I agree with your sentiment, but it's not actually "theft." More like "copyright infringement."
It seems that the tech community stands adamantly behind the "copyright infringement isn't theft" mantra but in reality the moral crime is taking something you weren't entitled to. Our actions don't really seem to consider the state of the original product making the difference between "theft" and "copyright infringement" because it is not concerning to us. For the developer/distributor/publisher/artist or whomever is expecting a cut from sales the result is the same: they lost a part of their wage.
Admittedly I've done my share of piracy but now that I spend a good chunk of my free time releasing software or writing code I have stopped; it feels kind of shitty to see something taken without any regard for your hardships. Hell, as a result I even go out of my way to make sure developers are paid their dues by purchasing almost any app I use. If I come to expect others to pay/donate for my effort it is quite hypocritical to not do the same as a consumer.
Secondly, and this is a point that I don't think is discussed much, piracy to me is an effect of market value. For example big music labels will argue that if I distribute a Britney Spears MP3 on a file sharing network, that they lose $0.99 * # of potential buyers. This is false. The market value of this piece of content is much lower. People would not pay for it if the only way to get it was through, say, iTunes. Basically, someone might want it for free, might consider if for cheap ($0.10/song), but not want it for the price set by the market.
Also check out Band Camp for new unsigned artists. Great service and IMHO the future of the "record" industry.
Music CDs are sold for roughly $10-$20 USD. The actual cost of making the physical CD is around $1. People seem much more agreeable to accept a $9-$19 markup on a physical CD than on a digital album, which costs $0 to copy but ostensibly has the same cost to produce otherwise.
I cannot do the same thing with digital goods since the supply is unlimited. I don't see how the market can settle using the old supply/demand paradigm. I can try to get a stable price by offering a "pay what you think it's worth" model, but that' no fun either.
In my experience, the market appears to have established an approximate range of fair prices for CDs in general, that does not appear to be based on how many copies have been pressed.
Obviously there are some major variations if too few copies were made and the publisher refuses to make more to meet demand (putting the CD "out of print"), or if many more were made than people want to buy and retailers need to clear out inventory.
But in general, if an artist produces a new CD, they could press 5 copies or 50,000 copies, and I would expect the selling price to be somewhere in that $10-$20 range or so, not because of the number of copies of that particular CD, but because of what the market expects CDs to cost.
If you take something from me that is meant only for sale to others then it helps me absolutely zero that I still have it.
With copyright infringement, it used to mean selling cheap knock-offs of your work, including your work illegally into someone else's dime novel, etc. With digital copyright infringement people are literally selling or giving away the authentic item (i.e. the data). This is much closer to 'theft' than the old idea of copyright infringement.
You have a good point about market value but those are economic principles, not moral ones. It's like saying I only took a gumdrop instead of a pallet of candy bars, but either way it's still wrong.
Why does copyright infringement not work?
> If you take something from me that is meant only for sale to others then it helps me absolutely zero that I still have it.
That still does not make it equivalent to theft. If I somehow started distributing copies of your digital goods and made it impossible for you to distribute the originals, would you say that's worse than me only doing the former and not the latter?
> This is much closer to 'theft' than the old idea of copyright infringement.
No, it is not. From WikiPedia [1]: In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
In no way is pirating something fitting that definition. The only thing that piracy might deny you is potential profits, which are not property by any definition.
> You have a good point about market value but those are economic principles, not moral ones. It's like saying I only took a gumdrop instead of a pallet of candy bars, but either way it's still wrong.
I agree! Piracy is wrong. Does not matter how little or how much you do it, it ends up hurting someone.
Well, it's more complicated. For example, I currently have a song in my iTunes library that I bought from iTunes when they sold DRM encumbered audio. I bought it with an Apple ID I no longer have access to. iTunes refuses to recognize it in any way and I cannot decrypt it, but I did pay for it fair and square. Would it be amoral for me to download that song on a file sharing network? What if I had an LP that I bought in 1979 instead of an m4p file?
The point is if you pirate software you are committing a moral act that, while economically may not be comparable to theft, reveals the same integrity and character as that of a common thief. Just like you can not "copyright infringe" a widget from to someone who built it, you cannot "steal" software, by definition. The only reason software pirates do not "steal" software is not because they are good-hearted citizens who simply draw the line between theft and copyright infringement in terms of immoral things they permit themselves to do. The reason software pirates do not "steal" software is because it is impossible to do so. I think if there were a way to copy software that deprived others of it, yet still had the same likelihood of getting caught as piracy does today, piracy would still occur as much as it does now. And the reason software pirates do not steal physical goods on top of software is because the risk/reward equation is completely different, not because they somehow have a deep philosophical aversion to affecting the scarcity of goods. People want shit and they do not want to pay for it. Some people who have this feeling decide they are going to take actions they shouldn't. We should hold opinions of these these people equally (though not necessarily treat them the same under the law.)
1. Copying software, changing attribution, and selling it as your own.
2. Acquiring software you would otherwise have to pay for, and being able to afford it (or using it for economic gain).
3. Acquiring software you would otherwise have to pay for, and being unable to afford it.
4. Using a cracked copy of software that you have paid for, in order to circumvent a restriction that impairs your use of it and which the vendor is unwilling to address.
I think few of us would consider #3 a heinous crime if it was done by someone in order to train himself on industry-standard software (e.g. Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.), which he would then be able to apply at a job where the software was paid for.
That's not to deny there are plenty of people who pirate just because they want free stuff without paying for it. But that doesn't mean we should all take our lessons from Inspector Javert.
First, if you copy one of my books, say from someone who bought it in pdf format from the O'Reilly site, you have not denied the owner access to his paid copy. You have not robbed anyone of a physical artifact with a measurable cost.
Second, such as act doesn't even rise to the status of "theft of service." It isn't like sneaking into another movie theater after watching the show you paid for. You are not taking up a physical seat.
At most you have committed a tort. The problem is these tiny torts have been criminalized. But that doesn't make them any more significant than they really are. How insignificant are they? So insignificant that simply by telling me you will write a review, I would give you a copy for free.
Quantify it: how was I damaged? If you lie to me just to get a free copy, how do I distinguish moral crime comitters from well-intentioned potential reviewers who never got around to it? How many of them should I pursue as thieves? What effect would that have on attracting reviewers?
Stamping "MORAL CRIME DOER" on the forehead of people who have taken something weightless, incrementally cost-less, and that is marketed by giving it away to people is like turning jaywalking into a felony.
The irony is that if copying my works was economically significant - if, say, I made an ERP system and a customer failed to pay maintenance fees - my recourse would be to sue them for the tort of not meeting a contractual obligation. The law already has a measure in place to prevent stupid cases: Is it worth suing over? If not, just move on.
I would agree with that.
But if someone tells me, "I want a copy, but even though you are asking $5 per copy, I don't think it's worth anything at all. Give one to me for free." ... I would not be so quick to hand over a copy in that case, and, based on anecdotal conversations with others, I suspect that is closer to the mentality of a lot of folks who are committing the trivial crime of copyright infringement.
More seriously, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. You could buy, or ask for a promotional copy of Guy Kawasaki's book about making books. It's about self-publishing, but his experiences with promoting and marketing books apply to any book where the publisher's marketing budget is very limited.
There are some other effects I can count on: That readers of HN are fairly likely to not bother to take something they won't use, because they value their own time. You are only a hypothetical pirate, and your question is hypothetical, too. In the real world, piracy behaves much like promotion.
But, you may be thinking, what about entertainment products?
It's been shown over and over that "pirates" are also top-ranked among paying customers. Is there a real-world case that piracy reduces revenue? If you get past the hypothetical cases, it's much harder to say so.
I guess my question is, where do you draw the line? You said, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. Sure. But if you give them all away, what do you sell? (Assuming that you want to sell any at all.)
The anecdotal evidence Guy Kawasaki bases his advice for self-publishers on is that giving away books is always good. My publishers have signing events at conferences and give away case-loads of my current book at these events. Amazon sales always spike afterward.
In practical terms, that tipping point seems to be very far out there.
Yep, that's exactly what victims of theft feel. When my car was stolen last year, I thought "Well it could be worse, they could have stolen someone else's car". Because the more people steal my stuff, the more money I make, right?
To use a ridiculous example, if you say that taking a picture of a statue is the same as stealing the statue, any accusations you make of theft will not be taken very seriously.
[1] My basis for this claim is that taking $40 that I already have is worse than not giving me $40 for a license to software that I wrote.
Don't get me wrong, I like the notion that it is morally right for people to be rewarded for their hard work if it benefits others. However, if we're going to enforce it, shouldn't we start by trying to stop the exploitation of poor people before we go all nuts over sob stories from software giants, record companies and movie studios?
> For the developer/distributor/publisher/artist or whomever is expecting a cut from sales the result is the same: they lost a part of their wage.
I take issue with this particular argument. By that logic, not consuming is morally equivalent to theft.
I'm sure some people would love that to be a common belief.