[coffeevradar]

Rationalizing your own behavior of downloading content you like and enjoying consuming it as being a "benefit to society" is quite a stretch.

Thinking that everything you do, even selfishly, is somehow ethically laudable is not a sign of maturity.

[duozerk]

So if I have a different opinion than you on copyright and intellectual property, it means I'm immature, right ?

You don't really give arguments to counter beyond the ad hominem attack, but let me try to explain why I think this way.

We have the capability to copy and distribute at negligible cost most of the cultural & educational content (books, scientific articles, movies, music, etc.) ever produced by humanity to our entire species; and because we don't have the same capability for physical things, we impose an artificial scarcity on this. Think of the enormous amounts of money and man hours spent on intellectual property: lawyers, consulting firms, etc... entire industries dedicated to limit our capability as a species to distribute knowledge and cultural content.

Now, if only a portion of these efforts had been spent towards spreading network infrastructure and creating, spreading and supporting educational material to the widest amount of people possible, where would we be right now as a species ? Given that, I can help but think that yes, copyright and intellectual property is more of an issue globally than a solution to the problem of incentivizing content production.

So no, it's not only rationalization of my "wrong" behavior (part of it probably is, sure); I genuinely believe this, and I genuinely believe that ignoring those laws and downloading content illegally is a form of non-violent (and massively followed) social protest; the mass reaction of the individuals in society to absurd laws.

As I said above, some sort of new economic model should have to be found for this to be viable; hence why compromise is necessary in the meantime (and hence why yes, I also pay for content when it is distributed in a way that in my view helps to go towards that direction).

[coffeevradar]

You do make some convincing arguments. I think, though, that you may be overlooking that it's not just ancillary participants that spend man hours on intellectual property matters. In a broad sense, artists of all kinds (that is, the authors of the copyrighted works) do the same thing. It seems undeniable that if it isn't possible to make a living as an artist or author, we'll have a lot less art to consume as a society. So even accepting your arguments, the decision to pirate a given piece of content is not one that is unambiguously virtuous.

I apologize for being rude earlier. I remember once feeling very self-righteous about my own disregard for copyright, and as my feelings have now switched to the opposite side of the issue I think I may have projected my own hang-ups onto you. It's a complicated topic, and I certainly don't think that always complying with copyright law makes anyone a saint either.