This is yet another example of a semantic argument as a proxy for values. What matters is not whether piracy "is theft", it's how bad we think it is. But by framing the argument as a semantic one, it ensures that people will focus on technicalities and constantly talk past each other, all the while ignoring what actually matters.

Agreeing to either definition of the word "theft" is not going to make either side suddenly change their opinion of piracy.

So can we all just agree that copying a file without consent and taking a physical object without consent are qualitatively different acts, and have a direct discussion of their relative morality instead?

This rather shows how hardened the fronts between the positions already are.

If I copy the numbers in a very rich person's bank account to my bank account, I haven't stolen anything from them. All I've done is made a copy of some information.

And yet one kind of copying generates rants about the cultural value of free distribution, while the other generates nothing but fear and horror.

It's all very strange. And not particularly thoughtful or consistent.

IMO either you have a free economy, in which case you make every damn thing free, or you accept that rules of ownership are necessary and that the output of labour has value independent of the ease with which it can be copied.

Claiming that rules of ownership are irrelevant for IP you personally want from others, but very important for IP you personally want to monopolise, is the very worst kind of special pleading.

Money is the agreement that a given person has a given amount of money. That's why blockchains, which allow distributed consensus, can be used to establish currencies.

If, by "intangible bit patterns", you mean the credentials for someone's bank account, this is also not the same as a copy of a creative work. By having a copy of credentials you have the ability to change how much money the person has. This is very illegal to do without consent. Analogously, nobody is suggesting we should be able to legally break into the author's computer and modify their copies of their book.

Ownership is about control over things. The author has control over their copy, and I have control over mine.

Rules of ownership are necessary for rivalrous goods, and not for others. Citing Thomas Jefferson,

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."

When we're talking about copying information, the issue isn't fraud, it's that you copied somebody else's recipe and made your own version. Now if you were selling this thing and representing it as your own, that would be one thing, but if you're just using it for personal reasons, people might look at it differently. It's as if you found the recipe for a Big Mac and made your own in your own kitchen for your family using your own materials. McDonalds might not like that because you aren't buying theirs, but I don't think they have any legal way to stop you from cooking a Big Mac copy. You could even sell it as long as you don't use their trademark.

Media companies, however, can stop you from "cooking your own Big Mac," even when you make that copy with your own equipment in your own home for personal use. You aren't allowed to use the recipe for a copyrighted media file, in some cases, even if you bought the original (because of having to circumvent DRM). Lawrence Lessig used an example of an ebook of a public domain work that contains the stipulation "this book may not be read aloud." The only justification for this distinction between rights to these recipes is that the law doesn't consider a recipe for food or flavors to be substantial original works but does consider a recipe for sounds or text to be original works of authorship. Some people would see this as an arbitrary distinction. We simply made computers too good at copying things to work within a traditional publishing framework.

None of this automatically makes any of these things ethical, but it's entirely possible and not hypocritical to have differing opinions about fraud and copying. Some people are concerned about the ethics of restricting copying in the way we do. It gives big advantages to those who have been first to file patents and copyrights, companies like Disney who have made their fortune by adapting public domain works and then copyrighting their versions and extending them perpetually. Some people see this as a movement toward a world where no creativity is allowed because somebody owns all of the foundational ideas, stories, and sounds on which we base our culture, which is always derivative of the past. It's already difficult to create anything without being assaulted by lawsuits, and this problem is only getting increasingly worse. To some people, avoiding this dystopia of a ban on creative works is much more important than protecting the profits of established companies with large legal departments. As the world is joining the global economy, they're increasingly being forced to adopt the intellectual property laws of the same countries that have been exploiting them and appropriating their best ideas for generations. Now they're finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the information economies of the already rich. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Sure, it's a big faceless corporation that already has billions of dollars, so it's as offensive. but it's basically the same thing as a GPL violation. Whenever a big corporation steals, err, I mean 'copies,' GPL code and refuses to give the output away, they aren't actually stealing, they were never going to contribute anything anyways...

Not exactly; I'm saying the benefits to society as a whole offered by the post-scarcity nature of data on the Internet (infinitely copiable with negligible cost) is so large that, in my opinion, their right to decide who should access the content is far less important and so should be ignored.

It certainly sucks for them; and it certainly means that we need to think about new models to finance content creation (since we are living in a definitely scarcity-based society in real life, for now at least); but there you go.

And you say they are the "owner" of the content; given the current laws, yes, "they" usually posess the content. But the "they" in question is very often great industry behemoths constructed on the old, physical model of distribution; regularly offering incredibly bad deals to content creators.

As I said, when a content creator distributes its content directly or with a non-DRM intermediary (such as GoG) - and I consider, for example, both netflix and steam as little more than new forms of DRM - then I always pay for it. I pay for it because we still don't have a new model allowing free distribution of data while providing incentives for content creators (a global licence mechanism or something similar - easier said than done), and so I see it as a compromise in the meantime. It also encourages those new means of distribution.

I run a software training company. We provide streaming access to recordings made of the live session for which a student purchased a seat. Pay for a four day class, and you can stream the recording of that four day class for, at the least, 18 months. Why 18 months? That's all we promise, ideas end up being available for longer - five years and counting now - and in 18 months the class tends to have changed enough that we'd rather you just attend again (for free, if it's online).

Do you have the right to pirate the videos that my students paid for? Do they have the right to share it with people who didn't attend the course, and are thus missing the context of the classroom experience (and the web site where updated materials/code samples are dispensed)?

Thinking that everything you do, even selfishly, is somehow ethically laudable is not a sign of maturity.

You don't really give arguments to counter beyond the ad hominem attack, but let me try to explain why I think this way.

We have the capability to copy and distribute at negligible cost most of the cultural & educational content (books, scientific articles, movies, music, etc.) ever produced by humanity to our entire species; and because we don't have the same capability for physical things, we impose an artificial scarcity on this. Think of the enormous amounts of money and man hours spent on intellectual property: lawyers, consulting firms, etc... entire industries dedicated to limit our capability as a species to distribute knowledge and cultural content.

Now, if only a portion of these efforts had been spent towards spreading network infrastructure and creating, spreading and supporting educational material to the widest amount of people possible, where would we be right now as a species ? Given that, I can help but think that yes, copyright and intellectual property is more of an issue globally than a solution to the problem of incentivizing content production.

So no, it's not only rationalization of my "wrong" behavior (part of it probably is, sure); I genuinely believe this, and I genuinely believe that ignoring those laws and downloading content illegally is a form of non-violent (and massively followed) social protest; the mass reaction of the individuals in society to absurd laws.

As I said above, some sort of new economic model should have to be found for this to be viable; hence why compromise is necessary in the meantime (and hence why yes, I also pay for content when it is distributed in a way that in my view helps to go towards that direction).

I apologize for being rude earlier. I remember once feeling very self-righteous about my own disregard for copyright, and as my feelings have now switched to the opposite side of the issue I think I may have projected my own hang-ups onto you. It's a complicated topic, and I certainly don't think that always complying with copyright law makes anyone a saint either.

Why would you think people would disagree with that?

Don't confuse the economic and moral rights in copyright. When you copy something you aren't necessarily depriving someone of their rights so much as disregarding their awarded monopoly. Just like you usually do if you make moonshine or take a unlicensed taxi.

It's anecdotal at this point but also worth noting that the earliest conception of copyright in the colonial era had nothing to do with protecting creators and everything to do with allowing distributors and regulators get a piece of the pie.

If the current framework written was fully applied, it would not last two full election cycles.