The other kind of pirate.

Great Debates
1

Really looking for GQ answers here. OK I get it. Copyright infringement, while illegal, and probably immoral definitely isn’t theft or stealing. The thing you are getting, someone else isn’t missing. But what is it?

Legally I guess it’s just ‘copyright infringement’. Morally I guess it’s akin to breaking a contract or promise (lying?). There’s some greed thrown in but greed is more of an attribute than an action per se. Maybe something like mooching or free riding.

I guess there could be different answers for different forms, from simple remixing your own, to making/downloading an illegal copy, to using a copy of software to do business and make money, to actually selling bootleg copies.

I don’t feel like I’ve quite got it. It’s not theft dopers, but what is it?

2

It’s theft not in the sense that the previous owner is now missing it, but in the sense that he/she has not been paid properly. It’s ethically the same as hiring them illegally for free. All they have to sell is their live performance and their recordings.

What if you wrote a book that became a best seller, and then you discovered that it was being printed without permission in India and sold all over Asia without a penny to you? How appreciative would you be?

As much as I can’t stand Bill Gates for his monopolistic practices, he’s right that the attitude that software is just there for the taking will depress the market and discourage development. Of course, the answer to that lately is the distributed effort of the fanatics of the open source movement.

3

[QUOTE=Cardinal]
but in the sense that he/she has not been paid properly.
[/QUOTE]

While I might agree that it’s wrong and I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t agree that it’s actually “theft”. It may be a sin but it’s not ‘thou shall not steal’. And even legally I don’t think it falls under theft laws. I’m trying to get a feel for what it would better be described as legally and especially morally. What would Plato and Kant or even Dante say?

4

Try “theft of intellectual property”. In my circle, if an engineering firm is engaged to do a project, completes design drawings etc. then is not paid for that … there is no other engineering firm who will touch it, until the first is paid.

I disagree with you. It is stealing. It is theft. It may not seem so tangible to you, but the artist put their work into it … they should be compensated for their work.

5

[QUOTE=NinetyWt]
It may not seem so tangible to you, but the artist put their work into it .. they should be compensated for their work.
[/QUOTE]

OK y’all just ain’t reading my OP lol.

This is not a debate about whether it’s wrong. In no way does the OP come within remote distance of advocating or justifying it. Let’s assume for the sake of this question that it’s bad. Let’s even pretend that everyone in the world is against it and thinks there is no worse thing you could do. That’s still irrelevant to my question.

It’s a question about what the proper semantics are. I think people are so hung up on defending their belief that it’s wrong that they are afraid to have a discussion about the proper terminology for fear of seeming like they are justifying it.

For example, stabbing someone is bad. Very bad. We all agree. But unless the person dies, we can’t call it murder. But we can have an adult conversation about how it’s more correct to call it assault than murder without freaking out about people thinking you’re saying that assault is OK.

In such a way, unless the property that one person has that supposedly belongs to someone else is actually now missing from the first person, it can’t rightly be called ‘stealing’. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still wrong, immoral illegal, a sin, etc. It just means it’s the wrong name. What rightly speaking, is the correct term or phrase, both legally and morally speaking?

6

So you’re looking for a legal term for copyright infringement besides “copright infringement?”

7

[QUOTE=garygnu]
So you’re looking for a legal term for copyright infringement besides “copright infringement?”
[/QUOTE]

As I stated (apparently not as clearly as I thought lol) in the OP, I was guessing that legally it was probably just ‘copyright infringement’, but i was still looking for more informed opinions, and i was mostly interested in ways of catagorizing it morally.

I also wondered if the category might differ (both morally and legally), depending on the degree/form of the offense - for example from simple remixing your own, to making/downloading an illegal copy, to using a copy of software to do business and make money, to actually selling bootleg copies, etc..

8

[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
As I stated <snip> i was mostly interested in ways of catagorizing it morally.

I also wondered if the category might differ (both morally and legally), <snip>
[/QUOTE]

Inasmuch as morals are an individual thing and legality is not, you seem to be combining an IMHO with a GD.

Morals first
Lessee: Gaining something that should have been paid for but not paying for it? Morally: wrong, wrong, wrong! No less so than “downloading an illegal copy, using a copy of software to do business and make money, actually selling bootleg copies.”

Legal
How does the law treat these various crimes (let’s don’t shy away from calling a spade a spade; your examples are crimes)? News accounts have record companies suing and settling with illegal downloaders, sometimes for thousands of dollars. The notice at the start of every DVD says penalties include fines up to $250,000 and prison terms of up to 5 years.

9

What’s wrong with ‘copyright piracy’??

10

[QUOTE=11811]
Morally: wrong, wrong, wrong!
[/QUOTE]

If you actually read anything that I wrote other than the words “copyright infringement” you would have seen that I already stipulated that it’s “wrong”. I’m looking for a more specific moral category such as ‘murder, lying, blasphemy’ moreso in the philosophical sense of moral and ethical reasoning, but in other senses such as religious would be fine too. And I’m not looking looking for the word “theft” as I feel it applies only to the specific category of wrong doing where the infringed party loses that actual property that the evil now possesses.

I’m not looking for GD or an IMHO I really am just looking for a GQ. Was hoping for a quick lesson in how a modern ethical philosopher would categorize it as opposed to perhaps classical philosopher or also major religious texts.

I’ll even settle for a simple thesaurus answer that discriminates between two terms for immoral property acquisition, one in which the property is removed, and one in which it is still present.

Heck I’ll even settle for any post that doesn’t glaringly demonstrate a complete and obvious disregard for actually reading a post before replying to it.

11

[QUOTE=chrisk]
What’s wrong with ‘copyright piracy’??
[/QUOTE]

If you mean legally, I can’t say for sure but I don’t think it’s the actual terminology for the legal offense. But since piracy is armed robbery at sea, I see it as even less analogous than simple robbery.

If you mean morally, are you saying that it’s such a unique offense that it can’t be put in one of the traditional moral categories, but is unique to the era of copyright law?

12

Whether legally chargeable as it or not, it is, in fact, theft of intellectual property.

Say a photographer makes and sells 50 signed and numbered prints of a given artistic shot. Part of the attraction, beyond the intrinsic beauty of the shot, to the collector is the value of owning 2% of a very small commodity. If someone then runs off 3,000 more prints, that value is reduced.

An artist with copyright over his works has a possession, into which he put labor, creativity, and intellectual effort. That copyright protects the fruits of his labor as surely as the padlock on the door of the homemade furniture shop protects the owner’s inventory of pieces that he’s made.

13

[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
If you mean legally, I can’t say for sure but I don’t think it’s the actual terminology for the legal offense. But since piracy is armed robbery at sea, I see it as even less analogous than simple robbery.

If you mean morally, are you saying that it’s such a unique offense that it can’t be put in one of the traditional moral categories, but is unique to the era of copyright law?
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I mean, what’s wrong with the phrase as a description, since the OP doesn’t like using the word ‘theft’ to describe the act. :slight_smile:

14

There’s nothing inherently immoral about copying other people. From the first caveman who banged some rocks together; to various strains of grain; to the immunizations you received as a child. The fact is that you owe your life to the intellectual “property” of people to whom you haven’t paid a penny of royalties.

15

[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
Copyright infringement, while illegal, and probably immoral definitely isn’t theft or stealing. The thing you are getting, someone else isn’t missing. But what is it?

[/QUOTE]

I am seeing the bolded part as the relevant bit here. But maybe I am misunderstanding you.

It seems your definition of theft requires there to be something tangible that person A had before the theft and no longer does after the theft. Now person B has it instead, without having made payment for it or gotten permission to take it.

We could turn your question around and ask you: why does the definition of theft require the victim to have had possession of the property at some point before it was stolen? Couldn’t you simply say that if someone is denied something they are legally entitled to (e.g. their portion of money from the sale of a CD) it has been stolen from them? Even if they never actually had it in their possession?

16

[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
Really looking for GQ answers here. OK I get it. Copyright infringement, while illegal, and probably immoral definitely isn’t theft or stealing. The thing you are getting, someone else isn’t missing. But what is it?
[/quote]

It’s copyright infringement, which is a pretty unique crime.

If forced, I’d actually compare it to something like disclosing national secrets or distributing obscene material, which, like copyright, are restrictions on certain types of speech, with the difference that it’s the government deciding which speech is forbidden, instead of private entities.

Free riding, I suppose, although I don’t think free riding is necessarily immoral. It’s not like breaking a contract because there is no agreement beforehand, except in the “social contract” sense, and in that case it’s still no more like breaking a contract than any other illegal act is.

“In fact” seems like pretty strong phrasing for a claim based only on a dubious argument.

Sure, but reducing the value of someone else’s property isn’t the same as theft. If I discover a flaw in the new Honda Accord and post about it on the internet, that will lower the value of Accords and make it harder for dealers and owners to sell them at a price they’d like, but I haven’t stolen anything.

In fact, the value of any property is reduced as it becomes more widely available. For example, spices that we can buy at the supermarket for a couple bucks today cost a fortune hundreds of years ago. If someone had bought a warehouse full of (nonperishable) spice in 1600 as an investment, his descendants would be pretty unhappy to see that its value had dropped so much, but the people who developed the infrastructure to make spices widely available aren’t thieves because of it. The same goes for De Beers’ diamond monopoly: if diamonds were no longer kept artificially scarce, the value of everyone’s diamonds would drop, but that’s just the market at work.

17

Nicest is getting to the heart of it

[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
And I’m not looking looking for the word “theft” as I feel it applies only to the specific category of wrong doing where the infringed party loses that actual property that the evil now possesses.
[/quote]

Copyright is the **exclusive ** right to copy something. To say that you still have the **exclusive ** right to copy something, after someone else has copied that thing, is a highly debatable proposition.

If one accepts for the sake of the argument that when copyright is acquired immorally the property is still present, then I am not aware of term of general application that describes that sort of immorality beyond "copyright infringement.

But really you are just confusing yourself. The reason you have arrived at the puzzled position that has prompted your OP is because you have set up an oxymoron. Either copyright infringement does not take the owner’s property in which case it is not immoral, or it does, in which case it is not.

It is unsurprising that philosophy has not seen a need to come up with a term of general application for a situation that is inherently contradictory and therefore doesn’t exist.

18

[QUOTE=Princhester]
Copyright is the **exclusive ** right to copy something. To say that you still have the **exclusive ** right to copy something, after someone else has copied that thing, is a highly debatable proposition.
[/quote]

Mm, I don’t think so. You still have rights even when they’re being infringed.

Not really. There are plenty of immoral acts that have nothing to do with taking the property of others. For the sake of argument, isn’t it possible that copyright infringement is one of them?

19

I missed that extra “not” the first time. If you put it there on purpose, I’m afraid I don’t see what you mean by it, because the OP’s position is not that infringement is moral.

20

[QUOTE=Mr2001]
Sure, but reducing the value of someone else’s property isn’t the same as theft. If I discover a flaw in the new Honda Accord and post about it on the internet, that will lower the value of Accords and make it harder for dealers and owners to sell them at a price they’d like, but I haven’t stolen anything.

In fact, the value of any property is reduced as it becomes more widely available. For example, spices that we can buy at the supermarket for a couple bucks today cost a fortune hundreds of years ago. If someone had bought a warehouse full of (nonperishable) spice in 1600 as an investment, his descendants would be pretty unhappy to see that its value had dropped so much, but the people who developed the infrastructure to make spices widely available aren’t thieves because of it. The same goes for De Beers’ diamond monopoly: if diamonds were no longer kept artificially scarce, the value of everyone’s diamonds would drop, but that’s just the market at work.
[/QUOTE]

In criminal law and morality, what you did and why you did it are highly relevant. What then occurred as a consequence is only one element for consideration. I could run over your cat in my car in circumstances in which I was utterly without blame. I could run over your cat on purpose and be guilty of a crime.

Your analogies mean nothing because the only element they have in common with Polycarp’s scenario is the loss of value, yet the immorality of his scenario lies not just in the loss of value but in loss of value due to property right infringement.

[QUOTE=Mr2001]
Mm, I don’t think so. You still have rights even when they’re being infringed.
[/quote]

That you may have a right to take certain actions after your property has been stolen, doesn’t mean you still have the property. You still have rights to your car after it has been stolen. Does that mean it hasn’t been stolen?

Like I sai: to say that you still have the exclusive right to copy something, after someone else has copied that thing, is a highly debatable proposition.

[QUOTE=Mr2001]
I missed that extra “not” the first time. If you put it there on purpose, I’m afraid I don’t see what you mean by it, because the OP’s position is not that infringement is moral.
[/QUOTE]

The final “not” is an error, sorry.

Well we are on the subject of property. Name an immoral act in relation to property that doesn’t involve depriving the owner of it, by taking it permanently or temporarily or by damaging it?