Am I An Evil Hard-Bitten Criminal Scum?

[willowisp]

For the poll I'm interested in the moral implications rather than in whether one should trust someone who would pirate games/music/videos in the first place.

[Poll #1029243]


There was a TV show in the '90s which I enjoyed immensely. I was in a long-distance relationship with callicrates, and knowing I could see this show every Sunday was what kept me going in between visits. Like all good things it came to an end, and the Major Studio (TM) which produced it seems intent upon pretending it never existed. Then again, it seemed as if they planned on doing it with several of their Sunday shows, but have since released two of the series on DVD.

Tonight I found a box set of all two seasons on a site and was overjoyed, but as I read the site I got the idea that it might not be under license by the Big Studio (TM). Andy agrees; what tipped us both off is that they are not regionally encoding the DVDs. Right off the bat I know a few things:

1. These people may not have the material in question and may just laugh all the way to the ID theft club with my credit card number.
   
2. If the videos are not commercial-free, uncut, and high-definition, as they promise, I will have no legal recourse since I could be nailed for buying pirated goods.
   
3. Their purchase record would have to be turned over to the government (presumably with proper paperwork, but under this administration I wouldn't count on it) in a criminal case.
   
4. Big Studio (TM) could and probably would try to take it out of my hide if they found out I'd bought a copy (I will note that given how hard Big Studio (TM) seems to be trying to disassociate itself from the show, this doesn't worry me as much as if this was their flagship money-maker).
   

I went to the Big Studio (TM) website (which still refuses to acknowledge their long-gone Sunday lineup. The two exceptions are the two shows released on DVD, and even then I could only find mention of those two shows by searching the DVD shop specifically) as well as the IMDB. There seems to be absolutely no indication they will ever release the show; even Amazon doesn't have the "Vote for this so we can tell them to make it" option.

I may buy the pirated copy, but I do have nagging doubts about the morality of it all. Or, to put it another way, I'm not the biggest fan of the RIAA or of Big Studio (TM), and I don't see the people who actually created/contributed to the show as being hurt by this. While my decision as to whether to buy it probably won't be influenced by the poll answers, I am a Cat and therefore my curiosity has to kill me sometime.


I welcome comments, especially if the answers offered in the poll are not nuanced enough to cover your feelings on piracy and such.

Comments

[lydiere.livejournal.com]

Down here in Aussie-land, we tend to get TV and movies much later - both in terms of it screening much later, and in terms of the DVD versions being released much later. I resent that I am unable to watch something because distributers/commercial television stations want to wait until they can make the most money with it; if something is available, it should actually be available.

A good case in point is The West Wing, which got screened here through to ~season four (I think), and then pulled off the air. The DVDs were not made available - and I was stuck. Should I wait, potentially forever, or try and get access in another way? I chose not to wait. And I don't regret that. Those seasons have finally been aired, and the DVDs are finally coming out - and I intend to replace my illegal copies with legal ones, as soon as they come out with a complete set of them.

I don't particularly like that someone is making money off me, by doing something illegal, but it is the easiest way to get around the problem (unless the things I want are available for illegal download).

I hate the idea that access to something is denied, for any reason. It feels like censorship, even though it isn't, precisely; what's the point of making something, if you won't let people continue to enjoy it?

[twotone]

I balk at the concept of downloading music or movies that are available or in theatres. It feels like theft to me. But I do understand that sometimes, if the company shows no interest in releasing a series, a bootleg DVD is your only recourse. (Well, that or hunting down the series an episode at a time on pirating forums.) I would still feel bad about it, and also frustrated... I'd much rather give the original makers of the show my money rather than someone who was lucky/clever enough to tape the episodes when they aired.

I have a similar moral dilemma about a self-published book of knitting patterns. In this case, they *were* available (I think three printings were made), but the original pattern author shows no interest in reprinting it. My options are basically to wait for one to show up on e-bay (the last copy known to be on e-bay sold for something like 3 times the original price), to scour the internet for the pirated version that's out there SOMEWHERE, or wait hopelessly for a re-release. (There are people willing to lend their copies to others, but photocopying said copies is considered just as a bad as pirating.)

[callicrates.livejournal.com]

I would really like it if there were a way to give the original makers of the show (or the music or whatever) my money instead of simply throwing it at the big studio and hoping that some of it filtered through to the people who actually did the work.

I really like how the origami community handles things like this. It's generally accepted that copying books is a bad idea. However, there are organizations out there (Origami USA and the British Origami Society and doubtless a dozen others of which I am not aware) that maintain lending libraries. That's only part of it, though. An awful lot of the art is passed on through face-to-face teaching, whether in a class, at a group meeting, or one-on-one. Copyright doesn't even enter into the equation there. If the original creator doesn't want the model to be passed on he or she simply doesn't teach it to anyone (or publish diagrams) to begin with. Sometimes there are conditions -- "this is how I want my work to be presented/treated" sorts of things. No problem.

The really interesting part is how all this interacts with the law, or rather, how it doesn't. A set of origami diagrams is clearly copyrighted. However, the model you fold from them is not. It is perfectly legal to fold a model from a book, reverse-engineer it and make your own diagrams, then give those away or sell them. Legal -- but very, very rude, and so noone does it. The community operates very much on respect and good manners.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I've run into this one with making myself copies of friends' music CDs. The standard agreement between the friend I usually cadge from and myself is that we will make copies for each other of anything the recipient would/will buy if it is ever on the market again, but right now it isn't. We figure that way the pirated copy is not in any way interfering with the person's actual likelihood of purchasing a real copy, so it's doing no harm.

[willowisp.livejournal.com]

I actually do that even with music still in print, especially artists like Romanovsky and Phillips. That's how I was introduced to them (the advisor for a club in college loaned the tapes to destitute students), and we made it up when they came and performed (and sold their CDs) one year. I'm planning on lending the CDs to a friend from a local business with the same caveat, and perhaps the hope she may sell it in her store and give them even more exposure (and, of course, rhinestones for Paul).

[aardvarklf.livejournal.com]

In my opinion the biggest argument against piracy is that if money is involved (so we're not talking about burning a friend's CDs here) you don't know where that money is going. It's not going to the Major Studio (TM), which is often a good thing imho, but it might be going to organised criminals or terrorists. I would feel much more guilty about having accidentally funded a truck bomb than I do about having deprived a big media corporation of a few quid - which is why I'll cheerfully turn some of my sister's CDs into MP3s, but I'd be very, very wary of buying something in a market or on the interweb.