Copyright, patents, and piracy
In our current capitalist legal system, designed to protect the rich and criminalize the poor, piracy is the "theft of intellectual property." This is done by copying. Literally just copying. It doesn't make the creator money, though, which is what matters the most to the capitalist class. And, better yet, you can only get it reliably enforced if you're rich enough to buy copyright protection or a patent (although laws about this vary worldwide).
Welcome back to Futurism, a gemlog about solarpunk ideals and a few things adjacent to it. Let's build a future worth living in.
Cord-cutting
Let me be straightforward that I fully believe what we now call piracy will be the norm in the future, the near future even. It might not be "legal," but it's still going to get more and more popular nonetheless.
I'll concede that competition with Netflix should have been a good thing. Instead, we ended up with all our shows split across streaming services, shoved behind ad-walls, and cancelled after its first or second season, no matter how well loved the series is or how complete the story is.
We ended up in the really shitty world of content licensing, which is a way for copyright or patent(?) owners to let someone else use their media in specific ways. Particularly, streaming services sometimes obtained limited licenses to content so that they could offer it for some time.
We also have other issues, like these companies sitting on or outright deleting unreleased movies as a tax write-off. People poured their lives into films like Disney's Crater which vanished during a "content purge," and various Warner Bros movies that they finish and then either never release or straight-up delete.
To make matters worse, the streaming services are now all cracking down on password sharing, which was formerly encouraged and was used by families and friends, adding ads to their services, AND jacking up the prices. Now there are even "bundles" of streaming services. Isn't this starting to sound like cable TV, and everything everyone hated about it?
Every one of these things makes piracy more appealing.
Why do pirates pirate?
Specifically, I'm talking about consumers of pirated content here. Consumers of pirated content are people who want to watch, read, listen to, or play some piece of media, but the barrier to legal entry is too high to do so: often either because it doesn't work on devices they have (emulation or streaming woes; this often entails breaking DRM), they cannot afford it, in some rare cases that it's impossible to legally acquire anymore (abandonware or media not on any streaming service), or some combination of those.
There are also a few people who use pirated content as an ideological affair. Streaming services in particular attract pirates who are concerned about their privacy; many streaming services now not only track what you watch or listen to, but also your location, and they all sell that data. Anarchists also pirate a lot because of their ideology, and that "information should be free."
And it should be.
Digital Rights Management (DRM)
One huge disadvantage of legal media is DRM. It restricts what you are allowed to do with it, on your own device, even if you have a legal copy.
Games that have DRM have become illegal to play on several occasions. When the DRM server goes offline or is inaccessible for some amount of time (maybe you live in a war-torn country with unreliable Internet access!), the game locks up and refuses to let you play it.
DRM even applies to hardware, including fucking TRACTORS. John Deere in particular is notorious for this; they have their parts VIN-locked, so that if your tractor breaks, you have to call out a John Deere licensed technician to let you use your tractor again.
DRM-free media is a pretty big market, for anyone who knows anything about DRM.
Anti-cheat
To a lesser degree, anti-cheat is also sometimes a pain in the ass, particularly if you want to apply cosmetic mods to a game, or if kernel-level anti-cheat is used.
There is no reason a game needs complete and total access to your system. You need better detection and mitigation, not a bigger gun.
If someone wants to cheat, or has to cheat to have fun, they should be allowed to. Stick them in local singleplayer and let them do whatever the hell they want.
All cops are bastards.
Insulin
Patents and their enforcement kill.
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention. In most countries, patent rights fall under private law and the patent holder must sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce their rights.
While you do get the schematics of a Thing and how to make it (the "enabling disclosure" Wikipedia speaks of), you're not allowed to use it for fucking ever. By the time you're allowed to make your own version of a patented technology, that technology has generally been made obsolete, especially in the 2020s.
Insulin, a medication NECESSARY TO LIVE for people with diabetes, has long been entangled by patent. The original insulin patent did finally expire in 2015, but several improved versions have been made since then, which have all been patented, and those patents are not expired.
Closing thoughts
In an ideal future, of course, "piracy" isn't a thing anymore because there's no concept of "stealing" media by copying it. Torrenting would be a lot more widely accepted and regular streaming apps would probably use torrents by default.
There's also a future where "piracy" isn't a thing because media has become so bastardized that it's basically impossible to view it without going to a dedicated venue, handing over all of your belongings, and having an eye scan. It's just like the old days of movie theaters and arcades, except so, so much worse.
We all know which one we're choosing.
Email me: me@blakes.dev (or DeltaChat). Subject pre-filled on this link.
Chat with me: me@blakes.dev (XMPP)
or on my backup: blake@federation.quest (XMPP)