It is theft, by your own definition. By the dictionary definition that you just posted, you’re stealing (“the action or crime of stealing”) income from the creator, unless they’re explicitly giving that creation away for free.
It’s not factually untrue. You can’t make that kind of generalization when it objectively does not apply to every studio and every distributor.
Everything else you’ve said is pointless because you’re only arguing about a subset of content. I’m arguing about all content. People who make the content deserve to be paid for the fruits of their labor. If you don’t pay the distributors, then they stop distributing that content and the people who made it are out of jobs. Netflix, Amazon, and Funimation aren’t going to pay those people to produce more content if people steal it. It’s literally as simple as that.
You guys are all bending over backwards to defend the very thing that is keeping the situation the way it is and forcing creators to work for these giant distributors. We’re literally using the internet, a place where creators can self-publish their content, and you guys are pretending that piracy is not theft. It’s madness.
Now you’re just arguing semantics. Argue the point. Do people deserve to be paid for the work that they create and, if not, why are you entitled to view and consume the fruit of their labor without paying for it (with the exception of them explicitly granting that)?
I’m not arguing the legal or criminal semantics. I’m arguing the dishonest justification and misrepresentation of piracy. Piracy is stealing. You’re stealing income from the creator if you ingest their work without paying for it. I don’t care if people pirate things but admit that it’s stealing and move on.
I was saying that it doesn’t matter whose fault it is to your assertion that “it’s not the creators or the consumers” fault. Piracy does have a person that’s at fault and, logically, it’s the person getting something for free that is not being offered for free.
I’m not talking about anyone justifying their existence through labor. You’re arguing a straw man. I’m stating that creators make something with the intent to get paid for that thing. Their motivation for why they’re doing so (whether it’s to participate in the system, “justify their existence”, personal gratification, or otherwise) is irrelevant to the argument being made. Having numerable instances where people are uncompensated doesn’t justify those situations anymore than it justifies this one.
Everything else you said about artists is all well and good and entirely meaningless to the people who can’t afford to pay their bills because they have no choice but to live within the market that they do. Of course I’d be happy if we lived in a Star Trekian utopia where money doesn’t matter anymore but we don’t and pirating content that people make isn’t going to change that.
All I’m arguing is that it’s dishonest to suggest that piracy is not stealing when the entire proposition of piracy is an entitlement to be able to consume something without paying for it. That is stealing by any stretch of the imagination. Whether you’re watching a movie without paying for it, using a website that someone built for you that you didn’t pay for, or having sex with a prostitute who you refuse to pay… it’s all stealing.
You’re talking about supply and demand for intangible products. That means that you’re either being intentionally obtuse about the fact that intangibles aren’t affected by supply and therefore can’t be bound to it or you’re being dishonest about the argument from the start. No one is talking about slavery. No one mentioned it. You’re mischaracterizing what I said so that you can dismiss it because it invalidates the argument you’ve attempted to make.
And now you’ve confirmed that you’re being dishonest because I’ve said far more than “that’s just the way it is”. I’ve provided the logic behind the argument and the evidence for why it is stealing and even prefaced the argument with the clarification that I am not against piracy and that I believe that there are situations in which case it may be justified and even beneficial. You ignoring that is why I know you’re being dishonest and why this third point is justified.
I’m not saying that because I don’t like your reasoning. I’m saying it because what you’ve said has no bearing on the point I’m making nor is it in any way an argument against what I’m saying. You’re arguing something else entirely which means it’s irrelevant to the point I’m making and therefore unnecessary to address or even validate.
No, it’s not. If you are just walking past that item, you’re not consuming the value of that item. If you’re being honest about this argument and attempted to make the analogous argument, you wouldn’t be watching the movies that you’re not paying for. The entire issue is that you’re not just walking past the items at the grocery store, you’re eating them and not paying for them. A better analogy would be grabbing a magazine off the rack at checkout and taking pictures of all the pages and not paying for it. The magazine is still there and the store was deprived of nothing but yet you’re now able to gain the value of that magazine’s content without paying for it. That’s still stealing. You can either pretend it’s not or you can say “Yeah, it’s stealing but I’m ok with that because those magazines are garbage anyways”.
Another dishonest argument. FreeCAD is explicitly granting people use of its product for free. They are not selling it. If someone opts to use a free product instead of a paid one, that is not stealing income from the creator of the paid product because you’re not using their product. The entire issue at hand is that people are using the productandnot paying for that use.
Ugh…but that isn’t the point of my argument that you responded to. I don’t care what you want to call it but arguing that it’s appropriation versus theft is simply pedantic and not useful. At the end of the day, the argument is that someone is taking the value of the work/product when they consume/ingest it without compensating the creator of that work/product.
You just admitted that the terms have to be fair for both parties and yet you’re sitting here arguing that the explicit denial of the rights of one of the parties is only allowed when it benefits you.
I agree with you in regard to DRM. DRM is stupid. I’ve never argued against that.
I also agree with you about media becoming “unavailable”. I never argued against that. In fact, elsewhere within this very thread, I’ve argued that using terms like “Buy” and “Sell” for items, whether tangible or not, should be considered fraud unless you own the items being bought and sold indefinitely and in perpetuity.
I didn’t presume anything about you. I was using the term “you” in the general sense to ask an idealogical question about why someone (putting you in the position that you’re arguing for) should be able to take advantage of said situation while not being subject to the same for the other party.
This is just like sovereign citizen bullshit. They want all the advantages of being a citizen but are LARP’ing in a reality where they’re bound by none of the responsibilities and rules that everyone else abides by. “You” want the advantages of watching movies (or whatever intangible content “you” want to choose to insert here) that “you” want to watch without paying for them while also not being bound by the repercussions and issues caused by not paying for it.
I don’t always pay for what I watch/read/play. But I don’t pretend that I’m not stealing when I do so. Whenever possible, and 100% of the time when I enjoy something, I pay for it.
That’s not a better example. You’re comparing a physical item with tangible scarcity to an intangible product. While you’re reading that book, no one else can read that. There is only 1 copy of it. Someone can get another copy of it but the one you hold is physical. Movies and other digital content is intangible. It’s not bound by that scarcity.
It would be worse for you to “lose” money and the creators gain nothing but that’s not the situation you’re discussing. We’re discussing a situation where you gain something and the creator gains nothing.
Then we’ll have to agree to disagree. It doesn’t matter how many levels of abstraction or semantics you hide it behind, you’re gaining from something made by another person without returning that gain (whether financially or otherwise) to that person.
He clearly directed the attack at me since he wants to come into my house and smash my keyboard or whatever the fuck he said. Introducing pedantry to the mix isn’t useful or helpful.
The point is that he didn’t provide any counter to the argument. He’s done nothing to address the actual argument and has simply made an attack. I don’t need to argue the semantics of it unless they care to actually address the points I’m making.
Someone else posted the definition of stealing in this thread elsewhere. If I gain something from someone without giving them what they’ve demanded in return, it’s stealing.
I don’t see anywhere that I’ve thrown a tantrum. I’ve been civil and respectful of all the people replying to me, even when they haven’t returned that in kind, and even attempted to bring some replies back to civility when I felt like the person was arguing in earnest. My point stands and no one has really argued the actual point without contradicting themselves.
That’s not true. It is not “literally the situation you’re discussing”. You don’t “lose” money if you’re paying for access to something. Paying for a ticket to a museum to see artwork isn’t you “losing” money just because you don’t walk out of the museum with something tangible.
You’re just arguing semantics about the word “creator” now. The other options you’ve provided are still basing your choice on a tangible good which is not the situation here. You can’t buy a “used” version of an intangible good so the rest of your argument is irrelevant to the situation actually being argued.
You are free and welcome to disagree but that doesn’t invalidate my point or my argument. I haven’t ignored anything unless it was irrelevant to the point (like the DRM arguments or the arguments about media that’s no longer available for purchase) and I’m not arguing the semantics of the words being used to describe the situation unless the person arguing against my point focuses on the semantics of those words as opposed to the actual crux of my argument. I’m not arguing against the legality of anything so that is also irrelevant. I haven’t deflected or ignored whether I have a moral argument or not, I’ve simply stated that it is also irrelevant to my point because, in an exchange, both parties have to gain something and agree to the exchange. That’s neither a moral nor a legal argument.
I’m glad you’re getting a chuckle but I suspect that your delight stems more from who you are as a person rather than anything I’ve actually said.
No, that’s not what I’m arguing. I’m arguing that they deserve to be paid because they’re asking to be paid for their work rather than giving it away for free. Their reasons for wanting to get paid are irrelevant. They are not offering the product of their labor for free. Full stop. Why they’re doing that doesn’t matter.
the entire proposition of digital copyright is an entitlement to be able to extract currency from something that’s infinitely reproducible by denying access to it.
I’m not talking about copyright, though! Copyright is a legal concept defined by lawmakers. I’m not focusing on the legality of piracy at all. I don’t care if it’s legal or not and I don’t care about the copyright. I’m simply arguing that people create things and expect to get paid for them. They don’t create them to give them away for free unless they’ve explicitly decided to do that.
watching a movie without paying for it’: like renting a movie from a library? sharing a dvd with a friend? time and format-shifting a dvd you’ve bought? plenty of legal examples here that are inconsistent with what you’re saying
watching a movie without paying for it’: like renting a movie from a library? sharing a dvd with a friend? time and format-shifting a dvd you’ve bought? plenty of legal examples here that are inconsistent with what you’re saying
Libraries have to get permission from creators to carry intangible goods. Libraries do not and cannot just buy media and offer it for consumption without permission, especially for digital media that is intangible. Sharing a DVD with a friend is a tangible good and therefore has physical limitations that intangible media does not so it is not the same. And, again, I’m not arguing about the legal implications of any of this so whether or not other things are legal or not is irrelevant.
‘using a website that someone built for you that you didn’t pay for’: this is a weird one, since ‘using a website that someone built without paying for it’ is exactly how the internet works now… Unless you mean stiffing a contractor you had an agreement with?
Stiffing a contractor is exactly what I mean. The person that created your website. The person that created the intangible good that you seem to be arguing is just fine to copy indefinitely without paying that person for their time (again, unless they’ve explicitly granted its free use).
‘having sex with a prostitute who you refuse to pay’: another weird and grotesque example… but I think conceptually the same as the website example? Stiffing a contractor?
Why is that a weird and/or grotesque example? Sex workers are people and provide a service. So, yes…stiffing a contractor.
‘That is stealing by any stretch of the imagination’: and it is quite a stretch (you’ve misused this turn-of-phrase)
Ok? I don’t think I did but does that really matter? The point still stands whether I used the idiom correctly or not.
You gave someone money who had permission to sell that thing to you. You have less money and, in exchange, you have access to consume the media/intangible good in question. This is not semantics. This is the literal situation that you were arguing.
The fact that you don’t see a distinction between tangible and intangible goods is exactly why you keep making arguments that make no sense and don’t logically hold up against the point I’m making. The difference matters because, even in your other irrelevant examples of buying used copies, borrowing discs, or renting, someone had to pay for that physical item or you would not have access to it. Intangible and tangible matters here because you can’t buy a used copy of an intangible item!
So… no. I don’t have to believe any of the other things you’ve mentioned because, in every single one of those cases, there is a tangible good that someone paid for which the author/creator was compensated that is physically limited that doesn’t exist for an intangible good. Your argument is still fundamentally flawed and, therefore, not a valid argument against my point.
I think it’s telling that you found that to be an ad-hominem when I made no attack about you whatsoever.
It’s not irrelevant because it’s an objective statement followed by a question about that statement. The morals, semantics, or legality of it isn’t what I’m arguing about (although I might concede that it could be argued as an ethical question which may converge slightly with morals).
Neither of those things are true. I’m not ignoring that at all. In fact, I haven’t argued anything about the price of media at all. If you don’t agree that the value of the product is worth what someone is charging for it, don’t buy it.
Your second statement also is not true unless you believe the flawed idea that people are entitled to those products. You’ve provided a false dichotomy. A third option is that people simply don’t find the price being asked worth that amount and simply don’t ingest that. Piracy is not the only other option and the idea that not having piracy would mean that things are more expensive is nonsense. People would simply not watch those movies or consume that media and creators/distributors would be forced to lower prices or not make any money and cease to exist.
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