Major reason not to buy ebooks from amazon: you can’t lend, give, exchange, sell them and you may lose all of them if you anger the right people. They are not yours, you are not buying them, you merely paid for conditioned access to them.
Steam is a glowing example of how to prevent piracy though. Because even if I own the games I can still loan them out. I can play the games across all of my devices. Steam has gone above and beyond to give you a reason to not pirate. I buy my games because the convenience steam provides without hindering my actual ownership of them.
I'm not comparing renting to owning, I'm pointing out that they are different things, and each has an appropriate place. The image in the OP makes a blanket statement implying that all payment equals permanent ownership.
It is certainly true that there are things people pay for that they should have more rights of ownership over, but don't (even, and maybe especially, if they are led to believe they have ownership rights that they do not).
But even ownership of, for example, my car, does not extend to me the right to reverse engineer my car and build another identical one, and then sell that.
When you enter into a contract, where you pay for a product or service, there are a wide variety of rights you do or don't receive, depending on the agreement.
Edit: Since your employer pays you for your labor, they own you, right?
My employer is paying for my time. Saying that they may own me for that is just absurd and makes no sense. They are paying for my labor, not for me physically. Lol. Buying your car doesn’t give you the right to reverse engineer it, true, but it doesn’t deny you the right to drive it whenever you please. No one is reverse engineering movies and TV shows, they just want to be able to watch the fucking thing whenever they want and without having to connect to the Internet, they want to own it, meaning watching it whenever forever. that’s all what people asking.
Let me restate the thing I was originally responding to:
Piracy can't be stealing if paying for it isn't owning.
This statement is so childishly oversimplified that it's just wrong. It might make people "feel better" about piracy (in particular, their own piracy actions), but it does so based on a plainly invalid argument. That's what I have been trying to point out.
Are there problems with the way media sales are handled? Absolutely. When Amazon is able to pull your purchases back out of your access that they made consumers feel that they would have unlimited and perpetual access to (even if the very fine print said otherwise), that's a huge problem. If a particular piece of media just isn't available anywhere except for via streaming (or, frankly, anywhere at all outside of piracy), that's also a problem.
OP's post doesn't address any of that. The suggestion is that "If I have paid for something, I (edit: should) have full, unlimited, and perpetual ownership rights to it." That's just not true; the landscape of commerce is far more complicated than that, and it's a mistake to just join into a weird hug box about it.
I guess it all depends on how one interprets ops cryptic message. Lol I read it as “I paid for it by pressing the ‘purchase’ button on a movie, so now it is mine”. You’ve probably read it “I should own the right to all of the movies and tv shows on Netflix since I’m a subscriber”. I don’t agree with the second, but sure as hell believe the first one from the bottom of my heart.
This is inaccurate. You are not buying it (the media), you are buying the right to stream it (as long as the seller provides the media as a stream). You don’t “buy” a movie unless you are paying for it’s ownership, which would be millions of dollars. For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM). And you generally don’t have a right be able to “buy” or have access to all media.
But all that doesn’t automaticly make it amoral. this comment is gonna be downvoted to hell
edit: There are probably gonna be more responces, so this will address everything else I have to say. What I wrote is how things are legally, more or less. I don’t like that either. I do consider piracy stealing (under current laws) and morally right. Stealing is just not that great term for digital stuff. Please don’t try to (uselessly) sway me and don’t infight
That’s kind of their point, because we are not in fact buying the media the argument is that piracy has some moral element. Put another way there is no option to own it outside of piracy.
this meme is a criticism of that. it shouldn’t be like that. if I buy a chair, I own the chair. I can then choose to sit on it, burn it, or give it to my neighbor, whatever. if I buy a movie, it’s suddenly not like that – but not because of some inherent quality that would make it impossible, but only because they say it is like that. but they have one weakness: it’s only like that if we actually stick to those rules. they’re all arbitrary anyway! we can therefore treat a bought movie just as it should be: a physical copy that we actually own. we can then decide to watch it, to lend it to our neighbor, to play it for everybody to see on the street, to cut it and remix it and do something new with it. will they come and claim we’ve “pirated” their media? yes of course, but this is nonsensical, dead law, that has to be broken again and again by just – ignoring it, and making it not so. if I buy a movie, I do own the movie, and the company that says otherwise can get fucked. that’s what this is about.
For physical releases you buy the disk and the right to watch it under certain conditions (DRM).
I’d like to point out German law (maybe this expands to EU and other countries) with traditional media.
Traditionally you bought movies and music on physical discs. You had a guaranteed right to be able to sell it to other people, as well as make personal copies of it for private use/backups.
DRM has always tried to oppose this right. And obviously, in the last decade(s) a lot went into service-oriented streaming and temporary access instead of owning even on a partial or theoretical level.
If I’ve bought the right to play the game, what’s “the game” that I’m entitled to if they decide to take away what makes it the thing I agreed to have access to?
I can’t believe we are actually talking about this. There is a difference between owning and renting. I’m financing my car, I’m paying to own it. After the payments are done, it’s 100% my car. Movies say “purchase” and literally outright don’t let you download and own a copy of the movie that you just paid full price for. I remember trying to purchase a TV show on YouTube and it stated that it’ll “expire” after two years of time of purchase. Bitch, you’re asking me to pay $100 for this shit. They have option to “rent” and to “purchase” and the expiration is on both, except one expires in 24 hours and the other in 2 years. Fuck that
Seems I hit a nerve. I don’t disagree with what you’ve put. The biggest issue here is the fact they say purchase rather than rent. I’d much rather I purchase a movie and own it but that’s not the business model they offer. In reality, if the continue with their current model they should rename it.
Right, but they won’t change the name, because they know your average Joe would just walk away from it, so they just keep it sketchy and keep fucking people over.
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