Comment on Anon tries to save money
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 days agoIt is theft, and th people that say it isn’t are making excuses so they feel better. You can grow your own food, you know? And it keeps growing back. But if you walk into a grocery store and walk out without paying, you are stealing. If you walk onto a farmers land and keep taking food from their crops without paying, it is stealing.
You make two very different arguments that highlight my reason for calling out theft. The first is that the person steals because companies don’t allow us to own anything. That almost holds water, until you understand that entertainment isn’t a necessity, and so stealing it is a wholly selfish act.
However, that brings us to your second point: people pirate because they can’t afford it. You contradict yourself. Who is the “pirate”? The one who steals in under misguided idea that some things cannot be owned, or the one that steals because they can’t afford it?
At the end of the day, you are being advertised to, and you feel that you have to have the latest thing because the advertising is working, and so you steal when you can’t afford. You are a part of the system that you fight against with your mantra of “nothing can be owned.” Stop.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
i “made” two arguments, apparently… when did i talk about the “nothing can be owned” stuff? all i said was that piracy isn’t stealing and that most people doing piracy aren’t affecting the market at all, since they wouldn’t have bought the game anyway.
also, please look up the definition of software piracy, as it seems you don’t know what it means.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Line one. That’s when you mentioned it. Literally right there in your words.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
stealing is taking the property of another person. i was talking about how piracy isn’t stealing, because you’re not taking the property of anyone.
if friend A makes and shares a song they made with friend B, and friend B copies it and sends it to me without A’s permission, that is not stealing, because neither of us are taking friend A’s property. friend A still owns the song, just like the company still owns the game.
“not owning games” is a completely different subject.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 days ago
While digital piracy does not constitute theft in the strict sense defined under common law—namely, the unauthorized taking and carrying away of tangible personal property with intent to permanently deprive the owner thereof—it nonetheless constitutes a violation of exclusive rights granted to copyright holders under Title 17 of the United States Code.
Specifically, piracy infringes upon the copyright owner’s exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and publicly display or perform their work. The fact that no physical object is removed is immaterial; copyright law protects the expression of ideas, not just their physical embodiments. As such, piracy is more accurately classified as a form of copyright infringement—a civil and, in some cases, criminal offense—not as theft per se, but as an analogous wrong with measurable economic harm.
Moreover, jurisprudence has recognized that infringement can result in lost profits, market harm, and unjust enrichment, all of which are actionable. While piracy may lack the zero-sum quality of theft, it undermines the incentive structure copyright law is designed to uphold—namely, the right of creators to control and profit from their original works.
I don’t know what to tell you. Want to know more? Go read about Dowling v United States from 1985. That should help you understand how its still a kind of theft.