11
I know what I'm doing, I just don't care
(imgflip.com)
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
💰 Please help cover server costs.
Piracy explicitly is not stealing. Theft requires denying the owner of the ability to use the thing that is stolen. Copyright infringement does not meet this bar, and is not a crime in the vast majority of cases. Commercial copyright infringement is the only offense classed as a crime, which in a nutshell is piracy for profit ie selling pirated material.
Piracy is attacking ships at sea and is usually done in order to rob them.
This is why you get a letter of marque to give you legitimacy. I've been letioning my government for one endlessly so I can attack Russian shipping in the balkans.
Piracy is best compared to riding a bus without a ticket.
that's an interesting definition, and one that appeals to me especially as a fan of "harmless" theft (taking something that the owner will never notice is gone, nor be inconvenienced by the lack of)
It's literally the legal definition. Copyright infringement has never been theft. Media companies have been trying to change the definition of theft, though.
It used to never be a crime, only a civil offense. This means the rightsholder has to sue you, rather than the state prosecute you, but also that the burden of proof is "the balance of probabilities", ie whichever side tips the scale past 50/50 with their argument, rather than "beyond reasonable doubt" which is more like >99%. However in the last decade many countries have introduced "commercial copyright infringement" as a criminal offense. Off the top of my head, in the US I think the threshold for that is like $1,000 or something.
It's not about it being "harmless" but the fact that you're not taking something away from someone. If I steal your laptop and sell it, you no longer have a laptop. If I copy data, you still have your original copy.
This is also why there's a different crime for "joyriding" instead of just stealing a car. If you steal a car, you might argue that you were just taking it for a drive, and never intended to permanently deprive the owner. In that case it's easier to convict you for joyriding instead of theft.
Regardless of the semantics of what we call theft, or whether theft requires denying somebody access to some good, there's an ethical issue with copying other people's stuff without permission. If a person breaks into another persons home and makes copies of all of the documents in their home private or otherwise, they've at least committed a crime in the form of breaking and entering. But if a person is invited into another persons home, and then without pemission copies all of the documents in the house, that still feels like a wrong act? Like, if you invite me into your house and I start copying down your personal journal, your family photos and other stuff you have lying around, to me that sounds like I'd be doing something wrong by you?
Edit: I do want to point out here that I'm not saying piracy is inherently wrong/bad or never justified.
Sure, but breaking and entering is a crime - just like theft. Copying someone's documents is wrong, but it's not a crime (not unless you commit a crime with those documents, eg fraudulently take out credit). In that case, it's a civil offense against the victim - just like copyright infringement.
Crimes are prosecuted by the government. To be convicted of a crime you have to be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt - in other words, it's more than 99% likely you did it.
Civil offenses are prosecuted by the victim. The burden of proof is "the balance of probabilities", ie it's more than 50% likely you did it. The victim must also show actual damages.
In the US, media companies have perverted the law around copyright infringement, and they manage to get awarded statutory damages well in excess of any actual damages they incur. This is why we had all those ridiculous Napster lawsuits where people were fined hundreds of thousands for downloading a handful of songs. In the rest of the world, they could only be awarded actual damages, and the lawsuits weren't really worth anything.
Media companies would really like copyright infringement to be theft, and they've lobbied hard for that. However they haven't managed it, not yet anyway. They did manage to establish a crime of commercial copyright infringement, though, where if you pirate a significant amount of material or do it for profit you could be criminally charged.
The ethical issue here has nothing to do with damaging any property at all.
Why are you conflating damaging property with causing harm? It's at least arguable that an invasion of privacy is harmful, regardless of whether or not property damage occurs.
In my example privacy invasion definitely occurs. If you disagree with that, then you should review what I initially said.
If the notion that when people don't want to share things with you, you have an unqualified right to take those things, and that doing that is just inherently not damaging, then I think your position is unrealistic and incredibly self serving.
Do you have some point to make here besides claiming you're just never doing anything wrong when it serves your interests?
Your point is wrong. My point is that you can't always (ethically) just copy other peoples stuff, just like you can't always just take things from people. My point is not that piracy is never justified. My point is not that you are personally doing something wrong by pirating things. My point is not that you can't be justified in copying other peoples stuff sometimes without permission. My point is not that piracy or copying other peoples data and documents always causes harm.
Edit: When was pirating "publically available" software specifically ever central to my point?
The only response you've given is "that's not harmful", which is in no way an argument for why it isn't. It's not totally inconceivable that taking things, even data, without permission can be harmful and to claim otherwise seems willfully stupid and in this case self serving.
I feel like many people would disagree with you.
Here's another example. Say a person makes pornographic photos and videos for their significant other, suppose that content gets leaked onto the internet and is uploaded to popular torrent sites without their permission. How is piracy of this sort of content not an invasion of privacy? How is piracy of this sort of content not unethical?
I felt like it was pretty clear that I was not talking about things as small as pirating a couple movies and games from multimillion dollar companies?
Is it not piracy? Please clarify the difference to me?
I feel like I've been pretty clear that this sort of example is not what I'm talking about..
I don't see why I need your permission? I feel like talking about when it is and isn't ethical to reproduce data is appropriate in this sort of community.
The ethics of data reproduction have been discussed in piracy communities for decades. It's a central topic to communities centered around data reproduction. Pretending otherwise is stupid.
Am I? Or are you arguing in bad faith on a topic you didn't bother to read the context of?
Arguably software, films and music aren't "publically available" in the sense that they're only conditionally available to the public (ignoring piracy).
But okay, lets take the pornographic example. Say they occasionally sell nude photos to acquaintances too. Now the photos are in some sense "publicly available" in the sense that some people can buy them. Is it now suddenly okay to pirate this media? If so, then why?
Did you not read my very first example where I claimed almost exactly that. What have you been thinking I was talking about?
Feel free to clarify why? At what point does my example become what we're talking about? Is it the number of people the content is sold for? Is it the amount of money the content is sold for? Enlighten me.
Piracy is stealing- but so is capitalism so it’s fine.
It may sound the same but making a copy of something is absolutely not the same as taking something. It’s an important distinction.
You're taking away the profit they deserve for the work and effort it took them to create the information.