No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
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No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
1–10 of 103 posts
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#2Another lame argument I hear is that all IP is essentially some number, and since you can't copyright a number, there is no such thing as IP.
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#3no, silly, piracy is not theft. piracy is piracy, its not a theft or not theft issue, its a different animal.
the rebuttal makes the assumption that pirates will actually pay for the item if they can't get it for free. 90% (i made this number up) of pirates would not pay for the item that they're pirating. hypothetically, if i were unable to pirate photoshop, i'd use gimp instead. i wouldn't go buy photoshop.
so, piracy does not steal income.
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#4Another lame argument I hear is that all IP is essentially some number, and since you can't copyright a number, there is no such thing as IP.
That's a good argument
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#5People need to stop thinking of piracy as theft or not theft. It's a digitally reproducible item which makes traditional concepts of property obsolete and it's about time the law and the record industry started coming up with terms which match this status.
Piracy does not take money away from sellers. It reduces how much they get. This is not the same thing.
The best example I heard was this: say you're a baker and you sell bread. One day it starts raining bread, and people pick up their bread from the street rather than pay for yours. It sucks for you that you aren't getting money from your bread, but how can you blame people for what they're doing?
Price is dictated by supply and demand, and there's now a supply which is infinite and therefore, by traditional economics, surely it should be free?
I don't agree that you should be able to get stuff from artists etc for free. I make a point of paying for the albums I download if I like them, and I pay for movies and TV I like. But it's not a question of ethics, it's a question of what exactly it is you're paying or not paying for.
Why exactly do so many newspapers publish content for free? Surely it's the same idea - they're publishers after all…?
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#6Another lame argument I hear is that all IP is essentially some number, and since you can't copyright a number, there is no such thing as IP.
That's a good argument
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#7Another lame argument I hear is that all IP is essentially some number, and since you can't copyright a number, there is no such thing as IP.
That's a good argument
It's lame because the number is irrelevant, so it is not the core of the IP.
The important thing is whether a certain number maps to a mechanism. The mapping is the thing people are really copyrighting when they copyright IP, and that is not a number.
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#8People need to stop thinking of piracy as theft or not theft. It's a digitally reproducible item which makes traditional concepts of property obsolete and it's about time the law and the record industry started coming up with terms which match this status. Piracy does not take money away from sellers. It reduces how much they get. This is not the same thing. The best example I heard was this: say you're a baker and y…
But it's not a question of ethics
EXACTLY what someone with an ethical dilemma says.
Situational logic if there ever was any.
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#9> A much better analogy for digital piracy is sneaking into a theater to watch a movie. You are not stealing a copy of that movie, and the theater is free to show the movie to others. But you are stealing revenue that the theater would have earned had you rightfully purchased a ticket.
Last I heard, you don't get sued/fined thousands of dollars for sneaking into a movie theater....
Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft
#10no, silly, piracy is not theft. piracy is piracy, its not a theft or not theft issue, its a different animal. the rebuttal makes the assumption that pirates will actually pay for the item if they can't get it for free. 90% (i made this number up) of pirates would not pay for the item that they're pirating. hypothetically, if i were unable to pirate photoshop, i'd use gimp instead. i wouldn't go buy photoshop. so, pir…
OK, accepting your made-up figure of 90%, what about the other 10% who would pay for the item they're pirating?