> Should we not punish people who drive at excess speed on empty roads, or embezzlers who steal money but later return it, or drug dealers who sell only to moderate users?
IMO: No.
IMO: No.
Do you think at least some of the content that was shared would have been purchased otherwise? We can't measure the impact directly but it's odd to assume that pirating content somehow does not affect the wellbeing of creators and other participants of the market.
I can say anecdotally with 100% confidence that when I can't easily find a freely available copy of a movie to watch online I pay for it.
There are probably other reasons but I would be really surprised if my behavior was an exception. I can pay for movies but it's more convenient not to (sometimes).
I already pay for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+, but their content libraries are smaller outside the US by some margin.
I pirate HBO and other services since there is no legal pathway to stream it where I live, and I’m not forking out to get it from whichever shitty local service bought the rights.
Happy to pay once they actually offer it worldwide as a first party option!
1. Last Sunday I streamed a movie called Stutz (2022) for free instead of purchasing it from Netflix. That's a loss of $16 for the industry (1 month subscription, but I am not interested in anything else from their catalog).
Someone was distributing that movie for free because the movie did not have value in a market.
If an artist digitally releases a music album for free - it's worthless? Meaning it has no value? Let's break this down. If I construct a physical object and sell it - it has worth because you can hold it in your hands. If I record an album and release it digitally - it's worthless, despite costing me 100x more than the physical object I created. And despite you appreciating the music 100x more than my physical object. So what defines value? Then physical aspect only? I guess that's a theory, doesn't help to navigate the world increasingly dominated by intangible things, but okay.
That is my intended meaning, though it doesn't need to be released for free, only digitally. If the album is a series of mp3 files in a zip archive why would one pay for it when they could just get a perfect copy from their friend (who got it from a friend, who got it from a friend, who got it ...)?
I do know the answer to this question: kindness (Patreon and similar). I don't know market forces to be particularly kind, however.
In the economic pricing models, free is counted separately as any other kind of pricing.
This debate has been settled for more than a decade, major copyright holder conglomerates have tried their best and poured a lot of money to try to demonstrate losses and they have failed.