[WendyTheWillow]

This would break digital ownership specifically, as you wouldn't be in control of their copies, which are trivial to make.

Besides, you agreed not to do this! That's the immoral act. First sale doctrine or no, agreeing to not do something and then doing it is immoral.

[Dylan16807]

> This would break digital ownership specifically, as you wouldn't be in control of their copies, which are trivial to make.

Why is "people can copy it for critique" compatible with ownership, and "people can copy it after a certain number of years" compatible with ownership, but "people can copy it when you're done selling it, or in places you won't sell it" not compatible with ownership?

I really don't understand.

> Besides, you agreed not to do this! That's the immoral act. First sale doctrine or no, agreeing to not do something and then doing it is immoral.

I don't think I've ever agreed to something like that on top of copyright.

Are you applying this idea to existing media, or suggesting it would become the new normal?

And I think first sale doctrine would get in the way of a contract clause that does almost but not quite the same thing that copyright does. But I'm not an expert there.

[WendyTheWillow]

You agree to these terms when you purchase any media, as these terms are codified in US copyright law.

If you buy media, thus agreeing to US copyright law, and then violate it, how is this a moral act?

But again, setting aside US copyright law, how would it be a moral act to agree to something and then act in opposition to that agreement (given the low stakes of what's involved here)?

[Dylan16807]

> You agree to these terms when you purchase any media, as these terms are codified in US copyright law.

But I keep talking about changing copyright. Why do you act like those terms would still apply if they were changed? That's why I thought you were talking about terms on top of copyright. It's really hard for me to follow your arguments.

> But again, setting aside US copyright law, how would it be a moral act to agree to something and then act in opposition to that agreement (given the low stakes of what's involved here)?

I have never made a promise to follow the law as part of a purchase.

And I have never had the rules of copyright copy-pasted into a purchase agreement either.

It's just a given that copyright is the law.

If I break the law later, I am not breaking a promise to the seller. There is no moral failure on that front. What matters is whether breaking the law is itself immoral. It does not break any agreement.

[WendyTheWillow]

Copyright law isn't really meaningful here as a representation of morality, it's a representation of the agreement you're making. By purchasing a work covered by US copyright law, you've implicitly agreed to abide by copyright law.

To put this another way, do you believe the owner of the work would have granted you access to the work had you been honest with your intent to engage in piracy? Do you think they'd have agreed to grant you access to the work if you weren't bound in some way to not copy their work and distribute it freely?

If no to either, then you've used deception to gain access to that work and this is an immoral act, which is extended when someone uses your immoral act to themselves gain access to the work.

[Dylan16807]

They probably wouldn't want to sell it to me if I was going to leave a bad review, either. That doesn't mean I deceived them.

But wow this is such a tangent from the original argument. This is just to argue that all pirated copies are tainted by deception because of the original sale? Because that's making a lot of assumptions. What if the first person to upload it bought a used copy? Or what if they bought it for personal use, then ten years later realized sales had been shut down and uploaded their copy to share with a new generation? There's lots of plausible ways for this to happen without even a hint of deception.

(Not that one deception for a giant pile of downloaders is even a big deal in the first place.)

[WendyTheWillow]

Regardless of the length of the chain of custody over the work, you always know the copyright holder would not have agreed to part with a copy of their work if they had known it would be further duplicated, so you can't really ever claim ignorance.

And I think it does mean you've deceived them if some law were in place and thus the expectation were in place that prohibited you from leaving a bad review. However, no such law exists, and therefore no such expectation exists.

(and yeah, I'm definitely not saying people are murdering puppies here. I have for sure pirated movies and TV shows, I just don't try to justify it -- I'm a tiny bit of a bad person!).