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Comment by joshma | Hacker News Reader

It's equivalent in an ethical sense, not equivalent in the legal sense. I think it's perfectly fine to call it stealing, since it embodies the core meaning "steal" is meant to convey. You're depriving another of something that is rightfully theirs, control over their creative content. Let's not get pedantic here, lest we devolve into discussing what "to steal the spotlight" means.

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It's equivalent in an ethical sense

In terms of quantifiable impact, I think there is a clear ethical distinction between flipping bits on a disk and taking possession of material property.

You're depriving another of something that is rightfully theirs, control over their creative content.

Yes, but "control over creative content" is a nebulous concept that bares only a thin resemblance to things that we can determine are absolutely present (or not present, as in the case of theft)

Let's not get pedantic here, lest we devolve into discussing what "to steal the spotlight" means.

This is exactly my point. I don't think the difference between "to steal the spotlight" and "to steal a spotlight" is a pedantic distinction.

"Stealing" generally connotes taking something away from someone else. With piracy, a potential sale is lost: the pirate might have bought the item were it not available illegally for free. With theft, there is both potential sale loss and property loss: if you steal a car from Toyota, they lose the ability to sell the car to you, and they also lose access to the car itself (which prevents them from selling it to anyone else). So Toyota loses twice, whereas the RIAA loses only once.

Of course, the ethical difference is probably larger than simply double. To use an old saying, let us assume that:

    potential sale = a bird in the bush

and,

    access to physical product = a bird in the hand

As we know from the ancient algorithm,

   a bird in the hand = 2 * (a bird in the bush)

Piracy loses a potential sale, and theft loses a potential sale and access to a physical product. Therefore, given the following equation:

    a bird in the bush = x * (a bird in the hand + a bird in the bush)

We should be able to solve for x, where x is the amount that piracy is as morally reprehensible as theft.

    a bird in the bush = x * (2 * a bird in the bush + a bird in the bush)
    a bird in the bush = x * (3 * a bird in the bush)
    a bird in the bush / 3 = x * a bird in the bush
    1/3 = x

As you can see, piracy is clearly 1/3rd as bad as theft. But, I have a feeling that the above algorithm still doesn't sufficiently illustrate the ethical difference between piracy and theft. Let's try again:

With piracy, the RIAA has lost the potential sale to the individual pirate. However, they still can sell the same DRMed AAC file to someone else. With our theft example, not only has Toyota lost the ability to sell to the thief: they've also lost the ability to sell that car to anyone else in the world. Therefore, if

    X = likelihood of sale to one individual

and we assume that reduced likelihood of a potential future sale (which is the RIAA's claim of loss) is equivalent to some loss of income, Toyota's lost income is:

    X * world population * price

And the RIAA has lost:

    X * 1 * price

Meaning that piracy, at the time of writing, is approximately 7 billion times better than theft, and increases in its relative virtue at every moment.

Would you mind if I copied your comment (with attribution and link) verbatim on my blog? I've never seen this line of reasoning before, complete with math :)

I'm not sure if you're joking or not by trying to define a quantitative relationship between piracy and stealing, but here goes anyways:

First of all, relatively pricing should not matter. By your logic, if Toyota's price was suddenly 0.5 * price, then stealing just got two times better! What's wrong is wrong.

Second, your equation does not do justice to math. If your definition of X is the same as mine (i.e. average likelihood an individual will buy this item, independent of the world population) then you're saying Toyota's lost income can potentially be GREATER than the price of the car.

In clearer terms, if

  dX / d(world population) = 0

then

  lost income = X * world population * price

does not have an upper bound! With the explosive nature of the world population, it would seem that theft gets exponentially worse as the years go by.

Where does the logic break down? Well it seems you've modeled the world's purchases of A SINGLE CAR as independent of each other. (In other words, you've modeled the lost income if Toyota had a car stolen by every human in the world.) What you really want, for n people, is

  X*P + (1-X)*X*P + (1-X)^2*X*P + ... + (1-X)^(n-1)*X*P  = P*[1-(1-X)^n]

- and there's our upper bound at P.

So now the comparison is between (1 - (1-X)^N) and X. In the case of software like Windows 7 where relatively few people will go for a free alternative, X is pretty damn high. I won't argue that it's greater than (1 - (1-X)^N), but it's nowhere near your estimate of 7 billion.

In all seriousness, I definitely agree that the "relative virtue" of digital theft is better than other forms. But, as you acknowledge, there is indeed a loss of value.

control over your creative works is not a right, nor should it be.

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