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In what world is everyone able or willing to pirate? I think your ad-absurdum is just absurd here.
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>Duplicating a video doesn’t deprive another person of anything

This was the claim. I said what I said to point out that if everyone acted on this belief for a feature film, there would be a thousand people who ultimately don't get compensated for their work.

You are right: not everyone is able or willing to pirate. Piracy is only able to exist because of these people who pay for art. That's definitely true, and definitely different than the claim that no one is being deprived of anything.


What are they being deprived of when somebody who was never going to pay makes a copy?

Some were going to pay. They already want to watch the show badly enough to jump through the hoops of pirating it.

The motive of the pirate doesn't matter: they are deprived from the revenue that was circumvented.

No they can't be deprived of imaginary revenue.

They are deprived of the payment they asked for in exchange for someone viewing their work.

Also, "the pirate was never going to pay" is a far more imaginary thing here; it's an unproven claim (especially since it's often paired with "pirates would pay if it was cheaper/more convenient to access).

Regardless, it strikes me as a particularly arrogant kind of entitlement for you to violate someone's terms to enjoy their thing while telling them you think it's worthless.


I'm personally happy to pay to watch without adverts. I'm not willing to pay for adverts. If they only sell it with adverts, then I'm never going to pay for it. Whether or not I watch it, they don't lose a dime.

I understand the idea of refusing service you don't like, but there's just no way that disliking a service gives you the right to rewrite terms.

I dunno man. If you're gonna benefit from the hard work of others without compensating them, so be it. It's the pretension that you're doing something other than that, for motives other than pure self-interest, which really bothers me.


> for motives other than pure self-interest, which really bothers me.

What motives have I claimed?


You haven’t explicitly claimed one. If you have a motive besides wanting to see the thing without feeling like you stole something, I'd like to hear it.

> It's the pretension that you're doing something other than that, for motives other than pure self-interest, which really bothers me.

Yes, it's very hard for me to see your motives as being something other than pure self-interest.

Am I wrong?


Isn't that the whole point of the free market? Make the total cost/effort for something lower than the alternative, and people will pay for it. I paid for Netflix for ages when they had every show/movie that I wanted to watch, instead of stuff being fragmented across 20 services.

Sure, that's the point of the free market. But anywhere else in the free market, we don't say "I don't want to pay for this/deal with the inconvenience, so I'll just take it for free".

The only way people try to make this work logically is to talk about how a digital good has a nominal real cost - but that's a very different argument.


> to talk about how a digital good has a nominal real cost

So once again, they can't lose imaginary income.


Are physical goods priced solely to cover nominal real costs?

If they are, then you have an argument. If they aren't, then whatever that price is covering other than nominal real costs is being stolen in this case as well.


Is the question "what is a free market"?



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