Humanist values include right to property ownership, and the right to get the benefits of your work. Artists deserve that, and can sell their rights to big studios if they want.
Just because it's easy to copy something, or just because studio execs were idiots who wouldn't get on board with streaming, or whatever else, doesn't mean it's morally right to copy someone's work for free.
It's perfectly fine to copy someone else's work. The immorality comes in when you start using physical force to punish people thinking thoughts you feel entitled to.
Copying scientific ideas (with attribution!) is completely OK and good.
Having heterodox ideas is vital for society.
Forcing people to think certain thoughts (or trying to) is the worst evil.
But making a movie is a commercial enterprise that involves risking a bunch of capital. It rarely pans out to make a profit. Copying it without payment is a very minor form of theft, but it's still theft.
Like forcing people think that copying is theft? Or that by clicking a button you agree to few hundred page agreement you couldn't possibly read or understand?
If the content is a movie created in the last 100 years, it was almost certainly created to slot into that revenue model.
The artists have a right to sell their property on their terms. And if they decide to do so by selling their rights to a studio, then that's how it is. And if you don't like corporations, contracts, or the revenue model, then that's completely irrelevant to the parties involved.
Furthermore, what is and isn't legal is a product of the legislature and the judiciary. Let's not forget that people write laws and interpret laws. They aren't some function of the cosmic order, though it's convenient to posture them as if they were.
When someone "has the right," it's because a group of people gave it to them, and anything that can be given, can be taken away. The fact that we forget this reality is a massive collective hallucination. Once you know how the hallucination works, it's hard to buy into it ever again.
TLDR; The arrow of implication doesn't go from reality -> laws. It goes from laws -> reality.
The pirated works were created under this understanding of the rules.
In other words, movies and games were financed and made at great expense and effort with a view to selling copies and tickets and making money off of VHS rentals / Netflix streaming. Piracy is a clear subversion of this, and by the way, if it became mainstream, would break the industry that creates some of the things we like.
While the law isn't part of some cosmic order, there's nothing written in the stars that entitles you to every creation of every other person, at your convenience, for free.
I'm glad there's room for both and the gray areas in between.
Do we, for example, have an obligation to those who play by laws we believe to be unjust?
If movie productions were so concerned about profit, maybe they should stop all the Hollywood accounting nonsense.
The industry has just made several films surpassing a billion dollars. The industry is absolute fine. And someone downloading Deadpool isn't stealing or doing any harm to that industry.
If people want to pay for it they will, and if they don't they won't. If I don't have enough talent to make a lot of money from my work, then that's the only reason - not piracy.
for sharing or facilitating the thinking of thoughts you feel entitled to.*
This was also a time before mass copying and distribution on a massive scale.
1. All information wants to be free.
2. The second something is digitized it becomes "free".
3. Artificially depriving someone of something that is free for personal profit is immoral.
1. All information wants to be free.
Information on the order of complexity of a movie cannot want anything.
2. The second something is digitized it becomes "free".
Nearly free to copy, doesn't mean you're free to take it.
3. Artificially depriving someone of something that is free for personal profit is immoral.
I get the sentiment here but I don't think it follows in the context of an artist creating something specifically to make money from it when it gets distributed.
To try to own information is like trying to own a flame. I lit your candle with my candle, so I own the flame on your candle. Making a copy is the same. To claim you own the copy is just plain stupid.
Information can be any collection of bits. You can copy these easily and almost for free.
But almost nobody cares about information in the abstract. I'm talking about specific, artful arrangements of bits. Lots of effort goes into making sequences of bits. (we can give our sequence of bits names like "The Lion King" or "Windows 98"). You only want a copy of these bits because of the effort that went into it.
Of course nobody can control how you flip the bits on your hard drive in practice, but that's missing the point. It's a particular arrangement of bits that you find entertaining or informative or useful, somebody put a lot of work into making it that way, and it's this creative effort that you end up enjoying and paying for, not the actual bits.
And of course you are depriving the artists of something - a royalty payment. The art was likely created with a view to that royalty payment. Which is why you want to pirate it in the first place. You want to enjoy the creative work without having to shell out for it.
You can come up with elaborate arguments about information theory, but in the end this is what it comes down to - pirates want other people to create value for them, for free, and will howl about "corporations" and "information wants to be free" to try and justify it.
I don't owe artists any royalties just because they say so. If they demand a kiss they won't get it either. I won't be bound by arbitrary restrictions around the physical matter in my possession.
There's a lot of "me me me" in this. If you want to live in a lawless society where morality revolves only around what is physically possible, that might be possible on some remote island; but don't be surprised if nobody on that island bothers to build any million dollar flame-lighting machines for your benefit.
2. No. It becomes easily copyable.
3. Irrelevant, given the problems with 1 and 2.
The phrase means "want" in the same way water "wants" to flow downhill.