[mseebach]

Morality and legality often intersects, but one does not imply the other. In other words, that something is legal or illegal doesn't make it moral or immoral.

It does not follow from your ancestors hardships that downloading a TV show is inherently immoral, any more that is follows it is moral.

What I consider very interesting in the discussion of the morality of downloading TV series in particular is in the comparison with DVRs:

Legal: DVR'ing a free-to-air broadcast TV show and skipping the commercial breaks.

Illegal: Downloading the same TV show, with the commercial breaks edited out.

The only substantial difference in the two scenarios is timing - whether you will be watching a Christmas special at Christmas or in May, two years later (as is more often the case with US shows in Europe).

Further noting that the the fact these TV shows airs on such a long delay reflects the practicality of how the TV show market work, not some particular desire of the copyright holder, what is the moral principle being breached here?

[aes256]

Just to further underline the divergence between morality and legality, it's worth noting that under current copyright law, it is illegal in the United Kingdom to record (i.e. 'DVR') any television broadcast.

It is also illegal to rip a copy of a CD you own to listen to on a computer or copy to a portable music player...

[sjmulder]

In the Netherlands, making a copy of copyrighted material is legal for personal use. There’s a levy on blank media such as DVD-Rs which is shared between copyright holders.

[fluidcruft]

Also illegal: Downloading the same TV show with the commercial breaks intact and not skipping them

[mseebach]

Yes, but in the isolated world of this thought experiment, that's more reasonable: Commercials are most often targeted for a specific market, so there is no value in someone watching them thousands of miles away. This is true even for global brands ("They call it a Royale with Cheese").

[fluidcruft]

Legal: recording the OTA broadcast and watching it two hours later without skipping ads

Illegal: Downloading the same TV show with the commercial breaks intact as broadcast by your local affiliate and watching it two hours later without skipping ads

[officemonkey]

Legal: a friend recording a TV show on a VCR and giving you the tape.

Illegal: a friend recording a TV show to an .avi file and sending you a megaupload link.