Why piracy is wrong

Previous editions Story archive Letters Subscribe Newsroom. Search query. Volume 46 Number 3. In the community. Is digital piracy really stealing? By Christian Barry. It might seem obvious that downloading is wrong.

After all, it is illegal. But there are many things that have been illegal that people don't think are morally wrong. Few people think they were wrong just because they were illegal. Two rival camps dominate public discussion around the ethics of illegal downloading. On the one hand, there are what might be called "fundamentalist libertarians". On the other hand, there are what might be called the "fundamentalist protectors". The more revenue a company loses to theft, the less money it has to reinvest — and the less work there is for hardworking crewmembers down the road.

Oh, and one more thing — many of these crewmembers if not most of them are also members of labor unions, such as the IATSE. Thanks to their unions, they receive healthcare, pensions, disability insurance, and other benefits.

Counterpoint: Hello again, Aaron. Is the solution, then, to steal the car? You have to save up your money, like everyone else. The same goes for creative works. Or, maybe you decide to watch it with a friend or two to split the cost or you decide that you may be getting better value from watching a film instead of spending that money on a beer or a soda. Counterpoint : Even if that were true, Enrique, why is it any more justified to pirate a Marvel movie or some other blockbuster than it is a Werner Herzog film?

Maybe the scale is larger, but that just means more money was spent much of it going into local economies and more jobs were created. The scale of the piracy tends to be commensurate with the scale of the production just look at Game of Thrones. The streaming era has made it easier to pirate than ever before, and no filmmaker, at any level , is safe from having their work stolen. Sadly, thanks to long-outdated safe harbor protections for American internet companies, we still have a long way to go here.

Hereditary is a horror film by a first-time director. The director Ari Aster had only made short films until this point. Buying content from a source that stole the content and made copies to sell — like counterfeit versions of games, movies, music, books, or software — is buying stolen goods.

It's not given to you for free by someone nice because they like you and want to give you something for free, but by someone with a malicious intent, because they want to make money for themselves using the free stuff as bait. That free software, song or movie may also steal your identity, corrupt your computer, capture your financial records and passwords, turn your computer into a bot on a criminal botnet, and threaten your safety and the safety of your family.

Trust your instincts. Be suspicious of software products that do not include proof of authenticity such as original disks, manuals, licensing, services policies, and warranties. Beware of backups. Avoid sellers offering to make backup copies. This is a clear indication the software is illegal. Steer clear of compilations. Be wary of compilations of software titles from different publishers on a single disk or CD.

If you cannot contact the seller after making a purchase, you may have no recourse if the product turns out to be pirated. Keep Receipts. Printout a copy of your order number and sales confirmation and file them for your records. This information will help build your case if it is pirated and further action is needed. Ensure secure payment. For starters, it seems important to stop treating intellectual property infringement as common theft, and to develop different legal remedies for its protection.

Various kinds of property are different, and warrant different forms of protection. This is hardly a novel idea. In his fascinating book, 13 Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age , the legal philosopher Stuart Green has pointed out that treating all infringement of property as theft subject to the same legal rubric is a relatively new development. Prior to the 20th Century, theft law consisted of a sort of ad hoc collection of specific theft offences and specific kinds of property that were subject to theft.

Different rules applied to different offences, and intangible forms of property, like intellectual property, were not included in theft law at all. We may need to return to rules that are well suited to protecting different forms of property. In the meantime, it seems incumbent on consumers to try to respect intellectual property unless doing so imposes unreasonable cost on them. Refraining from accessing patented essential medicines that are inaccessible due to price does seem unduly costly.

Refraining from watching the latest season of Game of Thrones, the ardour of its fans notwithstanding, does not. At the same time, we should also strongly resist massive penalties levied on downloaders when they are caught.

Even if what the downloaders have done is wrong, it is much worse to over-punish them. Festival of Social Science — Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire.