this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Piracy explicitly is not stealing. Theft requires denying the owner of the ability to use the thing that is stolen. Copyright infringement does not meet this bar, and is not a crime in the vast majority of cases. Commercial copyright infringement is the only offense classed as a crime, which in a nutshell is piracy for profit ie selling pirated material.
Regardless of the semantics of what we call theft, or whether theft requires denying somebody access to some good, there's an ethical issue with copying other people's stuff without permission. If a person breaks into another persons home and makes copies of all of the documents in their home private or otherwise, they've at least committed a crime in the form of breaking and entering. But if a person is invited into another persons home, and then without pemission copies all of the documents in the house, that still feels like a wrong act? Like, if you invite me into your house and I start copying down your personal journal, your family photos and other stuff you have lying around, to me that sounds like I'd be doing something wrong by you?
Edit: I do want to point out here that I'm not saying piracy is inherently wrong/bad or never justified.
Corporations are not people, no matter what the Supreme Court says.
Literally nothing in my post claimed that, or even really implied that so I'm not sure what your point with this is?
You are discussing piracy in the context of media and copyright infringement, in which the owner of the pirated material is a corporation and the pirate is an actual person.
By comparing the act of pirating corporate owned digital material to a fictional scenario in which one person is copying another person's physical possessions very much implies that you see the corporate owners of digital material as people.
EDIT: I understand your point by the way. Is it ethical to pirate things? Maybe or maybe not, but I think the stance of most people here is that pirating stuff that is produced by giant, obscenely wealthy media conglomerates is generally okay.
EDIT: I understand your point by the way. Is it ethical to pirate things? Maybe or maybe not, but I think the stance of most people here is that pirating stuff that is produced by giant, obscenely wealthy media conglomerates is generally okay.