Purely devil's advocate would be someone along the lines of -- just because it isn't for sale now doesn't mean it might never be. Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of ability to make money from it in the future.
Pretty flimsy, imo.
Pretty flimsy, imo.
Something that was pirated does NOT equal a lost sale.
I might enjoy Charlie Chaplin films, I would never pay for the ability to watch them. I don't feel it is worth my money. It doesn't matter if it becomes available at some-point in the future, I won't ever pay for it. If anti-piracy measures were 100% effective and reasonable and I couldn't get a copy of his material without paying for it. I will never pay for it.
There are a lot of reasons that pirates use to justify their actions; some can be agreed with, others are self-serving rhetoric.
Another good example of this "Piracy does not equal lost revenue"; music.
Terrestrial radio stations do not pay for the music that they play (unlike internet based streaming services). *[edit: Another HN'er has corrected me, but they do pay a fee to the songwriter] So if I had the ability to hear the song on the radio, the artist did not receive a penny from my listening. They can continue to not receive any money if I play an .mp3 of the same song.
IIRC this is actually why Spotify’s T&Cs don’t allow usage for businesses or public gatherings because they don’t pay out at the public performance licensing rate.
This is a common argument, but I think it's more complicated than a blanket yes or no.
If I sell 1000 copies of a novel (or a CD or a movie or whatever), then strictly speaking, my revenue isn't affected by how many pirated copies exist. I get paid for 1000 copies whether there are zero pirated copies or a million.
However, that doesn't mean pirated copies aren't lost revenue in a real sense; it just means it's effectively impossible to measure that lost revenue. Some of those people would never have paid for their copy at all; some might not have even been able to find it legally. Some, though, undoubtedly did have the money and did enjoy the work, they just decided it was cheaper not to pay for it. If enough people take that route, it does affect my revenue, in that I am making less than I would if those people were paying.
And it's easy to talk ourselves into believing that's always okay, with what you called self-serving rhetoric: "really, this just hurts big companies, not little ones or individual creators"; "oh, there are enough other people paying for it, we can afford it"; "I enjoy this, just not enough to pay for it." When we're talking specifically about Charlie Chaplin, that latter seems like a pretty easy call, since the vast majority of his filmography is over 70 years old and much of it is in the public domain. If, however, we say "I might enjoy Robert Downey Jr. films, but I would never pay for the ability to watch them," this may not seem so cut and tried.
I wish we had a better term than "intellectual property", because I genuinely think "property" makes people focus on physical representation as the thing they are paying for: shoplifting a DVD and pirating a movie are obviously different, and many people who've done the latter would never think of doing the former. But in both cases, what you're really interested in, what you're actually paying for, is the content.
I get that there's lots of gray areas: the content may not be available legally in your area; it may not legally be available at all; you may already own the movie on Blu-Ray and find it easier to download a torrent of it to make a good digital copy than to go through the hassle of ripping it. But any argument which, at the end of the day, reduces to "I wanna have this content, I just don't wanna pay for it" is, well... pretty weak.
Copyright (and patents) exist "To promote 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."
The purpose is to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the public's benefit, the means is a limited time monopoly.
The limited time rights are intended to be the minimum necessary to incentivize people to create for the public's benefit. Originally this was 14yrs, required registration, and could be renewed once.
The intent has been twisted by those with an interest in perpetuating copyright indefinitely (rights holders). Now copyright is 70yrs after the death of the creator or 95yrs after publication for contract work. [0]
Why does someone need to be incentivized to create after they're dead? Why were these extensions retroactive since you can't incentivize someone to create something they've already created?
This has been argued in the US courts, the end result of these extensions was because each one is still for a 'limited time' they're okay - even if they're repeatedly extended at each expiration. This isn't the original intent or spirit of copyright law.
> "Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of ability to make money from it in the future."
The rights holders have lobbied to twist the law for their own self-interest and then play victim - I have little sympathy for that.
I think if we had something sane (5yrs, maybe special protections around certain types of adaptations, maybe longer time frame to reward authors specifically up to some dollar amount if adapted for-profit, restrictions on for-profit distribution by third parties?) the law would be more aligned with its original goals and there would be fewer issues.
Today you can't even declare something 'public domain' if you want to since copyright is reserved by default. The best you can do is license it permissively.
[0]: An aside, at one point it was until the author's death. This gave me an idea for a B-movie where a serial killer goes around taking out pop groups so their music goes into the public domain.
I would like to point out to everyone that the correct expression to use in these discussions is rights holder NOT author.
Anyone still imagining this as a fight between pirate and "author" is strongly misled. Most people will happily support the author - just look at youtube/patreon. But most are also aware that buying or pirating a book ... has very little to do with the author in either case.
If a book is only copyrighted for, say, 5 years after creation, the advances for authors will become a lot smaller.
If it turns out 5 isn't enough time to incentivize people to actually write books or make movies then maybe back to the original 14.
I don't know the specific policy answer that turns out to be enough time to keep the incentive, but I do know it isn't 95 years after the publication date or 70 years after the author's death.
If this line of reasoning makes sense, then when is it unethical to pirate works? Until the copyright goes out? Until the original authors die? Until the original authors' heirs die? Until 14 + 14 years have passed (original extended copyright length)? Or is it when the IP is owned by individuals and not corporations?
Maybe ethics here just is a bit too complicated and it's pointless to bring it into the discussion?
That means if I spend a couple years writing a book, instead of spending more time with my family or working on something else, and get hit by a car and die the day after the release... my family is left with nothing?
My incentive to create would be that my family would have some earning even after my death (if I'm older or sick, for example)
That said, you'd still have the 5yr or whatever amount of time. I don't think tying it to the life of the author makes sense. It was just an example of how the spirit of the law got twisted from 'incentive to create' to 'rights holders should profit forever from their IP'.