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I am a tv producer. Stealing is if I invest years of blood, sweat, and capital into a project with the paradigm that in a free market exchange you can pay in so

I am a tv producer. Stealing is if I invest years of blood, sweat, and capital into a project with the paradigm that in a free market exchange you can pay in some form to view it or not and happily find some alternative way to enjoy your time. Nobody is forcing you to watch what I make and you won’t die if you don’t watch it. The creators like myself you valorize don’t exist in a vacuum. If distributors who finance the projects upfront with risk capital don’t get paid then there is nobody to pay me for making content and thus content does not get made. Financing the speculative production of a movie or tv series is inherently high risk. Let me flip the script a little michaelmrose. What do you do for your money and why should you not have to do it for me for free?

echlebek 6y ago
You have a good argument about why copyright violation is wrong, but you didn't respond to GP's arguments about why it is not theft.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft Definition of theft 1a : the act of stealing specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it Much like violating copyright isn't similar in nature to commandeering ships on the high seas its not much similar to the taking of real property in that the owner isn't deprived of anything and in fact is wholly unaffected and absent from the transaction. Actual property is the necessary resolution of the inherently rivalrous nature of property while Copyright is mandate that I limit what data I transmit to another party so as to avoid transmitting any patterns of bits that could reasonably be argued to be owned by any entity on the premise that this limitation will create an intangible good that can serve as an incentive to encourage creators to trade in it. If congress contrary to the rest of our interests grants you sole ownership of the color red I wont be a thief if I opt to paint my house that color. Really this is a tired subject having been debated endlessly since the 70s. Anyone still using it is apt to have staked out their position and decided they care more about the emotional import of the word thief than reasoned argument.
fuzxi 6y ago
>you can pay in some form to view it or not and happily find some alternative way to enjoy your time. Nobody is forcing you to watch what I make and you won’t die if you don’t watch it. That's kind of the point. Whether I pirate your work and watch it or I watch paint dry for an hour doesn't affect your bottom line, because you weren't going to get my money either way.
michaelmrose 6y ago
TV budgets are higher than ever even while piracy is easier than ever before. The only thing that could possibly kill tv would be jacking up the costs enough to keep users from enjoying them legally. I myself pay for hulu and netflix and I figure that contributes sufficiently to the shows I enjoy. It really doesn't matter what I do. My employment is an arrangement for services rendered same as yours. At the absurd limit where nobody paid for anything and absolutely everyone pirated everything nobody would be forcing you to work for free. Your employer in that scenario would have totally and wholly failed to secure an arrangement with customers to voluntarily transfer their money to your employers pockets and thus justify their existence. You wouldn't work for free you would just do something else. In reality if its really easy to pay and even mildly frustrating to pirate it seems like a reasonable balance of paying customers and freeloaders is apt to make you all healthy and wealthy.

echlebek 6y ago

You have a good argument about why copyright violation is wrong, but you didn't respond to GP's arguments about why it is not theft.

michaelmrose 6y ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft Definition of theft 1a : the act of stealing specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it Much like violating copyright isn't similar in nature to commandeering ships on the high seas its not much similar to the taking of real property in that the owner isn't deprived of anything and in fact is wholly unaffected and absent from the transaction. Actual property is the necessary resolution of the inherently rivalrous nature of property while Copyright is mandate that I limit what data I transmit to another party so as to avoid transmitting any patterns of bits that could reasonably be argued to be owned by any entity on the premise that this limitation will create an intangible good that can serve as an incentive to encourage creators to trade in it. If congress contrary to the rest of our interests grants you sole ownership of the color red I wont be a thief if I opt to paint my house that color. Really this is a tired subject having been debated endlessly since the 70s. Anyone still using it is apt to have staked out their position and decided they care more about the emotional import of the word thief than reasoned argument.

fuzxi 6y ago

>you can pay in some form to view it or not and happily find some alternative way to enjoy your time. Nobody is forcing you to watch what I make and you won’t die if you don’t watch it. That's kind of the point. Whether I pirate your work and watch it or I watch paint dry for an hour doesn't affect your bottom line, because you weren't going to get my money either way.

michaelmrose 6y ago

TV budgets are higher than ever even while piracy is easier than ever before. The only thing that could possibly kill tv would be jacking up the costs enough to keep users from enjoying them legally. I myself pay for hulu and netflix and I figure that contributes sufficiently to the shows I enjoy. It really doesn't matter what I do. My employment is an arrangement for services rendered same as yours. At the absurd limit where nobody paid for anything and absolutely everyone pirated everything nobody would be forcing you to work for free. Your employer in that scenario would have totally and wholly failed to secure an arrangement with customers to voluntarily transfer their money to your employers pockets and thus justify their existence. You wouldn't work for free you would just do something else. In reality if its really easy to pay and even mildly frustrating to pirate it seems like a reasonable balance of paying customers and freeloaders is apt to make you all healthy and wealthy.