this is all g.r.r.m.'s fault, anyway

[rone]

Let's be clear: i don't like The Oatmeal.  I found Matthew Inman's humor juvenile but inoffensive at first; even in the cartoons that had material that i liked, his delivery seemed off in the way that the dorkiest of nerds have when they overtell or overexplain a joke.  He finally lost me with his issues-revealing Utilikilts cartoon, and that's colored everything else that i've had the misfortune to witness (and you'd call me an idiot for continuing to follow links there, and you'd be right).  His approach to things in his life is relentlessly adolescent, and his current comic about how HBO has forced him to torrent the "Game of Thrones" series, which has been pounded across my social network with much delight by my so-called friends, is a prime example of this: entitlement and rationalization in the face of unenlightened self-harm (and, yes, the fact that it's about the much overrated "Game of Thrones", which book many of my friends inexplicably love and consequently turned them into morbidly obsessed fans of the HBO series, doesn't help).

Here's the thing: HBO doesn't owe anyone the "Game of Thrones" series outside of the terms in which they make it available (i.e., pay a shitload of money a month to the local cable monopoly and be glad that they deign to convey their munificence to your hovel).  Is Inman truly advocating that we should we bend or break the rules every time an incompetent business doesn't offer us their product in a timely fashion after we've declined to adhere to their idiotic terms and conditions, simply because we really, really want it?

If you're going to torrent it, torrent it, but don't waste time rationalizing it.  Just because the MPAA is acting like Javert doesn't mean that you're Valjean, and "Game of Thrones" isn't a piece of bread.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

There are very few things the theft of which can be explained by: "But I want it." Many people seem to feel, however, that that's an adequate justification for stealing "content".

"Gee, Jimmy, how'd you get that Bugatti Veyron I see in your garage?"
"I wanted it, but they wanted, like, totally ridiculous amounts of money for it - and I was willing to give them, like, twenty bucks, but nooo, so I took it. It's their fault for having such a stupid pricing scheme."

What a totally dumb-ass argument, and yet I hear ostensibly intelligent people bleat something very much like this about all sorts of things they've stolen. As if stealing THIS is somehow different.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to use the word 'stealing', but it's certainly an appropriation of an item to which one has no right, so i don't know what else to call it.

[eagle]

I also would like to use a different word than stealing, and think English is failing here. I think it's a different kind of crime, because you're not taking exclusive possession -- you're not robbing someone else of the use of it, just taking use to which you're not entitled.

That doesn't make it not wrong, but it does make it differently wrong. It's like larceny versus robbery versus burglary. They're all crimes, but they have different penalties for good reasons.

[thorfinn]

"Copyright license violation". There isn't a single word term, but that is the correct technical term.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lj_sucks_/]

That's nothing, I hear ostensibly intelligent people equate physical objects being stolen with intangible information being copied without depriving the owner of it. What a dumb-ass argument that is.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

The act isn't the same, but the impetus is.