I suppose we should treat jaywalking with the same hard line approach. The justification for both only benefits those who can push such laws.

Everyone hates copyright until it's their work being stolen.

Debatable at best. Art is produced out of passion, if the passion becomes overly monetized then it becomes pretty clear it stops being a reflection of the artist, and more so in the name of profit, which kills innovation.

Take for example, Wes Anderson movies. They aren't ranking in the billions after a successful weekend, but they don't have too because the folks involved recognize it's a passion project. I mean the cast alone is indicative that they're willing to take on a role that pays maybe a quarter of what they normally receive in other flicks.

The starving artist is a trope for a reason. Just admit that you don't want to pay for things.

Copyright doesn't provide an income floor to creative workers. Unions do.

Copyright is what allows that income in the first place.

Income for the publishing company. A lot of musicians don't earn a dime from recording sales until the publishing company first gets a return on investment. Hence bands focusing on live performance revenue, selling CDs on the spot, and merchandise.

It's just so obvious to me that it's a civil violation, not a criminal one.

The amount of law enforcement resources we dedicate to piracy compared to, say, death threats, illegal weapons trade, etc seems completely disproportionate.

Violating laws against attacking and robbing ships at sea is terrible. Violating laws protecting imaginary property rights is quite another. Don't get them confused.

Taking something without paying for it is morally wrong, there's no justification for it. You aren't stealing bread to feed your family, you're stealing a tv show.

You’re replying to the guy who likes that it became •legally• wrong, with the full weight of the state behind it.

Is this a good position?

Why or why not?

Define "taking."

Acquiring something without compensation.

The record companies can claim they compensated the artist, even if the math is bogus.

See Steve Albini’s open letter to the music industry for the full accounting…from the nineties when labels made their artists •really• dance for their shekels…

Best example I know of Lawful Evil…

Define "acquiring."

You keep using words that inherently equivocate between transfer-of-property acts and copying-of-property acts. Choose your words more carefully, and then make the same argument.

No amount of definitions will change your mind. Either you think downloading an mp3 is wrong or you don't. I think it's wrong but I do it anyway, that's intellectual honesty.

> Either you think downloading an mp3 is wrong or you don't.

No, I don't think my sense of morality inherently has anything to say about downloading an mp3, one way or the other. There's no instinct in humans that pattern-matches on the idea of copying information that someone else created being a particular "cultural touchstone" or "human right", nor of it being "disgusting" or "taboo."

But something being "not immoral" doesn't make it okay. Without a clear sense of moral value to an action, that action's worth comes down to an ethical question — a question that has to be resolved with ethical arguments, questions of utility and harm and fairness and "the curtain of ignorance" and so forth.

And my point is that you're failing to make those arguments.

Would you steal a dvd from best buy, assuming you weren't legally punished for it?

Again, you're leaning on a moral intuition about theft of physical property. The problem Best Buy have, in that situation, is that they would have to themselves buy another copy of the DVD in order to then have the stock of it to sell. It's shrinkage, like stealing a TV.

This does not pertain to downloading an MP3.

Like I said: make an ethical argument, not a moral argument. Stop attempting to rely on moral intuitions; there are no good moral intuitions for this, any more than there are good moral intuitions for e.g. the ethics of someone who can "fork off" copies of their mind, forcing those copies to merge back together with them. It's just not something that ever came up in our evolution!

Your statement thinks people being unindicted international felons (ACTA) is good for the country…somehow going overboard solves something…

What, exactly?

I think criminals should be punished by the legal system. Stealing a TV or tv show, society breaks down when laws are not enforced.

Enforcement with draconian laws continues to see Resistance.

Defenders are convinced that they are fighting the righteous fight.

Film at 11.