350
Pluralistic: “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”
(pluralistic.net)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
350 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37573 readers
266 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Not asking about the morality, asking whether or not the people making this argument on piracy consider jumping the turnstile to be theft, in the most practical sense. Not in an ideal world, but in the real world, would you consider that theft?
A turnstile jumper is also exploiting the products and services produced by offers without paying the cost to use them. Nothing is being "removed" in that situation either.
That is a false equivalency.
The trains cost money to run so you are using resources you haven't paid for.
Pirating takes away a possible purchase. You haven't actually used any of their resources or cost them anything.
If I wasn't going to buy it anyway they haven't lost anything.
If you streamed it from their servers for free using an exploit that would be stealing, as you've actually cost them resources.
And media costs money to make.
If you weren't going to buy it, why would you pirate it? That's the thing, if you're interested enough in a product to want it, then you taking it for free is a cost to the producer.
How do you think scene groups get their materials in the first place? They just find it on a flash drive on a park bench?
More often than not, scene releases are gathered internally by rogue employees in the studio who took something and distributed it in a way that they were not authorized to do. The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.
I don't agree with this at all. There are tons of things someone might want to use or have but not enough that they'd be willing to pay for it. Or over a certain amount of money.
The fact is that the person in question is still taking something without paying for it. A sense of entitlement (I want it badly enough that I should have it for free) doesn't change anything in this equation.
Sure, they are procuring something worth money without paying for it. But this is a very different argument than you would not pirate something if you would not also be prepared to pay it.