3 ms·
I pirate stuff too (although I try to limit my piracy) but one difference between me and many other pirates is that I know that I am sometimes hurting people wh
by kiba 7y ago
I pirate stuff too (although I try to limit my piracy) but one difference between me and many other pirates is that I know that I am sometimes hurting people when I pirate.
Question: Is losing a sale when it would otherwise be necessarily a moral harm?
- axguscbklp 7y agoProbably not necessarily, since content creators who are already rich don't really see their lives much affected by piracy. But content creators who are not rich need to sell product in order to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, so in that case yes, as far as I can tell, there is a moral harm.
- KarlKemp 7y agoIf piracy could be limited to cases where people would not have bought the work in question, that would be ideal. You’d get fanatical support from creators who, after all, do enjoy people reading their work. But that’s just not realistic, is it? There are schemes that approximate this, using price discrimination. Libraries are among them, allowing people to read works for free or nearly free by investing the time and/or inconvenience. The staggered release of expensive hard-bound and cheaper paperback editions serve the same purpose.