That’s not true. It is not “literally the situation you’re discussing”. You don’t “lose” money if you’re paying for access to something. Paying for a ticket to a museum to see artwork isn’t you “losing” money just because you don’t walk out of the museum with something tangible.
You’re just arguing semantics about the word “creator” now. The other options you’ve provided are still basing your choice on a tangible good which is not the situation here. You can’t buy a “used” version of an intangible good so the rest of your argument is irrelevant to the situation actually being argued.
Now we’re arguing semantics and I’m not going to do this. I PAID money. I GAVE SOMEONE money. I HAVE LESS money. If you can’t engage with the actual ideas behind what I’m saying, then what are you even doing?
I see no distinction between the tangible and intangible goods here. They are all methods for displaying a show on my screen for the express purpose of me seeing it with my eyes. What difference does it make if that method involves a tangible object? The moral argument you’ve been making this entire time is that by pirating a show, I consume it without the people who made it getting compensated.
In another thread, you said
At the end of the day, the argument is that someone is taking the value of the work/product when they consume/ingest it without compensating the creator of that work/product.
If this is why you believe piracy is theft, then you must necessarily believe that buying used copies, borrowing discs from friends, and renting from video stores are all also theft, because the statements you’ve made regarding why piracy is theft applies to all of those situations.
You gave someone money who had permission to sell that thing to you. You have less money and, in exchange, you have access to consume the media/intangible good in question. This is not semantics. This is the literal situation that you were arguing.
The fact that you don’t see a distinction between tangible and intangible goods is exactly why you keep making arguments that make no sense and don’t logically hold up against the point I’m making. The difference matters because, even in your other irrelevant examples of buying used copies, borrowing discs, or renting, someone had to pay for that physical item or you would not have access to it. Intangible and tangible matters here because you can’t buy a used copy of an intangible item!
So… no. I don’t have to believe any of the other things you’ve mentioned because, in every single one of those cases, there is a tangible good that someone paid for which the author/creator was compensated that is physically limited that doesn’t exist for an intangible good. Your argument is still fundamentally flawed and, therefore, not a valid argument against my point.
The logic just doesn’t flow. If the problem with illegally streaming content is that the creators don’t get paid for my consumption of their product, then buying a used copy is just as bad, because I’m still consuming the product without the creators being compensated. You can say it’s different because I’m using physical media that can’t be copied rather than using a copy of a digital file, but the end result remains the same: I consume the media, the creators don’t get paid. You can say it’s different because the physical media only allows one person to consume it, but… The original owner already did. I suppose they can’t rewatch it after they sell the disc to me, but they have definitely already consumed it.
It also brings up a complicated question: what if the original buyer of that disc rips the disc onto their computer before selling it to me? Is that immoral? I mean, they already watched the show. They might not have a legal right to keep that digital copy of the contents of that disc, but it seems weird to me to suggest that it’s immoral to keep a copy of a show you’ve already seen.
Finally, if buying a used copy is fine because the original owner of that copy already paid for it, then my illegal consumption doesn’t matter at all–the person who bought the disc was going to buy the disc anyway. They already paid for it, regardless of whether I would come and buy it from them in the future.
That’s not true. It is not “literally the situation you’re discussing”. You don’t “lose” money if you’re paying for access to something. Paying for a ticket to a museum to see artwork isn’t you “losing” money just because you don’t walk out of the museum with something tangible.
You’re just arguing semantics about the word “creator” now. The other options you’ve provided are still basing your choice on a tangible good which is not the situation here. You can’t buy a “used” version of an intangible good so the rest of your argument is irrelevant to the situation actually being argued.
Now we’re arguing semantics and I’m not going to do this. I PAID money. I GAVE SOMEONE money. I HAVE LESS money. If you can’t engage with the actual ideas behind what I’m saying, then what are you even doing?
I see no distinction between the tangible and intangible goods here. They are all methods for displaying a show on my screen for the express purpose of me seeing it with my eyes. What difference does it make if that method involves a tangible object? The moral argument you’ve been making this entire time is that by pirating a show, I consume it without the people who made it getting compensated.
In another thread, you said
If this is why you believe piracy is theft, then you must necessarily believe that buying used copies, borrowing discs from friends, and renting from video stores are all also theft, because the statements you’ve made regarding why piracy is theft applies to all of those situations.
You gave someone money who had permission to sell that thing to you. You have less money and, in exchange, you have access to consume the media/intangible good in question. This is not semantics. This is the literal situation that you were arguing.
The fact that you don’t see a distinction between tangible and intangible goods is exactly why you keep making arguments that make no sense and don’t logically hold up against the point I’m making. The difference matters because, even in your other irrelevant examples of buying used copies, borrowing discs, or renting, someone had to pay for that physical item or you would not have access to it. Intangible and tangible matters here because you can’t buy a used copy of an intangible item!
So… no. I don’t have to believe any of the other things you’ve mentioned because, in every single one of those cases, there is a tangible good that someone paid for which the author/creator was compensated that is physically limited that doesn’t exist for an intangible good. Your argument is still fundamentally flawed and, therefore, not a valid argument against my point.
The logic just doesn’t flow. If the problem with illegally streaming content is that the creators don’t get paid for my consumption of their product, then buying a used copy is just as bad, because I’m still consuming the product without the creators being compensated. You can say it’s different because I’m using physical media that can’t be copied rather than using a copy of a digital file, but the end result remains the same: I consume the media, the creators don’t get paid. You can say it’s different because the physical media only allows one person to consume it, but… The original owner already did. I suppose they can’t rewatch it after they sell the disc to me, but they have definitely already consumed it.
It also brings up a complicated question: what if the original buyer of that disc rips the disc onto their computer before selling it to me? Is that immoral? I mean, they already watched the show. They might not have a legal right to keep that digital copy of the contents of that disc, but it seems weird to me to suggest that it’s immoral to keep a copy of a show you’ve already seen.
Finally, if buying a used copy is fine because the original owner of that copy already paid for it, then my illegal consumption doesn’t matter at all–the person who bought the disc was going to buy the disc anyway. They already paid for it, regardless of whether I would come and buy it from them in the future.