6 ms·

I have written software that has eliminated a lot of jobs. I am not going to jail anytime soon. It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream, so

I have written software that has eliminated a lot of jobs. I am not going to jail anytime soon. It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream, so I don't follow why that argument by itself concludes anything about ethics of digital copying. If it does, lock me up as well because I'm going to keep eliminating income streams for the rest of my life.

raspyberr 3y ago
>It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream You can't just fire people without a reason though right? Some job rights are protected to some extent in some countries.
- sambazi 3y ago
  reasons are plentiful and subject to arguments, nothing fundamental here
- whelp_24 3y ago
  Actually, in the US, where copyright law is thick, you can.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
You haven't eliminated jobs: the bosses of people who are getting laid off are, after they buy your software. Crucial difference. > It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream No, but it is a crime to steal. If someone has created digital goods, put them up for sale, and you acquire them without paying, that is stealing. The fact they didn't "lose" some physical product in the process is irrelevant. You have cheated them out of their commensurate half of an even exchange they have offered. If you don't like the exchange, find it too expensive, the product not worth it, what have you, that's fine, you are free to not complete the transaction. You are not free to bypass it and gain the thing you weren't willing to pay for without paying.
- Dutchie987 3y ago
  If I would never buy the digital good, even if I didn't copy it, how am I depriving an author of any income? The act of me making a copy makes no difference at all to the author. I'm either not buying and not copying, or I'm not buying and copying. Net result is the same for the author. The is no cheating, there is no loss. At all.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    > If I would never buy the digital good, even if I didn't copy it, how am I depriving an author of any income? Because the author has offered it at a price because they have invested time, energy, expertise, and skill to create it. That's the value. It would be akin to saying to a cabinet maker that they are not owed money for their cabinet because they didn't make the wood, the tree did, which completely trivializes the labor and craft involved. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to be paid. We'd provide what we could and get what we need in return, but we don't live in that world.
    - Dutchie987 3y ago
      A cabinet maker builds very fine furniture and offers it for sale at a price. I'm not buying his beautifully crafted wares, for any and all reason. Now you come inspect my house, what actual difference does it make if I'm sitting on milk crates or furniture that looks suspiciously like the sculpted wood from the cabinet maker? My copying the furniture or not doing that makes no difference. There is no guarantee someone can make an income from their labor. Nobody has an obligation to buy something just because it was made.
      - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        I mean, if you have gone out of your way to shape your own wooden furniture that looks like his, out of wood that you harvested or purchased, then the value generated is yours via your woodworking skill and no one would expect you to buy it if you're capable and willing to make it yourself. That being said you're engaging in all manner of motivated reasoning to get around basic theories of value and clinging to this notion that if you could somehow get a flawless copy of a thing someone is selling that is in all other ways equivalent to the original that you haven't committed a crime, and while technically true, it utterly obliterates the notion of intellectual property. Now, IP law as it exists has many problems and pitfalls that require reform, however you are seemingly arguing that the theory of intellectual property is invalid, which is quite an interesting viewpoint for someone who apparently earns their living writing software. In so far as the following assumptions are true: - The world in which you live requires that you earn a living to subsist yourself - The world in which you live desires intellectual creations that can be copied harmlessly (movies, software, art, music, basically all entertainment products, design blueprints, et al) - Reality consists of a finite amount of time, of which a given individual receives a certain amount, and during which said individual must balance activities that generate income to cover the cost of assumption 1 - The reliable way for an individual to satisfy assumptions 1 and 3 is to dedicate a certain amount of time to the creation of products that can be sold While you taking a copy of something that you never intended to buy doesn't technically cost an author a sale that would, by your statement, never occur, it nevertheless means that you now possess their creation that was made with their energy, skills, and time which are individually all expressions of their finite time on the planet, assumption 3. That is, no matter how you want to excuse it, unethical. Energy is conserved, matter is conserved, theft of someone else's time and effort to produce a thing you wanted is theft.
expensive_news 3y ago
> It’s not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream It is in some cases, for example, DCMA and copyright that make it illegal to copy digital goods, the topic of this thread. But as an aside, laws are (generally) based on ethics, ethics are not based on laws, so even though it is illegal, it doesn’t conclude anything about the ethics of a situation. There are many arguments for why piracy is unethical, but the simplest might be using Kant’s categorical imperative “a universal ethical principle stating that one should always respect the humanity in others, and that one should only act in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone” [1]. So could piracy hold for everyone? If everyone pirated Marvel movies then Marvel would not be able to make $100+M movies and these movies would not exist, which is a contradiction. Therefore piracy violates Kant’s categorical imperative, therefore piracy is unethical. [1] https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/ https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > If everyone pirated Marvel movies then Marvel would not be able to make $100+M movies and these movies would not exist, which is a contradiction. Therefore piracy violates Kant’s categorical imperative, therefore piracy is unethical. Here is where your use of the categorical imperative breaks down: creating an economy that prevents Marvel from making movies is not in itself unethical. Undesirable, perhaps, but not unethical. No one is entitled to have their favorite business model work regardless of whether or not it makes sense in a given economy.
  - expensive_news 3y ago
    You are correct. I suppose it is a lot more nuanced. I believe a sound argument for copyright/DMCA would require: 1. Arguments to be made for the social utility in laws enabling such business models to exist, and 2. ethical considerations that come into play when said laws are violated (for example, a creator operating under the assumption of those laws being followed loses out on revenue when those laws are broken) I still think there are cases to be made for both of these claims, but this might be one reason why the two sides are so at odds with each other.
itishappy 3y ago
> It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream. It is if it's owed. It's a crime not to pay for a car, it's a crime not to pay taxes, and it's a crime not to pay your employees. I'm betting you'd lawyer up if nobody ever paid for your software.
- bumby 3y ago
  Your point stands, but I think you are sometimes confusing tort with crime.
bumby 3y ago
>It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream It is in the US. Besides the copyright issue, there’s the concept of tortious interference in contract law.

raspyberr 3y ago

>It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream You can't just fire people without a reason though right? Some job rights are protected to some extent in some countries.

sambazi 3y ago
reasons are plentiful and subject to arguments, nothing fundamental here
whelp_24 3y ago
Actually, in the US, where copyright law is thick, you can.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

You haven't eliminated jobs: the bosses of people who are getting laid off are, after they buy your software. Crucial difference. > It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream No, but it is a crime to steal. If someone has created digital goods, put them up for sale, and you acquire them without paying, that is stealing. The fact they didn't "lose" some physical product in the process is irrelevant. You have cheated them out of their commensurate half of an even exchange they have offered. If you don't like the exchange, find it too expensive, the product not worth it, what have you, that's fine, you are free to not complete the transaction. You are not free to bypass it and gain the thing you weren't willing to pay for without paying.

Dutchie987 3y ago
If I would never buy the digital good, even if I didn't copy it, how am I depriving an author of any income? The act of me making a copy makes no difference at all to the author. I'm either not buying and not copying, or I'm not buying and copying. Net result is the same for the author. The is no cheating, there is no loss. At all.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > If I would never buy the digital good, even if I didn't copy it, how am I depriving an author of any income? Because the author has offered it at a price because they have invested time, energy, expertise, and skill to create it. That's the value. It would be akin to saying to a cabinet maker that they are not owed money for their cabinet because they didn't make the wood, the tree did, which completely trivializes the labor and craft involved. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to be paid. We'd provide what we could and get what we need in return, but we don't live in that world.
  - Dutchie987 3y ago
    A cabinet maker builds very fine furniture and offers it for sale at a price. I'm not buying his beautifully crafted wares, for any and all reason. Now you come inspect my house, what actual difference does it make if I'm sitting on milk crates or furniture that looks suspiciously like the sculpted wood from the cabinet maker? My copying the furniture or not doing that makes no difference. There is no guarantee someone can make an income from their labor. Nobody has an obligation to buy something just because it was made.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      I mean, if you have gone out of your way to shape your own wooden furniture that looks like his, out of wood that you harvested or purchased, then the value generated is yours via your woodworking skill and no one would expect you to buy it if you're capable and willing to make it yourself. That being said you're engaging in all manner of motivated reasoning to get around basic theories of value and clinging to this notion that if you could somehow get a flawless copy of a thing someone is selling that is in all other ways equivalent to the original that you haven't committed a crime, and while technically true, it utterly obliterates the notion of intellectual property. Now, IP law as it exists has many problems and pitfalls that require reform, however you are seemingly arguing that the theory of intellectual property is invalid, which is quite an interesting viewpoint for someone who apparently earns their living writing software. In so far as the following assumptions are true: - The world in which you live requires that you earn a living to subsist yourself - The world in which you live desires intellectual creations that can be copied harmlessly (movies, software, art, music, basically all entertainment products, design blueprints, et al) - Reality consists of a finite amount of time, of which a given individual receives a certain amount, and during which said individual must balance activities that generate income to cover the cost of assumption 1 - The reliable way for an individual to satisfy assumptions 1 and 3 is to dedicate a certain amount of time to the creation of products that can be sold While you taking a copy of something that you never intended to buy doesn't technically cost an author a sale that would, by your statement, never occur, it nevertheless means that you now possess their creation that was made with their energy, skills, and time which are individually all expressions of their finite time on the planet, assumption 3. That is, no matter how you want to excuse it, unethical. Energy is conserved, matter is conserved, theft of someone else's time and effort to produce a thing you wanted is theft.

expensive_news 3y ago

> It’s not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream It is in some cases, for example, DCMA and copyright that make it illegal to copy digital goods, the topic of this thread. But as an aside, laws are (generally) based on ethics, ethics are not based on laws, so even though it is illegal, it doesn’t conclude anything about the ethics of a situation. There are many arguments for why piracy is unethical, but the simplest might be using Kant’s categorical imperative “a universal ethical principle stating that one should always respect the humanity in others, and that one should only act in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone” [1]. So could piracy hold for everyone? If everyone pirated Marvel movies then Marvel would not be able to make $100+M movies and these movies would not exist, which is a contradiction. Therefore piracy violates Kant’s categorical imperative, therefore piracy is unethical. [1] https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/ https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> If everyone pirated Marvel movies then Marvel would not be able to make $100+M movies and these movies would not exist, which is a contradiction. Therefore piracy violates Kant’s categorical imperative, therefore piracy is unethical. Here is where your use of the categorical imperative breaks down: creating an economy that prevents Marvel from making movies is not in itself unethical. Undesirable, perhaps, but not unethical. No one is entitled to have their favorite business model work regardless of whether or not it makes sense in a given economy.
- expensive_news 3y ago
  You are correct. I suppose it is a lot more nuanced. I believe a sound argument for copyright/DMCA would require: 1. Arguments to be made for the social utility in laws enabling such business models to exist, and 2. ethical considerations that come into play when said laws are violated (for example, a creator operating under the assumption of those laws being followed loses out on revenue when those laws are broken) I still think there are cases to be made for both of these claims, but this might be one reason why the two sides are so at odds with each other.

itishappy 3y ago

> It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream. It is if it's owed. It's a crime not to pay for a car, it's a crime not to pay taxes, and it's a crime not to pay your employees. I'm betting you'd lawyer up if nobody ever paid for your software.

bumby 3y ago
Your point stands, but I think you are sometimes confusing tort with crime.

bumby 3y ago

>It is not a crime to deprive someone of their income stream It is in the US. Besides the copyright issue, there’s the concept of tortious interference in contract law.