this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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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.
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.
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?
There is no back channel to measure that so the impact to the content producer is way less direct.
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.
Also a valid point.
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.
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.
That's not what's being discussed. It's whether laws are being broken. That's why the discussion is about piracy not payment.
Did you miss the part where "Lots of piracy is also not breaking the law."?
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.
"Not acknowledging" and "directly interfering with" something are two different things.