Why do you pirate movies/TV shows?

A number of movies suffered from morons downloading them.


A prime example is Kick Ass 2. Ok, maybe not the best movie, but it was set up for a 3rd movie at the end.


The 3rd movie, is not going to happen... because it was leaked online and dickheads decided to download it rather than go to the cinema. The movie bombed... now there's no sequel.


Look at something like Avatar... imagine if the same had happened to that.
Or LOTR.
Star Wars 7 as well.


The movie business would shut down eventually.


All because of dickheads with the attitude of "it's only once" and "it doesn't hurt anyone if I just do this one".


I hate pirate copies. There was a guy I know offering them to people in the pub... he then came over to me, knowing I'm a movie fan... he's never bothered doing it again since after I was finished with him.

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Because people still buy tickets and don't torrent everything. But if everyone torrented everything, the industry would be destroyed, right? If you admit that, then you've already agreed in principle that torrenting harms the industry, you're just quibbling over how much.

The comparison is not what they make now to what they made before, it's what they make now to what they would make if nobody torrented.

Again, we're talking about a counterfactual: the less money spent on movies, the fewer we get. The fact that we have a lot in no way refutes the idea that the industry is worse than it would be.

At any size, the movie industry has films that are on the cusp of making financial sense. Therefore, any dollar that goes into or out of the industry affects how many movies are made, and how much money is spent on them. Which in turn affects how many people work on the crew (normal people, mind you). This is really basic economics.

What makes no sense is the idea that the movie industry is magically immune to people who decide not to buy their products as often.

I'm a movie fan, I watch many movies. If I were to pay for all those I would be homeless...

That said, I don't think I'm the one bad guy to hunt down. I'm one of those who actually still buy physical movies, mostly movies I like, but sometimes I take a chance too. I also rent on rare occasions. And I never download cam copies or whatever, so if I'm doing anything, I'm not ruining cinema. If I want to see a film, I'll go.

I once recorded a lot on tv, to minimize the so-called illigal downloads. But I got tired of watching poorer quality with logos and pop-ups and commercials every five minutes. As I said, I'm a movie fan, so I'll support where I can, but I rate the quality of my viewing experience high and I don't want to compromize.

This sounds like an unbiased argument.

Yap.

Mmhm.

Yeaaaaaahhh...

Jeez, Rodent, I can't tell what side you're on!

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Aye, it's a system in need of reform, and any arguments based on pretending creative goods are finite like physical ones is specious. But they're also not without value, and in my experience a lot of people just quickly knock down the borderline straw man comparisons to physical media and then consider the practice defended, without really delving into all the other (much better) arguments against it.

Let's leave aside the implication that we ought to be able to indulge our hobbies/entertainment preferences without much functional limit...wouldn't this still be remedied by just not needing to see all these movies immediately after release? After awhile, movies are extraordinarily cheap. A Netflix membership can end up costing pennies a rental if you use it often enough.

I'm not trying to come down on anyone, but a lot of the arguments which imply there's no other choice are really leaving out all the assumptions underneath, and "I ought to be able to see new movies right away" sounds a good deal less reasonable than saying you have to choose between your love of cinema and having a home.

Anyone who believes that pirating movies is always wrong is free to contend with the points I've made earlier in this thread.

I think I should put a "(sarcasm)" thinguie in these posts.

There is no reason to pirate movies that already are no Netflix. However I think that when I am downloading movies like Bashu: The Little Stranger (1986) made in Iran and never actually distributed outside of Iran, does not harm the Iranian movie industry. In fact, if there were millions of westerners downloading Iranian movies after a while Netflix and Hulu would take notice and license it to begin to stream it.

Anime torrent sites have a policy of only allowing torrents of anime titles that have not been licensed in the west and today thanks to streaming services most people don't download series anymore.

Also, the new movies pirated have pretty low quality in video and audio.

You are making a copy of something whose creator has not allowed you to do so: it's like this, you write a book and sell copies of it under the condition that your clients will not make additional copies of it.

When you pirate your are violating the terms of the contract. So it is technically a crime.

I can think of several. Netflix is no universal solution.

It's more that they have legal loopholes that give them an easy out when the angry emails arrive than they get localized.

No, it's like this, bear with me and try this little thought experiment, will you? Watch this short video clip:

NOW, unless you've personalized your browser in just such a way as to prevent caching, which all browsers are designed to do by default, you just downloaded that video. It is copied. Maybe not in the same format, and maybe not in it's entirety, but it's still a string of data saved on your computer for the purposes of reference and reduced load times should you revisit the page in the future.

Your computer does this all the time and you may even do it yourself unknowingly, if, say for example, you downloaded that avatar of yours, Guap, you now possess a copy, albeit a piece, of a licensed creative material which you do not own. Vinland Saga is indeed a visual work, yes? Is this not a public demonstration of sorts? What's the distinction between presented something you do not own in pieces as opposed to something like manga scanned into a reading site?

Each page of the book is out of it's native format and separated into different webpages and those sites are routinely subject to your licensing exception. What difference does it make if they're not all there? What difference does it make if you're only using part of a creative work you do not own, or have permission for, to present as an avatar? Let alone download it (which I guarantee you've done intentionally or not).

Similarly, if the medium through which creative material is exchanged doesn't matter, then why are we not culpable for repeating songs in our own voices? We're still copying someone. What of poems? What of speeches? What of regular dialog? AT WHAT POINT can something even be considered creative material?

If I wear a t-shirt with a graphical design I didn't make and someone takes a photo of me, the graphic design on that t-shirt is being copied into another visual format. Is that infringing on copyright? Why not? What's the distinction?

Patents can be legally placed on low-complexity combinations of elements so even strings of code can be considered copyrighted, but those strings don't even need include anything intentionally creative, they need merely be arbitrarily complex enough to be handwaved into legal protection.

Consider: Can you copyright this?

Maybe these movies wouldn't be "incredibly expensive" if they would stop paying people like Johnny Depp $20 million to star in bad movies like the 2013 version of The Lone Ranger. (According to IMDB, he was paid $50,000,000 for the crappy 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland.) If they would pay the actors the same wages that normal people get for doing their job, maybe the movies wouldn't be so expensive to make.

Plus, the movie industry is one of the few industries where they can make a bad product, and there's no money back guarantee. No matter how bad the movie is, you can't get your money back from the movie theater after you've watched the movie, you can't get your money back from the store after you've opened the DVD, and you can't get your time back after you've wasted it watching a terrible movie.

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Dammit, GBG, like that movie wasn't disappointment enough!

Well, they'd certainly be less expensive, but a) that's not the bulk of the costs and b) whether or not you and I care about movie stars, most ordinary moviegoers do. If they're not using movie stars to attract more casual moviegoers, then they're achieving smaller audiences to begin with, and we get lower production values in general.

And most of the people involved aren't, you know, trying make bad movies, or trying to overpay movie stars. We can always say in retrospect which movies someone like Depp is indispensable to (Pirates of the Caribbean), but not so much beforehand. And it's not as if torrenters are only torrenting these kinds of films, or paying a lower amount commensurate with whatever salaries they have personally (with no stake in the film) deemed to be excessive. What generally happens is one hypothetical, like this, is used as ethical cover to torrent things where it doesn't apply.

Of course: because they can't "take back" the experience. But we all know that going in. And the next time I meet a torrenter who always pays for a film they've downloaded if they like it, I'm pretty sure they'll be the first.

I wouldn't go that far. But I do think there's a difference between defending the practice and constructing hypotheticals where it's at least ethically murky. Instead, what we get is: "what about this out of print Brazilian art house film you can't purchase anywhere and which the director encouraged people to download? Oh and while I'm there I might as well grab Interstellar."

Low budget! Low budget! Low budget!

I'm not really purely talking new releases. It's just movies in general.

I would actually say that 8/10 of the movies I watch aren't new releases (and quite often not easy to get a hold of either). And since Netflix and such still aren't that strong outside the US (at least not here in DK), I don't feel like paying almost $20 for a membership that gives me 90% movies I have already seen.

If there was a place for me to get top quality and a huge selection of films I would definitely commit to that. And I would even pay like $50-60 dollars for it a month tbh... But there just isn't anything good enough available yet imo.

And yes, I guess you could say it all comes down to a hobby or entertainment and that isn't a worthy reason to download free stuff just for pure pleasurements. But hey, that's just how I do it. And as I said, I'm far from the biggest sinner in this area. Not that it really objectively makes me less guilty, but subjectively I don't see myself as the biggest problem. I'm just enjoying what the Robin Hoods of movie uploaders have to offer - and if anything they are more guilty than me. And if that's still not good enough, then hey, I'm guiltly as charged..... but I do like my "guilty pleasures".

Yeah I pretty much practice what MovieMeditation does. I love Ray Donovan but I aint paying Showtime $100 a year to see 12 hrs of material. Make Ray Donovan an individual PPV option, and theyd make even more bank. The industry simply will not respond to the problem.

Analogy - a warehouse full of goods is broken into by burglars that drove a van thru a wall. Big ol hole in the wall and anyone walking by could just grab stuff. The company that owns the warehouse raises their prices to cover the losses, but never fixes the hole in the wall because theres no way they ever want to lower their prices again. The company is not suffering - whatsoever, but the stores that sell that companies warehouse products go out of business i.e. small theaters crumble. So the company purposefully ignoring an obvious true solution to the problem, the only ones with the resources to solve the problem, should be taking the blame now for not fixing that hole years ago. Not the people walking by grabbing free stuff from it, thats minor compared to the profits the company made.

*laughs* That's very different. I'm just making a case for modern copyright law as untenable.

I don't object to the idea of copyright, but the incarnation of it that exists now is ridiculous, especially when this happens: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...29/3678851.htm

Oh yeah, I agree. We need to adjust the laws for digital media somehow. I'm just poking fun at people's psychological tendency to use a valid complaint to cover all use cases, even the ones not really about that complaint.