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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

Instead of not consuming, pirates use all sort of mental gymnastics to justify their consumption without paying or following the terms involved.

I guess it’s no surprise many of these parasites are taking their ideology to retail. Millions of dollars of goods are stolen yearly, and this is why we can’t have nice things. Why pay when you can take for free?

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Calm down satan. Until you manage to manufacture physical products for free (one time cost then get inf copies, as digital content) retail theft !== digital pirating

Digital content cannot be reproduced infinitely for free. Anyone who suggests otherwise has never visited a data center.

So, your assertion in practice is to say that you believe items below a certain reproduction cost should be free. This is just the sort of mental gymnastics I’m talking about.

I have a billionth of a data center in my “home office” that I sometimes use to copy data. No, not absolutely free but effectively so for my uses. I’m certainly not charging people money if I seed a torrent.

> consumption

This doesn’t seem like the right term; it’s correct from an economic perspective but nobody “consumes” movies the way they do food.

Aside from the usual "piracy is not theft" argument, which I won't get into, you seem to be missing the fact that in a significant number of cases piracy actually drives legal sales. I have seen quite a few people who pirated a game and liked it so much that when its sequel came out they bought it on day 1 at full price, or recommended it to their friends who in turn proceeded to buy it. The movie/TV/anime merchandise market is larger than ever and I'm pretty sure even pirates like to spend a few bucks here and there if they can afford it; we already know merch is far more profitable than streaming service royalties for most musicians, so I would expect the same to be true for other parts of the media industry.

How many people did you see pirate and not buy? Not sure what the point of this anecdote is this it’s not like pirates resort their activity rigorously in a way that can be analyzed.

>I guess it’s no surprise many of these parasites are taking their ideology to retail. Millions of dollars of goods are stolen yearly, and this is why we can’t have nice things. Why pay when you can take for free?

lol, what a silly comment. We have plenty of nice things.

https://counciloncj.org/mid-year-2023-crime-trends/

Theft rates are falling excluding vehicle theft

Why are you arbitrarily excluding vehicles?

why are you arbitrarily pretending that makes up for all other forms of theft?

When did I do that?

Your initial comment had such suggestive phrasing when taken in turn with the comment that person replied to before you edited the first one.

Before it simply said theft is on the rise, which is simply true, even using the grandparent link, unless for some reason you don’t count cars.

However I edited since whether or not it’s on the rise is actually irrelevant to my point.

Theft is on the decline including vehicle theft because vehicle theft is a small portion.

Expand the x axis and that’s not true. Go look at their source.

I was responding to a statement you made that you’ve now edited out of existence. So who’s to say? Maybe it was relevant.

theft involves removing something from its place, so you prosecute the person that takes it

piracy involves the item still being in the same place, so you have to prosecute the person that copied and gave it to someone else

At least within the us, theft associated with things like shoplifting is dwarfed by wage theft. Companies steal from their customers and employees more than the other way around. I would argue this is the purpose of the streaming model, to make sure people can't pass their media collection on to their descendants so it has to be repurchased. Theft.

Piracy is an activity within the scope of the free market, just like this institutionalized theft. Giving companies a blank check while holding individuals to the highest standard is a more impressive feat of mental gymnastics.

I agree that wage theft is a problem but in this particular discussion it’s a “whataboutism”. At best it’s a “two wrongs make a right” argument but I think digital content piracy has an easier justification than that.

I don’t have to convince myself that piracy is okay: I do not see what is wrong with it. Others do. It’s on them to make the case against it and nobody makes a compelling case -- not one that I’ve read or heard. The talk of but it’s theft fails to see that piracy is markedly different from theft. It’s going to a different store where it’s on offer for free.

I absolutely agree that digital piracy isn't the same as physical theft. It can even improve sales.

My point is more that railing against small time media piracy while actual crimes are committed against human beings by big companies plays directly into the hands of those seeking to further the imbalance of power.

I don't really justify. I just pirate because I can. I don't really care about the moral discussion at all. YMMV of course.

I did share a Netflix account before the clampdown but now I pirate again. I just take the road of least resistance. Like water.

Indeed, and those who take items from the aisle at Target and walk out the door are also taking the road of least resistance. Such a hassle to go and check out, after all.

You can be against piracy, totally understandable, but your not going to convince anyone to not pirate media with this kind of strained comparison and dismissive sarcasm.

There is a pretty obvious difference between copying data (which leaves the original available) and removing a physical item from a store (which does not leave the original available). You can still consider both to be wrong, but they should be differentiated.

It is also worth trying to understand why people pirate, and addressing those issues, rather than just have snarky comment wars.

My goal is not to convince, merely my own comment i was broadcasting.

Though, I’m as interested in why people pirate as I am why people steal from stores.

The old "1-0=1-1" argument. You are unlikely to convince anybody here that this is true.

First of all, it doesn't feel the same to me at all.

Second, it's about the chance of getting caught. With online piracy this is zero. Doing that at target will net you a criminal record even if you're really good.

Conisder another example: You're hiking through the hills, are getting hungry and there's an apple orchard you can easily reach from the trail. Would you take an apple?

PS I didn't mean to make this a heated discussion, though it's obviously a hot take. I just wanted to explain my point of view. I'm kinda beyond justifying this.

All those fucking freeloaders using a DVR and fast-forwarding over the ads!

I think they should get the death penalty for violating the terms of service./s

I don't remember who this was but there was some Congressional hearing or somesuch where one of the execs begrudgingly permitted that it was okay to get up and go to the bathroom during an ad and that wouldn't count as stealing. :)

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