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The rest of us are honest with ourselves: piracy isn't stealing and doesn't affect some corporation's already ludicrous profits. Creating a copy of a file does not actually cause anyone any harm, even theoretically.

To think otherwise is to swallow propaganda hook line and sinker. The push to criminalize piracy is 100% driven by companies who are now trying to extract rent by simply not giving you an option to purchase and own digital goods, and instead want you to pay them monthly forever.

By that logic You should break into a billionaires home and steal their stuff because billionaires already have a ton of money. Let's be real here. It's theft.

What is and isn't theft is 100% independent of how rich the person you steal from is. You and I are thieves. Plain and simple.

> By that logic You should break into a billionaires home and steal their stuff because billionaires already have a ton of money.

I think you'll find that a surprising number of people would agree that this is a just and moral thing to do, but that is an entirely different conversation.

You present the argument as if piracy removes cold hard cash from someone's pocket. That is not the case. The only value lost is the hypothetical profit on a sale that may or may not have ever happened otherwise.

By this logic, it's theft to avoid buying certain brands. Just think of all the profits you STEAL from Amazon by buying from a local store instead! Every time you go to Walmart you're STEALING from your local mom and pop store. You are literally ripping food from their mouths! Don't you feel bad about yourself?!

It's nonsense.

You are moralizing it by saying it's immoral and wrong and you are a bad person for doing it.

It's not stealing it's copying.

There is no morally side to piracy. The business owner who has a product copied that no one was going to pay money for anyways can claims a loss but Microsoft's Windows the most heavy pirate software ever is more popular and successful because of it. When a game company exec says they would rather their product be pirated over a competitor it show a benefit exists to piracy.

People copy ideas in many areas that cause the original idea maker to lose profits. Copycat businesses. Price matching; aws lowered prices now Oracle cloud is copying them. These cost businesses more than piracy.

I'm not moralizing anything. Calling myself a criminal for stealing is just honesty. Piracy is an especially easy and guiltless crime because it can be done with no one knowing and no chance of getting caught that's why. But almost no one is able to admit this to themselves.

Even Hitler had a rationalization for the Holocaust.

It's totally obvious piracy is theft. It doesn't matter if that product was an idea or a piece of art or something a person is not making money off of. If someone created something and they own it and you take it against his wishes you are a thief. You're the one trying to justify it with all this rationalization. But you and others are going off topic.

I'm saying your rationalization is normal. Everyone does it. My question is more why do you spend the effort to do it. Why do you lie to yourself?

Why do you have to scaffold illusions all around yourself to construct a lie that makes yourself a moral paragon. You are a human, humans are not morally perfect. It's normal to steal.

You're on HN and identities aren't really exposed so it's not some lie you're telling others. These are lies we tell ourselves.

You're trying extremely hard to rationalize your opinion, to the point of comparing piracy to THE ACTUAL HOLOCAUST. You seem to be absolutely and totally unwilling to even consider an opinion contrary to your own, waving it away as "delusion".

If you can't understand why everyone is "deluded", maybe you should take a long hard look in the mirror and ask if maybe there's a possibility that you are in the wrong.

Ask yourself what a "deluded" person would do and say to convince themselves and then take a look at what you've written here.

>You're trying extremely hard to rationalize your opinion, to the point of comparing piracy to THE ACTUAL HOLOCAUST. You seem to be absolutely and totally unwilling to even consider an opinion contrary to your own, waving it away as "delusion".

No I'm saying EVEN something as extreme as the holocaust can be rationalized. Thus even simple stuff like piracy can be too. It's comparatively easier and very possible.

If I was doing what you're implying, saying that piracy is comparable to the holocaust I would be doing the opposite of rationalization. What am I going to comfort myself after stealing something and say I did something so atrocious that it's equivalent to the holocaust? It's radically the opposite, such beliefs are more like phobias, if I held such false beliefs I would be LESS likely to pirate.

>If you can't understand why everyone is "deluded", maybe you should take a long hard look in the mirror and ask if maybe there's a possibility that you are in the wrong.

No. I'm pretty sure I'm not deluded given that my viewpoint isn't rosy or justifying anything. Delusions are usually used for self comfort, there's none of that going on here with me.

>Ask yourself what a "deluded" person would do and say to convince themselves and then take a look at what you've written here.

A deluded person wouldn't call himself a criminal. But that's exactly what I am. I'm self fish, I'm an ass hole, and I'm a criminal. But I'm also saying most people are like this. They just can't admit it. It's a dog eat dog world.

Deluded people call themselves criminal all the time. Innocent people confess to crimes they don't commit for attention. But in your case you think by providing an extreme to compare you can link the negatively associated while pretending you are some strawman stereo type.

You are not an asshole you are tired of everyone supporting piracy and this is your best version of a response.

I'm not talking about delusion related to insanity. I'm talking about the common kind lie. Where people lie to themselves.

Do not call me an ass hole. Do not say things to people you wouldn't say in real life. That's both offensive, rude, spineless and against the rules here.

I agree with your sentiment but it's easy to answer some of your questions. Torrenting is something you can do from home, you can't be easily caught and even being caught doesn't mean much as an individual. If you're caught shop lifting then that can have far reaching consequences, plus you have to go out and it's harder to do. Also while out doing it you might get to meet folks who run the shops, even some who own them, making it a bit more personal.

Anyway, rationalisation is a human hobby. I often remark about all kinds of questionable decisions: they did it then rationalised, what they're saying is not the true reason. I suspect we might all go insane if we couldn't play pretend reasons.

Yeah that's my question. Most of these lies are so twisted that its obviously bs. Practically every responder to my query is an example.

I guess my other question is why are we built to be delusional? Can't intelligent entities be designed to act exactly the same but with total self awareness without going insane? What's the benefit of an intelligence that must first lie to itself before making an action?

This is probably a biological question given that this behavior is so pervasive (as demonstrated in this thread). It's likely an innate result of evolution, but what could possibly be the selection pressure that enables this?

I think I can answer your question. We don't use our logical thinking capacity for much decision making. Most of these decisions are forced on us by external factors, often social/experience.

For example, shoplifting - I would never shoplift even if the opportunity was there. Not for immediate moral reasons, but because the option wouldn't even be available to me. Have you ever done that negative rationalisation where you think "that situation was bizarre, I could have just walked out with that stuff" but you didn't because that was never presented as a viable option by your mind. We've had how to act drilled into us, we don't think about it. I've got kids, I remember taking them to the shops, saying "now put it up on the counter, here's the money to pay with" subconsciously teaching them this exact interaction.

It would take pre-thought or circumstance to force the shoplifting option to be available. Maybe you witnessed someone close to you doing it as a kid, or you found yourself in economic strife, or you sat at home and thought it would give you a real thrill. Something forces the option, you do it get get away with it, now that option is there. Next time you're at the store you might shoplift again even if you have moral objections to the idea. Now you've pretty much set yourself up, you have to rationalise it one way or another. And you probably don't even understand why you did it, so your brain is going to make something up.

This just played out in the country where I live, a politician was caught shoplifting from designer clothes stores. There you have a person with a very high wage who does not need to do it for economic reasons, where the consequences were severe. I very much doubt this person thought beforehand, because then they wouldn't have done it.

So this rationalization is a side effect. Pressure is to have larger brains for intelligence, I'm not up to date with the currently thought reasons for that pressure but it was all about social interaction etc. last I knew. However, thinking is quite expensive and we don't really do it much. Rather, most of the time we use our standard operating manual written by experience and social structure. If we then, later, try to consider our actions, we run round in circles trying to explain the unexplainable.

Your other examples fit this. Torrenting, that's a pretty social structure thing. I don't think my kids would even think of it right now, because they've had no exposure to it as a thing. Whereas I was a teenager when pirating music and software was huge, it's just second nature to look for torrents even when I could just buy... glad of spotify/netflix for removing enough friction on that front.

Climate change is a bigger one. We all grew up in a society where you drive cars. Expecting the average person to change their behaviour from the social norm is unrealistic. I've got a lot of climate related anxiety and I think we're well and truly fucked. To make myself feel a little better I try to think of humanity as evolved systems, not particularly intelligent once you get above the individual level. There's an abundance of energy resources and so evolutionary processes have eventuated to consume it, that being ourselves. There are people to blame of course, those in power who said they believe in it (rather than the denialists because why would they do anything?) and then did nothing or less than nothing and made it worse.

Good answer.

There is a general belief by some that paying customers should have a better experience than people getting it for free. Waiting 18 months or having a version with DRM that will stop working if/when the company decides to turn off their servers, providing the player software, or hasn’t bothered supporting your preferred device, is a worse customer experience.

It is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. Big difference.

There is no loss of value for the copyright holder.

In the connected international world there is a limited period when something is relevant and in this world 18 months is a long time. If something is valuable right now then it with very high probability has close to no value in 18 months. Its irrelevant.

Imagine if news is withheld for 18 months. What value it would have by then? Movies are similar. If a movie is release then it is discussed all over the world, in 18 months nobody cares. It's like buying stale food.

Of course, if you miss out and still want it then sure, go ahead, but being forced to wait is close to criminal offense.

Disclaimer: I don't torrent.

Mad respect if you don't pirate other stuff either. I'm not that good of a person. Maybe you don't call what I do stealing but I'd still say piracy is straight up a crime.

I think we can both admit that I'm a sort of criminal here. Not one that goes to jail but one that is breaking the law and obviously doing something immoral.

I’d happily pirate all of my content and sleep well at night. I don’t do this to justify anything to myself or give myself “comfort”.

But I earn enough to pay for my content so I make a decision to do that.