[carewell]

Your position somehow completely ignores the cost of... producing the content itself. It might come as a surprise, but people who write books, make music, film movies all have expenses. Yes it's "free" to make a digital copy, but that ignores the cost of producing content. It sometimes takes years to produce and release a movie, hundreds if not thousands of people are involved. Who is paying for that? Should they all go to Patreon and ask for donations?

[asdff]

Touring is the biggest source of revenue for the musician. If they show up and you buy a ticket to their show, you've just given them maybe an order of magnitude more money than they would ever have gotten from you from record sales or streams alone. If you buy one of the $40 fruit of the loom shirts they are selling then that covers the costs for another dozen pirates.

Plus, what about used physical media? Do you think if I bought a used Beatles cd, I should be mailing a $20 bill to Paul McCartney? Am I stealing from Paul when I listen to that CD for free from the library? Or when I borrow my friends CD? Should the FBI come a knocking if my friend remixes it into a mixtape? Absolutely not. So it shouldn't be considered stealing when someone passes me a digital file that came from someone down the line buying the album.

[bzzzt]

> Touring is the biggest source of revenue for the musician.

Not since Covid. Lots of headliner-class bands have cancelled their tours the last few months.

[asdff]

It's not like the record company is giving them a greater cut to compensate. Plus I'm sure they are still selling merch

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> It might come as a surprise, ...

Please don't condescend.

> Yes it's "free" to make a digital copy, but that ignores the cost of producing content.

I am not ignoring the cost, I am simply not respecting it. They are trying to run a business; the costs of doing so are their problem. If they cannot capture revenue to offset the mentioned costs, then they do not have a viable business. Currently, copyright law is required for the revenue to be captured, thus the business is not viable.

It is unfortunate, but I don't see how I am mistaken (I can understand disagreement that copyright law is broken, but it would be disagreement).

[carewell]

How is this different from any other theft?

I don’t respect the bakery down the road and will steal their products. Yes it’s protected by laws, but I don’t respect that either. It’s unfortunate, but it’s their own fault for not creating a viable business.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> How is this different from any other theft?

Nobody is being deprived of anything. If I buy a pastry from the bakery and then use a machine I own to materialize perfect copies of the pastry, what did I steal? Certainly not anything that needs to be replaced.

[LocalH]

Infringement is not theft under any legal framework that is beholden to Berne