Copying is not stealing. Stealing removes the original, copying leaves the original intact.
Let copyright holders deal with unauthorized copying, why should any layman care about it?
In terms of amount-of-benefit, the second vastly outweighs the first.
But if the author can't pay his bills then there is no author.
Does that cover it?
Would UBI fix this?
Back in 2006, the UK commissioned a report recommending how to revise the copyright system (the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property), and it particularly recommended against any further increases in copyright terms - contra pressure from the music industry - and essentially only didn't argue for decreases because of international obligations. On pages 52 to 55 of the Review, however, there's quite a lot of evidence suggesting that most producers of creative works would not be meaningfully harmed in earning power if the term of copyright was as short as 10 to 20 years after production.
A 10 year copyright term, renewable for a further 10 on application, would do a lot to redress the balance you mention here.
Using an untethered copy is indeed more privacy-friendly than using most garbage publisher portals and offerings. And yes, piracy can be a problem for the host if she has insufficient opsec.
Copying can be unauthorized, but when you say it as it is, "unauthorized copying" sounds a lot less terrible then "stealing" and "piracy", and is more precise in meaning.
Calling it "stealing", "piracy" and other ugly words is a strawman argument - we all agree stealing (physical items) and piracy (on high seas) is bad, so that would imply that copying is bad, too, since "copying is stealing and piracy". It's not, and additional arguments are needed.
How you steal (making a copy) doesn't affect the fact that you prevent the author to get his share or reward from it.
If you don't pay me, you're stealing from me.
Comparing this to your comment is whataboutism. Comments on hacker news are free to read. If you want to be payed for your writing, use a platform that support this.
However, you do have an automatic copyright on everything you write and I would need your permission (eventually by paying you a fee) to republish it in a book or somewhere else. Fair use is an exception to that, but the amount of text we can reuse without permission is limited. These are rules.
Copying answers isn't bad because you are infringing on someones "right" to have control over their answers. It is bad because you are commiting academic fraud and seeking a qualification you have not earned. You are claiming anothers achievement as your own.
Me reading a pirated book does not mean I claim to be the author.
If I download a PDF and read it and then delete it as soon as I am done, have I done the thing that is not exactly like stealing?
If I go to a library and read that same book in its entirety without checking it out ... doesn't seem much different than reading and then deleting a PDF.
Stealing someone else's book definitely seems wrong, but reading it while you are visiting their house seems fine?
I am not claiming to know the right (ethical, moral, whatever) action here. I just have a super huge problem calling it "piracy" or "stealing" or whatever. Figuring out a way to support creators is hugely important, but criminalizing the mere viewing or hearing of art/music/words/etc seems extremely wrong.
Anyway, I've been thinking about all this since at least Napster and I still have no idea really.
For example, that person whose works are in the gallery has built their business on a balance of exposure - letting anyone who walks in look at things - and the fact that people who buy art are willing to pay a fair amount to own a physical object for display. Looking without buying is expressly part of their business model.
Book publishing is different, with the author assuming they’ll get payments from readers - much smaller than that artists but many of them. Since I don’t have any ownership rights over their work, I don’t attempt to change the terms.
Eg, if you steal a book from a shelf, then it's gone. The shop can no longer sell it to anyone else, and needs to obtain a replacement. The customer that really need it may not be able to get it now.
But if a 10 year old from a dirt poor family with $100 to their name downloads a whole library of technical literature worth $10M, it's a very different situation. I think it's very arguable that there was no scenario in which the authors would have gotten paid, and that no real harm has been done in this particular case.
Just to be sure: do you think that if people can't afford something that's not physically tangible they should be entitled (or at least permitted) to have it free of charge, because they wouldn't buy it anyway? I wouldn't buy (and probably wouldn't afford) a 30-day stay at the most luxurious spa in my country, should I insist that they let me enter anyway?
That's tangible. You consume space, resources, people time, water, energy, etc. People have to clean after you.
For comparison, take the scenario of a 10 year old from a poor family pirating Solidworks, which costs $5000-ish a license. The family doesn't have $5000 in their bank account.
So there exist two possible outcomes of this situation:
A. Kid pirates Solidworks. Company makes $0.
B. Kid doesn't pirate Solidworks. Company makes $0, because it's impossible for them to buy it.
That's precisely why many such companies have huge educational discounts, and offer software for free to students sometimes, and sometimes ignore piracy in some areas. If you could eliminate piracy by non-engineering companies you wouldn't make much of a difference, because pretty much no hobbyist out there spends $5000 on software they might use just a bit. Rather than buying it, they'll make do with alternatives instead.
I have this impression that "poor kid" vs "incredibly expensive software" is used as a strawman here, since we're talking of $30 books that anyone who's not incredibly poor can buy just by saving for a couple of months and anyone who's that poor can probably access using a public library anyway, versus the enormous amount of people that could afford those books, but see no incentive paying since they can pirate them for free without even going out of their house.
Eg, back when I was 12 I did pirate software, and I didn't have the money to buy it if I wanted to. There was just no scenario under which those companies could have gotten paid. The alternative would be I'd just get my hands on something else, or mess around with the stuff I already had.
This even goes for things like $30 books. I grabbed a whole bunch of stuff just to take a look at what's it like. When pirating stuff a kid might grab an university book on biology out of curiosity to see how it compares to their high school lessons, but pretty much nobody actually buys books for reasons like that. The alternative reality is that it either doesn't happen or they check it out at a library instead, and again the publisher doesn't get any money.
Lost profit is still lost money. If you run a bar and I falsely tell everyone that your beer is poisoned (and everyone believes me) I'm not costing you any money, but you're still bankrupt at the end of the year.
> When pirating stuff a kid might grab an university book on biology out of curiosity to see how it compares to their high school lessons, but pretty much nobody actually buys books for reasons like that.
You sure that's the only plausible case? Here's another scenario: you need a programming book for your career, but you don't like spending $30 for it and you just pirate it. You would probably have bought it if you couldn't pirate it, but obviously pirating it costs less at nearly no risk; why should you spend $30?
I think this scenario is much more plausible than poor 10-year old kids downloading biology books for fun. But even if it wasn't, piracy enables both scenarios without distinction. Even if it was 80-20, that 20% of not-bought books would have ben bought if piracy didn't exist.
> The alternative reality is that it either doesn't happen or they check it out at a library instead, and again the publisher doesn't get any money.
I'm pretty sure public libraries pay for the books they have, directly or indirectly (with taxpayers' money)
Yes, but you can't lose a profit you could never have had.
> I think this scenario is much more plausible than poor 10-year old kids downloading biology books for fun. But even if it wasn't, piracy enables both scenarios without distinction. Even if it was 80-20, that 20% of not-bought books would have ben bought if piracy didn't exist.
I'm not arguing that piracy is completely harmless. I'm arguing that it works differently from theft. We can't consider every potential loss as a real one.
Eg, mass torrenting of stuff can get to the point where on paper, if all of that was legally paid for, it'd cost more than the country's entire GDP. That's obviously ridiculous.
If you go to a supermarket and steal a TV that’s stealing. You taking a picture of it isn’t.
What has this to do with stealing books ?
If you make an exact copy of my fiat money, yet I can still use it, nothing is stolen.
When governments make exact copy of existing fiat money (i.e. engage in money printing) they increase supply of fiat money and as a result cause inflation, which decrease the value of fiat money existing before the money printer was turned on. So while such a copy did not completely eliminate your ability to use your money, it did in fact decreased its utility. And indeed can be a valid case of "stealing".
It's not stealing, government didn't steal anyone's money, they just devalued it. In a similar sense, gold miners are increasing the supply of gold and lowering its price, but they still aren't stealing anyone's gold - they're making more. The fact that fiat money is completely fictional does make it more prone to systemic abuse - but even in that case, what the government is taking away from people is value and labor, not money itself, and those two are a little more abstract and harder to reason about.
The word "stealing" has a specific meaning related to physically taking something away from someone else, let's not use it in contexts where it doesn't apply. Especially when the use of the word is mostly perpetuated by copyright holders who want to persuade the public that not giving money to them is equal to stealing from them. That's bullshit, and it will always be bullshit. To me, it sounds horribly similar to narcissistic abuse: "How could you not give money to me? Do you have any idea how much that hurts me?".
Ok, so if your intellectual property is stolen ... err, sorry, "copied" of course, how do you get monetized for those "copied" copies? By your initial statement it's not removed, now you tell me it is? Weird.
> but I want money! I don't care if everyone else loses their right to sharing information!
Not my problem.