The mistake in this analogy is that the stars in boxes represent things one already has, while the dollar signs represent things one might get in the future.<p>Causing someone not to get income they might otherwise have gotten is not theft. If it were, giving someone bad financial advice would also be theft.<p>Because taking something someone already has is so much more serious than causing them not to get something they hoped to get in the future, we have a specially bad word just for this situation: theft. And the RIAA and MPAA deliberately misuse this word in order to make file sharing seem worse than it actually is.
People 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.<p>Piracy does not take money away from sellers. It reduces how much they get. This is not the same thing.<p>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?<p>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?<p>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.<p>Why exactly do so many newspapers publish content for free? Surely it's the same idea - they're publishers after all…?
no, silly, piracy is not theft. piracy is piracy, its not a theft or not theft issue, its a different animal.<p>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.<p>so, piracy does not steal income.
I think we all know piracy is not theft. It's robbery and murder at sea. Infringement is not theft either as best I can tell. But ask a lawyer if the question pertains to your specific situation.
"Piracy" is just as inappropriate and ridiculous as "theft" as a term to describe illegal copying or copyright infringement. Call it what it is, "illegal copying." It fits its own class, not theft of hard goods on land or piracy on the high seas.<p>"Arggg, what seas you be sailing, matey?"<p>How did the word "piracy" ever get attributed to this? Just to make it more sensational, more <i>evil</i>?
In constructing his analogy the author seems to take it as given that sneaking into a movie theater is theft. I don't consider that theft. I consider it piracy plus trespassing.
> 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.<p>Last I heard, you don't get sued/fined thousands of dollars for sneaking into a movie theater....
Piracy is a strange beast, but it is definitely NOT theft.<p>If I download a song - it does not directly negatively impact the artist. They aren't out anything.<p>The indirect impact on the artist is another matter. They are potentially out of a sale that could have otherwise happened without the piracy. However, they are also potentially gaining a sale from a user who would have not normally purchased their music, but downloaded and decided to buy. Just like listening to a song on the radio isn't theft - yet if you are only listening to the radio and not buying music are you stealing?<p>It most certainly should not carry harsher penalties than physical theft. Downloading a song should not result in a 1000$ penalty while a physical theft of a CD results in a lesser penalty.
I'd like the author of this post to know that to the extent that he persuades people that piracy is bad, and they are thus less likely to share things on peer-to-peer networks, he is forcing me to pay for stuff I'd otherwise download. This is not 'stealing revenue', but it is burdening me with expenses -- and at the bottom line, that's the same thing.<p>So I'll assume he's consistent in his moral principles once the check clears.
If you're going to get all pedantic about these terms, certainly you must bring up the <i>actual</i> definition of "piracy":<p><i>Piracy is a robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, without a commission from a sovereign nation.</i><p>That said, whatever you want to call it, it's hard to deny it's illegal in many places. If you're ok with breaking the law, and you think it's moral to "pirate", then by all means go ahead.
In his attempt to provide a better analogy, the author's is no better than the "stealing" example:
"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."<p>The movie theater has costs associated with the playing of said movie. It pays employees, cashiers, ushers, cleaners, licensing fees, operators... etc etc... These costs are covered by the revenue from said ticket purchase. On the other hand, when a pirated copy is made, there is absolutely no ADDITIONAL cost to the content's creator(s). Actually, people typically use their own resources (time especially) to reproduce these works.<p>As previously stated, this new medium needs new rules and new ways to participate.<p>Besides, last time I checked the people complaining the loudest about piracy benefit the most from it.
I think part of what gets confused in these discussions is that there are (at least) two reasons we might restrict a behavior: 1) because the act itself causes harm; 2) because allowing the act to occur will lead to an undesirable outcome.<p>Historically, copyright law is type (2) -- specifically, it's a response to the threat that creators will not create without financial incentive. The copying isn't itself undesirable; we're more interested in encouraging a specific outcome.<p>Where most of the purportedly analogous arguments go wrong is that they describe actions that are type (1).<p>As an example, lots of people here are suggesting that a better analogy to file sharing is the act of sneaking into a movie theater. But this seems pretty clearly to be a case of an act that is restricted due to (1); that is, it's illegal because it's trespassing, which is undesirable in its own right.
>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.<p>Some cinemas are set up to facilitate sneaking in: having passed the usher to get into one film, you can then stay and watch any number you like.<p>This is semi-deliberate: it turns out that they gain more money from people who wouldn't otherwise bother, than they lose from people who would otherwise buy two.<p>Maybe these people are committing "theft", but it's still a mutually beneficial relationship. This doesn't obviously apply to most internet piracy, as in that case nothing is bought at all, but it's worth considering.
Isn't this all just semantics? It all just depends on how you define theft. From what I understand, given the legal definition, it generally (but not always) is not exactly theft.
Leaving aside whether pirates would pay for the item, the idea that someone has a right to future sales is wrong. The guy who opens a competing business "hurts" Best Buy in exactly the same way that a pirate does, but this doesn't mean that he's actually taken anything from them, because they don't own future sales -- they only <i>hope</i> to eventually own them.<p>[Edit: but, reading down the page, I see that pg already made a similar point more concisely. Oh, well. :) ]
to understand that it does not steal income, you would need to live in place where authorized copy of MS Office exceeds net month salary of an Engineer. Would you pay one month salary for MS Windows? This is something that Western companies just do not understand when making business in Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam. When they hire guys to work for 300usd a month that's perfectly fine. When they offer software written by Indians for the same price in India as in the US - they consider it normal too? Very interesting logic.<p>I make over 100usd/hr and I pay for my software. My colleges in developing countries make it in a week and I don't blame them for copying software. Otherwise they would stay forever poor instead of learning stuff.