For those who consider 'pirating' theft, would you 'pirate' a disagreeable work?

[Gary_Robson]

@Namkcalb

Many films and books have elements that are disgusting, unfair or insulting to another group.

True. And in the United States, we have something called the First Amendment to the Constitution which allows for this.

@Namkcalb

For example, “The Da Vinci Code” offended a lot of Christians with its falsehoods, and “The Patriot” was unfairly anti-English.

You are aware that those are both fiction, right?

@Namkcalb

The Human Centipede transgresses almost all standards of decency.

No, it transgresses your standards of decency. Have you followed the plotlines of any shows like CSI, NCIS, Dexter, or Law & Order: SVU? They have had some pretty disgusting crimes committed, too.

@Namkcalb

Would you consider it ethical to pirate a offensive work to see how bad it really is?

No. If piracy is illegal and unethical, then it’s illegal and unethical for everything.

@Namkcalb

Well, when you pirate something, you only steal from the IP holder, not the owner of a store.

So you acknowledge that piracy is stealing? Good.

@Namkcalb

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.

It’s not a reward. It’s a paycheck. Novelists get paid for their writing using a different model than journalists, news anchors, and movie producers, but they all “drum up benefit from controversy.”

I’m not sure how “blood libel” differs from ordinary libel, but I don’t think you’ll find any of it in the three works of fiction you listed in the OP.

[TriPolar]

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:61, topic:599715”]

I’m not sure how “blood libel” differs from ordinary libel, but I don’t think you’ll find any of it in the three works of fiction you listed in the OP.
[/QUOTE]

Blood libel. There’s an exception if you’re the former half governor of Alaska.

I suppose I’ll be hearing from a moderator shortly.

[Blaster_Master]

I think the OP highlights an interesting problem with copyright and how it works with modern technology. In the past, copyrights were somewhat self-enforcing because it was difficult or expensive to copy a movie, a piece of music, or a book. With the advent of computers and the internet, it’s now trivial to copy and distribute original works and we encounter the sort of issue that the OP brings up.

Part of the problem, to me, is that one may believe that a work is objectionable, and thus be unwilling to pay for it, but in so not observe it, and thus not be able to know for certain whether or not he may or may not have been willing to pay for it. Of course we have some ways of getting around this, like the library, rentals, borrowing from friends, or whatever but that seems to not be making the best use of our technology.

Personally, I don’t think that copyrights are inherently “moral”, they’re just legal. Though it may not necessarily be workable as a business model, I would much prefer a system where a work is provided free of charge and then those who observe it can decide whether or not they want to reimburse the creator or not. I do something similar to this with music often, where I will locate some tracks from a new album and listen to them. If I like it and want to hear it more, I’ll buy the album, and/or other merchandise from the band and if I don’t like it, I won’t.

Assuming people could be trusted to follow through, it will likely improve the quality of art as well. For instance, with the DaVinci Code, I know people who strongly objected to it, but had to pay for it just so they could read it and intelligently object to it. Thus, the author was at least somewhat reimbursed just for the sake of generating controversy and not for the quality of the work itself. Or, with albums, particularly in pop music, a lot of them have filler songs because they know people will still buy the CD and, so they don’t feel ripped off, they put those low quality filler songs that no one really wants to hear just to fill up the album. The whole digital album concept helps fix this to some extent, but there’s still room for improvement.
Still, to more directly address the OPs issue, no. I will try to find someway to see it though. If it’s a movie, I’ll try to find it on a movie channel and DVR it, or I’ll find someone that owns it on DVD and borrow that, but I won’t just go download it online. I would do something similar with books, where I’d borrow them rather than download them illegal, but it would be nice if our laws did better reflect what is possible with modern technology.

[Spiny_Norman]

@Namkcalb

Not really, a ‘pirate’ in this case would only want to see or hear the horrible thing once, before deleting it.

It’s a distinct thing from ‘pirating’ something enjoyable, as most pirates would just stash it on their harddrive

That’s a meaningless distinction. The pirates really, really want to get at the content, correct? Their actions prove that to them, that content is at least worth the time and effort involved in acquiring it and reading it - otherwise, they’d just leave it alone. It is valuable to them.

So they’re taking something of value to them without compensating the owner - yeah, well, there’s a name for that.

[sportscrazed2]

Why even bother watching it if you are just going to get offended anyway? But, no I wouldn’t consider it morally acceptable. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Stick up for your morals if you are going to find something offensive don’t bother watching it and don’t give the creator the benefit of you watching it. But, then again how can you say something is offensive without first hand knowledge? But, seriously why even bother? There is plenty of other stuff to watch

[Lemur866]

@Spiny_Norman

That’s a meaningless distinction. The pirates really, really want to get at the content, correct? Their actions prove that to them, that content is at least worth the time and effort involved in acquiring it and reading it - otherwise, they’d just leave it alone. It is valuable to them.

So they’re taking something of value to them without compensating the owner - yeah, well, there’s a name for that.

They aren’t taking anything. They are copying something. Copying is different than taking. In taking, the owner doesn’t have it anymore and the taker has it. In copying, the owner has it and the copyer has it.

As Blaster Master pointed out, our copyright laws were created in an era when copyright violation required a great deal of effort. To print a new copy of a book or recording required extensive setup. Nobody would do that just to get a copy of a book to read themselves, it would be far cheaper and easier to simply purchase a legal copy.

This mean that copyright was pretty easy to enforce, since the only people making copies of works would be those who intended to make a bunch of copies and sell them. And in this case, you can track the copies back to the violator fairly easily, and seize his expensive copying equipment.

Of course, this is not the case in 2011. It is trivially easy to make thousands or millions of copies of a digital work, and it is trivially easy to distribute those copies all over the planet. And so, we have a mismatch between our legal industrial-era legal regime, and our digital-era technology. We aren’t going to smash our computers and networks, and so our legal system needs to be changed. Merely continuing on our current path and yelling louder about how it’s morally wrong to violate copyright isn’t exactly working, is it?