this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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The ethical issue here has nothing to do with damaging any property at all.
Why are you conflating damaging property with causing harm? It's at least arguable that an invasion of privacy is harmful, regardless of whether or not property damage occurs.
In my example privacy invasion definitely occurs. If you disagree with that, then you should review what I initially said.
If the notion that when people don't want to share things with you, you have an unqualified right to take those things, and that doing that is just inherently not damaging, then I think your position is unrealistic and incredibly self serving.
Do you have some point to make here besides claiming you're just never doing anything wrong when it serves your interests?
Your point is wrong. My point is that you can't always (ethically) just copy other peoples stuff, just like you can't always just take things from people. My point is not that piracy is never justified. My point is not that you are personally doing something wrong by pirating things. My point is not that you can't be justified in copying other peoples stuff sometimes without permission. My point is not that piracy or copying other peoples data and documents always causes harm.
Edit: When was pirating "publically available" software specifically ever central to my point?
The only response you've given is "that's not harmful", which is in no way an argument for why it isn't. It's not totally inconceivable that taking things, even data, without permission can be harmful and to claim otherwise seems willfully stupid and in this case self serving.
I feel like many people would disagree with you.
I'll take your approach. No, that's not what "taking something" means, because clearly the definition they're using for that is more inclusive.
Here's another example. Say a person makes pornographic photos and videos for their significant other, suppose that content gets leaked onto the internet and is uploaded to popular torrent sites without their permission. How is piracy of this sort of content not an invasion of privacy? How is piracy of this sort of content not unethical?
I felt like it was pretty clear that I was not talking about things as small as pirating a couple movies and games from multimillion dollar companies?
Is it not piracy? Please clarify the difference to me?
Arguably software, films and music aren't "publically available" in the sense that they're only conditionally available to the public (ignoring piracy).
But okay, lets take the pornographic example. Say they occasionally sell nude photos to acquaintances too. Now the photos are in some sense "publicly available" in the sense that some people can buy them. Is it now suddenly okay to pirate this media? If so, then why?
Did you not read my very first example where I claimed almost exactly that. What have you been thinking I was talking about?
Feel free to clarify why? At what point does my example become what we're talking about? Is it the number of people the content is sold for? Is it the amount of money the content is sold for? Enlighten me.
I feel like I've been pretty clesr that this sort of example is not what I'm talking about..
I don't see why I need your permission? I feel like talking about when it is and isn't ethical to reproduce data is appropriate in this sort of community.
The ethics of data reproduction have been discussed in piracy communities for decades. It's a central topic to communities centered around data reproduction. Pretending otherwise is stupid.
Am I? Or are you arguing in bad faith on a topic you didn't bother to read the context of?
Keep telling yourself that champ.