Ask HN: What are the strongest moral arguments against piracy?

Re:Ask HN: What are the strongest moral arguments against pi... by csallen on Saturday February 11, 2012 @02:52AM (#3578811)

  > Piracy is where the consumer side of a transaction takes 
    without permission. That's cheating. It is immoral.

That's not what piracy is, actually. Piracy is simply "an infringement of copyright". And copyright is the exclusive right to copy a work, distribute it for sale to the public, perform it publicly, display it publicly, or create derivatives from it. It's not really comparable to a normal transaction.

  > It sounds like you believe personal financial gain is
    inherently immoral. Many people do feel this way. Many
    people don't.

Well, that's not really what I believe. I do own a company after all. It doesn't get much more financial gain-seeking than that :)

The original intention of copyright was as follows: Ideas, expression, and information have no owners. They belong to the public because of free speech and all. However, this discouraged their creation, because if you wrote a book someone could just put their name on it and mass-produce it, giving you no credit. So lawmakers said how about we give authors a limited time to benefit financially from copyright. That will be a great incentive for them to create new works. However, after that time ends, the public should enjoy unrestricted use. That way we don't create monopolies on free speech and expression.

My problem is that we're straying from this original intent. The entire purpose was to prevent monopolies* on information. You used to only have copyrights for 28 years, max, before the public got full control over it. Since then, content companies and artists have endlessly lobbied Congress to give them more power, and today copyrights last an entire lifetime PLUS 70 years. Nothing ever enters the public domain.

So the real question is: How can you argue that copyright infringers are immoral, when the reality is that copyright holders are the ones who've violated the original intent of the law purely for personal gain? Their actions are ion violation of almost every moral foundation you listed (fairness, liberty, authority, betrayal, degradation).

  > You should assume the opposite of your bias and form
    your argument on that basis. It will make for a stronger 
    argument.

Thanks for the feedback.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What are the strongest moral arguments against pi... by SteveJS on Saturday February 11, 2012 @02:25PM (#3579916)

>How can you argue that copyright infringers are immoral, when the reality is that copyright holders are the ones who've violated the original intent of the law purely for personal gain?

I'd rephrase this as taking from copyright holders (violating the terms proffered) is moral because the holders are immoral.

This is precisely an argument based on justice/fairness. It sounds like you are taking a moral stand that piracy is equivalent to principled protest.

Taking a song for free when you are expected to pay for it isn't the same as refusing to go to the back of the bus, unless you do so with the explicit intent of suffering unjust consequences in the service of changing a bad law or social norm.

I believe it is uncontroversial that most piracy is done with the expectation of not being caught. Arguing for piracy is a difficult moral position because it is a 'small wrong' (breaking a proffered contract) with highly unlikely consequences. If you wish to take the principled protest stand you need to argue that it is right to pirate content with the intent to get caught.

Getting away with piracy doesn't really work as a moral stand. (Advocating piracy can be a pragmatic stand for the creative destruction of specific industries ... but that alone doesn't transform the individual act of piracy into moral one.)

A clean separation of 'pragmatic' or 'force of history' arguments from 'moral' arguments may serve you better.

For moral arguments you cannot ignore the moral consequences of the individual actions advocated. It's the classic doing wrong for the greater good. Breaking the law for principled protest is moral because the protester is seeking the consequences of breaking the law rather than avoiding the consequences.

[ Parent | on HN ]