Since I’ve never said anyrhing like that, I’m confused by you. If you acknowledge that copyright infringement is a crime, I’m happy to agree with you.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s about things that are simply too expensive, but things that are seen as “regular” stuff that is greedily overpriced.
Should a 30 mile drive on a highway cost $30 in tolls?
Should I have to pay $100 for in game content for a game that I already “bought”?
Should Cable TV cost $195 per month?
Should I pay $300 for textbooks that will be “obsolete” at the end of term?
Should long distance calls be super duper expensive (in the 1970’s) because AT&T is a monopoly?
There are perceived injustices there and many people feel just fine telling the people who made the unjust decisions that they’re not playing the rigged game, and they’re also not going to deprive themselves by not playing the game. They will get around your one sided rules and play their own way.
Yes, I think that’s part of it, at least. In that case it’s not “I feel entitled to get this for free” but rather “I feel entitled to get this for a reasonable price” (or “without jumping through hoops to get it”).
I definitely place toll roads and video games in different categories. Even turnstile jumpers. And here I’m talking about folks who need to go about their lives, get to work, etc., and are financially challenged. I’m not saying we should just make it the Wild West with regard to paying, but I have sympathy for the “I just want to get from here to there” guys.
I don’t care if a video game is the most over-priced product in history, with a multitude of features objectionable to you. “But I really want to play it” is not a good enough reason to pirate, not for responsible adults, anyway. You can always, I don’t know, just do something else. It’s a video game, not insulin.
Well, no. It says that they believe they sell more copies of the software when they add DRM. And this isn’t entirely unfounded. There are in any case some people who may have bought the game who chose not to because they pirated it.
But that doesn’t make it stealing. Stealing is specifically depriving others of their property without permission. This concept can be extended to services, but software is not a service. It is a (digital) good. It is (intellectual) property. And the owner has not been deprived of their property when someone pirates it, any more than when someone copies a book at the library.
The difference with piracy is that any individual act is not inherently harmful. If someone would not have purchased the digital good, then they have not caused any harm to anyone. And nearly everyone who pirates will claim that is the case. However, in aggregate, the availability of the product at a lower price point does compete with the legitimately sold product. This doesn’t require that people are lying–just that they are mistaken about what they would have done.
But this is all copyright: the exclusive monopoly on the right to sell or otherwise distribute copies of a piece of intellectual property. It is copyright infringement. Which is, in fact, exactly how piracy is generally dealt with legally. Usually it is civil, with the use of fines, but occasionally it is treated as a criminal issue. This is unlike stealing, which is nearly always criminal.
The issue with DRM is that it is often more onerous on the legitimate purchaser than it is on the person who pirated it. And the market does not adequately punish this behavior. The only thing that tends to do so are the constant complaints where people say that they get a better experience with the pirated version. The reason they fix this is because it increases piracy.
I’m not someone who says that DRM should just go away. Having some practical method to enforce one’s copyright on an infinitely copy-able good is a sensible precaution. What I reject is the idea of equating piracy with theft, and then using that to justify companies that use onerous DRM that harms even a small percentage of the legitimate purchasers. I’m against the fundamental idea that all companies should do is attempt to maximize profits, and that they need to keep making higher and higher profits.
And I’m against the idea that people should not be able to crack DRM for their own personal use, or make copies of their legitimately purchased digital good for their own use.
And, finally, I’m against the OP’s idea that people who literally cannot purchase a digital good are doing anything wrong by pirating it. That’s why the distinction is relevant. Stealing is wrong except for necessity (e.g. stealing food and water to live). Pirating is wrong unless it causes no harm.
This is also why I don’t consider abandonware to be morally wrong, or getting copies of old media that is unavailable for purchase. If either was stealing, they would be wrong.
Except that “society” functioned perfectly well without any notion of “intellectual property” for literally thousands of years.
Physical theft of real property has been a crime for just about as long as the notion of “property” and “crime” have existed. It’s only in the last couple of hundred years that the idea of “intellectual” property has come into being.
And even with an IP framework, we still treat intellectual property differently from physical property, in that IP is, by law, time-limited. Ridiculous copyright terms extensions bought by Disney notwithstanding, there’s still the notion that copyright and patents expire after a certain time. That doesn’t happen with physical property. Hell, with physical property, I still own it even after I’ve died - my will dictates who gets what, and that’s legally enforceable almost everywhere in the world.
Of course, what I find amusing in the sematic arguments is people who object to the word “theft”, saying, “No, no, it’s just piracy.” Dude, piracy is theft. The actual, yo ho-ho and a bottle of rum type pirates were all about stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down.
I should have been more precise: “modern society.” We may still differ, but IMO art, science, et.al., would be substantially inferior if IP weren’t protected. For the gamers, consider what the selection of available games would be if IP weren’t protected.
No it isn’t. You can steal an idea, steal information, etc.
Do you think there’s a distinction between “They aren’t doing anything wrong by pirating it” and “They’re entitled to pirate it”? (Speaking of course in a moral/ethical sense. In a legal sense, it’s a matter of what the laws actually say.)
People have a choice. That’s the point of a toll road. You can pay to get there faster or save a few bucks to get there slower.
But nobody owes anyone the faster route because they choose not to pay.
The article I mentioned in my original post was that basically the toll road authority around here was particularly unforgiving to poor people who were delinquent in their tolls. To which I was a bit incredulous; these people choose to use that road, knowing that it’s a toll road (you can’t miss the signs and toll tag readers), and then don’t pay, and are expecting some sort of forgiveness because they’re poor?
Those are the consequences of making poor choices, i.e. taking the toll road and not paying. That’s not some sort of diabolical plot on the part of the toll road authority to screw poor people, (even if they are pretty much abject assholes). It’s even more cut and dried than people who don’t pay parking tickets getting warrants for their arrest, etc… and then suffering huge life consequences by being hauled into jail. Toll roads are totally voluntary, and it’s not like there’s anywhere around here you can’t get through other means. They’re considerably more convenient, but the point is that you pay for that convenience. That’s not something anyone is owed.
You say it’s intellectual property and then go on to say that it’s not stealing because it’s not depriving someone of their property when it’s pirated.
You seem to be hung up on the idea that intellectual property isn’t a physical thing with finite copies. IMO, that doesn’t matter one bit.
Look at it this way- (I’ll use software because the language fits a little better) even if there are theoretically infinite software installations for a piece of software, in reality there are going to be a set number of installations that actually happen. And the developer should be paid for every one of those, in exactly the same way that an author should be paid for every copy of their book that’s sold.
So for every installation that’s pirated, that’s one of those finite real-world installations that he’s NOT being paid for, just like an author isn’t paid for a book that’s stolen. It’s money NOT in their pocket.
THAT is the point- nobody’s really arguing that you’re “stealing” the intangible software- you’re right, that doesn’t make sense. What everyone is arguing is that effectively piracy steals the revenue of the software/music/book/video/etc. creator.
At best, you can argue that for some pirated installations, the pirate wouldn’t have bought the software in any event, so there’s no revenue loss.
The toll road authority, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike from using the road without paying $50 a day for their commute.
BTW, the “nobody” you’re talking about is the government and their choice to spend millions of dollars to build a faster route for their wealthy citizens.
Yeah, this. It’s not a matter of “But you didn’t pay!” It’s a matter of “Them that haves gets.” Why do rich people deserve to get there faster just because they can afford it? Roads are a common good in our society, are absolutely necessary for the functioning of our car-centric society, and are built in a manner that takes over large swathes of land, in a way that affects everybody, rich or poor.
So why aren’t poor people allowed to use certain roads, just because they can’t afford to pay a toll? Who was it that decided to make it a toll road?
There is, however, a massive sense of entitlement that you should get to use stuff you didn’t pay for because [reasons] made you mad.
I don’t know who decided, but that argument is kind of silly IMO.
EVERYTHING works that way where there’s a cost involved. Who decided that rich people get filet mignon and poor people can’t, just because the rich can afford it? Who decided that poor people have to go on road trip vacations if they can go at all, while rich people can fly first class?
It would be one thing if there was ONE road going somewhere, that place was mandatory for someone, and there was a toll involved. That might not be entirely fair.
But toll roads are largely a matter of convenience, not necessity. Nobody’s owed convenience, and that’s the point of the thread. You sound like people are entitled to convenience, and that it’s somehow unfair that people who can pay for convenience do, and that those who don’t pay are penalized.
That is absurd.
If nobody is owed convenience, why are we building toll roads for the rich people to use?
Roads aren’t like steaks, or airlines. As a practical matter, they cannot be built without some significant government involvement. Why is the government helping build roads that are not accessible to everyone?
It’s not a question of owing anyone anything, it’s a question of what people are willing to pay for using.
If you built a toll road that was inconvenient, nobody would use it, and they’d just take the normal roads. That’s the point- it’s a convenient alternative to the existing roads, and you pay for that convenience. Or not- it’s your choice as to whether you’d rather pay cash to get there faster, or time to get there cheaper. But nobody is owed both.
Part of it, at least around here, is funding. In Texas private companies can fund toll roads (subject to TxDOT approval) in exchange for being allowed to collect tolls for some specified period.
Then let the rich bastards build their own fucking road. Nobody owes them conveniences, let them make their own convenient routes.
Oh, they can’t? It’s impossible for them to do this by themselves? Too bad, they’re not entitled to conveniences they can suck it up just like all the minimum wage workers who service their bullshit all day.
Very often disproportionately the poor, as it’s more likely to be their neighborhoods that are bulldozed or split into inaccessible pieces in order to put the road through.
You sound like you think of “convenience” as something trivial. Often it is – spending an extra twenty minutes to get to a concert that you’re going to for entertainment is pretty trivial. Arguably, for me to spend five or six hours roundtrip instead of four to get to a necessary medical appointment two or three times a year might be considered “trivial”, especially if you’re not the one exhausted from the drive. (I do pay the toll.) But for some people you’re adding an hour or two travel to every work day of their lives. That may also mean that they can’t find child care, so can’t get to work at all; or have to pay extra for child care (as well as for gas) so when the car breaks down they haven’t been able to save up enough to repair it, so they can’t get to work –
In other words, often it isn’t “trivial” at all; and at least borderlines on becoming necessity.
And yeah. That road wasn’t built entirely on private toll money; nor is it likely to be so run. And building it probably included condemning land by eminent domain.
Now I can see high tolls as a way to reduce city congestion and city air pollution – IF the city (ideally at least in part with the money from those tolls) establishes sufficient locations before the toll booths at which one can leave a car or other private transport and switch to mass transit, both of those at a reasonable cost; and the mass transit being sufficient both in stops and frequency to make it reasonably – ah, “convenient” – to use. And don’t raze or otherwise destroy poor neighborhoods to build those locations.
Yes, it sucks to be poor. I get that. But this isn’t any different than anything else where the poor have it worse than others. This isn’t a debate over whether toll roads are good or bad. It’s about the entitlement aspect.
But that doesn’t entitle them to use something they can’t pay for. They’re not owed the use of toll roads because they’re merely faster.
Case in point- I-635 here in Dallas has a two-tiered setup. Lower lanes are tolled, and upper lanes are free- there are about 2x the number of free lanes as tolled ones. Both sets follow the exact same route. Why should a poor person be entitled to use the toll roads for free, and middle-class or higher should be expected to pay to use those lanes, or use the free ones?
That’s what I’m talking about- in this case, it’s literally ONLY convenience.