this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Regardless of the semantics of what we call theft, or whether theft requires denying somebody access to some good, there's an ethical issue with copying other people's stuff without permission. If a person breaks into another persons home and makes copies of all of the documents in their home private or otherwise, they've at least committed a crime in the form of breaking and entering. But if a person is invited into another persons home, and then without pemission copies all of the documents in the house, that still feels like a wrong act? Like, if you invite me into your house and I start copying down your personal journal, your family photos and other stuff you have lying around, to me that sounds like I'd be doing something wrong by you?
Edit: I do want to point out here that I'm not saying piracy is inherently wrong/bad or never justified.
Sure, but breaking and entering is a crime - just like theft. Copying someone's documents is wrong, but it's not a crime (not unless you commit a crime with those documents, eg fraudulently take out credit). In that case, it's a civil offense against the victim - just like copyright infringement.
Crimes are prosecuted by the government. To be convicted of a crime you have to be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt - in other words, it's more than 99% likely you did it.
Civil offenses are prosecuted by the victim. The burden of proof is "the balance of probabilities", ie it's more than 50% likely you did it. The victim must also show actual damages.
In the US, media companies have perverted the law around copyright infringement, and they manage to get awarded statutory damages well in excess of any actual damages they incur. This is why we had all those ridiculous Napster lawsuits where people were fined hundreds of thousands for downloading a handful of songs. In the rest of the world, they could only be awarded actual damages, and the lawsuits weren't really worth anything.
Media companies would really like copyright infringement to be theft, and they've lobbied hard for that. However they haven't managed it, not yet anyway. They did manage to establish a crime of commercial copyright infringement, though, where if you pirate a significant amount of material or do it for profit you could be criminally charged.
My issue is mostly just to do with the moral status of piracy rather than the criminality of it. It feels like in some cases piracy should be justified and in others it shouldn't be. The criminality of an act is a separate thing. I think I was kind of explaining things poorly with my examples. The distinction between breaking into a home vs not in my example was meant to show the act of copying somebodies personal documents could still be wrong whether or not a crime had taken place under current laws.
This is very interesting. Establishing damages over reproduction of ones personal documents seems like it would be almost impossible to establish unless an actual crime had also taken place.
This train of thought for me seems to lead towards the most satisfying justifications I can think of for why media piracy is probably morally justifiable.
That's pretty much exactly right. However I think there is something to be said along the lines of "What reason would you have for copying the documents, if not to commit an offense?"
I feel like the main reason some businesses are completely against piracy is because it helps keep their prices in check. Many businesses take the piss with pricing, however when it gets bad enough people look to alternatives. If there is no alternative, if piracy wasn't an option, then businesses would get away with ripping off people even more than they currently do.
People do all sorts of nosy invasive things solely for the sake of curiosity and keeping tabs on others I guess? But at a certain point maybe it could just be shoved under some kind of stalking offense?
Kinda sounds like it might be easier to get away with if it was a crime and the burden of proof was higher
"I didn't know the router Comcast gave me came with an unprotected 'Guest' network enabled by default. Someone in one of the other apartments must have been using it to download torrents"
Sounds like a reasonable doubt to me, I'm sure there'd be plenty of other explanations. Plus the work to retrieve everyone's computers to investigate who actually downloaded it would be prohibitively intensive in anything other than the most extreme cases
In that case it would be less about reasonable doubt that you did it, and more about whether an IP address proves the identity of a user. I would say it doesn't meet the bar of 50%, however it's a bit of a grey area that hasn't been properly tested in court.
The ethical issue here has nothing to do with damaging any property at all.
Why are you conflating damaging property with causing harm? It's at least arguable that an invasion of privacy is harmful, regardless of whether or not property damage occurs.
In my example privacy invasion definitely occurs. If you disagree with that, then you should review what I initially said.
If the notion that when people don't want to share things with you, you have an unqualified right to take those things, and that doing that is just inherently not damaging, then I think your position is unrealistic and incredibly self serving.
Do you have some point to make here besides claiming you're just never doing anything wrong when it serves your interests?
Your point is wrong. My point is that you can't always (ethically) just copy other peoples stuff, just like you can't always just take things from people. My point is not that piracy is never justified. My point is not that you are personally doing something wrong by pirating things. My point is not that you can't be justified in copying other peoples stuff sometimes without permission. My point is not that piracy or copying other peoples data and documents always causes harm.
Edit: When was pirating "publically available" software specifically ever central to my point?
The only response you've given is "that's not harmful", which is in no way an argument for why it isn't. It's not totally inconceivable that taking things, even data, without permission can be harmful and to claim otherwise seems willfully stupid and in this case self serving.
I feel like many people would disagree with you.
I'll take your approach. No, that's not what "taking something" means, because clearly the definition they're using for that is more inclusive.
The only response you've given is "that's not harmful", which is in no way an argument for why it isn't. It's not totally inconceivable that taking things, even data, without permission can be harmful and to claim otherwise seems willfully stupid and in this case self serving.
Here's another example. Say a person makes pornographic photos and videos for their significant other, suppose that content gets leaked onto the internet and is uploaded to popular torrent sites without their permission. How is piracy of this sort of content not an invasion of privacy? How is piracy of this sort of content not unethical?
I felt like it was pretty clear that I was not talking about things as small as pirating a couple movies and games from multimillion dollar companies?
Is it not piracy? Please clarify the difference to me?
Arguably software, films and music aren't "publically available" in the sense that they're only conditionally available to the public (ignoring piracy).
But okay, lets take the pornographic example. Say they occasionally sell nude photos to acquaintances too. Now the photos are in some sense "publicly available" in the sense that some people can buy them. Is it now suddenly okay to pirate this media? If so, then why?
Did you not read my very first example where I claimed almost exactly that. What have you been thinking I was talking about?
Feel free to clarify why? At what point does my example become what we're talking about? Is it the number of people the content is sold for? Is it the amount of money the content is sold for? Enlighten me.
I feel like I've been pretty clesr that this sort of example is not what I'm talking about..
I don't see why I need your permission? I feel like talking about when it is and isn't ethical to reproduce data is appropriate in this sort of community.
The ethics of data reproduction have been discussed in piracy communities for decades. It's a central topic to communities centered around data reproduction. Pretending otherwise is stupid.
Am I? Or are you arguing in bad faith on a topic you didn't bother to read the context of?
Keep telling yourself that champ.
Very strange comparison, those private copies are specifically private. If you want our comparison to work, I'd be selling these private documents to others... Making them not very private.
My example doesn't require a "for sale" vs not distinction so I'm not sure why you're imposing that property on it? People pirate unreleased media, unofficial media, bootleg media and other forms of media that aren't for sale already, so being for sale is definitely not a necessary property of the cases we're concerned about when we're talking about the ethics of piracy.
And even if we restrict ourselves to talking about things that are already for sale: 1. Why does something being for sale suddenly make it not private? Many things for sale are already certainly not public. 2. Why does something being for sale suddenly make taking it without permission magically morally acceptable?
I'm imposing that property on it because for the overwhelming majority of media that is absolutely the case.
If it's for sale it's something you do not mind other people seeing. My documents I do not sell because I don't want people seeing it. If I were to sell them, clearly I don't mind people seeing it.
Making it for sale means you intend to share it, even if conditionally. Also "taking it" doesn't apply, making a copy isn't taking anything.
I don't see why this is such a necessary property of media? Arguably there could be more media inside peoples private homes and hard-drives that is not for sale than media that is for sale. On top of that, this kind of thing depends on how we define media, we can take more or less inclusive definitions of this term.
It should also be clear that the kinds of things that I'm talking about in my original post refers to more than just movies, music, games and software (despite me using "media" as a convenient example in my previous post).
I don't agree. I'd bet a lot of people are willing to sell plenty of ordinarily private things given a high enough price. I don't think the notion that something is for sale all of a sudden makes that thing magically not private? When you sell something you don't always make the thing you're selling available to the public, just to the buyer, and until the sale is complete you're not typically giving anybody full access to the thing. If it were public/not private the minute you made it for sale, then what is the point in selling it?
This isn't true either. Sometimes people make things for sale with no actual intent of selling. And the intent to share, does not make something all of a sudden not private either. You might share something (perhaps a secret) with a friend, that doesn't mean the thing you are sharing suddenly becomes not private/public, but that the scope of people you're will to share this thing privately with has increased by a small amount.
I also disagree with the notion that making a copy just inherently isn't "taking" things. This is also a matter of definitions, but people actively use the word "taking" to encompass more than just physical things. Phrases like "he took my idea", "she took my credit card information" and so on are examples of this. Obviously people do consider "taking" to include acts of copying in some cases. If you mean something else by taking, that's fine, but your personal definition for taking isn't really relevant when the point I'm making regards a more inclusive notion.
If you're talking about having family photos pirated, there's a privacy issue, not a property issue. Everyone talking about media in privacy talks about distributable media. If you want to include other things, that's on you, but you'll be yapping in the void as that isn't what the conversation is about. Not secrets, or private documents.
As for the term of taking, it's clear what taking means when you try to erroneously conflate piracy with stealing. It doesn't mean the same as taking a shit either, it has nothing to do with personal definitions, merely the accepted definitions when talking about either piracy, or stealing.
It's pretty clear that I'm talking about more than just family photos. It's also pretty clear that what I'm saying is that privacy problems are one of possibly many issues with copying data without permission. My actual point here from the start has been that it's not always ethical to copy other people's data without permission.
All of the types of media and data I'm talking about are distributable in a colloquial sense. This conversation is about the fact that copying data without permission isn't always ethical. The data we're talking about here absolutely includes secrets, private documents and so on.
I don't think that's what's happening. I'm talking about the ethics of copying data. Perhaps sometimes copying data can be considered theft, but whether or not copying data is theft, has nothing to do with my point. A thing being called theft doesn't make that thing morally wrong or right. The term theft itself has little to do with the actual issue we're talking about.
Also, I've never actually claimed piracy is theft. I'm also not claiming piracy is morally wrong, or even that theft is inherently morally wrong for that matter (a person can be justified in stealing in some cases).
Lets assume you're right and that literally everybody in the world uses these words the way you do (they don't). I don't think arguing "but that word means..." makes a very good argument against the fact that copying data from other people just isn't always morally right. The fact that you don't like how I use certain words is just not a good argument against what I'm saying. If you understand what I mean and you disagree with what I'm saying, then why not argue against my point instead of complaining about the fact that you don't like HOW I use certain words? If you understand what I'm saying and you agree that sometimes it's wrong to copy other peoples data without permission, then why are we still discussing this?