[mpat]

I don't buy bread. I have sandwiches that I would like to make, but I can't eat a whole loaf before it goes bad, so I don't buy it. I would gladly buy half a loaf, but my grocery store doesn't sell half loaves. If they won't make a half loaf to suit my needs and what I want to pay, I should just be able to steal whole loaves?

[cconroy]

The analogy is ...

The grocery store will not sell half a loaf because they cannot figure out how to keep them fresh enough to sell them. They don't try hard to sell half a loaf and they basically tell the public to accept whole loaves as a fait accompli.

A the growing demand for half loaves meets a innovative group of people who found a way to deliver fresh half loaves to people. They sell them on the city streets -- without a license -- near the grocery store. Customers are happy again.

The grocery store finds out they have been losing revenues to the street dealers and the engineering efforts they developed for delivery are based on knowledge in the public domain. Instead of using this knowledge to serve their customers the fresh half loaves they want, they try to stop the street dealers from selling because they operate without a business license.

[justncase80]

Yes, this is a much better analogy.

[mattwdelong]

Literally comparing apples and oranges.

More like; I buy a loaf of bread and I am never around to eat it. The whole loaf goes mouldy so I don't buy it. My friend gives me a piece of bread when I want it at 12 am, I would GLADLY pay for it but he doesn't accept money and he only complains.

[cookiecaper]

Actually he is literally comparing bread to piracy. It would be a literal comparison to apples and oranges if he had, literally, compared apples and oranges. "Literal" means "just as the text says it", not "definitely". "Literal" means it is exactly as it is written, it is not an exaggeration, expression, allegory, or analogy; it LITERALLY happened, meaning it happened EXACTLY AS WRITTEN.

You probably meant "definitely" or "certainly" comparing "apples to oranges". It's an expression, it's not literal unless he LITERALLY was comparing apples and oranges, where an apple is a fruit from an apple tree, and an orange is a fruit from an orange tree. Such a comparison may sound like "most apples are red and fat around the middle, most oranges are orange and evenly round".

[Lockyy]

Or he meant, "this is a literally perfect example of what the phrase "comparing apples to oranges" represents."

You know, I think that's what he actually meant. In fact, you knew that to and so did everyone else.

[ingenium]

That analogy doesn't hold. You could always freeze half the loaf when you get it. It's not the same with cable TV.

A better analogy would be that you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, but the grocery store forced you to also buy hot dog and hamburger buns with it along with some bagels. Say you're a vegetarian or don't like hot dogs or hamburgers, and you'll never use them, but you have to buy them anyway.

[chii]

I don't buy books. I like to read, but I never finish a book before I get bored of it, so I don't buy books.

I would gladly pay for half a book after I'm done reading the half that i read, but stores don't sell me half a book, for half the price.

So instead, I borrow the book from my friend, read half of it, and then return it. The store doesn't get any income from me at all.

[fleitz]

No you shouldn't steal a whole loaf, but you shouldn't be prevented from seeing a loaf and then going home and making your own loaf.

[spacemanaki]

That's even worse than the original analogy. No one is stopping you from going home and "making your own loaf" (I guess that would be shooting your own version of Game of Thrones? Ok, so actually someone would stop you, at least if you tried to share it.)

Something that often annoys me about the "piracy" debate is that the debate is very difficult to have, since there is very little to compare it to. No, it's not like stealing a car, but it's also not like making bread from scratch, and it's also not quite like sharing a (physical) copy with your friend, or like making a physical copy and handing that around (it's also not really like piracy, which is why I put that word in scare quotes)

[zerostar07]

I enter all the grocery stores in town to buy a loaf. Every grocer asks to see my passport, i am not american, they say no can do. I ask to pay them extra, they say not an option, i have to wait till the summer to buy my loaf when it's stale. An american customer hands me a loaf, i take it without paying and leave. Nothing is right in this situation.

[kondro]

Except for virtual products this analogy always falls down.

Ultimately, the issue here is that content producers don't have simultaneous releases of this content online (for a worldwide standardised fee) because they don't want to.

Selling and delivering a virtual product in Australia doesn't cost significantly more than it does in the USA.