Monopolies and price-gouging are a violation of the social contract.
Only business models that rely on monopolies are harmed.
And the entire concept of property is built on monopoly. Are you saying you don’t believe in property?
Ditigal media isn't physical, and in this case the physical media was on a closed ecosystem and attached to a server to stream or at least check in to verify. You wouldn't need all this with a plain ol' DVD, but you got advantadeges in that that movie played on any PS device you logged into.
If you want DRM free digital media, don't buy the above.
A fallacy is a "mistaken belief", so of course it is wrong. And you should look more into the concept of free riding. For that a good introduction would be The philosophers arms episode about free riding.
And what is that about private property? Where did that come from? We are talking about different concepts here, it is about markets and business models. As long as we don't honestly debate how outdated our modes of consumption are, piracy would be a natural response to artificial scarcity.
My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice. And that is what I think, that the current state of how the market is configured is anticonsumer, and therefore piracy is a natural response to it. It's not a matter of who is right or wrong. Everything is less than ideal in this whole affair.
Who decides what is "morally" ill gained? There's quite a good case that benefiting without work, e.g. through capital gains, is ill gained.
Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a social contract.
so rising physical theft over the pandemic means that stealing is legal? School shootings are going to be legal in the US overtime? What a horrible model for a social contract.
>Profiting from ownership without working (free riding of its own) is a questionable and often questioned item of a social contract.
Sure. But fact is that CEOs do do a lot of work to direct companies. We can question if that deserve whatever their pay is or their competency, but I hope no one thinks CEOs literally sit around doing nothing all day. Can we at least agree that burning a company down to the ground takes a non-zero effort?
Stockholders profit from ownership. CEO's salary is a salary (although stock and options maybe not).
No. The content of the social contract is whatever benefits those who adhere to the social contract. It's not a popular vote, what is good isn't up to what the most people think it is.
pointing out flawed reasoning with flawed reasoning is well, a fallacy by your words?
Your link there is an obvious one: it doesn't take into account colluding data over if the most pirated stuff comes from the most popular artists who have the most demand for tours. It doesn't take into account artists who can't afford tours (so, most of them) and how too much piracy will just get them cut out of the publisher's already crappy deal.
>My point is that piracy is a natural response to a predatory practice.
okay, I believe piracy would exist even if media was dirt cheap and we were in an economic boom. Some people just don't value media and if they want to take the time to pirate it over spending the money, they would. I'm pretty tired of the Just World Fallacy here that people never steal out of convenience.
How do you stand on the idea that someone desperately poor, who cannot afford a text book that would be transformative to their life, pirates said book. Is that still immoral?
There are many examples of piracy where no one loses out yet someone does benefit.
Painting such a complex subject with such a broad brush makes it seem like we’re just talking about your particular feelings rather than something universal.
Which is fine, but you’re making claims of generality without presenting a cogent argument.
What I am claiming presumes only that you live in a modern society, and therefore you participate in the social contract. Given that, what I am saying is then a conclusion of that.
I am trying to get to specifics but you keep waving your hands about this stuff.
And I’ve given lots of specifics. It’s just not a complex concept.
I'm very confident that in the majority of cases, people who download stuff would not have bought it at any price that the publisher would accept, if piracy wasn't an option. Which means that by the definition of harm I think you are using, the majority of cases would not be immoral. It seems to me the immoral cases would be the exception.
I guess it makes more sense if you also say that consuming something without paying for it is immoral even if you would never have paid to consume it. I find it hard to agree with that though, as I don't see who's harmed.
Besides, "harm" here is not the core of my argument. Doing moral wrong is. It is wrong to lie to obtain something, and it is wrong to benefit from ill gotten gains.
These acts are wrong themselves, regardless of whether or not they cause pain directly. This is not a hedonist argument, the cause of pain through harm in all or even many cases is not necessary for the act to be wrong.
I suppose I could say everyone that disapproves of piracy is just a copyright lawyer
Also I didn't say I'm not wrong in the comment you replied to. So what are are you talking about?
But keep on denying reality, as it's working out so well for you... :)
immoral, no. Unethical, yes.
That said, I'm glad libraries of all kinds (lending, little free, bookstore giveaways) help give more ethical access to such resources. You don't need the latest and greatest textbook to obtain knowledge.
With all that said, were talking about deluxe media, not foundational knowledge. why does the topic always shift to hyperole when talking about a song/movie/game being pirated? Are we really comparing pirating The Avengers (2012) to finding a way to learn arithmetic?
They suffer the same problem though in that morals and ethics do not have one universal standard. So something may be unethical to you but not to me but both be in the bounds of reason, or indeed the law.
You seem to accept that there is indeed ambiguity if you believe there to be a difference between a book pirated for a reason that helps someone, and a movie for entertainment in terms of piracy.
In addition, whilst you and i have access to libraries, this is very far from being common the world over.
Why then is it hyperbole? It’s just a simple example to show that piracy can in some cases harm no one and help someone. To wit: not all piracy is bad.
You claim that is unethical - which is all well and good, we do not share quite the same set of ethical values.
If a company has a monopoly on something, you cannot just go somewhere else to get something equivalent - that's the thing about monopolies, in a lot of cases, you simply don't have a choice.
I can't say the same about someone who "needs to play GTA V" (it was already free at some points. So you're not just entitled but inefficient in your frugality).
we can take down big pharma first and then worry about DRM on media you want to consume. It's not all or nothing.
Of course, pirating an indie band's song is a lot more in the questionable area (and not done nearly as often, since piracy by nature focuses on the more necessary/popular products) but that's not what's under discussion.
What other things do you feel are "tearing society apart", and how important are they to you compared to this?
IP, and specifically copyright are fairly new legal additions. The redefinition of time limited copyright to something extending past normal lifetimes especially so. EULAs and DRM enforcing copyright beyond book-style possibilities is new, and ongoing as we speak.
I'd say we see the public at large rejecting part of the law because it is not consistent with the social contract in their heads.
Powerfull entities trying to force the law outside the social contract's support is working, but not completely, and that's what's tearing society apart.
The line of reasoning is that copyright falls outside current social contracts. So the general rule of piracy is that it is illegal but amoral. Morality of copyright violations should be determined by other criteria.
Besides, the fact that piracy is rampant is a demonstration of copyright's necessity. If the works were so worthless that trying to charge for their consumption would be pointless, then why are so many people determined to illicitly gain access? And if the works would be made anyway, why weren't they until it was profitable to do so?
The argument you're making dies on a number of fronts, but the one I tried to address originally was the only legitimate line of inquiry. Your ad populum redefinition of the social contract doesn't work, as what is good/bad doesn't get voted on or collectively decided. The best rational argument is what wins in an ethics conversation.
Yes they do. Copyright and patent trade agreements kill and they kill a lot people.
If anyone is interested in the topic, a good first entry point paper to understand how this works and impacts:
> "What is the impact of intellectual property rules on access to medicines? A systematic review"
> "With very few exceptions, the articles in this review found that the introduction of patents following implementation of TRIPS rules and pharmaceutical-related TRIPS-plus IP provisions are associated with an increase in drug prices, consumer welfare losses and increased costs to consumers of pharmaceuticals and national governments."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9013034/
This paper alone should probably get you depressed, but if that gets you going, read "Information Feudalism" by Peter Drahos, then you'll understand how people in power truly have no respect for human lives in developing countries.
rent from the library, ask for a friend's copy, take out more loans.
>For a researcher in a developing country for research papers?
contact other researchers and ask directly. Maybe they can also share some stuff with you, especially if they are the author.
These are speedbumps not roadblocks. People can and have gotten around them even with little resources. Universities obviously have these resources, researchers generally want to encourage other researchers (even if only to validate their own research).
>Nobody dies, but a lot of people fall behind
Yes, an unfortunatle reality of all life. If I had to choose, free media is not even in the top 20 things I'd try to make more accessible to such people, though.