That is a fallacy. The artists tend to gain with it, for one piracy boosts concert sales (https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-concert-ticket-sales-...). Box office revenues are hurt but the last Hollywood strikes just showed us the corporations couldn't care less about the artists.
Only business models that rely on monopolies are harmed.
Are you saying that there's no difference in nature between physical and immaterial? Or that intellectual property and physical property are the same, with the same working principles, and follow the same rules?
There in fact are. And I think it's silly how people always resort to physical metaphors whenever the digital realities inconvenience them. And vice versa.
Ditigal media isn't physical, and in this case the physical media was on a closed ecosystem and attached to a server to stream or at least check in to verify. You wouldn't need all this with a plain ol' DVD, but you got advantadeges in that that movie played on any PS device you logged into.
If you want DRM free digital media, don't buy the above.
A fallacy is a "mistaken belief", so of course it is wrong. And you should look more into the concept of free riding. For that a good introduction would be The philosophers arms episode about free riding.
And what is that about private property? Where did that come from? We are talking about different concepts here, it is about markets and business models. As long as we don't honestly debate how outdated our modes of consumption are, piracy would be a natural response to artificial scarcity.
Rest assured, I am not defending piracy. Pointing out flawed reasoning is not the same as defending what it is criticising.
My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice. And that is what I think, that the current state of how the market is configured is anticonsumer, and therefore piracy is a natural response to it. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong. Everything is less than ideal in this whole affair.
>Pointing out flawed reasoning is not the same as defending what it is criticising.
pointing out flawed reasoning with flawed reasoning is well, a fallacy by your words?
Your link there is an obvious one: it doesn't take into account colluding data over if the most pirated stuff comes from the most popular artists who have the most demand for tours. It doesn't take into account artists who can't afford tours (so, most of them) and how too much piracy will just get them cut out of the publisher's already crappy deal.
>My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice.
okay, I believe piracy would exist even if media was dirt cheap and we were in an economic boom. Some people just don't value media and if they want to take the time to pirate it over spending the money, they would. I'm pretty tired of the Just World Fallacy here that people never steal out of convenience.
Natural things can be immoral, and the “state of the market” has no impact on the morality of piracy. There is no justification for lying, misrepresentation, breaking your word, or knowingly benefiting from ill gotten gains, given the immensely low stakes involved in listening to a particular song or watching a particular tv show.
The social contract does. It would be bad if people throughout society just straight up ignored the concepts of ownership and copyright law, and all of the things you enjoy would not be made. However, by ignoring that and pirating it anyway, you're becoming a "free rider" who benefits from the contract but doesn't abide by it.
The content of the social contract is whatever the members of the society accept. If a law is widely broken it's not really a part of the contract anymore.
Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a social contract.
>If a law is widely broken it's not really a part of the contract anymore.
so rising physical theft over the pandemic means that stealing is legal? School shootings are going to be legal in the US overtime? What a horrible model for a social contract.
>Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a social contract.
Sure. But fact is that CEOs do do a lot of work to direct companies. We can question if that deserve whatever their pay is or their competency, but I hope no one thinks CEOs literally sit around doing nothing all day. Can we at least agree that burning a company down to the ground takes a non-zero effort?
> The content of the social contract is whatever the members of the society accept.
No. The content of the social contract is whatever benefits those who adhere to the social contract. It's not a popular vote, what is good isn't up to what the most people think it is.
Artists are not harmed, for sure. If you don't have money, you wouldn't buy it anyway. By pirating in that scenario, you are promoting it, and thus artist benefits.
And you are presuming that no pirates do by claiming that all piracy is immoral.
How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that still immoral?
>How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that still immoral?
immoral, no. Unethical, yes.
That said, I'm glad libraries of all kinds (lending, little free, bookstore giveaways) help give more ethical access to such resources. You don't need the latest and greatest textbook to obtain knowledge.
With all that said, were talking about deluxe media, not foundational knowledge. why does the topic always shift to hyperole when talking about a song/movie/game being pirated? Are we really comparing pirating The Avengers (2012) to finding a way to learn arithmetic?
Morals and ethics are similar but not the same, i would agree.
They suffer the same problem though in that morals and ethics do not have one universal standard. So something may be unethical to you but not to me but both be in the bounds of reason, or indeed the law.
You seem to accept that there is indeed ambiguity if you believe there to be a difference between a book pirated for a reason that helps someone, and a movie for entertainment in terms of piracy.
In addition, whilst you and i have access to libraries, this is very far from being common the world over.
Why then is it hyperbole? It’s just a simple example to show that piracy can in some cases harm no one and help someone. To wit: not all piracy is bad.
You claim that is unethical - which is all well and good, we do not share quite the same set of ethical values.
Further, more educated people have better prospects in life, which lead to better personal finances, which lead to buying more and pirating less stuff.
Without a clear definition of morality that is considered universal you cannot make any claims about generality.
There are many examples of piracy where no one loses out yet someone does benefit.
Painting such a complex subject with such a broad brush makes it seem like we’re just talking about your particular feelings rather than something universal.
Which is fine, but you’re making claims of generality without presenting a cogent argument.
Sorry but no, this is not a vague concept that we do not share; morality is indeed agreed upon in large strokes, by the very virtue of us interacting in this forum, we already are implicitly agreeing to a number of shared values. For one, you’re not calling me insulting names, you’re accepting I have a point of view, etc.
What I am claiming presumes only that you live in a modern society, and therefore you participate in the social contract. Given that, what I am saying is then a conclusion of that.
I'm probably misreading your argument, because it seems inconsistent to me. You are saying that piracy is immoral because it causes harm; and that it causes harm because in some cases the downloaded would have purchased the downloaded media if not for piracy.
I'm very confident that in the majority of cases, people who download stuff would not have bought it at any price that the publisher would accept, if piracy wasn't an option. Which means that by the definition of harm I think you are using, the majority of cases would not be immoral. It seems to me the immoral cases would be the exception.
I guess it makes more sense if you also say that consuming something without paying for it is immoral even if you would never have paid to consume it. I find it hard to agree with that though, as I don't see who's harmed.
I think your confidence is not only unfounded, but awfully convenient for someone who stands to benefit from the acceptability of piracy to consider.
Besides, "harm" here is not the core of my argument. Doing moral wrong is. It is wrong to lie to obtain something, and it is wrong to benefit from ill gotten gains.
These acts are wrong themselves, regardless of whether or not they cause pain directly. This is not a hedonist argument, the cause of pain through harm in all or even many cases is not necessary for the act to be wrong.
