fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5656 ]

[ SECRET POST #5656 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5656 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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05. [SPOILERS for Obi Wan]

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06. [WARNING for discussion of sexual harassment]

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07. [WARNING for discussion of sexual harassment]

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08. [WARNING for non-con]

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09. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]

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10. [WARNING for discussion of domestic violence]

[Hasan Piker]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #809.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, I'm thinking this is basically a repeat of the "I can't afford to buy books/media and don't have access to libraries you Westerners don't know how good you have it" secrets we've been getting lately, which, fair, some places don't.

But the "therefore you are being unfairly judgey of my decision to pirate everything including works by authors who are as bad off as I am because why shouldn't I you fucking racist classist snobs" bs that keeps coming along for it is gross.

If you have the means to post on FS you've got access to tons of free and insanely cheap entertainment, more than any one person could ever process in a lifetime, plus the means to pirate from Disney and other massive corporations, but drawing any lines whatsoever about not pirating from other poor people is our privilege speaking rather than not wanting to fuck small time creators over.

I've never wanted to monetize my shitty creative work and while I don't pirate stuff myself idc if it's the Marvel show du jour or whatever, but acting like it doesn't matter who they steal from pisses me off.

+100

You don't need to have anything other than an Internet connection to post on FS, though?

AYRT--which is what gives you access to tons of cool free and cheap entertainment. I do buy the occasional new book, maybe three a year, but I don't subscribe to any streaming services or have cable or anything because I can't afford it and don't have wifi, so since my ancient tablet died and my desktop is almost old enough to vote, I only access the internet on my phone and sometimes at work on breaks.

One of my favorite, Hugo winning comics is still up in its entirety at diggercomic.com, and I spend a lot of time reading fanfic and looking at fanart and online museum archives and stuff.

I'm not up to date on every fandom ever, but I don't feel deprived, and most big fandoms are of properties owned by megacorps, and idc if someone pirates that crap.

But I get mad when people act like pirating from people who are poor (and often disabled since writing/drawing is something some people can do who maybe can't hold down a regular job) is totally the same as pirating from a megacorporation.

I don't think poor people don't deserve entertainment unless they can pay for it, but it's not cool to steal from people making less than poverty wages. Even people in "the West."

Acting like poor people in the US, especially, are so much better off than poor people elsewhere is... there are places in the US where "plumbing" is a pipe dumping raw sewage into a ditch behind the house. People live in their cars or on the street and police beat them up and throw everything they own away, including identifying documents and medication. Children go hungry every day. Only the insanely rich can afford health care, and only the middle class can afford health insurance that may or may not cover some health care costs. All that shit is worse if you're also brown, and often worse if you're LGBT, and our unelected Supreme Kangaroo Court is fucking us all over at warp speed. Our social safety net is rags and tatters.

And the UK is busy trying to sell off the NHS before someone in his own party shanks Boris Johnson, poor people are starving, boiling, and freezing as their housing and fuel benefits are cut to nothing, and food bank use has skyrocketed.

Sorry for the tangent rant. I just... ffs, steal from the rich all you like, but even the mistaken belief that the poorest 10% of Americans are richer than most of the world (I knew someone who froze to death in an alleyway and work with people who never have enough to eat or safe places to sleep or shower and put off medical care until they collapse and beg to be left to die because they can't afford the ambulance or hospital) stop trying to justify stealing from people who are one missed rent check or one argument with a shitty partner from homelessness, or even death from not being able to afford medication. Are those systemic problems it's not fair to ask other people in poverty to solve? Yep! But that doesn't excuse stealing from the poor. Even if you're poor.

AYRT - That's jumping to a lot of conclusions here. I am OP of the secret (thanks, btw, maker!) but I didn't make yesterday (was it?)'s secret. I am disabled myself and I wouldn't go around saying "YEAHH JUST STEAL FROM THE DISABLED CONTENT CREATORS!!".

However, as everyone knows, independent content creators that distribute content for free while they are building an audience rarely have huge fandoms. See, I enjoy independent creations. I know what it's like to make fanworks for an indie game that has maybe 5 fans other than you. It's fun, but also lonely and pathetic once you realize how poor you are compared to the dozens of people who are making amazing cosplays, at speedlight, of the newest leaked skin of the (latest system)-exclusive, hugely popular (gacha?) game-number-12819. Or just, well, the thousands of people who could at least play the game.

And I still think it's a privilege to live in places where you at least have easy access to legit merch, for instance, because people online will snap at you for pirating and most of them have NO IDEA how hard access can be. For some people, it's as easy as going to a bookstore or even a library. For others it's an online purchase plus shipping fees. For others, it's an online purchase, importing taxes and praying for your book's arrival. For others, it's none of the above because the country isn't open.

Of course, we are talking about different levels of struggles and hardships. My problem isn't so much with my own situation, which is... far from the most comfortable, but at least at this point in my life I have enough to get by and save a little so I can buy games or books once in a blue moon (but I did say I am disabled and vulnerable and I don't know what it's gonna be like tomorrow). It's about a wider scenario that for many reasons many people refuse to acknowledge, because it touches them on a very personal level, so I was only complaining. And I think a lot about people who REALLY don't have the means because I was one of them not long ago.

DA

But as the person above said, at least some of the creators are probably in the same type of financial situation you are. And besides, access to all media isn't a need. It is one thing to steal food because you can't afford it. It is quite another to steal something you don't need to live. You don't need every piece of media in the world.

AYRT - ??? when did I say I steal anything.

Apparently Twitter isn't the only place where well articulated sentences get misinterpreted. Wtf is you talkin about.

When they said “steal something you don’t need to live”, I think they were referring to pirating, not saying you literally stole something.

Anon who went off about poverty and piracy here and honestly, even though I don't pirate stuff I don't have a blanket moral objection to it, and I don't think poor people should have to resign themselves to lives of grinding drudgery with no leisure time or entertainment or small joys.

I've never been poor enough to have to steal food, but if you're poor enough that you're hungry all the time idgaf if you steal food, or baby formula, or soap and sanitary products.

I'm not comfortable with people stealing stuff they don't need to live, but a) that is my privilege talking and b) I do know there's a difference between media piracy and stealing physical things. I just don't think it's okay to take anything from someone struggling to make ends meet, even if it's an intangible digital copy of something.

Secret OP is apparently talking about games, which I know jack shit about, but one of my coworkers built a gaming computer and it cost him $$$.

I'm into cosplay on the cheap, so I don't have many finished costumes and lots were made from recycled curtains and sheets and stuff from the thrift store. I have a super intricate (by my standards) costume where all the fabric and half the trim is old curtains hand-painted, dyed, and layered, spangled with plastic rhinestones, dollar store costume jewelry, and plastic beaded Christmas garland. It took years to gather all the materials, adding things as I found and modified them, and only now when I finally have a decent paying job (I got a raise for the first time in a decade holy shit!) am I finishing it up with some store bought non dollar store trim.

I know that Frankensteining old computers together won't yield a top of the line gaming machine, though, and that sucks. Stealing games from indie creators who are often, you guessed it, not rich, is still shitty though.

(OP) We don't seem to disagree at all, except that my take on indie creators is different and I did mention it on the other secret's comment section as I said, and stand by, the idea that between not purchasing something, but playing/enjoying it and advertising through fanworks/streaming/whatever is preferable to me as a content creator than not purchasing something and not playing/enjoying it, because I acknowledge that unfortunately not everyone has the money to spare and that's how I personally feel about others enjoying what I create - never implied that others should agree. To me if someone ends up liking the thing I created and their finantial situation eventually gets better (as I pray it does) they may eventually go back to this thing they liked (or other creations of my own) and purchase it. But that is my personal understanding, my own personal take on the matter and of course piracy isn't a fine thing to do so if you can please pay for it. Anyway. No one has to agree. And of course between stealing from the rich and stealing from the poor please steal from the rich lol. Isn't that obvious?

Yeah, I get where you are coming from. I used to make cosplays from modded thrift stores pieces (because fabric was often too expensive) because we had a sewing machine home (luckily) and I was crafty enough to modify them. But to say that anyone who can't purchase a ready-made cosplay (either from professional artisans or popular industrial manufacturers) doesn't have the right to dream is nuts. They can and should.

DA

Pirating is not the same as stealing.
Monetary speaking it's more on the "I borrow a copy from a friend (not a library. They pay)" or "I buy second hand from an auction or a shop that doesn't pay anything to the creator" level.
If you do these types of things you're doing the same thing as pirates, from a corporate, small author point of view. You consume a product, but the creators don't gain any money from you consuming.

Your analogy doesn't track. If every torrent that existed was nonfungible--if it could only be passed from one user to the next, and each time it was passed on the previous user lost possession of it, then yeah, your analogy would be legit, but that is very much not the case.

Torrenting is much more akin to buying bootlegged copies of media from a street vendor, but it's actually even more damaging to the profitability of the property than bootleggers are, because there's no limit to the copies that can be produced, effectively zero cost and almost zero effort involved for anyone distributing those copies, and you can access those copies from almost anywhere and at any time.

I torrented almost everything for a while in the early 2010's, and I still torrent the occasional thing these days. I'm not out here morally condemning anyone who torrents anything. But I'm not here for these flimsy justifications based on bogus analogies, either.

I don't agree, because the result from a corporation or small creator's point of view is the same. This is what I wanted pointing out and I think my analogy still stands.

This is why some companies are also against sharing physical copies (why some games are only DLC or PS5 has a version without the disk reader) and DMR like Denuvo or -you gotta always be on the internet and have an unique licence- games exist nowadays (FUCK ME I'M TIRED AND CANNOT WRITE ATM).
Companies HATES second markets that pay no commission to them (ex. no Gamespot, but eBay) just as much as pirates. You consume the media, but you don't pay. You're a leech from their POV. So. If piracy is "stealing", so is borrowing a book or a DVD from a friend.

Bootlegs are things that are PRODUCED illegally. They're copies of concerts etc or fake books, not officially produced by the creators, so you can't really compare those to official books or games sold on auctions.
If you mean pirated copies sold as genuine on the street market well, no shit they're not the same as the thing I'm talking about because there's someone directly profiting from selling fake copies, actively "stealing" the money inbetween the customer and the producer. In the street market a customer is PAYING money that doesn't go to the producer of media, meanwhile torrenting from home does not involve any money from the customer and consumer of media.
Still, this doesn't invalidate my analogy.

For context: I don't pirate nowadays. I think I've pirated the last movie 10 years ago and it was a 60's movie.
I've got a family account for Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime and an account on Disney+. I buy games almost exclusively from GOG.com because they have no DMR. I buy books because I love having a pretty bookshelf and I share it with my family and friends. I have a family bookshelf with more than 3.000 books, mostly classics and some recent books, and more than 1.000 manga volumes. I buy everything from the local small library because I prefer buying locally. I have access to the public library, too, and sometimes donate requested books and money. I'm not rich, but I value art and education above everything else, so I invest all my money there.

Still, even if I don't actively do it and usually avoid anything illegal on the internet, piracy is not "STEALING". That word is wrong.
My post was not in fact justifying piracy, it was pointing out that it is not "stealing". And I spoke only about the monetary aspect of the thing, not the morally one. I'm actually against piracy myself.
Saying that PIRACY IS STEALING is like unironically citing that meme of YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR!!!! It's just silly.

DA

It’s DRM, not DMR.

AYART
Thanks for the heads up. I have a lot of problems with English acronims. Will pay more attention to this next time.

It’s not a problem, and I completely understand.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5656 ]

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