It doesn't matter if it's a CD, a Film, or manual with the instructions to build a spaceship. If you copy it, the original owner doesn't lose anything. If you don't copy it, the only one missing something (the experience) is YOU.
Enjoy!
Of course, if you happen to have some extra money for donations to creators, please do so. If you don't have that, try contributing with a review somewhere or recommending the content, spread the word. Piracy was shown to drive businesses in several occasions by independent and biased corps (trying to show the opposite).
The idea that everything must have a profit motive behind it or nobody would do it is a Capitalist myth.
In most cases of large scale production, the vast majority of people involved are already compensated for their labor. Ironically, often it is the artist/group themselves that don't receive compensation directly for their work, but as a conditional percentage based on overall profitability of the parent label corporation, (who are near universally nasty, scummy, and exploitative.)
Doing labor is not a sufficient condition for compensation. If it were, I could go through parking lots, washing people's cars while they are inside, and then present them a bill for my labor. Then, if they refused to pay, I could take them to court for "stealing" my labor from me by enjoying a freshly washed car and not paying the bill.
I could create artwork and demand people buy it from me to compensate me for all the labor I put into making it. Both examples are obviously ridiculous, because while labor very well may be a necessary condition for compensation, it isn't a sufficient condition.
You admit that my concert example, at least in certain circumstances works. Which means that it proves my argument. If consuming content without compensation is actually stealing, then people walking past and listening to some of the music in a concert are literally thieves and should be arrested and forced to pay restitution. A ridiculous conclusion to the vast majority of people, even, I would wager, to many anti-piracy folks.
I advocate compensating artists for their work if you can and if the artist is independent. I think its morally wrong to support the current exploitative entertainment structure by willingly paying for services and products that are designed to abuse the consumer and in many cases, the very artists that are under their banner.
You also never addressed my Rolex example, which is basically a perfect analogy to how digital media is replicated IRL.
You also ignore the idea that an action can become morally right in and of itself depending of the motive. Piracy itself can be an act of protest to support proper orientation of the markets and social norms around the creation and distribution of art.
History is filled with activists engaging in what was illegal and considered immoral at the time, but we look back on their actions now as good and upright. Just because many pirates are nerds that post dank memes doesn't delegitimize their actions.
Labor rights activists a century ago read Socialist theory and distributed cartoons and media mocking rich tycoons and abusive bosses. In other words, they were also nerds that posted dank memes.
I'd love to be able to actually discuss this, because a wall of text isn't at conducive to healthy discussion.
Your concert example is frankly ridiculous. A better one is people sneaking in without paying. Overhearing a few minutes of muffled bars of music does not compare with going to the show - what nonsense! That you claim it proves your point, well... You're dreaming.
Not a wall of text, I spent quite a bit of time carefully breaking down all of my points by numbered section.
If it's too much work for you to go through my post and address each point like I have been doing for yours, then I don't think we have much else to discuss.
One last question: Is it wrong for you to go to a bookstore, read a book, and put it back on the shelf without buying it? What about reading just 75% of it? 50%? How about just the first chapter to see if you like it? Or do you think it would be wrong to even skim the first page without buying it?
I don't have the energy to dissect your 20 part manifesto, sorry.I appreciate the effort, but got lost in the bullet points (the un-bulleted things felt like responses to the bullet and I wondered who you were replying to). It all felt like the crazed conspiracy theorist meme, sorry. I'm on a phone and it's such a shitty interface to wade through complex argument
As for books - No way, it's not wrong at all, and I regularly pirate music before I buy it, for example. We're not that different, I'm probably just accepting more 'guilt' for what I pirate.
Do you agree that physical goods are a whole different set of circumstances to abstract things? (As in, how the rolex is fundamentally different to the concert experience)
To each their own I guess.
So if you think the book example is fine even reading the whole thing and never paying for it, how is that any different from any other piracy examples? You consumed media that the artist created in its entirety without giving them any compensation.
I agree that physical goods are totally different, but in my magical wizard example, I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
A real life example is if I take a digital scan of a 3D figurine, turn it into a 3D model, and let other people on the web download it and 3D print it.
Did I "steal" anything? Of course not. Nobody is being deprived of anything at all.
See with books, that's where out gets complicated. I don't agree that reading part of the book is a problem, but the whole book does count as piracy to me. I do admit I don't know where the line is crossed. It's great the way libraries skirt around this problem and I don't really know how that fits in the broader scheme.
Perhaps another great idea is a magazine where there's really only one or two articles of interest - in my mind, have at it and consume what's of interest without shelling out for the whole thing (this is a lot like time-shifting, where recording content played on the air at a certain but inconvenient time is absolutely fair use).
Format shifting via a 3d scanner is fine but uploading to for others is where it's problematic - personal use has always abominated various liberties, I felt.
Great thought experiments, cheers