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Comment by taway1237 | Hacker News Reader

1. Piracy is theft.

Piracy, of actual -tangible- goods, is theft.

Piracy of digital content is -literal- copying. The original item is not modified or changed. Copying is not theft.

The politicians, media journalists, and corporations spent enough monies to brainwash children into believing copying is theft. It isn't.

Never was. Never is.

Digital content of songs and movies is exactly the same as the way you consume it. It is the tangible thing. It’s like having a perfect atom to atom reconstruction of the Mona Lisa you can put on your wall and stealing it. People’s jobs depend on the money made from selling digital media and making more digital media takes money. You can try to abstract it away but it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the prices or agreements aren’t fair but the blacksmith can charge whatever he wants for what he makes.

Then refer to it as 'illegal copying', not 'stealing'.

You're comparing selling finite physical goods to selling literal numbers. That's how insane copyright is. In order to have any impact, they have to associate it with absolute nonsense terms like high seas piracy. They have to equate it with stealing, robbery and theft. Otherwise it's exposed as the utterly victimless crime it is. You're reproducing the propaganda of a trillion dollar industry with immense lobbying power, an industry that literally buys laws.

The Mona Lisa is a good example why this comparison doesn't fly. If I could clone the Mona Lisa and put it on my wall, would it harm anyone? No. I would never have been able to afford it and the Louvre wouldn't sell it to me anyway. The original artist is very long dead.

However if I steal it the Louvre no longer has it and there would be a massive manhunt. Cloning is definitely not the same as stealing.

Not that I'd clone it because I think it was actually pretty unimpressive in real life.

I would amend this to piracy of media within a reasonable copyright term of say 10 or at most 20 years is theft.

Wrong.

No.

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