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Because you are getting something produced by someone for free if you pirate it and you are relying on others to fund your consumption. Take that to the logical

Because you are getting something produced by someone for free if you pirate it and you are relying on others to fund your consumption. Take that to the logical extreme: everybody pirates everything. That is _very_ different to everyone not buying it. There is demand for the product and it has a cost to produce. If you steal something from somebody, there is recourse in law. I don't disagree about the greed part, but I guess fragmentation is almost inevitable until the profit margin is driven down to near zero. Shortsighted, probably, but it would essentially require all the producers to back (and therefore yield profit to), one or two Netflix/Spotify type entities.

haswell 3y ago
Taking this to the logical extreme is fallacious. The piracy wars up to this point have already shown that people buy content if it’s reasonably priced, and that piracy in many cases actually increases sales of the original content. The fact that piracy is back in the limelight has everything to do with the failing business models of greedy companies, and is the market reacting accordingly. The fact that there are penalties for stealing physical goods does not imply that just any penalty is fine. The analogy doesn’t work. Removal of Internet access in 2023 is debilitating. Punishments are supposed to fit the crime, and the complete loss of access to what has become a fundamental point of access does not fit the crime. And there’s also the very old arguments that I won’t rehash here about the clear difference between digital copies of content and physical items.
- awjlogan 3y ago
  If I don't think a product in the shop is reasonably priced, I don't have the right just to take it. The shop can decide to reduce the price in response to the market - they may make less profit than before and make up for it in volume. However, that is entirely their perogative. There is zero difference between a digital and physical item if you are the producer. A digital good has the cost of production front loaded, it just has next to zero marginal cost. That may be the cost of education and experience, for example. If you make something of value, you absolutely have the right to choose how you are rewarded - if the buyer decides that choice isn't right for them, you can either change the offer or you look for your next customer. You may choose to give it away, if your reward is the satisfaction of someone using it, but that is your choice, not the consumer's.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    >There is zero difference between a digital and physical item if you are the producer There's absolutely a difference. If you produce a physical good, and somebody takes it, you no longer have it. If you produce a digital good and somebody copies it, you still have the original, you're still free to use and enjoy it as you see fit. Fundamentally property rights are a negative right: you have the right not to have your stuff taken. Negative rights don't conflict with eachother, that's why they make a good basis for society. Intellectual property is a positive right: you have the right to control how other people use their property, which conflicts with people's right to use their property as they see fit.
    - awjlogan 3y ago
      Intellectual property is a response exactly to the difference in the marginal cost because it recognises the threat to the value creating producer. Just because you don't tangibly see the cost of the IP, that doesn't mean it was free to produce. You can absolutely argue that IP law is cynically applied, but in principle it protects high capital and low operating expense businesses from those who would like to do the low operating expense part without bothering about the high capital part.
  - haswell 3y ago
    > If I don't think a product in the shop is reasonably priced, I don't have the right just to take it We need to collectively stop using these kinds of physical goods analogies in discussions about piracy. To claim that there is no difference is a fundamental miscalculation. To be clear, I do not condone piracy. I purchase the content that I view. But these kinds of fallacious analogies are misleading and dangerous to Internet freedom.
    - awjlogan 3y ago
      In what way is it fallacious? Or dangerous? (That's a genuine question). Fundamentally, it's the same problem - producers have to adjust their prices to reflect the threat to their income. If I produce something, and I forecast X% of my overall market to be stolen, I have to adjust my selling price according. It doesn't matter if that something is physical or digital. If I produce something that is digital I have the luxury of being able to reduce the cost as low as I like to capture as much value as I can, but that is still my choice as the producer.
- c22 3y ago
  People who are convicted of drunk driving are often permitted to drive again (especially if they need to to go to work) but are required to put a breathalyzer interlock on their ignition so they can't drive drunk. Perhaps similarly, people convicted of internet piracy could be required to operate with their torrent ports blocked, or with some sort of nanny state spyware installed on their devices.
  - haswell 3y ago
    People who drive drunk and regain their privileges do so with restrictions that are meant to protect the people around them. The breathalyzer interlock is made to ensure that this person cannot endanger other people. I think it’s extremely problematic to compare piracy to drunk driving, and to model a punishment for piracy on the punishment for drunk driving for the reasons stated above.
    - c22 3y ago
      Obviously you have to believe that the behavior causes harm to justify a restriction, but if you don't accept this premise then you cannot have an opinion on what would be an appropriate response because you believe there should be no response. I'm not trying to take a position on this either way, but within the context of 'internet piracy causes some sort of damage' I don't think the comparison is particularly problematic.
      - haswell 3y ago
        Restrictions are not the only form of punishment. Many infractions result in a simple fine. Others in mandatory education, etc. My point was that comparing this to a crime that kills people by the tens of thousands every year seems very stretched.
  - renzobanks 3y ago
    anybody can simply change the ports on which they choose to download a torrent.
- renzobanks 3y ago
  agreed, other than your "Punishments are supposed to fit the crime statement." that's one ideal out of many. I would say that companies that create things that are beneficial for people to learn how to use, but that are prohibitivly expensive for students, and younger people to afford to learn how to use like how Adobe products used to be, should always put systems in place to allow people to obtain free access to their products where that kind of thing is obviously applicable. Things that are meant for consumption (movies, tv shows, music) only should be paid a fair market price for in one way or another by the people that consume it. I say this as a both a member of the music industry and the software development industry.
  - awjlogan 3y ago
    Do remember that Adobe, say, does not give away their product to students out of the goodness of their heart: they want you to use their product when they start working and ask your employers to shell out the full amount.
shadowgovt 3y ago
> but I guess fragmentation is almost inevitable until the profit margin is driven down to near zero Precisely. You can't just take stuff people made at cost, that's violating copyright! You need to instead be a megacorporation that competes so brutally on intermediating yourself in the pipe that profit is driven towards zero, so you can't afford to pay any artists! That's the legal way to screw over creators.
- awjlogan 3y ago
  Brutal, but true :/
c22 3y ago
The word piracy was obviously chosen to create exactly this sort of confusion, but piracy on the internet is fundamentally different than stealing which is not buying someone's stuff and also depriving them of the ability to sell it to someone else.
- awjlogan 3y ago
  You are, instead, "stealing" the means for the producer to make more if they can't afford to do it any more because you've normalised using people's work without compensation. It doesn't really matter if the marginal cost of reproduction is near zero, it is the producer's choice what to price their product at, not yours. You're pushing the cost on to others to subsidise your consumption.
  - c22 3y ago
    But now we're getting into a much more nuanced argument about the shape of society. If I, as a lone actor, hook my tape deck into the output of my radio and "steal" the newest Britney Spears track have I normalized the act of piracy? If everyone is doing it then it does seem pretty normalized, but if everyone is doing it then your presumption as to society's values seems flawed. In reality these media producers seem to be making healthy profits so perhaps internet piracy is not as normalized as you think.
- renzobanks 3y ago
  I think the word piracy is worse honestly, because what it really means is to swashbuckle on the open seas. And i don't think stealing physical goods or digital goods is quite comparable to that.

haswell 3y ago

Taking this to the logical extreme is fallacious. The piracy wars up to this point have already shown that people buy content if it’s reasonably priced, and that piracy in many cases actually increases sales of the original content. The fact that piracy is back in the limelight has everything to do with the failing business models of greedy companies, and is the market reacting accordingly. The fact that there are penalties for stealing physical goods does not imply that just any penalty is fine. The analogy doesn’t work. Removal of Internet access in 2023 is debilitating. Punishments are supposed to fit the crime, and the complete loss of access to what has become a fundamental point of access does not fit the crime. And there’s also the very old arguments that I won’t rehash here about the clear difference between digital copies of content and physical items.

awjlogan 3y ago
If I don't think a product in the shop is reasonably priced, I don't have the right just to take it. The shop can decide to reduce the price in response to the market - they may make less profit than before and make up for it in volume. However, that is entirely their perogative. There is zero difference between a digital and physical item if you are the producer. A digital good has the cost of production front loaded, it just has next to zero marginal cost. That may be the cost of education and experience, for example. If you make something of value, you absolutely have the right to choose how you are rewarded - if the buyer decides that choice isn't right for them, you can either change the offer or you look for your next customer. You may choose to give it away, if your reward is the satisfaction of someone using it, but that is your choice, not the consumer's.
- logicchains 3y ago
  >There is zero difference between a digital and physical item if you are the producer There's absolutely a difference. If you produce a physical good, and somebody takes it, you no longer have it. If you produce a digital good and somebody copies it, you still have the original, you're still free to use and enjoy it as you see fit. Fundamentally property rights are a negative right: you have the right not to have your stuff taken. Negative rights don't conflict with eachother, that's why they make a good basis for society. Intellectual property is a positive right: you have the right to control how other people use their property, which conflicts with people's right to use their property as they see fit.
  - awjlogan 3y ago
    Intellectual property is a response exactly to the difference in the marginal cost because it recognises the threat to the value creating producer. Just because you don't tangibly see the cost of the IP, that doesn't mean it was free to produce. You can absolutely argue that IP law is cynically applied, but in principle it protects high capital and low operating expense businesses from those who would like to do the low operating expense part without bothering about the high capital part.
- haswell 3y ago
  > If I don't think a product in the shop is reasonably priced, I don't have the right just to take it We need to collectively stop using these kinds of physical goods analogies in discussions about piracy. To claim that there is no difference is a fundamental miscalculation. To be clear, I do not condone piracy. I purchase the content that I view. But these kinds of fallacious analogies are misleading and dangerous to Internet freedom.
  - awjlogan 3y ago
    In what way is it fallacious? Or dangerous? (That's a genuine question). Fundamentally, it's the same problem - producers have to adjust their prices to reflect the threat to their income. If I produce something, and I forecast X% of my overall market to be stolen, I have to adjust my selling price according. It doesn't matter if that something is physical or digital. If I produce something that is digital I have the luxury of being able to reduce the cost as low as I like to capture as much value as I can, but that is still my choice as the producer.
c22 3y ago
People who are convicted of drunk driving are often permitted to drive again (especially if they need to to go to work) but are required to put a breathalyzer interlock on their ignition so they can't drive drunk. Perhaps similarly, people convicted of internet piracy could be required to operate with their torrent ports blocked, or with some sort of nanny state spyware installed on their devices.
- haswell 3y ago
  People who drive drunk and regain their privileges do so with restrictions that are meant to protect the people around them. The breathalyzer interlock is made to ensure that this person cannot endanger other people. I think it’s extremely problematic to compare piracy to drunk driving, and to model a punishment for piracy on the punishment for drunk driving for the reasons stated above.
  - c22 3y ago
    Obviously you have to believe that the behavior causes harm to justify a restriction, but if you don't accept this premise then you cannot have an opinion on what would be an appropriate response because you believe there should be no response. I'm not trying to take a position on this either way, but within the context of 'internet piracy causes some sort of damage' I don't think the comparison is particularly problematic.
    - haswell 3y ago
      Restrictions are not the only form of punishment. Many infractions result in a simple fine. Others in mandatory education, etc. My point was that comparing this to a crime that kills people by the tens of thousands every year seems very stretched.
- renzobanks 3y ago
  anybody can simply change the ports on which they choose to download a torrent.
renzobanks 3y ago
agreed, other than your "Punishments are supposed to fit the crime statement." that's one ideal out of many. I would say that companies that create things that are beneficial for people to learn how to use, but that are prohibitivly expensive for students, and younger people to afford to learn how to use like how Adobe products used to be, should always put systems in place to allow people to obtain free access to their products where that kind of thing is obviously applicable. Things that are meant for consumption (movies, tv shows, music) only should be paid a fair market price for in one way or another by the people that consume it. I say this as a both a member of the music industry and the software development industry.
- awjlogan 3y ago
  Do remember that Adobe, say, does not give away their product to students out of the goodness of their heart: they want you to use their product when they start working and ask your employers to shell out the full amount.

shadowgovt 3y ago

> but I guess fragmentation is almost inevitable until the profit margin is driven down to near zero Precisely. You can't just take stuff people made at cost, that's violating copyright! You need to instead be a megacorporation that competes so brutally on intermediating yourself in the pipe that profit is driven towards zero, so you can't afford to pay any artists! That's the legal way to screw over creators.

awjlogan 3y ago
Brutal, but true :/

c22 3y ago

The word piracy was obviously chosen to create exactly this sort of confusion, but piracy on the internet is fundamentally different than stealing which is not buying someone's stuff and also depriving them of the ability to sell it to someone else.

awjlogan 3y ago
You are, instead, "stealing" the means for the producer to make more if they can't afford to do it any more because you've normalised using people's work without compensation. It doesn't really matter if the marginal cost of reproduction is near zero, it is the producer's choice what to price their product at, not yours. You're pushing the cost on to others to subsidise your consumption.
- c22 3y ago
  But now we're getting into a much more nuanced argument about the shape of society. If I, as a lone actor, hook my tape deck into the output of my radio and "steal" the newest Britney Spears track have I normalized the act of piracy? If everyone is doing it then it does seem pretty normalized, but if everyone is doing it then your presumption as to society's values seems flawed. In reality these media producers seem to be making healthy profits so perhaps internet piracy is not as normalized as you think.
renzobanks 3y ago
I think the word piracy is worse honestly, because what it really means is to swashbuckle on the open seas. And i don't think stealing physical goods or digital goods is quite comparable to that.