I am ashamed that I hadn’t reasoned this through given all the rubbish digital services have pulled with “purchases” being lies.
Theft isn’t specific to property, you can steal services too.
The water is certainly muddy with digital media, but this is just another oversimplified argument.
If you need to do mental gymnastics to feel OK about pirating then…idk find something better than this.
See comments below for more mental gymnastics
People who assert property rights (including limited monopoly rights on intellectual property) are doing mental gymnastics too. We’re just used to them, thanks to a century of propaganda after the great depression.
The current state of wealth distribution a century later doesn’t seem to carry the promise that capitalism can be fair.
In fact, IP maximalism (Thanks, Walt!) has denied the public a robust public domain, and our courts struggle to do the mental gymnastics to understand why we have a public domain in the first place.
That is to say, the US and EU have totally lost the plot.
Property rights aren’t even fair. Big guys assert them, and little guys have them taken away. A good comment: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/5648831
If I were to steal cable, I would be using the cable company’s resources to deliver content to my house without paying for it. If I were to set up an inductor under a power line to steal power, I would be depriving the power company of power they could have sold to somebody else without giving them anything in return.
When I torrent something, I don’t even put any additional load on Netflix’s servers. With their current monetization scheme I don’t even make the show’s producers any less money.
Theft isn’t specific to property, you can steal services too.
You can’t really “steal” services, even though they sometimes call it that. You can access services without authorization, but you’re not stealing anything. You can access services you don’t have authorization to access and then disrupt people who are authorized to use those services. But, again, not stealing. Just disruption.
Stealing deprives a person of something, copyright infringement and unauthorized access to services don’t.
You can’t really “steal” services, even though they sometimes call it that.
If you hire me to paint your portrait and then don’t pay me you have stolen my labour. I have given my time and effort and have not been reimbursed for it.
If you paid me and then gave your neighbour a copy of your portrait then you have not stolen my labour.
I don’t know if any freelancer who has not been paid for their work will agree with you
Freelancers may be upset if they’re mistreated, but that doesn’t mean they get to declare they were murdered, or that they were raped, or any other crime that didn’t occur. Theft has a specific definition, and fraud is not the same thing as theft.
If it’s theft, it’s theft. If it’s fraud, it’s fraud. It could be either. But “wage theft” is not copyright infringement, which is not theft.
Here’s what California’s Department of Industrial Relations says:
Wage theft is a form of fraud
So if someone creates a piece of art and I take a photo of it and sell the photo, or create prints of it, or even just give it give that photo to lots of people, what is that?
Who cares? The point is, it’s not theft. The person who had the art still has the art, so it’s not theft.
I guess you can’t steal anything when you just decide to limit the definition of the word.
But if we’re in reality and using the way words are actually defined then yes you can steal something intangible, and no it does not require someone to be deprived of something.
I’m not going to look up every state, but the Penal Code in some states explicitly define theft as:
A person commits an offense if he unlawfully appropriates property with intent to deprive the owner of property.
So, I think it is reasonable to include intent to deprive as part of the definition.
decide to limit the definition of the word.
To what it actually means? Sure.
I guess you can’t steal anything when you just decide to limit the definition of the word.
I guess you can steal anything when you expand the definition of the word to anything you want.
You live on the internet, it would take you 5 seconds to link to the “actual definition” you are using if the word was actually used that way.
I buy water, I own it. It just passes Thur my body or shower and pipes. That’s like saying you don’t own your tires as they wear away. You can own consumables. I get your underlying point about theft is more then taking away something. You could be depriving someone of money they would have made. Same with copyright theft. Someone buys your product and copies it then sells it. They didn’t steal from you directly but still caused harm. Piracy is a service issue, if things you buy on that service don’t work people will stop using that service. I’m not going to download 12 game launchers to play the games I want, I’ll stick with steam. Same way with tv/movies.
“muddy waters” is a saying, I don’t think you should take OP literally. The Rest you’ve written seems to agree with their sentiment btw.
Ahhh, thanks I misunderstood. I do agree but also I have a Plex server. I started it when I worked at blockbuster. Technically even ripping your Blu-rays can be illegal so, you have to find your one morals and not rely on laws.
Copyright infringement causes less harm than the copyright itself. Piracy causes less harm than the cruelty and greed in production and distribution of mainstream media. Less harm is caused by theft than by a system that willfully starves the public and vaults away excess to drive demand and market price.
No artists should go hungry but then no non-artist should either. And yet in our system artists are enslaved and had their work taken from them so that enterprisers can live in luxury while the rest of us toil, undernourished.
Same with copyright theft
Is this when you steal someone’s copyright and collect licensing fees posing as the legitimate copyright holder?
They didn’t steal from you directly
Or indirectly.
still caused harm.
Maybe, maybe not. But no theft occurred.
I meant infringe on the copyright. I don’t think what Disney and some others are doing is right with extending it but I do think the person that created the things should have some legal protection from it being copied for a bit.
