Thought experiment for piracy (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by zephyr@lemmy.world to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Imagine a cinema has a peeping view from the outside. Is it immoral to peek through the view? I.e: is it considered stealing to do that?

If instead of the cinema, the place was a classroom. Or a workshop, are you considered a theive?

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[-] 001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

How I've dealt with morals is that if you steal a book from a bookstore, the bookstore now has one less book. But if you took a notebook and went to the bookstore and started hand copying, word for word, when you're done, you can leave with your notebook but the bookstore owner haven't lost anything. I know hand copying a book is implausible, but what if you had superhuman writing speeds? Therefore, using technology like cameras shouldn't be any different than hand copying it.

So I concluded with: Digital Piracy =/= Theft.

Now whether digital piracy is moral or not, I don't care. I'm not stealing, I ain't a theif. Whether I pirated a book, or if I never even existed in the world, the result is the same: The bookstore never loses anything.

[-] azayrahmad@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 year ago

They lose a potential buyer, that is, you. Which is why books are plastic sealed.

Now if you don't have the means to pirate the book, would you buy it?

[-] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Now if you don't have the means to pirate the book, would you buy it?

That's the question, really. Would one just buy it or would one just go "welp, guess I'm too poor for that!" and just never watch the movie or read the book? I can tell you which one I am, I am poor, so I would just not watch, read, or listen to shit. No art for the poor I suppose.

But also, it's hard to feel bad when you're torrenting stuff like Mars Needs Women, I'm not even sure the production company still exists, most people involved in making it are likely dead, and I don't have the energy much less the money to try and track down the ONE streaming service it may be on. I don't watch things made after '09, and I don't watch popular things at all, for some of this stuff the only way to get it is piracy or buying a used DVD or VHS from some schmuck on ebay who thinks his VG+ copy of Petey Wheatstraw on VHS is worth Shantae money (it isn't.)

[-] Varlus@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Not the other guy but piracy isn't an automatic loss of sale. I've bought plenty of things I originally wouldn't have, because piracy was my "skimming the book" before buying. Not being able to pirate is like seeing the plastic wrapped book and going "I'll just look for something else then, I don't want to waste my money on something I'm not sure I'll like".

If someone has decided to pirate something, they had already decided it wasn't worth buying to begin with, they were already a "lost" sale.