[hotnfresh]

The ethical distance between this and littering is about as large as the one between littering and murder, though.

If it’s unethical, it’s somewhere around running a stoplight that’s plainly not registering your presence and hasn’t turned for ten full minutes, with perfect straight mile-long views either way and not a car or person in sight. Not really unethical at all.

[WendyTheWillow]

I like the littering analogy because it's a kind of tragedy-of-the-commons problem. If everyone pirated, clearly there'd be a problem around capitalistic incentives for making intellectual property, similarly to how if everyone littered, there'd be a problem around environmental cleanliness.

But I don't think most people would argue that everyone should pirate IP.

That's a good follow-up question though; for those who believe pirating is ethical, do you a) believe everyone should pirate, and b) if not, what makes your pirating acceptable but other pirating unacceptable?

[vonjuice]

Littering is actually a terrible analogy. First of all, a place becomes littered, everyone there is affected. Piracy only hypothetically harms a select few who probably make more money you can imagine.

Furthermore, in a world where everyone pirates, everyone is still free to give money. You can pirate and buy a steam game or a bandcamp album. They're not mutually exclusive. Here the littering analogy breaks down again.

I don't believe "everyone should pirate", I think the model of ownership as archaic, it is trying to uphold an old model of material goods, through power alone, into a technological model.

If I make a ceramic cup, and you steal it, I don't have it anymore. I can't drink my tea or look at it and smile.

If you made an exact replica of it, if I find out and I'm petty maybe I'll be mad, or maybe I'll fantasize about how you were maybe gonna buy it from me, but I sure can't complain that you took my cup away from me.

Being able to reproduce media at virtually no cost is a new concept. As such, it deserves new mindsets, not old models based around material goods.

I believe this exposes that the new model should be one of higher trust, where customers use their money as reward, not to obtain.

In regards to b) I think it's pretty simple. A steam game currently could take 20% or 2% of minimum wage based solely on where you live. There's emulated games too, what benefit, what real consequence is carried upstream to anyone that deserves it, when I take my time to find a used copy of an old game, buy a used CD reader, and rip the game legally, as opposed to two clicks from a torrent site. Show me the real harm, where in that chain is anything of consequence being done? Is it just about performing the dance that the authorities tell you to do?

[zlg_codes]

> That's a good follow-up question though; for those who believe pirating is ethical, do you a) believe everyone should pirate, and b) if not, what makes your pirating acceptable but other pirating unacceptable?

Pirating something, I see as gaining access to something when the official or preferred channel is either unreasonably expensive, or the product itself is unknown.

Piracy is an effective way to try before you buy, at your own pace. On one hand, sure, once you pirate something you don't need to buy it, but my own dabbling has resulted in MORE purchase activity, not less. I could buy games or movies or shows knowing I would enjoy them and be satisfied with my purchase.

There were totally games and whatnot that I downloaded, tried, and then ignored or deleted. Was anyone really damaged by that? I see that as the equivalent of window shopping. It's what you do after you try it that forms the ethical stance, in my opinion.

Are you a struggling student pirating AfterEffects or something else so you can earn money and then buy a real copy? Some might say that's ethical pirating because there's an intent to be legit about it but there are obstacles. "Don't buy or get it" one might say, and forever lock themselves out of opportunity.

Choosing to keep a pirated version of something is as much a social and political commentary as it is a technical violation of monopoly. Someone who can afford something they pirated, that they liked and kept, may be seen as a cheapskate.

But honestly, there are many games and music albums and shows I would never have tried out if I didn't have an easy and accessible means to just give'em a whirl.

So you could say I see no harm in "explorative" piracy, or pirating that then gets deleted when you find out you don't like it. In the rights-owner's world, that person should be out money, and disappointed in their purchase! Seems like more moral harm than making sure you like what you're buying.

[WendyTheWillow]

The problem with that is, of course, the lack of consent from the property owner. This is the "entitlement problem"; the options are not listed by asking, "How will I obtain this content?" they're listed by asking, "How will the content provider allow me to consume their content?" Sometimes, the answer is, "There is no way to consume this content."

If the owner of AfterEffects doesn't want to allow students to use their software, that's their right as the property owner. Students have no entitlement to that software. Violating the owner's property rights is an immoral act.

[zlg_codes]

And business has no entitlement to profit. Business models do not have to be respected, they must be validated through market success. And the intellectual property model is invalid. Copying an idea does not rob another person of that idea.

"But it's law", I don't care, law is religion for the ruling class and judges are essentially priests. They work on doctrine, adjacent to indoctrination. They operate with the attitude that the judge, and by extension the state, can do no wrong. That's already operating from a place of moral invalidity.

If I shared something to the world, even under license, and people copied it endlessly, I'd be told that I have personal responsibility, and what did I expect to happen when I shared. Victim blaming, essentially.

But the moment it's a business, the moment money's involved, suddenly we aren't entitled to anything and business deserves every last dollar they can squeeze.

The understanding is flipped. Businesses are second class entities to citizens. They deserve no more consideration than an individual, and indeed already enjoy too many privileges they've done nothing to earn.

They aren't entitled to money.

[WendyTheWillow]

So if a business owns something, it cannot contingently sell that thing to a person?

I'm not sure I agree with that. Businesses are ultimately owned by people, and in reality, a "business" sale boils down to one person exchanging goods for payment with another person. Sometimes those goods are digital, and sometimes those digital goods are only sold contingently. By agreeing to the contingencies, you're giving your word to someone that you will abide by the conditions of the sale.

Or are people not free to enter into contracts, in your view? I strongly disagree with that, but that's the only way what you're saying would work, based on my understanding.

[zlg_codes]

Many contracts have illegal terms in them that explicitly also add durability clauses so that illegal terms in a jurisdiction are already thrown out but the rest of the contract stays.

That established, what business contracts are entered, executed, and completed ethically and with equal respect to the rights of the contracting parties? Very few, if any. In practice, the ability to enter a contract is the ability to go into moral debt and be slave to a document.

So no, I don't think contracts should be entered freely because most contracts are actually one-sided as fuck and generally have no room for negotiation.

[garfij]

Following the example from the original comment, I would argue that if the content is otherwise unavailable for purchase or rent, then yes, it is ethical for anyone and everyone to pirate it.

Conversely it is unethical to retain the rights to shared cultural artifacts and _not_ provide a way for people to access them.

I'm papering over some grey area where if it's not available for purchase but you could get it from the library, maybe via inter-library loan, then maybe in aggregate it's better ethically to do that.

[Dylan16807]

Weren't we talking about the situation where there's no way to buy? Piracy there isn't going to undermine the incentive to create.

If everyone litters in public areas where trash cans are reasonable to expect, but have not been installed, a likely and good outcome is that trash cans get installed. (But in a more accurate analogy, the trash cans would cost negative money to install!)

[WendyTheWillow]

That's a problem, however, because it presumes an entitlement to content. Maybe there is no way to buy, and that's on purpose. You don't have an inherent right to consume content; that ought to be up to the owner of that content, even if they decide to arbitrarily limit access to their content.

It's up to them, and when you take that decision away from them, you commit an immoral act.

[Dylan16807]

Again, that depends on what you think the purpose of copyright is.

If you consider public domain to be the default, then you do have an inherent right to consume content. The limitations placed on this right are done for a purpose, to promote more creation via sales. And if sales won't happen, then there's no reason for the copyright.

[WendyTheWillow]

This doesn't account for the fact that someone can hold a copyright (or a physical item) and decide not to sell it at all. After all, they either hold the rights to it or they don't. It's not only theirs if they manage it "well".

[Dylan16807]

It doesn't really account for that, true. But copyright isn't the only control. If you've never distributed something, that generally falls under basic privacy.

But if you've already put 50 thousand copies out into the world, it should stay available in some reasonable form.

[vonjuice]

You made the case of "knowingly taking something", that in the knowing that it was "unethically" obtained, there's wrong doing.

However I'd posit that media businesses "knowingly get into the business where it's easy to copy your content". If you don't want your content to be reproduced easily, then don't get into a business where it is virtually costless and harmless to make millions of copies immediately very easily. You're not entitled to put people in jail because you willingly chose to take part of a business that's at the mercy of technology.

To me this is like deciding to open up a grocery and then getting upset at the amount of produce you have to throw away because it goes bad when people don't buy it all, that's just a known factor of the nature of the business. If you don't like it, you're not entitled to shape the world to your liking. Get into blacksmithing or glass working instead.

[WendyTheWillow]

Right, people will copy your content if it's easy, but should they? These are separate questions.

A chance to bring up my favorite philosophical concept, the "is-ought problem" aka "Hume's Guillotine"! [0]

> An ethical or judgmental conclusion cannot be inferred based on purely descriptive factual statements.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

[vonjuice]

Yes, companies will bitch about piracy, but should they? :)