[JoeAltmaier]

Yeah I'm not sympathetic. The alternative to finding (and failing to find) a service to watch the show could possibly be - not watching it? The conclusion 'naturally we then had to steal it' isn't entirely justified.

Shoplifting is easy and convenient too. Next time you forget your wallet at the corner store. Just sayin.

[billmalarky]

Devils Advocate: The alternative of "not consuming" digital products is less valuable to creators than "consuming for free."

Allow me to reference a very famous Bill Gates quote on Chinese piracy of software:

"And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

There are more ways to monetize a media property than pay-per-view so to speak. Merchandising is a big one, not to mention word of mouth marketing.

[colmvp]

I don't know. I think there is a difference between applications and platforms like Adobe Software and Windows which often get pirated but at times hugely cost prohibitive to new entrants (e.g. students, young people) vs pirating movies/shows. I'm persistently left unconvinced by moral arguments on show/movie piracy, especially in an age where there's no shortage of new content being created, be it on YouTube, your local bookstore, or your RSS feed. I still have a huge backlog of podcasts/books to catch up, let alone movies I still haven't seen.

[billmalarky]

I'm not trying to make a moral argument one way or the other.

My point is strictly relating to the business end result of the following three alternatives:

1) DO pay for and DO consume digital product.

2) NOT pay for but DO consume digital product.

3) NOT pay for and NOT consume digital product.

Only alternatives #1 and #2 provides a way to monetize the consumer, either via direct monetization of the product (ie pay-per-view) or indirect monetization (ie merchandizing, willingness to pay for new versions of the product in the future, etc), or by leveraging that consumer as a marketing agent to bring in additional consumers (ie that consumer's best friend ended up being monetizable when previously they would have never heard of your media property).

Because there is no expense to the business when a digital product is pirated, then intelligent business management would always prefer option 2 to option 3. That said, business management cannot publicly endorse this preference without the threat of converting #1 consumers into #2 consumers (which are still more valuable than #3 but arguably less than #1).

[BashiBazouk]

The other aspect is which of alternatives #2 and #3 point out through tracked metrics that a business decision may not be working as intended? itunes, Netflix and others have reduced piracy, if this kind of balkanisation of content shows a large uptick in piracy, are they likely to back off of it more so than just reduced viewership?

[ryanbrunner]

Regardless of whether there's a moral argument or not at the individual level, at an aggregate there's plenty of evidence to suggest that piracy will be widespread so long as the legal channels to obtain the content are more cumbersome.

There's a clear correlation between ease of access and reduced piracy in music and games. TV and movies are in a funny place right now where in some ways the situation is arguably worse than it was 10 years ago - back then you could be reasonably assured that you could find whatever you wanted at Blockbuster and it would work in your DVD player. Nowadays finding which providers have the rights to the content you want to watch, and whether they can be watched on your proprietary devices can be a nightmare.

Meanwhile, the piracy route for the most part works completely seamlessly. Using Popcorn Time for me is a better experience than the legal route - that's indicative of major problems.

[sgeisenh]

Piracy and larceny are entirely different crimes. Nobody "stole" anything, in this particular situation. In order for something to be "stolen", the victim must lose something that they already had. You might try to argue that streaming services lost a sale, but they never had the sale and they make the process so arduous that they would never get the sale.

To be clear, I am not promoting piracy, it does pose ethical problems. The metaphor to stealing simply fails to illuminate any of them.

[JoeAltmaier]

The 'book value' of items in the corner market is negligible. The real value is in having that soda available, cold and ready for you. And in marketing that fact.

So in a very real sense, stealing the soda and stealing the movie are hardly any different?

[Thrillington]

Except in this analogy you have to spend time to find which corner store claims to have the soda you want and then pay 6 bucks just to enter the corner store. Once inside you have to spend more of your time trying to fix their fridge so your soda is cold. After you can't fix the fridge they give you your six bucks back on the way out. But your time costs are never compensated.

[brassic]

The problem faced by the original poster is that the corner store didn't have the soda available, cold and ready, but the spiv outside did.

The corner store lost nothing.

[mbesto]

> So in a very real sense, stealing the soda and stealing the movie are hardly any different?

But again, stealing a soda voids the ability for someone else to obtain the good. "Stealing" a movie via piracy doesn't neglect someone else from obtain the good. This is the GP's point - stealing implies there is something of loss.

[JoeAltmaier]

...only if they run out. Read my comment again.

[jra_samba]

I can't believe people are still equating copyright infringement with physical theft. Didn't that tired old argument die a long time ago ? If not, why not ?

One more time, boys and girls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

[MarkMc]

> they make the process so arduous that they would never get the sale

It's all too easy to make such a claim - particularly if you are the one benefiting from piracy.

If the couple chose not to watch the movie, they aren't going to sit and stare at a blank wall for two hours. Maybe they would have watched a movie on regular TV with ads - thereby benefiting the businesses who placed the ads. Maybe they would have watched a movie on Netflix who therefore gave a small percentage of the Netflix subscription fee to the movie studio. And maybe a month later Google fix the technical problems and the couple decide to pay to watch the original movie.

The point is that if the couple hadn't downloaded the movie illegally, somebody somewhere would probably have been financially better off.

[jmilloy]

> The metaphor to stealing simply fails to illuminate any of them.

I think it illuminates that you got to have/experience something without paying for it, despite the fact that the distributor wanted you to.

[sqeaky]

Why pay for something which requires no resources to acquire?

If I hire a programmer I get software from the programmer's time. The programmer's time is an expended resource.

If I buy a Coke I get a bottle full of liquid. There was a loss of resources to get it me.

Once that programmer has already written the software there is no cost to duplicate it infinitely. Same with movies.

Since it requires no resources why is there a distributor? A middleman has to work hard to provide his value. Netflix does with impeccable service and high reliability. In this case Google failed. Torrents use otherwise unused bandwidth (ie no resource) and are the baseline for value that these middlemen must compete with.

[givinguflac]

This isn't forgetting a wallet when you get to the store. This is going to the store, buying the product, and then having the product just magically evaporate once you get half way home. Then you go back to the store, ask for help with your disappearing product, and be told they can't help you. Your analogy is terrible.

[lostcolony]

And then rather than deal with the store again, you go borrow the copy your friend has that never spontaneously evaporated.

[ekianjo]

The analogy between shoplifting and copyright infrigement gets really, really old.

[karyon]

I've made that argument myself, but agree that the current video streaming situation is just dumb. Could you explain me why that analogy is wrong? I understand there is no damage done as in, they don't have less money than they had before, but they still have less money than they would have if i bought/rented the video.

[mikeash]

That is why the analogy is wrong. If you're in a situation where you're definitely not going to buy it (because nobody will take your money and give you the product, for example) then there's no difference to them if you watch it or not.

Imagine I really want your car, so I take it. Or imagine I really want your car, so I use a magic wand to make an exact duplicate of it. Are those two scenarios at all comparable?

[sosborn]

> (because nobody will take your money and give you the product, for example)

This argument fall apart in many of the examples cited in this thread because most of the time, those movies are available digitally for a price. The fact is that most people just don't want to pay that price so they use other means to watch the movie.

[mikeash]

The argument works equally well if you simply wouldn't buy it.

The issue, of course, is whether or not you're correctly estimating whether you would end up buying it if you didn't pirate it. But if you take it as given that you wouldn't buy it, then there's no loss.

[zanny]

Because you go into a store and take something that store on longer has against its will. Copyright infringement is just someone else willingly duplicating data that you want, while the entity that holds a state granted monopoly to duplication (not necessarily creator) has not authorized the transfer.

One is robbery of scarce resources, one is a legal framework around imposing scarcity on something that is not naturally scarce.

You can steal a movie - in the traditional sense of the word - by breaking into MGM / Disney / Universal's internal network and copying the movie out from their own internal servers. This does happen, where scene releases of unreleased movies happen, often done by employees with access to get access to these films prematurely. That is the only situation remotely comparable to the shoplifting scenario, because in the normal piracy scenario nobody is not voluntarily participating (the original buyer of the movie who then shared it did a voluntary transaction, then violated the distribution terms given them when distributing it to others voluntarily).

Violating a contract and violence are on entirely different planes of ethics.

[emerod]

If transfer of ownership does not actually occur when a digital product is "purchased", then how can one argue that ownership is lost when a digital product is "stolen"? In both cases, what is happening involves licensed use, not ownership. What is lost when a digital product is pirated is not ownership, AKA property rights; what is lost is potential demand for licensing rights. What is lost when a physical item is stolen is actual possession, which would enable one to use or sell the actual item. Losing actual possession of the item will also cause loss of demand, though, since someone else having possession enables them to use or sell the actual item in competition with the legitimate owner, who is concerned with maintaining market demand for the physical items.

[ekianjo]

They dont have less money than before because its either you cant watch it in this case or you watch it illegally. Nobody loses money, its lost opportunity at best.

[ArkyBeagle]

The thing taken in shoplifting is rival in the economics sense. It makes impossible a sale to someone else. With piracy, it's just another copy.

[JoeAltmaier]

I know; I have to keep bringing it up because people keep pretending they're owed entertainment. This entitled generation is just disappointing.

[andybak]

The reason the comparison is objectionable is because 'theft' is not the same as 'failing to pay a fee'. Theft implies a non-duplicatable object has passed from the possession of one entity to the possession of another thus depriving the first entity of any use or advantage from it.

While we might disagree on the moral shading of copyright infringement can we agree that piracy and theft are different things?

[JoeAltmaier]

...and there's the convenient, highly abstract argument. When wanting free stuff, no mental gymnastic is too hard.

I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers. Like a 12-year-old deciding their older brother's belongings really belong to everybody, because socialism or whatever.

[t4nkd]

But it's not interesting to you that the gross majority of people, even people who lean to your opinion, are constructing abstractions in order to reason about the problem?

If you consider yourself a pragmatist, you should also consider that you have under analyzed the issue at hand and that trying to generalize digital media with anecdotes of exchange for goods or services in meat space is inappropriate.

Your position sounds more rooted in laziness than pragmatism, at this rate.

[pmoriarty]

"I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers."

I can understand (though not agree with) the point of view that people are selfish and just make up excuses to justify to themselves and others that they are in the right whenever they take some action that benefits themselves.

But I don't understand why you would attribute those selfish, self-justifying motives only to those that make copies of digital media but not to those who proclaim to "own" them or who decry copying as theft?

Wouldn't your view also have to apply to the whole concept of ownership, which you'd have to dismiss as a pretension to "theoretical philosophy"?

[sqeaky]

Here is simple no abstract argument:

Pirates don't deprive distributors or content producers of anything. No harm has been done.

[MarkMc]

JoeAltmaier didn't actually say, "piracy and shoplifting are both examples of theft". It was more like, "piracy and shoplifting are examples of taking something valuable to which you are not entitled simply because it's convenient".

[SolaceQuantum]

This kind of piracy existed before. Remember sharing music CDs with friends? Remember libraries over buying books? Remember letting your friends borrow your comics or reading photocopies?

[izacus]

Well, our corporate overlords are trying really hard to make these things a criminal offense in the future. How DARE you share a piece of content you bought with another? The licensing terms forbid it!

[j2bax]

Sharing a piece of original physical media is different than sharing a photocopy or burned copy. Sharing the physical media with the license attached to it is legal, making a copy is not as you can't create an additional license (unless allowed by the publisher) with the copied media.

[Pokepokalypse]

I 'member.

[givinguflac]

You seem to be missing the point that you continually bringing it up does not make it accurate or even relevant. You wouldn't download a car! This is a dumb argument.

[JoeAltmaier]

I know this: the subject is complex and many varied and valid arguments are made on all sides.

But amazingly, folks accept whatever argument gives them free entertainment. Objections are suddenly 'irrelevant' when watching their favorite TV show is at stake.

Folks who wouldn't go in the back window of a bar to avoid the cover charge, will gladly go in the back way online to hear their favorite band. And they rely on the (pretty indirect) argument about how the source is generated to rationalize it.

Pardon me for my cynicism.

[Fogest]

Well if the front door was inconvenient and hard to find, and then I paid for it and the front door wouldn't work, then yeah maybe I would go in the back window. Your argument is so flawed, and it really seems like with your comment above that you just are looking for a reason to call the younger generation "entitled".

Stop using physical examples, they don't correlate to a digital good that can be duplicated digitally, with no physical presence.

[JoeAltmaier]

They got a refund. Then pirated.

I understand they were frustrated in their efforts to be entertained. Then took what they wanted. Which is pretty much the definition of 'entitled'

Everything is pretty much physical in the real world. Like the physical time and effort folks make to provide services and market them.

[emerod]

This is no different from the situation during the US Prohibition era. Pragmatically speaking, the threat of punishment did not cause sufficient change in social behavior or attitudes. The ideal model of using law to manipulate society failed.

[CarpetBench]

It's just a bad analogy. It sounds silly if you replace movies with physical goods.

If you, unauthorized, print out a photo and hang it in your apartment to enjoy you've probably committed IP infringement of some kind.

Have you committed theft though? Is it the same severity as pickpocketing someone's wallet/purse?

It's important to distinguish because it informs how we should treat these things, legally.

[ArkyBeagle]

I don't necessarily sense any sense of entitlement from it. It's just that the access mechanisms are Byzantine-complex and full of people charging rents.

Rents are completely inherent in entertainment product - it's just that we have a faux facade of competition between services for the charging of rents. This is confusing.

[jra_samba]

Is that the entitled corporate generation you're disappointed in ? You know, the kind of entitlement that thinks "the author's life plus 70 years" is a reasonable term for copyright length.

How many more works does the author create in the +70 years after death ? If the answer (I suspect) is zero, what possible:

".. promotion of the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

can there be in that time ?

[fixermark]

FWIW, sometimes when I forget my wallet at the corner store, the clerk will just let me take the stick of gum because he knows I'm good for it later.

There's a lot of reasons that analogies between mom and pop face-to-face businesses and massively-middleman'd intermediary transactions break down; this is just one of them.

[Jtsummers]

> the clerk will just let me take the stick of gum because he knows I'm good for it later.

So you're still going to pay for it. That's not the same as the story here, where they paid for it, got a refund, then got it for "free". They aren't intending to go to the content creators and hand them $5 for it later.

[esharte]

The $5 isn't going to the content creators.

[Jtsummers]

A portion of it is. But regardless, via pirating nothing goes to the content creators. Not one penny. If you actually like content, at some point you need to pay for it or you won't get more of what you like.

[sqeaky]

The creator's are often paid and out of the equation. In the most common case the $5 literally does not go the creators.

You might argue that publishers and distributors will hold their portion of the $5 for the next piece of content.

[dhimes]

Actually, I'm ok with "pirating" it if they tried to legally get it first. Also, I personally probably wouldn't ask for a refund if I was going to watch it anyway- figuring that what I was doing was morally right I was just hacking the implementation- and the content creators would get their fair share.

I, like you, am disturbed by the "if it's easy to steal then it's ok to steal" argument. It really hurts people who make a living as creatives.

[dexterdog]

The problem is that it is easier to pirate than it is to do anything else because of the stranglehold that distributors are trying to place on the goods that the creatives are making. The distributors add a negative value to the product that becomes extra cost for the consumer to get his payment to the creator.

[7Z7]

My only problem with that is that you have not only paid for the content, but you've paid for the service as well. If you have to provide the service (in the form of finding a equivalent quality of work, receivable in a not inconvenient amount of time, and take the risk of potentially being flagged as a pirate on your ISP or sued by a rights holder), then it gets more complicated. The content creator certainly isn't getting 100% of the fee you've paid - so ultimately you are rewarding both the content creator and the shitty-service provider.

You may be OK losing the provider's portion to assure the creator is paid.

[swiley]

That's really not an accurate comparison:

1) they actually did pay to rent it.

2) the content owners don't lose more money weather it's "stollen" or just not watched at all. (In fact, it's better in some ways since these people will tell their friends about it now who may also watch it)

[JoeAltmaier]

They then got a refund. Then pirated it.

[CWuestefeld]

It's not really equivalent. He paid for the product, but then the store wouldn't let him take it home with him. His end solution probably wasn't legal, but to me it feels morally just.

[JoeAltmaier]

Except for the part where (s)he got a refund first. Then pirated it.

[justifier]

Your reference to shoplifting is so knee jerk and tired it fails to even apply to this instance

If you read it again you'll see the person paid for the product and then the product they paid for was kept from them

Same thing happened to me, I tried to rent a film on touyube but the stream consistently erred after 2s of low quality viewing.. what really bugged me was I could watch any trending video on the free service without issue on any quality setting but the movie I paid for lacked the same supply attention and was buggy for the entire rental window

Who's going to go after googs for the 6$ I spent trying to watch a movie but an error on touyube stopped me from having the access I paid for?

How is it high ground to withhold sympathy when it is a mega corps stealing from a user?

[jmilloy]

It really seems to me that the knee-jerk reaction here is the one against the shoplifting analogy. All analogies are approximations; you're meant to focus on the similarities instead of the differences. If you're choosing to focus on the differences, than you're choosing to misunderstand. Why would you do that?

p.s. If you read it again, you'll see that the person asked for a refund. It's somewhat unclear at this point whether that refund was granted, but my interpretation is that they did.

[JoeAltmaier]

Then they got a refund. Then they pirated. If I read it right?

[justifier]

Right, but is that how you define shoplifting?

Shoplifting is when someone buys something, then has it withheld from them, then get a refund, then access that product from someone else offering to share it with them?

I guess I was trying to move the conversation away from what I see as a flawed analogy to what I think is technically interesting, and that I have first hand experience with, in that the companies offering paid services fail to support them to the same standard as their free services

For the record the phone time seeking the refund, for me, lacked an appropriate roi so i am out the money and was stunted from exposing myself to the media.. media which the creator and distributor trusted goog with making available to me

There are so many interesting subtleties it's frustrating to bury the conversation in a flawed analogy

[JoeAltmaier]

No, that's the definition of 'entitled'. When just because its hard to get something, that taking it becomes justified.

[justifier]

Again, just a distraction

To be an issue of entitlement the person would have to say something that sets them apart, akin to: it's ok for me to pirate but for everyone else its bad;

Whereas the gp was just describing their process without applying any opinion on the ethics of others doing the same

an excuse is just an excuse, the special treatment is what makes it entitled

Have you ever pirated anything? If you have then your position would make you the entitled one because you are claiming it is wrong for this person to pirate though you have done so yourself

Why offer your opinion with lazy pithy statements and attempts to compartmentalise complex ideas into a single word?

It reads so demonstrative and finite as if these issues lack any capacity for dialogue

I think your perspective is important to this conversation but I'm unable to access it due to how you are presenting it

[JoeAltmaier]

Nah. Entitlement is the belief that one is due something unconditionally. Its ego at heart; an entitled person probably has no opinion on what is due others.