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Correct. Piracy is potentially copyright infringement, not "theft". People insist on using that word, despite it being factually wrong, due to its emotional val

Correct. Piracy is potentially copyright infringement, not "theft". People insist on using that word, despite it being factually wrong, due to its emotional valence and persuasive value. The author is a photojournalist, not a lawyer, and not qualified to comment on copyright law beyond simply giving his personal opinion.

9dev 1y ago
You can hold that stance, but it completely undermines the source of income for artists or inventors. If you want a world where only rich and privileged people can afford the time to create art, this is the way to go. Otherwise, we maybe can agree that people who make something should be eligible for some kind of compensation to encourage them to continue making, for our shared benefit. You can argue that Beyoncé and George Clooney and Stephen King are so rich already they don’t need the money anyway, but that omits how even these people had to make a career from the bottom up on the sole premise that their focus on their art (regardless of your opinion on it) will pay the bills. So just saying piracy isn’t theft and thus isn’t a problem is a wholly undercooked answer to a difficult problem.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  The "therefore isn't a problem" was not, I believe, present in the original post. It's entirely possible to believe that copyright infringement is not theft and yet also still a problem. It's mainly an appeal to not misrepresent the situation, because theft in a literal sense refers to a situation which is generally worse than copyright infringement.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    I fail to see how it’s not just nitpicking. Yes, pirates only copy something and the original owner still gets to keep it. The end result however is that someone gets something for free that they otherwise would have to pay for, similar to sneaking on a train or into a concert. In these cases, I don’t think many people would argue that what you’re doing isn’t wrong, or meaningfully different from theft; safe for lawyers of course, but I fail to see why the quibbling is relevant for normal people.
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      It's, if anything, more important for normal people: I think there's a very important moral difference between something that actively harms another person and not paying for something that benefits you. The latter, for example, should be much more acceptable for someone who lacks the means to pay to do. It's also much more important, (i.e. we should spend more resources), to prevent theft. Preventing piracy and your other examples is only important to the extent that it keeps the endeavor viable, or at least the effort in the prevention is worth the increase in payments. Coalescing this all into one thing is behind a lot of what I consider to be very harmful rhetoric and politics.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- FeepingCreature 1y ago
  If you follow this logic, it gets really close to arguing that open source is price dumping. Nobody has an obligation to an income in a particular field of work.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    Open Source is the conscious renunciation of any profit and intellectual property rights, whereas artists generally expect compensation for their work. Plus, open source code gets mostly written by people with a stable and well-paid day job. Take that away, and I doubt there’s much open source code left.
    - FeepingCreature 1y ago
      So it's not just price dumping, it's also gatekeeping against unemployed developers. What a terrible practice. Open source only looks better here because it has a different cultural context. But to a person trying to make money in the field, I'm not sure why that should matter.
amelius 1y ago
They never said "theft in the legal sense". Also they mean "theft of income" not "theft of data". This is not a legal text obviously.
- concinds 1y ago
  > Also they mean "theft of income" Right. It's the debunked, bad-faith argument that "piracy is theft" because the pirates would have bought a movie were it not for The Pirate Bay, to justify calculating monetary damages that are completely unmoored from reality. We shouldn’t let people revive this nonsense, even in the context of AI.
  - amelius 1y ago
    In case of AI it is closer to actual theft because income (of an artist) is taken away, and someone else (AI capitalists) makes money from it. I don't think the comparison is unreasonable here.
    - xscott 1y ago
      How come it's just an "artist" and not an "artist capitalist"? And isn't this "rent seeking" behavior on the part of the artist? It would be nice if the world used clinical terms to describe what's actually going on instead of using emotional terms to equate "copying" to "stealing" or "pirating", but people would rather confuse the issue than argue it logically in good faith.
      - amelius 1y ago
        OK in clinical terms, A wants to use X which is something that B produces, and by taking X, that will reduce B's opportunities to make an income, while at the same time increasing A's opportunities to make an income. Since A does not even ask for permission, in normal language we call that theft.
        therealpygon 1y ago
kgwgk 1y ago
People have been using the word for thousands of years so they may not stop now because you say so. (Romans were already using “furtum” - theft - and “plagium” - kidnapping - for ideas and not just for things and people.)
- sam_lowry_ 1y ago
  Why don't we make a conscious effort and call it "sharing" and not "piracy"?

9dev 1y ago

You can hold that stance, but it completely undermines the source of income for artists or inventors. If you want a world where only rich and privileged people can afford the time to create art, this is the way to go. Otherwise, we maybe can agree that people who make something should be eligible for some kind of compensation to encourage them to continue making, for our shared benefit. You can argue that Beyoncé and George Clooney and Stephen King are so rich already they don’t need the money anyway, but that omits how even these people had to make a career from the bottom up on the sole premise that their focus on their art (regardless of your opinion on it) will pay the bills. So just saying piracy isn’t theft and thus isn’t a problem is a wholly undercooked answer to a difficult problem.

rcxdude 1y ago
The "therefore isn't a problem" was not, I believe, present in the original post. It's entirely possible to believe that copyright infringement is not theft and yet also still a problem. It's mainly an appeal to not misrepresent the situation, because theft in a literal sense refers to a situation which is generally worse than copyright infringement.
- 9dev 1y ago
  I fail to see how it’s not just nitpicking. Yes, pirates only copy something and the original owner still gets to keep it. The end result however is that someone gets something for free that they otherwise would have to pay for, similar to sneaking on a train or into a concert. In these cases, I don’t think many people would argue that what you’re doing isn’t wrong, or meaningfully different from theft; safe for lawyers of course, but I fail to see why the quibbling is relevant for normal people.
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    It's, if anything, more important for normal people: I think there's a very important moral difference between something that actively harms another person and not paying for something that benefits you. The latter, for example, should be much more acceptable for someone who lacks the means to pay to do. It's also much more important, (i.e. we should spend more resources), to prevent theft. Preventing piracy and your other examples is only important to the extent that it keeps the endeavor viable, or at least the effort in the prevention is worth the increase in payments. Coalescing this all into one thing is behind a lot of what I consider to be very harmful rhetoric and politics.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
FeepingCreature 1y ago
If you follow this logic, it gets really close to arguing that open source is price dumping. Nobody has an obligation to an income in a particular field of work.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Open Source is the conscious renunciation of any profit and intellectual property rights, whereas artists generally expect compensation for their work. Plus, open source code gets mostly written by people with a stable and well-paid day job. Take that away, and I doubt there’s much open source code left.
  - FeepingCreature 1y ago
    So it's not just price dumping, it's also gatekeeping against unemployed developers. What a terrible practice. Open source only looks better here because it has a different cultural context. But to a person trying to make money in the field, I'm not sure why that should matter.

amelius 1y ago

They never said "theft in the legal sense". Also they mean "theft of income" not "theft of data". This is not a legal text obviously.

concinds 1y ago
> Also they mean "theft of income" Right. It's the debunked, bad-faith argument that "piracy is theft" because the pirates would have bought a movie were it not for The Pirate Bay, to justify calculating monetary damages that are completely unmoored from reality. We shouldn’t let people revive this nonsense, even in the context of AI.
- amelius 1y ago
  In case of AI it is closer to actual theft because income (of an artist) is taken away, and someone else (AI capitalists) makes money from it. I don't think the comparison is unreasonable here.
  - xscott 1y ago
    How come it's just an "artist" and not an "artist capitalist"? And isn't this "rent seeking" behavior on the part of the artist? It would be nice if the world used clinical terms to describe what's actually going on instead of using emotional terms to equate "copying" to "stealing" or "pirating", but people would rather confuse the issue than argue it logically in good faith.
    - amelius 1y ago
      OK in clinical terms, A wants to use X which is something that B produces, and by taking X, that will reduce B's opportunities to make an income, while at the same time increasing A's opportunities to make an income. Since A does not even ask for permission, in normal language we call that theft.
      - therealpygon 1y ago

kgwgk 1y ago

People have been using the word for thousands of years so they may not stop now because you say so. (Romans were already using “furtum” - theft - and “plagium” - kidnapping - for ideas and not just for things and people.)

sam_lowry_ 1y ago
Why don't we make a conscious effort and call it "sharing" and not "piracy"?