Many films and books have elements that are disgusting, unfair or insulting to another group.
For example, “The Da Vinci Code” offended a lot of Christians with its falsehoods, and “The Patriot” was unfairly anti-English. The Human Centipede transgresses almost all standards of decency.
Would you consider it ethical to pirate a offensive work to see how bad it really is?
It would prevent you rewarding people for their offensive behaviour, and if it turns out to be not so bad, you could always buy it later.
I personally don’t consider piracy theft, and even if I did, I would consider pirating a controversial work to be better than hating it without seeing it.
Since one of the premises of the discussion is that piracy is the same thing as theft, what you’re asking here is if it’s okay to steal from another person because you suspect they are dishonest, immoral, or simply lacking in talent. This theft isn’t to provide you with something you really need, or even particularly want, it’s just to satisfy some idle curiosity about whether the victim is as bad of a person as you’ve heard. Theft isn’t even the only way to obtain the potentially damning evidence, it’s just the method you’ve chosen because you don’t actually care enough to do things in any of the legitimate ways available to you.
I think, or at least hope, that few people would agree that this is ethical. Theft doesn’t suddenly become okay just because you don’t like the victim and happen to be in the mood to take their stuff.
If you’re that curious about The Da Vinci Code, it should be available for free at practically any library and for a low price at many secondhand bookstores. When a book is purchased secondhand the author doesn’t get royalties from the resale. Dan Brown got his “reward” when the book was originally purchased, although “reward” is not usually the term used to describe paying people for their work.
I don’t see how stealing from another person is “better” than spouting off about movies you’ve never seen. Those aren’t the only two options, either. It’s possible to say “That sounds pretty bad” or “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing I’d enjoy” or “The reviews said it was terrible” and move on with your life rather than obsessing over works you haven’t read/seen/heard.
A few times, I’ve made a point of buying a book at a used-book store, or reading a library copy, to make sure that the author doesn’t get any money from me…
But I wouldn’t pirate a copy. My odium toward the author wouldn’t make a difference.
Well, when you pirate something, you only steal from the IP holder, not the owner of a store. In this scenario, the offended only have a beef with the IP holder.
When I said ‘pirate’ I meant it as illegally downloading copyrighted material.
Well, when you feel you or what you value is potentially under attack, you might want to know what exactly is being said, to better combat it.
Couldn’t it be argued that it is just acquiring information?
Many arguements that define ‘piracy’ as theft rest on the fact that you are depriving the rights holder of potential benefit. If piracy was impossible, then in this case, a offended person person would not be a potential customer anyway, with the exception of paying to get the offensive information.
Insulting someone and then asking your victim for cash to find out what you said is not very ethical, and less ethical in my books than the victim directly stealing the informatino.
Good point, this’ll be a better thing to do. ‘Reward’ is the right word to use, as trying drum up benefit from controversy and blood libel is not what I would call proper or ethical work.
Well, reviews often don’t take into account the offensiveness to people belonging to groups they aren’t a part of.
For example, I’m not Jewish and I really liked “The Passion”, but that doesn’t mean that a Jewish person wouldn’t find it offensive.
Also, these works aren’t harmless, some people became more hostile to Opus Dei because of the Da Vinci Code’s lies. Some people take Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the English to be true.
Why is ethical to read a borrowed book from a library or a friend, but unethical to make a copy of that book and read the copy?
This is something that I honestly cannot understand.
Yes, I agree that it is absolutely imperative for creators to be compensated in some way for their work, otherwise they’ll stop doing it. So, you borrow a book from a friend and read it. And the creator of that book gets no compensation whatsoever. So have you stolen the content of the book?
Suppose the creator of the content owns the content.
Two scenarios:
A: The creator of the content wishes for you to have temporary acces to the content, and you take advantage of this offer.
B: The creator of the content wishes for you not to have temporary access to the content, but you take access anyway.
Do you think B is unethical while A is ethical?
The two scenarios aren’t just like yours, but it’s easy enough to see how the general principle applied in these two scenarios also applies in your two scenarios. You have to add some stuff in about what happens to rights to content when it is purchased by third parties and so on, but the main ideas are all there.
That begs the question. If an author of a book doesn’t want it in a library, are you pirating it by reading a library copy? That would be scenario B wouldn’t it?
Actually it comes to mind that buying a used copy would also be very close to scenario B. Chances are the author would rather get the money than the book reseller. Is that theft?
This is all just trying the rephrase things so piracy doesn’t sound so much like theft. One of the premises you set for this discussion is that piracy is theft.
Dan Brown didn’t go door to door telling Catholics they’d be really offended by his book and had better pay up to find out what he said about them. I don’t know anything about Dan Brown personally, but I think it’s likely that he doesn’t believe The Da Vinci Code is offensive to Catholics at all. But even if he deliberately set out to write a book that would shock Catholics, he had every right to do so. People who are easily offended aren’t under any obligation to read it, and there are legitimate ways to gain access to the book without giving Dan Brown a dime.
If neither reviews nor other people have described the work as offensive, the hypothetical pirate has no real reason to believe that it is offensive and thus would not be justified even if there were some ethical loophole for offensive works.
I didn’t say they were harmless, I said it isn’t okay to steal from people just because you don’t like them.
This (and the previous post) are where the stuff mentioned about having to add in some stuff about rights reversion on purchase etc.
So of course, the idea is, the creator, by selling his content to a publisher, agrees to allow that publisher to do certain things with his content, etc etc.
Really, I intended the focus to be on the intentions of the owner, not the creator.
If the owner of the content intends you to have temporary access, and you take access, that’s one thing. If the owner of the content does not intend you to have temporary access, and you take access, that’s another thing.
I said “wish” in my previous post but “intend” is a better word to use. By entering into an agreement with stipulations that are strictly against your wishes (i.e. you wouldn’t ideally want them to be there) you are nevertheless stating your intention that those parts of the agreement be effective.
IP rights can be part of a system that pays various service providers along the way, such as publishers and distributors and stores. IP theft can deprive them of money due. It doesn’t just effect the content creator.
Everybody has the right not to buy access to IP.
I’m an inventor and get paid partly on the basis of having signed away rights to some of my inventions. Since you are using a computer to use this, it is much likelier than not that you have at least one of my inventions in front of you, inside your computer, making it work better. If I wasn’t getting paid to invent them, I couldn’t have (because I would have been busy making money to feed my family some other way). There’s a certain level of probability that your computer wouldn’t be working right this instant if I hadn’t influenced it, which you wouldn’t like. To me, the ideas that intellectual property theft is real theft, and that you in particular should support protecting intellectual property and not stealing it, are just inescapably obvious.
Borrowing a book isn’t theft because it has been adjudged too disruptive and counterproductive to prohibit lending of purchased goods.
But you know what? The owner doesn’t have to sell you or the library the book. They can rent it to you and the rental agreement can prohibit you from lending it to someone else. A lot of sheet music is handled in this way.
Borrowing a book provides only temporary use, it is subject to other terms imposed
by the owner (such as fines for late return), and access may be delayed by the number
of other people who want to borrow the book. Pirated music is the permanent possession
of the asshole who pirated it, and the asshole never has to stand in line to listen to it.