That’s exactly what I was going to say. I do think that sneaking into a movie without paying for it is stealing - an issue that’s been argued here I don’t know how many times - but this at most is like lying about where you’re going.
It is as wrong as not paying to see the film in the first place, however wrong you may think that is. The fact that you are out the same amount of money is immaterial.
Is it wrong to steal a book from a bookstore, but give $15 to the library?
And, no, I don’t think that sneaking into a movie is morally equivalent to stealing something.
I’m not sure how this would hurt the theater owner, in many cases. In fact, if the other movie is later in its run, the theater owner might actually profit from someone doing this. The concessions should be roughly equal - though Ben Stein might make one sick to one’s stomach, I’ll grant you.
I’d suspect the producers of this film are showing it as a “public service.” In the general case I agree with you, but in this case those making the film lied to people like Dawkins, and so merit very little of our sympathy, beyond even lying about science. So there is far more reason to pull this trick on this movie than just about any other.
I disagree because not paying at all adds another victim (the theater itself) to the “crime.”
Huh? For every real blockbuster that turns a huge profit there are a dozen wanna-be blockbusters that flop and lose millions. Sure, **Iron Man ** was a big hit. But Speed Racer was a huge flop. Just go down the list of movies released this summer, most of them will fail.
As for comparing this to shoplifting a magazine, I’d say it’s more comparable to digging newspapers out of the recycling bins and reading them rather than putting 50 cents into the box and purchasing a copy. You are consuming something you didn’t pay for, yet you haven’t violated any laws, and you haven’t stolen anything.
You’re right, that’s a better analogy (although a slightly contrived one; is the shopowner blind?)–I was trying to come up with a sufficiently “good” reason (or a similarly principled one like in the OP) not to patronize the establishment.
It may be a minuscule sin, but then, isn’t the effect that you’re trying to achieve by doing it also minuscule?
This is more like checking a book out of the library rather than buying it, because you want to know what the book says but you don’t want to support the author.
sigh At least the people who do this and are saying, “Yeah, I know it’s wrong but I don’t really care,” are being intellectually honest about it. These pseudological gyrations to attempt to avoid addressing the ethical responsibility to pay for the product or service in which you partake are just willfully and irritatingly purblind. If I take an apple from a grocer’s cart, and then pay the shoe shine boy for it, it doesn’t all just wash out; I’ve still stolen the apple from the grocer.
The portion of the proceeds for the ticket purchased in order to enter the cinema will go to the distributor (and from thence to the filmmakers) whose film appears on the ticket; in the case of going to see another movie, you’re depriving the distributor and makers of the film that you did see from their share of the due revenue of their work. There is no moral ambiguity here; it is clearly wrong. Is it a “big wrong”? Meh; filmmakers and distributors have bigger fish to fry in terms of piracy and intellectual property theft, not to mention their own internal graft and money shuffling. Certainly civilization isn’t going to collapse, and Sean Penn will make enough money to both make overwrought independent films and snort all the coke he can get his hands on. But being of modest impact doesn’t make it ethically not wrong, which is the question asked by the o.p. Trying to rationalize around that doesn’t change the fundamental issue that you are abrogating the contract (yes, there is one) to pay for the film that you see.
Stranger
Dio and others are doing this as a matter of principle, not because they think they’ll bring the studio crashing down.
This is one of the smaller sins I can think of- like buying a product without researching if the company is ethical.
The producers of this film are hardly doing a public service; there is a dedicated core audience that will (or will be prodded to) see this film, guaranteeing a profit. Admittedly, not the profit a successful blockbuster will merit, but one that is assured. Whether they believe it or not is another question, but if they were doing it purely as a public service, they’d make it freely available on the Internet or other public venues.
I’m not nearly as outraged that people do this–in fact, I’m in agreement with silenus that most people probably do worse things on their way to the bathroom–as all of the attempts at transparent rationalizations that somehow invert the normal ethics of exchange. I can’t say that I much care whether Stein et al roll a seven or lose their shirts on the thing, and I’d look forward to seeing them factually eviscerated for their own transgressions of logic and ethics as filmmakers. That doesn’t make sneaking in to see the film–although again, I can’t imagine why any intelligent person would care to–less ethically suspect.
Stranger
Yes. (FWIW, I have never done this, mainly because I only go to see movies in theaters that I really want to see, so the situation hasn’t really come up in my life).
Actually as one of the “thieves” I am looking forward to my slow slide into a life of debauchery. I may eat a grape at the grocery store, or even leaf through a book at the local Barnes and Evil, then leave without paying for the words and knowledge that seeped into my brain. I might even try “speeding” and see how that feels.
I can’t wait to get to the sister-in-law shagging, she’s hot!
The only people hurt by my actions are the producers of this movie. People who are trying to advance the idea that creationism is a valid science that has been Left Behind. People who knowingly and with malice aforethought lied to and then edited interviews with prominent scientists to get their point across. The same ones who have been taken to court for using John Lennon’s Imagine without paying for it.
Sure they were exonerated by fair use laws, but still, this is a sleazy morally corrupt bunch who’s only defense is a means to an end.
They can have my 8 sheckles when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands!
But here’s the thing, Stranger. Violation of intellectual property rights isn’t stealing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong, but it isn’t the same thing as stealing an apple from the grocery store.
Is it immoral to patronize a library? If you read a book from the library instead of purchasing it, you are depriving the creators of that book of the purchase price of the book. Of course you have’t broken any laws by patronizing the library, and you haven’t violated our customs. But why? What’s the ethical difference?
When you steal an apple from the store, the store no longer has an apple. When you watch a movie you didn’t pay for, Disney still has that movie. Yes, if we don’t somehow compensate Disney when we watch Disney movies, eventually Disney is going to stop making movies. That was the purpose of copyright law. But doesn’t buying one copy of a book and sharing it with 100 of your friends violate the spirit of the law? I know it is perfectly legal, but is it unethical? What’s the ethical difference between reading your friend’s copy of a book, and watching a movie you didn’t pay for?
From M-W’s Dictionary of Law:
Every night, theaters transmit their daily attendance and revenue records to the Home Office, who in turn communicate these numbers to the various distribution arms of the studios. All these numbers are communicated in good faith–that the money and the attendance records are accurate representations of the business transacted in that theater that day.
Technically speaking, by buying a ticket for one show but attending another, you are directly responsible for making these figures inaccurate–figures that the “injured” (the studios) reasonably rely on being truthful. The theater, in selling you the correct ticket, and then proceeding to tear it and instruct you on which theater you should go to, has practiced, IMHO, sufficient due diligence and should not (note: IANAL) be considered complicit in transmitting these false records. If “fraud” has occurred, it is solely due to the party responsible–you, the ticketbuyer–for the deceptive behavior.
Now are these numbers marginal at best, a mere drop in a bucket of total revenues a particular studio will likely see over one weekend? Yes. But that doesn’t change the fundamental dishonesty of the act, nor does one’s motives (seemingly benign) mitigate the very real (if, again, rather marginal) financial repercussions of such an act.
The ethical difference is that a library is meant to loan books out. There is an implicit understanding between all parties–the author, the publisher, the library, the patron–that a certain type of transaction will occur, and as long as everyone abides by the nature of that contract, it’s a win-win-win-win.
When you buy a movie ticket theater, does your ticket say “Open Seating”? Or how about “Any theatre”? When you buy a ticket, do you simply ask for “Single admission”? No. Implicit in the contract–from when you initiate the transaction by saying the movie you want to attend to when you hold the torn stub in your hand printed with the title you’ve specifically agreed to attend–is that entering the multiplex is not a free-for-all. Sure, you can probably get away with doing whatever you want in terms of entering any particular house and seeing what you choose regardless of what the ticket says. But the theater certainly doesn’t sanction that behavior (if they happen to discover you’re in the wrong theater, they will kick you out) and the studio never agree to the terms of admission and revenue that such behavior endorses.
This is not analogous. You’re still paying the bookstore the actual price of the book, but their records indicate that a different $15 book was purchased.
Wow, people actually get upset about people who buy a ticket to one movie, then go see another one in the same theater? That’s pretty ridiculous.
Of course, it’s even more ridiculous that someone would actually do it in the first place.
No you aren’t. Not when the only possibilities are either:
a) See movie but buy a ticket for a different movie. (And the makers of the film you saw get no money.)
or
b) Don’t see the movie at all. (And the makers of the film get no money.)
Either way, the makers of the film aren’t getting your money, so they haven’t lost anything they would otherwise have received.
Now, presumably, with “message” movies like An Inconvenient Truth and Expelled, the filmmakers have a dual motive: to make money, of course, but also to engage in political persuasion. In scenario (a) above, they aren’t making money, but at least they are getting the opportunity to persuade you politically.