This is blatantly ridiculous. IA allows authors to opt out, despite how incredibly unethical it is for authors to opt out, and copying isn't stealing in the first place.
And it's not like you don't know that. This juvenile nonsense where "copying isn't theft" is the laziest form of post-hoc rationalization imaginable. Not a single one of you would start from first principles with, "it's okay to deprive people of payment for their services as long as the final product of their services is an artifact that they, too, retain a copy of."
Say after a hurricane or other national disaster there's a company selling water bottles for $1. Then, a charity shows up and starts providing water bottles for free. I decide to get the free water bottle instead of paying for one. Clearly no theft is involved, but your description would include this action.
Even if you think copyright infringement is wrong, it's clearly different from stealing physical objects. Calling it "theft" is an attempt to create a false equivalency between copyright infringement and shoplifting, burglary, robbery, etc. and ignores much of underlying ethics behind why we prohibit theft in the first place.
It's no wonder why opponents of copyright strongly object to the label of "stealing"; it's using a dirty word to dismiss your opponents objections. "Theft" implies copyright infringement is wrong, so by arguing unlicensed copying is theft you are begging the question instead of making an argument defending the current copyright system on its own merits.
It's similar to why proponents of abortion access object to the use of the term "murder" to describe abortion. Or why people who eat meat object to calling killing animals "murder".
Authors sometimes spend years of their lives and plenty of their own money to write a book. They often have no idea if it will even sell, so it can be a huge risk.
Why do you feel entitled to the product of that work for free?
Why do you feel entitled to the product of that work for free?
I buy physical copies of all of my books; I used to be in a vastly different situation. When I was growing up, my town's library didn't have a non-fiction section worth its salt, and had a fiction section that rarely had every book in a series, and that was including ILL programs.
My household couldn't always afford food, let alone non-essentials like books. Copying bits isn't stealing, and it'd have to be snowing in Hell if some of the people in this thread are right: if impoverished kids are stealing from the mouth of authors every single time they copy a book on the Internet, and it's somehow unethical for them to do so, who has a chance in the world of being moral?
But now, let me tackle the first line:
Authors sometimes spend years of their lives and plenty of their own money to write a book. They often have no idea if it will even sell, so it can be a huge risk.
So there are two ways to approach this. First, we can go the capitalist route, which you're advocating for:
"Risk. Keyword risk. You are not guaranteed a return on your investment for anything. Someone steals your physical copies of your book, sure, that's stealing. Someone copies your book, you lose literally nothing. Free market. Economics. Woo!"
"That line is completely and utterly ridiculous if you substitute 'Authors' and 'book' with any other occupation."
Alternatively, here's a more realistic, less hyper-capitalistic, less dystopian view:
Instead of getting mad at the people participating in the system, get mad at the system and the people orchestrating it. Try as much as you like, blaming people trying to better their lives in a way that's objectively not harmful, which is always what you're doing if you're reading a book and didn't rip the copy from someone's hands, and you'll always come off as the villain. You'll lose in the long run, and you'll be looked at as the villain in all of the history books when you do.
Drew DeVault (a person who both publishes software under free licenses & who has written a book and licensed it under the CC) has written a bunch of great stuff on this.
Most (all real?) formulations of capitalism involve enforcement mechanisms for contracts, including remuneration for services - I can't think of anything other than the most extreme straw-man formulation of Libertarianism that doesn't. There's no element of real-world, or less-than-crazypants-theoretical capitalism that goes "you aren't deprived of an actual physical object, therefore, it's not theft." That's... the strangest formulation of capitalism I've ever seen. That's a common defense of piracy, though.
You could choose to deny reality and call Milton Friedland a "crazypants" capitalist, or a non-real world capitalist, but you'd not only be wrong, you'd come off looking ridiculous.
Piracy doesn't harm sales, and actually improves them in certain cases: https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...
Tell me, though, how someone who can't afford books would be able to buy them in the first place? How are they taking food from the author's mouth? Complete and utter hogwash.
Heck. Most of the panhandlers make enough in change in an hour to afford a Kindle Single.
Please. Don't pretend to care for the small fraction of America that is in bad financial shape. You're just using them to justify your theft.
The root of this difference is whether a personal value system is based on the sum of utility- how many people are happy, and how much- versus the spread of utility- how much better off I am compared to my neighbors.
Much of present human culture publicly praises the former- collectivism which "raises all ships"- while individuals quietly optimize their personal advantage, and cry outrage at policies which they perceive as allowing others to "close in" on their own standard of living. This tendency toward zero-sum thinking- and the resistance to social progress it creates- is a troubling problem.
Now fill out the form and opt out or I'm going to feel completely good about taking your car.
Though I have to point out you seemingly ignored my other question, so I'm not sure how much good this one'll do.
It has ZERO to do with whether the book store is deprived of the use of the copy. It has everything to do with whether the creation costs are split evenly amoungst the users.
Here's an assignment for you: imagine writing a book or creating a movie. Now imagine that everyone pirates a digital version instead of paying you. Do you feel okay because no one deprived you of your original copy? Or are you depressed because everyone is using your work but not paying you what you asked?
You made a stupid analogy, I called you out on your stupid analogy.
Close to 100% of the cost of creating a book, movie or song lies in the creation
Correct.
not the duplication.
Exactly! Duplication costs nothing and as such should be free to all.
If all of the audience copies it for free instead of buying it, the creator makes nothing.
This never happens, and you'd have to have the strangest mindset to believe it does. I've got three bookshelves stocked with nothing more than CC-licensed hard copies of books. (I actually just spent $200 acquiring a mint copy of one that was particularly special to me as a child a couple of weeks ago.)
It has ZERO to do with whether the book store is deprived of the use of the copy.
Then maybe you shouldn't have made such a ridiculous analogy.
It has everything to do with whether the creation costs are split evenly amoungst (sic) the users.
Costs shouldn't be distributed evenly: people who can pay more should pay more, and people who can't pay at all shouldn't pay.
Here's an assignment for you: imagine writing a book or creating a movie.
Sure. I'd argue that books are objectively more valuable than movies, but you're obviously not taking this at any level but the most superficial.
Now imagine that everyone pirates a digital version instead of paying you.
Completely unlikely[1], and also ignoring that theater sales are where movies actually get the majority of their revenue, but sure.
[1] It's actually impossible, because the pirated copy had to come from somewhere.
Do you feel okay because no one deprived you of your original copy?
I'd recommend looking up Drew DeVault's words on this topic. He recently wrote a book, was receiving reasonable royalties from it, all the while it was licensed under a CC license.
Or are you depressed because everyone is using your work but not paying you what you asked?
People don't have a right to a business model, and if we're making decisions on levels of depression now, I declare that the idea of hypercapitalist nonsense like you're advocating for and that the current intellectual property system defends is depressing to me, and we have to change it now to something that supports authors (or, radical idea, everyone) while also not robbing the public of information.
This is not hypercapitalism. It's hyperfairness. We all have a right to control our work and how it is used by the world. If you don't want to buy my book, write your own.