[giantrobot]

> they're attempting to avoid the simple fact that piracy is robbing other people of their labour.

It's not. A pirate is just another non-customer. There's robbing involved when someone chooses not to buy something. Watching a movie at a friend's house isn't robbing the producers of anything. Neither is buying something second hand. These are all non-customers of the original creator.

[lancesells]

That's a huge stretch to say anyone that watches or listens to pirated entertainment would never pay for it. I wish people that use pirated entertainment would just admit that they don't want to pay for it.

[giantrobot]

It's the same stretch as saying people pirating content will never pay for it. All non-customers are simply not paying a creator for content. It doesn't fucking matter why they're a non-customer. From the perspective of a media publisher a pirate is no different than someone buying media second hand or never watching it in the first place.

If I buy a used Blu-ray I'm not giving a dime to Disney. I get to watch the Avengers all I want without ever paying them anything. They have lost nothing because I didn't take anything from them nor prevented them from selling a copy of the Avengers to someone else.

If you replaced my second hand copy of the Avengers with a pirated copy, nothing would change about the situation. Disney was deprived of nothing. The same is true if I rent it from the library, borrow it from a friend, or just never watch it. To Disney I am simply a non-customer.