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A comment on US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier piracy world into chaos. Parent comment

Re:US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier pir... by abakker on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @03:05PM (#24286015)
that might be a great idea, except this thread started with the blanket statement that we should all just steal it, not invest at all. Maybe cultural investment can be coordinated, but until then, I think the solution should be for the distributed act of paying for what you want will be preferable.

The less-than-optimal implementation of copyright doesn't justify theft.

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Re:US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier pir... by matheusmoreira on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @03:27PM (#24286263)
> this thread started with the blanket statement that we should all just steal it

No, I said that the choice to "pirate" was always available and that the way the copyright industry was trying to remove that choice was problematic.

> The less-than-optimal implementation of copyright doesn't justify theft.

Copyright infringement is not theft. Prevention of copyright infringement doesn't justify abusive and invasive DRM technologies either. The copyright industry should not gain full control over what software is allowed to run on people's computers just because they're losing money.

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Re:US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier pir... by Silhouette on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @09:21PM (#24289249)
Copyright infringement is not theft.

That's just a legal technicality. Either the viewer got to enjoy the work and the rightsholder got the corresponding money in their bank account, or they didn't. Whether a work was ripped before any payment was made, or the work was legally acquired but then the payment was stolen back from the bank account, the end result is functionally the same.

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Re:US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier pir... by DanBC on Thursday August 27, 2020 @11:11AM (#24294447)
> That's just a legal technicality.

No, it really isn't. The vast majority of copyright infringement isn't even a criminal offence. It becomes a criminal offence if you do it as part of business, or if you distort trade to a significant amount.

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Re:US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier pir... by account42 on Thursday August 27, 2020 @10:44AM (#24294158)
By that logic you should be able to sue people for lost sales because they were not interested in your product at all.
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Re:US indictments of piracy group members throw top-tier pir... by sjy on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @06:49PM (#24288203)
If you agree that copyright is less-than-optimal, but you don’t think that civil disobedience of copyright laws is helpful or ethical, then what suggestion do you have for reforming the system? To my mind, “less-than-optimal” is an understatement of the problems with the copyright model, particularly as applied to libraries and academic research.
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