Why we all love piracy

[Napoléon]

Which, by extension, gives you the right to steal cars simply because people leave them unlocked with the keys in? Why not nick candy bars? After all, they're 'available for the taking', aren't they?

It never ceases to astonish me how often people justify theft because it happens to be easy, or 'everybody does it'.

Theft is theft.

Boru

This is such a bullshit argument.

The difference between your scenario and piracy, is the fact that only one person truly "own's" the car. You can't make tons of copies of that car which can be distributed freely. If someone steals a car, the true owner is left without. That's a crime that has a real victim. When someone downloads a fucking music track, or a tv series, the person who originally bought it still owns the material. They still have the material. The only people "losing out" are the giant corporations that are already making fucking billions (and I'd make the argument they aren't losing out at all). Game of Thrones is the perfect example of a TV series actually BENEFITING from piracy. I for one would never have watched the series without piracy, but as it happens I watched it, and I've since bought the first two seasons. I'm not alone in this. Thousands of people have done this. There are no 'lost sales' when it comes to piracy. It's impossible to argue the people pirating would otherwise buy the series, or that they wouldn't even after they've pirated. Take a look at the biggest selling games that also feature high on the piracy lists. The Sims 3, Mass Effect, Black ops. None of these games have been 'damaged' by piracy. They're still selling millions of copies. Mass effect and the Sims 3 are two more things I've pirated before actually buying. The games website GOG.com has no digital rights management AT ALL. This is actually a marketing strategy by the company itself to sell games to consumers and ALLOW them to download a purchased game as many times as they want. Has their growth or sales been damaged by this? No. They're one of the fastest growing digital distributors out there, and their sales of the Witcher franchise (whose owner owns GOG.com) hasn't been affected at all when compared with sales on Steam which does have digital rights management.

The whole idea that corporations are damaged by piracy is a complete and utter fucking myth. Piracy really is a crime without a victim. It's a complete fallacy to say that everyone who pirates wouldn't buy the product if they have the choice. The truth is, I would argue, that many people who pirate don't do so with the intention of 'stealing'. It isn't even theft. It's been proven that if you give people the option (Netflix a good example) most people would buy the product. Bottom line is, most of the time the material people want simply isn't available for purchase for whatever reason, it doesn't mean they aren't willing to buy it. It's the corporations own fault for not giving people this option. These massive billion dollar companies are trying to sell this idea that people don't have the right to share. This is bullshit.

All piracy is, is sharing on a global scale. Sharing is not a crime. I don't care what anyone says. People used to make mix tapes from recordings they made from their radios and shared these with their friends. That wasn't considered 'piracy'. People lend each other video games all the time. That's not considered piracy (although there are companies like EA trying to prevent this with DRM). Do you think we should be prevented from sharing? Is sharing a morally reprehensible crime? Fuck off is it. I refuse to accept that piracy is some kind of 'harmful crime'. The only people you could argue it harms are giant corporations who won't even feel the impact of the piracy. Hell there's studies out there that show piracy in many cases actually increases the popularity of their content (Game of Thrones, as mentioned the best example).

The entire conflation of piracy with stealing is downright misleading and WRONG.


I'll leave you with Joss Stone's opinion on the matter:




*edited for grammar. Which is probably still terrible.