I would be curious to know what percentage of pirated movies are actually watched. I think a lot of people download things because they are available and might look interesting, but then never watch it. Does the steeling happen when the content is acquired or consumed? If someone isn’t going to watch it, even when it was free, did they steal anything?
With a chocolate bar there is a physical good that could have been sold to someone else, but instead a new one needs to be produced to sell to someone else. This isn’t the case with digital files.
It doesn't matter how many times you can sell the same item. If someone spent time and money producing something, no matter how small, and they dictate they want $x for you to own/consume it, then you are stealing if you don't give them $x for it.
In terms of "when" it's stolen re downloading vs watching, I would say when you download it personally as you now have access to the content without paying.
> If someone spent time and money producing something, no matter how small, and they dictate they want $x for you to own/consume it, then you are stealing if you don't give them $x for it.
Not quite. It's not stealing unless they are deprived of the original item (this is not to be confused with the money they think it is worth if they sell it or "sell" it). What is happening is copying, not stealing.
* It’s definitely not stealing in the legal sense of the term, which requires a party to be deprived of physical property that they own.
* It’s also not in the colloquial sense of the term, because if you call this stealing you’d also have apply the stealing label to blocking ads/trackers on the web, taking advantage of free trials for services without any intent of becoming a subscriber, or countless other activities that could be considered “depriving someone of revenue.”
In the US, we do in fact have a legal term for the crime at play here — but the term is copyright infringement, not “stealing” or “IP theft” or whatever other stupid label the content cartels want to apply to it.
> Yes that is quite literally also depriving them of revenue, and quite possibly their only source of revenue if they're a free website/app.
I think I made an error here by assuming that every reader of Hacker News would be at least somewhat pro-adblocking.
So since you appear not to be, let me ask you:
* Do you use any ad blocker at all? If yes, can you define precisely when ad blocking is stealing and when it is not?
* If I visit a random website with ads, and I don't have an adblocker, the ads on that site may be used to track me across other sites, build a profile of me to sell to data brokers, serve me malware, bog down my system resources with audio, video, crypto-miners, and other garbage, or a myriad of other undesirable things. Would you consider any of these things to be the website (or the ad network) stealing from me? At what point, if any, does the website's right to extract revenue from me end and my right to privacy/security begin?
Tracking - Tracking isn't stealing, that's a privacy question.
Building a Profile - I mean not stealing but also vague so not sure what's the point of trying to argue this one? Like if you keep going with this line of thinking you end up with "you looked at me funny which made me feel weird so you're stealing by stealing my joy". (Absurd example but trying to show how abstract arguments don't end up working) Then we would probably loop back to fallacy of composition.
Malware - Serving malware is a criminal act and you can block it, but you're also not usually going to CNN.com and expecting them to download a crypto miner on your hardware. You are, however, expecting advertisements, hence why you're using an adblocker.
Bogging down your resources/other garbage - I mean idk, case by case basis.
You keep trying to paint with broad strokes but that's not how these things usually work. In my original example, it works because it's a simple transaction the artist wanted. Pay me 1$ for my art and you can view it. They created it privately with the intent of selling, and by downloading it for free, you're breaking that intent and depriving them of potential revenue.
> Serving malware is a criminal act and you can block it, but you're also not usually going to CNN.com and expecting them to download a crypto miner on your hardware. You are, however, expecting advertisements, hence why you're using an adblocker.
I absolutely expect CNN, Google, and any other website to serve me malware. You can find many historical examples of the largest ad networks serving up malware on just about any site in existence. So that is actually the primary reason why I use adblockers, and blocking the visual noise is just a nice side effect.
How should I legally/ethically block this malware without using a broad ad blocker? AFAIK there's no way for me to know ahead of time when and on what site malware will be served.
I'm sorry if you think I'm painting in strokes that are too broad -- I'm trying to understand your viewpoint here. I would also like to be clear that I do think copyright infringement is a thing, and in your example of "pay me $1 and you can view my art," viewing the work and not paying is ethically dubious and probably could be considered copyright infringement in most jurisdictions. I just vehemently object to it being called "stealing" as you've done here.
> I absolutely expect CNN, Google, and any other website to serve me malware. You can find many historical examples of the largest ad networks serving up malware on just about any site in existence.
I would love to see a source of a large company like CNN knowingly serving malware in the guise of ads. I've never heard of that but I'm all ears; I feel like it would be big news if CNN knowingly put a crypto miner on your device.
> How should I legally/ethically block this malware without using a broad ad blocker?
I don't know but also now you're committing a fallacy known as "Irrelevant conclusion". Yes, there's a genuine question on how you can block malware without depriving website owners of their ad revenue, however it's irrelevant to the original argument of whether blocking ads is stealing (which we've somehow come to from a piracy argument but whatever). The argument becomes "Is blocking ads stealing when some of them give me malware", but that's separate from "Is blocking ads stealing".
Alternatively you might be trying to argue "but I block ads because some of them give me malware" which can be an appeal to pity[2], but I don't think you're trying to go that far.
Wow, aren't you the fallacy guy. Please, give me more fallacies! I should just change my username to fallaciousgoats.
How about this: I didn't use the word "knowingly" anywhere in my statement, and in fact I have no earthly idea whether the countless examples [1][2][3][4] of malware being served via ad networks on major websites was done knowingly. My guess is it wasn't?
So you've got the beginnings of a straw man fallacy here, questioning an argument that I never actually made.
If you'd like to learn more about why malware shows up on cross-site ad networks, there's a good quick read available at [5].
You're back at the start again though - if I wasn't going to buy it, then the vendor hasn't lost anything if I steal it. All that happens is I gain a free experience I would otherwise not have had.
Except because you now actually went out, downloaded/took it, and experienced it, it implies there was a non 0 interest in the work, therefore there is lost possible revenue since you might have eventually went and bought the work.
It's also possible I might not have bought the work. There's no sale until money changes hands.
If you run a store, and a customer shows interest in a product and physically touches it is he/she stealing if she chooses not to buy it? Let's say it's perfume, and the customer samples some of the perfume, then decides not to buy it. The customer has experienced it; if the customer doesn't buy the perfume, is that stealing?
You're using a false analogy. You're trying to make a parallel between not paying for an item/produced good and simply not giving someone money in an attempt to downplay not paying for created material.
A: "Not giving someone money for an item/produced good"
B: "Not giving someone money"
B can apply to a near infinite number of cases. A is one case that is "within" B. So... the root meaning is the same. If you call A stealing, you have to call B stealing, but that's ridiculous because, for example, each day, I literally don't give money to the entire world. According to your logic I would owe the whole world population the value of every item/produced good.
With a chocolate bar there is a physical good that could have been sold to someone else, but instead a new one needs to be produced to sell to someone else. This isn’t the case with digital files.