this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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I'm sorry you're ignorant of the issue.
For starters, piracy is not theft in most legal jurisdictions. It is infringement. These are different words in laws for a reason. Saying it's "theft" is falling for a PR campaign made by parties with a vested interest in that interpretation being in the public consciousness.
Next, a lot of piracy (I'm not going to comment on what proportion because I lack the numbers ... and so does literally everybody else because of the underground nature of this!) is of material that is simply not available through any other means to the people doing said piracy. I, for example, freely admit to piracy ... of things that I simply cannot buy where I am. There are literally zero avenues for me to purchase the things I pirate, so I pirate. There are, similarly, things which have been out of print, out of production, or otherwise unavailable anywhere in the world for ages that get pirated. (I don't pirate enough of these to say this is a primary motivation for me.)
Finally, there is some piracy that is actually directly virtuous. For example the people who pirate secret docs that reveal the illegal, immoral, or otherwise despicable shenanigans of large entities like corporations and governments.
Wow, what a smug and condescending response that misses the point.
First of all, I was clearly not trying to capture a legal definition, I said it seemed like a pretty name for petty theft to me, and I stand by that. In other words, people generally say they're pirating something instead of saying they're taking something illegally that doesn't belong to them because that doesn't make what they're doing sound as good.
I scanned through some of those communities, and I didn't get a sense that trying to attain stuff that's not available is anything approaching a majority of the discussion, but even so, it not being available where you are doesn't make it okay to steal. And you're being ridiculous if you're trying to insinuate that (1) any meaningful percentage of the piracy communities are about whistleblowers uncovering unethical or illegal activity or (2) people in general use the word "piracy" to describe that activity. I mean, are there any mainstream articles about Manning, Assange, or Snowden that describe them as pirates?
Still seems like a lot of folks trying to justify not paying for stuff they want.
Say "I didn't read the contents of the comment I'm responding to" without using those words.