It’s always been hypocrisy. The media companies only say what part you actually own based whatever is most profitable to them.
Technically, back in the day, when you bought any music wether it be 8-track, LP, cassette, or CD, you were purchasing a single-user license for the music and the media was just how the record companies delivered it to you. That’s why Napster and all the piracy that followed it was/is illegal, because you don’t own a license when you copy the digital file.
HOWEVER… Over the many decades I’ve been alive I’ve scratched, twisted, demagnetized, or just plain old lost hundreds of LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Do you think if I requested a new copy of the music that the record companies would send me a replacement?
No, they would not. So I obtained digital replacements by…other means.
Now that we’re all used to digital copies, suddenly that’s been the important part all along.
That’s why if you want to support artists, you can buy the shit locked down files so they get the artist gets paid, and then just never use them. Pay for them but get your actual files from piracy.
Listen, me hearties…
We are pirates, yar har fiddle me dee
If buying isn’t owning, then pirating cannot be stealing. These corporations are literally herding people back onto the seas. I need to go get myself a new flag with a skull and bones, since I tied my boat to the pier about fifteen-twenty years ago.
Pirating is not and never has been stealing. You do not deprive anyone of anything when you make a copy of something.
Copyright is a dumb as shit system of artificial scarcity and always has been.
Its kinda true. I like to think of gog and gog-games. One is a storefront. One is a clean ui with all the games downloadable for free.
I think many would still use the free one vs paid. Myself, there’s something about owning it.
I pirated doom eternal back in the day. I was enjoying it so much I just bought it instead. 🤷
I get what you’re saying with “copying” vs “stealing”, which is true. But if you could clone your friends car for free you don’t need to buy a car and the business loses a sale.
The business loses a sale of what though? A copy they never created or had possession of in the first place?
If I go home and build a PC, can Dell claim that I deprived them of a sale of a copy of one of their computers?
I do, raise the black flag and you can too.
Only way I feel I can push back is by also saving it locally 🏴☠️
We got frog boiled in the 2010s to accept renting out media. Me and my sandisk Sansa clip still go for walks listening to mp3s. I wonder if devices like this will see a resurgence under the idea that owning it gives you control of your media.
We thought we were signing up for libraries. We forgot the “Public” part of how libraries work.
I saved all my DVDs because the pawn/sale price wasnt worth it… So glad I did.
Films are still physical in my home. PC games are only digital, preferably bought at gog so I can download and store them. Music is also digital since I don’t have any cd player. But I will continue to my films as blu ray discs as long as my blu ray player works and the films are released. Well, there needs to be stores that sell the films as well, that looks like the first thing to fall.
🏴☠️
I mean, you can do that.
But it’s inconvenient and expensive and takes up space. So most folks choose not to do that for pragmatic reasons. Physical media still is broad available for books and music. Less so for films and TV shows, but many are still available in physical formats at online retailers.
I have a lot of physical books, like 500+. People tend to be quite negative about it and have so for a long time, because the popular conception is that physical media is stupid and wasteful. A lot of people take pride in owning nothing physical and regard that as ‘minimalism’ and are more than happy to purchase digital rentals or subscriptions only to further this aesthetic.
But it makes no sense to continue to produce physical media if only a niche audience is buying it, unless the product is niche, cheap to produce and has a high mark up. That’s why Vinly works, folks are willing to pay $30 per record and records cost pennies to physical reproduce.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years. If you’ve bought digital multimedia like movies, TV shows, software, etc from large corpos, you don’t own it and you are at their mercy. Contracts can expire and licenses can be revoked. Corps want you to own nothing and be grateful for them allowing you the privilege of paying them for a product or service they can rescind at any time for any reason, because fuck you, that’s why.
