this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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Stealing suggests they don't have the content anymore; they do. "Copying" is the word you're looking for.
The whole "stealing" comparison rather breaks down when there is basically no scarcity / no cost to duplicating and distributing what has been produced
Even arguing it's "stealing" because it deprives the publisher of the cost isn't exactly true, because it only holds if you'd actually have ponied up were the content not available for free (I know for sure I definitely wouldn't have played some games or watched some shows if I had had to actually pay for them)
Artistic content is, believe it or not, produced outside of capitalism as well. And in capitalist societies it often is produced despite capitalism, not thanks to it, and one could argue capitalism itself is a large part of the reason that content's quality has taken a dive over the past decades
This reminds me of issues with Groupon, LivingSocial, and other kinds of online middle men for businesses selling discounted goods and services. When a business signs up with Groupon to promote themselves by offering these discounts, it sometimes leads to the business being overwhelmed with customers if they sell too many deals, primarily if the business provides one on one services. So, if a massage salon oversells their deal, they might have only a couple of masseuses booking thousands of massages - they might never be able to fulfill their obligations and might even go out of business because they can't book full price clients.
But if the business is one to many - say, a yoga class, a gym membership, a foreign language class - they usually can squeeze more bodies into the rooms and make it work.
And if the business is scalable - an online yoga class, an online language class, something you can download - you could.probably sell an infinite amount of deals and be just fine. The infinitely available deals probably won't crowd out the full price clients because they are likely not looking for deals in Groupon, etc. And you will garner future continuing / full price clients because the deal allowed you to sample their product/service.
ETA: I have hundreds of free downloads of books from Amazon, offered as promotions to introduce me to different authors/series. If I share these free downloads, is it piracy?
I definitely mean "stealing" as "depriving the publisher of the cost". Limiting the term "stealing" just to moving physical objects really makes no sense in the current world.
That's an interesting case I never really considered. If you only genuinely pirate stuff you would never buy otherwise then... I guess it's fine? But this alone doesn't put the end to the discussion because I find it really hard to believe that people would just give up all of the stuff they pirate if they had to pay for it. But in some cases, sure, sounds reasonable.
That's true of course but I don't think just pretending we don't live in a capitalist world and taking stuff for free is making this world better in any way.
Let's say something costs $20, from which 75% goes to make some rich guy even richer and only 25% goes to the actual author who put in the work. It's more important to me to give that $5 to the author than NOT to give the $15 to the rich guy. Would I prefer there wasn't a rich guy in the equation? Yes, of course, but that's often just not possible.
In the end, I genuinely want the world to be a better place but I don't really believe in extreme solutions. I appreciate your civilized answer despite different opinions. Peace!