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Comment by skummetmaelk | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference between copying for personal use and distributing to others against payment of any type. Redistributing against payment implies that the purchaser is willing to pay in the first place and of course that payment should be made to the original creator / rights holder.

Piracy not being theft only applies if you would have _never_ bought the product in the first place, had it not been free to copy.

If you redistribute some content on youtube you are "stealing" eyeballs and ad money from the original creator.

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> Redistributing against payment implies that the purchaser is willing to pay in the first place and of course that payment should be made to the original creator / rights holder.

This argument can get muddy because of parties that are involved between the creator and the consumer, like record companies. Where sometimes the original creator does not see any money (or an unfair low amount) and all the intermediates reap the most profit for basically sitting on an acquired IP or copyright.

I'd love to give money to a original creator for their effort in creating their art to support them to create more, but I hate to fuel an industry that is actively fighting creation and innovation by lobbying for extended copyright and artificially fragmenting supply and hindering paying users with DRM (digital restrictions management).

You can argue that piracy is wrong if you please but you can't argue its theft in the same way you can't argue murder is rape its a category error not a judgement on its moral acceptability.

"Stealing" eyeballs is another ethical misjudgment as you have no moral right to someone else's attention even wherein you have an ethical/legal argument.

They haven't stolen eyeballs they have violated your legal right to authorize copies according to copyright law. This isn't just a semantic argument. Misidentifying the source of the ethical issue leads one to nonsensical conclusions.

By that argument, libraries and resellers are "stealing".

It's only stealing if the person who's being stolen from no longer has something they used to have. Potential things can't be stolen.

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