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Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" (pluralistic.net)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.

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[–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

That's two very different cases. Using exposure to extort services out people is different than copying something to see if you'd enjoy it.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's really not that different. The main difference is the audience size. For an independent musician selling merchandise, it would be equally insulting to them to tell them that they will be repaid in exposure if they give you one for free.

    Making a copy of something "to see if you'd enjoy it" or because it's somehow great for their exposure is mental gymnastics to justify piracy. Let's just call it intellectual property theft and stop beating around the bush.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Copying isn't theft. You're about 40 years late to this conversation and you're starting from the taste of boots? You're equating an instantly reproducible, finished product with a service; your analogy sucks.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The entire goal of my comment was to avoid mincing words. As somebody who has first hand experienced copyleft violation, it sure doesn't feel different on the receiving end. I feel this very personal experience is equivocal to copyright infringement. I'm not licking any boots—thanks for that accusation.

    It's easy to excuse illicit behavior from your armchair by gaslighting with the choice of words, because after all, violating copyright is just sticking it to the man, right? In truth, I feel that my software was stolen for profit and just for me as the little man, there's no other word that comes to my mind than "theft."

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You should write an open letter to hobbyists. It worked for Gates. If your software was "stolen for profit" and that didn't result in more people trying it and buying, I have bad news: it didn't seem like it was worth the money to the people who tried it. JRC does many studies on piracy and the data shows that total sales are not displaced by piracy volume, again and again. You can make the argument that this is only true for games and music (typically the subject of these studies) but this hardline attitude of it being the same as stealing sucks.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Lovely, so your rebuttal is that not only is my emotion wrong but my software sucks, too. I would suggest putting yourself in my shoes and envisioning what a shitty thing that is to say.

    To offer a bit of background: the clone my game published itself on Google Play with ads removed. Aside from simply the confusion of a game with verbatim the same name, this further entices users to install it, because Google Play displays a label when an app contains ads.

    What is the worth to a user? This is a terrific question, and I have spent years narrowing down the right valuation of ad content and in-app purchase pricing to remove ads. The game currently has 15M historical installs with fairly industry standard retention rates, so it can't be completely off. But the thing is, that valuation will always be higher than 0.

    So where does the steal come from? The cloned app only offered the ad-free experience long enough to gather enough installs, to then revert the change with a swapped out AdMob account number.

    I think most of this has been offset by that change now as I've seen a similar growth return to my app. But those losses in the interim period are gone forever. Somebody took my code base, republished it in blatant violation of GPL, causing me to lose revenue. I feel robbed and your apathy genuinely perplexes me.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    In that case it would be illegal

    Yap about my own crimes:

    In my opinion that would be immoral. For me, the only things I’ve pirated are mom’s cd’s (ripped) and Endorphin Dynamic Motion Synthesis. Endorphin physics is 20+ year old abandoned and discontinued software, it was a physics engine for film studios with a learning edition: 30 day free trial. Yes, it is a copy for my own enjoyment, but there was never a purchase to be made. I tried looking for the old web servers, but after NaturalMotion was bought by Zinga in 2015, they shut down all servers and effectively erased it from history. Only 2 companies legally know the secrets of this Dynamic Motion Synthesis: NaturalMotion/Zynga and Rockstar. Rockstar has a branch of it for games called Euphoria, I think it still exists. If no-one had cracked Endorphin, no trace of its existence would have stayed, effectively removed from reality. I now need windows 7 and a vm lol. The music mom had already bought, mp3players don’t support discs.

    Yap about your game’s copycat:

    How many ads? If there’s a lot ads it makes sense someone would rip it, though it still sucks. If there’s almost none, they’re very obviously in the wrong HOWEVER it’s more complicated than this and I obviously don’t know the details when all you said about it was you made it, had some ads, someone ripped it/reuploaded without ads, so I can’t really say much about it. Sorry that happened, it must suck, though I don’t know much about software dev.

    Piracy is definitely a gray topic with valid points on either side so my interpretation of your game situation is probably inaccurate and where the line is drawn changes person to person. Have a great day.

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