If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing
Piracy is copyright infringement. That’s different from larceny.
In no world is piracy ever stealing.
I have a friend that works in the film industry. He’s real talented, and has trouble finding work. So sometimes I feel a pang of regret, pirating stuff. Then I see bullshit like this, and it helps me know that I’m doing the right thing. When technofascists get so mad about people being against them, that they turn the internet off, I’ll be sitting pretty with my external hard drive stuffed to the brim with all sorts of awesome stuff to watch.
Thanks to Sony for showing us why digital piracy is necessary and justified.
I truly feel sorry for everyone affected but it’s also important to draw firm conclusions from this happening to oneself.
I’ve had this happen to me once, bought myself an Album on Amazon Music, back then the Amazon Music App was rather unusable so I just downloaded the MP3, years later I wanted to redownload some of the “worse” songs from this album I had deleted/lost over the years. Gone, the entire thing gone. Still there in my purchase history, unavailable anywhere else. Best part: the album itself was still on Amazon so I could have bought it again.
I drew my conclusion: Never buy with DRM. Always download the files, even if I don’t need them.
I wasn’t planning on torrenting those movies but I think I’ll do it now out of spite.
Buy Blu-ray’s and DVD’s.
And just to be sure make a digital copy of those so you have at least 2 versions available should either version degrade.
In some jurisdiction bypassing the DRM for strictly personal use is even legal, in those where it’s not: if you don’t share your private copy can anyone even prove you bypassed it?
I thought disc rot wasn’t a thing anymore with Blu-ray?
All physical objects degrade with time. Factory-pressed commercial discs like movies have an expected lifespan of 10-20 years assuming they’re stored properly at all times.
I just want to say I have 30 year old DVDs that still read just fine, and I’ve had other DVDs that stopped reading after 10 years with no visible damage. Shits a crapshoot.
How can a company even legally give you a “license to view something” like that without advertising it as "until we randomly decide to take it down. It shouldn’t be legal. They should have to say what the contract is for all the things they sell licenses for.
And this is why I pirate without any qualms.
