At least, some of the recent controversies.

  • @NightOwl
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    2510 months ago

    Piracy I associate as an illegal act that carries penalties of fines and imprisonment. Like real piracy…

    As blocking is legal and something even the FBI recommends. This is more a website shortcoming than an act of piracy. Which if blocking ads is piracy then at that point the word just becomes diluted, and at that point who even cares.

    • ChozoOP
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      710 months ago

      Which if blocking ads is piracy then at that point the word just becomes diluted, and at that point who even cares.

      Isn’t “taking something without paying” what piracy is? With YouTube, the “payment” is your time spent watching an ad. If you bypass that “payment”, are you not effectively pirating the content?

      It doesn’t seem that diluted to me. I actually agree with Linus’s take that adblocking is piracy. It’s just a much more socially and legally-acceptable form of piracy.

      If anything, I feel like adblocking on YouTube does even more direct damage to content creators than pirating blockbuster movies does to movie studios, honestly. If ten thousand people pirate a new Marvel movie, Disney’s not going to hurt too bad from that. But if ten thousand people adblock a YouTuber, that can significantly hurt their income by damaging their ad impression ranking. Advertisers on YouTube set their rates based on the engagement they get from a channel, and drops in engagement will typically result in drops in CPM.

      It’s the reason I pay for YouTube Premium, myself. I use YouTube pretty much all day long, and I want the creators whose content I spend my day watching to get paid for their work. And if not for YTP, I would 100% be adblocking YouTube, otherwise.

      • @klubsanwich@beehaw.org
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        1210 months ago

        If I tune into an NFL game using an OTA antenna, then turn off my TV during commercials and turn it back on for the game, would that be piracy?

        • @the_third@feddit.de
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          210 months ago

          There is no back channel to measure that so the impact to the content producer is way less direct.

          • @hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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            510 months ago

            The measurement of the act doesn’t change the act.

            I think the difference is websites have a terms of service they expect you to follow. If you have an account you have agreed to that. TV doesn’t.

        • ChozoOP
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          110 months ago

          I would say no, because that’s broadcast in real time to everybody, literally over the air. YouTube is on-demand. Just because they’re both video formats doesn’t make them fully comparable.

          I think a more apt real-life comparison would be to video rental stores; for a small cost, you have the right to view the video for a short time. But you’re still not supposed to just take videos without paying for them, even if you’re bringing them back and not making copies to share.

      • @NightOwl
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        910 months ago

        That’s a whole lot of words for what in the end is not piracy with no laws being broken. There’s a difference between a moral argument and law breaking.

        • @lloram239@feddit.de
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          110 months ago

          Lots of piracy is also not breaking the law. Copyright violations are illegal, but that involves making copies, which you don’t do when you stream a movie from a pirate site. It’s the site provider that is breaking the law, not the viewer at the other end.

          In the end it doesn’t matter if you call it freeloading, piracy or whatever. You can twist the definitions of those words any way you want. What matters is that the content provider isn’t getting paid.

          • @NightOwl
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            410 months ago

            That’s not what’s being discussed. It’s whether laws are being broken. That’s why the discussion is about piracy not payment.

      • ditty
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        410 months ago

        It’s not illegal to look away from a billboard or to close my eyes during a trailer at the movies, which seems more akin to using an adblocker in a browser.

        • ChozoOP
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          210 months ago

          “Not acknowledging” and “directly interfering with” something are two different things.

      • @BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf
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        10 months ago

        No, taking something without paying is theft. Piracy has many definitions, but none of them that simple.

        -Robbery or other serious acts of violence committed at sea.
        -The hijacking of an airplane.
        -Copyright or patent infringement.
        -The illegal interception or use of radio or television signals.
        -An instance of piracy.
        -In geology, that process whereby, because of a higher natural gradient, and therefore more efficient eroding power, one stream cuts back a divide and taps off the head-waters or a tributary of another stream. The captured stream usually turns a sharp angle into its new course and leaves a wind-gap where it formerly flowed. Also called stream-piracy.
        -Robbery upon the sea; robbery by pirates; the practice of robbing on the high seas.
        -Literary theft; any unauthorized appropriation of the mental or artistic conceptions or productions of another; specifically, an infringement of the law of copyright.