3 ms·

I started at "piracy is theft", eventually switched to "piracy is too complicated an issue to be labeled as black or white", and now I've settled in "actually,

I started at "piracy is theft", eventually switched to "piracy is too complicated an issue to be labeled as black or white", and now I've settled in "actually, I'm okay with most of it". The typical example: the music industry says "copying a CD is stealing from the artist", but plenty of small artists would counter-argur that a. the music industry is the one getting the money, not them, and b. they would prefer you to pirate their songs and make them popular so they can actually make money with more concerts. In my opinion, piracy is bad when it hurts small producers (which tends to be the case with books) and actually good when it benefits society in detriment of some giant corporation. And if said giant corporation invested millions into laws that restrict people's access to their own culture (with Disney at the top of that list), I will actually encourage it. I see this as siding with society instead of corporations. I know that this is not an universally accepted view, but I just bring it up to point out that there is more to piracy than "yes, it's theft" or "no, it isn't".

TameAntelope 6y ago
My point was, can't it both be "it's theft" and "I'm probably okay with most of it"? We treat "bad" as this absolute, "all bad is Bad!" but really no, there are all kinds of degrees of bad. Theft is bad, but IP theft is probably a lot less bad than armed robbery, for example. I just don't get the conflict. I entirely agree with you otherwise.
chii 6y ago
> In my opinion, piracy is bad when it hurts small producers (which tends to be the case with books) and actually good when it benefits society in detriment of some giant corporation. the problem with this line of thinking is that it's got a built-in personal bias against the monied and wealthy. Just because a corporation is rich, doesn't mean they can suffer detriment. The issue of corporate overreach in copyright law is a separate issue that should be solved using law and democracy, not a backhanded application of robinhood morals. If piracy is benefitial to society, then it's just as beneficial if it was pirating an indie artist's content as well as content produced by a corporate.

TameAntelope 6y ago

My point was, can't it both be "it's theft" and "I'm probably okay with most of it"? We treat "bad" as this absolute, "all bad is Bad!" but really no, there are all kinds of degrees of bad. Theft is bad, but IP theft is probably a lot less bad than armed robbery, for example. I just don't get the conflict. I entirely agree with you otherwise.

chii 6y ago

> In my opinion, piracy is bad when it hurts small producers (which tends to be the case with books) and actually good when it benefits society in detriment of some giant corporation. the problem with this line of thinking is that it's got a built-in personal bias against the monied and wealthy. Just because a corporation is rich, doesn't mean they can suffer detriment. The issue of corporate overreach in copyright law is a separate issue that should be solved using law and democracy, not a backhanded application of robinhood morals. If piracy is benefitial to society, then it's just as beneficial if it was pirating an indie artist's content as well as content produced by a corporate.