I posted earlier but I think this time I'll respond to the notion of "piracy=stealing". I'd like people to not sidetrack this to "piracy=acceptable" because the matter of the thread is whether piracy is stealing or not brahs.
The only conclusion I can come to that actually responds to the concept of stealing is that piracy=/=stealing.
Firstly, when talking about piracy, in effect, we basically refer to the offence of infringing copyright and by stealing, we mostly are going to the theft side of things, there's the obvious difference of the two crimes in the law. Infringing copyright is an entirely different offence to theft. I think by just looking at this alone, settles that piracy=/=stealing. Every case for infringing copyright could warrant damages to be paid to the claimant, but in a theft case, you're probably going to be jailed if found guilty. You can't equate the offence of copyright infringement to the criminal offence of theft, it's clear that they are not one in the same. Totally different laws. Totally different things.
Secondly, if we look at what "pirating" something actually is, it becomes even more shaky to assume that someone has "stolen" anything. Even with the original pirate, all he's doing is taking a digital copy of whatever he wants to rip. Here, he'll extract the formulae that's encoded onto the disk that gives his computer the information to effectively mimic the original (ie, MP3's, there's programmed a set of instructions for digital music players to copy the original pattern, no actual music is stored inside the file.) All that does is use the resources from his power and computer to allow the output of soundwaces to distort the air (music) and arrange pixels on the screen. There's no taking of anything at all here, sure, he benefits from it but that doesn't make it stealing. From there, he'll upload these files with the formulae into some sort of network, each being a copy of the files he has on his own PC. Again, these files can be assembled to recreate a copy of the thing in question, be it video, game, music, et cetera et cetera but I don't really see how this fits the definition of stealing something, the game, music or whatever isn't taken away from the creating party, just essentially the copy of the original is copied again and shared out.
Finally, I'd like to delve into a definition of stealing. I'll go with a really common sense one, you take something belonging to another, depriving them of that thing. That's stealing to me personally, if you want to throw another definition in, feel free to do so. We've already looked at the inner mechanics of what internet piracy actually is, so, how does this measure up against a definition of stealing? Not well I'm afraid. There's no deprevation of property from a party, sure, there's the copying of code to recreate an original structure, but there's no depriving of the thing itself happening, the original stays with the company safe and sound, all that's happening is copying of a copy which has been legally purchased on CD, presumably, otherwise it would easily by a stealing of the original tape, that is stealing. However, copying is not stealing. Quite tricky to think about, but ah well.
At the end of the day, it is illegal to infringe copyright, anyone can plainly see that it's illegal, to argue it isn't would be a seriously lost cause. This is an argument on the semantics of issue, it is not in anyway absurd to point out how "piracy is stealing" may be semantically incorrect. Also note, I'm not trying to justify piracy, so don't bandwagon on me for that reason.
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