In the early 80s, the local pirate scene in my hometown revolved around a guy who I'll call George. George's entire basement was devoted to boxes full of diskettes (5 1/4" in those days) of pirated software and photocopied documentation. All kinds of software - games, office apps, scientific stuff, you name it. Some was downloaded from BBS's but the majority of it was shipped USPS from god knows who.
Thing is, he used virtually none of it. He collected software for the sake of collecting it. He didn't even play video games, just loaded them up once to make sure they ran. He was a hoarder basically, who had stumbled into a niche hobby, and like most hobbyists he would happily share it with anyone who asked.
I'm not saying every pirate is like that, or even most, but I am saying, I don't think the pirate scene works without people like that. The music fans are spokes, but people who do it for the sake of doing it are the hubs.
For the hoarders that don’t share, I don’t really see much of an issue. Sure, they have all that stuff, but they would have never bought it. It’s not actually a lost sale.
I’m half joking but all these tools to automatically download TVs and movies has absolutely led to this class of user that habitually downloads stuff just for the sake of doing it. Terabytes of movies they have no interest in. The psychology of it fascinates me.
Wait, what? There are so many assumptions packed into this statement.
Why should we view things through the lens of whether we are glorifying pirates or not? Is your assertion we should be condemning them? Why? Is it because they are taking bread out of the mouths of musicians? Is it equally bad if Spotify uses their leverage to commoditize and devalue music so musicians can no longer make meaningful money from recorded music? What about music labels who structure deals so they get the bulk of the money for a fraction of the work?
I'm curious to understand the principles you hold that give you such a black and white view on piracy.
First, when someone uses "many" and "most", it indicates they are avoiding "a black and white view," by acknowledging there are some exceptions.
As to the main point, no individual has the right to take someone else's intellectual property (such as songs, movies, books, etc that were often created by large teams of people over months or years) and, without asking any permission, "liberate" that content so that it can be freely copied and consumed by virtually anyone, anywhere, around the world, without recognition or attribution.
The question isn't whether distribution of the work ultimately does or does not benefit the creator(s), which it often does. It's that the "pirate" has no right to independently make the irreversible decision to freely distribute the content.
Copyright impedes accessibility, an important human right. The “pirates” sometimes “liberate” content that has no hope of being released due to a snarl of copyright and artificial regional restrictions.
For example: audio description. Audio description is an accessibility technology that allows people who are blind or low vision to watch films, essentially by providing an extra soundtrack with a narrator concisely providing context for what's going on that can't be accounted for by dialogue or sound effects.
I have owned, in my life, 5 copies of the film Alien. None of those versions are audio described. Up until last year there was no way to hear a described version without resorting to “piracy”. The only way to hear a (mediocre version with a synth voice instead of an expressive human one) described version is to pretend to be in Canada, or attend a theatre capable of delivering AD with the new re-release. It's not a world-wide release.
So, sitting here in a cow-paddock in rural Western Australia, I still have no legal way to watch the audio described version of an oscar-winning film over 40 years old. Having paid 5 times for it, damn right I pirate that. And while I am not vision impaired, there are many others who are who depend on AD to participate in culture, and when they find barriers to that, they pirate that content too.
I have films on DVD I paid for, but cannot legally watch because I'm too many kilometers from some notional border or other. Damn right I “pirated” those!
As to your main point, you note that no individual has the right to take someone else's intellectual property. I presume you are giving your ethical blessing and a free pass to OpenAI and Midjourney et. al. who have provably leveraged a pirated corpus into highly profitable products?
> So, sitting here in a cow-paddock in rural Western Australia, I still have no legal way to watch the audio described version of an oscar-winning film over 40 years old.
Put a note up in the nearest local store, invite someone from the foodbank around and swap a meal for them describing what happens as you watch the film together.
FWiW I'm also currently living in wheatbelt W.Australia, my father (born 1935) makes a habit of helping out older people (Meals on Wheels, book reading, etc) in the local area that are struggling ..
You might have more legal options than you realise.
(Where I am the community is not so great. If you need a casserole, they're in your corner. If you supported gay marriage, and if prefer to do indigenous patch burning instead of let it turn into a wildfire so you can be a hero, then you're about as welcome as a blowfly).
Anyway I'm not vision impaired, I just enjoy audio described films while I'm doing chores or commuting.
Audio description is very much an art, and while some do resort to ad hoc description from friends, it's often clumsy and not immersive. Producing the real thing is highly asymmetric to the film run-time. It takes about 2 hours to properly describe about 20 minutes of a film, depending on the overal genre.
The blind community face an even greater hurdle. I've heard so many stories of blind people signing up to a streaming platform to watch a film, only for the audio description not be avaiable on that platform for that film. Because streaming platform X doesn't have the rights to the AD produced by streaming platform Y. It also leads to a great deal of redundancy as multiple services create entirely distinct AD tracks for the same film. It's crazy!
Piracy is the only way some of these movies and television shows can be enjoyed by some people, and often those people are of limited means.
I did some digital | electronic support work for the WA Institute for the Blind(?) in Perth back in 1984 (ish) and understand the value of goo audio description (and piracy .. or file sharing in hobbyist communities as I might think of it) so I understand your position.
Just being that person on teh internet that likes to point out there are many ways to skin cats .. not that we do that in the country anymore.
Stange presumption on your part... groups, companies, associations, teams, cooperatives, guilds, whatever... they are collections of individuals and no, they don't have any right to piracy. That includes anyone working on or involved in AI, so if it is unclear to you, I absolutely do not support OpenAI, Midjourney, Claude, ChatGPT or any other AI technology to "learn" or "train" off of others' works without their permission.
