It's piracy in the sense that the artist is encouraging fans to share the work with other fans. It's not a download directly from the artist's website.
It's because after the artist records and distributes his/her song, it's not his song anymore, it's the company he/she works for. Even if he/she is ok with it. The company that pays for it to distributes it. is pissy fit about it.
Even if the artist (or heck, publisher, or someone else vaguely involved in it) doesn't mind, that doesn't mean the other stakeholders in the project are happy to have it as well.
So even if-say- the Publisher decided that they didn't mind pirating things, that doesn't mean they can give it away for free if A: there were other people involved and B: they do not want it to happen.
Shanethefilmmaker
Personally I ecourage piracy for the following reason, much of the "Lost" stuff like old movies long forgotten, a secret album that an artist records, or a version that was not meant to be distributed, either gets destroyed or lost in a fire. Most of the people lucky enough to still have it odds are they got it from their great grandaddy's who in turn stole it straight from the film reel rooms and recording studios. They were the first media preservers.
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Personally, I encourage people to do some actual flipping research about film preservation and its' relation to piracy, so that they realize that No, pirates are rarely media preservers. And I say this as someone who actually uses Abandonware to the hilt.
We can see this as clear as day in the Valley of the Kings or material like from the Library of Alexandria. When grave robbers get in, the value of the site collapses because they promptly screw things up, take things, mishandle things (since again, we are usually dealing with- to be blunt- careless and greedy incompetents), and generally cause a lot more damage than they do otherwise.
ACTUAL lost films and other media tends not to be done by pirates, but by the legitimate owners or custodians of the piece (like India's PK Nair) who actually have a vested interest and knowledge in keeping it preservable. Which is the reason why the *actual* partially or completely rediscovered films are NOT from people whose great grandaddy stole from the film reel rooms, but from the actual legitimate archives.
The other part where this actually bears some semblance are those who specifically stole it in order to save it, like the farmer who stole Confucian texts to keep them from being destroyed by the Qin Emperor, only to show others them after the danger was past. This is marginally more like what you are alleging, but this differs from people stealing out of greed because they usually take steps to preserve them.
This is similar to the aforementioned Abandonware phenomenon and public domain. The latter of which is to release it into the public domain for anyone to enjoy and preserve after nobody can truly claim reasonable ownership of it anymore, and the former of which tends to be for borderline unplayable games and media (because of Technology Marches On ) made by companies or people who no longer support them or have died. These things are more or less commercially unsalable overall, and so you don't really hurt anyone with active interests by spreading it around.
At best, piracy and preservation are fickle and opportunistic friends in dire circumstances, where stealing a work of art at least possibly prevents it from being destroyed by some oppressive tyrant. But in most cases they are direct enemies. Piracy does not help preservation, it pillages it.
And what's more, it scares people from making future media if they know they will have their profits robbed from them.
Edited by 75.36.164.85
Piracy makes more sense than buying it from the publishers, even on an advertising standpoint. If a person buys an album or a TV box set or a movie, the money is spent and gone, and the best that person can do to promote it is to tell their friends. If a person pirates it and then buys a T-Shirt, the money is still spent, only now, everyone that sees them will get the advertising. If the shirt is well-made, this might actually get other people to check it out (for example: some people I know but would not have mentioned Lordi to are now Lordi fans due to my The Arocklpyse shirt).
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This assumes that pirates actually buy as well as pirate, which is at *best* a horrendously optimistic assumption. In practice they pirate it, buy nothing, and leave the creator, publisher, and all others hanging out.
It also assumes that piracy is better at advertising than people who actually understand how advertising works and plan the business strategy around it.To say this is "dubious" is probably generous to the extreme.
Finally, it assumes advertising is worth much without purchase. You can be the world's most popular company and still be unable to keep the doors open because nobody actually buys anything from you. Whereas you can be the most humdrum or even obscure corporation in the world and still make profits.
It is not surprising that every sane businessperson would prefer the latter in the long run. Because in the end, pirates are not *nearly* so generous or open-hearted as you seem to think.
>*** This is actually a pretty common misconception amongst piracy fanatics. Most publishers split profits with the creators, and even in cases where they don't, that is because they purchased the rights to it wholesale from the creators, ensuring that the creators got paid.
Removed as misleading. The creators have the lower hand in most negotiations involving publishers to such an extent it's not even remotely possible to consider it to be fair. A lot of dev houses are barely afloat and sell for a pittance what will make millions for a publisher whose input is often either minimal creation or, worse, executive meddling (and in the case of Bethesda vis Obsidian, was executive meddling AND screwing them by not doing any QA at all, otherwise they would have noticed that the engine still had bugs reported as far back as Oblivion and Morrowind)
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Re-added as correct. "Misleading" does not translate as "inaccurate", and the fact that creators tend to be at a disadvantage when negotiating with publishers does not mean it is wrong. In fact, there are plenty of cases where the creator is the one who can push the publishers harshly (and even unfairly), though it is unsurprisingly far rarer.
Something doesn't have to be "fair" in order to be just or legal, and "fair" in an d of itself is at best subjective.
Notch hasn't encouraged people to pirate the game. He said, "Please don’t interpret this text as me being fine with people pirating Minecraft. I’d MUCH rather have people pay for it so I can reinvest in hiring people and developing more cool games in the future", during his post about piracy.
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Really a Useful Note
, started by Tuomas on Feb 2nd 2018 at 9:52:06 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman