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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it is horsepuckey. Large groups of people have learned that there is no social censure for stealing certain types of goods. Stealing is strictly superior to buying for them. They'll steal it if it is possible. I have both trials and a very generous refund policy, and my downloadable app gets stolen frequently. (And my web app gets stolen never, which should be a preview of coming attractions for people who are going to wake up one day and wonder why nothing functions without an Internet connection.)

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Piracy is not theft. Theft requires that one is deprived of some tangible benefit. Downloads cannot be strictly correlated to lost sales, because many download to sample, or download things they wouldn't spend money on anyway.

This doesn't mean you have to agree with filesharing, or think it's a good thing, or participate in it, but calling it "theft" is scaremongering.

Does that mean if I steal a yacht that it's not theft because I wouldn't have bought one anyway? Your logic seems flawed to me.

A better analogy would be drawing up plans from his yacht and using them to build another yacht for yourself. This is illegal, but it would be silly to claim that it is "stealing" from the yacht manufacturer.

It's stealing because you're depriving someone of that yacht. It's not a lost sale because you wouldn't have bought one.

It’s not really important whether it’s ‘theft’ or not, that’s just not relevant to the question whether it is morally acceptable or not.

>> Piracy is not theft.

No, some piracy is not theft. And some is.

You realize this semantic argument is old, tired, and does nothing to actually make people who pirate software look any better.

A 'semantic argument' is a core dump where I come from. Which is synonymous with 'pay-cuts'.

Piracy is also something completely different. It involves boats, killing, abducting and extorting people and gasp stealing stuff. So, go STFU with your apologetic nitpicking…

Piracy isn't theft in the sense of a depriving any one person of goods they would otherwise use.

Piracy is theft in the sense that it deprives a producer of the income or potential income that they would otherwise make from someone buying a good.

Piracy is like breaking into a warehouse full of unsold toys slated to be destroyed. It's against the law but it's hard to see it impacting a particular person negatively (not that it won't if no one buys toys the following Christmas).

It's conflict between those who believe digital or intellectual property opens up a whole different domain of "property" and those who believe the old rules should apply without change.

I would suggest those arguing for intellectual property not try to equate digital piracy with something like breaking into your neighbor's house and stealing their jewelry. It's a poor analogy. The argument that producers need and deserve to be paid probably carries more weight.

Piracy is theft in the sense that it deprives a producer of the income or potential income that they would otherwise make from someone buying a good.

So do successful competitors, boycotts, Internet FUD, and a whole slew of other things, in fairness.

It occurs to me that property (of any sort) is a metaphysical concept.

Frugality also fits the definition of "theft in the sense that it deprives a producer of the income or potential income that they would otherwise make from someone buying a good." If I were less austere, you could make a ton more money off me.

Also, property is not itself all that metaphysical, at least not if we accept the idea that things actually exist as we perceive them (which seems like the opposite of metaphysics). Some of the trappings we attach to it might be, but property is pretty fundamental to the idea of self. On a very basic level, my property is something I have.

While you have a point, it's mostly irrelevant to this discussion. We could argue about the legal punishment for property theft versus copyright infringement too but that's not relevant either.

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