Why do you think these are the important features of stealing? Isn’t the point just that you’re taking someone’s legal property, and illegally helping yourself to it? The fact that you can do this with a machine that has a neat interface doesn’t seem important. ETA: And I agree its not really the book you’ve stolen in this case, but the money you avoided paying. Thats the thing I have a legal right to, but have been illegally deprived of.
I take it, rather, that you have an argument for why this is not stealing, or why if it is, it is nevertheless justifiable.
Why do you think these are the important features of stealing?
Because that’s what the word means. And you not having the thing that you previously had is kind of a big deal.
Copying a some work you have done is Copyright Infringement. It is also illegal. It’s just a slightly different one.
Mind you ‘stealing’ is somewhat more appropriate than ‘piracy’. After all if it was a pirate it would take your stuff and quite probably kill you. Possibly also raid your village and rape all your womenfolk.
Reminded me of this enlightening and well-researched article. (Or collection of highly questionable claims and idiotic hysterics that in aggregate make the whole thing quite amusing; take your pick.)
You never had the money. I have not deprived you of anything. If you were intending to buy a lottery ticket but I went and bought every lottery ticket in town (for whatever bizarre reason) would you say that I’d stolen something from you?
Your question was ‘Isn’t it wrong?‘, now you’re going with ‘But it’s illegal!’
I don’t care much about my opportunity to by lottery tickets. If you want to be a nuisance, buy up a couple of my favourites packaged foods. If you want to be a menace buy up all available food, or all sources of a couple of vital nutrients.
I guess I wouldn’t call it stealing, but the fatal one I would say should be illegal, if it was likely to happen otherwise. The nuisance one, I would call monopolising, and maybe anticompetitive. That’s a good analogy, but with a few differences. Copyright infringement can be lots of people individually satisfying their requirements, leaving a publisher with no market for the product, and anticompetitive behaviour can be one company satisfying all of a competitor’s market, possibly deliberately to get rid of them, leaving that competitor with no market for their product.
We can discuss whether or not they’re evil (and in two of the cases above they very obviously are), but the discussion is bound to be pretty pointless if we group them together with theft (which is a different issue).
And I’ve seen a lot of pointless copyright arguments. The discussion here I expect to be better than most. I haven’t really made up my mind on what the law should say about copyright, and since I’m not deciding the law I’m not going to try too hard.
Well, I take it that Anubhav is talking about piriteing a book as a justifiable responce to wanting it. Legally, anyway, that’s intellectual property theft.
Well, I take it that Anubhav is talking about piriteing a book as a justifiable responce to wanting it. Legally, anyway, that’s intellectual property theft.
If you are appealing to legal considerations in order to support your preferred semantics you had best consider that ‘theft’ and copyright infringement are covered by entirely different laws. In fact, they aren’t even covered by the same kind of law. For most part copyright infringement is a civil issue not a criminal one. This doesn’t say anything about whether it is moral but it makes “the law says it is stealing” rather questionable.
For years whenever I went to see a movie I had to put up with this nonsense. This sort of equivocation just sickens me. It brought to mind the observation that one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. I’m never going to look at “copying movies is stealing” with anything but contempt.
I’m never going to look at “copying movies is stealing” with anything but contempt.
Also, as a general heuristic, when the best argument that can be made for a position is to confuse the language involved, that position is likely wrong. (not to say that any particular other is right, tho; that would be reversed stupidity).
Also, as a general heuristic, when the best argument that can be made for a position is to confuse the language involved, that position is likely wrong. (not to say that any particular other is right, tho; that would be reversed stupidity).
legally, “intellectual property” doesn’t exist. There are a number of legal institutions collectively called IP, but the term IP is not a legal one.
Furthermore, copying, use without license, counterfeiting and such are legally “infringement”, not “theft”. Theft is legally a criminal offense, infringement is civil (lawsuits).
Using the term “theft” in the context of copyright infringement is political rhetoric designed to confuse the issue. Copying looks very different from the rest of category “theft”.
“Piracy” is also a stupid term {copy, theft and murder on the high seas} looks about as useless as {hitler, stalin, john smith}. Carve reality at the joints. “Copy” is very clear in what it means and has no political connotations.
If you would like to make a moral case about book copying versus book buying, do so without reference to useless categories.
Agree about the word theft. It is not helpful except as a dishonest ploy to conflate two actions that have not been agreed to be the same and have some significant differences.
Mostly disagree about the word ‘piracy’. Murder on the high seas is so different people should only confuse the two meanings as a joke. Maybe it was a bad idea to reuse the word initially but not now it is a common meaning. The only thing is it is pretty bad taste if someone you know has been kidnapped by pirates, but that is quite rare.
‘Copy’ is not quite right—that would include downloading Cory Doctorow’s stories from his own website, for example. These are deliberately made available by the author. We are really talking about copying that is neither authorised by law nor by the owner/creator. And probably not including forging bank notes, only copyright infringement.
ETA—I may have missed your point here, whether piracy in the sense of copying carves reality at the joints is also arguable. But it is a category I have in my head.
“Piracy” is also a stupid term {copy, theft and murder on the high seas} looks about as useless as {hitler, stalin, john smith}. Carve reality at the joints. “Copy” is very clear in what it means and has no political connotations.
Insisting on ‘copy’ is move similar in kind to insisting on ‘property’. It has the political connotation of moral acceptability. In some cases using a word that sounds like an acceptable thing isn’t much different to insisting on a word that sounds terrible.
I don’t think insisting on using non-moral primitives to describe moral situations is on the same level as confusing things with rhetorical terms, but I’ll think about it.
If you can’t make a moral case without using words that already have moral connotation, there probably isn’t one to be made. For example, it would be easy to make a moral case against breaking windows by appealing to economics, utility, opportunity costs, and so on. You would not have to mention “vandalism”.
Likewise in this case. If a moral argument can’t be made for or against copying without appealing to rhetorically tainted words, I don’t think we should be discussing the issue.
If I was really interested in making copying sound good, I would be using words like “wealth”, “produce”, “wealth replication”, “cultural commons” and so on.
I don’t think insisting on using non-moral primitives to describe moral situations is on the same level as confusing things with rhetorical terms, but I’ll think about it.
I agree, particularly in as much as the morally loaded terms can only be used in the moralizing rhetoric while the neutral terms can be used either as opposing rhetoric in the same vein or they can be used to discuss the issue and consequences at a low level.
Likewise in this case. If a moral argument can’t be made for or against copying without appealing to rhetorically tainted words, I don’t think we should be discussing the issue.
Which, of course, it can.
If I was really interested in making copying sound good, I would be using words like “wealth”, “produce”, “wealth replication”, “cultural commons” and so on.
This is one of the words I’d have been using to explain the intended benefit of laws preventing copying. “Property rights and enforceable legal restrictions” is the standard rudimentary solution to tragedies of the commons for good reason!
If I was really interested in making copying sound good, I would be using words like “wealth”, “produce”, “wealth replication”, “cultural commons” and so on.
This is one of the words I’d have been using to explain the intended benefit of laws preventing copying. “Property rights and enforceable legal restrictions” is the standard rudimentary solution to tragedies of the commons for good reason!
I thot that list up quickly. I’m not surprised some of the terms were wrong. (rhetoric is always wrong!)
Anyways, I was thinking of “cultural commons” in terms of people being free to mix and mash culture without getting legally harassed or having to pay lots of fees. It seems that “cultural commons” is at the core of the issue.
I’m going to go ahead and state this in case it is not clear: I may or may not have an opinion on this subject, and I do not intend to bring it into this discussion. My interest is in keeping the language and discussion rational as opposed to political.
‘Copy’ sounds neutral to me. It has negative connotations in some scenarios (‘got caught copying in an exam’, ‘All that the Chinese idiots do is copy American innovations’).
In fact, off the top of my head I can’t think of a single instance where ‘copy’ has a positive connotation.
Legally, slaves may be property, but that doesn’t mean there’s no difference between my burning down my house and burning down my slave.
And copyright infringement and theft aren’t even the same legally. You have to file a civil suit for the former but a criminal suit for the latter. ‘Intellectual property theft’ is just empty rhetoric.
Legally, slaves may be property, but that doesn’t mean there’s no difference between my burning down my house and burning down my slave.
One of them is insurance fraud and the other is ‘discipline’? (At least, if there happens to have been a culture where insurance fraud was an issue that also had slavery.)
Maybe to a deontologist. As far as I’m concerned, all that matters is whether it makes the world a better or worse place. It doesn’t even matter whether copyright infringement is ‘stealing’ or not (though, as others have pointed out, it basically is not). And it seems to me that in certain situations infringing copyright has lots of benefits with almost no downsides, so I could not accept calling it wrong.
I’m no moral theorist, but a consequentalist approach seems reasonable to me. That said, a given act of filesharing in violation of IP laws will generally have no significant consequences. Though, I suppose I think habitually violating the law because it is convenient to do so will have negative consequences for one’s charachter, but that’s going to vary case by case even if it is a real problem.
I don’t find stealing intrinsically wrong. Property is just made up anyways.
Property is used for a reason, though. It makes our economy function. As such, I’d find stealing instrumentally wrong. When dealing with something like information, it’s only instrumentally wrong if you would have bought it if piracy wasn’t an option, and you aren’t planning on doing something better with the money, such as donating it to a good charity.
Also, I seem to be in a minority with intellectual property, at least when it comes to books. Governments have gone to great lengths to set up libraries to allow the citizens to pirate books.
Why does property’s being made up make a difference? I mean, I think I see what you’re getting at, but I think it would be be helpful to spell the reasoning out. What exactly are the premises that lead to the conclusion that stealing isn’t intrinsicly wrong?
And your argument about instrumental value seems insufficient. The theft of a book vs. Its purchace has no significant impact on the economy, and I have no reason to calculate the utilities involved in this choice as if it would. And finally? Why should I care about the condition of the economy as opposed to my personal wealth? Can’t I generally justify the instrumental value of actions which damage the economy so long as they enrich me personally?
Why does property’s being made up make a difference?
I favor simpler values. Something that’s made up tends not to be simple. Also, I don’t think anything that can’t be experienced can matter. The differences ownership makes in experience are miniscule.
The theft of a book vs. Its purchace has no significant impact on the economy
It’s not noticeable with one book, but that’s not because it’s not there. If nobody bought books, there would be fewer produced. The fact that people are willing to pay for books shows that they’re worth producing.
There are places where this is more obvious, such as medicine, but it applies to books as well.
If you’re selfish, and you only care about the economy insomuch as it affects you, then you would steal (piracy or otherwise) as much as you could get away with. If you’re not selfish, you’d have better things to do with the money, and thus still steal as much as you could get away with.
That said, in either case it would still be best to favor laws that discourage piracy, or possibly find a different way to compensate the owner. It does more good on average, so you’re likely to benefit from it more than be hurt from it.
Can’t I generally justify the instrumental value of actions which damage the economy so long as they enrich me personally?
If you only consider yourself valuable, then actions that enrich you personally are instrumentally valuable.
I really don’t know what you’re getting at. “Stealing is wrong because it’s intrinsically wrong. However, anything that favours me at the expense of everyone else has instrumental value!” (I don’t get whether you’re trying to say ‘it has instrumental value, therefore it’s a good thing’, or ‘screw instrumental value, it’s a stupid metric’.)
But isn’t stealing wrong?
Stealing: I break into your house and take a book without your consent. You no longer have the book.
Copying: I use ctrl-c ctrl-v on your book. Now both of us have the book.
Pretty fundamental distinction, isn’t it?
Why do you think these are the important features of stealing? Isn’t the point just that you’re taking someone’s legal property, and illegally helping yourself to it? The fact that you can do this with a machine that has a neat interface doesn’t seem important. ETA: And I agree its not really the book you’ve stolen in this case, but the money you avoided paying. Thats the thing I have a legal right to, but have been illegally deprived of.
I take it, rather, that you have an argument for why this is not stealing, or why if it is, it is nevertheless justifiable.
Because that’s what the word means. And you not having the thing that you previously had is kind of a big deal.
Copying a some work you have done is Copyright Infringement. It is also illegal. It’s just a slightly different one.
Mind you ‘stealing’ is somewhat more appropriate than ‘piracy’. After all if it was a pirate it would take your stuff and quite probably kill you. Possibly also raid your village and rape all your womenfolk.
Copying is not a crime, it is a civil offense. Just FYI.
I swear I’ve also made this point myself in a sibling comment. But to neaten the casual wording up here I’ll replace ‘a crime’ with ‘illegal’.
I see that you have, but I saw this first.
Reminded me of this enlightening and well-researched article. (Or collection of highly questionable claims and idiotic hysterics that in aggregate make the whole thing quite amusing; take your pick.)
You never had the money. I have not deprived you of anything. If you were intending to buy a lottery ticket but I went and bought every lottery ticket in town (for whatever bizarre reason) would you say that I’d stolen something from you?
Your question was ‘Isn’t it wrong?‘, now you’re going with ‘But it’s illegal!’
I don’t care much about my opportunity to by lottery tickets. If you want to be a nuisance, buy up a couple of my favourites packaged foods. If you want to be a menace buy up all available food, or all sources of a couple of vital nutrients.
I guess I wouldn’t call it stealing, but the fatal one I would say should be illegal, if it was likely to happen otherwise. The nuisance one, I would call monopolising, and maybe anticompetitive. That’s a good analogy, but with a few differences. Copyright infringement can be lots of people individually satisfying their requirements, leaving a publisher with no market for the product, and anticompetitive behaviour can be one company satisfying all of a competitor’s market, possibly deliberately to get rid of them, leaving that competitor with no market for their product.
And yet, as you say, none of that is stealing.
We can discuss whether or not they’re evil (and in two of the cases above they very obviously are), but the discussion is bound to be pretty pointless if we group them together with theft (which is a different issue).
And I’ve seen a lot of pointless copyright arguments. The discussion here I expect to be better than most. I haven’t really made up my mind on what the law should say about copyright, and since I’m not deciding the law I’m not going to try too hard.
Who said anything about stealing? This is about buying or copying a book, not theft.
Well, I take it that Anubhav is talking about piriteing a book as a justifiable responce to wanting it. Legally, anyway, that’s intellectual property theft.
If you are appealing to legal considerations in order to support your preferred semantics you had best consider that ‘theft’ and copyright infringement are covered by entirely different laws. In fact, they aren’t even covered by the same kind of law. For most part copyright infringement is a civil issue not a criminal one. This doesn’t say anything about whether it is moral but it makes “the law says it is stealing” rather questionable.
For years whenever I went to see a movie I had to put up with this nonsense. This sort of equivocation just sickens me. It brought to mind the observation that one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. I’m never going to look at “copying movies is stealing” with anything but contempt.
Also, as a general heuristic, when the best argument that can be made for a position is to confuse the language involved, that position is likely wrong. (not to say that any particular other is right, tho; that would be reversed stupidity).
Totally agree (including with the caveat.)
legally, “intellectual property” doesn’t exist. There are a number of legal institutions collectively called IP, but the term IP is not a legal one.
Furthermore, copying, use without license, counterfeiting and such are legally “infringement”, not “theft”. Theft is legally a criminal offense, infringement is civil (lawsuits).
Using the term “theft” in the context of copyright infringement is political rhetoric designed to confuse the issue. Copying looks very different from the rest of category “theft”.
“Piracy” is also a stupid term {copy, theft and murder on the high seas} looks about as useless as {hitler, stalin, john smith}. Carve reality at the joints. “Copy” is very clear in what it means and has no political connotations.
If you would like to make a moral case about book copying versus book buying, do so without reference to useless categories.
Agree about the word theft. It is not helpful except as a dishonest ploy to conflate two actions that have not been agreed to be the same and have some significant differences.
Mostly disagree about the word ‘piracy’. Murder on the high seas is so different people should only confuse the two meanings as a joke. Maybe it was a bad idea to reuse the word initially but not now it is a common meaning. The only thing is it is pretty bad taste if someone you know has been kidnapped by pirates, but that is quite rare.
‘Copy’ is not quite right—that would include downloading Cory Doctorow’s stories from his own website, for example. These are deliberately made available by the author. We are really talking about copying that is neither authorised by law nor by the owner/creator. And probably not including forging bank notes, only copyright infringement.
ETA—I may have missed your point here, whether piracy in the sense of copying carves reality at the joints is also arguable. But it is a category I have in my head.
Insisting on ‘copy’ is move similar in kind to insisting on ‘property’. It has the political connotation of moral acceptability. In some cases using a word that sounds like an acceptable thing isn’t much different to insisting on a word that sounds terrible.
Good point, and I just thot of that myself.
I don’t think insisting on using non-moral primitives to describe moral situations is on the same level as confusing things with rhetorical terms, but I’ll think about it.
If you can’t make a moral case without using words that already have moral connotation, there probably isn’t one to be made. For example, it would be easy to make a moral case against breaking windows by appealing to economics, utility, opportunity costs, and so on. You would not have to mention “vandalism”.
Likewise in this case. If a moral argument can’t be made for or against copying without appealing to rhetorically tainted words, I don’t think we should be discussing the issue.
If I was really interested in making copying sound good, I would be using words like “wealth”, “produce”, “wealth replication”, “cultural commons” and so on.
I agree, particularly in as much as the morally loaded terms can only be used in the moralizing rhetoric while the neutral terms can be used either as opposing rhetoric in the same vein or they can be used to discuss the issue and consequences at a low level.
Which, of course, it can.
This is one of the words I’d have been using to explain the intended benefit of laws preventing copying. “Property rights and enforceable legal restrictions” is the standard rudimentary solution to tragedies of the commons for good reason!
I thot that list up quickly. I’m not surprised some of the terms were wrong. (rhetoric is always wrong!)
Anyways, I was thinking of “cultural commons” in terms of people being free to mix and mash culture without getting legally harassed or having to pay lots of fees. It seems that “cultural commons” is at the core of the issue.
I’m going to go ahead and state this in case it is not clear: I may or may not have an opinion on this subject, and I do not intend to bring it into this discussion. My interest is in keeping the language and discussion rational as opposed to political.
‘Copy’ sounds neutral to me. It has negative connotations in some scenarios (‘got caught copying in an exam’, ‘All that the Chinese idiots do is copy American innovations’).
In fact, off the top of my head I can’t think of a single instance where ‘copy’ has a positive connotation.
Legally, slaves may be property, but that doesn’t mean there’s no difference between my burning down my house and burning down my slave.
And copyright infringement and theft aren’t even the same legally. You have to file a civil suit for the former but a criminal suit for the latter. ‘Intellectual property theft’ is just empty rhetoric.
One of them is insurance fraud and the other is ‘discipline’? (At least, if there happens to have been a culture where insurance fraud was an issue that also had slavery.)
Maybe to a deontologist. As far as I’m concerned, all that matters is whether it makes the world a better or worse place. It doesn’t even matter whether copyright infringement is ‘stealing’ or not (though, as others have pointed out, it basically is not). And it seems to me that in certain situations infringing copyright has lots of benefits with almost no downsides, so I could not accept calling it wrong.
I’m no moral theorist, but a consequentalist approach seems reasonable to me. That said, a given act of filesharing in violation of IP laws will generally have no significant consequences. Though, I suppose I think habitually violating the law because it is convenient to do so will have negative consequences for one’s charachter, but that’s going to vary case by case even if it is a real problem.
Intrinsically or instrumentally?
I don’t find stealing intrinsically wrong. Property is just made up anyways.
Property is used for a reason, though. It makes our economy function. As such, I’d find stealing instrumentally wrong. When dealing with something like information, it’s only instrumentally wrong if you would have bought it if piracy wasn’t an option, and you aren’t planning on doing something better with the money, such as donating it to a good charity.
Also, I seem to be in a minority with intellectual property, at least when it comes to books. Governments have gone to great lengths to set up libraries to allow the citizens to pirate books.
Why does property’s being made up make a difference? I mean, I think I see what you’re getting at, but I think it would be be helpful to spell the reasoning out. What exactly are the premises that lead to the conclusion that stealing isn’t intrinsicly wrong?
And your argument about instrumental value seems insufficient. The theft of a book vs. Its purchace has no significant impact on the economy, and I have no reason to calculate the utilities involved in this choice as if it would. And finally? Why should I care about the condition of the economy as opposed to my personal wealth? Can’t I generally justify the instrumental value of actions which damage the economy so long as they enrich me personally?
I favor simpler values. Something that’s made up tends not to be simple. Also, I don’t think anything that can’t be experienced can matter. The differences ownership makes in experience are miniscule.
It’s not noticeable with one book, but that’s not because it’s not there. If nobody bought books, there would be fewer produced. The fact that people are willing to pay for books shows that they’re worth producing.
There are places where this is more obvious, such as medicine, but it applies to books as well.
If you’re selfish, and you only care about the economy insomuch as it affects you, then you would steal (piracy or otherwise) as much as you could get away with. If you’re not selfish, you’d have better things to do with the money, and thus still steal as much as you could get away with.
That said, in either case it would still be best to favor laws that discourage piracy, or possibly find a different way to compensate the owner. It does more good on average, so you’re likely to benefit from it more than be hurt from it.
If you only consider yourself valuable, then actions that enrich you personally are instrumentally valuable.
I really don’t know what you’re getting at. “Stealing is wrong because it’s intrinsically wrong. However, anything that favours me at the expense of everyone else has instrumental value!” (I don’t get whether you’re trying to say ‘it has instrumental value, therefore it’s a good thing’, or ‘screw instrumental value, it’s a stupid metric’.)