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I'm glad things worked out for Vlad -- when I was younger, I pirated a fair amount of software and games, and, like him, I think it enabled me to get inspired to learn more about computers in general and, indeed, now I stare at them all day for work.

But.

I'm not sure what the bigger point is, here. Should we be okay with piracy as long as the pirate is using it for self-betterment? Do games count for that? What about pirating Game of Thrones episodes? (Or, to take a wild leap: Is it cool for a kid to steal a car if he learns how to be a mechanic from it?)

Today, I do feel there are some motions towards providing better access to software and hardware in poorer parts of the world. Which is great. And, to be frank, the quality of both cheap hardware and open source software is insane relative to twenty years ago. So, again, I'm not sure what Vlad's bigger point is.

If the point is to justify piracy, I think he only does it in the very narrowest of ways: Considering the state of technology in the 1990s, piracy enabled people in poorer parts of the world (and kids in wealthier parts of the world) access to the growing information technology industry. I'm not sure that argument exactly holds in the same way today.

Finally, Microsoft can survive a fair amount of piracy. But not every software company can. What happens when this "it's cool because I'm using it to educate myself" stance kills software companies? Or game companies? Or media companies? Is that better for everyone?

---

EDIT: I'm not equating the act of stealing a car with the act of pirating Windows. I am merely wondering about the general nature of morally justifying a crime based on it being done for self-improvement. If we say it's okay in a case of software piracy, are we okay with it in other contexts?

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There are much better arguments for justifying piracy, notably the original intent/purpose of copyright.

http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...

The point is that taking strong measures against copyright infringement is stupid. Many (if not most) of the people that do it would pay a reasonable price if it was possible for them to do so.

Also, stealing a car is nothing like copyright infringement. There is absolutely no parallel you can draw there.

> "Many (if not most) of the people that do it would pay a reasonable price if it was possible for them to do so."

And the fact that they can't afford it gives them justification for stealing it? Would it not make more sense, that if you can't afford something you aren't entitled to it? If a poor or homeless person were to steal food from a shop they wouldn't be allowed to do it because, although they would like to pay, it isn't possible for them to do so.

The difference with your homeless person is that these people are stealing education.

You're committing an act of classism. Please check your rich whiteboy privilege.

If the homeless person was taking food from the infinite food replicator, then yes it would be fine.

Why does it have to be infinite? Every restaurant has left over at the end of the day. Is it wrong for the homeless to pick up food from those shop during the day without paying?

Is it wrong for the homeless to sleep in your house in the room no one is currently using?

It has to be infinite for the analogy to work.

The restaurants have to pay to replace food the homeless would pick up during the day (or even put in work to prepare it for a restaurant). Food that's leftover at the end of the day and can't be sold the next day could certainly be given to the homeless for free (and I know of at least a few restaurants in my city that do this).

The homeless person sleeping in the spare room creates cleanup work, and prevents you from using that room at a moment's notice. If a homeless person could sleep in my spare room without using the shared spaces and leaving the room instantly, in perfect order, the moment I wanted to use the room, I don't think I can morally justify not letting them.

So while the situations you mention may or may not be moral, it's shifting the debate back into a worldview centred around scarcity.

I shouldn't have made the comment about the car. Too many people are misinterpreting what I meant... I'm not equating the crime of pirating Windows and stealing a car. Very different things.

But, are crimes in general justifiable if the person committing them does it for self-betterment?

Yeah, probably in many cases. Possibly in this case. But I also worry that it becomes a rallying point for piracy in general. That's what concerns me. I don't think most people pirate media for self-betterment. They do so because they don't want to pay.

The risk of piracy is that, if enough people pirate instead of purchase, it becomes more difficult for inventors and creators to make a living, and so we all may lose access to their potential future inventions and creations.

To beat on your poor car analogy some more: if copying cars was free and easy, then we would indeed have a lot more cars, but they'd all be 1930s VW Bugs. Competition drives innovation, but there has to be something to compete for, like our dollars.

To your last point: the top torrents at TPB are all video games, TV shows, and movies. Seems more like self-worserment, yuk yuk.

You seem to be assuming that simply because something is a crime it is therefore morally wrong. I don't think piracy needs justification because copying something is not morally wrong. OTOH, stealing a car (without justificaiton) is morally wrong.

> What about pirating Game of Thrones episodes?

If piracy caused future GoT episodes to not be made, that would be a bad outcome. But it won't happen. A series of GoT costs $50 million to make and they could probably fairly easily crowdfund it, (e.g. $10 * 5 million or some other multiple). I'm sure lots of people would be prepared to pay that amount (or a lot more) to ensure they could watch the next series -- I know I would.

I think that the answer is open source, now there are a lot of alternatives and you don't need piracy for learning stuff, now probably piracy makes you dumber

Open source is not an option in this instance.

The point Vlad is trying to make is that when he was 15 he pirated Photoshop, learnt to use it, and got a job using it. He might have learnt some ideas and methods had he downloaded GIMP and used that instead, but ultimately he would have nothing on someone with years of Photoshop experience. The UI and many ideas are completely different.

Since the car analogy isn't working: Let me try another one, equally with flaws no doubts. :-) Piracy as we known it is rampant of the coasts of Somalia (Yes, I am talking about real world pirates). One of the reasons why that is happening is the systematic breakdown of the livelihoods of fisherman in the region due to dumping of toxic wastes of those coasts and the free flow of arms. Now, it is arguable that those fisherman are using the monetary flow from piracy to lift themselves from poverty which is a good thing. However, I do wish to point out that that analogy is based on my philosophy that e-piracy is not a victimless crime, as long as you have at least one data point of a person who would have paid for the game/movie/software but didn't do so because he/she had easy access to a torrent.

To be honest, I don't care about people pirating stuff. It is the moral justifications that seem rather specious at best. What is wrong with accepting that you are doing something wrong and... keep doing it if you wish?

If people weren't eating up your "stealing a car" example, I doubt the "violently kidnapping and holding for ransom" example will fare any better.

How about this: a young woman has a sick child in a jurisdiction without universal health care. Her income is insufficient to pay for his treatment, so she has sex with some rich men in exchange for money. Sadly, prostitution is illegal.

Is it ever right to break the law in order to improve your prospects (or those of your family)? Some would say it is a moral imperative.

> e-piracy is not a victimless crime, as long as you have at least one data point of a person who would have paid for the game/movie/software but didn't do so because he/she had easy access to a torrent.

Well.... If the easy availability of the torrent led to more sales than it diminished, then the crime is still victimless regardless of your datapoint, since the supposed victim actually received a benefit.

This may seem far fetched, but I understand that for all but the largest block busters, there is some evidence that this is true for films: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246

If you're a film maker, making non-blockbuster films, you should probably be supporting piracy from a purely financial point of view. I fully expect that the same is true in music as well. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/48001/pirates-more-music-onl...

>> What is wrong with accepting that

>> you are doing something wrong and...

>> keep doing it if you wish?

Because we believe there’s honestly nothing wrong with it.

Paraphrasing you: I don’t understand what is wrong with accepting that pirates are doing something right and... abstain from doing it if you wish?

> Because we believe there’s honestly nothing wrong with it.

Your belief is not required. Laws are laws.

His belief is not required for it to be illegal. "Wrong," on the other hand, is a whole different concept...

Laws are not set in stone (and when they were, in Hammurapi’s time, it didn’t help much), and some laws are clearly stupid and vicious. For example, in imperial China, it was once illegal for an ordinary person to keep astronomical tools at home (if I remember corectly, there was a death penalty for this). I believe copyright laws are just like this.

>e-piracy is not a victimless crime, as long as you have at least one data point of a person who would have paid for the game/movie/software but didn't do so because he/she had easy access to a torrent.

By that definition a criminal who steals a a physical product from a store is guilty of both stealing the product and depriving the store of his hypothetical future patronage.

What about producing better substitute product. Am I guilty because I create a product that stops people from buying your product?

If it's not the act of piracy that makes it immoral, but the result, then anything else that has the same result should be equally immoral.

If a kid goes through the trouble of learning how to download, crack, and install software, I see that as a good barrier of entry for someone to start learning a piece of software. If you are going through all that trouble, chances are you are really interested in what you are pursuing and there is a bigger chance you may pursue a career in design/dev. And when you do enter the field, your employer will purchase licenses for you. I know that if I didn't pirate software as a kid, there is no way in hell I would be working in the web now. Also, when I was learning, I pirated all of my software. Now I don't have a single pirated program on my PC. And I gladly pay $50/month for the Creative Suite.

Or the software companies can release 'lite' versions of their software intended only for personal use and then rely on employers/schools and people purchasing the full versions to make most of their money.

" I know that if I didn't pirate software as a kid, there is no way in hell I would be working in the web now"

There's a whole mess of us "working in the web" who never pirated software for web development.

This may be more a 'kid/adult' thing - I went through about 3 years of pirating games for my C128 back in the 80s, then pretty much just stopped pirating. So, I can't say I've never pirated. I did. I bought many games too, but copied/traded with friends at school. There was an element of social currency when trading (who had skyfox? who had bard's tale? etc). But by 12th grade, there was no attraction for me anymore.

As an adult, I've paid for almost all my software, but have primarily used open source software (desktop linux for years), learning the LAMP stack from the ground up - absolutely 0 need for piracy of any sort, and it's provided a great foundation for working in the web field.

Perhaps with fewer people justifying the means with the ends, we'd have more users/contributors on open source projects and tools, continuing to make that ecosystem even better, vs propping up the dominance of some established commercial vendors with legions of essentially free training and advertising by continued acceptance of pirated software use.

You are overly western-centric, if you honestly think that the world in the 1990's is any different than it is today.

The only difference is that the there has been a shift of development, where some Eastern European and South American countries can now afford software licensing, but at the same time massive numbers of people in Africa and Asia have reached wealth levels that are sufficient for buying computers yet too low to afford the software.

He is illustrating the deadweight loss of a successful copyright system.

Stealing a car deprives someone of a car. Copying a car does not.

I think you understand my point. In a general sense, is doing something criminal okay if it's for self-betterment? Pirating Windows does rob Microsoft of some small portion of their rights as a creator.

Piracy for personal use is a 'victimless' (don't bite my head off please) crime, that's why it's OK here. Stealing is not.

Piracy is different from stealing, yeah. But I find it kind of short-sighted this notion that it's "victimless."

Not intending to bite your head off. :-)

Regardless of you thinking the view is short-sighted, without a counterargument it will remain victimless.

A very simple thought experiment:

A rap artist is hired by a label to create an album. Said artist later dies. The label goes bankrupt soon thereafter, or perhaps simply folds up shop and leaves the business without auctioning off its assets.

I have produced a copy of the album, which I host at my own cost from my server, once these events have transpired. There is no reasonable "victim" left for this crime of infringement, and indeed I'm helping to reduce the scarcity of this product in the world.

While somewhat contrived, this thought experiment is not particularly far off from reality.

No, it's pretty far off from reality. It's an extreme edge case that doesn't at all justify pirating Photoshop.

Ah, you're correct--we were talking about software mainly, not music.

Software companies never go out of business without selling off their assets, and it's the extreme edge-case where people continue to distribute the works.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

This truly seldom happens.

Again, abandonware does not justify pirating Photoshop, a product that is constantly updated by a very active company.

See also abandonware or emulation of older systems. It's technically illegal for me to go download a copy of System Shock, but the company that made it is long gone, and the company that bought their assets isn't doing anything with it.

Illegal? Sort of. Immoral? Not really.

> There is no reasonable "victim" left for this crime of infringement

The victim is the artist's heirs.

What'd they do to deserve anything?

Hey, it takes a lot of effort and sweat-of-the-brow to be born as the kid of some rich dude!

I've been trying for years and I still haven't managed it!

Not necessarily. When you pirate something, you are hurting the owner's chances of selling it to you in the future. If you know that there is no chance that you will buy it, then it is victimless. If however things change and you are in a position where you would buy it, you are far less likely to, which does hurt the seller.

In some cases you're actually helping the owner's chances of selling it to you in the future. Sometimes I pirate something and it's so good that I just have to buy it.

Of course, in a lot of cases demos would work well for that, but they seem to have fallen out of favour recently.

This post is meant as a response to DevilBoy and in part you, Chasing.

Blending both concepts of copyright violation and theft together, what happens in this common situation?

  1. I go to a store and buy an audio CD. I'm given the receipt.
  2. My audio CD is stolen at some later date. I still have the receipt.

We know a theft happens. Someone stole the disc. However, where is my unique copy created by the rights holder? Is it on the CD? The receipt? Or perhaps more intangible as some sort of judgement (think more like metadata)?

Is the thief guilty of copyright infringement?

Edit: as meeting this line of thought out, I realize there are 2nd hand shops that can legally sell media of all types (cd's included). How this works is the person (me) goes in with the intent to sell the disc. They give me a price, which we come to a meeting of the minds. Sale occurs based upon first-sale doctrine.

This would indicate that the proof of copyright does not exist in the receipt. So would the rightful copy retain with me if there is no meeting of the minds (theft)?

This trope comes up every time piracy is discussed. The point is no one is talking about the legal meaning of "stealing" versus "copyright infringement". What people are saying is that it's immoral.

The fact that a content company's product is easily stolen simply because the nature of his business means it is effortless to do through the internet doesn't change anything. If you go to a lawyer for legal advice and then refuse to pay him saying "I haven't deprived you of a tangible product so it's not really stealing" you are missing the point, it's still theft. No one would do that, but they do pirate content because it's unbelievably easy and there are no consequences. That's the only reason.

Some people are honest about it and say "I just don't want to pay for it". But most people I hear justifying piracy feel entitled to it and don't think there's anything wrong.

What do you mean, "entitled" to it? Are you saying that people who engage in this behavior argue for it to continue indefinitely? I've always known copying to be a reaction to a market failure, not a proposed permanent state of affairs. Where does "entitlement" come into it?

I'm gonna chime in and say that I would certainly propose sharing as a permanent state of affairs. Just not sharing the works of authors who'd prefer we didn't. I propose we move toward listening to/watching/playing more stuff that's Creative Commons or similarly licensed.

Mix that in with a bit of Work-for-Hire for things no-one really wants to make, and it would hopefully be viable. Maybe I'm an idealist.

I'll stop bringing it up when people stop saying that piracy is the same as car theft. Otherwise why not go all the way and say piracy is genocide.

Becuase saying piracy is theft has truthiness, whereas saying piracy is genocide does not.

Neither "has truthiness". Copyright exists as a separate legal doctrine for a very simple reason:

It is materially different from theft. Enough so that making property law fit copyright is not feasible in any reasonable way.

One is based on an presumptive right of the individual to protection of their right to continued use of something.

The other is an artificial government monopoly restricting the public from exercising their right to full use of their own property, by preventing them from copying and distributing information that is legally already in their possession, and where nobody are deprived of continued use at all.

I think you miss understood me. I used the word "truthiness" to mean it sounds like it is true. For someone not fammilar with the issue, saying pirating is a form of theft sounds valid.

Then they need to say it is immoral--a position which may arguably be correct--and not say that it is stealing--a position which is intellectually dishonest and trivially shown to be incorrect.

Choice of words here is very, very important. If you want to start staking out a moral claim on information, you damned well had better choose your message carefully.

It's semantics and is irrelevant every time this topic comes up because no one is actually talking about legal definitions. Pirates always seem to miss that it's a moral argument when they trot out these familiar lines (the irony isn't lost on me). Whether or not you're guilty of petty theft, shoplifting, larceny, or burglary is for your lawyers and the courts to determine. For me and others from my position it is much simpler, you're still a thief and it's still wrong.

It's completely relevant, especially because the normal intuitions about stealing and property rights here are so ill-defined.

Consider, if you will, that for hundreds of years the concept of intellectual property--indeed, even the idea of land ownership in some places-was foreign. You simply cannot throw up your hands and say "But semantics!" and expect to be taken seriously.

At best, you look lazy--at worst, you appear a sycophant to those who rely on provably unneeded monopolies of information distribution.

You're position is indeed much simpler: you seem to be either unwilling or unable to understand that this ongoing public dialogue about intellectual property, copyright, and related matters is something that isn't cut and dried.

Just to back you up on the history side:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." Thomas Jefferson

"The ordinary subjects of property are well known, and easily conceived... But property, when applied to ideas, or literary and intellectual compositions, is perfectly new and surprising... by far the most comprehensive denomination of it would be a property in nonsense." Lord Gardenston in Hinton vs Donaldson, 1773

Why don't you try to stop preemptively dismissing other people. Calling it "immoral" doesn't mean anything unless you define morality and that's a loaded gun. The point is that legally, there is a distinction between depriving others of property and infringing on a copyright.

If they're different crimes, they're treated differently, addressed differently, etc... how on Earth is it not relevant to discuss?

Do we need to define them as moral or immoral though? They are different crimes but both crimes currently.

Crime is something defined by law. Law can get wrong, and very often does.

I live in a country where it’s forbidden to organise people to jog in the park together via social network (unless you get appropriate permission, lol). Is such a 'crime' immoral?

If you think your country’s laws are always correct, think again.

There are even cases when what has been considered a crime now is considered a bravery. For example, Lithuanian book smugglers were commiting a crime, but now they are considered to have been doing the right thing.

I find it ironic that you make your argument this way, when the statement that it is not theft is generally exactly intended to highlight the moral issue.

To me and a lot of others, illegal copying is far more morally defensible than theft. If someone tries to call a person that pirate a thief, my immediate reaction is that the claim is not only flat out false, but offensive.

Copyright protection is an artificial government monopoly on an activity that does not affect your property rights, and as such it is perfectly defensible for someone to consider it moral to violate copyright. I do consider some forms of copyright violations morally wrong, such as selling copies, but I do consider a lot of piracy morally acceptable (despite the fact I don't engage in piracy, though I did some 20-25 years ago)

Theft is materially different because it deprives the owner of continued use of that which was stolen.

So what do you call it when you take a service and don't pay for the service? If you hire a lawyer but don't pay her for her time. If you hire a plumber but don't pay him for his time? A car mechanic? A doctor? A programmer? An artist?

I see that a programmer or artist is slightly different because the work the programmer or artist did can be duplicated where as the lawyer, plumber, doctor, car mechanic's work can not but they're still effectively the same. Someone worked and expects to be compensated for that work. Not compensating someone for work you received I believe is also called "theft".

I'll also note that the most pirated software often represents a lot more work than a single lawyer, plumber, doctor, car mechanic. If you use one of their services you'll likely get a few hours of their time. If you pirate photoshop or MW3 that likely represents a few hundred man years of time.

Anyway, I'm not arguing against piracy. I'm not sure what other word their is though for taking someone's time/labor without paying them.

>I see that a programmer or artist is slightly different because the work the programmer or artist did can be duplicated.

That's not only "slightly different", that's the crucial difference. So no, they aren't "effectively the same", they are two completely unrelated cases. Would people please stop trying to use this dishonest and flat out false argument to support entirely wrong chains of argumentation?

Besides which, the work an artist/programmer has done is unrelated to the distribution of the result. If one expects to be paid for the actual work done, they have to seek other models. One that often comes up here is Kickstarter, where a form of contract is made - money for work done. Perfectly fine. Musicians have and always had concerts and merchandise as their source of income. Comissioned works are also possible, and are a very valid source of income. Additionally, there's patronage - which is, for example, basically the way Linus Torvalds makes his money.

I'm positive this list is by far not exhaustive.

So no, pirating something is not taking someone's work time, since their time and money spend for distribution is effectively zero.

That might make it different than a plumber but how is that different than a lawyer or accountant. The result of their work is often just data. That data can be duplicated for free. By your argument I should therefore not have to pay them?

I'm not saying they are the same but I have yet to see someone clearly make the distinction on why one person's duplicate able work needed to be paid for and another's is not.

> Some people are honest about it and say "I just don't want to pay for it". But most people I hear justifying piracy feel entitled to it and don't think there's anything wrong.

And what is dishonest about that?

When a builder builds a house he gets paid for his work. If he wants more money, he has to do more building. He can't just sit back and take a payment every time someone enters that building for the rest of his life.

Nurses, doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, mechanics, service staff, chefs, teachers all have the same deal. You can't multiply your work by the people who benefit from it forever (maybe everyone who likes the person whose life you saved?) and get paid by each one.

Now to me, that seems sane and normal. You want more money, you do more work. Getting the government to pass special laws allowing you to extract rent from your creative endevour for every person who experiences it going into the future is what seems dishonest to me.

If a builder wants to take a payment every time you enter the building he is free to do so, thinking otherwise is highly presumptuous. Whether that business model will be viable in the market will be left for him to see (hotel managers operate exactly like this except they don't get paid for entering their building but for getting a room for the night).

What's dishonest about it? The mental gymnastics to rationalize their actions when it's really about "I don't have to pay for this and there are no consequences if I don't so I'm not going to".

You seem to think it's impossible for people to genuinely believe that copying is not theft. You're wrong. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe that sharing is not theft, and far from being something that we should persecute, is something that makes humanity richer and the world a better place, and many of those people do not believe it simply in order to feel better about copying stuff, since they don't actually 'pirate' copyrighted things.

I don't think you've read my posts because I KNOW people think pirating isn't wrong. And they go through a variety of mental hoops to rationalize why it isn't. They're wrong. And nothing you've said defends their position, all you've said is that they have it.

That's nearly what I've been saying in this thread.

What I've been saying is that for many people it is not a rationalization. They genuinely believe, because of arguments from history and logic that sharing isn't wrong. They aren't jumping through mental hoops, this is their honest belief after considering the alternatives and arguments.

Now that isn't to say that there aren't some, maybe many people for whom it is purely rationalization, but your posts seem to entirely ignore any other possibility.

"When a builder builds a house he gets paid for his work. If he wants more money, he has to do more building. He can't just sit back and take a payment every time someone enters that building for the rest of his life."

A builder:

  - is hired by a single client
  - to build a house for many months
  - and is compensated throughout the engagement with an hourly/daily/monthly wage or salary, 
    which is pretty much guaranteed (unless being let off for typically external reasons).

An author/actor/game developer:

  - also takes many months to complete a book/movie/game but
  - he is not hired by any single client
  - his income is directly related to the reception of the end product by the audience.

I'd be interested to know how do you think should the creative professional be compensated if not by the actual people who benefit from it.

I believe they should’t really be compensated, because the demand for new games, films and books is created arificially, through advertisement. In fact, the older games are not less fun to play, they’re just not fashionable anymore; old films are not less fun to watch; old books are not less fun to read.

We need new software, because: a) old software is unavailable anymore (due to copyright), b) everyone else uses the new one (due to advertising), so we need it for interoperation, c) old software doesn’t recieve bug fixes, and copyright prevents people from disassembling and modifying software themselves (luckily some countries like Belarus and Russia have better laws and allow this, but previous points still apply).

If the companies stopped producing new software because of lack of money, it wouldn’t stop innovations — if something is really useful, people will still impement it at least because it’s useful for themselves.

If we were allowed to copy information freely, the old software would suffice for most tasks (with occasional bugfixes that could be made by users themselves).

But this distinction is historically new. It came about because of copyright. There's no inherent difference.

Before that, authors/actors/composers etc. were compensated either through commissions for the creation of the work (with the expectation that it might be copied by others) or for performances of the works, or by benefactors.

Or, as the vast majority of authors today, who expend the effort to create works without getting their work published for profit (or at all), they were often not compensated for their work at all. In fact, like with vanity publishing today, any number of authors would have encountered substantial expensive in getting their own works spread, with no hope of recouping those expenses.

Modern copyright did not start until the Statue of Anne in 1710, and did not extend to the majority of the world until much later.

Whether or not returning to that state is desirable or not is certainly open to debate, but history does give us plenty of examples of possible ways of doing so.

>This trope comes up every time piracy is discussed. The point is no one is talking about the legal meaning of "stealing" versus "copyright infringement". What people are saying is that it's immoral.

It comes up every time because piracy and stealing are worlds apart morally. Were I to steal someone's car, they would be incredibly inconvenienced. Were I to illegitimately obtain a piece of software, the developers just get a smaller check at the end of the month.

As the article says, things are not black and white and we should not treat them as if they were. There are degrees of 'badness', and piracy is not as bad as stealing.

>the developers just get a smaller check at the end of the month.

..Only if you were going to buy it in the first place and decided not to.

I would quibble with your definition of stealing in the case of copying a content company's product. Certainly it's not in the content company's best interest for one person to purchase a CD and then make a copy for his neighbor. But what makes it stealing? The legality of shrink-wrap licensing can be debated, but in many people's minds the action is not disimilar to loaning the CD, or making photocopies of books at a library. Of course the moral behavior would be to respect the publisher's wish to receive payment from each possessor of a CD with those same arrangements of bits, although that course of action might be morally overridden due to certain extenuating circumstances (such as those encountered by the author).

> If you go to a lawyer for legal advice and then refuse to pay him saying "I haven't deprived you of a tangible product so it's not really stealing" you are missing the point, it's still theft.

That is theft because you've robbed the lawyer of his opportunity cost. For the time he was spending giving you legal advice, he could have been giving it to someone else that would pay him.

A more apt analogy would be secretly listening in on a lawyer giving legal advice to a paying client. You haven't taken anything away from him or the paying client, and all you've done is "copied" what was being heard anyway.

Actually it's most certainly not theft. It's probably categorized as breach of contract -- though don't take my word here. Regardless you've just ended up proving his point.

If a thief steals a car that sells for $10,000, is the dealership out the cost of the car, or are they out the cost of the car plus $10k because the thief might have purchased the car at some point?

> The fact that a content company's product is easily stolen

It's not stolen, it's copied. One of the dark-arts pro-copyright people used was to conflate those two terms into one word. We can still discuss if breaking someone's business model by copying is moral or not, but we really need to separate those two words and talk about them with extreme precision - especially given how heated the discussion is.

Identity theft is still called "theft", even though nothing is actually stolen.

Piracy is more like counterfeiting. It's much worse than stealing. Stealing a TV only deprives someone of that physical value. Pirating software has the ability to destroy the value of the entire product line (why would someone pay $99 when they can just get it for free).

The same concept also applies to things like the app store. Now that games are 99 cents, it's not easy to create a game and charge $30 anymore (because the value is what people are willing to pay. If everyone were giving these games away for free or they were pirated and everyone knew these games could be downloaded for free, that value would be $0).

If you cannot make spending $99 dollars more appealing to your target audience than going to the pirate bay and messing around with sketchy-ass cracks, then frankly you just suck at selling software and really have little business doing it.

The people actually in the market for $99 dollar software in the first are not going to do all that nonsense (unless you have done something terribly wrong with your legitimate distribution channels...), and who cares if people who aren't in your target audience pirate it?

Photoshop is the classic example. The people who pirate it are jobless students, while the target audience for Photoshop is undeniably professionals (who buy it). This is evidenced by the lengths that Adobe doesn't bother to go to to prevent piracy.

Similarly, with video games people either pirate them because they are not in the market for things that cost $50, or because someone royally fucked up the legitimate distribution (with draconian DRM, or by not offering it on Steam, or whatever). Gamers who are in the market for games buy games.

"If you cannot make spending $99 dollars more appealing to your target audience than going to the pirate bay and messing around with sketchy-ass cracks, then frankly you just suck at selling software and really have little business doing it."

So..I should be forced to compete with someone making an exact copy of my software and giving it out for free? Does this make any sense to you?

Should hackernews.com be forced to compete with hackernews2.com, which is an exact duplicate?

"The people who pirate it are jobless students"

Do you have any evidence to back this up? Adobe has a student edition that can be purchased for almost nothing from many sites and it's all legitimate. Microsoft has these programs and also things like the bizspark/webspark programs. You can get free Microsoft software and all you need is an LLC (costs very little to create).

Your reasons don't really make sense anymore.

"with draconian DRM, or by not offering it on Steam, or whatever)"

Wow, we sure are in an entitlement generation. If you can't get exactly what you want, you take it upon yourself to just take it. I also can't really take anyone that uses the word "draconian" seriously.

The problem with your logic is that it never ends.

Look at the music industry: At first, it was because CDs were too expensive. The record companies responded by having 99 cent singles and very cheap music. Next, it was because the artists weren't being treated fairly. With the Internet, you can now release your music without any label.

Hell, even the infamous louis CK $5 comedy special was pirated like hell the day after it was released. It's very cheap, DRM free, and people still pirated the hell out of it. How do you explain this? The "Draconian" DRM? Too expensive? The bits weren't in the right order for the pirates' specification?

Piracy came first, not "Draconian DRM", so this is not a valid excuse as to why people are pirating, sorry.

"Gamers who are in the market for games buy games."

Your mindset isn't new and as a software developer (and business owner), I just need to change my business plan. Now, you will need to pay a monthly fee for my service instead of owning it outright. It stops piracy dead. I hope you enjoy paying a monthly fee for all of your software, because it's a world piracy helped create.

I'm sick of people like you that just can't be honest: you want free stuff and you aren't willing to use you hard earned money to get it.

I really have no idea what you are on about. You aren't competing with somebody giving your software away for free. They are giving it to a completely separate audience. Those people were never going to be your customers. If you lose customers to it, then you have failed to make them your customers in the first place.

You seem to think that I am defending pirating; offering up a moral justification of sorts. I am not. I am not interested in the slightest in the morality of the topic, one way or the other. I offer them no moral defence, nor do I morally condemn them. Rather I am telling you that you should not get bent out of shape over it.

And for the record, despite your insinuation, I pirate neither software, nor music, nor movies, nor whatever else there is to pirate. Why would I?

I think you are taking my response too personally for some reason.

Pirating software has the ability to destroy the value of the entire product line.

Given that Photoshop is still profitable for Adobe, this is objectively false.

Bear with me, I'm trying to play devil's advocate here.

While you might not be depriving someone of a car, you are devaluing the product. Consider in the OP's case, he learned how to do certain things with this stolen software, and now he can sell his services for what is most likely less than what those who paid for their software and training charge. This, in some way, steals work from them. His knowledge is "illegally gained." Even if they don't charge less for their work, maybe they come here on a visa. Once again, taking jobs from those that earned it through legal channels.

So simply suggest that the only ramifications are from the software company missing out on a sale ignores the entire ecosystem.

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