[bzax]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft: "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it"

Has the rightful owner been deprived of their property? What, exactly, is the property in question?

[Bakary]

I pirate quite a bit but what bothers me about this reasoning is that at the end of the day the goal is to not pay for other people's labor, and the reason it happens is primarily the ease of achieving this rather than the nature of the thing in question. Whether it's specifically called theft or not has significant legal implications, but is also a moot point in an ethical and aesthetic sense.

[bzax]

On the contrary, I am not making the claim that "it isn't theft because no such property has been deprived". I think whether it is theft is a nuanced question, and it can only be answered if we are clear on what we think that property is. The US constitution perhaps defines such a property - to paraphrase lightly - "securing for limited times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings". If a simple exclusive right to one's work exists here it is clearly being deprived! (notably, such a simple right is not a thing, at least under US law - or fair use wouldn't exist)

What, to you, is the property being taken here? One can disagree ethically with the constitution's "The Congress shall have Power To promote 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", or one might disagree either legally or ethically with the consistency of Congress's implementation of that power, or one might disagree ethically with whether a particular violation of that right that one believes exists is a deprivation.

[Bakary]

I'm not interested in the details of American laws or any national law for that matter or whether it meets the definition of theft in one locale or not. The dictionary-oriented debate about legal definitions or the appeals to the 90's information sharing ethos that I both often see come up in such discussions miss the overall point.

Presumably, the typical pirate enjoys having a wide variety of artistic and/or creative material at their disposal. For that material to exist, effort must be expended at some point, and for that to happen the creator must receive some support somewhere, if only to meet their basic needs.

If the legal option is less convenient than the pirate option, there is an argument in favor of piracy there. However, the question is what would happen if both services were equally convenient. Logically, only the willingness to pay would be the determining factor. Would the majority of pirates who now complain about convenience or cite informational freedom go out of their way to donate? My intuition makes me doubt that.

On one hand you have the freeloading pirate: either someone else pays for the material in time/energy/financing, or the material simply doesn't come into existence from lack of support. On the other, we tell artists and creators that it sucks to be them and they should just learn to deal with the fact that their work happens to be hard to finance and easy to pirate. They are held to a higher standard compared to other workers whilst we take their work for granted and enjoy its existence. Can we try to alter this state of things through laws? It's an open question I suppose. But the fundamental motivation behind piracy is only high-minded if the market is asymmetrical and punishes legal buyers.

[Akronymus]

In the words of Gabe Newell:

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

I personally find going to an archival site to be MUCH easier than signing up for a subscription. Also, most news outlets don't provide a way to do one time donations, so I can't throw money their way if I read some amount of articles.

So, no, for me it isn't the goal to not pay, but rather to have it be convenient.

[Bakary]

I can agree to some extent with Gaben's take. In fact, Steam has been instrumental in changing my habits because it's more convenient than the alternative.

However, once you have a paid service and an unpaid service with otherwise identical convenience levels, the act of paying will always introduce that much more friction.

Let's say we have that donation system with online publications. Even if it's one-click, you still have to think about your balance, have the negative emotion of spending money, when the archival site is just a click away. Let's say you have a very simple DRM-free bookshop, reduced to the most convenience possible of search, click, buy. You'll still have Libgen just a click away as well. At this point, the determining factor is the propensity to not pay for labor.

[Akronymus]

I personally go out of my way to throw at least some money at services I use a lot assuming there are one time payments in some form. Or sometimes throw money at something I pirated before. For example, I have a lot of pirated epubs of light novels, as it's more convenient. Some authors have a donation option somewhere, where I throw some money their way, if I've enjoyed the books. I absolutely get that some friction for such things is inevitable.

Not gonna claim that I have some moral highground for my opinions/actions though.

[Bakary]

To be clear, I'm not trying to assign blame here. I am pretty stingy myself. My point is simply that the argument that piracy exists or stops existing for convenience's sake makes sense in an asymmetrical situation where the legal option is less convenient or conversely becomes more convenient (Spotify, Steam, early Netflix)

In a symmetrical situation with all other things being equal, the guiding principle of piracy will be the desire to compensate the creator.

[Akronymus]

Oh, gotcha. It seems I didn't quite tead your previous comment correctly.

I would add the personal feeling of doing the right thing to the symmetrical case, which IMO is distinct, as it's a negative incentive (I am amoral for pirating) rather than a positive (I am gicing the creator money)

But that could be considered splitting hairs.

[trevyn]

At the end of the day, the goal is to enjoy a data sequence that exists in the world.

If someone thinks that they can “own” a data sequence on the internet, and labored to produce it based on that belief, that’s unfortunate.

[Bakary]

Your money is also a data sequence on the internet, but you might miss it if it were gone.

I don't necessarily see a problem with looking at things this way, but the end result is that we have extremely powerful adtech companies, the deterioration of journalism (not that it was great to begin with), predatory business models, an attention economy, harder lives for artists, otherwise great projects killed, etc.

I'm aware that this was all inevitable, and I am pretty stingy myself when it comes to online material, but my point is that there is a cost to pay at the macro level. By definition, if you enjoy a type of material and aren't paying for it and use adblocking software, someone else is paying for it, whether it's the creator themselves or some overarching entity or some other aficionado. If you want to freeload in a way that is unsustainable if everyone does it, whilst enjoying a great diversity of material, that's unfortunate.

On a more positive note, I'd say donation systems such as Kickstarter or Patreon or Substack have come a long way

[trevyn]

There are plenty of data sequences that people create for their own reasons, and then intentionally give away.

I would have no problem if all other data sequences were no longer created.

[LegitShady]

If it doesn't matterz use the right words.

[Bakary]

It's not that the definitions don't matter, just that they aren't invoked in good faith for the most part, or don't take into account the broader situation of stuff needing effort to come into existence.