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Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
(pluralistic.net)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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The fact that no product is missing anywhere means it’s not stealing.
If you rent your car from Mercedes and I make a copy of it, the only change is that I’ve not copied your car, I’ve copied Mercedes’.
By this logic no services should be paid. Are you really just hung up on the word "stealing"? It is wrong to go against an agreement or to take the work of others and not pay for it simply because it's easy to do that when the work isn't tangible.
Are people really that fucked up today?
I’m not talking about payment, I’m talking about if it’s stealing or not. It might be copyright infringement depending on local law, but it’s not stealing. Selling a copy might be counterfeiting.
I never made an agreement but to copy things without paying. That agreement was made on my behalf, and if you look into the history of it, it's really fucking shady. Copyright in the US originally lasted 20 years (IIRC), and I would be ok with that, but big copyright holders successfully bribed lawmakers to extend the term until now it's effectively infinite.
So tell me, was it immoral to ignore copyrights after 20 years when that was the law? Did changing the law change what's moral?