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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

The analogy between shoplifting and copyright infrigement gets really, really old.

I've made that argument myself, but agree that the current video streaming situation is just dumb. Could you explain me why that analogy is wrong? I understand there is no damage done as in, they don't have less money than they had before, but they still have less money than they would have if i bought/rented the video.

That is why the analogy is wrong. If you're in a situation where you're definitely not going to buy it (because nobody will take your money and give you the product, for example) then there's no difference to them if you watch it or not.

Imagine I really want your car, so I take it. Or imagine I really want your car, so I use a magic wand to make an exact duplicate of it. Are those two scenarios at all comparable?

> (because nobody will take your money and give you the product, for example)

This argument fall apart in many of the examples cited in this thread because most of the time, those movies are available digitally for a price. The fact is that most people just don't want to pay that price so they use other means to watch the movie.

The argument works equally well if you simply wouldn't buy it.

The issue, of course, is whether or not you're correctly estimating whether you would end up buying it if you didn't pirate it. But if you take it as given that you wouldn't buy it, then there's no loss.

They dont have less money than before because its either you cant watch it in this case or you watch it illegally. Nobody loses money, its lost opportunity at best.

Because you go into a store and take something that store on longer has against its will. Copyright infringement is just someone else willingly duplicating data that you want, while the entity that holds a state granted monopoly to duplication (not necessarily creator) has not authorized the transfer.

One is robbery of scarce resources, one is a legal framework around imposing scarcity on something that is not naturally scarce.

You can steal a movie - in the traditional sense of the word - by breaking into MGM / Disney / Universal's internal network and copying the movie out from their own internal servers. This does happen, where scene releases of unreleased movies happen, often done by employees with access to get access to these films prematurely. That is the only situation remotely comparable to the shoplifting scenario, because in the normal piracy scenario nobody is not voluntarily participating (the original buyer of the movie who then shared it did a voluntary transaction, then violated the distribution terms given them when distributing it to others voluntarily).

Violating a contract and violence are on entirely different planes of ethics.

If transfer of ownership does not actually occur when a digital product is "purchased", then how can one argue that ownership is lost when a digital product is "stolen"? In both cases, what is happening involves licensed use, not ownership. What is lost when a digital product is pirated is not ownership, AKA property rights; what is lost is potential demand for licensing rights. What is lost when a physical item is stolen is actual possession, which would enable one to use or sell the actual item. Losing actual possession of the item will also cause loss of demand, though, since someone else having possession enables them to use or sell the actual item in competition with the legitimate owner, who is concerned with maintaining market demand for the physical items.

The thing taken in shoplifting is rival in the economics sense. It makes impossible a sale to someone else. With piracy, it's just another copy.

I know; I have to keep bringing it up because people keep pretending they're owed entertainment. This entitled generation is just disappointing.

You seem to be missing the point that you continually bringing it up does not make it accurate or even relevant. You wouldn't download a car! This is a dumb argument.

I know this: the subject is complex and many varied and valid arguments are made on all sides.

But amazingly, folks accept whatever argument gives them free entertainment. Objections are suddenly 'irrelevant' when watching their favorite TV show is at stake.

Folks who wouldn't go in the back window of a bar to avoid the cover charge, will gladly go in the back way online to hear their favorite band. And they rely on the (pretty indirect) argument about how the source is generated to rationalize it.

Pardon me for my cynicism.

Well if the front door was inconvenient and hard to find, and then I paid for it and the front door wouldn't work, then yeah maybe I would go in the back window. Your argument is so flawed, and it really seems like with your comment above that you just are looking for a reason to call the younger generation "entitled".

Stop using physical examples, they don't correlate to a digital good that can be duplicated digitally, with no physical presence.

They got a refund. Then pirated.

I understand they were frustrated in their efforts to be entertained. Then took what they wanted. Which is pretty much the definition of 'entitled'

Everything is pretty much physical in the real world. Like the physical time and effort folks make to provide services and market them.

Why is the streaming services not the entitled ones in this scenario? According to you they should get payment when their sole contribution was wasting their want-to-be-customers' time.

"Then took what they wanted."

The word "took" when applied to physical objects implies that only one person (the one who took it) has that object, and the one it was taken from no longer has it.

In the digital world that can only happen if the original is deleted or destroyed, which does not happen in the case of a copy or a "pirating". The original is still in the possession of the "owner", but now also in the possession of the copier. The "owner" does not lose his own copy, so nothing is "taken" from him.

It's analogous, in the physical world, to making a photograph of a photograph. The original photograph still exists, and the "owner" of the original photograph does not have anything "taken" from them by the existence of a copy in the possession of someone else (except perhaps in the legal or potential sense -- depending on the laws, the jurisdiction, and the interpretation of those laws -- but certainly not in any kind of physical sense).

I like your photocopying example. I have personally used the library on my school campus to sign out some temporary textbooks they have on hold so that I can take a couple pictures of pages I need, and use those for my classes. Is the publisher losing anything? No, because I was never going to go pay $200 so I could read a couple pages from their textbook.

Yes, they got a refund because they wasted their time to get nothing. Absolutely nothing. They actually were at a loss because they wasted time and got nothing but frustration for it. So yeah, I don't see a reason why they are not entitled to it.

What does the time and effort required matter in anyway in this case? If something is copied, it is copied. They can't lose something they didn't have. If I could clone a car and then I took that cloned car is it still the same as stealing the original car? No, if a friend cloned me their car I don't see how you could even come close to saying it was the same as stealing the car.

Are they entitled to the entertainment? Sure, why not? If they tried to get it already why not. Not to mention in this day in age there is a lot more social pressure to be up to date with current hit tv shows and movies. And sure, you could be "that guy" who doesn't watch these things, but most don't want to be in that group.

So yes, if they tried to get it legally, and the legal system failed and wasted their time, I do see them entitled to try another avenue even if it may not be legal. I would not say the same about a physical item.

This is no different from the situation during the US Prohibition era. Pragmatically speaking, the threat of punishment did not cause sufficient change in social behavior or attitudes. The ideal model of using law to manipulate society failed.

The reason the comparison is objectionable is because 'theft' is not the same as 'failing to pay a fee'. Theft implies a non-duplicatable object has passed from the possession of one entity to the possession of another thus depriving the first entity of any use or advantage from it.

While we might disagree on the moral shading of copyright infringement can we agree that piracy and theft are different things?

...and there's the convenient, highly abstract argument. When wanting free stuff, no mental gymnastic is too hard.

I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers. Like a 12-year-old deciding their older brother's belongings really belong to everybody, because socialism or whatever.

But it's not interesting to you that the gross majority of people, even people who lean to your opinion, are constructing abstractions in order to reason about the problem?

If you consider yourself a pragmatist, you should also consider that you have under analyzed the issue at hand and that trying to generalize digital media with anecdotes of exchange for goods or services in meat space is inappropriate.

Your position sounds more rooted in laziness than pragmatism, at this rate.

"I'm a pragmatist. I see folks wanting to avoid disappointment (can't see favorite show) suddenly becoming theoretical philosophers."

I can understand (though not agree with) the point of view that people are selfish and just make up excuses to justify to themselves and others that they are in the right whenever they take some action that benefits themselves.

But I don't understand why you would attribute those selfish, self-justifying motives only to those that make copies of digital media but not to those who proclaim to "own" them or who decry copying as theft?

Wouldn't your view also have to apply to the whole concept of ownership, which you'd have to dismiss as a pretension to "theoretical philosophy"?

Here is simple no abstract argument:

Pirates don't deprive distributors or content producers of anything. No harm has been done.

JoeAltmaier didn't actually say, "piracy and shoplifting are both examples of theft". It was more like, "piracy and shoplifting are examples of taking something valuable to which you are not entitled simply because it's convenient".

This kind of piracy existed before. Remember sharing music CDs with friends? Remember libraries over buying books? Remember letting your friends borrow your comics or reading photocopies?

I 'member.

Well, our corporate overlords are trying really hard to make these things a criminal offense in the future. How DARE you share a piece of content you bought with another? The licensing terms forbid it!

Sharing a piece of original physical media is different than sharing a photocopy or burned copy. Sharing the physical media with the license attached to it is legal, making a copy is not as you can't create an additional license (unless allowed by the publisher) with the copied media.

It's just a bad analogy. It sounds silly if you replace movies with physical goods.

If you, unauthorized, print out a photo and hang it in your apartment to enjoy you've probably committed IP infringement of some kind.

Have you committed theft though? Is it the same severity as pickpocketing someone's wallet/purse?

It's important to distinguish because it informs how we should treat these things, legally.

I don't necessarily sense any sense of entitlement from it. It's just that the access mechanisms are Byzantine-complex and full of people charging rents.

Rents are completely inherent in entertainment product - it's just that we have a faux facade of competition between services for the charging of rents. This is confusing.

Is that the entitled corporate generation you're disappointed in ? You know, the kind of entitlement that thinks "the author's life plus 70 years" is a reasonable term for copyright length.

How many more works does the author create in the +70 years after death ? If the answer (I suspect) is zero, what possible:

".. promotion of the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

can there be in that time ?

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