That’s… a good argument. I never thought of it like that.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for the cinema? You don’t own anything new after.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for your haircut? You don’t own anything new after.
Is it stealing if you don’t pay for your car service? You don’t own anything new after.
That is actually, by law, NOT stealing, thats called fraud.
The difference is that in your later two examples, a business lost something, their time / labor. If you took someones seat at the theater, there will be a disruption at the least, maybe the customer does not get their seat or you have to be kicked out or cleaned up after, but if you don’t disrupt anything or make a mess, you caused no harm whatsoever.
No one looses anything when someone copies a file without permission. The FBI and other propaganda sources would have you believe that media companies would make more money if you didn’t copy the file, there is no evidence of that, only evidence to the contrary, even so, if it were true, taking an action that causes someone to earn less money than if the action were not taken is not theft. If I open up a store, next to your store, and sell the kind of products you sell, you will make less money than if i don’t, but no person with any self respect would ever claim that I stole anything from you, except you, the angry store owner. The reality is that these laws and their associated propaganda exist because the wealthy ruling class is terrified of making slightly less money for their investors.
Think back to the moment you learned that copying was considered theft, you knew it was ridiculous at the time, but you’ve seen so many FBI warnings, and so much of your favorite youtubers whining about facebook videos that belong to them with more views than theirs, steeling their precious views, even though almost no one on earth watches videos on facebook and on youtube, and no one who knows and wants to support a creator would ever watch their content in a way that would instead support someone else who provided no new value. The reality is that the youtuber was never going to get any views from the audience of the facebook video if the facebook video didn’t exist, but because it did, many people followed the comment saying that the video was stolen right back to the original creator. Likewise the people who are pirating software or media are probably not going to buy it in any timeline, but now that they copied the content, they might promote it to people who will actually buy it, people who otherwise would not know about it.
You even said it your last point. Those are services. We are talking about goods here.
Yes, Captain obvious thanks for pointing out that a service and a product are different things. After all why would I pirate porn when fucking a hooker doesn’t get me anything new after?
Not owning it is similar to paying to go to theater or cinema and you don’t own the thing either. I don’t see people complaining that they cannot take video in theaters.
internet piracy? i never ever would do such a thing, it is illegal. instead i will pay for 5 streaming services and never own anything. remember, you wouldn’t steal a car.
But would you download a bear? The real question
“Harry Potter is no longer available on this platform”
The only thing I would (totally naively and magically) wish for is some kind of really well organized and curated time capsule mainly for movies and music preservation.
I don’t want all the music and movies for myself, I wouldn’t be able to watch/hear it all but I wish for anyone from any time in the future — to have a simple/legal option to just dig anything out, public domain or whatever will work best.
People have created some amazing gems.
While I appreciate the sentiment, theft of service is a crime. You don’t have to be able to own something to be able to steal it.
- eskimofry ( @eskimofry@lemmy.ml ) English15•1 year ago
When evil hides behind legality, there’s no moral imperative for good people to follow laws.
There’s always this guy who’s like, aCtchUaLLy…
- eskimofry ( @eskimofry@lemmy.ml ) English5•1 year ago
Sounds quite evil then, this definition of crime and legality.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English4•1 year ago
Theft of service is stuff like getting a haircut and leaving without paying. No, it’s not evil that there are laws against doing that.
Calling software a service is quite a stretch, though.
only very specific series’s of ones and zeros are able to be stolen.
This statement feels so wrong yet also feels so correct. If companies can’t let ppl own what they paid they shouldn’t complain when ppl pirate.
Preach!
pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate let’s pirate let’s pirate let’s pirate pirate
Time to download a car!
just take my upvote
À propos stealing, the quote is from https://peoplemaking.games/@Illuminatus@mstdn.social
This is the mantra
Makes sense, if you pay for a whole cheese burger but you only get half you can take the other half.
So I can keep my rental car, got it.
I hate DRM. Especially as an open sourcer. If all methods of buying it are DRM’ed I won’t buy it. My wife has Netflix and contribute the same to OpenRightsGroup, who fight DRM, to balance out our karma. I won’t watch Netflix.
But it’s not just media now. A lot of modern device have anti-features and lockout the user. I won’t say owner, because if it’s a computer and your not admin, your not the owner. Car are terrible for this and it rubs right up against Right To Repair. They use this power imbalance to force you to use dealerships. Crazy thing is, the cars modules are also closed black boxes to car manufacturer. I’ve been to car industry talks where automotive engineers complain of this, and everyone is nodding, but they don’t see their own closeness is no better. They want other to be open with them, but don’t want to be open with others.
It’s a terrible state of play. In future, today will be a digital darkage and will only be the pirated and cracked stuff that makes it through. It’s so stupid, shortsighted, anticompetitive and certain amount of just evil.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
One might argue that software developers deserve to be paid fairly for their work.
That argument falls flat, though, when their products include user-hostile misfeatures like performance-ruining DRM and obnoxious in-app advertising, which pirates remove. By including such misfeatures, software companies are basically punishing their customers for not pirating their products.