Hacker News Reader

Comment by theandrewbailey | Hacker News Reader

If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing, so...

When someone tells me that downloading a song or a movie is like stealing, I usually encourage them to download a new car.

> When someone tells me that downloading a song or a movie is like stealing, I usually encourage them to download a new car

Now do social security benefits. Or hell, money in a bank account.

Information being free and the ability to change information are two different things.

> Information being free and the ability to change information are two different things

A bank CEO adding zeroes to their own account doesn't deprive any specific person of anything. We still consider it stealing because of its systemic effects.

That both changes information and has measurable systemic effects.

If a 12 year old kid with no income copies a floppy disk or two with Monkey Island, no money were lost. He might even spend more money on LucasArt products as an adult.

For creative works, there's always a license behind it post the invention of copyright. It wasn't as obvious in the past now that DRM and digital/streaming only has given studios/publishers/etc the ability to cancel your access at their discretion. Though complicating matters is that there's increasingly nothing worth spending money on in the first place anymore.

Not true. If you buy a book, it is yours. You can literally do anything you want with it. They cannot reclaim it. You cannot create a copy of the book, but that has nothing to do with owning an individual book.

Your point is incoherent.Could you restate?

Are you suggesting that we never had ownership, it just wasn't obvious? If so, please cite your sources.

> It wasn't as obvious in the past now that DRM and digital/streaming only has given studios/publishers/etc the ability to cancel your access at their discretion.

And that right there is the crux of the argument. Cancelling access to physical media was never a thing, because you "bought" it. Digital media shouldn't be any different. If I buy a file and someday it doesn't work because of something you did, you're responsible for it, but corporations have been able to get away with no responsibility. Example:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/02/playstatio...

> If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing, so...

This is a bad argument for piracy. (There are good ones.) Plenty of things that can't be bought and sold without restriction can be stolen.

Such as?

Plutonium.

Plutonium does get sold, look up certified reference materials.

"without restriction"

The seller isn’t restricting you on what you can do with your 0.1 gram sample of plutonium.

Organs

There’s a market for cadavers.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodi...

And it's tightly regulated.

So are cars, it’s still a sale and actual ownership.

> it’s still a sale and actual ownership

What makes it actual versus pretend ownership? Remember, ownership is a social construct.

> Remember, ownership is a social construct.

But the argument about you not really "owning" stuff even when the button says "buy" is a legal one.

> the argument about you not really "owning" stuff even when the button says "buy" is a legal one

Ownership is a stack of rights. It's a social construct--you can't lab test for ownership. It's meaningless to say what "really" owning means without specifying which of those rights you view to be essential in this situation.

Finality. Does the seller or creator having a say in what you do with something after the transaction? If so it’s not a sale.

If the dealership can still repossess the car you haven’t bought it yet. New house requires being an HOA member? Not a sale.

> Finality

No real estate is bought and owned without restrictions. And between taxes and bans, one’s relationship with other owned property is similarly revocable.

> the dealership can still repossess the car you haven’t bought it yet

If you bought your car with financing, it cannot be stolen?

> New house requires being an HOA member? Not a sale

So if your house has an HOA it cannot be stolen?

> owned without restrictions

Society has a say in what you can do with a gun you just bought, the manufacturer and gun shop doesn’t. Thus restrictions by the seller is what matters here.

> if you bought your car with financing, it can’t be stolen?

It can be stolen from the bank. Walk away from a loan and you are not out the full value of the item as the bank can only repossess the car from whoever stole it.

in some states (e.g. Virginia) you don’t get to own a car. you have to pay for the right to own a car each year in October via 4+% tax on your car’s current value. ‘merica at its finest :)

Ok, so there is one similarity there. If you pay for an organ transplant you can't sell that organ again, because it is illegal to sell your own organs. Although you might be able to donate it on your death depending on the circumstances.

But the reasons for prohibiting resell are very different. For organs, selling organs is prohibited in order to protect individuals from being pressured or otherwise exploited into selling their organs. But for media, publishing and distribution companies are using technical measures and what is, IMO, an abuse of copyright law to maximize profits.

> Such as?

Tickets to a live performance. Health information. Public benefits. Tax refunds. Rental cars.

You just listed things that are regularly resold.

> You just listed things that are regularly resold

Yes? I said "things that can't be bought and sold without restriction."

Are you saying it's not pirating if there's a resellable DVD available?

Stealing a physical DVD has meaning. Making a copy of a purely intangible set of data doesn’t deprive someone of that data.

> Making a copy of a purely intangible set of data doesn’t deprive someone of that data

You’re making an argument on the non-rivalry of digital content. This is one of the good arguments I referenced.

Digital content is currently a club good, like broadcast television. (Excludable.) You’re arguing for treating it like a public good, like a park. (Not excludable.)

Ownership being a social construct makes statements like stealing X has meaning somewhat useless, particularly when it comes to rules.

Marriage is a social construct, but that doesn’t make the word meaningless.

Buying a fork isn’t a marriage.

Social construct != meaningless. Money and laws are also social constructs. But you can’t argue for money or laws or marriage by beginning and ending with whether you feel like it has meaning.

I’m using the definition of sale here. Court cases have required companies not to call something a sale when it isn’t one.

> Digital content is currently a club good, like broadcast television. (Excludable.) You’re arguing for treating it like a public good, like a park. (Not excludable.)

Digital content was public good when I was growing up as everything published in the internet. When did it change? Did it change in the whole world at the same time or just in the US?

he didn't say stealing isn't piracy, in which case your point would stand - he says piracy isn't stealing. piracy could be a lot of things, but stealing isn't one of them.

It's not only about restictions on buying and selling, it's also about restictions on using (where, for how long, can it be inherited) which are dictated by the vendor.

> it's also about restictions on using (where, for how long, can it be inherited) which are dictated by the vendor

Sure. Again, this is true for a wide variety of things. Many of which we commonly consider to be stealable.

Such as?

I've always thought there was a clever hack to get out of deed restrictions through the use of adverse possession.

Won't work, recorded deed restrictions run with the land.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com