# I Pirate And You Should Too **Channel:** BittenPear **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xka3tGFR030 **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/xka3tGFR030 ## Chapters - 0:00 — Physical Games and Broken Ownership - 1:13 — Copyright Promises Companies Broke - 6:44 — Public Domain Delays and Real Harm - 10:29 — Pirates, Publishers, and Hollywood ## Transcript **[0:00]:** There's something special about holding a physical game in your hands. Back in 2004, opening GTA San Andreas meant getting a disc, a thick manual, and a map you'd pin onto your wall. Now, GTA 6 costs 100 bucks, and what's inside the box? A piece of paper with a code. We used to collect real history in our hands. Now, we collect empty plastic boxes. Seriously, what the hell does buying even mean anymore? If spending 100 bucks doesn't actually give me the game, then downloading a copy online isn't stealing. It's a crazy double standard. The same multi-billion dollar company selling us empty plastic are trying to gaslight us into thinking we're the ones robbing them. There's a right way and a wrong way about piracy. Let's look at where we should actually draw the line. But, before we dive in, please drop a like and subscribe to the channel. **[1:00]:** Most people forget, but any engagement is the only way to help a small channel like mine grow. We are really close to hitting 10K subscribers. So, yeah, I appreciate you in advance. Now, let's get right into it. **[1:13]:** Let's go back to 1790, when Congress passed America's first copyright law. The deal was simple. Authors got exclusive rights to sell their work for 14 years, plus another 14 if they managed not to die of yellow fever. The original contract was straightforward. The work is for sale, your purchase stays yours, and one day it becomes public. Remember that cheesy ad, "You wouldn't steal a car?" And yeah, obviously, most of us wouldn't. But, that guilt trip completely misses the plot. The deal we have with these big-ass companies is completely broken. And they're the ones who broke it. Promise number one, what you buy stays yours. When you buy a disc, it's an actual copy you own. Over a hundred years ago, the Supreme Court ruled you can sell it, lend it, or give it away to anyone you want. But that pathetic code is just a digital license locked to your account, and they have full control over it. **[2:16]:** That's why the physical edition of GTA 6 is a total scam. You're just buying an empty box with a piece of paper inside. And digital ownership is extremely fragile. Just look at Sony's latest magic trick. They sent out a notice to PlayStation owners in the UK saying that 551 Studio Canal movies were being deleted from their accounts, and they didn't even offer a single penny in refunds. It's a heartbreaking reminder that any online purchase we make can disappear without a trace. That's where the internet's favorite line comes from. If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. Solid point. It just misses something bigger. Promise number two, the work stays for sale. But copyright lets a company decide whether a game gets to exist at all. A perfect example would be Mother 3. It came out on Game Boy Advance back on April 20th, 2006 in Japan. **[3:17]:** Now, Nintendo sold the previous game, Earthbound, in America back in 1995, but for some reason, they just refused to bring the sequel over. They finally got it on Switch online in February 2024, but again, it's only for Japan. This past April, the game turned 20 years old, and there is still no official English version. Of course, an English version does exist, though. It just didn't come from Nintendo. Fans finished their own translation in 2008, led by Clyde Mandolin, a guy who translates Japanese for a living. Hundreds of thousands of gamers have finally been able to play the game, and Nintendo has spent the last two decades actively pretending it doesn't exist. You cannot steal a game that isn't even on sale. Nintendo had 20 years to take my money, but they never even tried. And even when these multi-billion-dollar companies actually do drop a game, the pricing is completely detached from reality anyway. **[4:22]:** Back in 2011, there was this massive study on piracy in developing nations. We're talking 35 researchers spending 3 years looking at six different countries. Compared to what people earn in Brazil, Russia, or South Africa, a legal CD, DVD, or a copy of Microsoft Office cost five to 10 times more than in the US or Europe. That's like you paying 500 bucks for GTA 6. Turns out, people don't love breaking the law. They just love being able to buy groceries. And for millions, piracy is the only option. And Microsoft knew this years before that study even came out. Get this. Back in '98, Bill Gates was giving a speech to college students. He told them that about 3 million computers were being sold in China every year, but nobody was actually paying for Windows or Office. His exact words were, "As long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours." **[5:24]:** The strategy was mad simple. Get everyone hooked on Microsoft products for free, and then we will figure out a way to make them pay sometime over the next 10 years. Now, it's Monday morning, October 20th, 2008. Microsoft finally decides it's time to cash in on that decade-long bet. They roll out an anti-piracy update across China and suddenly millions of people log into their pirated copies of Windows and the desktop just goes completely black. And even if you manually change it back, an hour later, black again. By the end of that week, this Beijing lawyer, Dong Junwei, decides he's done playing nice. He goes straight to China's national police and files a complaint calling Microsoft the biggest hacker in China. But pay attention to the timing. A month before the screens went dark, Microsoft had dropped the price of Office for students from 700 yuan down to 200, roughly 100 bucks down to 30. **[6:30]:** Exactly 10 years after Gates gave that speech, they came to collect cash. Drop the price first, flip the switch second. Microsoft didn't lose China to piracy. They used it as a Trojan horse. **[6:44]:** Promise them for free. Number three, one day the world belongs to everyone. Enter Disney. It's November premieres. You've got Mickey whistling, steering the boat, the whole thing. If you were playing by the original 1790 rules, that cartoon becomes public property by 1956. Heck, even under the actual law they had in 1928, the timer runs out by 1984. But Disney had other plans. To save Mickey Mouse, Congress extended copyright in '76 and again in '98. Critics called it the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. The fight went all the way to the Supreme Court and Disney side won. Because of that, Steamboat Willie didn't become public until January 1st, 2024, a whole 95 years after it came out. The original Mickey finally belongs to all of us. But, everyone who saw it premiere in 1928 were too dead to celebrate it with us. That's all three promises broken. **[7:52]:** And whenever you call the industry out on it, they read from the exact same script. Piracy kills jobs. You've definitely heard this stat before, that US businesses are losing 250 billion dollars a year and 750,000 jobs. The government, the lobbyists, everybody just repeated those exact numbers for years like they were the absolute facts. In April 2010, the government actually fact-checked these numbers. The billions in losses traced back to a 2002 FBI press release, and the FBI admitted they had zero data to back it up. The jobs number came from a customs press release from that same year. Nobody knew who wrote it, and customs had already banned their own staff from using it because it was fake. Two stats that everyone spammed for years weren't even based on bad data. They were based on no data. Even the guy who created America's digital copyright law admitted the whole strategy was a failure. **[8:58]:** Bruce Lehman chaired the working group that designed the rules under Bill Clinton. But at a conference in Montreal back in 2007, he said, "Our attempts at copyright control have not been successful." And he blamed the record labels for refusing to change. Piracy still causes real harm. The government report confirmed it, even if they couldn't track the exact amount of dollar damage. Which brings us to the one time you shouldn't pirate. Look at Stardew Valley. One guy, Eric Barone, locks himself in a room for years and builds a masterpiece. He did the code, the art, the music, the story, the whole damn thing by himself. It was 15 bucks when it launched and it's still 15 bucks today. And the guy didn't stop there. He spent the last decade putting out massive content updates completely for free. He promised never to charge for any extra content or sequels. **[9:59]:** He swore on his family name that DLC would remain completely free for life. He even told fans to screenshot it and shame him if he ever breaks his word. What a legend. He's not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need. So, if you pirate a game like that, you aren't fighting the system, you're stealing from a creator who actually cares about you. But Baron isn't the one calling you a thief, the big companies are. **[10:29]:** And plot twist, they were pirates first. Back in 1842, Charles Dickens lands in Boston and America loses its mind. For a brief moment, he was the biggest celebrity of the country. A few weeks later at a dinner in Hartford, he stands up and says it out loud, "American publishers are stealing his books." The second he says "international copyright", the room goes ice cold. The press immediately starts tearing him apart. One paper writes, "You must drop that, Charlie." Another one makes fun of his yellow teeth. The reality was that same 1790 law only protected American authors and Dickens was British. So, US printers could legally pirate millions of his books without paying him a single dime. So, Dickens goes home and writes a travel book called American Notes. And man, he absolutely trashes the place. Within weeks, American printers pirate his book and sell it as a cheap newspaper extra. **[11:39]:** Then, Americans actually read what they stole and realized they were the butt of the joke. They're so offended they gather outside a New York theater and set the copies on fire. Americans pirated his book about America and then burned the stolen work. One of the biggest pirates was a New York publisher, Harper and Brothers. They printed books by Dickens' main rival, William Thackeray, and paid him zero royalties. When Thackeray came to America, he met James Harper's daughter and straight-up said, "So, this is a pirate's daughter, is it?" Brutal. Big publishers fought international copyright for decades because they loved free labor. But, the second smaller printers started undercutting them and selling the same books for 10 cents, the big monopolies switched sides. The pirates got out-pirated. So, in 1891, they forced the new law to kill their cheaper competition. America ignored global copyright for 101 years, then turned around and started publishing a yearly list ranking other countries on their piracy. **[12:47]:** And that pirate company, Harper, they're HarperCollins now. It's one of the largest publishers in the world. The movie business went through the exact same fight, except the pirates actually won. In 1908, Thomas Edison, yes, the lightbulb guy, teams up with the biggest studios to lock down the whole industry. Want to make a movie? Buy their license. But, a film distributor named Carl Laemmle refused to play those made-up rules. The industry calls him an outlaw, a parasite, a pirate, and they hit him with 289 lawsuits in 3 years. Carl doesn't flinch. He keeps making unlicensed movies, merges with other indie rebels, and in 1912, they form a little company you might know, Universal. In 1915, a federal court rules Edison's trust illegal. The pirate wins. That's the part of Hollywood history the cheesy anti-piracy ads always skip. You wouldn't steal a car, right? The Motion Picture Association made that ad, and Universal, the studio a pirate creator, is literally its member. **[14:01]:** Harper got rich off stolen books. Universal was built by pirate. Microsoft let China pirate Windows for 10 years, then sent the bill. The law has never stopped the copying. It just dictates who gets a pass. My rule is simple. Pay the creators who treat you right, and the companies that broke the deal first don't get to call you a thief. That's why I pirate, and it's exactly why guys like Eric Barone deserve your 15 bucks.