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by sgeisenh 3535 days ago
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.
3 comments
JoeAltmaier 3535 days ago
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?

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Thrillington 3535 days ago
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.
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brassic 3535 days ago
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.

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mbesto 3535 days ago
> 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.

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JoeAltmaier 3534 days ago
...only if they run out. Read my comment again.
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jra_samba 3535 days ago
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

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MarkMc 3535 days ago
> 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.

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jmilloy 3535 days ago
> 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.

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sqeaky 3535 days ago
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.

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