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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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You know what say: if buying isn’t owning then pirating isn’t stealing.
Pirating isn't stealing because it's addition not subtraction. You're creating more of a thing not taking a thing away from someone who had a thing. Actually what Sony is doing here is closer to stealing as people had a thing they purchased and now they don't.
More like guidelines than actual rules
Here’s my risky comment of the day.
I think piracy isn’t like stealing, but it’s still wrong in some interesting and nuanced ways. Just so you know, I’m in no position to judge people for pirating, because I’ve done my fair share of sailing the high seas. However, I would still like to discuss the ethical aspects of piracy and how it compares with stealing.
IMO, calling it stealing is completely wrong, but free-riding or trespassing could be more suitable words for this. Obviously, the movie industry would love to compare it with the most severe crime they can come up with, but they certainly have financial incentives behind that reasoning. I’m looking at it from a more neutral perspective.
Stealing has clear and direct harm associated with it, whereas the effects of piracy are more subtle and indirect. Free-riding a bus or sneaking into a circus (AKA trespassing) are somewhat similar, but there’s clear indirect harm. If you watch a football match from the outside of the fence, it’s probably still considered free-riding, but I would put that into a completely different category. IMO it’s also closer to piracy than the other examples.
Most pirates shouldn’t be counted as lost customers, so the argument about depriving the creator of their rightful income is only partially correct. If pirating wasn’t possible, but paying for the movie was, vast majority of these people would prefer to do something else like, go outside and play football with friends. To some extent, piracy still does reduce the demand for the pirated material, so there’s an indirect harm associated with it, and that’s what makes it unethical IMO. Still not wrong enough that I would stop doing it, especially considering what the alternatives are. Again, I have no moral high ground in this situation, and I’m willing to call my own actions unethical. You can call yours whatever you want.
Piracy isn't stealing, the same way riding the subway without a ticket isn't stealing.
Riding the subway without a ticket would be called, in many jurisdictions, theft of services
It’s nice that they made the distinction between regular theft and theft of services. The harm associated with them isn’t the same, so it would make sense to treat them differently. However, I still think that describing free-riding as a theft of any kind is a bit too harsh.