This is not about whether your neighbor is committing wrongdoing in your community, rather whether the system itself, and the edifices that hold it up are conducting themselves in good faith. Without these major players pressuring government to extend the enforced monopolies of copyright longer (that is, robbing the public – you and I – of its catalog of public-domain material) and failing to enforce educational and fair use, we wouldn’t have IP laws at all, and piracy would not be a thing.
Firstly, the neighbor comment I made is an analogy. Nobody is claiming this is about literal neighbors committing wrongdoings in a community. I’m not sure if you’ve missed my point with that analogy or if you’re choosing to willfully misunderstand it here?
Second, what you’re claiming here isn’t correct when you talk about “what this is about”. My comment which you are replying to was not about whether “the system itself, and the edifices holding it up are conducting themselves in good faith” or anything like that. My whole point is about whether “If they make it difficult or impossible to acquire through purchase … I think an argument can be made for surfing the high seas.” is good reasoning or not. Nobody is debating you on whether the modern media industries, the government, etc are corrupt or acting in good faith. That has nothing to do with my actual point.
We’re not pirating from the artists. We’re not pirating from our neighbors. We’re pirating from giant corporations who’ve been plying the government for over a century now to strip rights from the public.
You keep jumping back to these points of “well the media corporations, the government, etc did X wrong by us, so we’re automatically justified to pirate”, that’s not how this works. The whole issue is why does that justify piracy? Doubling down and trying to say “BUT I WAS WRONGED!” is not a good argument here. Being wronged in some way does not make it morally acceptable to just do whatever you like.
I believe they mean not that they were wronged, but that the system is wrong. Ala MLK just laws and unjust laws. They disagree with IP law and thus feel piracy is fine as such.
Personally, I pay for my music and don’t use streaming services. I support bands by going to shows and buying merch. However I also don’t listen to big name artists and shit, and think most really don’t give a shit if you pay for the music or not if you’re supporting them in some way often. Plenty of bands have a “steal this record” or “steal this album”, or end up putting out stuff where they’d urged people to pirate their shit example: Streetlight Manifesto had done so because victory was refusing to send CD’s to the band to distribute to those who had preordered, wasn’t paying them for purchases made through victories site, etc. The (bigger label) music industry is fucked. They extort bands. They extort venues. They extort anywhere that plays music. They extort anything they can for money while the content creators barely get shit.
I don’t think the system being wrong is very good justification either. You still run into the same problem I’m pointing out. If some local store near me has an inherently fucked up return policy, I’m probably not justified in shitting in the middle of an aisle or trying to fistfight a cashier in response. Something being wrong isn’t an immediate justification for whatever action a person takes in reaction.
Of course you wouldn’t be justified in harming a minimum wage worker because the policy of the corporation. That is like the opposite of the point. Its more like, say my neighbor owns a company and exploits immigrants to do lawncare. Maybe I’d pay for it if I knew he was actually taking care of his workers and not exploiting them, but he sucks, boo. So while he is away on vacation I borrow his equipment without asking to do my own lawn. Does it hurt him? I mean technically there is more wear & tear on the equipment. Will he notice? No. Do I give a shit if it causes it to break faster than it would have otherwise? Nah, fuck him.
Fair enough. By what authority do you assert intellectual property belongs to a private entity and not the public?
You certainly asserted such by arguing piracy is morally wrong. If IP belonged to the public (id est there’s no patent or copyright) then everything would be in the public domain. Media piracy would not be a thing.
But you assert not only is it a thing but it is morally wrong.
So please, by what authority are you asserting puts IP in the hands of private interests, thus making piracy a moral wrongdoing?
