[picardythird]

If I walk in to a record store and buy a CD, I'm not just paying for the paper and plastic that it's made of. I'm paying the record company, the record store, and the artist for their time and talent.

With a digital goods, we can eliminate the paper and plastic. It's a great thing! But for some reason, we've also decided to write the artist out of the equation too. At least if you're a pirate.

If you're a software engineer, you're being paid not to manufacture hard goods but to create something of intellectual value that could be technically be duplicated forever. What's the difference between pirating music and stealing code that is under a software license?

[webmaven]

> What's the difference between pirating music and stealing code that is under a software license?

If by "stealing code" you mean creating and distributing (probably selling) software derived from it that violates the license, it is quite different.

If what you mean is simply downloading warez for your own use, it is more or less the same.

[picardythird]

So are you against torrenting copyrighted digital goods then? Because people do exactly that. They steal intellectual property and distribute it for other people to use.

Stealing for personal use may be a more minor thing, but it still boggles me that people want to consume the fruits of others' labor without compensating them in anyway, as if creators are slaves who exist only to please.

[webmaven]

I made no claim about the relative morality of piracy vs. license violations.

But I will note that you are (by using the framing of "stealing") implying that piracy results in lost sales, which is largely not the case, except possibly for the most popular works. See "Piracy is Progressive Taxation":

https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxati...

[picardythird]

If a publisher or author doesn't mind, as is the case with the article you linked, that's fantastic. O'reilly is a good business. But it's still stealing. I think if you have the money, you should pay for the product. It's one thing for a teenager to download a bunch of songs on Kazaa in 2000. But I don't understand why so many self respecting adult knowledge workers feel the need to pirate things they can afford just because they can. Seems entitled and disrespectful to me.

[webmaven]

You're still not getting it. It doesn't matter if the publisher minds or not; copying is not theft:

https://freakonomics.com/2012/04/copying-is-not-theft/

[witrak]

The whole publishing business is effectively a service of providing content created by the author to final users. And because of the uneven power of authors and publishers, the latter is able to grab almost 100% of the price paid by people. Music labels are used to pay artists after long lawsuits. These are the best cases. Scientific publishers do more: they require payments from authors too and don't pay reviewers.

In all cases, the price paid by the user is split in proportion which clearly shows that saying that "pirating" means stealing money from authors is utterly false. I have nothing against paying for books the amount really passed to authors plus some additional fair amount based on the true cost of distribution (eg. printing and transport or electronic storing and transfer) plus a modest profit. However, it is not the case nowadays.

Similarly, I would accept payments for articles in a model where the price for a good article wouldn't cover the costs of many worthless ones. The current model - subscription - is attempting to hide real costs of production of articles of very different value under average price forcing readers to purchase wholesale products. Why should one pay for "fillers" the same money as for good content?

[picardythird]

All good points for reforming the business, but none justify stealing the content, in my view. Voting with the wallet is about abstaining, not stealing.

For better or for worse, subscriptions are king in 2022, and I don’t see a meta-subscription for news being a good thing for journalism itself. Personally, I prefer something closer to the iTunes model, but that’s dead. I’m growing entirely sick of singular platforms that hold all the cards of entirely industries (and they don’t pay any better than the publishers do).