Because it's illegal is (IMHO) not a reason at all, on its own. I'll also agree that copyright is not an intrinsically moral concept, like material theft. However, I think copyright (in some form, not necessarily in the way it is practiced today) is a key piece of positive law. Absent of copyright, there is no reason to pay anyone for any easily duplicatable product, except out of the goodness of one's heart. Now, if those producing the content didn't need money (e.g. some sort of post-scarcity society) then I would see any kind of copyright as pointlessly restrictive, except maybe for some claim of (non rights reserving) authorship.

The sad fact is that we don't live in such a world, so some form of compensation for authors is necessary, if you want them to keep doing what they are doing. Copyright isn't the only model, but I don't see any practical way to pivot back to a patronage model, especially for content which isn't considered high art. So, I don't think it is fair that one should be paid for making cars, but not be paid for making software, since both consume money to produce. The fact that software doesn't consume (much) money to produce more units after one is produced means that the model of compensation may be different, but I don't think it means there should be no compensation at all. It is easy to go too far in the other direction (e.g. the behavior of record companies and movie studios, who exploit the real authors), but I don't think that invalidates the concept entirely.

>Because it's illegal is (IMHO) not a reason at all, on its own. I'll also agree that copyright is not an intrinsically moral concept, like material theft. However, I think copyright (in some form, not necessarily in the way it is practiced today) is a key piece of positive law. Absent of copyright, there is no reason to pay anyone for any easily duplicatable product, except out of the goodness of one's heart.

So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it. From my point of view, that would be progress. Of course some people would lament not having Transformers 3 -- but then again, some people would lament anything and everything, including bad things. The key question is: is it better in aggregate?

Now, for other stuff, like software, that might indeed be an issue. I'm assuming here that "pro" software is a good thing (more features, higher quality), where "pro art" is a bad thing (more commercialized crap).

Don't get me wrong, I have no love for the members of a 4 letter content producer organizations, or the over-expansion of copyright they push. My point is that copyright in some shape or form is important for less scummy players in the content business.

For example, the direction Patreon and Kickstarter are taking the indie media scene is very encouraging, but these little fish would be even more screwed if copyright completely evaporated.

>So no more big bugdet commercial BS endlessly re-run and re-sold on DVDs and such. Art would be created by people really passionate for it.

It's possible to be passionate about your craft and spend money on it and want to make money at it. I would be willing to bet that most of the people who worked on Transformers 3 were actually quite passionate. Then again, so are Uwe Boll and Stephanie Meyer. Mainstream familiarity breeds contempt in hispters and elitists but it's not necessarily the case that there is an inverse relationship between the scale of distribution and artistic quality. You can find good, high budget commercial fare as well as plenty of garbage on the indie side of any creative industry.

Making an exemption for software development doesn't really make sense either. Surely, if artists need to starve for the sake of their work then programmers do as well?

But I liked the Avengers movies, even though you would certainly call them "commercialized crap".

In a world where they hadn't been created, I would be strictly worse off. Even if I could enjoy low-budget "artsy" movies.

Probably in Hungarian without subtitles, for maximum authenticity.

"Art would be created by people really passionate for it."

That's how art happens even now.

At bottom, its not about respecting 'copyright'. Its about respecting authors. There's a system in place so they can dedicate some part of their lives to creation, and get compensated for that. To flout that system because complex moralizing disrespects authors, right at home where it hurts - their compensation.

I'd say the blame is on their editors for not caring enough for the authors to try selling their work wherever possible. If I can't buy their work, I won't, so they won't see any money from me. Whether I saw their work - from the authors' point of view - is irrelevant.

I'd say that might go under 'complex moralizing'. Their work is available; it may take more than a google or a click to obtain. Too much work to walk down to the store? That is what I meant by disrespecting the author.

I suspect much pirating is rooted in entitlement, and the moralizing comes after.

> Their work is available

Sometimes no, it's not.

Just this morning I was talking with TeMPOraL and we were recalling how the software market looked like in Poland in the nineties (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397694). My "walk down to the store" then would have to be to another country, a thousand kilometers or so; through two or three national borders. It's not that I didn't want to pay with what little money I had, it's just that there was no one who wanted to take my money (besides "pirates", of course).

This is the context for my statement above. Of course, it's rarely that bad nowadays, but it still happens. And how hard getting the content has to be for you to consider it not available? There being physically not one "legal" copy of Windows in the entire country (been there)? Is it enough for the nearest place offering content to be a thousand kilometers away? 500km? 200km? (and no, nobody wanted to even ship it via snail mail, because uncertain laws and such).

As for entitlement... well, that's trickier and I don't want to go there. I can only say that both sides of this argument have interesting and convincing arguments.

That is probably true in most cases, not just of pirating, but of all interactions. We act, we feel, then we justify why we acted and felt such.

Where is this magical store where you can get (say) American TV in non-potato resolution, the day after it comes out?

I don't know, perhaps ones wife has some boudoir photos taken. Just that they exist would entitle anyone to the right to view them, if they could get them? Moreover, say her husband does things to restrict said access, would people really say that that is immoral?

That doesn't seem quite right to me.

Does the content creator (since there would be no 'owner' without copyright) have any say over the use or distribution? I think of all those rock stars that have had politicians misappropriate their songs and then asked them to stop using them over the years. I wonder what that felt like, you wrote this hit song that was powerful and evoked emotion and then someone you are ideologically opposed to tried to use it for their purpose.

>Just that they exist would entitle anyone to the right to view them, if they could get them?

You've got the "rights" the wrong way around - it's not that people have the right to see the boudoir photos, it's that people have the right to copy photos they own, and the husband/wife are not allowed to infringe on that right.

Basically, it's not "thou shalt not kill", rather than "right to life", although people implicitly do have the right to copy.

The exception being, obviously, copyright - which is a temporary state-sanctioned monopoly on the right to copy your works (in other words, you're temporarily the sole holder of the copy right), for the sake of producing more artistic works for the general public.