Piracy* is illegal and it does hurt the industry (how much is up for debate). BUT, I just can’t find my way to accepting that it qualifies as theft.
Games/software/movie/music companies claiming this are doing a classical cake-and-eat-it-too. EULAs make it very clear that you are not buying a movie (or game, etc...) but in fact buying a limited license to use that content, with certain restrictions. Whenever arguments of EULAs and/or copyright come up this same point is repeated over and over. People claim they bought it so should be able to do whatever they want with it, but the producers say that that is NOT the case: you only bought a license to use the product under specific circumstances.
I can appreciate that – after all it’s not fair to use a song in an advertisement broadcast to millions of people just because you bought the CD. Of course, that contrasts with other ‘normal’ products; you can, for instance take a car you already own and use it in a movie without having to pay any more money.
I’m not suggesting this is odd or unreasonable, just that there is clearly a difference between content – like movies or music – and ‘real’ products.
And so, if there is such a difference, might this not also be matched by a difference in how unlawful acquisition of said items is treated? I’m not saying it shouldn’t be illegal to download a pirated copy of a movie, just that I don’t feel it really deserves to be treated the same as if you went into a store and physically stole a copy.
The real question is, when someone downloads 'pirated' content, what is being ‘stolen’? If there are 10 DVDs and you steal one, then there is a physical item that has been taken. But, if it is all digital**, what, really, has been taken? You might say that rights have been appropriated, BUT, as IP that is able to be duplicated infinitely, how do you calculate the value of any given copy?
To think of it another way, you would assume that the license only become real when sold to someone. If a ‘copy’ of the content has any intrinsic value, you could claim that you have infinite assets by virtue of the fact that you have the ability to make infinite copies.
Yes, yes, that's a semi-facetious - but not so much as it might seem.
The concept of 'theft' is well defined, philosophically, only in it's relationship to 'property' and 'ownership', terms which themselves are not as firm as might be thought. The only real, concrete definition of theft that is available without resorting to definitions by fiat is that it is the unjust deprivation of property from one person by another person.
A key concept of this is what it means to 'own' something in the first place. Possession is relatively easy to define but, as ownership is really only a bundle of rights agreed upon by social convention, theft must be defined as the removal of those rights. So what rights does a 'pirate' remove?
If someone steals my car, my right to drive it has been removed. Also my right to hit it with a golf club, paint it purple and jump up and down on the bonnet. But, if someone copies a movie, no rights have been removed from the 'owner'.
A content owner has the right to sell their content but a pirate has not impacted that right.
None of that is to say that piracy shouldn't be illegal, but theft is a criminal offence and to equate the two is ignorant or, worse, deliberately misleading.
* - Used for convenience, not accuracy.
** - Again, used for convenience - I realise that DVDs and CDs hold digital data too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
