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This is the usual argument that piracy is not stealing, yeah. I've never found it persuasive. IMO the salient thing which defines stealing isn't that it's zero-sum, it's that you're taking something which doesn't belong to you. So it doesn't matter that you are just copying bits, it's still stealing.
I mean, yeah I agree that media companies are being idiotic. They have resisted new methods of doing business at every step of the way, right up until their hand is forced and it turns out they actually make more money the new way. But that doesn't mean it's OK to just steal their shit, nor that the law should turn a blind eye to it. Kind of like I was saying in my post above: if companies are retarded in their business practices you should by all means not do business with them, but it doesn't justify stealing from them.
Let’s say you’re JRR Tolkien and you’ve written the Lord of the Rings. It’s your unique creation and without you no copies could exist.
From my perspective, that means that you have a right to own the creation as a whole in perpetuity. This is why the argument that because copying doesn’t remove any given physical iteration of the work nothing has been taken from the owner never made much sense to me. This is also why I don’t think you should be able to buy or contractually obtain (as opposed to lease) copyright from someone. You are attempting to appropriate the rights of creatorship without being the creator.
(This is the maximal scenario for me. Lots of circumstances can reduce the author’s rights morally and in practice. For example, if the work was created by many people cooperating, like a TV show, if you take TLoR and just change a couple of the words, if the author is dead and the copyright is held by their great-grandchildren who despise him, etc.)
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The reason theft is wrong is because you are depriving someone of their property, the use of said property, and indirectly the time and effort put into creating/obtaining that piece of property.
This is why the matter replicator thought experiment is salient. If someone came up to me and said, can I have your car for free, I'd say no. However, if instead they wanted to merely duplicate it perfectly at no cost to me, I would instead agree.
Bolded for emphasis. If someone invests money into creating something, it doesn't matter if it's replicatable on a massive scale.
I'm unapologetically a pirate of a lot of media (if it's not provided to me in a DRM-free format at what I consider to be a fair price). But I won't try and wriggle out of the question of if I'm stealing or not. I definitely am.
Except this again ignores that copying some copyrighted work does not deprive the person who created it of anything.
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I disagree. Theft is wrong because taking something which doesn't belong to you is inherently wrong. As I said, that's why I don't consider the copying distinction salient.
You're not even correct by the points of your own argument, though.
When I copy a photograph, what have I taken?
Nothing, I've taken nothing. The original item is still there as it always was, yet I also have a copy of it.
If nothing is taken, there can be no "taking" of something which doesn't belong to you.
Further, the idea that one can own a particular pattern of matter or bits is seems mistaken.
Even the US Constitution acknowledges that you can't own "intellectual property" in the Copyright Clause
Clearly acknowledges that we're conferring a limited right for a specific public purpose, not that there is an inherent right of intellectual property.
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"Taking" harms someone due to deprivation of the old owner, not possession by the new one. Copying is not taking in any meaningful sense. There is no moral case against copying in and of itself; you can argue that since we have laws against it, those laws should be followed, and you can argue that creating and enforcing these laws is net-positive for everyone, but the act itself is clearly net-positive in its first-order effects.
If you look at the right of property ownership, a useful way to conceptualize it is as a bundle of collateral rights. 'Intellectual property' is a wonky case, because some of the analogies to physical property don't hold up--as you say, if I copy a work that you created, I have not removed the original from your possession. But some of the other collateral rights do hold up in analogy: in this case, the 'right to exclude.' If I own a piece of land, I generally have the right to exclude others from it--if you want to get from one side of my property to the other, you need to go around, otherwise you are trespassing. If there is an easement that generally lets people cross a corner of my property without being liable for trespass, that is one stick out of the full and complete bundle of rights that I'd otherwise have to the property.
IMO, the maximalist positions both ways have flaws; I think there's something to the 'intellectual property is a form of property' position, but it's a substantially non-central example of such.
This seems to still derive from there only being one physical piece of property, which allows only one sort of use or occupation at a time. I need to keep others off my land because their use impinges on mine. If someone could create a functionally-identical piece of land that they could occupy and use without impinging on me, up to and including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain, we'd be right back to the situation where there's no obvious harm to doing so.
I don't recognize a moral right to exclude other people from ownership and participation as such. I recognize a right to exclude because such a right is necessary to prevent obvious harms from squatting, but duplication obviates those harms and thus the necessity for such a principle. Artificial scarcity for its own sake seems innately perverse.
There's also value based on scarcity. If I own a piece of real property near Disneyland, the value of that property is not merely based on the utility of being-near-Disneyland, but also the reality that this proximity is rare--if you could create "a functionally-identical piece of land...including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain" then the value of my property would be markedly reduced, even though the baseline utility of being-near-Disneyland hasn't changed.
Like if the crusty old farmer next door suddenly decides to turn his back 40 into condos? I don't think you have the right to stop him in this instance.
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Yes, but I would argue that no one has a right to the preservation of such value. If you own the property next to Disneyland, Disneyland doesn't need your permission to close down and move, and if you own the highway to Disneyland, you don't have a right to quash air travel.
Your right to that value is contingent, not innate. We grant that right because not granting it would have other, worse effects, not because granting it is good in itself. If we could deny that right without those other harmful effects, we'd be better off doing so even if the result is the loss of the value you held. Enforcing artificial scarcity may be a necessary evil in some rare cases, but it's still evil and very often not even necessary.
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You're playing silly semantic games with "taking". To take something does not require deprivation of possession, but even if it did that's a poor hinge for your argument. You're nitpicking my word choice, not offering a substantive objection.
You are using the label "taking" because it has strong negative associations. It has strong negative associations because central examples of "taking" cause harm. Duplication of data very clearly does not cause harm in these ways. This is basic logic, not "playing silly semantic games". Stretching affect-loaded labels to cover highly non-central examples of what they're supposed to describe, on the other hand, pretty clearly is playing silly semantic games. I can't stop you from calling duplication "taking", but I certainly can point out that doing so is dishonest. But hey, don't take my word for it when you can consult the sacred texts.
Ah, so you're not playing semantic games, you're accusing me of bad faith. Yes, that's so much better. /s
No, my good man, I'm not using the term "taking" to try to cash in on some negative connotations in a disingenuous way. It was just a simple word choice, one which I maintain is actually the correct one (taking never has meant that one must deprive someone of something, nor does it have negative connotations, contrary to your assertions on both counts). But even if I were wrong on that score (which I don't believe I am), I'm not some kind of bad faith commenter trying to twist words to my advantage. At the absolute worst, I made a poor choice of words.
It's honestly super obnoxious that you (and others) have chosen to jump down my throat over a simple word choice, one which doesn't actually affect my position even if I had used something else. Maybe instead of assuming bad faith on my part, you should follow the forum rules (you know, the other holy texts) and be charitable.
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I would disagree and say you are the one playing a semantic game here.
Taking implies that there is some thing (item) which you now have which no one else can now have because you have it.
That is simply impossible in the case we're talking about.
Again: that is not part of what it means to take something. But even if it were, that is still not a substantive objection to my point. That is nitpicking my choice of words, not actually a meaningful argument against my position.
It is, in fact, what it means to take something.
And since it is, it is also a substantive objection to your point.
And since it is a substantive objection, you have not answered it.
No, it's not a substantive objection. This is what I mean when I say you (and others) are just playing semantic games. Let's say I rephrase my argument thusly to appease your idiosyncratic definition of "take":
Stealing is to come into possession of something, or even to copy it, against the wishes of the person who owns it.
Nothing has actually changed in my argument. I've simply replaced the word "take" with a much wordier phrasing just because you're being a pedant (and an incorrect one at that). So now, you still have to address my actual position instead of playing inane word games. Which is why I said your objection is not substantive. You are attacking merely the word choice, and not the actual position I hold.
I don't know why you're so hell bent on playing semantic games. Nor do I understand where the hell you get the impression it's somehow my fault. I wasn't the one to start this pedantry about "well ackshually taking things means x". I'm simply responding to the semantic games others initiated.
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Since the phrasing here seems to be causing a lot of confusion, I will offer a potential clarification. Is it your position that posession of something that doesn't belong to you is immoral regardless of how you came to have it? Therefore quantifying harm done to the original owner is irrelevant?
No, because someone can give something to you and that's perfectly fine.
In that case the item now belongs to you, no? Should we enumerate all the legitimate ways to transfer ownership and assume anything else to be stealing, or should we draw a narrow definition around stealing and consider everything outside it to be acceptable?
This is the “license” solution. GPL, BSD, MIT…they’re all sets of contract terms defining acceptable use.
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You appear to be asserting that if I steal my neighbor's chainsaw, that's bad, but if I then give it to you, that's perfectly fine.
I don't think that's what you mean to say, but it is what you're actually saying. I think you should consider stepping away from the keyboard, taking a couple deep breaths, and thinking a bit about how this thread is going, because at the moment you don't appear to be doing a good job of either understanding or conveying meaning with the words you use. I genuinely do not mean this to be insulting, and invite you to show this thread to someone you trust for a disinterested outside perspective. I do not wish you ill, but I do find this thread bewildering; I recognize your name from the old place, and do not remember you acting in this manner in the past. If you like, I'll step out here and leave you to it.
I agree on the object level, but you seem to be overheating a little yourself, dude. Calling his argument "dishonest", "crazy" and "very stupid" isn't too civil.
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Whether it's "stealing" or not, I think that, in some cases, there is no moral obligation to respect copyright. Copyright is a truce, an agreement, to encourage certain productive behaviors that are otherwise difficult to incentivize. As the US Constitution says,
(emphasis mine). To the extent that copyright etc. accomplishes something useful, then it makes some sense to respect it. But calling it property (as in, "intellectual property") is a lie, a legal fiction. If an agent is abusing copyright law to oppose its intended use--which large music companies and ticketmaster do, for example--then I see no reason to respect it. They are violating the agreement, not as written, because they used their ill-gotten gains to lobby lawmakers in a twisted Kafakesque circle of theft, but certainly in spirit. I certainly don't see a moral requirement to pay a middleman who exploited legal loopholes rather than the actual creator.
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But you don't, you're not taking something which doesn't belong to you. You're making a copy of something which doesn't belong to you. The original item still belongs to the original owner.
In fact that owner can be happy for you to do that. So if my friend bought a CD and gave it to me for me to copy - is it still stealing? And if yes, from who?
No, you're taking it. The semantic game you're trying to play is silly.
The semantic game you're trying to play is irrelevant. Nothing is missing, no damage done, but it's still somehow stealing. What you can say if you want to actually somehow formalize your intuition - there's a potentially lost profit for the company which originally created the product. But they sold the product and the owner is fine for me to copy it. You need to squeeze your eyes really hard to make it "stealing". The owner of the product you're supposedly "stole" it from is fine.
The difference between "taking it" and "copying it" is not just semantics, it's an objective difference. Which can lead to the weird situations when your "stealing" can miss the victim. So is it still stealing at this point? Obviously it's still is pattern matching by your intuition to stealing, fine. I think you're kind of replacing the damage which is no longer done to the owner of the "stolen" object with the potential indirect damage done (in the form of lost profit) to the original author. Which my intuition matches to not stealing.
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But are your moral intuitions completely in line with the law on all points of what things can be "owned" as intellectual property?
As a simple example, clothing designs can't be copyrighted in most of the world because clothing is considered utilitarian.
If I make a knock-off dress, that's completely legal. Do you consider me to be morally as bad as a person who has pirated a movie? Do you think the law should be changed to punish people who copy clothing designs as well?
Or what about board games? Game mechanics and rules are not copyrightable.
It is perfectly legal for me to make a clone of Monopoly, as long as I use my own names, art, presentation of the rules, etc. for everything. Do you think if I make such a clone that I'm "stealing" something not currently covered by law from Hasbro?
Don't get me wrong. I understand your position to a degree, but I find it highly suspicious when a moral position is identical with the law. How do you morally deal with situations like the UK granting perpetual copyright on Peter Pan, because the copyright is owned by a hospital? Do you think I'm stealing, if I download the original Peter Pan stories from Project Gutenberg in the United States, even though there's someone, somewhere in the world with a claim to ownership over that intellectual property? What about if I make my own original Peter Pan stories, since he's public domain here? If it's morally okay for me to download the original Peter Pan stories or make Peter Pan fan ficiton in the United States despite the perpetual UK copyright, is it okay to pirate copies of other works in countries that aren't party to the Berne Copyright convention?
I think one thing one needs to clarify here is that not all violations of copyright are the same. For example, copyright should not allow someone to claim a monopoly on the characters and fictional world they created, just the specific stories they wrote (or at minimum that kind of monopoly should be very sharply limited).
So with that said, no I don't think all of the examples you listed are stealing. I also think that it's unreasonable for some of them to be covered by copyright law at all. I would never say that the state of copyright law (or IP law more generally) is perfect. I wouldn't even say it rises to the level of "acceptable". IP law is in many cases quite immoral, and is in dire need of reform.
If you agree that downloading the original Peter Pan in the US isn't "stealing" despite the perpetual UK copyright of that work, then do you agree that a person can morally object to the length of copyright terms in a country, and morally pirate all works older than a certain age?
For example, if I decide to live by a self-imposed 28-year "moral copyright" code, where I only pirate things older than 28 years old (the original copyright term in 1790 in the United States), do you think I am stealing when I download a work from 1993? (If you think 28 years is too short, substitute some arbitrary time less than the 95 years of modern US copyright.)
Mmm, I'm not sure. I can't really say yes or no with confidence. I guess if I had to pick one or the other I would say no, that isn't stealing, because at some point the law has overreached what is moral. I'm not sure where exactly the age would be though.
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