Saying that "when you pirate something the creator loses zero money" is an even worse argument.

You actually missed my point though (but I concede I used a rather simplified argument).

I was actually taking the "it's not available in my area" or "it's to expensive" argument of the OP to justify piracy to its logical conclusion.

I was pointing out that you can't circumvent the creator/owner's choices or restrictions on distribution, availability and pricing (i.e. "the food is too expensive here") just because you don't agree with them. It's not a level playing field.

If you don't like the creator's choices, don't participate in his creation. There really is no other choice.

While digital media creates the illusion of the "victimless crime" because you aren't taking something physical, it doesn't remove the fact that you are benefiting from someone else's hard work without agreeing to their terms of use, whatever those may be.

If it is your belief that the creator's terms of use should reign supreme, that is legitimate, but if you want to argue for it then you need to actually argue for it.

I wouldn't say that I missed your point, merely that I objected to a particular argument you used it making it. I realize this is a lower level of discourse than addressing your main point entirely, but I'm hoping that it would raise the level of discourse overall.

For reasons I've never understood, copyright advocates love comparing copyright infringement with physical theft. If copyright infringement is bad then it should be possible, nay preferable, to argue this on its own merits, not through bad analogies.

They argue that way because their inflated claims have no merit. The only justification for copyright that doesn't amount to arrogant and unjustifiable claims of "creator privilege" (my phrase, but that is what their wordy arguments amount to) is that given in the US Constitution, as a practical matter "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".

You might notice in "useful arts" that an argument could be made right now, that fiction, music, movies, and video games never should have been covered. And, in fact, music wasn't covered for decades afterward.

I'm hopelessly biased here, because I make video games. But do you not feel that the world would be worse off--culturally and technologically--without a commercial video games industry? And do you not think that the utility of games--faster and more ubiquitous computers--is self-evident when you compare it to a world without a commercial video games industry, but extremely difficult or impossible to anticipate in advance?

Maybe I'm making assumptions that you don't agree with--perhaps you think that a thriving video games industry could exist as strongly in the absence of copyright, or that the video games industry hasn't encouraged advances in computers--but both my claims seem fairly uncontroversial to me.

MMORPGS, or any game where the community counts, don't need copyright to be profitable.

This is appealing but not actually true. In the absence of copyright, no contract exists for downloading the game client, which means no EULA can be enforced. In the absence of a EULA, there are zero legal barriers[0] to people setting up private servers, which are protocol-compatible with the free game client, and hosting their own game, which destroys the business model of the MMO creator.

This is more-or-less an impossible problem to solve technologically at the moment: MMO servers are (by definition) too contended to do more than act as more than glorified packet switches for authoritative clients. The only lever to pull is to put more functionality on the server and off the client, but for a variety of reasons this leads to a less satisfactory user experience.

[0] http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/06/07/the-lawbringer-the-history... -- a quick history of the action by Blizzard against the maker of an in-game bot, legally identical to running a private server. Note the claims were all either copyright-related, won by the bot-maker, or involved "tortious interference"--i.e. incentivizing the buyer of Glider to break their EULA with Blizzard, which would no longer exist.

Also, as far as lack of copyright crippling music, I am sure that would be astounding news to Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, among many others.

At least two of those composers died in poverty so they might have actually thought that copyright is a good thing.

This a very shortsighted view - of course creators lose money due to pirating.

I'm not even speaking about the concept of sells they may have had in place of theft - that is simple conjecture. There is no doubt that less money flowing in to the industry, as a direct result of piracy, means less money for creators. Is anyone honestly suggesting media sales haven't declined due to pirating?

I'm not a proponent of the industry as it currently functions, but I dislike the offhand spread of disinformation - less money spent on purchases will indirectly, and sometimes directly, result in less money for creators.

Creators fail to gain money. It's not the same as losing money.

By all means, let's talk about the effects of piracy on creators' profits. But let's not pretend that a pirated copy costs the creator anything.

The action and consequences of stealing versus pirating are different. They deserve to be discussed differently. Linking them together is clumsy and doesn't further the discourse.

That sort of argument just comes off as a word game to me, I don't really know what to say to it. It is similar to saying no one dies when they jump out of a window, it is the impact that kills them.

Well, let's look at the various outcomes. There are, I think, three possible actions to consider: A) taking and paying B) taking and not paying C) not taking.

For a restaurant, we get: A) restaurant benefits B) restaurant loses C) restaurant suffers no effect either way.

For piracy, we get: A) creator benefits B) creator suffers no effect either way C) creator suffers no effect either way.

Consider what happens if I organize a thousand people to carry out (B) on something. If it's a restaurant, this could easily drive them out of business. If it's a creator of copyrighted content, they continue with their business as usual.

Note: I'm not saying that (B) is good, or acceptable, or justified, or should be legal, or anything like that, when it comes to copyright infringement. I'm just saying that the two scenarios entail significantly different consequences, and should not be treated as the same thing. Treating them as the same doesn't help the discussion at all: it simply causes people who agree with you to nod their heads, and people who disagree to think you're being disingenuous.

There's a common flaw in this line of argument. In your (B) example, you need to do one more level of analysis:

   i) Would have paid if it were the only option, but would rather get 
      something for nothing
  ii) Would not have paid under any circumstances

Assign probabilities to each of those events and now you know the probability of harm to the creator. Option (i) could be low, but it is not a 0% probability which means that for a sufficiently large sample size the (B) scenario does cause the creator to suffer.

If piracy takes root as something that people 'should' do, then B) in your piracy example leads to the same outcome as B) in your restaurant example.

It deprives them of any income, and removes the incentive and ability for them to produce further content as a means of living in the future.

That deprives all of their future contributions and damages the commons. In summation, at scale, the outcome for both B) scenarios IS the same, and if it is at scale, then there must be an effect not at scale, whether or not you refuse to accept it.

(B) at scale only leads to the same outcome if a substantial number are converted from (A). If people are only converted from (C) then the outcomes are completely different.

In short, the effect of piracy depends entirely on whether the pirates are potential customers. The effect of dine-and-dash does not depend on that. This is, I believe, an extremely significant difference.

What about non-monetary things the creator loses?