[ank_the_elder]

"How much did Return of the Jedi cost to make?"

"$32.5 million"

"And how much was the revenue?"

"$475 million"

"So you had a $442.5 million profit!"

"No, no. We had no profit - we use Hollywood accounting"

Repeat for Forrest Gump, Spider-Man, etc.

Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they ain't gonna respect you.

[youngButEager]

You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them.

You folks are young. If you're lucky enough to learn some of these things, the fact that a lot of bad karma will suddenly disappear from your life and things will go shockingly smoothly -- will only be the dessert. The real banquet will be knowing that you went through a time when you made bad decisions but by a stroke of genius, realized you were actually hurting someone (financially in this case) and were able to set aside your selfish wants on their behalf.

One of the best things you will discover is this: when a person is making bad decisions in one part of their life, they're rarely able to confine that bad decision making to just one part of life -- they're making bad decisions across the entire spectrum of their behavior.

That was a cool lesson to learn. I had to become in charge of a lot of young techies to discover it. A near-karma-free life is waiting for you guys. Shalom.

[syshum]

>>>You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone. Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing from them.

The supporters of a too-strict, repressive form of copyright often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to refer to copyright infringement. This is spin, but they would like you to take it for objective truth.

Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement. The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says.

To refute them, you can point to this real case which shows what can properly be described as “copyright theft.”

Unauthorized copying is forbidden by copyright law in many circumstances (not all!), but being forbidden doesn't make it wrong. In general, laws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change.

A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear-words.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft

[youngButEager]

You often need permission, then pay royalties, to copyright holders. That is the theft. In cases where you enjoy then distribute the copyrighted works of someone without their permission and avoid paying them the required royalties -- you have stolen money $$ from them. It's the same as eating at a restaurant then not paying. STEALING. You got a benefit you were supposed to pay for -- and you DID NOT PAY.

Stealing from others habitually is a very bad decision. You can justify it using any inner dialog you like.

The only caution is this: there are consequences to bad decisions you've made.

Here is the biggest consequence: if you purposely decide to hurt someone else (financially in this case), unless you are sociopathic/career criminal, you'll have an internal conflict about it. You will 'explain it away' so it doesn't feel as bad: "I do this because the law is unfair" or "everyone else is doing it".

YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF. You know darn well you shouldn't act that way. Once you start lying to yourself, you're going to green-light lying to yourself again.

For example: If asked in a job interview with the IRS "let's say we hire you and you have access to the IRS secure network, and after a week you discover that a lot of your IRS coworkers change personal data in our computer system and underpay their taxes. And you find your coworkers also download and seed torrent clouds with copyrighted material. Which activity would you find acceptable?"

YOU'D HAVE TO LIE TO THE IRS INTERVIEWER!! See? You'd have to say "I would never cheat on my taxes. And I download copyrighted material and seed with copyrighted material all the time."

YOU WOULDN'T SAY THAT!

Nope, you wouldn't get hired if you admitted to the IRS interviewer -- OR ANY OTHER COMPANY INTERVIEWING YOU FOR A JOB -- that you make illegal, unauthorized use of copyrighted works.

Why wouldn't you admit to the IRS job interviewer you seed torrents with copyrighted works without the owner's permission?

BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT'S WRONG. That's why.

RECAP: (1) you're stealing from an artist by not paying royalties on their film/music/etc. when using sites like KAT; (2) YOU'RE LYING TO YOUR FUTURE EMPLOYER in a job interview.

Slippery slope. In managing large groups of tech workers, what I discovered was this: if an employee is unethical or dishonest in one area of life, they seem to have a hard time restricting those bad decisions to only one area.

[syshum]

As a libertarian I would never work for Government Especially the IRS.

>>You often need permission, then pay royalties, to copyright holders. That is the theft.

You operate under the idea that I believe they are entitled to these things, I do support or believe copyright is ethical, I do not believe the government has the ethical authority to tell me how I can arrange the bits on my hard disk, I do not believe the government has the ethical authority to grant a person or company the monopoly on an idea or arrangement or words, notes, or images

[mickronome]

First of all, stealing is legally a completely different concept than copyright infringement. The first very much accepted by society as a norm, the other much less so, for a multitude of surprisingly good reasons.

Secondly, rationalising it is easy, and bringing forth rational arguments for why copyright laws in their current form are not justifiable is about as easy.

Thirdly, to discredit someones opinion simply because you assume them to be young does not strike menas particularly mature, rather it reeks of immaturity, hybris and ignorance.

In closing, my life has certainly not been rainbows and unicorns simply because I choose to avoid hurting others and act somewhat like an adult. If that is you experience you should consider yourself very lucky, as what you appear to experience is materially false for a lot of people. Granted, you can create heaps of problems for yourself by doing (tautoligical) bad decisions, but you can easily create problems for yourself without acting immoral, unethical or breaking the law. Still there is nothing that I can do to really prevent people from creating problems for me, I can only hope for them not to.

[jacobolus]

> you'll never be able to rationalize [copyright infringement]

He just did.

Rationalize, transitive verb (Mirriam-Webster): 1. to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable: as [...] b) to attribute (one’s actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives <rationalized his dislike of his brother> ; broadly : to create an excuse or more attractive explanation for <rationalize the problem>

* * *

The comments here, whether you agree with the explanations given or not, are a textbook example of rationalizing an action. Perhaps you meant he will never be able to justify copyright infringement?

[ank_the_elder]

The level of condescension required to write something like that is truly astounding. Not only are you assuming everyone who disagrees with you is wrong - but you are assuming that the error stems from youth, and in particular from "bad decisions" as judged solely by you!

How arrogant do you have to be to observe humanity and decide that "bad decision making" is not only all around you but you are also somehow immune to it - and a distinguished observer and commentator, to boot!

If this is not a textbook definition of bigotry[0], I do not know what it is.

[0]: "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself"

[youngButEager]

Actually, no, you're 100% wrong -- dangerously wrong.

Failure to follow the law has consequences. My point is that, simply. "Getting a benefit that is legally required to be paid for AND NOT PAYING" is stealing.

Staying out of trouble is a SURVIVAL STRATEGY.

A lot of people out there have very poor survival inclinations. Making bad decisions can really hurt you.

While stealing from the author of copyrighted works may not land you in prison -- by so passionately arguing in favor of stealing from the authors means you only respect the law when it suits you.

In my experience (running engineering teams, startups, rental properties, military experience) -- a sign from anyone that they play 'loosey-goosey' with the rules/law etc. is a WARNING. I've noticed, as have most parents, managers, etc. that when a person violates the law in one area -- "makes a bad decision" -- they for whatever reason cannot seem to restrict that poor decision making to only 1 area of their behavior.

I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not sure why, for example, when a person rationalizes stealing copyrighted material -- "gets the benefit of another person's effort that they were required to pay for and DID NOT PAY" -- I'm not sure why they seem to 'rationalize' a lot of other bad decisions. Maybe there's research in psychology that studies this, not sure. Would not be surprised. Maybe in criminal justice psychology.

But ask any parent with a troubled kid; or a cop who has 'regulars'; or a judge who has 'regulars'; or a long-time tech manager; or any other person who over time was exposed to a broad spectrum of people and behavior.

If you folks are rationalizing away stealing an artist's works, you would lie about doing that in a job interview.

Why? Because it's wrong to get the benefit of copyrighted material without paying.

Richard Stallman rebelled against 'closed IP' and look at the positive results.

So go out there and channel that rebellion. DON'T STEAL THOUGH.

If I'm interviewing you and I ask you "ever seeded a torrent cloud?" and you say 'No' and that is a lie -- YOU JUST LIED TO A TOTAL STRANGER. One 'bad decision' -- stealing copyrighted works -- led to another -- lying in a professional setting.

Where does that bad decision-making stop? HARD TO KNOW.

But having suffered the consequences of 'letting it slide', and since 1993 some of those consequences were quite painful -- if I catch someone exposing me to possible risk by their conscious volition -- I KNOW I'VE BEEN WARNED.

Once you get older, you'll either (1) take a Richard Stallman approach, or (2) realize the benefit of stealing from people is outweighed by the negative effects (lying to a hiring manager for example).

If you solemnly believe "there are no consequences to stealing from people" I'm here to tell you, you are dead wrong.

[ank_the_elder]

I believe in psychology this is called white and black thinking. It's one of the many red flags I've found reading your comments. This idea of labelling people 'good' or 'bad' based on a single minimal interaction is also a red flag. I suggest you see a mental health professional - it's hard to live like that. I know there is stigma associated to it in the USA and other places, but if you want to get better that's probably the only way to do so.

Here's to hoping you seek the help you require.