I had a professor require the purchase of a $300 TEMPORARY ACCESS to an online textbook which also gave the professor royalties. I was morally obligated to pirate that book, but now they're tying busywork to the online software and you cannot pass unless you pay up
That should be illegal. At my college in the states, they always tell us to get the cheapest option, maybe an older used edition, or just pirate the book. They never have us use the online busywork.
@@lance_374 This type of shit is what ruins my dreams, I´ve always wanted to go into neurology and prosthetics, but I couldn't imagine some of the bullshit that comes along with the corporations in that area
Okay, so hear me out, most colleges have law students, meet with them and the professor(s) and discuss potential legal ramifications. Some of em like solving legal puzzles!
@@lance_374 I wish that was the case in my State. A decade ago, even the community colleges had 'teachers' who required students buy learning materials that were really just license keys for some stuff online. Community. Colleges. How the publishers must have laughed as they cashed the money of all those *literally poor* students, and how apathetic those so-called professors must have been to their students' well-being.
I would have a great deal more sympathy for the preservation argument, if people weren't trying to "preserve" media within a week of release and while the artist is still trying to get paid. After something goes out of print, it is a lot more understandable.
@@Mikemk_ If it were genuinely about preservations, someone who bought a copy while it was in print could make copies after it was out of print. As opposed to the current situation where someone redistributes within a week of release.
piracy always seems to result in a better product. This is a bad strategy for content providers. It would be like If buying food from a market resulted in the cashier spitting in it, but if you stole the food there would be no spit. And then when you bring this up morons on the internet say "yeah but the markets terms of service say its ok to spit in your food" screw that terms of service.
This is a big part of the problem for me. I've always been willing to pay full price for the goods & services I consume. But, it's hard to swallow(no pun intended & pause) that after paying, I get a shittier good or service than I would've received without paying. *The paid experience:* As a result of BS restrictions that are not made obvious on the purchase page, I have to: 1) Buy a new monitor 2) Rebuild my entire computer so it uses a different processor - NOT because my current processor can't decode 4k60 at that codec/bitrate 100x much less realtime, but because of copy protection nonsense 3) Buy a license for, and install, a closed source operating system 4) Change my web browser 5) Still mess around with it when it does not work out of the box after reading docs/help files, as if I am trying to install gentoo from a stage 1 tarball rather than enjoy entertainment that I _bought and paid for_ 6) I want to watch w/ girlfriend two weeks later because I thought it was a good show 7) It's no longer available because of a licensing dispute... *The high seas experience:* 1) I search an index 2) I click 3) I download my file 4) It just plays when I double click it, on my EXISTING HARDWARE. NO RESTRICTIONS - the only limit is my GPU, CPU, or soundcard's capabilities to reproduce & playback the media that I've obtained. 5) Media is often distributed in better quality as a result of using a better codec/MUCH higher bitrate than _"legitimate"_ purchase - you can download a 50gb/100gb raw bluray, or you can stream a 3 mbps-5 mbps piece of pixelated garbage... 5) It's mine, forever. It will work today. It will work tomorrow. It will work until the end of time. I would pay $0 for the first experience, I would pay 2x their asking retail price for the second experience. When the second experience is free, how can you blame anyone for running for it? This honestly goes back to the dating video I did last week th-cam.com/video/0mg5MiO02vU/w-d-xo.html - I WANT to pay. I just don't want to feel _stupid_ for paying. Once you make me feel like a chump for paying, I will not pay you, date you, or consume your content - ever again.
@@rossmanngroup Louis. I have the acronym for you to use I would call this a: Reversible Action Purchase Experience Or Revoked Acquisition Purchase Experience Or maybe Reneged Agreement Purchase Experience I’m not a marketer, so I shall defer to others more experienced, but it does have a ring to it. Carry on
Seriously. I thought I'd watch Invincible since I happened to get Amazon Prime and the thing looked 480p or worse. Maybe it doesn't like Firefox? Meanwhile the pirated one I can watch offline at full quality and even pass it through an upscaler to improve the quality further than the source.
Pretty much as long as they use the word "purchase" you are either purchasing (and have owning rights to the product) or are a victim of false advertisement (and have right to full refund of that product). If they wont refund it, then you own it.
Lease isn't right either. If you lease a car, you paid for the right to use it for (typically) 3 years. At no point has the leasing period been implied to be indefinite, and there is no legal way for them to take the car back before the agreed period has passed (assuming you uphold your end of the deal and keep up with payments).
Without piracy, I wouldn't be the person I am today. As a child with parents who need to feed the kids/put a roof over our heads, I found all of the books, video games, movies, and music I still enjoy today from piracy. Now, I only pirate products that have shitty services and EULAs. Shop local and pro consumer companies, buy used, and support indie artists. It seems legit since I've never pirated a Steam game, but haven't bought a Nintendo game in the past 6 years. Great video!
If you pay full price for something you should have access to it, end of story. If companies try to take your purchased product away from you then they're the pirates... steal it back.
Interesting thought. So downloading the media would then be privateering instead of piracy, right? Edit: sorry for spamming the same message multiple times, I received an error while posting it.
They're *worse* than pirates actually: If you pirate it, the company isn't losing access to anything, but when they take a purchased copy away from you, _you are._ That is a characteristic of _literal theft._
@@gondolagripes1674 Copyright. It's an infringement of the creator's right to copy the work. Theft only applies to materials and resources, like the physical disc.
Another tier that's missing is "I pirate because I can't afford it due to the lack of regional pricing". This is often overlooked, but there are places in the world where paying 15$ for something is the equivalent of not having food for the next week.
👍When I went to Ukraine in high school, I learned this first-hand. Our crappy Canada-buck was weak enough to grumble when getting money changed to USD...But then we did the math and saw that just one of us "broke" Canadians could buy pizzas to feed our whole dozen students. (Half Ukrainian, half Canadian.) They took us to an open-air market near a small town, with tents and tables set up all over the place - every single music or game CD was pirated, because there was no way to pay for it legitimately unless you were wealthy.
So don't pay for something if you can't afford it. I'd love to buy a new Porsche but I don't have the funds to do it without bankrupting myself. And I won't go to a dealership and steal one just because I'm too poor to buy it
@@Maximilian1990 "you wouldn't download a car" moment. Making a new car costs money, copying a file doesn't. Not saying piracy good, but the other side doesn't lose anything if you pirate, they just aren't gaining either.
@@nezu_cc making and maintaining new software costs money too like wtf 😂 yes the other side loses the money they would have received if you had purchased your copy legally
@@nezu_cc Eh, it's far more complex than both of you would imply, and boils down to the role of state in a globalized world, late capitalism and all that jazz. In the Porsche example, it's more like you're making bread and trade it to locals, and they give you a bike in exchange, but if you lived across the street, they'd give you a Porsche instead. Possibly even if you're selling to the same people. So while companies generally have the discretion to do what they want with their products, ethics and morality of such could still be dubious sometimes, that is why anti-discrimination laws exist, for example. It is not a victimless crime, but it is also not hard to see why the poor and disadvantaged find justice in "robbing the rich" - as they see it. All in all, a hard issue to tackle. Is it governments that let people down? Are weak economies inherited? Is it up for the companies to pick up the slack, for people to be more isolationist and promote their local markets until they get competitive? How about something more controversial like big pharma? The list goes on.
Subscription only is much harder to pirate. That is actually part of the reason for the popularity of the live service products and rolling release delivery systems. If the product is continuously changing or if the product requires unavailable to the customer server resources to work, then pirating said product is a much more involved process. It may require you to go as far as reverse engineering a large part of it.
@Louis -Years ago, Weird Al Yankovic was an advocate for piracy - he wrote a song lampooning the RIAA and MPAA ("Don't Download This Song"), he bought back the rights to all his music, and he put his ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY up for FREE DOWNLOAD on his website - I don't know if it's still there, but he did it, and he KNEW it would get seeded around. The man is a legend of a creative, and I am glad to have given him my money for many years.
Yeah, stuff like that spreads the word, more people listening to the music, etc... So many artists got big because of MP3's when Napster was big. I never would have bought most of the 00 era Eminem albums if it wasn't for Napster.
When the artist will do things like that, and I find I like their their product. Most of the time I will go ahead and buy a physical copy. Now if it's something I don't care about. Then I won't bother. But if it is something I like I feel I should support that so they continue to make more of what I like
When you pirate media, the publisher loses a sale, but the artist can still make something new and get a sale out of you tomorrow. Publishers have to pay an artist to do that. As proof, I offer a comparsion between the Napster controversy and the AI Art controversy. Artists are pissed off about their images being used to train AI systems, despite those images otherwise being available for free. But the publishers that were pissed off about Napster, KaZaA, Gnutella, and BitTorrent are perfectly fine with brazen copyright infringement at scale, *so long as* the end result is a magic box that lets them fire all artists and replace them with AI sludge. It's like a dementedly inverted version of the "disintermediation" argument being thrown around by Negativland and friends. That being said, Weird Al actually *did* have a bone to pick with pirates: namely that they took literally any funny song and put Weird Al's name on it. It's not the usual complaint from major label artists but it's important to note how many people were misattributing songs to Weird Al for basically no reason.
The Touhou Project franchise gathered a Western fanbase pretty much only thanks to piracy. The creator of the franchise is an indie and self-publishes in Japan. The only way to even get a game legally was for a reseller to have one of the limited physical copies in stock, and even then you wouldn't have any translation (all fan made). And if you wanted to play the first five games, you need an emulator because they weren't even on Windows. The situation has changed in recent years, because the creator has added more and more of his games on Steam and has understandably been more protective of his games, asking a website dedicated to sharing copies of the games to close. Still, we owe the fan community for the games even being a thing outside of Japan.
I think a distinction should be made between piracy of products made by individuals (and self-published companies with only one individual in it), and piracy of products sold by companies exceeding a certain number of employees or a certain amount of revenue.
@@くるみみ Could you develop? Do you mean maybe that self-published companies are impacted more than big players in the industry? If that was what you meant, that's fair. However, in the case I was describing, it was more about game preservation and accessibility. The creator was limited in his ability to produce enough copies and sell them outisde of Japan. Buying from a reseller meant that you would pay more without any money going to the creator, and the stocks would still be limited, especially for older games. And as I said, the fairly recent developments of the games now being available much more easily and legally through Steam have changed the situation.
I was in that boat. Had all the games as Downloads from DoujinStyle, favorite website back then. The moment ZUN decided to release on Steam, I bought every copy available of a game I previously played but didn't have legally yet. Not all cases are the same, but ZUN's situation qualifies for the classic "Piracy is a service issue" Gabe Newell quote.
Anime in general is also largely popular in the west because of fans trading pirated copies and fansubs. Obviously it's not solely responsible, a lot of Japanese animation did make it over here officially, but sites like Crunchyroll would not be able to exist if that fanbase hadn't been cultivated through piracy.
The retro gaming tier of the hierarchy - I want to play a retro video game and are happy to pay a fair price to compensate the creators but the publisher no longer sells it, complains about not getting a cent from a second hand sale, it is out of the reach of virtually everyone because of the collectors market inflating prices and the publisher has no intention of re-releasing the game, it is seen as "abandonware" and you find a pirate copy.
abandonware has led to a re-release or remastering of many vintage games. Some of note are The Zoombinis, Freddy the Fish, Putt Putt, and many others. People loved the games, and were finding ways to play it on a modern processor. The game studios then either resurrected the game, or bought rights from whomever they ended up with, to be able to provide the game to a whole new generation.
@@gizmoenterprises3467Games getting remade or remastered isn’t always a good thing though. Sometimes, they make a game worse or stray away from the original vision of the game.
@@gizmoenterprises3467a great way to find out which retro games should be made accessible on modern hardware probably comes down to which ones get the most pirate downloads relative to their contemporary sales.
A tier to add in between 1 and 2. “I bought a physical medium and it has degraded. I can buy it from a third party at an inflated price. I pirated a copy”
a.k.a. every retro gamer who wants to play games on what is increasingly most platforms nowadays. The prices of an increasing number of Sega Saturn games are well beyond the reach of those who want to play the games because the collectors market have shrunk supply at the same time people who likely bought a PlayStation in the 90s and only just seen the Saturn via TH-cam and want to sample its library of games increase demand. Plus, the publishers don't want to re-release the games.
Somewhere in the middle there should be an adobe tier: "I enjoy a product, but it's based on a subscription. I believe that buying is owning, so I get a pirated copy"
@@PvblivsAelivs I see your argument, but I believe that when Adobe has a monopoly for editing software, they can raise their prices to any unreal standard they want, because if you need those programs for work, you can't go anywhere else (you can make a valid point and mention davinci resolve for premiere and a plethora of drawing software for illustrator, but photoshop, lightroom, aftereffects, animate have virtually no competition)
@@PvblivsAelivsI view it more akin to choosing a different option. Regardless of if you pirate after effects or use a different software, adobe never gets your money. Monetarily, it’s the same either way for the people who made the product. Legally reprehensible but morally justified in my opinion.
@@grantm.5975 "I view it more akin to choosing a different option." The "five-fingered discount" option? There _is_ editing software other than Adobe's You just don't want to use it. Morally, it is the same as taking items off store shelves and not paying for them. If you think that's morally justified, I'm not going to persuade you otherwise.
@@PvblivsAelivs As others have pointed out, physically, piracy is not theft. With theft, you have deprived others and the owner of a physical product, which is not what happens with piracy. The product you have pirated is still available to be purchased by others and to be owned by the product owners. Morally though, I agree its kind of in a grey area. "I believe that purchasing is owning" is really just "I don't like the current price model", which isn't really a valid moral reason to pirate a product on its own. However, its only really "amoral" if the people who work on the product receive compensation directly as a result of product sales (which I'm 90% sure they don't, correct me if I'm wrong), which is mostly why it falls into the grey area for me.
If I've said it once, I've said it a quintillion times: if you distribute digital content in exchange for money in any way or in any capacity, if you want to or have to take it away for any reason, you should legally be required to refund the full purchase price + 15%, turning all revocation of digital goods into a legally mandated net loss
Yes please! Also, revoking access to major features should also count. Spore and Darkspore on Steam is neutered because EA cut off access to the creature servers. It can be EASILY argued that the game has become unplayable now.
@@JamesTDG If your customers rely on your running servers, you should be required to either keep them running forever, or give your customers the source code to their software and copies of all data needed to keep them running. ESPECIALLY encryption keys!
@@Roxor128 Agreed. When they cut support for Spore on Steam, I actually stopped saving up for it, cause that was the only platform I was gonna own it legitimately.
Piracy and archiving resulted in a niche children's show being seen by its owners as still having an audience and now with the archivists' help is now being streamed on Peacock. The show is called Princess Gwenevere (Starla in UK) and the Jewel Riders, for anyone curious.
It should be considered fraud if they say it's a purchase. Purchasing is ownership. This needs to be established in court so we can finally have companies not be able to screw us over individually. Also, unrelated but not unrelated, nobody should ever be able to have their right to sue someone taken away from them in any kind of contract or EULA. If someone has a valid reason to sue, that should never be able to be taken away from them.
I had a friend who worked for a well known game company. I had to explain to him that no, you don't get payed a second time when someone buys something used. He was convinced buying second hand games was theft. I had to explain to him that if I buy something, it is mine. Until I used cars as an example, he could not understand the principle and once he did, he still tried to convince me I was wrong.
Well, TBH it does have roots from off-shore platforms and ships that were playing music on the radio waves without obtaining a permission from the owners. People on 'ships' stealing other people's stuff are, technically, pirates and the name stuck...
Copyright was made to squeeze every penny out of content, not protect creators. The worst implementation of copyright is Roblox. They will not let people manually delete images of spongebob they uploaded when they were 12 yo and their support team is a dumpster fire.
On a personal note, piracy can allow a "try before you buy" option. I did the same with many video games, the Mass Effect trilogy and Spec Ops: The Line most memorably, and I wholeheartedly approve of people purchasing a product after they recognized the value.
People say this but never actually buy things, then complain when the sequel either doesn't get made, gets Denuvo'd, or gets consolified to hell so it can actually turn a profit on platforms without piracy... but that's "not my problem", right?
@@AFistfulOf4KI don't know anyone who's done this who wasn't also stuck in actual poverty. I really don't get why so many assume that everyone is immoral and greedy. There aren't that many people (by proportion) without the empathy gene.
@@AFistfulOf4Knah. I try before I buy and actually buy things. Game demos aren't commonplace on PC & I'm not going to buy a game if I have no idea how it'll run on my system, how buggy it is, or if I'll actually enjoy it. If more games had demos on steam, I'd be far less incentivized to try before I buy via piracy. Also, this doesn't make sequels get Denuvo'd. People buying products with Denuvo is what continues it's existence. I remember reading an article about some game that recently had it's Denuvo removed, and when compared to older tests of the game it had 23% better 1% lows (stutters) with it disabled. Personally, I refuse to buy any game with tons of DRM protection or Denuvo. I'm far from the only person who does this, which shows that Denuvo's inclusion actually ends up avoiding some sales.
@@AFistfulOf4K Speak for yourself. I spent at least 860$ on "pirated" Steam games, nevermind getting hooked on a developer/game series and buying their entire catalogue after pirating a single game.
@@reynoldskynaston9529Not every company. There are tons of companies that side with consumers, because it is worth it for them. For example Brother is one of these for printers, many game developers are not cashgrabs. You can find honest people pretty much in every industry, the issue is that they are the minority.
@@FaQUE-hg5tlPiracy of a product is a sign that the product is good, but the price is wrong or the company has made itself worthy of your boycott. Nintendo is a great example.
@@justsomeguy5103 I can think of an example or two, red dead 2 is a great game, but in order play it you'll have to create a Rockstar account even if you bought it from steam. RGSC launcher is very bad on pc, it is slow, offline mode is unreliable and it requires me to solve 10 captchas to log in. This is pathetic. If I pirate, I don't get any of these problems. Gaben Newell (praise lord gabe) has said that piracy isn't a money problem,it's a service problem.
When I was in college about 25 years ago, we learned that copyright law allowed the consumer to have a copy of a piece of software for backup purposes. Where that backup came from is irrelevant. If you pay for a piece of software, you have the ability to make a copy for your own personal use. The idea was you make a purchase, make a copy, and then use the copy as your main means of consuming the content. This way the original would be preserved and if the copy got damaged, lost, stolen, or erased, then you could make a new copy. This means when you purchase access to content and then the content is for whatever reason, removed. You can legally use a copy you've obtained (source does not matter). As the the content was obviously lost, stolen, or damage (aka removed from an account). EULA do not apply, they are not legally binding, and they would have the burden to show a signature to any sort of binding contract they wish to claim. Therefor, using digital means to obtain a copy of content that you have purchased is NOT piracy. Software piracy is when a user obtains or creates a copy of a product that has not been purchased. Once the owner or distributor has received payment for digital content, it is impossible for the consumer to commit software piracy. When content is removed from an account, it is considered lost or damaged. And to my knowledge, this law hasn't been changed in the last quarter century. So if you all decide to use some form of online procurement of content you have already purchased, you are not doing anything immoral, unethical, or illegal (in the US at least, can't speak for outside, though I believe the EU is very similar or even more protective of the consumer in some cases). The ones offering such a service might be doing something that is in a grey area by not verifying purchases, but that is none of our business, that is between them and the IP holder. If businesses do not wish for consumers to obtain their legal copies from sources they feel operate in such a grey area, then they should offer the ability to their consumers to obtain such copies in a fashion that is easy, no restrictions, and without any strings attached. That should be considered an ultimatum. Either offer the service or we go elsewhere.
It's still somewhat iffy because you cannot guarantee that the version you download is exactly the same. Maybe it's updated, or you download a premium version containing paid add-ons that you did not own. Good luck finding a torrent of a game with two expansions, but you only had the base game + second expansion. That, or finding a game version without the pre-order bonus that you missed. It's virtually impossible. Not to mention that you're never buying just a copy nowadays, as it is only a license. Not that I care if you do pirate stuff like this, but it's something to keep in mind in this argument. The content providers have developed a lot of loopholes to sidestep these older laws. Copyright law needs to be revised, because if has gotten ridiculous.
@@leonro Yeah this is why I wish it was as easy to make copies as it used to be. And it would behoove businesses to make that easy for their customers and not harder. Otherwise their consumers will download things they may not have full access for. But they shouldn't have been driven to have to go to those measures in the first place. I think you mostly agree though. As I do about pro-consumer changes to copyrights and property ownership.
It's interesting, but if you ever read the license agreement included with software you will notice that you are no purchasing a disc or a floppy but the right to use the software as indicated on the agreement... Let's say you purchase a computer with a license that grant you the right to use MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 on that computer but only on that computer, then you can't sell the software or hardware by itself... In fact if you ever receive a computer that was sold with an OEM software the new owner of the computer still have the right to install the software even if the discs had been damaged or lost. And yeah license agreements can be super shitty and some of the small print end up without legal support in some countries.
reality ~ If we say this channel has helped for 10 years your $20 would be 5 cents a day give or take plus the pound off flesh from TH-cam/ Google and the Bank and I quite expect flak but I don't care cos if I had donated all the money I've been ripped off with music software companies x 3 AFTER the BEST years for software 2009 to 2014 I could have donated $1,500 (reasons of plain old going AWOL from planet earth, selling their business on to a 3rd party and just plain old stating it won't work on the next upgrade of windows cos they want to make more money by selling you the same product with a new number and different paint job) BUT it would probably be more $$ beneficial to watch ad revenue commercials.
I have a Cannonball Run policy. If the movie or TV show is not available on any modern format beyond VHS or laserdisc and not available streaming, I consider it abandoned. Pirate it.
I couldn't find my original disc, so I _tried_ to purchase Unreal Tournament (mostly for UnrealEd2)... but the port sold today is so hasty it requires newer & faster hardware than I have, so I had to find a copy of the original anyway
Ahhh the " well if you don't want my money" strategy. I would be more than happy to pay for a digital copy of an old show like Yes Minister at a reasonable price for the effort of them encoding it and providing a download ( say say 3.99 GBP) i am not paying 20 or 30 quid for the DVD when everyone who was behind the show is dead by now and i already paid the BBC to make it anyway as i am forced to pay a TV licence .
sometimes content is not available for purchase period, in any format because it's so old and wasn't popular enough. At that point it's not even piracy, it's archiving. There is LOADS of media that is lost because people didn't bother to preserve it
I would like to add "The movie/media I wished to purchased is not available in physical form and only available through a subscription service". My wife and I have a very large DVD collection. The pleasure of looking through the collection to find a movie to watch is almost as enjoyable as the movie sometimes. Recently, we wished to purchase the DVD for the Disney movie Elementals. What we found was at the time, this movie was not available in Australia in physical form and only available through a subscription service to Disney+. I did find a copy that I could ship from the US but that was $50 plus shipping. So for the first time in over 10 years, I downloaded a movie to add to our collection. If the movie was available in physical form
Yeah, I was surprised this wasn't touched on. A significant portion of media these days never exists in physical form and is only available via subscription or "purchase" through a platform that can revoke its rights at any time.
I really believe that physical media should be more of a niche/collectors option in order to reduce e-waste, but at the other hand, if physical media is dying, I think services like netflix, disney+, etc, should provide the option of downloading a LOCAL copy in a mainstream format like mp4, not some encrypted bullshit that still depends on the app to work
@@Pedro-zh6kk The physical copy is basically a "license". Ideally, we should be able to purchase official licenses that are stored in a reliable database to confirm that we own that copy. Then we should be allowed to download it in any medium, whether it be DDL from a site, or torrenting through an official private tracker.
I just don't have the attachment to physical disks and cartridges that most people do. If I want something with physicality, I play a tabletop game. CDs and cartridges are flawed, fragile devices that will eventually be unusable unless preserved very carefully. Or, the devices used to read them will wear out first.
Intresting. There's also a video explaining a reaserch done on how piracy affects videogames. They found that it has a positive effect on that particular industry.
yes I would imagine like that much, why would buy a full version, and with all rape that Louis describing here, need serial licence keys to verified well that great un till the server goes down?
What I know for sure is denuvo fucks up every single new release, I dont even buy games on day one anymore, 2 months later theyre like 30% off anyways.
Well I will say that Metallica has not gotten one penny from me since the Napster thing. I think the biggest issue was they couldn't produce anything that anyone wanted to hear anymore and if people pirated it first they wouldn't buy it later.
Something similar happened with music. A lot of the managed talent lost a little on album sales but everyone else had an increase. Also drew in a lot more merch and ticket sales at local venues from people who otherwise wouldn't have known.
22:49 I'm glad you mentioned this. I'm a musician who sells my music on CDs. I have had people tell me that they won't buy my CDs because record labels don't pay their artists well enough, and then when I tell them that I make the CDs myself and retain 100% of the profit, they don't believe me!
Yeah, they are just using it as an excuse. They should just be honest and say "I don't like your music enough / I'm cheap or poor or just an a-hole." but I guess none of those options are the best either as none of those have social grace.
Oh, and if you like it, and have plenty of money and are cheap it doesn't necessarily mean you are an a-hole. Someone who is wealthy but has a psychological scarcity mindset will perhaps be too cheap to part with money, there are Billionaires like this! They will penny pinch and do all manner of stupid things to save a buck. That is then a psychological condition. They might also be an a-hole but they don't have to be, more of a "head case". there are some stories of Bill Gates that suggest he's been a penny pincher.
There’s also: I purchased this product in one format, I want to experience it in a different format without repurchasing the media I’ve already paid for, I pirate it in that second format.
For that, I would say just don't buy Ubisoft games. Don't pirate Ubisoft games. When someone invites you to play an Ubisoft game, tell them you won't be playing Ubisoft games because (shitty Ubisoft behaviour). Don't play Ubisoft games, period. As long as they know people want their stuff, they will keep their shitty terms and behaviours. Shit companies only change on pressure.
@@rata536I have been doing exactly that. Before, I bought every once in a while some of the older Ubisoft stuff (Rayman, original Assassin's Creed games, etc.) but after repeatedly repulsive behaviour and the workplace scandals (the icing on the cake) I have simply avoided acknowledging their existence. Whenever a game of theirs pops up on Steam, I swiftly ignore it. Similar things happened to me with EA, Take Two and Activision-Blizzard. I enjoyed their games in the past, but I don't want anything to do with them anymore. Maybe they've gotten better over time, and I'm Christian so forgiveness is natural, but I'll hold onto my sentiment until I can see some meaningful change in either behaviour or leadership. It is silly to move on while the terms of service remain unchanged. I cannot stop supporting my country when I don't like the government, but I sure can stop supporting a company, especially if it's non-essential. But heck, boycotting Ubisoft is easy. They have barely made any games worth playing in the last 10 years, especially if you experienced some of their prior releases. I'm just about to stop supporting Nintendo, whose games I have enjoyed a lot ever since I was a child. At the very least, even if I won't be able to hold on, I don't want to buy them new. There are many indie games if I ever feel the need for entertainment, and those people cannot behave badly with customers.
"also wipes save files after ~8 month break" oh they can fuck so far off that they are outside the solar system. I wondered for years what happened to some of my saves because of life stuff happening. I also regularly take breaks because of low energy/ADHD fueled loops. So continuing 8 months later is somewhat common for me. I legit thought i was being agressively gaslit for a good year and it made it hard to even get back in the AC game i was enjoying.
Sorry mate but I am afraid that won't happen. When I was 14 and wanted to use the internet I had to learn English and understand how to work on computers and operating systems. Ofc I knew how to get digital content... Youth nowadays know how to work social media, a touchscreen and that's it. Piracy gets hidden on search engines and only a tiny minority, that does not make a difference will remain being able to pirate....
The corporations aren't gonna learn though. That's not how the market works. To make them change, we have to force them to do it by making their bad business practices illegal.
@@dakazzeThe "learn" is not about piracy. Its about the moment major courts and legislators (like US or EU) will finally do something about it. The moment they will be legally forced to refund 10 years of sales for their BS, they will learn (or go bankrupt which is also good).
I still don't understand one thing. Why doesn't anyone consider the public library piracy? I can literally get anything I could torrent form the library for free and everyone is fine with it. Yet if I torrented the same thing I get called a pirate? It seems like the public library is just piracy we are okay with?
someone else who sees and calls the farce for what it really is! there's techncially no real difference. the book publishers did actually try to shutter the libraries based on this argument, too. libraries tend to offer many books [and other things] for cheap/free, so that many/all may actually use/access them. in many respects, a single copy is being treated like hundreds/thousands/etc... the same can be said if you share with friends/family, one purchase virtually became multiple. the public is not bothered generally because they've been brainwashed into this business with false equivalence to theft, quasi-morality, legality, etc... the exchange of borrowing from a library, or even friend/family is done in a legal and "moral" way. the book/movie/game/etc... was purchased legally, and the purchaser is well within their rights to share it as many times as they like* or even re-sell it. nothing defined as a crime or considered "immoral" took place. and this is all they see, because this is what they were literally brainwashed to see. same reason we had all too many people wholly against mickey mouse entering the public domain, disney lobbied and brainwashed the public, too. this should also put into perspective controlled digital lending and the internet archive lawsuit. i think IA knew exactly what they were doing, and why. also, here's another interesting one : heard of Project Deluge? Jason Scott did an upload/Q&A stream after hidden palace did the showcase stream for part 1. a particular question and answer struck me : "how old does something need to be for it to be archived?" / "old enough to exist". there's a particular implication here...and i think you know exactly what that is? :P
@@ETXAlienRobot201 I also want to add I think part of the "steal" that is happening right now is this: that throughout history even with libraries, and sharing, copying, etc... which by the way we have been able to make copies of basically everything for a long time now ( tapes, vhs etc.. ) people have still purchased things. The reason is if you enjoy something you want to own it and support the makers of it too. However now we are not being sold products we are being rented temporary access through streaming services. So no one feels like the own something and most of these streaming services barely support the creators giving them like .008 $ per stream or something silly like that. So people sort of have in some cases decided there is no point even to bothering. I think those people are likely right. If you want my money actually make something, then allow most of the proceeds to the artist. I will get the pleasure of supporting them and also I will have a product that I own rather than just renting. Some of my favorite artists are already doing this with boxed sets and special editions of albums that come with picture books, expanded liner notes, and artwork that get sold by them on their merch store. I could and of course do stream those albums as well for basically no cost at all however I also own a nice product that can't be taken away from me and I can rip the CD album to literally any format I want and as high quality as I want... I think the streaming service could be okay but I think of them as ways of sampling music and I think of them as rental not as owning anything. I also think if you want to say F the streaming service and torrent everything or get it from the library and then buy stuff once you find the group you really love that is fine too. Being a musician myself I am fairly certain other musicians want you to hear their music however that happens. They can always make money on shows, merch, special editions etc... They just want the largest fanbase possible which is where the real money is. Something needs to change in the entertainment industry because as much as people want to blame unauthorized copying ( I hate the term pirate because it's just propaganda ) the real issue is these companies are using unethical practices to try and ring as much money as possible out of people for no benefit and for a thing that is not even a product. here is the real thing unauthorized copying generally doesn't hurt sales. Most people who are getting these copies of works would have just never even watched or listened to the content if they only way to get it was to pay: www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html
@@Grap3_S0da an actual text wall, damn... you pretty much have everything spot-on. thoughfull ownership only really applies if you have full rights to do anything with what you purchased. and it's been an uphill battle to secure those. as far as media/art/invention is concerned, the final step is to abolish IP in its entirety. with exception of reverting trademarks to purely a means of authentication of your brand/organization, and hard-banning the use of common language to register one. like "candy" , "sky", etc... [gg UK, allowing that at all] and ah, thanks for that link! a friend sent me a similar one a while back and it's since been buried in my DMs. you ever check the EFF website? MPA[A] is once again trying to get a website block/filter established at the federal level. also, cute the statement from the MPA director about heinous organized crime being tied to the big piracy hubs. while i wouldn't doubt that, besides hollywood's own very direct ties to heinous organized crime, most people turn to crime because our broken socio-economic system incentivizes it. honest work pays peanuts, is it any wonder people do/sell bad stuff to make ends meet? and naturally, there's a heirarchy in that structure, as well. with, no surprise, the most rich and powerful being the most corrupt and genuinely evil. also, since these big bullies keep taking-down the relatively trustworthy/safe sites, is it any wonder the ones remaining are kinda shady? nope! Also, given their track record, whose to say hollywood is not in any way affiliated with the shady sites or their operators/benefactors? or comitting similarly heinous acts? oh, right, several actors/executives have done exactly that! and let's not forget by definition, the MPA is a fascist organization, so they have no credibility/accountability in the first place.
I've bought PS1 games off of Sony's network multiple times as well as physical copies from my childhood AND my adulthood. I ain't buying them again. 4 times is enough. Especially now that Sony can literally go into your online library and remove media as shown with a video game demo they released and then deleted from everyone's system. Or netflix altering movies like removing a nudey book page from "Back to the Future." Who does that? This is why I have become like 8-track guy. I will have physical copies of everything until the day I die.
As a person who bought GTA V on XBOX 360, ONE and PC, you may very well imagine that I’m not interesting into buying another game from Rockstar (and not even pirating new releases!) At least I could sell the XBOX versions, even at a loss, as they were physical copies.
Yeah, not having the physical copies sucks when digital services will eventually shut down. I've been able to play all the games I enjoyed as a kid on original save files, play newer games offline, and play specific versions. In 20, 25 years how much of my digital library will still be available and in the way that I want? My games from over two decades ago are still accessible.
@@watsonwrote I’m gonna feel bad for people who bought the XBOX ONE S All-Digital edition, when the console is 20 years old and as useful as a doorweight- Yes, not even as a Blu-Ray player, as it lacks one (duh). PS2 owners on the other hand, who took great care of their consoles, are actually quite happy nowadays.
Don't forget digital versions get censored and altered constantly to fit the narrative. Unless you have the hard copies you are getting an altered product.
I love your content!!! And thamks to your sage advice no way will I put my images on photobucket!!! Dude, you rock. Much love from a college professor who loves 90's grunge more than any other genre. You made my day!!!
@@BrutallyHonestRevs Region free players are common enough, plus if you're emigrating I find it unlikely you'd be shipping across every knick-knack and doodad from the old country.
I do get the appeal of physical media (like for collecting and feeling of "scarcity" that makes you value each piece of media more), but for me personally it is not worth it anymore. An external HDD can fit an equivalent of a whole shelf of DVDs, and I would feel uncomfortable having so many pieces of plastic laying around my home that I would never use. I don't even have a DVD player anymore, and think of replacing the DVD drive in my laptop with a second SATA storage. And I can also watch my digital media however and whenever I like, because it is all DRMless.
The original full metal alchemist, a show I grew up with, is no longer available for sale because the copyright owners don’t want people watching it instead of brotherhood. Because of this, the only option is to pirate the video or to purchase a low quality burned dvd from ebay
@@abdullahtrees5204FMAB is a bunch of generic anime fights strung together with a plot with no point to it all. FMAB even intended you to have watched the original beforehand bc they rush and skip early content assuming you've seen the original
I'm going to be honest, I've always skirted the edge of the piracy debate, and I felt that if it is at all possible, just pay for your stuff. And while I still do not condone piracy, I can understand why some people turn to it. It makes sense in my head. And I don't blame anyone who works with the first almost half of your list. Having said that, your last 2 or 3 videos here are what have helped me make a very important decision for my future. I was contemplating getting a samsung book 4 ultra, but you have convinced me that a Framework laptop would be the more ethical choice, as I can repair and replace any part of it myself, which means I have true ownership of my product. Thank you, sir.
@@Maximilian1990 pirating is not stealing its just braking copyright law stealing is takin sum like an car but pirating is taking ur friends homework and coping it 1 to 1 and using it ur self
I could agree more with the end of the video. If I click on a link and the first thing I'm presented with is "Please disable your adblocker", I hit the back button and move on.
I’ve definitely never pirated before ;) ;) but but I’d imagine that pirating a college text book is more satisfying than just a tv show. My buddy did in fact save over $400 in a single semester by pirating textbooks.
College textbooks are even more horrible now because of platforms like Cengage. Not only is the online homework bundled with the textbook (making piracy impossible since you n3ed the homework to pass), but the lifespan of the textbook is also ARTIFICIALLY LIMITED by mak8jg it only available to rent. Want to reference the textbook after you finish that class? Better pay up! 🤓
@@JamesTDG if only. I'm not in college but a lot of these streaming services, apps and even websites don't let you screenshot or screen record. The result is pitch black or a blob or ineligible pixels.
@@Twiddle_thingsUhm, Behold(?)! My phone camera(?)! Though I'll agree, that's pretty sucky. And it's not limited to school books now. As a gov't employee, even memos and orders are getting uploaded to these shitty 'learning' sites, paywalled, then get botted to the front page of search results. Though this wouldn't be a fucking problem if the gov websites always works and isn't a pain in the ass to navigate.
Level 0, I pirate whatever I feel like AND I encourage other's to pirate whatever I create. I make drawings, among other things, take a screenshot, make a copy, share and promote it. I'd be happy
I worked in the motion picture industry from the time I was 17 years old until I retired. Therefore I torrented movies (2.36Tb) with a clear conscience. Also have a card for free movie tickets that never expires. Thanks for the video and I agree with you. Greetings from -Gabriel of Norway.
Throughout this whole video, one little sentence you said resonated with me: "it's not my problem". I don't remember exactly when you said it or in what context, but it's a very good point to drive home, which is that when for example digital content gets removed because some company stopped paying to host it or whatever, why should i, the person who bought a copy of that content whether it's media, video games, ebooks or whatever, lose it? This all goes back to the whole new paradigm of "when you pay for something you don't own it you just are granted access to a copy of it and that access or the content itself is volatile" which is very abusive behavior by the companies that sell the content and goes completely against not just the right of ownership, but freedom. If the US is such a free country why do they allow and participate in these practices? Same applies for any other free country.
I will never understand how resistant so many people are to any nuance when it comes to the issue of privacy. There are many people who will never buy content, and many who will never pirate content. There are many who will never be able to afford buying content, but still do, and many who can afford to pay for all content they'd ever want, and never will. Someone could take the time to graph out the many permutations of these factors, but who cares. The corporations make plenty of money, and many choose to spend even more on DRM methods to force more money out of the market, while others are happy just knowing people are enjoying their content. To go along with that quote from your former manager, there's a quote, possibly mis]attributed to Banksy: *_"An artist dies 2 deaths: The first when they quit breathing and their heart stops, and the second death comes some time later when someone speaks their name for the final time."_*
For the older folks going from Vinyl to Tape to CD to Digital with music, or VHS to DVD to BluRay to Digital.. Hearing that it's copyright infringement or piracy to copy after I already paid for the same thing multiple times.. Yeah, totally equal!
I recently bought a vinyl for collecting sake, and the company sent me a zip with all the music I bought as mp3s. I really wish more companies would take that route. It was so nice being able to listen to it right away and have the files without having to find them online, sort and organize them and such
@@shinobuoshino5066 why? I have a massive collection of music, most is mp3/320kps. It isnt worth the minimal sound difference to need exhorbant amount of drive space to store it all. What do you suggest? Which format sound noticably better without making each file ridiculously large?
I'd add a tier for "I like this old game on this old console. It's discontinued now, but it's been remastered and put for sale on modern consoles, however it's a buggy, shoddy port and an awful experience. The original version is also very rare now and resellers want hundreds of dollars for it, so I'd rather pirate a digital copy of the original to use on an emulator"
Fun fact: Copyright laws originally only protected works for twenty years, period. This was to protect authors and other creators, and their publishers, for a time to allow them to recoup the costs of distribution of the works and make a reasonable profit therefrom. Then came the ability for a copyright holder to extend a copyright by renewal. This was roughly concurrent with the advent of motion pictures. It was reasonable to allow rights holders to extend a copyright if the work was still selling well enough to justify it (of course, this criteria would be repeatedly abused). Fast forward to our rapacious 100 year copyrights under the DMCA, including scurrilous outfits who buy up and renew the copyrights for works that actually belong in the Public Domain, then sell them. Does anyone reading see a trend here? Another fun fact: _Information wants to be free!_
This is what is missing from the conversation. It would be a lot more rational to take a stand against piracy if we had a reasonable public domain. Nearly all of the content I've pirated has been 15-30 years old at the time I pirated it and wasn't being sold by its publisher anymore. But then you see companies like Nintendo do their best to shut down every ROM Hack and fanmade product to their games. One fan took Pokemon Crystal, which was published in 2000 and from 2008 to 2016 worked on transforming it into their "Pokemon Prism" hack, which used all new graphics, music, region design, plot, and features... It didn't resemble Crystal whatsoever anymore and the maker of the hack was not making a profit off of it. They shut it down because just a year later they would re-release Crystal in their E-Shop and didn't want competition. Ideally, we would have a period of time where no copyright infringement is allowed and then a period of time where copyright infringement is allowed but not for profit.
Maybe this would look like 15 years of protection against copyright infringement, after which piracy of that content is fully legal. And then 35 years later (for a total of 50 years) it hits public domain.
@@AlexsGoogleAccount if there's a cut-off at which point "you're legally allowed to pirate it" , why then wait an additional 35 years to go fully public domain? also, 15 years flat is more than enough time.
@@ETXAlienRobot201 After the cutoff point, there are no protections against piracy, but an individual or company cannot re-sell your product or profit from it.
Audible stole 2 Terry Pratchett books from my library because someone else bought the rights to produce audibooks for them in USA and started doing frankly mediocre theater-esque productions of the abridged books. So, I cancelled my subscription and I pirated his complete discworld set which is easily found on the internet archive. I've already purchased the audiobooks and the full softcover set, while he was alive.
In India, a lot of US IT companies setup offices to get access to cheap labor since the cost of living is lower here. Based on the cost of living, they lower the paycheck. But when it comes to selling their products, US companies basically charge us same as US folks knowing full well that we don't earn near as much as them. Or in some bizarre cases like Apple, they actually charge more than US. What do you think, is it morally ok to pirate in these cases?
*NOT JUST!* However, regional pricing is certainly important to have. Gabe Newell's statement about having a good service is important here. Also, I don't think big corporations actually do this _that_ much. ...Me? I'm Indian.
these companies are delusional and evil. They have bribed the US government to make insane trade deals to guarantee their ip and copyright. It's bonkers. pirate all of it, boycott said stores, and maybe more.
I can for a fact say that there would no video game culture in India without piracy. I grew up playing pirated Mario and Contra on cheap NES knockoffs from China. Like many people of my era, this was my childhood and introduction to gaming. If my dad had to actually buy a NES (which wasn’t even available on sale in India at that time) and pay 60$ in 1990s for a single game, there is no way I’d be into video games today. This is a repeating story for most people in India that grew up on a pirated NES/PS1/PS2/PSP. Same goes for Windows. A lot of people use pirated copies of Windows to learn how to use computers and use pirated software like MS Office or some AutoCAD to develop skills necessary for a modern world. Simply because these products are unaffordable for 99% of the population due lack of any regional pricing.
I live in the US, so I don't have experience with this, but I think it's really just up to you. Pay for what you want and pirate what you aren't able to pay for.
Piracy is never stealing. Stealing requires you to deprive the owner of their property. Pirates make unauthorized copies. Piracy can never be stealing and we should not allow media conglomerates to redefine words to suit their agendas.
By definition it isn't stealing, but that's like saying patent infringement also isn't stealing, so it's just complicated trying to define whether intellectual property copying is actual theft when no one is directly harmed.
Maybe the tarts have accidentally removed the original ones? Which game company was it again that released a pirated and cracked copy of their game as an original to sell? E: Rockstar.
That's a problem with the concept of IP at all. Ideas cannot be stolen because they can only be recreated in the minds of others, never removed from the mind of the original creator (unless you resort to physical violence, of course, which should be illegal for reasons completely distinct from the ideas behind IP). This makes it impossible for ideas to be property, because property is necessarily exclusive. Intellectual property and physical property are mutually exclusive. If someone else owns their idea more than you own the physical property with which you create it, which you rightfully owned leading up to that point, then you don't own your physical property.
I still only buy my music on CDs and rip them myself. This way I have a completely lossless, DRM-free, perfectly tagged library and the CD goes into ‘The Archive (tm)’ and collects dust as a final stage backup. There are a few shops local to me that sell a really good selection of used CDs for $1-$5 USD, so it ends up costing a lot less too.
I rip and stash to all my devices and drives. No cd required if you keep things up to date on a hidden flashdrive you keep around for safekeeping. I do the same for books as well.
i appreciate the hierarcy and the explanations for each tier! also really like the point about recognizing that there are a lot of people behind the scenes too besides artists who deserve to be credited as well. it's quite easy for people to devalue them and their contributions. people already devalue artists and the labour that goes into creating art in any form!
As a dyslexic I feel safe in saying that the people who notice these scams are almost always neurologicaly atypical. these scams are more invisible to most people and that is by design. They know how to hide the price point and the cost to benefit, etc. As a paper and pencil gamer my community has long been riden and used by companies who bought out the original creators and/or robbed them and refuse to pay royalties. I want to form pirate guilds to make fan edits of the games we already own and have to re-purchase every time the company rewrites the rules just to sell books. The dungeons and dragons community was once just people who did not fit in anywhere else but our community was great and we really did look out for each other. Now companies inject weird politics where they don't belong and try to divide communities. All the good will is gone and it is just a matter of time before more people wake up to how badly they've been abused for stinking worthless money. What they have traded for cash is priceless and will maybe never be again. They robbed the whole world with their stupid greed even if very few people realize it.
Aw, man, I got very interested into your post when I read dyslexia reconignizing dark patterns but at the end I felt sad because of the political tangent. Weird politics, yeah, funny how the """"""""inclusive"""""""""" "people" exclude MAINLY who needs inclusion the most. They're about dividing and conquering, I question if it is about profit anymore, I tend to think not. It's an honor to fight with you in the boycotting ranks, king. Let's keep opening people's eyes. I'm bipolar, btw.
@@DavidPereiraLima123I see it as fixing their mistakes. Inserting art and margin scrolls that deter photocopy attempts wouldn't rile me if the art was better. By design it has to look muddy and overly detailed, apparently. the same is done with the actual rules by spreading them across multiple pages or chapters when it could be put into a few information rich charts. the grasping greedy hands are crushing the life out of the IP they have control over. If they saw popular fan edits I think they might feel pressure to get in front of them.
Right on both accounts. Right on them using tactics most people somehow don't see and end up defending (although it's blatantly obvious to me how corrupt and malicious many of these tactics are). And the super *inclusive* group is just the fake group. If you flip everything they say to the opposite, it makes perfect sense and lines up with their actions. They're inclusive, they want to help people, and everyone will be happier listening to what they say. Now invert all 3 of those statements and it becomes accurate.
I felt this so much. I purchased my Mercedes Benz e300 2019 in 2019 and it came with a hotspot and internet browser onboard. One year later they stop supporting it… this stuff is so frustrating. I know I still have a car but that feature was one of the selling point for me because I could get work done on the go.
if you appreciate someone's solo work it's always better to support the creators of movies, videos, etc DIRECTLY if possible than to pay greedy companies.
Agree - I was looking at B&N publishers and authors that sell through B&N that have 8 dollar books get 40 cents!! Imagine pirating that book online and donating 8 bucks to the author. It would do them so much better. Fuck publishing companies
@@kirsten007 publishing companies are made to make money off someone's creation. it's an outdated thinking, on internet you don't need to pay somebody 80% to get seen. Yeah, maybe your exposure will be smaller, still is very possible, plus developing authenticity and separation is signs of confidence 😊
This is the type of discussions we need to have to mature people's purchasing decisions, which effectively control the economy and the behavior of companies. Great take on people's purchase decision making. Thanks for the vid!
When i was in highschool piracy was pretty much the only way to get games and photoshop. My parents would occasionally buy me a game but that was the rare exception. Game studios never technically lost money because it would never have been bought
@@Maximilian1990 that is literally impossible. I had essentially no money until i was about 16 and started earning my own. I never got "allowance" money. Adobe in particular has definitely recouped their losses with me, as fir everyone else you maybe dont understand that most families cant aford to buy as many games as a teenager can play. We did buy game cartridges back when that was a thing because the market was full of Nintendo Knock-offs, but a regular game was too expensive. The best way to get one legally was with the full games included in a magazine like PCGames and LEVEL which were popular in Romania at the time
@@Maximilian1990 But it is still their own fault for not coming up with a pricing model that poorer people could afford. note that today many games are free but you pay for extra benefits. A lot of software has an ad supported tier free tier and then other tiers where it is somewhat better for additional money. Also you can offer both an outright purchase or a "pay per day/week/month/year" type system. The issue is that when they don't do this then there are only 3 options for people who aren't wealthy, one is save up and buy a very tiny percentage of the things they would like (and some don't have the money for even that), another is to have the thing for free, and the last one is to not have it and this one is perhaps the worst or the company as a free user sometimes encourages purchases while someone who doesn't use it can discourage others from buying it (interest in a thing can be infectious and this can work for or against the TV show, movie or game maker).
@@Maximilian1990forced to? Theoretically, but for a leisure product like a game or software you could very much go out with, it won’t really be a lost sale
I think you forgot a key level: "I'm too poor to purchase media just for my pleasure, so I'll pirate it with the understanding that if it brings me value, I'll go back and purchase it as soon as I'm able."
sound like my life story. Now I prefer to buy games. I've rebuilt my childhood collection mostly via Steam. Shame that most of the stuff is now available only in digital form. Physical media from good-old-times is unobtainable
And to demo games. No way I was gonna outright buy Cyberpunk without knowing if I liked it. I knew I'd like it after playing it for 10 hours and then bought it at full price, no further questions. We need more game demos.
Long time viewer but rarely do I post: I love that you are very clearly a technically competent dude who could do all sorts of crazy green screen background effects but you run with two mismatched doors and a light switch for your backdrop.
Piracy is completely fine in my opinion. It really is a victimless crime. Companies have been screwing us over for so long that we just kind of gave up. They don’t deserve our time or attention. Seriously. Just let us own things. Physical or digital. Piracy will always exist. They can take away our stuff anytime. It’s awful.
No, its not. One case I keep arguing with people about is impoverished countries. If you can't buy Switch games in your country or you cant afford them because you live in a 2nd or 3rd world country; then you are absolutely entitled to pirate whatever you want. Art is free, the only reason we pay for it is so that artists can keep making art (publishers by extension provide capital to artists/developers). If you cant afford a piece of media or it's not available then its literally a loss to no one. If theres a kid in a country with no clean water and hes emulating Nintendo games on his PC, then I do not give a rats ass and neither should you. No one will change my mind on this.
Art still requires labour. Someone worked to produce that art. The kid who has no clean water should probably focus on getting some instead of emulating Nintendo games.
watch out, the nintendo boot lickers will be mad that the impoverished want to also enjoy some luxuries in life. God forbid people have fun without putting themselves in more debt.
@@illegalopinions4082 That's not how the world works. The burden of "Finding pure water" does not fall on little children who have next to no idea what they're looking for. you will find these kids playing on the streets even if they are a few days away from dying of thirst. Kids in a 3rd world country somehow getting their hands on a pirated copy of media does not affect those who created it since they have no way of paying these artists.
@@illegalopinions4082 "Oh you're poor? Well just pull your socks up and get out there! Oh... Uh, yeah, sorry about the army we sent that blew up your home. Anyway, don't play Nintendo. Thanks"
That's a good point because if I were that artist I wouldn't have made the sale anyways. Piracy also "spreads the word" so to speak... Lots of people learned Windows, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc by using pirated software to learn. Once you learn something you want to keep using it and not switch to another, UNLESS the company seriously screws you and forces you away.
been sub'd and watching your video for about 2 weeks now. Gotta say I am very impressed with all of your content and professionalism with any subject matter while still remaining down to earth. Good to see someone with good values and providing everyone with this sort of information. God tier level youtuber. Thank you 😊 If your reading this now this channel desrves your subscription. piece to all in these trying times
as somone who has worked with a lot of abandoned and emulated stuff (yes im still pissed that citra was caught in the DMCA crossfire, I had to remove the direct github link and replace it with I think "I worked on emulation software"). My own pov is that if the software and/or hardware are completely abandoned or have reached full retro scalping prices (eg needing to pay something like 5000$ for a working ps2 or ds or gamecube,etc). And the original company is no longer selling the object in its original form and is providing zero support (eg provides responses like "sorry cant help or just purchase the remake") then piracy should be allowed because we are picking up the slack and also keeping the original IP/game/software/hardware alive.
What does "keeping it alive" mean? It mean you playing it even if the original creator does not want to sell it to you anymore? Why is so important that you continue playing it?
@@MrJleonp "keeping it alive" means keeping interest in the game/IP/hardware/software going. And yes this does include if the original crator does not want to sell it or cant sell it. "Why is so important that you continue playing it?" there are many answers to this question. Some of them are, "nostalgia, speedrun reasons, digital archival purposes, just the desire to play a game". One use case is to provide safe children games such as the entire humongous entertainment collection that dont require internet or any form of IAP.
My father's argument for pirating was that the more things he had to trade the more likely he would have something someone wanted to trade FOR. Thus piracy drives purchase to have a large variety. He had a friend group that would purchase various media with trade in mind. One would pay full price for a program & trade a copy to get a copy of a program purchased by someone else. He said it was to combat middle man resellers who sold overpriced copies that cost them pennies to produce. Piracy as Bargain Bin Shopping.
There needs to be a law put in effect somewhere down the line of all these lawsuits being had with big tech right now that forces them to have "Do not sell my data" as an opt in thing. After 15 years of using emails to sign up for shit only to realize after those 15 years that it is used to track what we do across ALL platforms. It's fucking gross!
I remember a few years ago a TV interview on the subject of piracy. One of the people interviewed said (as I recall) "theft involves depriving the owner of an item access to that item. Piracy is taking a copy of the item, therefore not depriving the owner of the item access, and as such, is not theft".
I dont give a damm, if there is legitimate fight upon newly relased movies in cinemas. There the price is justifiable. But what really grind my gears is when it is near impossible to watch film like Naked Gun, /where most of protagonist and makers are dead and it had been paid many times. Why can not I watch movies, listen to music, that I could literally record from radios or tv with decent quality? I am supporting my favorite creator by buing merch or tickets for concert. But you may not realize this, but here in my country paying for five streaming services does not cost 9USD. It is more, like 20USD. If I want just to watch things I like, I would have to pay like 110 USD/MO. Damm, I can have a food for 14 days for that sum.
I'd suggest that in none of these cases is the content "stolen." That's not to say that it's moral; it's just not stealing. IMHO, stealing is when you take something away from someone. If you haven't removed their content from them - just made a copy of it - you might have cheated them out of money that they're rightfully owed, but the content isn't actually stolen. Words like "stealing" and "piracy" seem to be used too freely to make the act sound like something that it isn't.
That just sounds like semantics to me, lol. At the end of the day, the result is still $ not going to people. (Which I'm also not making a moral judgement on).
@@barrybachStealing not only doesn't give money to the owner but it takes even more away from them. It takes what it cost them to produce that item and now they can't even sell it to anyone else. It's not really just semantics
I'd like to hear the thoughts about two very absent tiers: 1.) "I live paycheck to paycheck, 0% chance I experience this art/content unless it's free. The creator either gets nothing from me, or nothing from me, there is no difference, other than my enjoyment of their work. If I like it, I will go out of my way to tell others, who have a high chance of paying, themselves." I think everyone was young enough for this to be true at some point (before having a job). As a wild guess I would say that this describes the majority of people that regularly engage in piracy. As an adult with a decent job, I'd sooner abstain from experiencing content before I'd go through the effort to safely pirate something, however I think this justification is gray and extremely common. 2.) Another one, "the content does not allow me to make an accurate judgment as to whether the product is worth the price unless I fully experience the product/content. If I like the content, I purchase it later. If I don't like it, I do not." This happens in gaming a lot, and software in general. A demo only shows the first level, or even worse, a tailored experience that is completely inaccurate to the regular game/software.
There was a thing I did quite often with regards to games. With the state of games these days and many many of them being released in borderline unplayable states, etc. I would pirate the game and play it, if I found the game to actually be a valuable and pleasant experience then I would pay for it on steam or wherever else. Big companies like Activison and others fuck them, I refuse to support them. However, ESPECIALLY for smaller devs, I will choose to support them almost every single time I take a sort of, "try before you buy" approach for many games these days (not my fault the state of games in 2024 is just so god awful)
Just one of the things I have stuck to since Uni times: "If it is available on the open, free, public carrier waves, then I see no reason getting a copy from the high seas is a problem. I just have no desire to deal with an antennae, TV box/card, and TV when I already have a perfectly working computer that can play media."
Damn Louis analysis is spot on. This shit affects us gamer nerds profoundly as well. Problem is... nowadays a lot of games are classified as "Live Service" and because of that, once the game company deems in there estimation that the game is over, its truly over. There are certain classics that we literally CANNOT play anymore because the infrastructure is gone, and with the way the DRM, the controls, or just the way the game is designed it WILL NOT WORK, without that live service. The DMCA needs to be updated, and it needs to be retroactive grandfathering where its like "Listen motherfuckers... you don't have to support these games or software anymore into perpetuity, but now it is ILLEGAL (IF!) you no longer sell a game or program, support, or make the article open source after its effective life. Maybe they don't have to provide support, or even explain how stuff works, but enthusiastic devs or fellow nerds have the right, if this game or software is EOL, its no longer supported, sold, or for all intents and purposes its abandonware, you have the right as a consumer to not only buy from others, but pirate, decompile, reverse engineer, sell, and create derivative works (and sell those) if its truly abandonware. There are soo many great games nowadays that will never be played again because the damn servers have gone dark, and there are people who WOULD be willing to spend the money to support the infrastructure, but because of the damn legalese in this country they cannot since they're not the original content rights holders, even though the original holders have no interest in supporting the IP.
those are the main reasons i pirate: 1)Region lock (content not avaliable on my region) 2)Censorship eg: you want to watch an anime... but instead of just translating it, they replaced the dialouges and/or add dialougues where there is none and/or replace the soundtrack and/or replace sound effects and/or redraw stuff to censor blood, violence, body parts exposure, foreigner food or for the sake of changing it without any reason. the reason why i mentioned anime is because that is quite common to happen in animes, but it can also happen in games and other medias.
Fansubs are especially valuable when studios fail to release subtitles in one's language... They can also be more accurate\hilarious, at times. "Jellyfish Chips is like crack." 'True.'
@@shirothefish9688 Are we talking subbed or dubbed? I find subbed shows coming right from Japanese television with some quick subtitles added are pretty good. You're fumbling in the dark with dubbed though. Who knows if any crazy political activists will be putting their messages in it and ruining the material along the way, or any form of censorship you mentioned.
nth: Copyright law has long departed from it's original intent due to inmoral lobbying efforts, and I only wish to abide by the original terms, with the added caveat that those that did/do the lobbying don't even get that much courtesy.
i think you didn't include the case " i pirated that piece of software because the price is too high for the value it provides to me and if i had no other choice but to buy that for the full price in order to get access to it i would just never do it and just never use it" so that there would be no purchase anyways
As a free market person who doesn't support intellectual property emforcement, I have no problem with piracy. Such things should be funded through people commissioning the project, donating afterward, or buying physical merchandise that's related. For example, a lot of kid's programming makes more money off of the toys and such for the franchise than the show or movie. I don't know if anyone ever gives money to Winrar, but it's an example of a product done that way.
Jesus CHRIST lol, and I thought mine was bad I had to buy two textbooks for physics, totalling about £45. The teachers wanted us to give them back at the end of our course but I merely said, "no thanks, I paid for these" and still have them to this day. Best part? My other subjects such as mathematics gave them out for free and I also kept those. I use them occasionally too to brush up my knowledge!
I get how some IP needs protection. I just dont think it should restrict your use as a consumer. For example, LLMs (AI) are big now and they are the result of millions of dollars of GPUs and kWh to get something that works. I can see why something like that should be protected. Movies, same thing, though copyright law should expire MUCH earlier, IMO like 1 year after its been out on theaters is more than enough. They've made their money. I dont have a problem with IP protection, its just way overdone now, to the point where piracy gives you a better product.
@@boggless2771 And as someone not a part of that company, and not a part of any law enforcement, it only makes sense to use piracy as a tool to fight back against anti-consumerism masquerading as companies "rights" or some such nonsense. It's all just greed. You're right, all these entertainment products would make enough money in 1-2 years that it could go free past that point. But they would *NEVER* throw away even the smallest potential profit, after all, it's the only thing that matters to them.
@@wilh3lmmusic the compression algorithm specifically is also proprietary. and it's definitely relying on IP to have any enforcement of that. not sure if they've gone after anyone for it, but that seems to be the intent. it does seem to be the case enterprise users pay to use winrar. ironic, since they'd probably save money using, oh, 7zip? i can personally say that i no longer use winrar. i never really liked it in the first place. i primarily use 7zip and it does well exactly what i need it to do, save for some very rare exceptions. [which are fault of other devs/companies creating non-standard and/or proprietary garbage] i'd actually say winrar's business model is comparable to adobe. you're freely allowed to open the final files and download the viewers for those, but they expect a pretty penny to create those files or buy those tools for authoring them. ofc, winrar doesn't have a deathgrip like adobe does, so they're in no position to extort users. if they relied solely on donations or merch, "purchase this program" would be completely off the table and there wouldn't be aversion to opening the compression algorithm.
Piracy is only morally debated in first world countries. Where I live, piracy is something we born with. We have school computers with everything pirated. Every technician that comes into your house and "activates windows" does this pirating it. Big companies doesn't have a regulation that check if their computers have licensed software or not. Here, piracy is meaningless in terms of law. But it's not just because we like to pirate, it's because we need to. Here, a normal paid work pays around 500 USD per month, so more or less 6k every year. Imagine being a graphic designer and having to pay to Adobe 60USD every month, and also paying for spotify, Netflix/Paramount+/wathever, Internet, rent... It sums up. I'm only paying for something that's worth my money, like some indie and lovely created steam games, useful stuff like Google One (cheapest tier) and internet. And that's it. You want me to pay for your service? Provide me a very good reason and even then, show me why I shouldn't pirate your software. Then I'll pay. I love your videos btw, you're one of my favorite pseudo-podcast form of content.
_"You wouldn't steal a car"_ That ad used to make me laugh. I've been sailing the high seas since the C64 days, that will never change. If I genuinely enjoy something then I go and buy the real deal. Most of the time I don't make it beyond 20 minutes in to a movie, or 30 minutes in to a game etc. Without sailing I'd have bought things I ultimately didn't want more times than beggars belief. In a world where "try before you buy" is decreasing, it's the only viable vector for ensuring you're purchasing what you actually want.
Started with the C64 also. The idea that by our existing we owe them our money is problematic. When you "consume" media, games etc there is nothing actually consumed and there is no loss except their presumption they have right to our money. now that doesn't mean that it's cool to never support what you love if you have money and want more of it then maybe you should pay if there isn't a compelling greater need. But the reality is people only have so much money and depriving someone of such content is not beneficial to anyone. What is far worse than watching or playing something you didn't pay for??? A bad review or opinion that discourages sales! Or for that matter creating a competing and superior product or use for people's time so they don't buy product X. If you wouldn't have bought it, or if you would have bought it anyway and regretted it deeply then they shouldn't have your money anyway and that you may have got some entertainment for free is more of a "thought crime".
@@jonathanberry1111 "Support what you love" is also something of a misnomer, as the vast majority of the money being pumped in your industry of choice is being funneled to people who had little / nothing to do with the production of "what you love"
if i had the machinery to make drivetrain, suspension, frame, body and whatever else, i would download a car maybe i"d even modify it a bit, can never have too long legroom and cargo area
I am really surprised their isn't a gaming company that has succeeded with some sort of monthly subscription to borrow games. Honestly Amazon kindle is so wonderful for books, I read so many books and have found authors that are amazing that I would never have found without it. Streaming for music is the same thing, but there really isn't anything like that for games.
Buying a game that relies on a central server to work like live service games is the worst practice in the video game industry, piracy won't help when wanting to play the game years since the game doesn't work anymore unless a dedicated fan reverse engineers the server.
Imo a good example is WoW: I bought the game, they changed it. I didnt like it anymore. Some people opened classic servers simulating the old game. If I didnt buy it in the first place, its a good argument, but I did, several addons, so I wouldnt really feel bad for playing on a non blizz server. They dont give the service and game I want. Though I never played on a private server, I fully understand people doing it. Instead I quit for good, which probably isnt what Blizz wants too. :D
I love that minecraft STILL has the old versions available. A lot of people hated the combat update or whatever in 8.1 (its on 20+ now) and those people that hate the change can still play on 8.1!
@@kirsten007Yeah.. I grew up with counterstrike. in the beta versions you had a system called "bunnyhopping", where you could strafe jump and accelerate quite fast, much faster than normal running. Of course you had a way better position than people who couldnt do it and surprise them and you were harder to hit. They removed it too and its impossible now to do.
Also, blizzard has agreements with some private servers, so they can operate fully legaly (at least, this was the case with the one i played on), so long as they are 1-2 patches behind, they can operate freely, because blizzard knows its a worse, but free service, so they are not competing
Some of my favorite shows and games fall into that area where you just can't legally purchase them anymore. Mortal Kombat 9 a game a lot of players consider one of the series best is no longer available for direct sale because they lost the rights to a guest character Freddy. All the future releases also are on the path to sharing that fate with their guest characters as well.
Do you remember when amazon was creating the mesh network with the ring doorbell. This is exactly why I always said they were doing it... (@4:30) so companies could license the communications and be able to capture your usage data even without an internet connection... In the future it won't even be enough to just "not connect the device to the wifi".
Service providers: "decentralized networks aren't sufficient to meet end-user's needs" Service providers: "decentralized networks are a great way to meet end-user's needs"
Piracy is a service problem. If somebody is selling something that's DRM free and they won't take it away from you ever, and you pirate it anyway, that's stealing. Buy it when they sell it in the manner you say you want it. Everything else is fair game. If they only offer it via subscription (or don't offer it via any method at all) and won't sell it, piracy isn't stealing. If I bought something previously and they decided later to take it away, or just not make it available on a new platform, piracy isn't stealing - it's reclamation. Oh, and adblockers and sponsor fast forwarders aren't piracy.
Also yeah I agree with "I did buy a copy but I'm going to go pirate one to do as I please now" like you said for your music albums Take Tears of the Kingdom last year. Game leaked a few weeks before launch. If people kept their pre-orders but downloaded a pirate copy to start playing right away (and/or to play on an emulator for 60 fps) that's fine by me. Nintendo's getting your money, that's the end of the transaction, they don't have the right to force you to wait or force you to play it on their dilapidated console that can't even hold 30 fps. It would be canceling the preorder after downloading a pirate copy where I would then find it immoral. It's available for purchase, so buy it. But then go nuts, do what you want, the rightsholder has your money. And same thing for movies. I'm gonna buy that disc, then rip it and throw the digital file on a NAS to watch over the network on any TV in the house without having to go pick up the disc and put it in a player. I don't care if that's not how they want me to use the disc. They got their money, they can now STFU because the transaction is over.
@@JamesTDG it's actually funny at the most fundamental level the quote says: "piracy is a problem". the public domain also needs to be strong. but i'm pretty sure that whole essay [and reduced quote] of his does not adddress this. and it makes sense when you scrutinize valve/steam as both rightsholders and publishers. they actually stand to lose from a stronger PD. also, the argument fails to take into account that some amount of piracy is actually in fact due to prices, especially in less developed/wealthy countries.
What's your opinion on this: "I want a digital piece of software, but the company is preventing me from paying for it, while others can purchase it, so I go get a pirated copy"
My top categories of "things that are moral to pirate" are works of art that are no longer available for purchase, followed by specific editions that will never again be available for purchase due to licensing issues. Basically, pieces of culture that should be accessible in a museum setting because nobody can or will make money from that piece of culture anymore. For example, plenty of video games from decades ago just can't be bought anymore, or on the lucky occasion it's been ported or remastered, the original release can't be purchased and played on the original consoles. There's also versions of films/shows that fans, critics, and scholars can't purchase from a publisher anymore when only a specific version is buyable, and denying them access harms the study and appreciation of film. A related category is fan translations of media that will almost certainly never be localized, especially if the original is also no longer available. For example, there is a Japan-only Phoenix Wright game for the DS that is over a decade old and Capcom never localized it. Even though it's technically illegal for fans to make a translation, who is harmed by playing this fan version? Sometimes this is a necessary step to the publishers actually making money -- for decades there were only fan translations of the original Devilman manga available. When an official translation was released, I bought it immediately because I'd read the fan translations and really enjoyed it. I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't been introduced to me. Sometimes the localization work was done but the game was never brought to certain markets. Vib Ribbon, an early PS1 game, was never available in my county, only the EU. Is Sony going to rerelease it? No. It's a weird art game and probably a licensing nightmare with the music with almost no market. Is it something people interested in video game history and games as an art medium should experience? Yes! How hard would it be for game publishers to just sell ROMs for old games for a few bucks a pop?
![ลองสั่งของจากแอพ temu ถูกจริงหรอ?? ( part : 1/2 ) [โกงไหมครับ ep.89 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RTcZSQTiDZw/mqdefault.jpg)
The marker of our dystopia is not that the "do not sell my personal info" button is on by default.
It's that it's there, in the first place.
Welcome to capitalism!
That is so true.
time to return to monke
*off
but yes, agreed.
I'm guessing you mean _off_ by default?
I had a professor require the purchase of a $300 TEMPORARY ACCESS to an online textbook which also gave the professor royalties. I was morally obligated to pirate that book, but now they're tying busywork to the online software and you cannot pass unless you pay up
That should be illegal. At my college in the states, they always tell us to get the cheapest option, maybe an older used edition, or just pirate the book. They never have us use the online busywork.
@@lance_374 This type of shit is what ruins my dreams, I´ve always wanted to go into neurology and prosthetics, but I couldn't imagine some of the bullshit that comes along with the corporations in that area
Okay, so hear me out, most colleges have law students, meet with them and the professor(s) and discuss potential legal ramifications. Some of em like solving legal puzzles!
Welcome to capitalism!
@@lance_374 I wish that was the case in my State. A decade ago, even the community colleges had 'teachers' who required students buy learning materials that were really just license keys for some stuff online. Community. Colleges. How the publishers must have laughed as they cashed the money of all those *literally poor* students, and how apathetic those so-called professors must have been to their students' well-being.
Piracy is not only ok but mandatory to preserve the existence of media. The corporations have shown that they'd rather their IPs be destroyed.
Basically Nintendo with their classics.
I would have a great deal more sympathy for the preservation argument, if people weren't trying to "preserve" media within a week of release and while the artist is still trying to get paid. After something goes out of print, it is a lot more understandable.
@PvblivsAelivs if you wait until after it goes out of print, then you get the doctor who situation.
@@Mikemk_
If it were genuinely about preservations, someone who bought a copy while it was in print could make copies after it was out of print. As opposed to the current situation where someone redistributes within a week of release.
@@PvblivsAelivs So because some people crack/download cracked new games, we should just ignore the other people who don't do that?
piracy always seems to result in a better product. This is a bad strategy for content providers. It would be like If buying food from a market resulted in the cashier spitting in it, but if you stole the food there would be no spit. And then when you bring this up morons on the internet say "yeah but the markets terms of service say its ok to spit in your food" screw that terms of service.
This is a big part of the problem for me. I've always been willing to pay full price for the goods & services I consume. But, it's hard to swallow(no pun intended & pause) that after paying, I get a shittier good or service than I would've received without paying.
*The paid experience:*
As a result of BS restrictions that are not made obvious on the purchase page, I have to:
1) Buy a new monitor
2) Rebuild my entire computer so it uses a different processor - NOT because my current processor can't decode 4k60 at that codec/bitrate 100x much less realtime, but because of copy protection nonsense
3) Buy a license for, and install, a closed source operating system
4) Change my web browser
5) Still mess around with it when it does not work out of the box after reading docs/help files, as if I am trying to install gentoo from a stage 1 tarball rather than enjoy entertainment that I _bought and paid for_
6) I want to watch w/ girlfriend two weeks later because I thought it was a good show
7) It's no longer available because of a licensing dispute...
*The high seas experience:*
1) I search an index
2) I click
3) I download my file
4) It just plays when I double click it, on my EXISTING HARDWARE. NO RESTRICTIONS - the only limit is my GPU, CPU, or soundcard's capabilities to reproduce & playback the media that I've obtained.
5) Media is often distributed in better quality as a result of using a better codec/MUCH higher bitrate than _"legitimate"_ purchase - you can download a 50gb/100gb raw bluray, or you can stream a 3 mbps-5 mbps piece of pixelated garbage...
5) It's mine, forever. It will work today. It will work tomorrow. It will work until the end of time.
I would pay $0 for the first experience, I would pay 2x their asking retail price for the second experience. When the second experience is free, how can you blame anyone for running for it?
This honestly goes back to the dating video I did last week th-cam.com/video/0mg5MiO02vU/w-d-xo.html - I WANT to pay. I just don't want to feel _stupid_ for paying. Once you make me feel like a chump for paying, I will not pay you, date you, or consume your content - ever again.
@@rossmanngroup Louis.
I have the acronym for you to use
I would call this a:
Reversible
Action
Purchase
Experience
Or
Revoked
Acquisition
Purchase
Experience
Or maybe
Reneged
Agreement
Purchase
Experience
I’m not a marketer, so I shall defer to others more experienced, but it does have a ring to it.
Carry on
A
Retroactively
Amended
Purchase
Experience
That’s it
Wow
My comments are getting eaten
Seriously. I thought I'd watch Invincible since I happened to get Amazon Prime and the thing looked 480p or worse. Maybe it doesn't like Firefox?
Meanwhile the pirated one I can watch offline at full quality and even pass it through an upscaler to improve the quality further than the source.
The word PURCHASE needs replaced with LEASE, not hidden in some agreement that details how “purchase” more or less means “lease.”
Yeah, I think it's scummy to hide these things in pages and pages of text
An Eternal Higher Purchase! 😭
Pretty much as long as they use the word "purchase" you are either purchasing (and have owning rights to the product)
or are a victim of false advertisement (and have right to full refund of that product).
If they wont refund it, then you own it.
Lease isn't right either. If you lease a car, you paid for the right to use it for (typically) 3 years. At no point has the leasing period been implied to be indefinite, and there is no legal way for them to take the car back before the agreed period has passed (assuming you uphold your end of the deal and keep up with payments).
I was thinking also about “ACCESS” (I am ESL and I have no idea was lease means)
Without piracy, I wouldn't be the person I am today. As a child with parents who need to feed the kids/put a roof over our heads, I found all of the books, video games, movies, and music I still enjoy today from piracy. Now, I only pirate products that have shitty services and EULAs. Shop local and pro consumer companies, buy used, and support indie artists. It seems legit since I've never pirated a Steam game, but haven't bought a Nintendo game in the past 6 years. Great video!
If you pay full price for something you should have access to it, end of story. If companies try to take your purchased product away from you then they're the pirates... steal it back.
yeah, it's quite simple, 1 transaction and change of ownership of 2 goods, i pay money, you give me product i get to keep
end of fuckign story
Interesting thought. So downloading the media would then be privateering instead of piracy, right?
Edit: sorry for spamming the same message multiple times, I received an error while posting it.
Interesting thought. So downloading the media would then be privateering instead of piracy, right?
@@dutchdykefingernetflix is a rental service, you don’t get to keep stuff just like rental stores you don’t own anything.
They're *worse* than pirates actually: If you pirate it, the company isn't losing access to anything, but when they take a purchased copy away from you, _you are._ That is a characteristic of _literal theft._
If purchasing it isn't owning it, then piracy isn't theft.
It's infringement, it has never been theft.
@@An_Attemptinfringement on what exactly?
Piracy isn't any more thieving than revoking a digital license.
@@gondolagripes1674 Copyright. It's an infringement of the creator's right to copy the work. Theft only applies to materials and resources, like the physical disc.
@@TheSimArchitect Doesn't make it an acceptable practice of ignoring copyright though.
Another tier that's missing is "I pirate because I can't afford it due to the lack of regional pricing". This is often overlooked, but there are places in the world where paying 15$ for something is the equivalent of not having food for the next week.
👍When I went to Ukraine in high school, I learned this first-hand. Our crappy Canada-buck was weak enough to grumble when getting money changed to USD...But then we did the math and saw that just one of us "broke" Canadians could buy pizzas to feed our whole dozen students. (Half Ukrainian, half Canadian.) They took us to an open-air market near a small town, with tents and tables set up all over the place - every single music or game CD was pirated, because there was no way to pay for it legitimately unless you were wealthy.
So don't pay for something if you can't afford it. I'd love to buy a new Porsche but I don't have the funds to do it without bankrupting myself. And I won't go to a dealership and steal one just because I'm too poor to buy it
@@Maximilian1990 "you wouldn't download a car" moment. Making a new car costs money, copying a file doesn't. Not saying piracy good, but the other side doesn't lose anything if you pirate, they just aren't gaining either.
@@nezu_cc making and maintaining new software costs money too like wtf 😂 yes the other side loses the money they would have received if you had purchased your copy legally
@@nezu_cc Eh, it's far more complex than both of you would imply, and boils down to the role of state in a globalized world, late capitalism and all that jazz.
In the Porsche example, it's more like you're making bread and trade it to locals, and they give you a bike in exchange, but if you lived across the street, they'd give you a Porsche instead. Possibly even if you're selling to the same people.
So while companies generally have the discretion to do what they want with their products, ethics and morality of such could still be dubious sometimes, that is why anti-discrimination laws exist, for example. It is not a victimless crime, but it is also not hard to see why the poor and disadvantaged find justice in "robbing the rich" - as they see it.
All in all, a hard issue to tackle. Is it governments that let people down? Are weak economies inherited? Is it up for the companies to pick up the slack, for people to be more isolationist and promote their local markets until they get competitive? How about something more controversial like big pharma? The list goes on.
if there’s a one time purchase available, I buy it. If it’s subscription only, I pirate it. Simple as.
Sony (PSN) has "pulled back" one time purchases more than once in the past.
Subscription only is much harder to pirate. That is actually part of the reason for the popularity of the live service products and rolling release delivery systems. If the product is continuously changing or if the product requires unavailable to the customer server resources to work, then pirating said product is a much more involved process. It may require you to go as far as reverse engineering a large part of it.
@@TheTransporter007 i believe that was with some select movies, at least recently.
That’s stealing. Simple as.
DVDs for the win!
@Louis -Years ago, Weird Al Yankovic was an advocate for piracy - he wrote a song lampooning the RIAA and MPAA ("Don't Download This Song"), he bought back the rights to all his music, and he put his ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY up for FREE DOWNLOAD on his website - I don't know if it's still there, but he did it, and he KNEW it would get seeded around.
The man is a legend of a creative, and I am glad to have given him my money for many years.
Yeah, stuff like that spreads the word, more people listening to the music, etc...
So many artists got big because of MP3's when Napster was big. I never would have bought most of the 00 era Eminem albums if it wasn't for Napster.
When the artist will do things like that, and I find I like their their product. Most of the time I will go ahead and buy a physical copy. Now if it's something I don't care about. Then I won't bother. But if it is something I like I feel I should support that so they continue to make more of what I like
When you pirate media, the publisher loses a sale, but the artist can still make something new and get a sale out of you tomorrow. Publishers have to pay an artist to do that. As proof, I offer a comparsion between the Napster controversy and the AI Art controversy. Artists are pissed off about their images being used to train AI systems, despite those images otherwise being available for free. But the publishers that were pissed off about Napster, KaZaA, Gnutella, and BitTorrent are perfectly fine with brazen copyright infringement at scale, *so long as* the end result is a magic box that lets them fire all artists and replace them with AI sludge. It's like a dementedly inverted version of the "disintermediation" argument being thrown around by Negativland and friends.
That being said, Weird Al actually *did* have a bone to pick with pirates: namely that they took literally any funny song and put Weird Al's name on it. It's not the usual complaint from major label artists but it's important to note how many people were misattributing songs to Weird Al for basically no reason.
Indeed a legend.
Tech n9ne did a similar around Napster era and just let it out for free. Not only a class act, proof someone believes in their product.
The Touhou Project franchise gathered a Western fanbase pretty much only thanks to piracy.
The creator of the franchise is an indie and self-publishes in Japan. The only way to even get a game legally was for a reseller to have one of the limited physical copies in stock, and even then you wouldn't have any translation (all fan made). And if you wanted to play the first five games, you need an emulator because they weren't even on Windows.
The situation has changed in recent years, because the creator has added more and more of his games on Steam and has understandably been more protective of his games, asking a website dedicated to sharing copies of the games to close.
Still, we owe the fan community for the games even being a thing outside of Japan.
I think a distinction should be made between piracy of products made by individuals (and self-published companies with only one individual in it), and piracy of products sold by companies exceeding a certain number of employees or a certain amount of revenue.
@@くるみみ Could you develop? Do you mean maybe that self-published companies are impacted more than big players in the industry?
If that was what you meant, that's fair. However, in the case I was describing, it was more about game preservation and accessibility. The creator was limited in his ability to produce enough copies and sell them outisde of Japan. Buying from a reseller meant that you would pay more without any money going to the creator, and the stocks would still be limited, especially for older games. And as I said, the fairly recent developments of the games now being available much more easily and legally through Steam have changed the situation.
I was in that boat. Had all the games as Downloads from DoujinStyle, favorite website back then.
The moment ZUN decided to release on Steam, I bought every copy available of a game I previously played but didn't have legally yet.
Not all cases are the same, but ZUN's situation qualifies for the classic "Piracy is a service issue" Gabe Newell quote.
Anime in general is also largely popular in the west because of fans trading pirated copies and fansubs. Obviously it's not solely responsible, a lot of Japanese animation did make it over here officially, but sites like Crunchyroll would not be able to exist if that fanbase hadn't been cultivated through piracy.
Mother 3 is also a good example of this
The retro gaming tier of the hierarchy - I want to play a retro video game and are happy to pay a fair price to compensate the creators but the publisher no longer sells it, complains about not getting a cent from a second hand sale, it is out of the reach of virtually everyone because of the collectors market inflating prices and the publisher has no intention of re-releasing the game, it is seen as "abandonware" and you find a pirate copy.
abandonware has led to a re-release or remastering of many vintage games. Some of note are The Zoombinis, Freddy the Fish, Putt Putt, and many others.
People loved the games, and were finding ways to play it on a modern processor. The game studios then either resurrected the game, or bought rights from whomever they ended up with, to be able to provide the game to a whole new generation.
@@gizmoenterprises3467Games getting remade or remastered isn’t always a good thing though. Sometimes, they make a game worse or stray away from the original vision of the game.
@@gizmoenterprises3467a great way to find out which retro games should be made accessible on modern hardware probably comes down to which ones get the most pirate downloads relative to their contemporary sales.
@@Allustarsometimes they include the original alongside the remake for the best of both worlds.
This is essentially the Dune games made by Cryo and Westwood in the 1990s and 2001 as well as High Moon's Cybertron - and who knows how many others...
A tier to add in between 1 and 2. “I bought a physical medium and it has degraded. I can buy it from a third party at an inflated price. I pirated a copy”
a.k.a. every retro gamer who wants to play games on what is increasingly most platforms nowadays. The prices of an increasing number of Sega Saturn games are well beyond the reach of those who want to play the games because the collectors market have shrunk supply at the same time people who likely bought a PlayStation in the 90s and only just seen the Saturn via TH-cam and want to sample its library of games increase demand. Plus, the publishers don't want to re-release the games.
I go one step further and would do that outright, if my money doesn't go to the creator of the content, why would I pay for it?
@@tgheretfordive bought a few of the licensced ones, if the price is right and the software works.
If you possess a physical copy, I don’t think it’s necessarily illegal to crack and emulate a copy of it. It’s sharing the copy that’s illegal.
*Wildly inflated price
Somewhere in the middle there should be an adobe tier: "I enjoy a product, but it's based on a subscription. I believe that buying is owning, so I get a pirated copy"
Oh, that's in there. It's under "I just don't want to pay."" If something is on a subscription model, it is more akin to renting than buying.
@@PvblivsAelivs I see your argument, but I believe that when Adobe has a monopoly for editing software, they can raise their prices to any unreal standard they want, because if you need those programs for work, you can't go anywhere else (you can make a valid point and mention davinci resolve for premiere and a plethora of drawing software for illustrator, but photoshop, lightroom, aftereffects, animate have virtually no competition)
@@PvblivsAelivsI view it more akin to choosing a different option. Regardless of if you pirate after effects or use a different software, adobe never gets your money. Monetarily, it’s the same either way for the people who made the product. Legally reprehensible but morally justified in my opinion.
@@grantm.5975
"I view it more akin to choosing a different option."
The "five-fingered discount" option? There _is_ editing software other than Adobe's You just don't want to use it. Morally, it is the same as taking items off store shelves and not paying for them. If you think that's morally justified, I'm not going to persuade you otherwise.
@@PvblivsAelivs As others have pointed out, physically, piracy is not theft. With theft, you have deprived others and the owner of a physical product, which is not what happens with piracy. The product you have pirated is still available to be purchased by others and to be owned by the product owners. Morally though, I agree its kind of in a grey area. "I believe that purchasing is owning" is really just "I don't like the current price model", which isn't really a valid moral reason to pirate a product on its own. However, its only really "amoral" if the people who work on the product receive compensation directly as a result of product sales (which I'm 90% sure they don't, correct me if I'm wrong), which is mostly why it falls into the grey area for me.
If I've said it once, I've said it a quintillion times: if you distribute digital content in exchange for money in any way or in any capacity, if you want to or have to take it away for any reason, you should legally be required to refund the full purchase price + 15%, turning all revocation of digital goods into a legally mandated net loss
Gotta add inflation and interest to that, 'cause you can be damn sure they would.
Yes please! Also, revoking access to major features should also count. Spore and Darkspore on Steam is neutered because EA cut off access to the creature servers. It can be EASILY argued that the game has become unplayable now.
@@JamesTDG If your customers rely on your running servers, you should be required to either keep them running forever, or give your customers the source code to their software and copies of all data needed to keep them running. ESPECIALLY encryption keys!
Add inflation and interest.
@@Roxor128 Agreed. When they cut support for Spore on Steam, I actually stopped saving up for it, cause that was the only platform I was gonna own it legitimately.
Piracy and archiving resulted in a niche children's show being seen by its owners as still having an audience and now with the archivists' help is now being streamed on Peacock. The show is called Princess Gwenevere (Starla in UK) and the Jewel Riders, for anyone curious.
It should be considered fraud if they say it's a purchase. Purchasing is ownership. This needs to be established in court so we can finally have companies not be able to screw us over individually.
Also, unrelated but not unrelated, nobody should ever be able to have their right to sue someone taken away from them in any kind of contract or EULA. If someone has a valid reason to sue, that should never be able to be taken away from them.
You get what you paid for, which is access to software under TOS set by the seller.
@@Maximilian1990it is very misleading to state it as a purchase. These things are literally HIDDEN in the TOS.
@@Nifylau but you are literally purchasing... a license to use something
@@Maximilian1990 *renting
@@Nifylau it's only renting if you break the tos 🤷♂️
I had a friend who worked for a well known game company. I had to explain to him that no, you don't get payed a second time when someone buys something used. He was convinced buying second hand games was theft. I had to explain to him that if I buy something, it is mine. Until I used cars as an example, he could not understand the principle and once he did, he still tried to convince me I was wrong.
Thanks god your friend is not a CEO, else he gonna make anti consumer worse 😂
Should have told em to just have their cellphones, book, dvds, etc. pile up and never sell em even the rare stuff.
Your friend isn't intelligent enough to be a friend. Being friends with them will cost you in the end.
'had'
Key word here people
He probably worked in marketing.
Even the word "piracy" is fake.
They had to name the act of making a copy of something to sound really bad.
Well, TBH it does have roots from off-shore platforms and ships that were playing music on the radio waves without obtaining a permission from the owners. People on 'ships' stealing other people's stuff are, technically, pirates and the name stuck...
Copyright was made to squeeze every penny out of content, not protect creators. The worst implementation of copyright is Roblox. They will not let people manually delete images of spongebob they uploaded when they were 12 yo and their support team is a dumpster fire.
@@zwerko Especially because they were literally called 'Pirate radio stations'.
Yeah - it was an intentional ploy to control the narrative and people bought it.
The phrase *F I L E S H A R I N G* sounds like a good or just neutral thing, even when you say it.
On a personal note, piracy can allow a "try before you buy" option. I did the same with many video games, the Mass Effect trilogy and Spec Ops: The Line most memorably, and I wholeheartedly approve of people purchasing a product after they recognized the value.
People say this but never actually buy things, then complain when the sequel either doesn't get made, gets Denuvo'd, or gets consolified to hell so it can actually turn a profit on platforms without piracy... but that's "not my problem", right?
@@AFistfulOf4KI don't know anyone who's done this who wasn't also stuck in actual poverty. I really don't get why so many assume that everyone is immoral and greedy. There aren't that many people (by proportion) without the empathy gene.
@@AFistfulOf4Knah. I try before I buy and actually buy things. Game demos aren't commonplace on PC & I'm not going to buy a game if I have no idea how it'll run on my system, how buggy it is, or if I'll actually enjoy it. If more games had demos on steam, I'd be far less incentivized to try before I buy via piracy.
Also, this doesn't make sequels get Denuvo'd. People buying products with Denuvo is what continues it's existence. I remember reading an article about some game that recently had it's Denuvo removed, and when compared to older tests of the game it had 23% better 1% lows (stutters) with it disabled. Personally, I refuse to buy any game with tons of DRM protection or Denuvo. I'm far from the only person who does this, which shows that Denuvo's inclusion actually ends up avoiding some sales.
@@AFistfulOf4K Speak for yourself. I spent at least 860$ on "pirated" Steam games, nevermind getting hooked on a developer/game series and buying their entire catalogue after pirating a single game.
@@AFistfulOf4K Can confirm that I've also done this, re-buying games I pirated after landing a good job and being able to get back into gaming.
The top of my hierarchy is this: Any company engaging in anti-customer actions is fair game for anti-company actions.
That’s every company so just be honest and say you want to pirate.
Well anti-company actions usually are illegal so do what you must 😂
@@reynoldskynaston9529Not every company.
There are tons of companies that side with consumers, because it is worth it for them.
For example Brother is one of these for printers, many game developers are not cashgrabs.
You can find honest people pretty much in every industry, the issue is that they are the minority.
@@FaQUE-hg5tlPiracy of a product is a sign that the product is good, but the price is wrong or the company has made itself worthy of your boycott. Nintendo is a great example.
@@justsomeguy5103 I can think of an example or two, red dead 2 is a great game, but in order play it you'll have to create a Rockstar account even if you bought it from steam. RGSC launcher is very bad on pc, it is slow, offline mode is unreliable and it requires me to solve 10 captchas to log in. This is pathetic. If I pirate, I don't get any of these problems. Gaben Newell (praise lord gabe) has said that piracy isn't a money problem,it's a service problem.
When I was in college about 25 years ago, we learned that copyright law allowed the consumer to have a copy of a piece of software for backup purposes. Where that backup came from is irrelevant. If you pay for a piece of software, you have the ability to make a copy for your own personal use. The idea was you make a purchase, make a copy, and then use the copy as your main means of consuming the content. This way the original would be preserved and if the copy got damaged, lost, stolen, or erased, then you could make a new copy.
This means when you purchase access to content and then the content is for whatever reason, removed. You can legally use a copy you've obtained (source does not matter). As the the content was obviously lost, stolen, or damage (aka removed from an account). EULA do not apply, they are not legally binding, and they would have the burden to show a signature to any sort of binding contract they wish to claim.
Therefor, using digital means to obtain a copy of content that you have purchased is NOT piracy. Software piracy is when a user obtains or creates a copy of a product that has not been purchased. Once the owner or distributor has received payment for digital content, it is impossible for the consumer to commit software piracy.
When content is removed from an account, it is considered lost or damaged. And to my knowledge, this law hasn't been changed in the last quarter century.
So if you all decide to use some form of online procurement of content you have already purchased, you are not doing anything immoral, unethical, or illegal (in the US at least, can't speak for outside, though I believe the EU is very similar or even more protective of the consumer in some cases). The ones offering such a service might be doing something that is in a grey area by not verifying purchases, but that is none of our business, that is between them and the IP holder.
If businesses do not wish for consumers to obtain their legal copies from sources they feel operate in such a grey area, then they should offer the ability to their consumers to obtain such copies in a fashion that is easy, no restrictions, and without any strings attached. That should be considered an ultimatum. Either offer the service or we go elsewhere.
And then there’s DRM. F*** DMCA 1201.
This is how i always viewed it
It's still somewhat iffy because you cannot guarantee that the version you download is exactly the same. Maybe it's updated, or you download a premium version containing paid add-ons that you did not own. Good luck finding a torrent of a game with two expansions, but you only had the base game + second expansion. That, or finding a game version without the pre-order bonus that you missed. It's virtually impossible. Not to mention that you're never buying just a copy nowadays, as it is only a license.
Not that I care if you do pirate stuff like this, but it's something to keep in mind in this argument. The content providers have developed a lot of loopholes to sidestep these older laws. Copyright law needs to be revised, because if has gotten ridiculous.
@@leonro Yeah this is why I wish it was as easy to make copies as it used to be. And it would behoove businesses to make that easy for their customers and not harder. Otherwise their consumers will download things they may not have full access for.
But they shouldn't have been driven to have to go to those measures in the first place. I think you mostly agree though. As I do about pro-consumer changes to copyrights and property ownership.
It's interesting, but if you ever read the license agreement included with software you will notice that you are no purchasing a disc or a floppy but the right to use the software as indicated on the agreement... Let's say you purchase a computer with a license that grant you the right to use MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 on that computer but only on that computer, then you can't sell the software or hardware by itself... In fact if you ever receive a computer that was sold with an OEM software the new owner of the computer still have the right to install the software even if the discs had been damaged or lost.
And yeah license agreements can be super shitty and some of the small print end up without legal support in some countries.
You have helped me so many times over the years and I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you.
reality ~ If we say this channel has helped for 10 years your $20 would be 5 cents a day give or take plus the pound off flesh from TH-cam/ Google and the Bank and I quite expect flak but I don't care cos if I had donated all the money I've been ripped off with music software companies x 3 AFTER the BEST years for software 2009 to 2014 I could have donated $1,500 (reasons of plain old going AWOL from planet earth, selling their business on to a 3rd party and just plain old stating it won't work on the next upgrade of windows cos they want to make more money by selling you the same product with a new number and different paint job) BUT it would probably be more $$ beneficial to watch ad revenue commercials.
@@StephSancia what
💀
If purchasing a digital product doesn’t mean I control it, then copying a digital product and storing locally is my only recourse
You control it within the TOS you literally agreed to on purchase.
@@Maximilian1990didnt agree to TOS if i pirate it first 😂
@@GG-ou7it the TOS applies the moment you start using a service, legally or illegally 😉
Tos literally change every couple of months@@Maximilian1990
@@Maximilian1990Who are you? Why are you shilling so hard for corporations?
I have a Cannonball Run policy. If the movie or TV show is not available on any modern format beyond VHS or laserdisc and not available streaming, I consider it abandoned. Pirate it.
If the hardware is abandonware, the media is abandonware
I couldn't find my original disc, so I _tried_ to purchase Unreal Tournament (mostly for UnrealEd2)... but the port sold today is so hasty it requires newer & faster hardware than I have, so I had to find a copy of the original anyway
Ahhh the " well if you don't want my money" strategy. I would be more than happy to pay for a digital copy of an old show like Yes Minister at a reasonable price for the effort of them encoding it and providing a download ( say say 3.99 GBP) i am not paying 20 or 30 quid for the DVD when everyone who was behind the show is dead by now and i already paid the BBC to make it anyway as i am forced to pay a TV licence .
sometimes content is not available for purchase period, in any format because it's so old and wasn't popular enough. At that point it's not even piracy, it's archiving. There is LOADS of media that is lost because people didn't bother to preserve it
@@KatamuroTheFirst Good point.
I would like to add "The movie/media I wished to purchased is not available in physical form and only available through a subscription service".
My wife and I have a very large DVD collection. The pleasure of looking through the collection to find a movie to watch is almost as enjoyable as the movie sometimes. Recently, we wished to purchase the DVD for the Disney movie Elementals. What we found was at the time, this movie was not available in Australia in physical form and only available through a subscription service to Disney+. I did find a copy that I could ship from the US but that was $50 plus shipping.
So for the first time in over 10 years, I downloaded a movie to add to our collection. If the movie was available in physical form
Yeah, I was surprised this wasn't touched on. A significant portion of media these days never exists in physical form and is only available via subscription or "purchase" through a platform that can revoke its rights at any time.
I really believe that physical media should be more of a niche/collectors option in order to reduce e-waste, but at the other hand, if physical media is dying, I think services like netflix, disney+, etc, should provide the option of downloading a LOCAL copy in a mainstream format like mp4, not some encrypted bullshit that still depends on the app to work
@@Pedro-zh6kk The physical copy is basically a "license". Ideally, we should be able to purchase official licenses that are stored in a reliable database to confirm that we own that copy. Then we should be allowed to download it in any medium, whether it be DDL from a site, or torrenting through an official private tracker.
@@Pedro-zh6kk At least with a DVD or any other physical media no company can take that away from me.
I just don't have the attachment to physical disks and cartridges that most people do. If I want something with physicality, I play a tabletop game. CDs and cartridges are flawed, fragile devices that will eventually be unusable unless preserved very carefully. Or, the devices used to read them will wear out first.
Intresting. There's also a video explaining a reaserch done on how piracy affects videogames. They found that it has a positive effect on that particular industry.
yes I would imagine like that much, why would buy a full version, and with all rape that Louis describing here, need serial licence keys to verified well that great un till the server goes down?
What I know for sure is denuvo fucks up every single new release, I dont even buy games on day one anymore, 2 months later theyre like 30% off anyways.
Different research found no correlation and another - negative effect
Well I will say that Metallica has not gotten one penny from me since the Napster thing. I think the biggest issue was they couldn't produce anything that anyone wanted to hear anymore and if people pirated it first they wouldn't buy it later.
Something similar happened with music. A lot of the managed talent lost a little on album sales but everyone else had an increase. Also drew in a lot more merch and ticket sales at local venues from people who otherwise wouldn't have known.
22:49 I'm glad you mentioned this. I'm a musician who sells my music on CDs. I have had people tell me that they won't buy my CDs because record labels don't pay their artists well enough, and then when I tell them that I make the CDs myself and retain 100% of the profit, they don't believe me!
Did you remind them that CD burners have been a thing for the last 25 years?
What kind of rejects did you encounter ?
I don't believe it.
Yeah, they are just using it as an excuse. They should just be honest and say "I don't like your music enough / I'm cheap or poor or just an a-hole." but I guess none of those options are the best either as none of those have social grace.
Oh, and if you like it, and have plenty of money and are cheap it doesn't necessarily mean you are an a-hole. Someone who is wealthy but has a psychological scarcity mindset will perhaps be too cheap to part with money, there are Billionaires like this! They will penny pinch and do all manner of stupid things to save a buck. That is then a psychological condition. They might also be an a-hole but they don't have to be, more of a "head case". there are some stories of Bill Gates that suggest he's been a penny pincher.
There’s also: I purchased this product in one format, I want to experience it in a different format without repurchasing the media I’ve already paid for, I pirate it in that second format.
Ubisoft forcing you to create an account with them (accept their ToS) to play games I bought on steam , also wipes save files after ~8 month break
For that, I would say just don't buy Ubisoft games. Don't pirate Ubisoft games. When someone invites you to play an Ubisoft game, tell them you won't be playing Ubisoft games because (shitty Ubisoft behaviour). Don't play Ubisoft games, period. As long as they know people want their stuff, they will keep their shitty terms and behaviours. Shit companies only change on pressure.
fuck ubisoft in particular
Yeah what the other guy said, Ubisoft has been dog shit for 5+ years. It's very easy to play games anywhere else just about instead of their games
@@rata536I have been doing exactly that. Before, I bought every once in a while some of the older Ubisoft stuff (Rayman, original Assassin's Creed games, etc.) but after repeatedly repulsive behaviour and the workplace scandals (the icing on the cake) I have simply avoided acknowledging their existence. Whenever a game of theirs pops up on Steam, I swiftly ignore it. Similar things happened to me with EA, Take Two and Activision-Blizzard. I enjoyed their games in the past, but I don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Maybe they've gotten better over time, and I'm Christian so forgiveness is natural, but I'll hold onto my sentiment until I can see some meaningful change in either behaviour or leadership. It is silly to move on while the terms of service remain unchanged. I cannot stop supporting my country when I don't like the government, but I sure can stop supporting a company, especially if it's non-essential.
But heck, boycotting Ubisoft is easy. They have barely made any games worth playing in the last 10 years, especially if you experienced some of their prior releases. I'm just about to stop supporting Nintendo, whose games I have enjoyed a lot ever since I was a child. At the very least, even if I won't be able to hold on, I don't want to buy them new. There are many indie games if I ever feel the need for entertainment, and those people cannot behave badly with customers.
"also wipes save files after ~8 month break" oh they can fuck so far off that they are outside the solar system. I wondered for years what happened to some of my saves because of life stuff happening. I also regularly take breaks because of low energy/ADHD fueled loops. So continuing 8 months later is somewhat common for me.
I legit thought i was being agressively gaslit for a good year and it made it hard to even get back in the AC game i was enjoying.
These corporations are gonna learn one way or another. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. Say the words. Believe in them.
Sorry mate but I am afraid that won't happen. When I was 14 and wanted to use the internet I had to learn English and understand how to work on computers and operating systems. Ofc I knew how to get digital content... Youth nowadays know how to work social media, a touchscreen and that's it. Piracy gets hidden on search engines and only a tiny minority, that does not make a difference will remain being able to pirate....
The corporations aren't gonna learn though. That's not how the market works. To make them change, we have to force them to do it by making their bad business practices illegal.
LOL they sure will little buddy, they sure will
@@dakazzeThe "learn" is not about piracy.
Its about the moment major courts and legislators (like US or EU) will finally do something about it.
The moment they will be legally forced to refund 10 years of sales for their BS, they will learn (or go bankrupt which is also good).
I don’t believe in them. Piracy simply isn’t stealing.
I still don't understand one thing. Why doesn't anyone consider the public library piracy? I can literally get anything I could torrent form the library for free and everyone is fine with it. Yet if I torrented the same thing I get called a pirate? It seems like the public library is just piracy we are okay with?
someone else who sees and calls the farce for what it really is! there's techncially no real difference. the book publishers did actually try to shutter the libraries based on this argument, too. libraries tend to offer many books [and other things] for cheap/free, so that many/all may actually use/access them. in many respects, a single copy is being treated like hundreds/thousands/etc... the same can be said if you share with friends/family, one purchase virtually became multiple.
the public is not bothered generally because they've been brainwashed into this business with false equivalence to theft, quasi-morality, legality, etc... the exchange of borrowing from a library, or even friend/family is done in a legal and "moral" way. the book/movie/game/etc... was purchased legally, and the purchaser is well within their rights to share it as many times as they like* or even re-sell it. nothing defined as a crime or considered "immoral" took place. and this is all they see, because this is what they were literally brainwashed to see. same reason we had all too many people wholly against mickey mouse entering the public domain, disney lobbied and brainwashed the public, too.
this should also put into perspective controlled digital lending and the internet archive lawsuit. i think IA knew exactly what they were doing, and why. also, here's another interesting one : heard of Project Deluge? Jason Scott did an upload/Q&A stream after hidden palace did the showcase stream for part 1. a particular question and answer struck me : "how old does something need to be for it to be archived?" / "old enough to exist". there's a particular implication here...and i think you know exactly what that is? :P
@@ETXAlienRobot201 I also want to add I think part of the "steal" that is happening right now is this: that throughout history even with libraries, and sharing, copying, etc... which by the way we have been able to make copies of basically everything for a long time now ( tapes, vhs etc.. ) people have still purchased things. The reason is if you enjoy something you want to own it and support the makers of it too. However now we are not being sold products we are being rented temporary access through streaming services. So no one feels like the own something and most of these streaming services barely support the creators giving them like .008 $ per stream or something silly like that. So people sort of have in some cases decided there is no point even to bothering. I think those people are likely right. If you want my money actually make something, then allow most of the proceeds to the artist. I will get the pleasure of supporting them and also I will have a product that I own rather than just renting. Some of my favorite artists are already doing this with boxed sets and special editions of albums that come with picture books, expanded liner notes, and artwork that get sold by them on their merch store. I could and of course do stream those albums as well for basically no cost at all however I also own a nice product that can't be taken away from me and I can rip the CD album to literally any format I want and as high quality as I want... I think the streaming service could be okay but I think of them as ways of sampling music and I think of them as rental not as owning anything. I also think if you want to say F the streaming service and torrent everything or get it from the library and then buy stuff once you find the group you really love that is fine too. Being a musician myself I am fairly certain other musicians want you to hear their music however that happens. They can always make money on shows, merch, special editions etc... They just want the largest fanbase possible which is where the real money is. Something needs to change in the entertainment industry because as much as people want to blame unauthorized copying ( I hate the term pirate because it's just propaganda ) the real issue is these companies are using unethical practices to try and ring as much money as possible out of people for no benefit and for a thing that is not even a product. here is the real thing unauthorized copying generally doesn't hurt sales. Most people who are getting these copies of works would have just never even watched or listened to the content if they only way to get it was to pay: www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html
@@Grap3_S0da
an actual text wall, damn...
you pretty much have everything spot-on. thoughfull ownership only really applies if you have full rights to do anything with what you purchased. and it's been an uphill battle to secure those. as far as media/art/invention is concerned, the final step is to abolish IP in its entirety. with exception of reverting trademarks to purely a means of authentication of your brand/organization, and hard-banning the use of common language to register one. like "candy" , "sky", etc... [gg UK, allowing that at all]
and ah, thanks for that link! a friend sent me a similar one a while back and it's since been buried in my DMs. you ever check the EFF website? MPA[A] is once again trying to get a website block/filter established at the federal level. also, cute the statement from the MPA director about heinous organized crime being tied to the big piracy hubs. while i wouldn't doubt that, besides hollywood's own very direct ties to heinous organized crime, most people turn to crime because our broken socio-economic system incentivizes it. honest work pays peanuts, is it any wonder people do/sell bad stuff to make ends meet? and naturally, there's a heirarchy in that structure, as well. with, no surprise, the most rich and powerful being the most corrupt and genuinely evil. also, since these big bullies keep taking-down the relatively trustworthy/safe sites, is it any wonder the ones remaining are kinda shady? nope! Also, given their track record, whose to say hollywood is not in any way affiliated with the shady sites or their operators/benefactors? or comitting similarly heinous acts? oh, right, several actors/executives have done exactly that! and let's not forget by definition, the MPA is a fascist organization, so they have no credibility/accountability in the first place.
i thought people weren’t okay with the libraries and hence the “conservative” politicians wanting to defund libraries
I've bought PS1 games off of Sony's network multiple times as well as physical copies from my childhood AND my adulthood. I ain't buying them again. 4 times is enough. Especially now that Sony can literally go into your online library and remove media as shown with a video game demo they released and then deleted from everyone's system. Or netflix altering movies like removing a nudey book page from "Back to the Future." Who does that? This is why I have become like 8-track guy. I will have physical copies of everything until the day I die.
As a person who bought GTA V on XBOX 360, ONE and PC, you may very well imagine that I’m not interesting into buying another game from Rockstar (and not even pirating new releases!)
At least I could sell the XBOX versions, even at a loss, as they were physical copies.
Yeah, not having the physical copies sucks when digital services will eventually shut down. I've been able to play all the games I enjoyed as a kid on original save files, play newer games offline, and play specific versions. In 20, 25 years how much of my digital library will still be available and in the way that I want? My games from over two decades ago are still accessible.
@@watsonwrote I’m gonna feel bad for people who bought the XBOX ONE S All-Digital edition, when the console is 20 years old and as useful as a doorweight- Yes, not even as a Blu-Ray player, as it lacks one (duh).
PS2 owners on the other hand, who took great care of their consoles, are actually quite happy nowadays.
@@satsumagt5284 yesss my ps2 still works great
Don't forget digital versions get censored and altered constantly to fit the narrative.
Unless you have the hard copies you are getting an altered product.
TH-cam actually does do this too if you rent movies. Rent in 4k but you can’t even watch in 1080p in the same browser you paid for.
who tf rents movies 😂😂😂
@@mistermiyagi6073People in the 90s.
ignorant comment is ignorant@@mistermiyagi6073
I love your content!!! And thamks to your sage advice no way will I put my images on photobucket!!! Dude, you rock. Much love from a college professor who loves 90's grunge more than any other genre. You made my day!!!
It may be old school I still buy the dvd or blue ray. I can watch it until the end of time.
@@BrutallyHonestRevsYou cant watch the usa version that you bought on dvd ?
@@BrutallyHonestRevs
any video player can decode pal or ntec.
@@BrutallyHonestRevs Region free players are common enough, plus if you're emigrating I find it unlikely you'd be shipping across every knick-knack and doodad from the old country.
I do get the appeal of physical media (like for collecting and feeling of "scarcity" that makes you value each piece of media more), but for me personally it is not worth it anymore. An external HDD can fit an equivalent of a whole shelf of DVDs, and I would feel uncomfortable having so many pieces of plastic laying around my home that I would never use. I don't even have a DVD player anymore, and think of replacing the DVD drive in my laptop with a second SATA storage. And I can also watch my digital media however and whenever I like, because it is all DRMless.
The original full metal alchemist, a show I grew up with, is no longer available for sale because the copyright owners don’t want people watching it instead of brotherhood. Because of this, the only option is to pirate the video or to purchase a low quality burned dvd from ebay
Ew, FMAB is way better :(
@@abdullahtrees5204 Not the point. Melissa is a great track and that makes the show worth at least a single watch.
@@abdullahtrees5204FMAB is a bunch of generic anime fights strung together with a plot with no point to it all. FMAB even intended you to have watched the original beforehand bc they rush and skip early content assuming you've seen the original
@@abdullahtrees5204 It's great for the first 25 or so episodes, while the story is the same. And it's great to watch those right before brotherhood
@@abdullahtrees5204 you are factually incorrect
I'm going to be honest, I've always skirted the edge of the piracy debate, and I felt that if it is at all possible, just pay for your stuff. And while I still do not condone piracy, I can understand why some people turn to it. It makes sense in my head. And I don't blame anyone who works with the first almost half of your list. Having said that, your last 2 or 3 videos here are what have helped me make a very important decision for my future. I was contemplating getting a samsung book 4 ultra, but you have convinced me that a Framework laptop would be the more ethical choice, as I can repair and replace any part of it myself, which means I have true ownership of my product. Thank you, sir.
"If buying isn't owning pirating isn't stealing." I love this quote or something similar.
Two things wrong with that one: you are confused about what you're buying and pirating is literally stealing
@@Maximilian1990 pirating is not stealing its just braking copyright law stealing is takin sum like an car but pirating is taking ur friends homework and coping it 1 to 1 and using it ur self
@@Maximilian1990 no such thing as stealing content. you can steal money and things and take them away, downloading s1e4 of friends is not stealing.
@@So0n2B1 Gaining illegal access to a service is literally theft, go look it up.
@@Jetiix see above
"...Repeated, Implicit, Enthusiastic consent..."
This is why i have so much respect for you Louis
As opposed to a Retroactively Amended Purchase Experience??
That's the kind of consent I'm after!! 😘
I hope his girlfriend doesn't mind
@@purpleprinc3 nothing in life is worth doing without it!
@@MidlifeRenaissanceMan Retroactively Applied Purchase Erasure?
I could agree more with the end of the video. If I click on a link and the first thing I'm presented with is "Please disable your adblocker", I hit the back button and move on.
I’ve definitely never pirated before ;) ;) but but I’d imagine that pirating a college text book is more satisfying than just a tv show. My buddy did in fact save over $400 in a single semester by pirating textbooks.
College textbooks are even more horrible now because of platforms like Cengage. Not only is the online homework bundled with the textbook (making piracy impossible since you n3ed the homework to pass), but the lifespan of the textbook is also ARTIFICIALLY LIMITED by mak8jg it only available to rent. Want to reference the textbook after you finish that class? Better pay up! 🤓
@@Fasteroid BEHOLD! The screenshot tool!
@@JamesTDG if only. I'm not in college but a lot of these streaming services, apps and even websites don't let you screenshot or screen record. The result is pitch black or a blob or ineligible pixels.
@@Twiddle_thingsUhm, Behold(?)! My phone camera(?)!
Though I'll agree, that's pretty sucky. And it's not limited to school books now. As a gov't employee, even memos and orders are getting uploaded to these shitty 'learning' sites, paywalled, then get botted to the front page of search results. Though this wouldn't be a fucking problem if the gov websites always works and isn't a pain in the ass to navigate.
Thanks for the message at the beginning
Level 0, I pirate whatever I feel like AND I encourage other's to pirate whatever I create. I make drawings, among other things, take a screenshot, make a copy, share and promote it. I'd be happy
I worked in the motion picture industry from the time I was 17 years old until I retired. Therefore I torrented movies (2.36Tb) with a clear conscience. Also have a card for free movie tickets that never expires.
Thanks for the video and I agree with you.
Greetings from -Gabriel of Norway.
Throughout this whole video, one little sentence you said resonated with me: "it's not my problem".
I don't remember exactly when you said it or in what context, but it's a very good point to drive home, which is that when for example digital content gets removed because some company stopped paying to host it or whatever, why should i, the person who bought a copy of that content whether it's media, video games, ebooks or whatever, lose it? This all goes back to the whole new paradigm of "when you pay for something you don't own it you just are granted access to a copy of it and that access or the content itself is volatile" which is very abusive behavior by the companies that sell the content and goes completely against not just the right of ownership, but freedom. If the US is such a free country why do they allow and participate in these practices? Same applies for any other free country.
I will never understand how resistant so many people are to any nuance when it comes to the issue of privacy.
There are many people who will never buy content, and many who will never pirate content. There are many who will never be able to afford buying content, but still do, and many who can afford to pay for all content they'd ever want, and never will.
Someone could take the time to graph out the many permutations of these factors, but who cares. The corporations make plenty of money, and many choose to spend even more on DRM methods to force more money out of the market, while others are happy just knowing people are enjoying their content.
To go along with that quote from your former manager, there's a quote, possibly mis]attributed to Banksy:
*_"An artist dies 2 deaths: The first when they quit breathing and their heart stops, and the second death comes some time later when someone speaks their name for the final time."_*
For the older folks going from Vinyl to Tape to CD to Digital with music, or VHS to DVD to BluRay to Digital..
Hearing that it's copyright infringement or piracy to copy after I already paid for the same thing multiple times..
Yeah, totally equal!
I recently bought a vinyl for collecting sake, and the company sent me a zip with all the music I bought as mp3s. I really wish more companies would take that route.
It was so nice being able to listen to it right away and have the files without having to find them online, sort and organize them and such
mp3s in 2024 is an insult
@@shinobuoshino5066 they also had FLAC and WAV
Several BandCamp bands do this. I approve!
@@shinobuoshino5066 why? I have a massive collection of music, most is mp3/320kps. It isnt worth the minimal sound difference to need exhorbant amount of drive space to store it all. What do you suggest? Which format sound noticably better without making each file ridiculously large?
@@shinobuoshino5066have the option for .wav, flac, or alac?
I'd add a tier for "I like this old game on this old console. It's discontinued now, but it's been remastered and put for sale on modern consoles, however it's a buggy, shoddy port and an awful experience. The original version is also very rare now and resellers want hundreds of dollars for it, so I'd rather pirate a digital copy of the original to use on an emulator"
Fun fact: Copyright laws originally only protected works for twenty years, period. This was to protect authors and other creators, and their publishers, for a time to allow them to recoup the costs of distribution of the works and make a reasonable profit therefrom. Then came the ability for a copyright holder to extend a copyright by renewal. This was roughly concurrent with the advent of motion pictures. It was reasonable to allow rights holders to extend a copyright if the work was still selling well enough to justify it (of course, this criteria would be repeatedly abused).
Fast forward to our rapacious 100 year copyrights under the DMCA, including scurrilous outfits who buy up and renew the copyrights for works that actually belong in the Public Domain, then sell them. Does anyone reading see a trend here?
Another fun fact: _Information wants to be free!_
This is what is missing from the conversation. It would be a lot more rational to take a stand against piracy if we had a reasonable public domain.
Nearly all of the content I've pirated has been 15-30 years old at the time I pirated it and wasn't being sold by its publisher anymore.
But then you see companies like Nintendo do their best to shut down every ROM Hack and fanmade product to their games. One fan took Pokemon Crystal, which was published in 2000 and from 2008 to 2016 worked on transforming it into their "Pokemon Prism" hack, which used all new graphics, music, region design, plot, and features... It didn't resemble Crystal whatsoever anymore and the maker of the hack was not making a profit off of it.
They shut it down because just a year later they would re-release Crystal in their E-Shop and didn't want competition.
Ideally, we would have a period of time where no copyright infringement is allowed and then a period of time where copyright infringement is allowed but not for profit.
Maybe this would look like 15 years of protection against copyright infringement, after which piracy of that content is fully legal.
And then 35 years later (for a total of 50 years) it hits public domain.
@@AlexsGoogleAccount if there's a cut-off at which point "you're legally allowed to pirate it" , why then wait an additional 35 years to go fully public domain? also, 15 years flat is more than enough time.
@@ETXAlienRobot201
After the cutoff point, there are no protections against piracy, but an individual or company cannot re-sell your product or profit from it.
@@AlexsGoogleAccount but...why? is there even a difference at that point?
Audible stole 2 Terry Pratchett books from my library because someone else bought the rights to produce audibooks for them in USA and started doing frankly mediocre theater-esque productions of the abridged books. So, I cancelled my subscription and I pirated his complete discworld set which is easily found on the internet archive. I've already purchased the audiobooks and the full softcover set, while he was alive.
The Internet Archive I find is slightly underrated for games and audio.
@@ThatGuy-ky2yf that might be a good thing tbh.
In India, a lot of US IT companies setup offices to get access to cheap labor since the cost of living is lower here. Based on the cost of living, they lower the paycheck.
But when it comes to selling their products, US companies basically charge us same as US folks knowing full well that we don't earn near as much as them. Or in some bizarre cases like Apple, they actually charge more than US.
What do you think, is it morally ok to pirate in these cases?
*NOT JUST!* However, regional pricing is certainly important to have. Gabe Newell's statement about having a good service is important here.
Also, I don't think big corporations actually do this _that_ much.
...Me? I'm Indian.
these companies are delusional and evil. They have bribed the US government to make insane trade deals to guarantee their ip and copyright. It's bonkers. pirate all of it, boycott said stores, and maybe more.
I can for a fact say that there would no video game culture in India without piracy. I grew up playing pirated Mario and Contra on cheap NES knockoffs from China. Like many people of my era, this was my childhood and introduction to gaming. If my dad had to actually buy a NES (which wasn’t even available on sale in India at that time) and pay 60$ in 1990s for a single game, there is no way I’d be into video games today. This is a repeating story for most people in India that grew up on a pirated NES/PS1/PS2/PSP.
Same goes for Windows. A lot of people use pirated copies of Windows to learn how to use computers and use pirated software like MS Office or some AutoCAD to develop skills necessary for a modern world. Simply because these products are unaffordable for 99% of the population due lack of any regional pricing.
@@PurushNahiMahaPurushStole my words man... I started gaming too on bootleg NES consoles in 2008-09.
I live in the US, so I don't have experience with this, but I think it's really just up to you. Pay for what you want and pirate what you aren't able to pay for.
Piracy is never stealing.
Stealing requires you to deprive the owner of their property. Pirates make unauthorized copies.
Piracy can never be stealing and we should not allow media conglomerates to redefine words to suit their agendas.
Saving this
That is why it is called infringement.
By definition it isn't stealing, but that's like saying patent infringement also isn't stealing, so it's just complicated trying to define whether intellectual property copying is actual theft when no one is directly harmed.
Maybe the tarts have accidentally removed the original ones? Which game company was it again that released a pirated and cracked copy of their game as an original to sell?
E: Rockstar.
That's a problem with the concept of IP at all. Ideas cannot be stolen because they can only be recreated in the minds of others, never removed from the mind of the original creator (unless you resort to physical violence, of course, which should be illegal for reasons completely distinct from the ideas behind IP). This makes it impossible for ideas to be property, because property is necessarily exclusive.
Intellectual property and physical property are mutually exclusive. If someone else owns their idea more than you own the physical property with which you create it, which you rightfully owned leading up to that point, then you don't own your physical property.
I still only buy my music on CDs and rip them myself. This way I have a completely lossless, DRM-free, perfectly tagged library and the CD goes into ‘The Archive (tm)’ and collects dust as a final stage backup. There are a few shops local to me that sell a really good selection of used CDs for $1-$5 USD, so it ends up costing a lot less too.
I rip and stash to all my devices and drives. No cd required if you keep things up to date on a hidden flashdrive you keep around for safekeeping. I do the same for books as well.
You really have a stronggg communication skill very calm no nonsense but every word has a value and people will pay attention to it, so charismatic.
i appreciate the hierarcy and the explanations for each tier! also really like the point about recognizing that there are a lot of people behind the scenes too besides artists who deserve to be credited as well. it's quite easy for people to devalue them and their contributions. people already devalue artists and the labour that goes into creating art in any form!
As a dyslexic I feel safe in saying that the people who notice these scams are almost always neurologicaly atypical. these scams are more invisible to most people and that is by design. They know how to hide the price point and the cost to benefit, etc.
As a paper and pencil gamer my community has long been riden and used by companies who bought out the original creators and/or robbed them and refuse to pay royalties. I want to form pirate guilds to make fan edits of the games we already own and have to re-purchase every time the company rewrites the rules just to sell books. The dungeons and dragons community was once just people who did not fit in anywhere else but our community was great and we really did look out for each other. Now companies inject weird politics where they don't belong and try to divide communities. All the good will is gone and it is just a matter of time before more people wake up to how badly they've been abused for stinking worthless money. What they have traded for cash is priceless and will maybe never be again. They robbed the whole world with their stupid greed even if very few people realize it.
Aw, man, I got very interested into your post when I read dyslexia reconignizing dark patterns but at the end I felt sad because of the political tangent. Weird politics, yeah, funny how the """"""""inclusive"""""""""" "people" exclude MAINLY who needs inclusion the most. They're about dividing and conquering, I question if it is about profit anymore, I tend to think not. It's an honor to fight with you in the boycotting ranks, king. Let's keep opening people's eyes. I'm bipolar, btw.
@@DavidPereiraLima123I see it as fixing their mistakes. Inserting art and margin scrolls that deter photocopy attempts wouldn't rile me if the art was better. By design it has to look muddy and overly detailed, apparently.
the same is done with the actual rules by spreading them across multiple pages or chapters when it could be put into a few information rich charts.
the grasping greedy hands are crushing the life out of the IP they have control over. If they saw popular fan edits I think they might feel pressure to get in front of them.
TSR was where I drew the line. F WotC.
WotC incites me to be enraged.. and i was a Buddhist nun and meditation expert so that is saying a lot 😅
Right on both accounts. Right on them using tactics most people somehow don't see and end up defending (although it's blatantly obvious to me how corrupt and malicious many of these tactics are). And the super *inclusive* group is just the fake group. If you flip everything they say to the opposite, it makes perfect sense and lines up with their actions. They're inclusive, they want to help people, and everyone will be happier listening to what they say. Now invert all 3 of those statements and it becomes accurate.
I felt this so much. I purchased my Mercedes Benz e300 2019 in 2019 and it came with a hotspot and internet browser onboard. One year later they stop supporting it… this stuff is so frustrating. I know I still have a car but that feature was one of the selling point for me because I could get work done on the go.
My moral compass is a bit rusty, it doesn't bother me one bit to pirate content from large corporations.
Nah, I barely see any rust
😢 but they need that money to pour into their shareholders's pockets more next quarter than they did this quarter
Mine’s not rusty, but I don’t even care to pirate when I think they’re undeserving, I just don’t use their software at all
if you appreciate someone's solo work it's always better to support the creators of movies, videos, etc DIRECTLY if possible than to pay greedy companies.
I have never paid MS for an OS. I have paid independant developers for software i use a lot.
Agree - I was looking at B&N publishers and authors that sell through B&N that have 8 dollar books get 40 cents!! Imagine pirating that book online and donating 8 bucks to the author. It would do them so much better. Fuck publishing companies
@@kirsten007 publishing companies are made to make money off someone's creation. it's an outdated thinking, on internet you don't need to pay somebody 80% to get seen. Yeah, maybe your exposure will be smaller, still is very possible, plus developing authenticity and separation is signs of confidence 😊
This is the type of discussions we need to have to mature people's purchasing decisions, which effectively control the economy and the behavior of companies. Great take on people's purchase decision making. Thanks for the vid!
When i was in highschool piracy was pretty much the only way to get games and photoshop.
My parents would occasionally buy me a game but that was the rare exception.
Game studios never technically lost money because it would never have been bought
They lost money because you would have been forced to save up and buy the software outright. They also had their rights infringed upon by your theft
@@Maximilian1990 that is literally impossible. I had essentially no money until i was about 16 and started earning my own.
I never got "allowance" money.
Adobe in particular has definitely recouped their losses with me, as fir everyone else you maybe dont understand that most families cant aford to buy as many games as a teenager can play.
We did buy game cartridges back when that was a thing because the market was full of Nintendo Knock-offs, but a regular game was too expensive. The best way to get one legally was with the full games included in a magazine like PCGames and LEVEL which were popular in Romania at the time
@@Maximilian1990 But it is still their own fault for not coming up with a pricing model that poorer people could afford. note that today many games are free but you pay for extra benefits. A lot of software has an ad supported tier free tier and then other tiers where it is somewhat better for additional money. Also you can offer both an outright purchase or a "pay per day/week/month/year" type system. The issue is that when they don't do this then there are only 3 options for people who aren't wealthy, one is save up and buy a very tiny percentage of the things they would like (and some don't have the money for even that), another is to have the thing for free, and the last one is to not have it and this one is perhaps the worst or the company as a free user sometimes encourages purchases while someone who doesn't use it can discourage others from buying it (interest in a thing can be infectious and this can work for or against the TV show, movie or game maker).
@@Maximilian1990 They didn't lose money. Not gaining money is not the same thing as losing money.
@@Maximilian1990forced to? Theoretically, but for a leisure product like a game or software you could very much go out with, it won’t really be a lost sale
I think you forgot a key level:
"I'm too poor to purchase media just for my pleasure, so I'll pirate it with the understanding that if it brings me value, I'll go back and purchase it as soon as I'm able."
sound like my life story. Now I prefer to buy games. I've rebuilt my childhood collection mostly via Steam.
Shame that most of the stuff is now available only in digital form. Physical media from good-old-times is unobtainable
I've always sailed the high seas from a third world country where buying the hardware to play the content is hard enough to justify.
And to demo games. No way I was gonna outright buy Cyberpunk without knowing if I liked it. I knew I'd like it after playing it for 10 hours and then bought it at full price, no further questions. We need more game demos.
Not having the money to buy something doesn't justify you stealing it
@@Maximilian1990nobody is talking about taking stuff away from people (stealing)
Long time viewer but rarely do I post:
I love that you are very clearly a technically competent dude who could do all sorts of crazy green screen background effects but you run with two mismatched doors and a light switch for your backdrop.
Piracy is completely fine in my opinion. It really is a victimless crime. Companies have been screwing us over for so long that we just kind of gave up. They don’t deserve our time or attention. Seriously. Just let us own things. Physical or digital. Piracy will always exist. They can take away our stuff anytime. It’s awful.
No, its not. One case I keep arguing with people about is impoverished countries. If you can't buy Switch games in your country or you cant afford them because you live in a 2nd or 3rd world country; then you are absolutely entitled to pirate whatever you want.
Art is free, the only reason we pay for it is so that artists can keep making art (publishers by extension provide capital to artists/developers).
If you cant afford a piece of media or it's not available then its literally a loss to no one.
If theres a kid in a country with no clean water and hes emulating Nintendo games on his PC, then I do not give a rats ass and neither should you.
No one will change my mind on this.
Art still requires labour. Someone worked to produce that art. The kid who has no clean water should probably focus on getting some instead of emulating Nintendo games.
watch out, the nintendo boot lickers will be mad that the impoverished want to also enjoy some luxuries in life. God forbid people have fun without putting themselves in more debt.
@@illegalopinions4082 That's not how the world works. The burden of "Finding pure water" does not fall on little children who have next to no idea what they're looking for. you will find these kids playing on the streets even if they are a few days away from dying of thirst.
Kids in a 3rd world country somehow getting their hands on a pirated copy of media does not affect those who created it since they have no way of paying these artists.
@@illegalopinions4082 "Oh you're poor? Well just pull your socks up and get out there! Oh... Uh, yeah, sorry about the army we sent that blew up your home. Anyway, don't play Nintendo. Thanks"
That's a good point because if I were that artist I wouldn't have made the sale anyways.
Piracy also "spreads the word" so to speak... Lots of people learned Windows, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc by using pirated software to learn. Once you learn something you want to keep using it and not switch to another, UNLESS the company seriously screws you and forces you away.
been sub'd and watching your video for about 2 weeks now. Gotta say I am very impressed with all of your content and professionalism with any subject matter while still remaining down to earth. Good to see someone with good values and providing everyone with this sort of information. God tier level youtuber. Thank you 😊 If your reading this now this channel desrves your subscription. piece to all in these trying times
as somone who has worked with a lot of abandoned and emulated stuff (yes im still pissed that citra was caught in the DMCA crossfire, I had to remove the direct github link and replace it with I think "I worked on emulation software").
My own pov is that if the software and/or hardware are completely abandoned or have reached full retro scalping prices (eg needing to pay something like 5000$ for a working ps2 or ds or gamecube,etc). And the original company is no longer selling the object in its original form and is providing zero support (eg provides responses like "sorry cant help or just purchase the remake") then piracy should be allowed because we are picking up the slack and also keeping the original IP/game/software/hardware alive.
What does "keeping it alive" mean? It mean you playing it even if the original creator does not want to sell it to you anymore? Why is so important that you continue playing it?
@@MrJleonp
"keeping it alive" means keeping interest in the game/IP/hardware/software going. And yes this does include if the original crator does not want to sell it or cant sell it.
"Why is so important that you continue playing it?" there are many answers to this question. Some of them are, "nostalgia, speedrun reasons, digital archival purposes, just the desire to play a game".
One use case is to provide safe children games such as the entire humongous entertainment collection that dont require internet or any form of IAP.
Citra wasn't "caught in the crossfire", Yuzu devs literally gave up on it when their Switch emulator cash cow got shut down.
I rented a movie on TH-cam. The audio was so low I couldn't even enjoy the movie with everything turned all the way up; so I look to the high seas.
V for Vendetta is like that
My father's argument for pirating was that the more things he had to trade the more likely he would have something someone wanted to trade FOR. Thus piracy drives purchase to have a large variety.
He had a friend group that would purchase various media with trade in mind. One would pay full price for a program & trade a copy to get a copy of a program purchased by someone else. He said it was to combat middle man resellers who sold overpriced copies that cost them pennies to produce.
Piracy as Bargain Bin Shopping.
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing
What is renting?
yup. if you can be banned and have your entire library stolen from you? then piracy is equal game.
@@bnorrish paying to be able to use something temporarily, where you have the knowledge it's only temporary and you don't own it.
@Ary3660 Until they quit giving us reasons to say it.
@Ary3660 I have no idea..
There needs to be a law put in effect somewhere down the line of all these lawsuits being had with big tech right now that forces them to have "Do not sell my data" as an opt in thing. After 15 years of using emails to sign up for shit only to realize after those 15 years that it is used to track what we do across ALL platforms. It's fucking gross!
Not distributing personal data should be the default
I remember a few years ago a TV interview on the subject of piracy. One of the people interviewed said (as I recall) "theft involves depriving the owner of an item access to that item. Piracy is taking a copy of the item, therefore not depriving the owner of the item access, and as such, is not theft".
Theft also involves depriving the owner of an intellectual property of his rights to monetize access to that property.
no@@Maximilian1990 that would called "infringement" not theft
So if someone provides a service to you and you don't pay them for it, you haven't, in effect, stolen from them? C'mon..self serving rubbish
Not my opinion, I'm just reporting how some people try to justify piracy.
@@simonanderson1433
Btw, how many times do you pay your barber for ONE haircut?
I dont give a damm, if there is legitimate fight upon newly relased movies in cinemas. There the price is justifiable. But what really grind my gears is when it is near impossible to watch film like Naked Gun, /where most of protagonist and makers are dead and it had been paid many times. Why can not I watch movies, listen to music, that I could literally record from radios or tv with decent quality? I am supporting my favorite creator by buing merch or tickets for concert.
But you may not realize this, but here in my country paying for five streaming services does not cost 9USD. It is more, like 20USD. If I want just to watch things I like, I would have to pay like 110 USD/MO. Damm, I can have a food for 14 days for that sum.
Streaming in the US is actually about $15 per service for the bare minimum. Some offer cheaper plans with tons of commercials and limited shows.
I'd suggest that in none of these cases is the content "stolen." That's not to say that it's moral; it's just not stealing. IMHO, stealing is when you take something away from someone. If you haven't removed their content from them - just made a copy of it - you might have cheated them out of money that they're rightfully owed, but the content isn't actually stolen. Words like "stealing" and "piracy" seem to be used too freely to make the act sound like something that it isn't.
That just sounds like semantics to me, lol. At the end of the day, the result is still $ not going to people. (Which I'm also not making a moral judgement on).
@@barrybachStealing not only doesn't give money to the owner but it takes even more away from them. It takes what it cost them to produce that item and now they can't even sell it to anyone else. It's not really just semantics
Your "ho" doesn't matter, illegally accessing a service or a product is defined as theft.
I'd like to hear the thoughts about two very absent tiers:
1.) "I live paycheck to paycheck, 0% chance I experience this art/content unless it's free. The creator either gets nothing from me, or nothing from me, there is no difference, other than my enjoyment of their work. If I like it, I will go out of my way to tell others, who have a high chance of paying, themselves." I think everyone was young enough for this to be true at some point (before having a job). As a wild guess I would say that this describes the majority of people that regularly engage in piracy. As an adult with a decent job, I'd sooner abstain from experiencing content before I'd go through the effort to safely pirate something, however I think this justification is gray and extremely common.
2.) Another one, "the content does not allow me to make an accurate judgment as to whether the product is worth the price unless I fully experience the product/content. If I like the content, I purchase it later. If I don't like it, I do not." This happens in gaming a lot, and software in general. A demo only shows the first level, or even worse, a tailored experience that is completely inaccurate to the regular game/software.
There was a thing I did quite often with regards to games. With the state of games these days and many many of them being released in borderline unplayable states, etc. I would pirate the game and play it, if I found the game to actually be a valuable and pleasant experience then I would pay for it on steam or wherever else. Big companies like Activison and others fuck them, I refuse to support them. However, ESPECIALLY for smaller devs, I will choose to support them almost every single time
I take a sort of, "try before you buy" approach for many games these days (not my fault the state of games in 2024 is just so god awful)
Just one of the things I have stuck to since Uni times: "If it is available on the open, free, public carrier waves, then I see no reason getting a copy from the high seas is a problem. I just have no desire to deal with an antennae, TV box/card, and TV when I already have a perfectly working computer that can play media."
Ignores that they have ads and pay for Access to those airwaves.
Damn Louis analysis is spot on. This shit affects us gamer nerds profoundly as well. Problem is... nowadays a lot of games are classified as "Live Service" and because of that, once the game company deems in there estimation that the game is over, its truly over. There are certain classics that we literally CANNOT play anymore because the infrastructure is gone, and with the way the DRM, the controls, or just the way the game is designed it WILL NOT WORK, without that live service. The DMCA needs to be updated, and it needs to be retroactive grandfathering where its like "Listen motherfuckers... you don't have to support these games or software anymore into perpetuity, but now it is ILLEGAL (IF!) you no longer sell a game or program, support, or make the article open source after its effective life. Maybe they don't have to provide support, or even explain how stuff works, but enthusiastic devs or fellow nerds have the right, if this game or software is EOL, its no longer supported, sold, or for all intents and purposes its abandonware, you have the right as a consumer to not only buy from others, but pirate, decompile, reverse engineer, sell, and create derivative works (and sell those) if its truly abandonware. There are soo many great games nowadays that will never be played again because the damn servers have gone dark, and there are people who WOULD be willing to spend the money to support the infrastructure, but because of the damn legalese in this country they cannot since they're not the original content rights holders, even though the original holders have no interest in supporting the IP.
those are the main reasons i pirate:
1)Region lock (content not avaliable on my region)
2)Censorship
eg: you want to watch an anime...
but instead of just translating it, they replaced the dialouges and/or add dialougues where there is none and/or replace the soundtrack and/or replace sound effects and/or redraw stuff to censor blood, violence, body parts exposure, foreigner food or for the sake of changing it without any reason.
the reason why i mentioned anime is because that is quite common to happen in animes, but it can also happen in games and other medias.
Honestly at this point the only anime I trust is pirated stuff, preferably with fansubs.
because the mainline stuff is a goddang minefield.
@@shirothefish9688exactly
Fansubs are especially valuable when studios fail to release subtitles in one's language...
They can also be more accurate\hilarious, at times.
"Jellyfish Chips is like crack."
'True.'
I pirated Kundun because it is censored/restricted to keep China happy 🙄 i would have gladly paid for it, but it was impossible 🤷♀️
@@shirothefish9688 Are we talking subbed or dubbed? I find subbed shows coming right from Japanese television with some quick subtitles added are pretty good. You're fumbling in the dark with dubbed though. Who knows if any crazy political activists will be putting their messages in it and ruining the material along the way, or any form of censorship you mentioned.
nth: Copyright law has long departed from it's original intent due to inmoral lobbying efforts, and I only wish to abide by the original terms, with the added caveat that those that did/do the lobbying don't even get that much courtesy.
i think you didn't include the case " i pirated that piece of software because the price is too high for the value it provides to me and if i had no other choice but to buy that for the full price in order to get access to it i would just never do it and just never use it" so that there would be no purchase anyways
Tom Scott's video about copyright is right at the top of my recommendations under this video 😂
Fuck all corporations. You ARE the product and they give zero fucks about you. WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!
As a free market person who doesn't support intellectual property emforcement, I have no problem with piracy. Such things should be funded through people commissioning the project, donating afterward, or buying physical merchandise that's related. For example, a lot of kid's programming makes more money off of the toys and such for the franchise than the show or movie.
I don't know if anyone ever gives money to Winrar, but it's an example of a product done that way.
If I remember correctly, WinRAR gets their money from enterprise customers primarily.
Jesus CHRIST lol, and I thought mine was bad
I had to buy two textbooks for physics, totalling about £45. The teachers wanted us to give them back at the end of our course but I merely said, "no thanks, I paid for these" and still have them to this day.
Best part? My other subjects such as mathematics gave them out for free and I also kept those. I use them occasionally too to brush up my knowledge!
I get how some IP needs protection. I just dont think it should restrict your use as a consumer. For example, LLMs (AI) are big now and they are the result of millions of dollars of GPUs and kWh to get something that works. I can see why something like that should be protected. Movies, same thing, though copyright law should expire MUCH earlier, IMO like 1 year after its been out on theaters is more than enough. They've made their money.
I dont have a problem with IP protection, its just way overdone now, to the point where piracy gives you a better product.
@@boggless2771 And as someone not a part of that company, and not a part of any law enforcement, it only makes sense to use piracy as a tool to fight back against anti-consumerism masquerading as companies "rights" or some such nonsense. It's all just greed. You're right, all these entertainment products would make enough money in 1-2 years that it could go free past that point. But they would *NEVER* throw away even the smallest potential profit, after all, it's the only thing that matters to them.
@@wilh3lmmusic the compression algorithm specifically is also proprietary. and it's definitely relying on IP to have any enforcement of that. not sure if they've gone after anyone for it, but that seems to be the intent. it does seem to be the case enterprise users pay to use winrar. ironic, since they'd probably save money using, oh, 7zip? i can personally say that i no longer use winrar. i never really liked it in the first place. i primarily use 7zip and it does well exactly what i need it to do, save for some very rare exceptions. [which are fault of other devs/companies creating non-standard and/or proprietary garbage]
i'd actually say winrar's business model is comparable to adobe. you're freely allowed to open the final files and download the viewers for those, but they expect a pretty penny to create those files or buy those tools for authoring them. ofc, winrar doesn't have a deathgrip like adobe does, so they're in no position to extort users. if they relied solely on donations or merch, "purchase this program" would be completely off the table and there wouldn't be aversion to opening the compression algorithm.
You forgot about pirating from companies that don't keep your info safe. Or companies that sell your info after you pay for the product.
Piracy is only morally debated in first world countries. Where I live, piracy is something we born with. We have school computers with everything pirated. Every technician that comes into your house and "activates windows" does this pirating it. Big companies doesn't have a regulation that check if their computers have licensed software or not. Here, piracy is meaningless in terms of law.
But it's not just because we like to pirate, it's because we need to. Here, a normal paid work pays around 500 USD per month, so more or less 6k every year. Imagine being a graphic designer and having to pay to Adobe 60USD every month, and also paying for spotify, Netflix/Paramount+/wathever, Internet, rent... It sums up.
I'm only paying for something that's worth my money, like some indie and lovely created steam games, useful stuff like Google One (cheapest tier) and internet. And that's it. You want me to pay for your service? Provide me a very good reason and even then, show me why I shouldn't pirate your software. Then I'll pay.
I love your videos btw, you're one of my favorite pseudo-podcast form of content.
_"You wouldn't steal a car"_
That ad used to make me laugh. I've been sailing the high seas since the C64 days, that will never change. If I genuinely enjoy something then I go and buy the real deal. Most of the time I don't make it beyond 20 minutes in to a movie, or 30 minutes in to a game etc. Without sailing I'd have bought things I ultimately didn't want more times than beggars belief. In a world where "try before you buy" is decreasing, it's the only viable vector for ensuring you're purchasing what you actually want.
Started with the C64 also. The idea that by our existing we owe them our money is problematic. When you "consume" media, games etc there is nothing actually consumed and there is no loss except their presumption they have right to our money. now that doesn't mean that it's cool to never support what you love if you have money and want more of it then maybe you should pay if there isn't a compelling greater need. But the reality is people only have so much money and depriving someone of such content is not beneficial to anyone. What is far worse than watching or playing something you didn't pay for??? A bad review or opinion that discourages sales! Or for that matter creating a competing and superior product or use for people's time so they don't buy product X. If you wouldn't have bought it, or if you would have bought it anyway and regretted it deeply then they shouldn't have your money anyway and that you may have got some entertainment for free is more of a "thought crime".
@@jonathanberry1111 "Support what you love" is also something of a misnomer, as the vast majority of the money being pumped in your industry of choice is being funneled to people who had little / nothing to do with the production of "what you love"
if i had the machinery to make drivetrain, suspension, frame, body and whatever else, i would download a car
maybe i"d even modify it a bit, can never have too long legroom and cargo area
I am really surprised their isn't a gaming company that has succeeded with some sort of monthly subscription to borrow games. Honestly Amazon kindle is so wonderful for books, I read so many books and have found authors that are amazing that I would never have found without it. Streaming for music is the same thing, but there really isn't anything like that for games.
"You wouldn't download a car"
If I could, I would.
Buying a game that relies on a central server to work like live service games is the worst practice in the video game industry, piracy won't help when wanting to play the game years since the game doesn't work anymore unless a dedicated fan reverse engineers the server.
So many games lost forever because of this 😢
@@AliciaGuitar Starwars galaxies comes to mind.
I am on the "the media i want can't be bought anymore, so i am forced to get a digital copy of it even though i don't want to".
Imo a good example is WoW: I bought the game, they changed it. I didnt like it anymore. Some people opened classic servers simulating the old game.
If I didnt buy it in the first place, its a good argument, but I did, several addons, so I wouldnt really feel bad for playing on a non blizz server. They dont give the service and game I want.
Though I never played on a private server, I fully understand people doing it. Instead I quit for good, which probably isnt what Blizz wants too. :D
I love that minecraft STILL has the old versions available. A lot of people hated the combat update or whatever in 8.1 (its on 20+ now) and those people that hate the change can still play on 8.1!
@@kirsten007Yeah.. I grew up with counterstrike. in the beta versions you had a system called "bunnyhopping", where you could strafe jump and accelerate quite fast, much faster than normal running. Of course you had a way better position than people who couldnt do it and surprise them and you were harder to hit. They removed it too and its impossible now to do.
Also, blizzard has agreements with some private servers, so they can operate fully legaly (at least, this was the case with the one i played on), so long as they are 1-2 patches behind, they can operate freely, because blizzard knows its a worse, but free service, so they are not competing
Just watched your video, and was looking for next video to watch
Then notification came up
Some of my favorite shows and games fall into that area where you just can't legally purchase them anymore. Mortal Kombat 9 a game a lot of players consider one of the series best is no longer available for direct sale because they lost the rights to a guest character Freddy. All the future releases also are on the path to sharing that fate with their guest characters as well.
Do you remember when amazon was creating the mesh network with the ring doorbell. This is exactly why I always said they were doing it... (@4:30) so companies could license the communications and be able to capture your usage data even without an internet connection...
In the future it won't even be enough to just "not connect the device to the wifi".
Service providers: "decentralized networks aren't sufficient to meet end-user's needs"
Service providers: "decentralized networks are a great way to meet end-user's needs"
Piracy is a service problem. If somebody is selling something that's DRM free and they won't take it away from you ever, and you pirate it anyway, that's stealing. Buy it when they sell it in the manner you say you want it.
Everything else is fair game. If they only offer it via subscription (or don't offer it via any method at all) and won't sell it, piracy isn't stealing. If I bought something previously and they decided later to take it away, or just not make it available on a new platform, piracy isn't stealing - it's reclamation.
Oh, and adblockers and sponsor fast forwarders aren't piracy.
Also yeah I agree with "I did buy a copy but I'm going to go pirate one to do as I please now" like you said for your music albums
Take Tears of the Kingdom last year. Game leaked a few weeks before launch. If people kept their pre-orders but downloaded a pirate copy to start playing right away (and/or to play on an emulator for 60 fps) that's fine by me. Nintendo's getting your money, that's the end of the transaction, they don't have the right to force you to wait or force you to play it on their dilapidated console that can't even hold 30 fps.
It would be canceling the preorder after downloading a pirate copy where I would then find it immoral. It's available for purchase, so buy it. But then go nuts, do what you want, the rightsholder has your money.
And same thing for movies. I'm gonna buy that disc, then rip it and throw the digital file on a NAS to watch over the network on any TV in the house without having to go pick up the disc and put it in a player. I don't care if that's not how they want me to use the disc. They got their money, they can now STFU because the transaction is over.
it's never stealing, it's copyright infringement
@@doltBmB Hear me out, what if copyright is bullshit?
@@JamesTDG it's actually funny at the most fundamental level the quote says: "piracy is a problem". the public domain also needs to be strong. but i'm pretty sure that whole essay [and reduced quote] of his does not adddress this. and it makes sense when you scrutinize valve/steam as both rightsholders and publishers. they actually stand to lose from a stronger PD. also, the argument fails to take into account that some amount of piracy is actually in fact due to prices, especially in less developed/wealthy countries.
What's your opinion on this: "I want a digital piece of software, but the company is preventing me from paying for it, while others can purchase it, so I go get a pirated copy"
My top categories of "things that are moral to pirate" are works of art that are no longer available for purchase, followed by specific editions that will never again be available for purchase due to licensing issues. Basically, pieces of culture that should be accessible in a museum setting because nobody can or will make money from that piece of culture anymore. For example, plenty of video games from decades ago just can't be bought anymore, or on the lucky occasion it's been ported or remastered, the original release can't be purchased and played on the original consoles.
There's also versions of films/shows that fans, critics, and scholars can't purchase from a publisher anymore when only a specific version is buyable, and denying them access harms the study and appreciation of film.
A related category is fan translations of media that will almost certainly never be localized, especially if the original is also no longer available. For example, there is a Japan-only Phoenix Wright game for the DS that is over a decade old and Capcom never localized it. Even though it's technically illegal for fans to make a translation, who is harmed by playing this fan version? Sometimes this is a necessary step to the publishers actually making money -- for decades there were only fan translations of the original Devilman manga available. When an official translation was released, I bought it immediately because I'd read the fan translations and really enjoyed it. I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't been introduced to me.
Sometimes the localization work was done but the game was never brought to certain markets. Vib Ribbon, an early PS1 game, was never available in my county, only the EU. Is Sony going to rerelease it? No. It's a weird art game and probably a licensing nightmare with the music with almost no market. Is it something people interested in video game history and games as an art medium should experience? Yes!
How hard would it be for game publishers to just sell ROMs for old games for a few bucks a pop?
cough cough galerians, xenogears, custom robo, any smash before ultimate, the armored core games before 6, etc.
A museum doesn't allow you to take a piece of art and take it home. Also you have to pay a ticket to visit a museum.
Well courts ruled buying isn't ownership so piracy isn't stealing 🤷♂️