I was recently able to achieve the Pinnacle of my movie going career with a little planning ahead. Went and bought tickets to Evil Dead Rise, then it ended with enough time that if we waited for the credits to roll most of the way through, we could walk right into the Mario movie, and then did the same into John Wick 4.
And because the theater will let you choose your seats, all you have to do is check before you go how full they are and if you really want to know, check maybe thirty minutes before the next movie starts, and see what seats are available. They’re usually static web pages, so you can just have a tab open and refresh it. Then there’s no conflicts… you just walk in and sit down in seats you know are empty.
Theater employees don’t give a fuck, they’re too underpaid to care.
How I’ve dealt with morals is that if you steal a book from a bookstore, the bookstore now has one less book. But if you took a notebook and went to the bookstore and started hand copying, word for word, when you’re done, you can leave with your notebook but the bookstore owner haven’t lost anything. I know hand copying a book is implausible, but what if you had superhuman writing speeds? Therefore, using technology like cameras shouldn’t be any different than hand copying it.
So I concluded with: Digital Piracy =/= Theft.
Now whether digital piracy is moral or not, I don’t care. I’m not stealing, I ain’t a theif. Whether I pirated a book, or if I never even existed in the world, the result is the same: The bookstore never loses anything.
Now if you don’t have the means to pirate the book, would you buy it?
That’s the question, really. Would one just buy it or would one just go “welp, guess I’m too poor for that!” and just never watch the movie or read the book? I can tell you which one I am, I am poor, so I would just not watch, read, or listen to shit. No art for the poor I suppose.
But also, it’s hard to feel bad when you’re torrenting stuff like Mars Needs Women, I’m not even sure the production company still exists, most people involved in making it are likely dead, and I don’t have the energy much less the money to try and track down the ONE streaming service it may be on. I don’t watch things made after '09, and I don’t watch popular things at all, for some of this stuff the only way to get it is piracy or buying a used DVD or VHS from some schmuck on ebay who thinks his VG+ copy of Petey Wheatstraw on VHS is worth Shantae money (it isn’t.)
Not the other guy but piracy isn’t an automatic loss of sale. I’ve bought plenty of things I originally wouldn’t have, because piracy was my “skimming the book” before buying. Not being able to pirate is like seeing the plastic wrapped book and going “I’ll just look for something else then, I don’t want to waste my money on something I’m not sure I’ll like”.
If someone has decided to pirate something, they had already decided it wasn’t worth buying to begin with, they were already a “lost” sale.
It’s more important to me to consider the ethics or morality of the situation rather than the legality. Laws, especially in the US, are built to protect those in power, aka those with money. In all of those situations, you’d be considered a thief. But the idea that education is a commodity is immoral in the first place. So I have no qualms about the classroom and workshop. The cinema either.
It is only immoral to steal and reproduce a work for profit. Actually I believe it is unethical to try to sell something for more than you paid for it, unless you’ve added value to it with labor. Ticket scalpers and medical supply hoarders for instance are scum.
Imagine if the Mona Lisa had such immense copyright protection that few have ever seen it. Well then I guess it wouldn’t be that famous would it. An artist or record label doesn’t own the recording any more than the sound engineer or instrument maker does.
The problem with digital piracy being considered stealing is that it’s based on a corrupt system to begin with: capitalism. The people who funded the movie didn’t MAKE the movie, the people in the credits did. Once it’s already made a fair profit in the cinema, the VFX artists who worked hundreds of OT hours don’t see another dime from your streaming subscription or digital download. And yeah capital is necessary to make films, but are we to judge the full legality and ethics of how that capital was attained in the first place? Remember, there’s no way to earn a billion dollars. You must take it.
Just to add a thought: big film studios screw over the VFX artists all the time. There are stories of a movie winning "Best Visual Effects" award and the VFX house that actually did all the hard work going bankrupt because they didn't get paid enough by the big studio to make ends meet. IIRC, Life of Pi was one such occasion. Isn't that piracy, too: owner class stealing labor from working class.
One could possibly argue that piracy is the inevitable product—nay, an honoured practice—of capitalism because it all boils down to exploiting someone's labor for your own benefit without fair compensation for the laborer. Big corporations exploit 3rd world countries to get their resources for as cheap as possible; pirates exploit movie, film and game studios to get their entertainment for as cheap as possible. Circle of life; business as usual🙃
Isn't that piracy, too: owner class stealing labor from working class.
Wage theft is actually by far the biggest kind of theft in the US, and film studios and game studios are well known culprits. And piracy has absolutely zero impact on that wage theft. You make a good argument.
Imagine owning a farm where you grow the same crop as your neighbor's farm, the only difference is that you're using natural seeds, but your neighbor is using genetically modified seeds that were licensed from a mega corp. Wind comes along and your neighbor's plants cross pollinate with yours, you know, nature being nature. Guess what, you're now being sued by the mega corp for stealing their IPO.
I mean, if an event is walled-off and admission is charged to spectate the event (a movie screening, concert, ball game, etc), you could absolutely argue that it's stealing--but it depends on what the ticket price covers. Does it just buy you a seat? If so, then the people inside aren't paying for the content either, just for a seat. It would be stealing to go in and sit down, but not to stand outside and watch. If the ticket price pays for access to the performance, then yeah, it's stealing.
But is it immoral? Idk. Is stealing as an act always immoral? If you're starving, is it immoral to steal from big chain grocery stores to feed your family? Is it immoral for a homeless person to sleep in an abandoned house that's techically owned by a bank but they're not doing anything with it? Many would say those things are not immoral. Some would say it's immoral that our system allows for people to be without food or shelter when we have so much excess. But then there's entertainment. Is entertainment a need? Is it important for our mental health? Is it a luxury for people with time to waste? Is someone losing something? If so, who? Do they deserve it? Are they earning it legitimately?
Morality is weird and complicated. It's often incredibly subjective. What kind of world do you want to live in? Do you believe art and entertainment should be free? Do you believe artists should be paid? Do you believe event venues should be paid? What do you support? Those aren't meant to be leading questions at all, but they are things you should think about. What do you believe in, and are your actions in line with those beliefs? Who do you want to be?
There’s a drive in cinema in my city surrounded by residential houses. If you look over your fence you can see the screen, and if you have a radio you can tune into the audio. Free movies nearly every night of the week.
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