Is Online Piracy ever Justified? A Yemenis Perspective

[PowerNet]

I have A Internet Café In Yemen (Posted about it on Reddit PCMR)

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/wh4d8x/one_year_of_opening_my_dream_project_in_yemen/

Living here it always came to mind why Piracy is Big Here. We don't have Cinemas and The Internet is in Kbps, But does that Justify taking some ones hard work?
It is said that 100k of jobs are lost each year and billions in revenue lost.

Let me Know, what is your relationship with Online Piracy and would you ever justify it?

I also went into details about this Issue of Piracy in Yemen in a Video

<link removed by staff>

Edited October 31, 2023 by SansVarnic
Removed content.

[jaslion]

34 minutes ago, PowerNet said:

Let me Know, what is your relationship with Online Piracy and would you ever justify it?

You don't justify it. Simple as that. You are using a product for free and avoiding paying. However it's up to you as a person if you are ok with knowing that.

 

35 minutes ago, PowerNet said:

It is said that 100k of jobs are lost each year and billions in revenue lost.

This is very nuanced as well quite simply put. A pirate was never going to pay anyway so you can't count it as revenue lost as they would have never given you any anyway.

 

Jobs lost yeah no thats just the creative industry being garbage. I know been there done that.

 

Piracy is purely seen as a loss for the top 1% of the company that make investments it's why you have all that garbage drm that makes the experience bad but doesn't really stop piracy much, at all or at best for long.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Yeah the lost revenue was always a joke.  When I used to pirate as a teen it was because we were poor and all my money went into paying for Internet access (it was WAY more expensive back then).  There's quite a few games I pirated first (eg The Elder Scrolls Oblivion), then bought them when I discovered I liked them, as I couldn't afford the loss to buy something I ended up hating.  I literally would never have gotten into gaming at all without piracy and now I have literally thousands of bought games.

 

I also knew someone who just pirated everything because he could.  I very much doubt he would have bought any of it as he wasn't THAT bothered about the content, it was more a case of "why not if I can?".

 

I mean you see the same with a lot of people on streaming services.  They watch what is available and it never even occurs to them to actually buy stuff that isn't.  They're just not passionate about the content like those of us still buying physical media for the absolute best image and sound quality.

[jaslion]

13 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

They watch what is available and it never even occurs to them to actually buy stuff that isn't.

Yup pretty much just like having the tv on but not really watching or being invested. Basically just using it because it is there.

 

Stremio is now picking up popularity with the torrent streaming addon due to social media and well it's legit the first time every I had my uncle be passionate about a show because he watched something that actually interested him all because it was dead simple to just type it in, wait 20 seconds and boom it's going.

 

Piracy is back on the rise I am noticing that more than enough myself right now because of obvious reasons but I have also noticed that the people that started partaking in it again or for the first time now have shows they are quite passionate about which is pretty cool some even bought merch n stuff

[leclod]

56 minutes ago, jaslion said:

A pirate was never going to pay anyway so you can't count it as revenue lost as they would have never given you any anyway.

16 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Yeah the lost revenue was always a joke.

I believe your position is as wrong as theirs.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

With some magic making piracy impossible, more revenue would flow to creators. And I'm not talking only hollywood, also the small ones, theaters, events...

 

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, leclod said:

I believe your position is as wrong as theirs.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

With some magic making piracy impossible, more revenue would flow to creators. And I'm not talking only hollywood, also the small ones, theaters, events...

 

Id not say in the middle really

 

Its absolutly more nuanced but well basically simple sketch.

 

Rebecca and Luc like the show "Tetra" on streaming service "Delta" but they dont like the price they pay.

 

They are both not tech inclined. A friend shows a foolproof easy quality way to watch for free and they cancel the sub to watch it for free now. They do not care about anything else but oh hey free stuff woo! As most people do

 

Now that friend caused loss of revenue. However if Rebecca and luc go watch a new show via this way there isnt loss of revenue because they no longer have any incentive to purchase a way to watch because its been replaced by a free option. They now realize they can just watch for free and dont really think about it.

 

Same for the friend they might also like "Tetra" but they were never planning on spending money to watch it.

 

So there was loss of revenue on the switch but after that no more since these are now no longer potenial customers as they have now something that cant really be beaten by a paid service

 

 

Now for the jobs part.

 

Companies have been making record profits in creative industries year after year but they cut costs and jobs more and more. So more money does not equal more jobs at all. Just equals more work for as little people as possible.

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I also knew someone who just pirated everything because he could.  I very much doubt he would have bought any of it as he wasn't THAT bothered about the content, it was more a case of "why not if I can?".

There will always be a subset of people who actually do pirate instead of purchasing.  Not everyone but some.

 

As a whole though, with the effect of pirating on the industry I think it really depends.  There are definitely some things that have been effected by piracy, specifically games, while there are some things that I suspect have benefited like movies (to an extent).  A big thing though is piracy has lead us to this point of requiring online streaming services which has no doubt effected some companies (specifically Disney).  It means they now have to almost make up their entire revenue from a movie at the box office instead of the sale of DVDs/BluRays.

 

3 hours ago, PowerNet said:

Let me Know, what is your relationship with Online Piracy and would you ever justify it?

You can only justify piracy to yourself.

 

For myself, I know I have pirated things but the key is that if it's something I ended up liking I usually end up buying a boxset or start actually watching the movies in theatres.  Pirates of the Caribbean is a good example of this, I went and saw it in theatres 3 times but the only reason I gave it a shot was I had pirated it and enjoyed it.

 

Then there are some shows that as a Canadian I have no way of accessing.  For those I don't have any issues as all because I couldn't get it no matter what.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

19 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You can only justify piracy to yourself.

Tbf, theres a lot of gray areas where lots of people would say its justified, mostly games the owners no longer sell.

[Lurking]

Probably worth clarifying if Yemen has laws that protect that specific content. The Hollywood copyright might only apply to NA and Europe etc. and as long as you don't sell those downloaded movies there, there is no crime. If there is no law forbidding it, it is legal.

 

US law means nothing outside the US. 

 

I know patents are different. But those only apply to certain countries or regions and outside those you can legally build the same product as long as you don't export to a region covered by that patent. 

 

So, first check if anything is illegal. If it isn't, I don't see an ethical problem. Especially if no one would buy it anyway. And a poor Yemeni shouldn't worry about some $100,000,000 Hollywood star having $1 less.

[leclod]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Its absolutly more nuanced but well basically simple sketch.

I believe your sketch is true to some extent but I don't believe it's meaningfull compared to the rest.

But we might not find common ground, so let's agree to disagree.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

6 hours ago, leclod said:

I believe your position is as wrong as theirs.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

"Somewhere" may as well be 1% away from one of the extremes. Available evidence suggests it's not exactly near the "hundreds of billions lost" extreme.

 

6 hours ago, leclod said:

With some magic making piracy impossible, more revenue would flow to creators. 

I'm absolutely certain that more than $0 would go the creators' way if piracy was magically impossible. I'm sure we can all find one instance in which one person would almost surely pay for something, yet the convenience of piracy got in the way and they didn't. However, the relevant question to judge the posts you replied to, in the context of OP's statement, is once again: is the sum of all those cases worth more than a few pennies? Would it make any noticeable difference for the industry's totals?

 

6 hours ago, leclod said:

And I'm not talking only hollywood, also the small ones, theaters, events...

The opposite is true: most lost revenue argument stems from blockbusters, whereas smaller, independent creators and live events tend to benefit from ease of discovery. So much so that record companies changed the design of their contracts with artist when they noticed record sales were falling but concert revenue was booming.

[leclod]

30 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

The opposite is true: most lost revenue argument stems from blockbusters, whereas smaller, independent creators and live events tend to benefit from ease of discovery. So much so that record companies changed the design of their contracts with artist when they noticed record sales were falling but concert revenue was booming.

 This is my only answer to your beginning.

 

As for that mentionned end,  I meant that without piracy there'd be a lot more opportunities for paid entertainment, including smaller, independent creators and live events.

All those hours otherwise spent in front of piracy would have to go somewhere.

Edited October 31, 2023 by leclod

[SansVarnic]

13 hours ago, PowerNet said:

I have A Internet Café In Yemen (Posted about it on Reddit PCMR)

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/wh4d8x/one_year_of_opening_my_dream_project_in_yemen/

Living here it always came to mind why Piracy is Big Here. We don't have Cinemas and The Internet is in Kbps, But does that Justify taking some ones hard work?
It is said that 100k of jobs are lost each year and billions in revenue lost.

Let me Know, what is your relationship with Online Piracy and would you ever justify it?

I also went into details about this Issue of Piracy in Yemen in a Video

<link removed by staff>

YT link removed - see the self promotion clause in the Community Standards for our rules on this.

[Bitter]

It's fine, but only from big corporations that abuse our public resources and don't pay their fare share in taxes. Don't pirate from small artists. That's my ethical take.

[Silviecat44]

I support it to download things that aren't even available to buy

 

also sometimes I don't want my money going to murdoch

[Alex Atkin UK]

7 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I'm absolutely certain that more than $0 would go the creators' way if piracy was magically impossible. I'm sure we can all find one instance in which one person would almost surely pay for something, yet the convenience of piracy got in the way and they didn't. However, the relevant question to judge the posts you replied to, in the context of OP's statement, is once again: is the sum of all those cases worth more than a few pennies? Would it make any noticeable difference for the industry's totals?

The problem with that is the industry potentially spends more on piracy prevention than they actually lose to that small subset of people.  We saw this with the music industry where you can legally purchase music without any DRM and it didn't tank the industry.  But some people will still resort to ripping YouTube videos just as some people care so little about the experience they'd watch a cam of a movie.

 

They completely fail to take into account people like me who used piracy as a gateway to see what's worth purchasing and I may never have bought a single game marketed as RPG if it weren't for pirating Oblivion all those years ago, as I used to think all RPGs were turn-based back then.

 

The media industry goes out of its way to destroy itself.  I spent a fortune on Xbox Live Arcade games back on the Xbox 360 because every single one of them required a mandatory trial version.  I got into PC gaming through shareware.  Now they want people to pay for "early access" and trials, or other subscription services.  Its pure greed and stupidity.

 

Its also why they really hate physical media, as there is still a huge amount of people on low incomes that will trade in used games rather than buying them new, so they lose money there too even though that's perfectly legal.

 

Then on the flip side there are TV shows you simply can't watch now due to not being on any streaming service.  For example the only way to watch CSI in the UK is poor quality DVDs with annoying PAL speedup, live TV with the same speedup problem and no control over which episodes you watch, or piracy where they are available in 720p.  There were a few seasons released on Bluray but they are out of print so hard to find.

 

Some games and TV shows disappear because they aren't worth renewing licensed music contracts.  If there is no legal way to access the content, who is piracy hurting exactly?  I feel what we need is a complete overhaul of how licensing works but I don't think were going to get it.

[Giganthrax]

Ever since the 90s, I used to hear how piracy was terrible and same as stealing and how it would ruin the video gaming industry.

 

Now in 2023, video games make more money than Hollywood and yet game companies are greedier than ever, with literal gambling mechanics being shoved into games made for kids.

 

So I say: fuck them. If you cant/wont pay for a game, feel free to pirate it. The gaming companies will be swimming in cash anyway.

[IkeaGnome]

I backup all my media.

If I a) own a physical copy, b) have a subscription to watch/access something c)it's not available on anyway to pay for it or d) was removed from somewhere I have paid access to I don't mind creating myself a backup one bit.

[Dragonwinged]

So prior to getting Starlink, (greatest satellite based internet ever. Thanks Elon) we had Viasat internet which had an average of 500Kbps and an average ping of about 600ms. Streaming any quality of video was impossible. It would stop every 5 seconds to buffer a video at 144p. Then I found a Youtube alternative app that allows me to preload videos, and while it did take forever to download, I was able to watch decent quality video from start to finish without the need to pause midway through to buffer. This is the trade off between a local copy and streaming. And in my opinion, the upside of having a local copy far outweighs the downside. The only problem is, there is a frightening amount of content that is no longer possible to legitimately obtain a local copy. For a lot of music and movies, piracy is your only option for locally stored media. Storefronts that used to distribite drm free digital copies like Amazon have completely switched over to streaming only business models, and for many areas across the globe that simply isn't a viable option. 

 

The good news is that for the most part it appears that anti-piracy laws have become blue laws (that is, laws that aren't enforced due to cultural disdain) law enforcement won't arrest you for piracy because they see it as too much work for not enough of a cultural and legal victory, and many companies overlook piracy because the cost of going after pirates isn't worth the legal fees and cultural backlash they experience. There are definitely exceptions to this. Nintendo is the most litigious company when it comes to piracy, and they are universally despised because of their stance on the issue. Yet despite their efforts, Nintendo games and software are probably the most pirated games right now, for the mere reason that Nintendo themselves haven't offered a legitimate method of playing their massive backlog of games. 

 

So yeah, as long as your concious is clear, don't worry about it. The one in a million chance you do get a visit that requires lawyers, it usually means you've stepped well beyond the boundaries of simple piracy for the sake of personal enjoyment.

[Guimorneg]

I'm from Brazil. Piracy here is one of the largest of the world. Guess what is the reasons...

 

I not completely in favor of piracy. But is easier to criticize and incriminate  someone who pirates games, movies, etc when you live in a first world country. Just what I think.

[ImWilly]

30 minutes ago, Guimorneg said:

I'm from Brazil. Piracy here is one of the largest of the world. Guess what is the reasons?

A. The economy is ruined, so purchasing a simple software or subscription costs as much as monthly groceries

B. The subscription price is not adjusted to regional price

C. Foreign content or anything import is heavily restricted, high 'import' tax, and so just to enjoy a foreign TV series, someone has to smuggle a flash drive 

D. Brazil government legalize piracy

E. All of above

 

Is this a good multiple choice?

[Rex Hite]

On one hand, maybe people with lesser means to participate in the global economy needn't overly concern themselves with the business considerations of corporations in which they have no say.  Perhaps the arbitrary rules regarding intellectual property and copyright are for businesses to enforce; but not necessarily for ours to follow.

 

On the other hand, maybe people with lesser means should concern themselves less with engaging in any way with corporate owned entertainment and more with finding ways to be a people with greater means. IE, the pirated content isn't worth the effort and distracts from what ought to be done.

 

And on the third hand, who's to say... difficult problems often require more than two hands to figure out.

 

 

 

[Bitter]

35 minutes ago, Rex Hite said:

On one hand, maybe people with lesser means to participate in the global economy needn't overly concern themselves with the business considerations of corporations in which they have no say.  Perhaps the arbitrary rules regarding intellectual property and copyright are for businesses to enforce; but not necessarily for ours to follow.

 

On the other hand, maybe people with lesser means should concern themselves less with engaging in any way with corporate owned entertainment and more with finding ways to be a people with greater means. IE, the pirated content isn't worth the effort and distracts from what ought to be done.

 

And on the third hand, who's to say... difficult problems often require more than two hands to figure out.

Ah yes, poor people don't deserve to enjoy themselves.

[Stahlmann]

My view on piracy is pretty simple: If you're gonna steal something, at least do it with a smile. Be honest to yourself and accept that you do it because you don't want to pay. Don't try to justify it and argue how you have the moral authority to steal stomething. There is no moral authority that justifies stealing.

 

Many people - including me - pirated games and music when they were younger. But i never told myself that i'm in the right. I just didn't have money but wanted to play these games and i didn't want to earn it by doing a small job so i pirated them, simple as that.

 

People pirating games and buying them after finding out they like the game are similar to people who say they disable adblock for specific YouTube creators. They might exist in some extremely rare cases, but most of the time they're just talking shit because they want to justify themself.

 

I don't understand why everyone needs to justify everything they do nowadays. Sometimes it's best to just say "i fucked up and it won't happen again". Instead, most people try to get to some sort of moral high ground that justifies their actions.

[Kisai]

On 10/31/2023 at 3:14 AM, PowerNet said:

I have A Internet Café In Yemen (Posted about it on Reddit PCMR)

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/wh4d8x/one_year_of_opening_my_dream_project_in_yemen/

Living here it always came to mind why Piracy is Big Here. We don't have Cinemas and The Internet is in Kbps, But does that Justify taking some ones hard work?
It is said that 100k of jobs are lost each year and billions in revenue lost.

Let me Know, what is your relationship with Online Piracy and would you ever justify it?

I also went into details about this Issue of Piracy in Yemen in a Video

<link removed by staff>

 

"Please tell us what crimes you have committed in a public forum"

 

People here are more than happy to tell you about their personal copyright infringement, and then either justify it one of three ways:

- Company doesn't sell here, their loss

- Company does sell here, but nobody can afford the price asked

- Company removed item from sale, but it remains popular, so it's still widely bootlegged

 

My personal view is that if a product is not made available by legal means, and importing the product is essentially impossible, then the company/manufacturer/distributor has abandoned any claim about damages from piracy. It was their choice not to sell to X country, so they don't get to whine about X country piracy.

 

You should first and foremost, support local creators. Never pirate local creators products, and never pirate things made by your countrymen. It is the pinnacle of disrespect to pirate something that contributes directly to your countries economy.

 

That said, many people can easily justify the piracy of products, software, games, films, etc if they aren't created in the country. This is because often these products get censored or taxed extra for being foreign products, and if they even make it across the import decathlon that some countries (eg Brazil, India) put products through, it's usually been tampered with.

 

Many people in the west, still pirate television and films, usually of foreign countries, because that is the only way those media get seen. There is no "Steam for Film and Television". The closest to that is iTunes, and iTunes does not carry foreign shows. Only that which has been picked up by a local distributor, and it's often censored or localized differently. Piracy of music has seen more of an uptick due to the inability to just buy music tracks on iTunes.

 

You can also see this on Youtube. You might create a playlist one day, with 100 songs on it, and then the next year, half those tracks disappear as they get moved to different channels, or the rights owner decides it should be blocked in your country. I've seven seen this with Spotify, where one "album" had 90% of it's tracks disappear within a few months of release. Maybe they were covers (pretty sure the tracks that weren't taken down were originals.)

 

People are rightfully annoyed when things disappear. So they take steps to download things that aren't supposed to be downloaded, and then those things end up on file sharing systems because it's now "rare" or "hard to find." 

 

I would easily say that MOST pirated media is just people being greedy or spiteful. They just don't want to pay, and see certain companies (eg Disney, HBO, Warner, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft) as being obnoxiously EVIL(TM), so stealing from them is just seen as "resistance" in their mind, when really it's just a convenient excuse.

 

Many people justify emulation (legal or not) for piracy, not the other way around.  It's a convenient excuse for them to not pay for the product, because their "emulator" makes the software playable the way they want.

 

At any rate, always ask "who does this harm?", because ultimately it harms the actual creators at the bottom, and not the CEO's at the top, when you pirate something. The creators are the ones not getting their royalties or residuals when you pirate music, television and films.