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Comment by 3cats-in-a-coat | Hacker News Reader

As a user I also want to walk into a grocery store and walk out with everything and not paying. But is that bad, let's think about it?

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Just like not reading every advertisement in the regular paper was always considered a crime?

But no one said not watching youtube ads is a crime.

The more accurate analogy would be reprinting a newspaper without the ads.

No, it's more like cutting out the text of the articles with scissors. I did that all the time when I was a kid. Just like I used to record TV on a VCR and then fast forward through the commercials. Time shifting and content skipping has never been immoral.

You don't need an ad blocker to "not read the advertisement" genius.

I would have no moral qualms with doing that if I could make an identical copy of the products and leave with the copy.

That's the comparison that is most apt in this case.

That's what we do with fruits and veggies so go for it!

You can't copy an apple from an apple, they're not true breeding.

Even if that weren't the case, you couldn't copy an apple in a grocery store anyway.

In that case the grocery store is providing a service of aggregating and organizing all the products you want, and keeping them fresh. That’s not free. Even if the act of making a copy is free, there are a lot of expenses involved on the store side.

Is stealing physical goods the same as removing parts of a video stream?

Yes, when the service asks for money to see that video stream without those parts. Especially when that money finances the video creator and infrastructure costs for said service.

Your point really isn't such a "gotcha" as you think it is.

Use this smartarsery to support Nebula or PeerTube instead.

so you never walk away or change station when there is advertising on tv/radio/billboards?

And? Some food places charge money for delivering the food to your home, it's not a crime to move the food yourself.

You've said nothing.

So if I close my eyes during the ad, walk away and make myself a coffee, or switch my focus to another window while it's playing - is that illegal?

When I visit a web site for the first time, I don't remember agreeing to looking at/watching or reading the ads.

You wouldn't copy groceries

You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again! Copying groceries is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences

My example is a bit of a contrived stretch, but laws are hard to reason about as they're not binary:

Someone that designed a robot that goes to the movie theater, sits in your seat, and streams the movie to your computer so you can go to the movies from home.

And then it also ends up not showing or "removing" the ads that get shown in the beginning of the movie before it starts.

As a human, I want to get healthcare from a hospital and then walk out without paying, but that would be evil.

Depends on the circumstances. Remember, moral reasoning isn't based on facts about the world, so anything goes if we elevate the right principles.

Just because you're thinking about morality doesn't mean it doesn't start in the world. The world always comes first. There's no void in which you float and do your thinking and then encounter reality.

Everything starts in public. That's where we learn language, how to live and how to reason, including about morality.

Try somewhere with socialised healthcare. I've done that a couple of times.

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