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Technology @lemmy.world
kpw @kbin.social

Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

472 comments

  • Forget about features and prices, how about actual content?

    2017 I buy this space shooter game called "Destiny 2". It has some problems, but it's decent enough. $60 buy in. The single player story missions took you through four initial planets/moons, the European Dead Zone, Titan, Nessus, and Io, recovering your power and kicking the asses of the space turtles who tried to kill everyone.

    Expansion 1, 2, 3 and 4 come out widening the story, adding more locations, Mercury, Mars, The Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, the Moon... with all the associated story missions, strikes, raids...

    And I bought in on those too. Some hundreds of dollars.

    Roll forward to 2020, almost 2,000 hours in game. Bungie decides they're done with story missions and removes them from the game. They also decide that the game is "too big" for new players to get into, and seeking a Fortnite, free to play style audience, removes 1/2 of the content from the game.

    Existing players like me drop the game because content we paid good money for and hours we spent exploring, collecting and curating gear, just went up in smoke.

    New players now have no onboarding point and are incredibly confused because there's no story and no real way to get into the game.

    So Bungie managed to completely alienate both their existing user base, and the one they hoped to attract.

    Oh, and they have now promised not to do it again, but at the same time, haven't brought the content back either.

    It's an online service as a game too, so piracy is not an option. The only way to experience the original content is through YouTube videos.

    https://youtu.be/EVH865r2J8k

  • Netflix and Amazon prime simply won't work with VPNs active, which I use for work and privacy towards my ISP.

    I won't compromise my security for their bad services. Living in a non US country, we are also always several years behind on content being offered.

    Yeah, nah. The paying customer always pays for the percieved sins of non customers.

    Set sail.

  • the way i see it, on big budget productions anyone who is relying on their paycheck to survive already got paid for their work, and the ones collecting royalties or sales percentages are rich enough that i couldnt care less. smaller independent studios or individual creators are the ones that i will always support, and in cases like itch.io games that are pwyw i will take the free download and figure out how much i will pay based on how much i like the game.

    • That's Like saying I don't pay rent to the landlord, the house has already been built.

      If a society agrees on this being right, no more houses will be built. And no movies will be made.

      • If society agrees on something like that then houses will still get built as obviously we've entered the socialist utopia were all waiting for

        Capitalist brains stuck on "buh peeps need money or not do nothin"

      • well, when reduced to those terms they so seem to be similar concepts but needs and luxuries are not exactly equivalent, not to mention the difference between a tangible possession vs an intangible "experience" which have wildly different relationships, transaction types, and even grey area over what is considered piracy.

        also, claiming society has agreed on these exchanges being "right" isnt exactly accurate. society certainly tolerates these exchanges, but to what degree has changed significantly in recent years. theres a good debate over intellectual property ownership, and whether the original idea is more valuable than the creation of the work itself. certain aspects of filmmaking, for instance, are recognized as being more significant to the finished work than some other roles (directors, cinematographers, etc) but the fair compensation of other roles which make no less significant contributions to the relevance of any work is a subject on which society cannot make a fair judgment without knowing the details of every relationship.

        in the end, i believe piracy is and should be viewed as an organic market force which should prompt corrections in order to minimize, but due to the nature of the transaction it will never go away.

    • Don't you see the problem in your reasoning? When everyone would just pirate, nobody would be able to get paid. The money that pays the wages for the workers isn't willed into existence, it ultimately comes from the consumer. Bigger studios pay their workers before the project is finished. That money comes from ongoing sales they produced before.

      • If I’m pirating, it means I either can’t afford the item, it’s too hard to get, or the ways to get it have been made overly complex and frustrating. This means literally no money was ever going in anyone’s pockets to begin with.

        How am I preventing a sale that was never going to take place to begin with?

      • i would see your point if my reasoning were extended beyond where my boundaries are set. my position is based on a lot of factors and isnt a blanket statement that piracy is never immoral or that everyone should pirate all the time regardless of circumstances. if everyone were to pirate, it would certainly change my perspective on it as a broad practice, though not absolutely.

        my argument, at least from the perspective of my original comment, was more of a reflection of my feelings that the least deserving are making the most profit off of any given large studio property, and i advocated piracy as a reaction to that given current studio structuring and the state of the entertainment market. and i understand that the profit of previous properties are directly responsible for the amount invested in subsequent works, but there is a certain degree of profitability which makes me feel like any argument about how piracy is hurting business is petty complaining over what is comparitively loose change for those that continue to be paid. i dont quite get a pang of empathy for a few thousand or even tens of thousands of instances of piracy for a property with profits in the hundres of millions considering how many instances were from people priced out anyway.

  • 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.

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

472 comments