Also, copyright infringement never even used to ever be a crime, although now there is a form of criminal copyright infringement, if it’s done for money or if the value is above a certain amount. Thanks to lobbying from wealthy industries. Most copyright infringement still is not a crime, though.
The reason industries lobby for harsher copyright laws is because they know they can make more money if people can’t pirate. They take the piss with their pricing, but they’re acutely aware that if they take the piss too much then people will turn to piracy. By prohibiting piracy and levying harsh penalties they can get away with even more unfair pricing, and maybe even profit from piracy through punitive damages (which is mainly a US thing, most sensible nations only allow you to sue for actual damages).
By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
Creating a competitor is not the same logic at all. That competitor gets paid when someone buys their product.
The issue is that time and effort are put into something that is being made to get compensation for that time and effort, not to be given away for free. If you’re going to a competing product, you’re not ingesting the initial product without paying for it.
I’m not arguing legal definitions. I’m arguing against the bullshit mental gymnastics that piracy is not stealing. It is. Just admit it and move on. I don’t care if people pirate. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of trying to justify theft. If you ingest something that an artist made to try and make a livelihood and don’t pay them, you’re stealing that livelihood.
The argument that digital piracy is theft is predicated on the idea that pirating is depriving the creator of their rightful property: the money from a sale. In the absence of said sale, that money wasn’t their property to begin with, however. The only way to reconcile this is by treating potential income as property.
In doing so, a number of stupid things can be argued for:
Creating a new product is theft because it deprives the competition of their potential income.
Boycotting a company is theft because it deprives them of potential income.
Not purchasing a new phone is theft because it deprives the manufacturer of potential income.
Not hiring Tom because Bob was a better candidate is theft because it deprives Tom of potential income.
There’s a reason that piracy legally falls under copyright infringement rather than theft. You aren’t depriving the creator of property by making a new digital copy of their media, but you are violating their copyright by creating an unauthorized copy.
It is not the same logic. You are not ingesting the work of the creator by going to a competitor. The issue is that you are gaining something from the labor of the creator without compensating them for that labor (which they gain from). It is an unequal exchange that both parties have not agreed to. It is theft. Going to a competitor and buying from them is an equal exchange - you’re paying money for the product of their labor.
Everything else you’ve said continues to be dishonest because it is based on this very simple, fundamental flaw in your original argument.
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the productandnot paying for that use.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
You should pick your examples more carefully.
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
It is stealing income. You’re taking advantage of the result of someone’s effort and time without compensating them for it. No one is ok with that in any other context but y’all bend over backwards to justify it unilaterally here as opposed to denouncing this behavior (the Crunchroll behavior, to be clear) as its own issue that is also wrong.
That’s irrelevant. That’s not the case with all media, especially anime, when the creators are the owners and executives of many studios. Even if it was, it doesn’t change the calculus that the work is being sold.
If you weren’t gonna buy it anyway and since the creator doesn’t lose anything, how can it be stealing?
And on top of that, it offers the creator exposure and creates new fans who one day might buy some of their products.
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries. But painting has been a thing for thousands of years, we’ve had time to adapt to it. Not the same thing with digital media. It came about after all these definitions and laws. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And because corpos are greedy, we’ll probably keep having this conversation forever
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries.
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of art galleries are not free. And, they tend to rotate their content regularly, so you have no control over what you have access to. Pretty much everything this thread is complaining about Crunchyroll doing.
It’s stealing because you watched it. If you didn’t watch it and didn’t buy it or steal it, then nothing has been stolen. The entire crux is that you’re consuming and ingesting the product they’re selling without paying for it.
Additionally, if you’re making the argument that you can’t count “potential” sales of something as theft then you can’t also make the argument that “potential” exposure is valid. Either both potentials are valid or neither is and, if they both are, then it’s theft.
And you’ve just proven my argument for me with your art gallery examples. Art galleries explicitly give people that access. You pay for that access. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get to look at those paintings without buying anything because you already had to buy something to even get to look at the paintings. Unless the creator is explicitly giving you access for free, you’re stealing if you’re ingesting or consuming something that they made for which they are charging.
That’s just factually untrue. The ‘creators’ are just animators that work for animation studios that get paid by companies like funimation, amazon and Netflix to publish content and those middle men reap the majority of the benefits. Very very rarely do actual individual people make a percentage of whatever a work earns. It’s just middle men executives that earn that.
I would argue that piracy helps make them more money anyways. The actual money is in merchandise. If I’m able to pirate an anime and really like it I’m more likely to spend money on merchandise VS me not bothering to watch a show and not buying merch.
Here’s an article proving that the actual creators don’t make much money at all and it’s not because of piracy.
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
My guy, with anime 90 percent of the content comes from light novels or Manga. The reason they get turned into anime is because they’re popular. Netflix Amazon funimation and other distributers often just bid on anime projects and don’t specifically order one particular series.
Of course they deserve to be paid but I’m arguing that pirating doesn’t cut into their pay because they’ve already been paid before the anime even comes out.
If buying digital products isn’t owning then pirating isn’t theft. Funimation just said fuck you to all their consumers who ‘bought’ their digital products.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
The very thing keeping the situation the way it is very much not piracy or can it be placed at the feet of the general consumer. That you think the mess of giant distributors we have today is the fault of digital piracy is actually madness.
That’s both dishonest and factually untrue. If you’re ingesting the creation without paying for it, then you’ve stolen it from the artists because they didn’t create it for free (unless they explicitly have). The creator sees a difference because you wouldn’t have been able to ingest their creation without paying them for it.
Theft requires you to deprive the original owner of their property.
Creating a digital copy does not prevent the creator from accessing or selling their property. Potential income is not property; it was never in their possession to begin with.
I am arguing that people deserve to be paid for their work. If you’re not willing to pay them, you are not entitled to the fruits of their labor for free. Full stop.
It’s not just the legal definition. It’s the dictionary definition, as well.
Piracy is illegal, unethical, a small loss in net profit, and a whole bunch of other things. It’s just not theft. If it really needs to be given a label that isn’t “piracy”, the closest one you’re going to find is “appropriation”:
noun. the action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission.
Don’t worry, you’re correct and these people are just uncomfortable to define this as theft (if you didn’t pay something to someone prior.). If you didn’t pay, it’s theft, and it doesn’t matter what background revenue sharing agreements exist.
Google’s example sentence is quite topical. Still: Until potential income is defined as property, its loss isn’t theft. Besides that, if someone wasn’t going to pay for a digital copy in the first place, it’s not exactly a loss of potential income.
I know. It’s painfully obvious that the people arguing against this are just dishonest. I’ve already stated several times that I have no issues with piracy. All I’m saying is that, if people are going to pirate, they should be clear that it is theft, they’re depriving the creator of income, they’re ok with that, and they’ll continue to do it. That’s it.
Ok, so when I decide not to pirate and not to buy I’m also stealing? Or do you think if I didn’t pirate something I would definitely buy it?
I have pirated and later bought things I’ve enjoyed that I wouldn’t have bought otherwise, so I’d argue that’s better for the creators. But I guess I’m being dishonest 🤷🏻
…If nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property"
This is a dishonest response. Movies and media are not ideas. They are representations of ideas that take time and effort to create and that are created so that the artist that made them can make a living and pay their bills. Stealing those representations without compensating the artist for their time and effort means they can’t pay their bills which means they have to stop creating in order to get a job where the fruits of their efforts aren’t stolen.
No. The substance of it is irrelevant to my argument. You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not to put too fine a point on it - ideas are like assholes; everyone has them and most of them stink but the idea of an asshole doesn’t actually make you wretch the way the stench of an actual asshole might.
You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not quite; what makes ideas incompatible with exclusive possession is the same thing that makes digital content incompatible with exclusive possession - their intangibility. A person can labor for years on an idea, and retain exclusive ownership over that idea having not realized it to others; “but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
The same applies to digitally represented media.
You’ve made a statement about the labor involved in producing an idea or digital media, and I’m making a statement about the nature of intangible goods. Embodied labor isn’t the same as some objective moral or ethical imperative, nor is embodied labor the same as value.
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
The legal definition is not the definition. That is just nonsense. There are an innumerable amount of terms that have a literary definition that is not the same as the legal definition.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Lemme use a different, better example. Say I buy used copies of everything I watch. How is that different from watching shows on sketchy streaming websites? Either way I consume the media and the people who made it get nothing. If anything, it seems worse to me for me to lose money and the creators to gain nothing, while some random person on the internet profits from reselling their work after they’ve already consumed it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product.
And you’re ignoring the fact that the producer treats their digital product with no real scarcity as if it was a physical product that cost a significant amount to produce and distribute. By your own reasoning, the digital product should be much cheaper.
If it wasn’t for piracy, the product (digital or physical) would be even more expensive. As it is, producers know that if they price too high people will turn to piracy, if that wasn’t an option then there would be nothing holding them back.
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
Pirating isn’t stealing either way.
Also, copyright infringement never even used to ever be a crime, although now there is a form of criminal copyright infringement, if it’s done for money or if the value is above a certain amount. Thanks to lobbying from wealthy industries. Most copyright infringement still is not a crime, though.
The reason industries lobby for harsher copyright laws is because they know they can make more money if people can’t pirate. They take the piss with their pricing, but they’re acutely aware that if they take the piss too much then people will turn to piracy. By prohibiting piracy and levying harsh penalties they can get away with even more unfair pricing, and maybe even profit from piracy through punitive damages (which is mainly a US thing, most sensible nations only allow you to sue for actual damages).
It is. You’re stealing income from the person that created the thing you took and didn’t pay for.
By that logic, creating a competitor and wooing over customers would also be theft.
Note they are not saying piracy is legal, or that it’s not a tort. They are saying it’s not theft, and it should be discussed separately, as we criminalize theft because someone loses their property, not because the thief gets free shit.
Creating a competitor is not the same logic at all. That competitor gets paid when someone buys their product.
The issue is that time and effort are put into something that is being made to get compensation for that time and effort, not to be given away for free. If you’re going to a competing product, you’re not ingesting the initial product without paying for it.
I’m not arguing legal definitions. I’m arguing against the bullshit mental gymnastics that piracy is not stealing. It is. Just admit it and move on. I don’t care if people pirate. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of trying to justify theft. If you ingest something that an artist made to try and make a livelihood and don’t pay them, you’re stealing that livelihood.
No, it’s exactly the same logic.
The argument that digital piracy is theft is predicated on the idea that pirating is depriving the creator of their rightful property: the money from a sale. In the absence of said sale, that money wasn’t their property to begin with, however. The only way to reconcile this is by treating potential income as property.
In doing so, a number of stupid things can be argued for:
Creating a new product is theft because it deprives the competition of their potential income.
Boycotting a company is theft because it deprives them of potential income.
Not purchasing a new phone is theft because it deprives the manufacturer of potential income.
Not hiring Tom because Bob was a better candidate is theft because it deprives Tom of potential income.
There’s a reason that piracy legally falls under copyright infringement rather than theft. You aren’t depriving the creator of property by making a new digital copy of their media, but you are violating their copyright by creating an unauthorized copy.
It is not the same logic. You are not ingesting the work of the creator by going to a competitor. The issue is that you are gaining something from the labor of the creator without compensating them for that labor (which they gain from). It is an unequal exchange that both parties have not agreed to. It is theft. Going to a competitor and buying from them is an equal exchange - you’re paying money for the product of their labor.
Everything else you’ve said continues to be dishonest because it is based on this very simple, fundamental flaw in your original argument.
What if I don’t sell it? If someone opts to use FreeCAD instead of Fusion360, did FreeCAD steal income from Autodesk?
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the product and not paying for that use.
What about Autodesk pissing in the face of users who bought a “lifetime” license, not only superceding their product but degrading it such that it doesn’t work anymore?
You should pick your examples more carefully.
You should also take an objective position and consider that not all rightsholders are acting in good faith. But then, in order to do that, you would have to be acting in good faith.
You eating data?
Ingesting something doesn’t only mean eating it. It literally means “to bring into”.
I wish piracy was stealing income, I need some of that income.
It is stealing income. You’re taking advantage of the result of someone’s effort and time without compensating them for it. No one is ok with that in any other context but y’all bend over backwards to justify it unilaterally here as opposed to denouncing this behavior (the Crunchroll behavior, to be clear) as its own issue that is also wrong.
The workers already got paid. It’s executives that are being “stolen from.” ( I’m too broke to buy it anyways)
That’s irrelevant. That’s not the case with all media, especially anime, when the creators are the owners and executives of many studios. Even if it was, it doesn’t change the calculus that the work is being sold.
If you weren’t gonna buy it anyway and since the creator doesn’t lose anything, how can it be stealing?
And on top of that, it offers the creator exposure and creates new fans who one day might buy some of their products.
Another example: if I go to an art gallery and look at paintings every day without ever buying anything, is that stealing? I’m ingesting their art daily for free. No, I’m not. That’s the purpose of art galleries. But painting has been a thing for thousands of years, we’ve had time to adapt to it. Not the same thing with digital media. It came about after all these definitions and laws. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And because corpos are greedy, we’ll probably keep having this conversation forever
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of art galleries are not free. And, they tend to rotate their content regularly, so you have no control over what you have access to. Pretty much everything this thread is complaining about Crunchyroll doing.
They’ll never admit this because it invalidates their entire point.
It’s stealing because you watched it. If you didn’t watch it and didn’t buy it or steal it, then nothing has been stolen. The entire crux is that you’re consuming and ingesting the product they’re selling without paying for it.
Additionally, if you’re making the argument that you can’t count “potential” sales of something as theft then you can’t also make the argument that “potential” exposure is valid. Either both potentials are valid or neither is and, if they both are, then it’s theft.
And you’ve just proven my argument for me with your art gallery examples. Art galleries explicitly give people that access. You pay for that access. If you don’t pay for it, you don’t get to look at those paintings without buying anything because you already had to buy something to even get to look at the paintings. Unless the creator is explicitly giving you access for free, you’re stealing if you’re ingesting or consuming something that they made for which they are charging.
Ok, what if the creator says it’s ok to pirate their stuff. Is that still stealing?
That’s just factually untrue. The ‘creators’ are just animators that work for animation studios that get paid by companies like funimation, amazon and Netflix to publish content and those middle men reap the majority of the benefits. Very very rarely do actual individual people make a percentage of whatever a work earns. It’s just middle men executives that earn that.
I would argue that piracy helps make them more money anyways. The actual money is in merchandise. If I’m able to pirate an anime and really like it I’m more likely to spend money on merchandise VS me not bothering to watch a show and not buying merch.
Here’s an article proving that the actual creators don’t make much money at all and it’s not because of piracy.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/7/2/20677237/anime-industry-japan-artists-pay-labor-abuse-neon-genesis-evangelion-netflix
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
My guy, with anime 90 percent of the content comes from light novels or Manga. The reason they get turned into anime is because they’re popular. Netflix Amazon funimation and other distributers often just bid on anime projects and don’t specifically order one particular series.
Of course they deserve to be paid but I’m arguing that pirating doesn’t cut into their pay because they’ve already been paid before the anime even comes out.
If buying digital products isn’t owning then pirating isn’t theft. Funimation just said fuck you to all their consumers who ‘bought’ their digital products.
The very thing keeping the situation the way it is very much not piracy or can it be placed at the feet of the general consumer. That you think the mess of giant distributors we have today is the fault of digital piracy is actually madness.
The same disturbers that regularly drop content that people pay for and the same disturbers that claim you own something?
That’s not stealing lol. If I pirate something or if I don’t, the creator sees no difference.
Stealing income would be reducing the income for the author (piracy doesn’t alter it) and you getting it instead (you don’t).
That’s both dishonest and factually untrue. If you’re ingesting the creation without paying for it, then you’ve stolen it from the artists because they didn’t create it for free (unless they explicitly have). The creator sees a difference because you wouldn’t have been able to ingest their creation without paying them for it.
Theft requires you to deprive the original owner of their property.
Creating a digital copy does not prevent the creator from accessing or selling their property. Potential income is not property; it was never in their possession to begin with.
You’re arguing a legal definition. I am not.
I am arguing that people deserve to be paid for their work. If you’re not willing to pay them, you are not entitled to the fruits of their labor for free. Full stop.
It’s not just the legal definition. It’s the dictionary definition, as well.
Piracy is illegal, unethical, a small loss in net profit, and a whole bunch of other things. It’s just not theft. If it really needs to be given a label that isn’t “piracy”, the closest one you’re going to find is “appropriation”:
Don’t worry, you’re correct and these people are just uncomfortable to define this as theft (if you didn’t pay something to someone prior.). If you didn’t pay, it’s theft, and it doesn’t matter what background revenue sharing agreements exist.
Google’s example sentence is quite topical. Still: Until potential income is defined as property, its loss isn’t theft. Besides that, if someone wasn’t going to pay for a digital copy in the first place, it’s not exactly a loss of potential income.
I know. It’s painfully obvious that the people arguing against this are just dishonest. I’ve already stated several times that I have no issues with piracy. All I’m saying is that, if people are going to pirate, they should be clear that it is theft, they’re depriving the creator of income, they’re ok with that, and they’ll continue to do it. That’s it.
Ok, so when I decide not to pirate and not to buy I’m also stealing? Or do you think if I didn’t pirate something I would definitely buy it?
I have pirated and later bought things I’ve enjoyed that I wouldn’t have bought otherwise, so I’d argue that’s better for the creators. But I guess I’m being dishonest 🤷🏻
–Thomas Jefferson
This is a dishonest response. Movies and media are not ideas. They are representations of ideas that take time and effort to create and that are created so that the artist that made them can make a living and pay their bills. Stealing those representations without compensating the artist for their time and effort means they can’t pay their bills which means they have to stop creating in order to get a job where the fruits of their efforts aren’t stolen.
That statement makes no sense in this context, regardless of whether I reflect on its poor grammar or not.
Sure it does, you just don’t like the substance of it.
No. The substance of it is irrelevant to my argument. You’re still arguing ideas which content that is created is not. It may be intangible but it is not simply an idea. It is a manifestation of an idea and is, therefore, wholly different.
Not to put too fine a point on it - ideas are like assholes; everyone has them and most of them stink but the idea of an asshole doesn’t actually make you wretch the way the stench of an actual asshole might.
Not quite; what makes ideas incompatible with exclusive possession is the same thing that makes digital content incompatible with exclusive possession - their intangibility. A person can labor for years on an idea, and retain exclusive ownership over that idea having not realized it to others; “but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
The same applies to digitally represented media.
You’ve made a statement about the labor involved in producing an idea or digital media, and I’m making a statement about the nature of intangible goods. Embodied labor isn’t the same as some objective moral or ethical imperative, nor is embodied labor the same as value.
Piracy is defined as a civil offense, meanwhile theft is defined as a crime. Theft is also defined as depriving someone of something - eg, if I take your bike, you no longer have a bike, but if I copy your bike and build my own then you still have your bike and haven’t lost anything.
“Potential lost income” is abstract, it doesn’t necessarily exist and the victim of copyright infringement isn’t really losing anything - they don’t even provide the bandwidth you download it with. Ultimately 1 pirated download =/= 1 lost sale, as people download more crap than they would be willing to buy.
I’m not arguing the legal definition of this so everything you’ve said is irrelevant.
The legal definition is THE definition, it’s literally what the word means, and where the concepts of both originate.
What you’re saying isn’t irrelevant, it’s just completely ignorant and wrong.
The legal definition is not the definition. That is just nonsense. There are an innumerable amount of terms that have a literary definition that is not the same as the legal definition.
You’re trying to say that your definition is the only valid one, which conveniently is one that your argument is entirely reliant upon.
It isn’t valid, you’re wrong, your argument does not hold water.
By this logic, everything you don’t buy is stealing income. Every item you walk past at the grocery store was made by someone for money, and by not buying it, you’re denying them that income. How dare you eat at a friend’s house for free?
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Lemme use a different, better example. Say I buy used copies of everything I watch. How is that different from watching shows on sketchy streaming websites? Either way I consume the media and the people who made it get nothing. If anything, it seems worse to me for me to lose money and the creators to gain nothing, while some random person on the internet profits from reselling their work after they’ve already consumed it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
And you’re ignoring the fact that the producer treats their digital product with no real scarcity as if it was a physical product that cost a significant amount to produce and distribute. By your own reasoning, the digital product should be much cheaper.
If it wasn’t for piracy, the product (digital or physical) would be even more expensive. As it is, producers know that if they price too high people will turn to piracy, if that wasn’t an option then there would be nothing holding them back.
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
“If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.”
Good idea, I’ll pirate it instead.