You could say the same of a stolen DVD. Would the thief have otherwise paid for the DVD? At least in the case of a physical good, you could argue that the item being stolen "may" have prevented someone else from buying it, but even then there's no guarantee.
Devil's advocate, it's not that simple. Producing a DVD is cheap, the seller can produce them for almost nothing per unit (not zero though).
It could be that this stolen DVD allows N people to discover its content and buy the DVD. The seller wins from this stealing even for a small N. N could be bigger than when downloading the movie instead, because the DVD can be seen in a shelf for example.
Is it fundamentally different? (it's a genuine question, I have not studied anything on the matter).
The only difference I see is that almost nothing = zero when downloading the DVD's content instead of stealing the physical object.
edit: I actually see a difference, there's no guarantee that a stolen DVD does produce any sale, and so there is a loss even if it is small, but I think the question is still not simple to answer.
> Producing a DVD is cheap, the seller can produce them for almost nothing per unit (not zero though).
That's true, although I was thinking more about retailers who presumably pay much more than the marginal cost (though still much less than the retail price). It's also probably true that copyright laws are responsible for the vast majority of the commercial value of physical copies of digital media. Perhaps an easier way to see the fundamental difference is that when you're downloading a copy of a movie from BitTorrent, all the parties actively involved are willing participants.
> It could be that this stolen DVD allows N people to discover its content and buy the DVD.
This is also a real possibility, and is a strong argument for copyright holders to rethink their business models (and, in my view, for societies to rethink copyright laws). But I don't think it's a strong argument for treating the theft of a physical DVD and someone torrenting a movie as being remotely comparable.
It is possible that movie (DVD, Blueray) sales are similar to book sales. The stock is only paid for when it is actually sold. That allows shops to hold huge stock on day 1 with less financial risk and also to price-match all other shops regardless on when they received their stocks.
By the time the DVD is licensed and produced and shipped and put on a shelf taking up space, that's most of the price tag accounted for.
Even if you used the wholesale price for theft, it wouldn't make a big difference. There's a real burden there that's very close to a lost sale even if it's not actually a lost sale.
With piracy none of those costs exist, and any costs that do exist are paid for by the pirate.
How about buying a preowned DVD? If we decide that what you're paying for is the entertainment and joy of watching a movie, are we not stealing from the content creators by reselling and purchasing used DVDs?
Edit: I'm making it clear I absolutely despise this argument of course :D Being able to buy/sell used physical media is my favorite reason to buy physical and never buy digital.
I'm sure there are many owners out there that hate the fact physical media is resellable. I'm sure this is at least part of the reason everything is becoming more restricted by copy protection, streamed, proprietary downloads, etc. Everything is becoming harder to own and share without "pirating".
The thing I really hate about not owning content is the access is so damn unreliable. One day I have an album in my playlist, the next day it's gone because licensing or whatever. Then I randomly have to log back in. Maybe on a device i dedicated for playing music that's a pain in the ass to interact with.
I could play Mp3s on a 20 year old computer. That 20 year old computer won't work with apple music lol.
Hell, I can play DVDs that I bought 6 months ago on my 17 year old PowerBook G4!
A stolen DVD seems more likely to be a lost sale, than an unauthorized digital copy. The person stealing the DVD has gone there in person and is willing to risk a possible interaction with staff/security. So they probably want the DVD, and would buy it otherwise. The person who downloads the movie might just be randomly browsing and not really all that interested otherwise.
> A stolen DVD is very clearly a reduction in the number of DVDs the seller can possibly sell.
But that's not true; you would have to assume that the number of DVDs the vendor orders is independent of the number of DVDs the vendor loses to all forces including both sales and theft. That assumption is obviously false. If you run a store, you're not limited to ordering a single shipment of whatever DVD; if it sells well, you can order additional shipments.
If I steal 50 Disney DVDs from a store (and they aren't recovered by the police) the store's insurance will reimburse the store for the loss, and then the store will order more DVDs to refill their stock. Disney actually comes out ahead in that case, believe it or not
And in the case of the stolen DVD, the DVD is physically gone from where it was. In the case of digital copies, nothing is lost besides the potential for one particular sale.
The damages are at least the wholesale price of the DVD (probably half the consumer price) in that case. With piracy that becomes harder because the marginal cost is zero.
