It's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. If someone steals my car I no longer have my car. If someone copies my car my car loses values because there is now one extra copy of my car floating around.

If intellectual property is indeed property, it can be stolen. Considering (in the US, at least), intellectual property is codified within the Constitution, it's pretty hard to say it isn't real.

Edit: to be clear, I agree it's not 'theft', but am pushing back on the way this distinction is sometimes used to insinuate that it is victimless (not saying the poster above is claiming that, just that it's worth pointing out)

Often when you have to qualify something (intellectual property instead of just property), it's because it's used as a metaphor instead of a subcategory. Intellectual property is a form of property as much as political science is a form of science.

You can metaphorically say it's theft, but it doesn't manifest as theft of actual property.

For example: many people (myself included) have downloaded the $1.000.000 torrent (a list of files whose value amounts to a million dollars). I found nothing of use in it so I just deleted it. Did I cause a million dollars in damages? Was the damage restored when I deleted it?

If you consider the same for actual property there's no question about it. Stealing a Bugatti does cause millions to be lost, and destroying it makes it irrecoverable.

entertainment is a service industry. Extracting the service value without providing the requested fee is stealing.

You've posted 67 (!) comments in this thread, mostly making the same point over and over in angry ways.

I get that you have legit reasons for feeling strongly about this topic, but this is way over the top, so please don't do it on HN. We want curious conversation here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> You want something. You don't want to pay for it. You take it without paying.

This is an age old argument... I'm not taking anything. I'm merely looking at something. The same way that I'm not "stealing from Leonardo" when I look at statue of David. I understand that the makers of the movie had some hopes of monetizing my looking but alas, they failed. Based on pure logic alone, it's clear that piracy is not theft, it's something else.

You don't take it, you make a new, identical copy of it, leaving any previously existing copy intact.

So if I make a new, identical copy of a GPL'ed codebase - should I feel free to use it for whatever purpose I want and ignore the GPL?

I will happily take your money and provide you with a new, identical copy of it if that's the deal you want to make.

That doesn't make any sense as an allegory.

Nobody is TAKING anything. Everything is at the place where it belongs.

Also if you'd be able to make identical copies of money, of course people would accept it.

I generally support this argument, but to play devil's advocate, you might consider the bit stream used to transfer the content to be new bits. The file may be a bit-for-bit copy if you ask a computer, but streaming it required a series of voltage fluctuations that wouldn't have happened otherwise. You could consider that series of events to be roughly analogous to a CD-ROM containing some content. You can load the CD onto two computers and get two copies of its content, but there are two physically distinct CDs just like there are two physically distinct series of bits streaming to two locations.

Literally the NFT argument

An NFT is a certificate of authenticity. Copies of the associated item don't have a valid certificate. Getting satisfaction from a copy is orthogonal to the value associated with the authenticated original.

I'll go into your mailbox and take your paycheck. I'll provide you with a new identical copy of it. I'll leave the previous existing copy intact, but in my possession.

Which one of us gets to deposit the money?

You're copying the check but stealing the money. The money and the check are not the same thing.

If I copy your car key and use it to steal your car. I've copied the key but stolen your car.

You're copying the entertainment value provided and stealing the income that is related to that value.

Theft is when you take something from someone. As in, what you have materially gained, they have materially lost. Copyright infringement is not theft, and must be treated differently, because what you gain, nobody has lost; the supply is infinite.

If you accuse someone of stealing the income, but they haven't gotten any money out of it, how does that make sense? What you're describing is a missed opportunity for a sale; had someone 'stolen' nothing and simply passed the product by, you would still not have made that sale and nothing would have changed.

What about borrowing from public libraries? Buying a used legitimate disc at a garage sale? Are people who do this in the wrong?

Finally! I agree with this. I think that physically purchased goods should be free from any sort of "DRM." and is not stealing.

The difference is one party at a time, i.e. household, library patron, etc, can enjoy the entertainment service.

When you pirate it, The original owner of the dvd retains the service value as well as providing the service to others without any value being transferred to the workforce/IP holders.

That's the difference and I personally am all in for a mythical solution that but still allows complete freedom of ownership while also stopping people from digitally reproducing assets and dispensing them exponentially.

I don't believe it will ever happen tho :/

But you agree, that there is a difference between copying information and taking physical objects away?

I seriously don't understand why this point keeps getting repeated. It is just semantics!

Yes, we all know copying a digital show isn't the same exact thing as stealing your car. However, you are still taking something of value! Let's say you snuck into my band's concert venue and didn't buy a ticket. Yeah you didn't physically take anything from me, but you are having access to something you shouldn't without paying.

No, I am not taking anything of value. You still have all the things of value you had before. The difference between a rivalrous good and a non-rivalrous good is not semantics.

The mental gymnastics to justify piracy as anything other than theft is always interesting to watch.

So is the substitution of moral smugness for complex thought.

Call it stealing it or not, non rivalrous or whatever, the point is that the movie owners have intellectual property rights to their movies and can decide how it is distributed.

If you think that's a dumb deal then you don't have to take it. Pirating it is simply wrong.

piracy is receiving the service value of entertainment without providing the requested fee.

Another word for it is stealing.

For receiving the service value of entertainment of reading this comment, I request a fee of $1,000.

Is my request reasonable? Do you feel inclined to pay me? Do I incur $1000 of damages if you choose not to?

Theft is not defined by the receiving, it is defined by the taking. The moral ill is not you being enriched, it is the person who had it rightfully, being deprived of it.

"Let's say you snuck into my band's concert venue and didn't buy a ticket. Yeah you didn't physically take anything from me, but you are having access to something you shouldn't without paying."

And this is again a physical situation, where one more person takes up limited space, reducing something.

Copying does not reduce anything.

It also does not contribute anything, true, so I am not saying it is always ethical to do so.

But when a poor person in bangladesh or bolivia living under very different economic realities, where 10$ means a LOT and who could never afford to pay for western realities anyway, streams some hollywood movie from a warez site - than I see zero damage. And guess what, they all do. So do poor teenagers and students in the west and they usually start paying, once they can afford it.

Judging them all as "thefts" from a position of being born into wealth, is maybe not very ethical either. So to repeat it again, stealing implies taking something away. Which is not the case here.