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I’d like to solicit themotte’s thoughts on the ethics of piracy. Specificlly movies, software, and music.
Sharing copyrighted data has been a part of the internet landscape for as long as there has been networked computers. I know it traces back to the bbs days and likely even earlier than that.
Back in the early aughts I was involved in a forum where we would scan for unsecured FTP servers and then fill them with the latest movie music and software releases straight from the groups who actually created and distributed the files. The beauty of this is that you were transferring between commercial networks so the speeds were ludicrous.
This was not long after Napster popularized file sharing and typical online user was very much of the opinion that copying data and sharing it was not equivalent to stealing. Maybe it was the circles I traveled in and my age at the time, but nearly everyone was ethically fine with downloading media. The only reason one wouldn’t do it was that there you needed some minimal level of technical know how to find more than just music on p2p networks. The only folks opposed to it were media corporations, some artists, and a small amount of corporate shills.
Once iTunes, steam, Netflix’s, Spotify, and other commercial options became available, most people stopped file sharing and simply bought media. It was a common to hear the refrain that piracy was a result of lack of access to media online. If there was ease of access and a fair price, most people would be happy to purchase software. This sentiment is still common but I sense it’s become less prominent over the last few years. The streaming environment has become quite fracutured and has impaired both the ease of access and price point for legally consuming media online.
The point of this post is to suggest that people’s opinion on the ethics of media piracy is diametrically opposed to where it was for most of the internets history. The median online opinion that I see is that piracy = theft. Many of these people are young and have been thought from an early age that piracy is not ethical. I suspect that many have also changed their opinion as they age and perhaps are not working at software/medi companies where piracy not affects them directly.
From a personal perspective, I stopped pirating media when iTunes and steam hit the market because it was in fact easier to obtain things legally and I was happy to pay.
That changed about 4 years ago when I realized that I could not in good conscience pay money to Hollywood and leftist game developers. I am happy to pirate their software and steal their movies because the alternative is so distasteful to me. I will occasionally really enjoy something and find the creators to be acceptable enough to support. In those cases I will purchase something after the fact to support people that I agree with. I encourage everyone to do the same. Enforcement of file sharing these days is non-existent. You can pretty much use the the pirate bay without worry and ignore the occasional email from you isp asking you to stop. Though there are many other alternatives out there that don’t take long to find.
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.
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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