So recently I’ve seen a newspaper article about how the toll roads in North Texas show little mercy to people of color/poor people, and the article basically implies that because these toll roads are somewhat expensive, and very convenient, that what follows is that people of color and or poor people have some sort of entitlement to use these roads, regardless of their ability to pay (a big part of the article is about how the penalties are onerous, which they are.)
And on Reddit, a thread about who are villains who are actually heroes, has people arguing that software and media pirates fall into this category, because in some places, they can’t get video games and movies for an affordable amount, and therefore these people are like Robin Hood or somehow doing something laudable.
Did I go wrong here, when I assume that unless there isn’t an alternative, and what you’re doing is more of a health and welfare type situation, you are NOT entitled to use toll roads, video games, or other media if you can’t pay for it? To me, that’s theft, plain and simple. But lots of people on Reddit and the people in the article are basically implying that there’s a right to something, even when it’s for something as frivolous as a toll road or a video game, and that if you can’t pay/can’t get it normally, then you’re entitled to use it without paying.
This blows my mind. I’m not saying I haven’t used pirated games and media, but I never had any illusions that I wasn’t stealing and that it wasn’t right. And once I got enough income, I’ve never used anything pirated ever again.
The toll road part is tricky. I can’t think of a lot of support for that position. Tolls on the road pay for the roads and bridges in question and often other state roads as well.
But for movies and music, both industries have spent a huge amount of money on lobbying for tough laws, extending copyright far beyond what is reasonable and lawyers to enforce these laws than is good for the country and art. So I can kind of get the Robin Hood vibe there.
The video game industry I know too little about, so no comment.
Taking the argument to its logical conclusion, does this mean that I should be able to help myself to smoked salmon and filet steak from the supermarket because it’s too expensive?
Of course, that analogy falls down on the toll road argument. Texas is a huge State and I imagine the alternatives are not good.
The fact that you are asking this, and the way you state it, including Robin Hood, does indicate that there is another point of view. That POV I do consider moral and valid. That is society is set up unfairly, and thus immorally, and immoral laws and rules can be morally justifiable to ignore. It’s just a question of degree.
The government built the toll roads. The government decided to make them toll roads as part of its overall budget policy. If the government made those tolls onerous, it’s fair to question why, and to suggest that the government should not be building public works that place a burden on the people.
No. Pirating media is not the same. If you steal smoked salmon it deprives the supermarket of the ability to sell the salmon to someone else. If you pirate media it does not deprive the media company of the ability to sell the media to someone else.
As to toll roads I think they are a poor idea except in the case of heavily congested areas as it costs money to collect the tolls (toll collectors, equipment…). So it is better to simply pay for them out of gas and vehicle taxes.
I’m gonna say about as far as the agricultural revolution so like 10,000BC. You could argue a sizeable chunk of all human culture in the ensuing millennia was attempting answer the question “hey! how come it’s only a few rich elites that have all this cool stuff and not the rest of us?”
Generally speaking, I’m not in favor of pirating software. But at times the video game industry is just outright abusive towards their customers with their anti-consumer behavior and I find myself having little sympathy for them. They’ve had no problem preying on consumers with their microtransactions including loot boxes, forcing us to create a specific account with them to play their games, exclusive content available at different retailers or for different platforms, requiring games to be online to be played even in single player, etc., etc.
Heh. My reaction is precisely flopped. Roads promote convenience and efficiency for (almost) everyone, and should be accessible to (almost) all. I’ve no big problem with moderate tolls, but (as has been pointed out) toll collection adds inefficiency.
But music and movies? Those are just entertainment. Privately produced entertainment. And there’s no shortage of inexpensive entertainment. I can go to the public library and borrow a new DVD everyday. I can watch broadcast TV and get 12 channels 24 hrs a day.
Not having low-cost access to exactly what I want see right now is an insignificant problem. Making ‘poor folk’ spend an extra hour traveling — maybe several times a week — is kinda dickish.
That’s how markets work - if you don’t like loot boxes and micro transactions, don’t play those games or games from those publishers.
But just because they do obnoxious stuff of their own, it doesn’t entitle anyone to steal from them. That’s essentially my point - almost all of the justifications for pirating media are very conceptually similar to victim blaming. They deserve it because they’re anti-consumer or money grubbing, a huge company, or whatever.
I feel like if you are going to steal, own up to it instead of coming up with tortured justifications about why you deserve it without paying.
Pirating media has characteristics that are different from other types of “unauthorized taking”. In particular, it does not deprive the owners of the thing from having possession of the thing, which is usually the problem with stealing, that the owners don’t have their things anymore.
Pirating media is a copyright violation, it is its own type of crime, unique in and of itself. It does not need to be theft or stealing, but media companies want to portray it as such to tap into our preexisting feelings about those crimes.
There’s definitely a recent stripe of thinking that any inconvenience is injustice. Big debate raging right now on social media over whether fast-food delivery is an optional luxury, or a life-saving necessity for people who live in food deserts and 2 jobs and don’t even have time to go to a drive-through.
I think that’s obviously silly, but there’s something to be said for public resources that assign proportionally greater costs to the poor. Consumption pricing is the most efficient way to allocate public resources, but it’s often unjust to people who must use the road for work and necessities, and have no reasonable alternative to the route they take. For that reason I think consumption pricing for things like tolls ought to be scaled to income so that the marginal cost scale with someone’s ability to pay.
Obviously this applies to public goods and not private goods. If you have to eat steak for dinner every night, that’s your choice, there are abundant protein alternatives that are both cheaper and healthier.
Could you explain how it is? I’m not arguing here it’s morally correct or we are all entitled to all media for free, just that whatever piracy is, is absolutely not stealing. Nothing is taken, nothing is even disturbed or occupied.
Somehow over the last few decades the concept of stealing was extended to include something that is absolutely not stealing.
So, here’s the scene. You’re watching from nearby. Guy at a Starbucks is being a jerk, hassling and bitching at the barista throughout the whole process. He pays, and a $10 bill falls out of his pocket to the floor. The guy behind him steps on the bill, deliberately so it’s hidden, then, when Mr Jerk walks away, picks it up and stuffs it in the tip jar.
I think we can all appreciate that Mr Tip “shouldn’t have done that” but we’re also not going to jump in to make sure Mr Jerk gets his $10 back, and we’ll all probably chuckle once the scene is complete.
Game companies want to be obnoxious providers in an effort to squeeze every possible penny from their customers, some of the people will do things they “shouldn’t do” in response. It’s expected, and I’m not going to jump in to defend the companies.
If you were an indie game developer, would you be upset if people were downloading your game without paying you? What if you were a struggling musician and people were downloading your songs without buying them?
It’s not somehow different when it is a large company vs a single person. Stealing their songs /games may well be stealing revenue from grandma’s pension fund or someone’s 401k, depending on how they’re invested.
I’m with @griffin1977 : copying software without a license is not stealing. Again, just like @griffin1977: I am not claiming that it isn’t a crime or it’s morally OK or whatever.
It’s just a different crime, and calling it “theft” is just to emotively link these things. We may as well say we are “raping” the software because we’re using it without consent. (apologies for the massive hyperbole but I couldn’t think of another analogy that fit)
Also, we get into funny territory if the justification for calling it theft is “potential income”. Because of course a lot of piracy is of people who would not, or could not, have paid for the software, like the OP implies.
Does that make it OK then?
I’m not sure I agree- some jurisdictions have a crime called “theft of services” specifically for cases where there is no physical object such as intentionally not paying for a haircut or bus/train fare or tampering with equipment to obtain electricity, cable TV , and other utilities without paying for the services. And it doesn’t matter if you would never have paid for the cable TV.
As far as “entitlement” I’m seeing two forms lately that I either never noticed before or didn’t used to happen so much. Both involve “freebies” . One is people playing free online games complaining when the game changes how you earn free boosters and the other is people who belong to a rewards program of some sort acting as though they have been cheated because the program has changed. I’m not talking about people who have saved miles or points for years who suddenly without warning lose them. To describe one version, a casino might use the points you earned during calendar year 2023 to determine your level as of Jan 1 2024. And on Jan 1 2024, maybe they change some benefits, so that if you were Diamond in 2023 you got free meals but in 2024 that’s no longer a benefit. You want to start going elsewhere that’s just fine - but they aren’t ripping you off because it changed.