memes

You seem to be under the impression that people and corporations get equal treatment under the law.

Frankly this catch phrase never made any sense to me, from a logical point of view.

It assumes that:

1. If buying = owning then pirating* = stealing, because you own it without buying.

2. And if buying =/= owning then pirating =/= stealing, because you can't own it otherwise.

But the justification in the second statement is completely irrelevant to the first statement. You still own it without buying. It's still stealing.

UNLESS - we examine what "stealing" is. This is where the arguments about being in a digital space vs. a physical space comes in. Where the question is raised: Is making an exact copy really "stealing"? Or, consider what is being "stolen"? The original item? The idea? We need to think about this more.

But it's here the argument should be made and here the debate should be. That's where "pirates" have a chance of winning. Let's get rid of this flawed, easily repeatable, but fundamentally incorrect catch phrase and come up with a better one already. One that makes sense.

*(Nevermind that most of you technically aren't even pirating, you're just downloading the fruits of someone else that pirated.)

Piracy technically isn't stealing, it's intellectual property reproduction license violation. Clever bastards those lawyers. You basically don't purchase the music, you purchase the right to reproduce it for non-commercial purposes.

It's important never to forget who sets the terms of commerce, wages, and employment.

All the peasants can do is game the terms they set. And the owner class that sets those rigged terms, and their doting class traitor sycophants, rage against even that.

"you you you... You're just supposed to eat cat food in the dark crying if you can't afford to enjoy life, while we laugh about your subsistence at the country club! No fair!"

Now... Wait.

Is the argument here that something must be owned to be stolen? I don't think ownership is contested, just who is the owner. Or is the argument that pirating also isn't owning... Or... What? Just tit for tat and it looks like the thoughts should be related somehow? I'm all for sailing the high seas and for right to repair / software ownership, but the two concepts are independent as far as I can see.

Idk, if I'm going to try to reproduce this mental gymnastics I should really stretch first: I don't want to pull something and end up a sovcit.

Imagine if we could hook up Bittorrent and Bitcoin somehow, and made it so you could create a torrent of your work and get some money when people download.

And then people who seed it could maybe get a little cut for helping to host things. And you'd buy tokens and you'd know that almost 100% of the money goes to the artist, and the artist has control over the entire process.

That would be neat, but I'm sure someone here will explain why this is unworkable and stupid. Which is why I posted it.

You can pare this down significantly. Piracy isn't theft. They are different things.

Most of the back and forth is predicated on the idea that the digital world works the same as the digital one. It does not!

In the physical world you cannot produce and exact copy of something for zero dollars.

In the digital world you can make many copies at effectively zero cost.

Stealing, theft, is predicated on taking something from someone so they no longer have it.

Making a digital copy does not steal or remove access.

The whole argument, which I would posit is deeply flawed, is that pirating removes imaginary potential profits for reselling the thing copied (not stolen). If that's so then prove it. Prove that at some point in the future I, or any other given person, would have bought that digital thing. Unless you've invented time travel you just can't.

Copying digital content isn't theft and pirating isn't the right thing to call it.

We have to figure out how to better frame or address the digital world that just fundamentally doesn't operate the same as the physical one.

If buying isn't owning,

Then it's time to get communism

This must be why blockbuster failed, people just grabbed whatever and left saying it’s not stealing because blockbuster lets them rent it