Why do you think this "clearly unethical"? I don't think it's clear at all.
Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?
You know what the truth is, for me, and everyone I know, at least? The truth is, we don't care about "other" people's opinions on ethics (where "other" people=people on the internet, in the government, in anti-piracy ads, etc). The fact is, it's socially acceptable, among my social circles, to pirate, to use drugs, and to {participate in,facilitate} underage drinking. So I have no qualms with people I know doing so, nor if I were to do so myself.
You don't pirate, ever? Because it's "clearly unethical"? Do everyone in your social circles hold similar opinions? Do you jaywalk? Have you ever used drugs, or facilitated illegal drinking?
Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious.
I guess my point is, I don't think ethics matter. I don't think about whether what I do is ethical. I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things), because I have empathy. I guess you could say I have ethics in that if you asked me why I don't, I'd say "it's wrong", but I'd never say something is "clearly unethical" and try to argue why. I'd say it's wrong because it's hurtful, and I don't like being hurt.
I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring".
As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy.
Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet.
> I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring".
I don't think you can assert this without providing some backup. It's certainly the case that sharing certain information with certain parties is a high impulse, but the idea that we have a strong impulse for all information to be shared freely is highly unintuitive to me, merely based on my experiences.
Furthermore, that something is an impulse does not make it ethical. We have many impulses (sex, food, violence), and acting on them unquestioningly would lead to many unethical things. We also do not categorically say that all of these impulses must be fulfilled in an ethical society. For example, most people would not agree that I have a certain right to act violently at times, because of my violent impulses.
> As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy.
That's not what a monopoly is. A monopoly would be if only company could “create” culture. (Or if it was group, it'd be an oligopoly, but I'd still understand your point.) But we're not in that situation. Especially with the internet, we're not in that situation. Anyone can create culture, and they have the ability to choose how exclusive it is. I would guess, though I can't back this up, that at this point in history we have more free culture than ever before. We have the opposite of a monopoly on our culture.
> Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet.
It's both, and why shouldn't it be? The studio executives behind making Game of Thrones play their part just as George RR Martin and Aidan Gillen do. There is an argument to be had that perhaps the compensation for these roles is skewed relative to their importance, but I don't believe that argument would lead to “therefore, no one has any right to make money on Game of Thrones.”
It isn't a 'human right' to be able to watch Game of Thrones or Batman Begins without paying for it I don't believe. It is ignorant to try and claim otherwise.
Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins?
Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret.
>Is it a 'human right' to make money off of Game of Thrones or Batman Begins?
Is it a right to make money off of Game of Thrones? No. Is it their right to charge for content they've created? In my opinion, yes.
I am a huge advocate of open source software. I'm not an advocate of taking other peoples' software and forcing it to be free, against the creators' wishes.
Sharing a book, or facts from a library or notes from a university lecture is one thing. Downloading a copy of a movie, a video game, or software is another.
Let's say you made a startup that, rather than SaaS, actually wrote a thick client. They're cool, so let's make it easy and say it's DRM-free. Let's say it's a cool, new IDE.
You spent the last year of your life working on this IDE, and you see that it's up on The Pirate Bay. Sure, at first you'll probably be flattered. Then you realize, wait a minute, this is getting 1000x the downloads my actual product is getting. Maybe your sales increase as a result of the "free marketing," but that is the best case scenario.
If sales don't increase, you've worked hard and not been compensated. Do I think that most movies (especially in theatres) are overpriced and a rip off? Hell yeah I do, which is why I spend my money on Netflix which seems more sanely priced.
You don't have a right to all the software you want without paying the people who made it; you don't have a right to watch the latest movies and TV shows without paying the people who created them; you don't have a right to listen to that new CD in the store without paying the artists.
I think that big business/media generally rips off consumers. I don't think that pirates are evil; I think that they're desperate and that business needs to adjust to their needs. Have I ever pirated computer games? Sure. But when Valve's Steam became more convenient to use than a badly cracked torrent, that became my number one resource for games.
I used to pirate movies because renting or buying them was such a pain in the ass. With iTunes rentals and Netflix, that problem has been solved too.
If you want to make a stand, maybe against DRM with which you disagree, do so by purchasing from people who are making a stand too; for example, I hope you bought Louis C.K.'s $5 DRM-free show a couple of months ago.
>Copyright is a monopoly granted by congress' interpretation of the constitution's directive to promote progress of science and the useful arts. I think it's time to reinterpret.
How do you suggest we reinterpret? Should everyone get everything they want for free? Should all the tech startups that we read about on Hacker News and root for have no business model, because charging for software or media is so wrong? We live in a capitalist society, and in order to "reinterpret" science and arts as free-for-all, we'd need to completely reorganize our economic system.
I'm not saying that we've got it down perfectly (in fact, I'd say the opposite), so I'm open to your suggestions and ideas.
My point was that copyright is not a matter of rights, it is a matter of business.
If I am going to spend a year of my life developing something I intend to sell, I should make sure it's a good idea not only to make it, but also to try and sell it in a form like a fat client. If I do it anyway and no one buys it, regardless of the reason it was bad business.
Nobody weeps for the carriage makers because we like our cars. No one will weep for the media makers who couldn't adapt to the new market forces.
Treating piracy as anything other than a force of nature will only leave you drowned when the DRM dam breaks. All the examples you cite of being willing to pay content distributors are examples of businesses who have adapted to the new realities of the market.
I don't think businesses should be forced to give away things for free, I just think they don't need artificial monopolies in order to profitably contribute to science and the useful arts.
> How do you suggest we reinterpret? Should everyone get everything they want for free?
A Kickstarter-type patronage model would work: the creators of Game of Thrones ask for funding for a new series, then release it directly into the public domain.
I don't believe it would be wise for movies.io itself to engage into business (and profiting from content we don't own would definitely be unethical, from my point of view), but what we could do is work with a third-party platform that allows the financing of small productions (Movies, TV shows), and have a partnership with us so they are featured / show up in our results etc.
Exciting stuff happening there with the right partners, please contact us if you have leads.
>That's the same thing that would happen if nobody downloaded it for free but only a few people purchased it.
Agreed. In that case, I think it would make sense to conclude "there is little to no interest in my app," instead of "people want my app but would rather not pay for it."
There used to be a dial on that particular machine that could be rationally set somewhere between "always free" and "locked away from society forever". Some very unethical people paid a lot of bribe money to crank it all the way up and then rip the knob off. We don't need to "reinterpret", we just need to use it like it was intended in the first place.
I actually do believe it is a human right to have access to all the art and knowledge. Other people seem to think so too, thats why we have public libraries. I don't know what the solution here is but good things are happening like Spotify were people have the ability to expand their minds, listen to something new and support the artists at the same time. We probably wouldn't have had Spotify without the threat of piracy.
No offense to you personally, jellicle, but why is this the top comment and why can't I downvote it? This is more of a tangential provocative comment than a response.
This is a rather extreme argument. You really think the impulse to share is universally stronger than the impulse to be secretive, the exact inverse, for example? Specifically, what about private data?
How far does this ethical obligation to share go? How much effort is one ethically obligated to expend to share? Before I knew what I was doing with HTML and CSS, some stuff I did didn't work due to what I am now quite sure were browser bugs. Was it unethical for me not to share that knowledge? Is it unethical now for me not to be trying to figure out how to reproduce those bugs again to share?
Is it unethical for artists, writers, coders, even mathematicians not to share unfinished works, code and proofs?
It's interesting that, today, it seems most ignored creative people would be content with merely getting and, for a spell, keeping some small part of the world's attention. To be richly compensated is really just a bonus.
That said, I suppose one nice thing about getting money is that it will stick around even after the spotlight goes elsewhere.
Disclaimer: I work at a legal online video streaming site.
Jaywalking, doing drugs, and underage drinking are fundamentally acts against rules, not acts against entities. A risk is being taken and the burden of failure is on the risk-taker.
Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to get into that? Acquiring media in an unauthorized fashion is an act against the creator and their licensed distributor. That makes it unethical.
You can separate whether an action is justified, and whether it's ethical. There are clearly reasons to pirate - valid or not^, the act itself is not ethical. And I think it's clearly so.
^ personal opinion: mostly not
There's also the separate but related issue that many believe that entertainment is a right, or that it should be available in all mediums. While I do believe that it should be available anywhere at any time, pirating should not at all be considered an ethical recourse to acquiring it through other means. Art doesn't exist absent the influence of money. Entertainment is commercial art but that doesn't mean that its artistic value excuses the viewer from participating in the artist's (creator's) intentions for distribution.
> Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to
> get into that?
Let's.
Example: The legal drinking age in Detroit, Michigan, USA is 21 years of age. The legal drinking age in Windsor, Ontario, Canada (right across the river from Detroit) is 19 years old. A 19 year old US citizen drives across the Detroit River and buys a drink at a bar.
Is the bar acting unethically? If not, how is it any different (ethically) to sell alcohol to the same 19 year old while in Detroit?
Few things annoy me as much as people who don't stop to think about this. And it's the same with all age lines that were created by people...
For example most people seem to think that having sex with someone who is [country/state's minimum age minus one month] would make you a monster, while [plus one month] is fine, as if that magical line (whether it's drawn at 13, 16, 18, or whatever) actually changes people from naive to "ready for sex".
The bar did not travel state lines. If the laws allow it, they have fulfilled their obligation. If, on the other hand, they are actively targeting and soliciting orders for alcohol from 19-year-old US citizens to pick up and consume, for example, at parties, then perhaps they have done something unethical.
That is beside the point, however, as the questions of jurisdiction with respect to copyright are somewhat more well-established than that.
The younger you start using an addictive substance, the more likely you are to become addicted.
Putting an age limit on drugs use is a matter of public health, and protecting people who are not mature enough to understand the consequences of their acts.
Some people take more time than others to reach maturity, so I agree that setting an arbitrary age is not ideal, but it makes some sense.
If it were that simple, a country like the Netherlands which has a legal drinking age of 16 (for ABV<20%) should have way more problems with alcohol abuse and addiction than a sensible country such as the USA, which has the drinking age no less than five years later, so significantly less people in the US should suffer alcohol addiction, right?
Incidentally, we don't get to take a driver's license test until we're 18, so that's kind of reversed. Care to guess who has more problems with driving under the influence?
Your comparison doesn't make any sense. There are other factors, notably cultural, involved. For example, the praise of individualism in the US (which may encourage reckless behavior), and the limited social security net (poverty increases the risk of substance abuse).
When you control for other factors, the pattern I described emerge. See:
Of course children have to be protected. That's the whole point of education, gradually removing barriers while you teach them (or let them learn) how to get along by themselves. Whether or not the society should have a word on the topic is open for debate. I'm for, to some extent, as you probably guessed.
Nit picking: Jaywalking can put other people at risk if there's any amount of traffic. On a completely empty stretch of road it's not unethical, but the line between safe and unsafe jaywalking is extremely blurred.
I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good.
If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation.
We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's. A world with no measuring sticks yet many measurements.
I suppose that's a difference between a lot of people, there are those who think things are simply determined by who they're standing around whereas there are those who hold to more definite and progressive concepts of things that don't change as if a wave driven by the winds of the sea and tossed about.
Then again, I avoid jaywalking, which is seen as madness by some and is often trailed by some silly rant about police making money. It's viewed differently by others and those are generally the ones I prefer to be around as they're a little more uplifting and less vulgar.
I avoid cheating too, for example, classes at university finished yesterday for this semester and I had one last, small piece of assessment to hand in and I had done it incorrectly and I asking a friend how she went about solving it—it turns out my calculations and the like were correct, there was just something wrong with my logic—she said to just copy her answer verbatim which I couldn't do despite her arguments that it's not worth much, it's the last day or 'everyone does it' which sounded like a puppet talking.
Wow, finally a thoughtful, non-knee-jerk response. Thank you for taking the time to write this.
I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good.
I agree with that, I was more trying to say that I don't really choose my actions based on whether I think they're "good" or "bad". In fact, when I chide someone, I tell them what they're doing is "uncool". This made me realize I'm actually choosing my actions based on social acceptability, and I felt like, doesn't everyone? In fact, e.g. bus driver segregating the bus, we as a society even consider this ok.
If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation.
My impression is that throughout human history, the "state of things" has been determined by groupthink, and it will be basically until the Singularity (but that's any day now, right?). Now don't get me wrong, it's lead to all manner of problems (Godwin's law is relevant here), but it seems to me to be a fundamental element of the human condition.
We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's.
Care to elaborate on "retarded"?
Do you not see this new relativistic, cosmopolitan world as an improvement over when people had absolute convictions? I was taught that they used them to justify what we now consider heinous crimes.
"selfish" being good is a capitalistic idea, but "everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's" sounds quite socialist, so this seems contradictory.
silly rant about police making money
While I agree that a lot of people have an unfair bias against the police, it's not silly to be worried about unnecessary laws motivated by government revenues, do you think this never happens?
The rest of your comment:
Why do you avoid jaywalking, and why did you refuse to copy her answer? What do you think of people who jaywalk, and who copy other people's answers, and who pirate movies? Would you say what they're doing is unethical, or even "clearly unethical"?
I think the copying answers thing is especially interesting, because while there's controversial arguments about the hurtfulness of jaywalking and pirating, copying someone's answer to a problem you know how to do, with their permission, is the ultimate example of a victimless, but apparently in your eyes, unethical act. Is it just the principle of the matter, because you feel like you'd be presenting her work as your own?
There was a class at university I took where my friend and I would pair on working through the problems on the whiteboard, and she would write the solutions down, and I, who always procrastinated way more than her, ended up regularly copying her solutions (not verbatim, heavily paraphrased, but definitely not working it out on my own again). Would you do that? If not, would you judge me for it?
I personally agree that copying answers where the copier knows how to do it is a victimless act. But to take the position of devil's advocate here, one could say that there are actually potential victims.
One potential victim is an employer who believes they are hiring someone with objectively-evaluated qualifications. I think this argument is easily shot down; institutional evaluations are not actually objective, and in fact the person doing the copying is actually in a better position to evaluate their abilities than the institution. But, someone else may believe differently on these points than me.
Another potential victim is the person being copied from. They may feel socially pressured to allow someone to copy from them whether they actually want to allow it or not, and they may submit to that social pressure (and this isn't made up -- in certain circles it would be considered a little rude to not allow your friends to copy your answers). But if the institution finds out about it, both parties (copier and copiee) may get in trouble. While this is probably a rare case, it's still true that a person knowingly using that social pressure to their advantage is doing something unethical.
Anyway, I basically agree with you on this point, but it's fair to say that this issue is not as definitively clear-cut as you make it out to be.
So if someone produces a work in digital form, and it is explicitly their intent to earn a living from people paying them money to view this work, can you think of anything even remotely unethical about the release and downloading of the work on a torrent site?
Since you asked, I shall explain. Here is my working definition of something that immoral:
Violating the written or unwritten rules of the society one
lives in, in a way that is directly harmful to another person or
group of people, though ones actions.
So taking drugs is fine, since you are not harming another person. Downloading a film is also fine for the same reason. With selling drugs and jaywalking it depends.
Building a torrent site is different though, because under the rules of our society someone who made a movie can decide who sees that movie and who does not. You are taking that right away from them by distributing that movie. If the rules make sense or does not really matter (within reason), it is a rule that we as a society agreed upon.
EDIT: I don't think morality can ever be subject to loopholes and technicalities, it's governed by common sense.
However, the counter-argument that would let count is good intentions: if OP truly believes that the world might become a better place as the result of his action and he has no selfish motivations at all, I might consider it moral (at least from his point of view).
1. To be immoral, something both has to violate rules of society in addition to being "directly" harmful? So if it's directly harmful but violates no rules of society (e.g. beating and raping women in societies where that's socially acceptable), or it violates rules of society but is only indirectly harmful, it's perfectly moral?
2. What's your working definition of "directly harmful"? Littering directly harms wildlife, does it directly harm people? Buying some drugs directly supports people who actively harm other people. Last I heard, there was mounting evidence that second-hand smoke was worse than what used to be believed; is smoking indoors "directly harmful" to other occupants?
3. I'm not sure what you mean by "counter-argument" (what are you arguing against? Your definition?), but you seem to be saying you feel like there should be intentionality in there somewhere but you're not sure where. I hope you don't need me to tell you that muddies the issue further, e.g. religious fanatics that really believe they're saving souls or the world when they hurt people.
Are you seriously not understanding what I am saying or are you just looking for a discussion?
You asked (basically) why anyone would consider jaywalking, taking drugs, and downloading movies to be ethical, but not hosting a torrent site. So, I tried to give a rough stipulation of my own personal ethics. That definition was not meant to be universal, bulletproof, or exhaustive.
1. My point is that what is considered harmful or not is decided by the rules of society. Different societies agreed upon different rules about what the rights are of a person. If there was a society were there copyright is not commonly accepted then making a movie pirate site is (obviously) not a problem. If you don't agree with the rules, you should work to change them, but not take justice in your own hands.
2. Specifically, I was thinking about a situation where you buy drugs and that money gets used to finance a drug war. Even though, I think that is bad, I don't think it an deciding factor in this case if buying drugs was legal or not.
3. That's why I added "from his point of view". If I would consider it ethical in this case depends on whether I think it is reasonable or not, and whether the mean justifies the end in this case.
I'm sorry, I now realize I didn't express that I was looking for a discussion, you seemed open to that.
1. I feel like you're conflating societies' notion of what people are allowed to do, which is what I'd understand "rules of society" to mean, and societies' notion of what counts as harmful, which I wouldn't consider to be the same thing.
2. I see...so what's your working definition of "directly harmful", and how do, say, littering and second-hand smoke fall into it?
3. I assume you meant "whether the ends justifies the means". So how does the reasonability, and whether the ends justifies the means, fit into your working definition?
> Violating the written or unwritten rules of the society
Considering the amount of people out there that are torrenting, an argument can be made that it is an unwritten rule of society that this is perfectly fine.
> if OP truly believes that the world might become a better place as the result of his action and he has no selfish motivations at all, I might consider it moral (at least from his point of view).
You only have my word (and the lack of ads/monetization) for it, but I truly do.
I also wish the situation would change and we can all license stuff easily and legally. (See my other comments)
allow me han, i still have notes from my social justice class in hs:
basically, ethics:morals::superego:ego, in that morals are internalized but ethics are imposed by an outside authority.
ethics are an outgrowth of human society/interaction on a large scale and almost always imply a system of agreed upon rules and behavior. for example, legal ethics define how a lawyere is supposed to act and conduct himself while in the course of practicing law. medical ethics do the same for medical professionals. these have nothing to do an individuals personal feelings about right or wrong, but merely what is agreed upon but society in a specific context.
morals, otoh, are an internalized set of rules that may or may not be part of a larger overarching system. these tend to be much less black and white than ethics.
to make things confusing, morals can also mean a specific case of how an ethical system is applied, in which case a society can have morals.
practical examples:
doctors are ethically obliged to heal every patient he has to the best of his ability. a specific doctor might consider it immoral to let a murderer live when you have the chance to kill him/her. if a killer (to keep things less grey, assume that the killer is a killer with 100% certainty and no extraneous circumstances), comes before the aforementioned doctor with a wound, the doctor has a range of choices: kill the murderer/patient, heal him/her as best as possible, make a halfhearted attempt to heal the patient/murderer. anything less than healing the patient as best as possible would be unethical because the doctor is supposed to ignore personal biases when treating patients. according to the doctor's ethics, anything other than killing the patient/murderer is immoral.
almost all societies hold that killing another human is unethical. almost all societies have a standing army that is ethically obliged to kill enemies of the society. depending on how you want to look at this paradox, the exceptions to the broad ethical rule of not killing humans has many moral exceptions/loopholes on a societal scale, or you could say that soldiers live by a separate ethical code from the rest of society, under which killing is not forbidden.
there are at least two conflicting ethical codes when it comes to piracy/copyright infringement:
1) depriving someone of their possessions is wrong (aka stealing, ie if i am using it you can't use it), barring a few caveats
2) one should share one's knowledge freely (ie sharing is caring), barring a few caveats
deciding which ethical code takes precedence is a moral issues.
"'ethics' is either the organised philosophical study of the concepts and principles involved in systems of morality [i.e. a 2nd-order enquiry of morality], or it is the set of principles, attitudes, aims and standards adopted by individuals or organisations by which they live and act [i.e. a superset of morality]".
You are declaring yourself entitled to other people's creative output. They go to work every day and practice their crafts. You benefit from their work, but refuse to pay the craftsmen.
Car theft is a stupid analogy because that deprives someone of a car.
The better analogy is that an electrician came and rewired your house. (The lighting rig for a single scene is probably thirty times as complex.) You paid for parts and gas, but decided not to pay for the labor listed in the quote you accepted. You've valued his labor at $0, which is fine, but not if you expect him to perform it.
I don't like making distributors rich either. I would love to see a nonprofit HBO-like studio selling online subscriptions. But the market hasn't yet created one capable of producing content I want. Sounds like a brilliant startup opportunity.
laughinghan, I don't buy your physical / virtual goods distinction. Your argument is inconsistent - if you were prepared to shoplift the same movie from a store I wouldn't agree with your ethics, but you would at least be acting consistently.
Good point RE social stigma attached to this, but IMO it's simply a reflection of the penalty most territories attach to physical theft compared to virtual. The latter is also a lot easier to perpetrate.
I can't cite evidence immediately, but it's fairly accepted that length of jail terms influence per-capita crime rates of most crime types.
It is not necessarily parasitical (and not at all dishonourable), because the only justification for imposing restrictions on people's freedom to share informational goods is the standard economic rationale, and we cannot a priori specify the correct extent of that. If copyright is actually too long (broad, etc.) a de facto reduction of it by illicit copying would be economically beneficial (and that seems most likely the case).
These are nonrival goods -- as many people can use and enjoy them as want to with no hindrance or loss to any. When there is plenty for everyone, why should any have a right to impose restrictions on others? The only plausible reason is a collective one: that we can in practice (by stimulating production) get a better functioning economy.
Living for others' sake is what being human is largely about, it is what cooperative systems like economies are about -- which are critical for us to live well. By maximising our costless use of nonrival goods we all gain.
You clearly lack perspective: try to reverse the point of view and apply the same logic.
An employer wants others to live for his sake, does that make him a parasite? No. (The analogy fails to go any further, but your point is nonetheless invalid.)
Plus, if you had some intuition, you'd realized that 1) we too, have worked really hard on movies.io (and still are), and 2) we would love to work towards a legal solution. Discussing with people right now, will press release if/when that happens. But our requirements are pretty steep, cf. http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/
An employer provides compensation for the work of the employee. If he didn't, and the employee wasn't working willingly, that would be slavery, which would definitely make the "employer" a parasite.
As far as http://www.dontmakemesteal.com, what gives you the right to blackmail a business into doing things? If you don't like their prices, don't watch the movie right now. Wait and watch when it's on TV. If you don't like the DRM, don't buy it. Market forces are strong when the market puts their money behind their intent.
I don't like the bullshit restrictions some companies put on their content, such as HBO but they have a right to whatever the F they want with their hard earned content. They put up the financing/energy/creativity/etc to produce the content. It's not my right to put them to an ultimatum: do things my way or I'm going to steal from you.
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend.
4. to move, bring, convey, or put secretly or quietly; smuggle (usually followed by away, from, in, into, etc.): They stole the bicycle into the bedroom to surprise the child.
5. Baseball . (of a base runner) to gain (a base) without the help of a walk or batted ball, as by running to it during the delivery of a pitch.
1. any of various modified forms of iron, artificially produced, having a carbon content less than that of pig iron and more than that of wrought iron, and having qualities of hardness, elasticity, and strength varying according to composition and heat treatment: generally categorized as having a high, medium, or low-carbon content.
2. a thing or things made of this metal.
3. a flat strip of this metal used for stiffening, especially in corsets; stay.
4. a bar of this metal that has one end formed to hold a bit for driving through rock.
5. steels, stocks or bonds of companies producing this metal.
I believe that he wasn't saying that you misspelt the word, he was saying that infringement does not equal 'stealing.'
Infringement is probably within the scope of appropriation which is the number 2 definition you listed, but maybe it shouldn't be. Conflating real theft with copyright infringement is confusing, and unnecessary.
If I've misinterpreted anything then please ignore.
If you want to argue the case then you'll need to find better analogies. The employer/employee relationship is entered into mutually and both parties gain from it.
Lets really put the shoe on the other foot. How would you feel if someone came along, took all of your source code for movies.io and hosted it on movies2.io. Not only that, but they now had way more users than you (for whatever reason). How would that make you feel? Would you consider them freeloaders? Parasites even?
Most content creators that I know would be very glad if the whole world woudl listen to their music! More likely, I'm dishonouring the intentions of the content distributors. And I really don't give a fuck about them, they certainly don't honor anybody/anything other than cash!
What did the content creators intend when they accepted investment to realise their works. Or what did they intend when they agreed to provide their creative input to a movie for a fee. Or what did they intend when they signed the rights to their work over to a distributor in exchange for some form of compensation or royalty payments?
Being a parasite requires some sort of active harm. Since the cost of obtaining a torrent is essential nil, and the creator doesn't support it anyhow, you're not harming them in the least.
Now, you're also certainly not giving them any benefit, and perhaps you believe that they deserve some benefit, but that still doesn't make you a parasite any more than anybody who just didn't buy a movie.
Put another way: to the creator, the utility of your torrenting a movie is the same as the utility of just not buying the movie. Now, obviously the utility of your paying the creator is higher, but that still doesn't make you a parasite.
You are at worst a symbiont, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
Now, there are other arguments for copyright, but your point about being a parasite is just inaccurate.
You're hampering the exclusivity which the creators rely upon to sell their work to distributors, and you're also forcing them to compete against another outlet (bittorrents) using their own work against them. That's pretty harmful.
By your logic, someone could set up a company called PBO which just mirrors HBO's cable feed, and there'd be nothing unethical about it.
Pirating movies is stealing. There is no other way of putting it. I'll let you decide whether you find stealing ethical or not. It might depend on your social circle.
If you were a member of a gang, you'll find it socially acceptable among your social circles to kill people and sell drugs probably.
Theft is defined as unlawful deprivation of use of property. Piracy does not stop the original owner from continuing to sell. It's a lost customer, not a lost sale.
Using drugs, "facilitating underage drinking" and even jaywalking are quite a bit different than stealing. You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok, but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal, you lack empathy for the act, and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another.
Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble. You do steal, and you do hurt people. You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.
"Stealing", as you call it, doesn't "hurt the creators of the material" any more than simply not buying does. In fact, if anything it helps:
Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results
suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases
increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of
approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD.
That only works if you contend that every single person who pirated something would not have purchased the thing otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's wrong in the same way that saying every single pirated copy of something results in lost revenue (as the MPAA and RIAA contend.) It might not be as wrong, but it's still wrong.
And while there are plenty of studies that suggest piracy might help sales, there are also plenty that suggest that it does not:
In fact, while the issue is plenty debatable I'd say that most of the evidence comes down on the side of "yes, piracy hurts sales, just no where near as much as the MPAA would have you think." (Though even the article above suggests that piracy wouldn't be as much of an issue if movies were released worldwide simultaneously.)
Furthermore, "hurting the creators" needn't necessarily be financial. There are many, many artists, programmers, etc. -- not big publishers, but creators -- who hate piracy with a passion. They often feel under assault by Internet companies the way that people here feel under assault by the MPAA. I think they're misguided, but it's irresponsible to just say "fuck you, this doesn't hurt."
So no, "hurting the creators" is not false, probably not financially and certainly not ethically (you're doing something with their work they don't want.) It's valid to say that the creators have to suck it up and adapt, and that many of them won't be able to make money in the ways they did before. But they are getting hurt.
That only works if you contend that every single person who pirated something would not have purchased the thing otherwise.
First, downloading doesn't prevent purchasing.
Secondly, otherwise how? Either you download it or you don't. Do you mean, if it wasn't available to download? But that's not the "stealing" part. That's uploading/sharing, which is a different issue.
Thirdly, "hurting" potential sales is not inheritly wrong. In fact, that's what many - most? - startups try to do.
And while there are plenty of studies that suggest piracy might help sales, there are also plenty that suggest that it does not:
That's not a study, that's a joke. 30 movies of an extremely biased sample over just a three year period?
I'd rather have a more global view of the movie industry: for example, the five years of consecutive record profits that the MPAA had right during the Bittorrent boom.
In fact, while the issue is plenty debatable I'd say that most of the evidence comes down on the side of "yes, piracy hurts sales, just no where near as much as the MPAA would have you think." (Though even the article above suggests that piracy wouldn't be as much of an issue if movies were released worldwide simultaneously.)
Most studies are paid by the industry. It'd be extraordinary if they said otherwise.
Furthermore, "hurting the creators" needn't necessarily be financial. There are many, many artists, programmers, etc. -- not big publishers, but creators -- who hate piracy with a passion. They often feel under assault by Internet companies the way that people here feel under assault by the MPAA. I think they're misguided, but it's irresponsible to just say "fuck you, this doesn't hurt."
I'm pretty sure file sharers feel offended by your inacurate accusations too, but that didn't stop you.
So no, "hurting the creators" is not false, probably not financially
Again, not buying is not buying. Whether you "pirate" or not is irrelevant - it doesn't affect the creator financially either way.
and certainly not ethically (you're doing something with their work they don't want.)
And I'm pretty sure MS doesn't want me to install LibreOffice on "their" work. So what? We, content creators, are not gods that have a right to demand whatever we want from our users. Is it unethical to lend or sell your car if e.g. Toyota doesn't want you to?
Downloading and consuming some content removes the primary reason of purchasing something—to consume that content.
Now, the ideas of people on here and in the tech world in general really can't be further than that of those in the 'outside world.' When people I know who aren't technical people speak of downloading stuff many often make note of how awesome it is to consume something without having to pay for it.
Not paying. It's a big deal to a lot of people who pirate.
Oh, I know plenty of people who say it's awesome to consume stuff without paying too. Of course, 90% of them wouldn't buy that stuff anyway since they're already struggling to feed and clothe their kids (Yeay for living in a country in a permanent economic crisis for the last 30 years!).
But the few I know that can actualy afford that stuff aren't spending less; at most, they moved to spending more on concerts and less on albums. Which is supported by real data in other countries:
I'm not hurting them - I would never have bought what they are selling. I'm just letting them benefit me, and thus increasing the level of happiness in this world.
>you would simply stop consuming all of these things //
If he continues to consume those things at the same level (ie spends the same amount of money on them) then the argument still stands IMO.
I've seen articles saying that those who download a lot are often also ones who consume at higher levels; a movie buff can spend a huge amount of income on movies and still torrent.
Removing the torrenting won't necessarily increase the amount spent, indeed it could decrease it under models that come readily to mind.
Most, yes. We would still have YouTube, though. Actually, I bought 1 CD this year, Parov Stelar's Princess, that I would have bought regardless, but that's about it.
Even if you would stop, I don't think most pirates would. They'd probably consume less, and be a lot more discriminating, but I do think they would buy.
You make one good point, but I think you overall misunderstand my stance. Firstly,
You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok...
I don't think not stealing makes piracy ok, and I didn't say so. What I mean, and what I tried to say, was that I haven't decided whether I think piracy is ethical or not, and I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the forseeable future.
...but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal...and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another. ... You do steal, and you do hurt people.
In my eyes (and maybe this is unreasonable of me, anyone else?), you lose credibility when you state, as fact, your own opinions that you know other people disagree on. The fact that everyone agrees on, is that you believe pirating is stealing, and that it hurts creators. Whether your belief is true or not, is not a fact that the participants of this discussion all agree on or stipulate too.
...you lack empathy for the act...
Minor point, but I don't think this makes sense, as a statement. My understanding of empathy is that it's possible to have empathy and do harm, if you don't realize you're doing harm and hence even though you would empathize, you don't. So I'm not lacking empathy "for the act", whatever you mean by that, but rather I think you mean that I don't realize I'm hurting people, as you say in the next part of your sentence.
Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble.
I had trouble phrasing this, since I had two things to say about me saying "it's wrong": I wanted to both contrast with saying "clearly unethical", and explain how I would go further. To clarify, I definitely did not mean I would "go no further", in fact I later went further, and said I'd say it's wrong because it's hurtful, and I don't like being hurt.
Now, the one good point you made:
Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. [...] You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.
Well, yes and no. Would I ever beat and murder women if it were "socially acceptable" to? I want to think I wouldn't, but I don't know that, and you don't know that you wouldn't. A couple decades ago, in some of those United States, bus drivers made anyone who was visibly of African-American descent sit in the back. Was that unethical? I think we all agree it was. Was the bus driver an unethical person? Well, we sure don't punish everyone who ever engaged in acts that we now consider unethical but engaged in them simply because it was socially acceptable at the time, like these bus drivers.
I want to believe that everything I do that's socially acceptable is ethical in some absolute sense, and that all those things that are socially acceptable that I don't think we should do (and don't do) are unethical in some absolute sense, but both of those things are almost certainly false. For those things that are unethical but I don't realize and do anyway because they're socially acceptable, how is "socially acceptable" not a justification? Surely it's unreasonable to expect me to know what is absolutely ethical and what isn't.
In my eyes (and maybe this is unreasonable of me, anyone else?), you lose credibility when you state, as fact, your own opinions that you know other people disagree on.
You begin your comment by saying "You make one good point…" Is that a fact? No. Did you state it as a fact? Yes, in that you stated it without qualifiers. Does that mean you have no credibility? Of course not, come on.
For the rest of it, let's rephrase your own logic a bit: "I don't know if sending people to the back of the bus is wrong, but I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the foreseeable future" would be a pretty weak argument against declaring segregation unethical.
It hinges around the idea of whether or not you're hurting people. You started your original comment by saying that "clearly unethical" is a debatable point, but then you tried to draw an equivalence between piracy and a three more victimless acts. You then say "ethics don't matter" and follow that up with "I don't hurt people." I'm saying you do hurt people. It's debatable, but you dismiss debate of it by trying to argue that ethics don't matter and you're not going to think about it. That's not a good counter an assertion that piracy is unethical.
(As a side note, the Stanford Experiment and related studies suggest that both of us would beat and murder women if it were socially acceptable. Creepy stuff that, which is one of the reasons why I think it's important not to tie "ethical" too closely to "socially acceptable." It's also why your notion that "ethics don't matter, I don't really have to think about it" upsets me, perhaps more than it should.)
You begin your comment by saying "You make one good point…" Is that a fact? No. Did you state it as a fact? Yes, in that you stated it without qualifiers. Does that mean you have no credibility? Of course not, come on.
Do you disagree that you misconstrued my stance and only made one other point? If not, I don't see how that applies to me. If so, I'm sorry, I should have used qualifiers, it wasn't obvious to me it was a controversial statement.
Your statement that "piracy is stealing" is a controversial statement, you know this, right? That you stated it as fact is why you decrease in credibility in my eyes. I definitely did not mean you lose all credibility.
For the rest of it, let's rephrase your own logic a bit: "I don't know if sending people to the back of the bus is wrong, but I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the foreseeable future" would be a pretty weak argument against declaring segregation unethical.
I agree that it's unethical. What I ask is, is it not ok for me to send people to the back of the bus, in such a situation? edw519's original comment said something was "clearly unethical", and I responded by saying, maybe, but is it not ok for me to do it anyway, due to the situation?
I'm saying you do hurt people.
Whether this counts as "hurting people" in some sense is debatable, but I hoped it was clear from context that by "hurting people" I meant direct bodily harm, which piracy clearly isn't.
It's debatable, but you dismiss debate...
I don't think it's debatable that someone would have made more money if I paid for something I pirated instead. I also don't think it's debatable that it is impossible to avoid causing people to be worse off due to our actions and inactions. Where's the line? Seems to me, the line society draws is social acceptability.
That's not a good counter an assertion that piracy is unethical.
I countered the assertion that "piracy is unethical" with "ethics don't matter, social acceptability does, and piracy is socially acceptable". Why is this not a good counter?
...your notion that "ethics don't matter, I don't really have to think about it" upsets me, perhaps more than it should.
I certainly don't like the idea that I'm turning a blind eye towards, perhaps even engaging in, unethical actions. But I can't painstakingly decide the ethics of everything I do. I try to do good in the world, I really do. But sometimes I don't know and can't decide, and I have to fall back on the tired old excuse of "social acceptability".
For those things that are unethical but I don't realize and do anyway because they're socially acceptable, how is "socially acceptable" not a justification? Surely it's unreasonable to expect me to know what is absolutely ethical and what isn't.
There is no question that making decisions about what is ethical and what is not is difficult, which is why I question the fact that you don't care enough to decide whether your piracy is ethical. Acting ethically is difficult, and over the course of our lives we will all make many, many mistakes. But ideally I think we should at least try to act ethically, which requires that we put thought into our actions.
"Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?"
I love discussions like this, because something like this is not clearly unethical, but when GNU code is used without following the license (like in the thesis Wordpress theme debacle awhile back, people cry "theft".
"I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)"
This is a nice way of trying to legitimize piracy. As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs?
Interestingly, the GPL seems to come up every time there is a discussion about copyright law.
The fact that the GPL uses copyright is just an implementation detail. In a very real sense, the GPL is the opposite of normal copyright--it turns copyright law against itself. It goes further than not having any copyright (e.g. public domain/BSD/MIT): it not only ensures this particular work is free, it ensures all the works it can affect also remain free.
So the issue (from an idealist's standpoint) is not that the copyright of a GPL project is infringed but rather that additional limits are added on the project. The idea behind the GPL is to ensure that not only can everybody access the program, but they can legally and practically modify it. The people infringing are the ones who stop others from accessing the intellectual "property"--the very opposite of "pirates"!
In the open source world, the most direct analog of something like piracy is distributing a normally paid project for free, legally (e.g. CentOS vs RHEL). Not only is this legal, but it's completely reasonable--nobody's crying foul! (You are not allowed to use trademarks, but that's completely orthogonal to copyright.)
So really, the arguments against copyright and for the GPL are the same. If anything, the latter is actually more extreme: it ensures not only access but the ability to modify.
In the FSF's perfect world, copyright would not be necessary for the GPL--all software would just be free (as in speech) by default. So supporting the GPL and opposing other copyright is entirely consistent.
1. That's actually very good point. I don't know anything about this "thesis Wordpress theme debacle", but if someone copied GNU code without attribution, for example, even though it doesn't obviously hurt anyone, I'd think that's wrong.
I think the difference is twofold: it's socially unacceptable, and empathically, I'd be offended if someone plagiarized my work.
2. I am not trying to legitimize piracy just because "I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)", and I didn't say so. What I mean, and what I tried to say, was that I haven't decided whether I think piracy is ethical or not, and I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the forseeable future.
As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs?
I'm surprised you take it as a given that you should feel bad doing so. We live in a very capitalistic world, and I think most capitalists would say no, you absolutely shouldn't feel bad. Do you believe we should be employing people in obsolete jobs just to avoid putting people out of work? I will happily provide examples compiled by capitalists of just that, taken to the extreme, to prove how bad of an idea it is.
Really? You think yourself so above me, so better than me, in every way, that not only don't I deserve a response, but I herald the death of the HN as a place for insightful discussions?
Maybe there would be more insightful discussions if people had more to say than "HN is dead" in response to a confused, imperfect person expressing where they are on the path to discerning right from wrong.
Why do you think this "clearly unethical"? I don't think it's clear at all.
Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?
You know what the truth is, for me, and everyone I know, at least? The truth is, we don't care about "other" people's opinions on ethics (where "other" people=people on the internet, in the government, in anti-piracy ads, etc). The fact is, it's socially acceptable, among my social circles, to pirate, to use drugs, and to {participate in,facilitate} underage drinking. So I have no qualms with people I know doing so, nor if I were to do so myself.
You don't pirate, ever? Because it's "clearly unethical"? Do everyone in your social circles hold similar opinions? Do you jaywalk? Have you ever used drugs, or facilitated illegal drinking?
Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious.
I guess my point is, I don't think ethics matter. I don't think about whether what I do is ethical. I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things), because I have empathy. I guess you could say I have ethics in that if you asked me why I don't, I'd say "it's wrong", but I'd never say something is "clearly unethical" and try to argue why. I'd say it's wrong because it's hurtful, and I don't like being hurt.
Is this just me?