As for the rest, it's very possible that despite how much thought I've put into it, I'm completely wrong.
Offtopic, but your focus on the word "simply" made me wonder if I'd said it. I hadn't, so I'm curious as to the focus on it.
To me, if someone creates (or has) something unique, and doesn't want someone else to have it, then they should not. It doesn't matter to me whether it's freely available on the pirate bay, or locked up in their sock drawer; they created it, not me, and if they want me to have it, they'll either give it to me, or make it available to me to purchase.
Anything else violates their wishes on their thing.
That is, if you and only yourself have it, it's of course immoral for me to coerce you to give it to me, or to take it from you against your will. But if you give (a copy of) that information to a third party, the third party now owns a copy, and should have the same rights about it as you have. Which includes giving that information to me, for free.
There's no other way for it to work that makes sense. Just like you don't have a right to tell something to someone and then issue a gag order, you shouldn't have such right to any other form of information.
Of course, exceptions are being made because of the economy, but then let's be clear - piracy is bad because of economic reasons, not moral ones. Morally you're privileged by being able to limit distribution of information in the first place.
This is an extraordinary amount of personalized respect to give faceless companies who are literally only acting as they do in order to extract the maximum amount of money from "content" they did not create.
> To me, if someone creates (or has) something unique, and doesn't want someone else to have it, then they should not. It doesn't matter to me whether it's freely available on the pirate bay, or locked up in their sock drawer; they created it, not me, and if they want me to have it, they'll either give it to me, or make it available to me to purchase.
That's what I would call an argument that comes across as 'simple'. Self-evident, almost. But because so many intelligent, moral people disagree, there's probably some element in there that you're oversimplifying (from the perspective of those who hold a different point of view). Not acknowledging that is what bothered me, but of course it's fair enough if you hold this view and express it as your perspective.
Anyways, I do see your point, and I do respect it. The way I see it, nobody can fault you for choosing to be more 'restrictive' or 'narrow' in your ethical framework (where 'narrow' is not meant as an insult)!
I could defend my point of view by saying that I would simply not download certain things if there was no easy way to do so, but clearly we disagree on this issue. But arguing that it's 'simply' lack of respect for your fellow man and 'simply' taking does not do the issue justice.
Either it is as simple as you say, and all of us who pirate are lesser creatures than yourself (which would be convenient to conclude), or it's not as simple as you say. I don't really see how there's a third option, and that's the problem I had with your comment.