. Me and my sandisk Sansa clip still go for walks listening to mp3s. I wonder if devices like this will see a resurgence under the idea that owning it gives you control of your media.
Its a thing already.
Companies like fiio, shanling etc make old skool style players.
E.g.:
We thought we were signing up for libraries. We forgot the “Public” part of how libraries work.
If Amazon sales of “MP3 players” are indicative it’s simmering; I see a handful with over 1-2K sales per month (assuming we can trust those numbers, it is Amazon after all). I imagine it’s going to be a bit muted for a while due to the memory and storage price gouging and that may push more people towards CD’s, which are already seeing a resurgence.
I have an mp3 player that I occasionally use, but much more frequently I’m streaming my music to my phone from my Plex server.
I saved all my DVDs because the pawn/sale price wasnt worth it… So glad I did.
Films are still physical in my home. PC games are only digital, preferably bought at gog so I can download and store them. Music is also digital since I don’t have any cd player. But I will continue to my films as blu ray discs as long as my blu ray player works and the films are released. Well, there needs to be stores that sell the films as well, that looks like the first thing to fall.
I love gog too, but I’m a sucker for classic/retro games. Playing Star Flight atm, forgot how hard these older games are!
I do still have a shit ton of CD’s. I actually forgot about them until you mentioned it. Yet nothing to play them on lol. The rest is .MP3 or ripped from my CD’s
I do have an old whatever the other version of blue ray player was. They were giving them away and they can play DVDs so I grabbed on as that format failed.
Got VHS and a deck, also got an Hi8 deck but thats more for vacation movies\4 wheeling when I was a kid.
I do have a bunch of laser disc’s but never bought a player. I need to as I have all the original Star Wars and others waiting to be played :)
GAH now I remember: “HD DVD”
As long as blue ray discs are released, there’ll be webshops selling them
