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> When I have a bike and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of the use of that bicycle. That's what makes it theft. Let me give you back your analogy w

> When I have a bike and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of the use of that bicycle. That's what makes it theft. Let me give you back your analogy with a dose of reality: When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft. So your position is that if a company sells something, anything that deprives them of potential income is theft? If I set up a separate bike store down the street and charge less than you, have I stolen from you? How about if I give them away for free?
- cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
  If you set up a separate bike store, steal my bikes--which I spent my own money to create--from my store, and and give it away for free, then yes, you are a thief. If you set up a separate bike store AND make a bike with your own time and energy and money, and give it away for free, good luck on your business. p.s. I am a heavy user of Bittorrent myself and appreciate the technology (I'm sure most people on HN have done illegal downloads), but I at least acknowledge what I am doing is technically stealing. The only reason I'm not going to jail is because it's technically and economically not easy to enforce it. Just because I'm not going to jail doesn't mean it's not stealing. Stealing is stealing. All I'm saying is people who do illegal downloads should at least understand what they are doing is technically a theft and don't feel so entitled for stealing from other people. I sincerely hope there are better ways to incentivize creators who spend their time and energy producing their intellectual property to the world.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    You're arguing circularly; it's stealing because it's theft because it's stealing. If I make my own bike store and produce bikes which are identical to yours without taking yours away, then it's not theft.
    - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
      > If I make my own bike store and produce bikes which are identical to yours without taking yours away, then it's not theft. That's exactly in line with what I said. It's not theft in that case. You are getting lost in your own analogy. A bike is valuable because of the time, energy, and money put into producing it. If you set up your own bike store and produce the bike that's identical to my bike, you deserve to make money from it. But that's not what's happening here. Here's what's happening: Let's say you start making your living by producing and selling bikes at your own bike store. One night I break into your bike store and just take a bike away. I didn't put in any time, energy, and money into producing the bike. You did. You spent your time, energy, and money to build that bike, which you could have spent on other things in life. If I didn't steal it, you could have made money from that bike. I deprived you of an opportunity to make money from your investment. Let's use a more large scale example to see how this can be a very dangerous line of thought. A guy named anthony levandowski took intellectual property from Google and tried to produce autonomous vehicles which are identical to what Google was trying to build, WITHOUT taking google's technology away. Google can feel free to build their autonomous vehicle, what's the big deal? This is not stealing, right? Well, here's what happened: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandowski-waymo-uber-lawsuit-sentence-18-months-prison-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandows... Intellectual property is very real. Just because certain types of intellectual property cannot be protected because of the nature of the digital technology, does NOT mean it is not stealing. Stealing is stealing. Some thefts are considered "ok" because "everyone else is doing it and there's no easy way to enforce it", but it's steal stealing.
anhner 6y ago
If you make a living selling bikes, and I make an exact copy of your bike WITHOUT taking the one you have just made, am I still stealing from you?
- castlecrasher2 6y ago
  Copy or not, you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue. I don't much like how the digital landscape has played out in terms of ownership, but pretending that torrenting a copy of a movie means you didn't steal it ignores the obvious.
  - acuozzo 6y ago
    > you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue POTENTIAL revenue. You're working from the assumption that all pirates would purchase desired content if it weren't made available for free (illegally). The alternative you're ignoring is that a pirate can, and often does, choose different content to consume when initially-sought content isn't available to download.
    - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
      These arguments you're making are irrelevant. Even you yourself are using the term "pirate", which implies stealing. You talk as if "POTENTIAL revenue" is equal to zero, but if you studied economics you would realize that there is such a thing called opportunity cost. It doesn't matter if it's just "potential" revenue, what you are essentially stealing is someone else's opportunity cost. This is a different story if this person created music and gave it away for free intentionally (because he/she doesn't care, or in an effort to get more audience to monetize in other ways), but if Alice is providing X in exchange for Y, and you take X without giving Alice Y, then it is stealing. Your logic is "I wouldn't have consumed X in the first place if it was not free", and you are right. But at the same time, that does not change the fact that what you did there at the end of the day, no matter how NOT-valuable you see the product, is stealing. For example, this is like drinking a lemonade from a kid's lemonade stand without paying the $1 price, and saying "You know what, you should be thankful that I even consumed what you created. I would have never drank this worthless beverage for $1, therefore what I just did is not stealing"

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

> When I make a living by selling bikes, and you steal it from me, you are depriving me of my time and energy and money spent to maintain my business. That's what makes it theft. So your position is that if a company sells something, anything that deprives them of potential income is theft? If I set up a separate bike store down the street and charge less than you, have I stolen from you? How about if I give them away for free?

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
If you set up a separate bike store, steal my bikes--which I spent my own money to create--from my store, and and give it away for free, then yes, you are a thief. If you set up a separate bike store AND make a bike with your own time and energy and money, and give it away for free, good luck on your business. p.s. I am a heavy user of Bittorrent myself and appreciate the technology (I'm sure most people on HN have done illegal downloads), but I at least acknowledge what I am doing is technically stealing. The only reason I'm not going to jail is because it's technically and economically not easy to enforce it. Just because I'm not going to jail doesn't mean it's not stealing. Stealing is stealing. All I'm saying is people who do illegal downloads should at least understand what they are doing is technically a theft and don't feel so entitled for stealing from other people. I sincerely hope there are better ways to incentivize creators who spend their time and energy producing their intellectual property to the world.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  You're arguing circularly; it's stealing because it's theft because it's stealing. If I make my own bike store and produce bikes which are identical to yours without taking yours away, then it's not theft.
  - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
    > If I make my own bike store and produce bikes which are identical to yours without taking yours away, then it's not theft. That's exactly in line with what I said. It's not theft in that case. You are getting lost in your own analogy. A bike is valuable because of the time, energy, and money put into producing it. If you set up your own bike store and produce the bike that's identical to my bike, you deserve to make money from it. But that's not what's happening here. Here's what's happening: Let's say you start making your living by producing and selling bikes at your own bike store. One night I break into your bike store and just take a bike away. I didn't put in any time, energy, and money into producing the bike. You did. You spent your time, energy, and money to build that bike, which you could have spent on other things in life. If I didn't steal it, you could have made money from that bike. I deprived you of an opportunity to make money from your investment. Let's use a more large scale example to see how this can be a very dangerous line of thought. A guy named anthony levandowski took intellectual property from Google and tried to produce autonomous vehicles which are identical to what Google was trying to build, WITHOUT taking google's technology away. Google can feel free to build their autonomous vehicle, what's the big deal? This is not stealing, right? Well, here's what happened: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandowski-waymo-uber-lawsuit-sentence-18-months-prison-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354906/anthony-levandows... Intellectual property is very real. Just because certain types of intellectual property cannot be protected because of the nature of the digital technology, does NOT mean it is not stealing. Stealing is stealing. Some thefts are considered "ok" because "everyone else is doing it and there's no easy way to enforce it", but it's steal stealing.

anhner 6y ago

If you make a living selling bikes, and I make an exact copy of your bike WITHOUT taking the one you have just made, am I still stealing from you?

castlecrasher2 6y ago
Copy or not, you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue. I don't much like how the digital landscape has played out in terms of ownership, but pretending that torrenting a copy of a movie means you didn't steal it ignores the obvious.
- acuozzo 6y ago
  > you're willfully depriving the company of their revenue POTENTIAL revenue. You're working from the assumption that all pirates would purchase desired content if it weren't made available for free (illegally). The alternative you're ignoring is that a pirate can, and often does, choose different content to consume when initially-sought content isn't available to download.
  - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
    These arguments you're making are irrelevant. Even you yourself are using the term "pirate", which implies stealing. You talk as if "POTENTIAL revenue" is equal to zero, but if you studied economics you would realize that there is such a thing called opportunity cost. It doesn't matter if it's just "potential" revenue, what you are essentially stealing is someone else's opportunity cost. This is a different story if this person created music and gave it away for free intentionally (because he/she doesn't care, or in an effort to get more audience to monetize in other ways), but if Alice is providing X in exchange for Y, and you take X without giving Alice Y, then it is stealing. Your logic is "I wouldn't have consumed X in the first place if it was not free", and you are right. But at the same time, that does not change the fact that what you did there at the end of the day, no matter how NOT-valuable you see the product, is stealing. For example, this is like drinking a lemonade from a kid's lemonade stand without paying the $1 price, and saying "You know what, you should be thankful that I even consumed what you created. I would have never drank this worthless beverage for $1, therefore what I just did is not stealing"