alt Hacker NewsRemember how people used to justify their own personal software piracy with arguments like "information wants to be free", "no one stole anything, you still have the data", "I was never going to buy it anyway", and "copyright should be abolished?"
> Instead the AI companies reached these absurd settlements with publishers that made a mockery out of all the previous copyright enforcement victims.
Isn't that at least something? How many people pirating software ever settled with the companies they "victimized?"
Replies
> Remember how people used to justify their own personal software piracy
A courtesy. There was never any need to justify it.
> Isn't that at least something?
Yes, it's a joke. Why do they get to infringe copyrights with impunity while normal people get destroyed? Either go after them like the copyright industry always does and punish them properly, or abolish copyright straight up. This "rules for thee but not for me" nonsense is straight up disgusting.
> How many people pirating software ever settled with the companies they "victimized?"
Too many to list. Also, nobody is victimizing billion dollar corporations.
Settlements after the fact, not agreements beforehand.
No that's not something. That's just having infinitely more money to fight legal battles.
No. I want either:
1. The copyright infringement of big corpos fully justifying my copyright infringement in the face of law
2. The copyright infringement of big corpos being prosecuted in the same exact way as my copyright infringement would.
There is really no middle ground.
How many people pirating software stole every piece of copyrighted material in existence and then used that material to generate billions of dollars which they kept for themselves?