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I don't disagree, and in practice, I don't pirate except where encouraged by the content owners.

Admittedly, I don't know how or why that particular justification is okay with me, except that I know a number of expats who simply don't have access to American television in any other way.

I understand and agree that I'm being hypocritical, and I agree that piracy is "not okay", which is why I don't do it. However, I simply can't judge the piraters who do so out of lack of availability with the same stance that I judge those who do so casually, or as a matter of course, or because they don't agree with DRM, or because they don't like the record producer, or whatever.

Unavailability just seems like a less shallow justification to me to an act that it still equally wrong.

> If the food is too expensive at your favourite restaurant, you don't pull a runner after the meal, you simply don't eat there, and you hope that in time the owners will realize and make adjustments. But if they choose not to, then that is their right.

Stuff like this really hurts your argument, IMO. When you eat at a restaurant and then don't pay, that restaurant loses a substantial amount of money. When you pirate something, the creator loses zero money.

If we're going to discuss piracy, let's discuss piracy, not other crimes which may appear to be somewhat related. Otherwise you get completely bizarre arguments like this: http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l605vu5xV11qcw66ho1_500.jp...

This a very shortsighted view - of course creators lose money due to pirating.

I'm not even speaking about the concept of sells they may have had in place of theft - that is simple conjecture. There is no doubt that less money flowing in to the industry, as a direct result of piracy, means less money for creators. Is anyone honestly suggesting media sales haven't declined due to pirating?

I'm not a proponent of the industry as it currently functions, but I dislike the offhand spread of disinformation - less money spent on purchases will indirectly, and sometimes directly, result in less money for creators.

Creators fail to gain money. It's not the same as losing money.

By all means, let's talk about the effects of piracy on creators' profits. But let's not pretend that a pirated copy costs the creator anything.

The action and consequences of stealing versus pirating are different. They deserve to be discussed differently. Linking them together is clumsy and doesn't further the discourse.

That sort of argument just comes off as a word game to me, I don't really know what to say to it. It is similar to saying no one dies when they jump out of a window, it is the impact that kills them.

Well, let's look at the various outcomes. There are, I think, three possible actions to consider: A) taking and paying B) taking and not paying C) not taking.

For a restaurant, we get: A) restaurant benefits B) restaurant loses C) restaurant suffers no effect either way.

For piracy, we get: A) creator benefits B) creator suffers no effect either way C) creator suffers no effect either way.

Consider what happens if I organize a thousand people to carry out (B) on something. If it's a restaurant, this could easily drive them out of business. If it's a creator of copyrighted content, they continue with their business as usual.

Note: I'm not saying that (B) is good, or acceptable, or justified, or should be legal, or anything like that, when it comes to copyright infringement. I'm just saying that the two scenarios entail significantly different consequences, and should not be treated as the same thing. Treating them as the same doesn't help the discussion at all: it simply causes people who agree with you to nod their heads, and people who disagree to think you're being disingenuous.

If piracy takes root as something that people 'should' do, then B) in your piracy example leads to the same outcome as B) in your restaurant example.

It deprives them of any income, and removes the incentive and ability for them to produce further content as a means of living in the future.

That deprives all of their future contributions and damages the commons. In summation, at scale, the outcome for both B) scenarios IS the same, and if it is at scale, then there must be an effect not at scale, whether or not you refuse to accept it.

(B) at scale only leads to the same outcome if a substantial number are converted from (A). If people are only converted from (C) then the outcomes are completely different.

In short, the effect of piracy depends entirely on whether the pirates are potential customers. The effect of dine-and-dash does not depend on that. This is, I believe, an extremely significant difference.

There's a common flaw in this line of argument. In your (B) example, you need to do one more level of analysis:

   i) Would have paid if it were the only option, but would rather get 
      something for nothing
  ii) Would not have paid under any circumstances

Assign probabilities to each of those events and now you know the probability of harm to the creator. Option (i) could be low, but it is not a 0% probability which means that for a sufficiently large sample size the (B) scenario does cause the creator to suffer.

Saying that "when you pirate something the creator loses zero money" is an even worse argument.

You actually missed my point though (but I concede I used a rather simplified argument).

I was actually taking the "it's not available in my area" or "it's to expensive" argument of the OP to justify piracy to its logical conclusion.

I was pointing out that you can't circumvent the creator/owner's choices or restrictions on distribution, availability and pricing (i.e. "the food is too expensive here") just because you don't agree with them. It's not a level playing field.

If you don't like the creator's choices, don't participate in his creation. There really is no other choice.

While digital media creates the illusion of the "victimless crime" because you aren't taking something physical, it doesn't remove the fact that you are benefiting from someone else's hard work without agreeing to their terms of use, whatever those may be.

If it is your belief that the creator's terms of use should reign supreme, that is legitimate, but if you want to argue for it then you need to actually argue for it.

I wouldn't say that I missed your point, merely that I objected to a particular argument you used it making it. I realize this is a lower level of discourse than addressing your main point entirely, but I'm hoping that it would raise the level of discourse overall.

For reasons I've never understood, copyright advocates love comparing copyright infringement with physical theft. If copyright infringement is bad then it should be possible, nay preferable, to argue this on its own merits, not through bad analogies.

They argue that way because their inflated claims have no merit. The only justification for copyright that doesn't amount to arrogant and unjustifiable claims of "creator privilege" (my phrase, but that is what their wordy arguments amount to) is that given in the US Constitution, as a practical matter "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".

You might notice in "useful arts" that an argument could be made right now, that fiction, music, movies, and video games never should have been covered. And, in fact, music wasn't covered for decades afterward.

Also, as far as lack of copyright crippling music, I am sure that would be astounding news to Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, among many others.

At least two of those composers died in poverty so they might have actually thought that copyright is a good thing.

I'm hopelessly biased here, because I make video games. But do you not feel that the world would be worse off--culturally and technologically--without a commercial video games industry? And do you not think that the utility of games--faster and more ubiquitous computers--is self-evident when you compare it to a world without a commercial video games industry, but extremely difficult or impossible to anticipate in advance?

Maybe I'm making assumptions that you don't agree with--perhaps you think that a thriving video games industry could exist as strongly in the absence of copyright, or that the video games industry hasn't encouraged advances in computers--but both my claims seem fairly uncontroversial to me.

MMORPGS, or any game where the community counts, don't need copyright to be profitable.

This is appealing but not actually true. In the absence of copyright, no contract exists for downloading the game client, which means no EULA can be enforced. In the absence of a EULA, there are zero legal barriers[0] to people setting up private servers, which are protocol-compatible with the free game client, and hosting their own game, which destroys the business model of the MMO creator.

This is more-or-less an impossible problem to solve technologically at the moment: MMO servers are (by definition) too contended to do more than act as more than glorified packet switches for authoritative clients. The only lever to pull is to put more functionality on the server and off the client, but for a variety of reasons this leads to a less satisfactory user experience.

[0] http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/06/07/the-lawbringer-the-history... -- a quick history of the action by Blizzard against the maker of an in-game bot, legally identical to running a private server. Note the claims were all either copyright-related, won by the bot-maker, or involved "tortious interference"--i.e. incentivizing the buyer of Glider to break their EULA with Blizzard, which would no longer exist.

What about non-monetary things the creator loses?

Leaving restaurant without paying = stealing. Downloading = fraud.

One is hurting a business by creating direct loss, the other one creates no direct loss (and it is not clear it is hurting anyone...)

So according to you, us customers, should shut up and let them dictate how we spend our money? You should come back to reality, customers have the money, and if we say "There is a problem with the way the entertainment industry works", then there is a problem.

And the lack of offering is a legitimate reason to "pirate", I have tons of hands on examples where piracy does not hurt in any way the industry:

I lived 5years in North America, got used to certain shows, enjoy some of those shows, and have no way of seeing them from my current country, so because the entertainment industry fails to realize that we live in a global world, I should just shut up and take it? I don't think so, so i occasionally download, i download something that i had no access to, something that was not and would have never been available in my country.

The internet and file sharing offers a channel that otherwise would not be available to a lot of people, and the entertainment industry (as well as you) are still living decades in the past. We live in a globalized world, we expect everything to be globalized and we are right to expect so.

And please could we stop with the "creators", "artist", it is not about them and as never been. Piracy does not hurt them in any way, it never has. The entertainment industry does, by taking ridiculous amounts of money out of every sale, deal, show, leaving most of the bands in "debt" when they decide to drop them because they didn't "reach targets" (which is another layer of bullshit right there).

It is time for some people here on HN, to stop make this issue about the artist and creators, because it is not about them, it is about a system that is profoundly broken, and that the internet finished.

It is time for a change in the way the entertainment industry works, the way copyright works, the way artists/creators are remunerated, not a time to point fingers at each others and play on semantics or other fallacies.

> The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...

Actually, you do. That is precisely the point of copyright - all creative works are (well, were, before the advent of the major content companies in the US) implicitly understood as the property of the people. Thus, in order to promote continued creative works, an artificial incentive has to be created to encourage additional creation, e.g. copyright. Copyright doesn't create rights, it postpones them.

This is what few people understand anymore about copyright and the original view of the creative process. Enlightenment ideals held that all creative processes were the right of the people as an extension of the mere fact of being an intelligent being - creative activity is required for effective participation in any human society. It is an inborn part of being human.

I'm not saying this to justify the OP's comment about pirating something not available in your country, although that would be a reasonably valid interpretation of a human's right to the product of other human's creative endeavors. If you had 100% certainty that the producer had no intention of distributing that content in your country, you are entirely within your right to find it another way.

The problem is that the content producers these days would claim the opposite - and they do the entirety of the human species, and the whole history and future of human civilization, a disservice by claiming so. I am not engaging in hyperbole here. Even today, we continue to benefit from the knowledge and creations of those thousands of years ago who gave us amazing works. All creative works today are possible due to the works that came before them. The fallout of the infinite lockdown on content ownership that occurs today will not be known for hundreds of years.

> The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...

Legally? Indeed. Ethically? I disagree. I have the RIGHT to partake in what is part of my culture. Whether I like it or no, series, games and movies changed my worldview and made me the person with a extensive cultural knowledge I am today. Of course, I can do with what I can see legally, and I do, but although the TV series here in Flanders are very, very good, there's just not that much of them. And I can go to the theatre, but when was the last time a cinema in Belgium showed "2001"? And does any big company really deserve to make anymore money of that?

Or consider this. I'm a huge fan of "My Little Pony". The series and the community around it have enriched my life enormously. What are the odds that without the internet and without piracy I would have ever seen it?

Without piracy, I would have been a much less interesting person and I believe I have the right to be the person I am today.

The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...

I agree, and I'm surprised so many people miss this. If everyone simply refused to use content that was not distributed under acceptable terms the content creators would change the terms.