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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33465 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I agree with those who say that piracy is unethical and all arguments that it isn't are rationalizations.

That said, "ethical" isn't a binary. Things are not either infinitely good or infinitely bad. Some things are more unethical than others. I think as a general principle, you should not pirate. But I'd judge you a lot more harshly for shoplifting from a store, since that actually deprives the rightful owner of physical goods they could otherwise sell to someone else.

I'll also accept some rationalizations, provisionally. Very poor people who literally can't afford to pay for legal downloads? Yeah, technically they are stealing, and if they wanted to claim virtuousness they should not pirate what they can't afford, but I'm not really going to begrudge all those people in the third world for their cracked versions of Microsoft Office and bootleg MCU downloads.

OTOH, I've read justifications from pirates who are basically privileged kids in the US complaining that they can't afford it 'cause they're starving students or unemployed or whatever. No sympathy for them. If you can pay for it and you won't, you're kind of sleazy.

"I don't want to give money to people who hate me." Well, okay, but acknowledge that pirating their works is not a principled stand. Not consuming their works would be a principled stand. Pirating their works is just a fuck you. Maybe you think it's justified, and my response is "whatever," but don't tell me you're a bravely sailing the seven seas to stick it to The Man, or JK Rowling.

The piracy is a principal and ethical position if you don't accept that there can be any intellectual property, that's it. I can write a book, which is my property and i can sell that particular book to anyone even if it's fully digital product. It becomes someone else's property. But just because i wrote a book, doesn't magically gives me any rights to ANY copy of my book in anyone's elses possession, digital or not. That's their property now, i've sold this product to them, that's when my right to the book ends. The product is a particular piece of information which after selling it is no longer mine. You can't sell thing and still keep possessing it, it's literally eat the cake and have it too!

So after i sold it he can do anything with it - he can store it, he can throw it away, he can copy it and sell it as if he's still an author and you can argue that's not ethical as it's a lie. But if he sells or just gives it away without a claim that he's an author - it may deprive the original author of some potential profit but it's not unethical. His version of the book may add the value to the product - his version can be of a better quality, it can be better designed, it can be just cheaper or simply closer to someone who will buy it from him. He's not selling your book, he's selling his rightfully acquired product, it's no longer your book, you can't claim any ownershhip rights to it. You can claim author rights to it for what it's worth.

So it's not unethical at all. And even in terms of maximizing utility (i'm not utilitarian so it's not the main argument for me really) the alternative to that is strictly worse and highly dystopian imo.

Now the argument you can have is that the buying a book transaction isn't strictly speaking buying a book, it's entering the contractual obligations with a lot of points and asterisks describing what you can do with that book and what you cannot do with that book, so the book isn't really yours in any sense, you're buying the right to read it(not even the case for electronic book!) and you can't let's say resell it blablabla. If you think that's ethical - fine by me, i don't. And again it's extremely dystopian. Luckily for me I don't need to enter into those contractual obligations at all, i'm not buying this book, i'm just downloading it from someone anonymous on the internet and I'm not signing any contracts, thanks.

The piracy is a principal and ethical position if you don't accept that there can be any intellectual property, that's it.

Well, yes. And theft is a principled and ethical position if you don't accept that there can be any private property.

I am aware of the anti-IP arguments, and even have some sympathy for them on an ethical level, but you're still rationalizing.

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