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by giantrobot 918 days ago
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.