/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

It would be more permissible to believe in no God at all,than to attribute him an opposition to cyber piracy.

>>549748

Well this is complete nonsense

>>549752

So is this and that.

I am not a theologian, so take what I say with a huge pile of salt, but I was in your position and reasoned as follows:

Piracy in and of itself is not theft – even the medieval monks regularly "pirated" texts by copying them down without the permission of the original author.

However, modern internet piracy is an inherently disordered act for two reasons:

1) You must disobey the law of the land to do it (and there is no proportionately grave reason to require disobedience – it's one thing to disobey if the government forbids you from saying mass or forces you to abort babies, but it's another to disobey so that you can watch your favorite films for free)

2) You must violate the contract you signed with your ISP and force them to use their bandwidth for something they do not wish it to be used for, causing them to commit a crime in the process. In other words, you not only violate a perfectly reasonable contract that you entered into in good faith, but you also cause the company to become an unwilling accessory to your sin.

Just my 2 cents. Consult your priest/spiritual director, obviously.

I can't confirm if it's not stealing or not, but if it is against the laws of your country then it is wrong.

>>549957

The lawgiver surely didn't create piracy laws (the owner of the copyrights with moral certitude doesn't care, and we can hardly presume the lawgiver forbidding us in conscience to avoid accessing a copyrighted work with the owner's permission) with the intention of morally binding one (if prosecution happens, I can't see the law in such a particular instance as anything but a purely penal one) to avoid cases like this, and it's the will of the lawgiver that matters, not the words which are supposed to cofidy it; this is essentially a loophole.

And if I remember correctly, it's specifically allowed under EU and American laws anyway.

Property rights:

1. the right to possession

2. the right to use

When you pirate a movie, you are using the movie against the owner's will, even if the original remains in their possession. Every copy of a movie released includes an explicit statement forbidding the pirating of it. The law concurs that piracy is illegal.

If I use your toothbrush, but never take it out of your bathroom, I've still violated your property rights.

People seeking to justify piracy are doing so for their own greed.

It isn't that hard to not watch movies. Almost all of them are utter garbage.

So… Downloading music with non-cleared samples is still piracy, right?

You know, I really liked vaporwave…

>>550148

See >>550017

Can you think of anyone prosecuted for listening to such music?

Besides, accession is a valid way of gaining ownership.

(For Catholics here, consider also how all - I haven't seen any disagreeing, at least - theologians you can find consider fair use/exceptions to copyright laws valid and not unjust.)

>>550077

Theft is taking possession of someone else's property. Property, in the biblical sense, was something tangible. You simply could not own ideas.

Now, ideas can be owned via copyright. Whatever taking an idea and duplicating it might be, it isn't "theft." The owner is not deprived of his possession - perhaps the profits of his owned idea, but not his tangible repositories of the idea. Don't call it theft; it is what it is, violation of another's copyright.

Now that we know it's not against the ten commandments, what about the fact that it's the law. I dunno. There certainly isn't any consensus by the populace. It's obvious the laws are promulgated by large corporate interests and, in fact, are an example of the corruption of our republican system in America- that lobbying is more effective than the popular vote. These laws also help to keep the poor poor and the rich rich which will inevitably lead to deeper social discontent.

I don't know, but there's some opposing thoughts.

>>549744

It isn't theft, but theft is not the only commandment. I believe piracy falls under the "thou shalt not covet" commandment.

You're taking someone else's livelihood through your own covetousness.

God don't care about piracy of things like TV/movies

I do think he'd hate piracy of a good game though

>>550244

>For Catholics here, consider also how all - I haven't seen any disagreeing, at least - theologians you can find consider fair use/exceptions to copyright laws valid and not unjust.

Yes, copyright is seen as just in most places by most people. But do know this:

It would be better to distribute a temporary stabilizer for cancer than actually giving off the cure since that would make more money. And you can do that, because you have a patent, and now the patent on stopping cancer prevents other people form researching the same technology without buying rights form you.

>>550259

I am sorry but I think that image applies to you more than me.

Unless you can somehow abradacadabra a reason why pirating movies/TV would be allowed?

>>550260

*The image is of me

I see TV/movies as a different subject to games

Games typically have more time put into them with & are made to give money to the creator(s) directly

While TV/movies after such a period of time will be free(or almost free/in huge bundles for low costs) on things like CD-bundles/netflix, and have been able to be looked up on google for free as of nearing 2 decades; they're also typically seen as a form of art, and want to be seen, while videogames don't typically care if you play it, but just want the monis

I'm probably just being dumb though

>>550262

Hundred, sometimes thousands, of people go into the making of a film or television show. Why would you take the money out of a hard working grip, who is trying to feed his family?

Also, Netflix isn't free.

>>550265

And they actively know that one day its gonna just be in a "100 CD's for 99 cents!" bargain bundle (if they'll ever exist in the future)

Netflix is really cheap, and like 99% of the stuff they got you don't pay for, so you could watch a billion things for 'free', then get taxed 9$ a month like normal

>>550266

You seem to be making a lot of excuses for sin. Your mental gymnastics won't mean much when you are judged.

>>550267

As I said, I'm probably being stupid

Welp, I myself have never pirated before, but I have googled free movies/episodes

I do wonder what media-pirating hell looks like though

>>550262

>have been able to be looked up on google for free as of nearing 2 decades

If you mean a file staying clearly visible on the Internet, in such a way that it could be easily found and deleted by the copyright owner (this obviously assumes that this owner, e.g. a company, still exists), who also clearly could do so any time they wanted, then such an owner clearly consents; and therefore this reason seems actually valid, since the lawgiver could hardly morally bind you to avoid content with copyrights' owner's permission (the law in such circumstances seems to be purely penal, and as such if you are actually found, it seems you would still be morally obliged to pay the fine).

>>550273

I see a lot of things as a "don't walk of the grass", but if theres no fences, and the path to where I want to go is though dogland, I'm just gonna tippytoe the grass

>>549744

>piracy does not hurt the publisher

I'm pretty sure piracy cuts into the profits of a lot of publishers a bunch so I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.

>>549748

I'd like to think God has an opinion on everything. What's the most righteous color?

>>550384

I'll take a moment to unironically reply to this post.

I like the meritocracy form testing something before buying it, but I'd rather not have my own ideas trampling God's commandments. Otherwise, I'll be unrepentant.

>>549763

The problem with that though is that piracy/copyright law is convoluted to confusion, and this was likely done on purpose.

>>550395

*or incredibly vague, which was likely done on purpose therefore out of corruption

>>549957

Not the same thing. If I happen across cheese pizza or something, I'm not going to get my door kicked down.

>>550077

>greed

No. Some of use will download stuff for use of, say, education, which is under fair use.

>>550394

No, piracy is Fair and expecting everyone to pay for something you may not like is unfair.

Why SHOULD i pay to an already rich man for music I can get for free?

>>550244

Nobody's been prosecuted, although I can recall at least one artist got DMCA'd or even sued for making a remix of a newer song. That said, outside of vaporwave and other niche sample-heavy genres, people get sued all the time for using uncleared samples (e.g. Kanye West, etc.), but I haven't heard of anyone getting in trouble for owning such music.

What I dislike the most about this whole subject is just how vague the law is. The lawmakers seem to want to keep the rules on copyright as tight as possible, but literally nobody bothers with enforcement of these seemingly-strict rules. It seems to me, then, that the laws are only kept in place to destroy major copyright infringers in court, but are otherwise irrelevant. This sloppy law system produces problems for someone like the Christian, who *must* obey the laws of the country or be guilty of sin, even if no one cares about actually enforcing those laws most of the time.

>>550386

White is always in fashion in Heaven

>>550436

>It seems to me, then, that the laws are only kept in place to destroy major copyright infringers in court, but are otherwise irrelevant.

Although actual prosecutions are rare, the amount of attention the relevant authorities give to the matter and their support for obedience to copyright laws hardly allow us to think that they don't care.

>>550436

>Nobody's been prosecuted, although I can recall at least one artist got DMCA'd or even sued for making a remix of a newer song. That said, outside of vaporwave and other niche sample-heavy genres, people get sued all the time for using uncleared samples (e.g. Kanye West, etc.), but I haven't heard of anyone getting in trouble for owning such music.

The question was about downloading. If the lawgivers don't care - and the phenomenon is so ubiquitous that they would surely give some, any clue that they care if they in fact did - then it can be treated as at worst a purely penal law.

I treat the question of whether the music sampled is somebody's property as irrelevant because of the complete lack of any comments to the contrary by any Catholic moral theologians today; the validity of accession is most probably the cause of this consensus, if the song indeed actually belongs to somebody, and not only rights to its distribution.

>>550379

>first link

>In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.

Kind of inconclusive results. Also varies depending on what you're pirating, like the exception thy mention:

>"All in all, the estimated loss for recent top films is 5 per cent of current sales volumes."

Also why would monopolies want to hide that piracy has no significant effect on sales if it did not indeed pose a real threat to their profits?

>second link

What does streaming have to do with piracy? If you are streaming something, you are legally using it. It's the opposite of piracy more or less. I fully endorse streaming as a legal alternative to piracy.

What about using ad-block on commercialized streams or YouTube videos? You're still cutting into the profits of the host, but it's not illegal to do so.

What about the use of piracy or unauthorized streams to view foreign material that would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible to obtain? I know what you're thinking, but I'm not talking about just anime, but anything that typically doesn't see exports to Western nations for various reasons, don't have a cow.