Just because something doesn't scale into the macro doesn't mean it can't be true and relevant in the micro.

Also, you've extrapolated from "non-zero sum, not all equations balance" into "there is no math", which makes your argument more fallacious than that to which you were responding.

>Just because something doesn't scale into the macro doesn't mean it can't be true and relevant in the micro.

Call me extremist but, I don't agree with this. There's no deprivation happening. It's a crappy thing to do, no doubt, but I can't see any analogy to the 'lost sale' meme tossed around by the various *AA groups that doesn't break down immediately upon any kind of scrutiny.

On another note, I pretty much winced every time the author said "steal". Can we all agree to stop doing this? It's wrong, we know it's wrong, we chide the AA's for this every time they do it, and it's just the same when anyone else does either, going back to one simple fact: nothing has been stolen.

The hand-wringing over 'steal' that crops up in these threads is hilarious. If the whole piracy thing was as logically tight as the armchair economists would like you to believe, then the misappropriation of terms would not be so offensive. It'd be merely annoying. Instead, we often find vast treatises on semantics.

I'm not saying you pirate (that's your business), more observing the disconnect between the argument ("it doesn't hurt anyone") and the tone ("but DON'T call it stealing!!")

People may find arguments about semantics silly, but they are important. Just take a look at the whole brouhaha about evolution just being a theory: a large part of that whole disconnect stems from two meanings of the word "theory" that are not synonyms but are still very close. This is exactly the problem we want to avoid with "theft"--calling copying theft says as little about it as calling evolution a theory.

That is, there is either the proper meaning in context (e.g. infringing copyright) which does not mesh with the common definition or there is the common definition (depriving somebody of property) which does not mesh with the context. People framing copyright infringement as "theft" want to take advantage of emotional connotations of the word in much the same way as people capitalizing on the fact that evolution is "just a theory".

>more observing the disconnect between the argument ("it doesn't hurt anyone") and the tone ("but DON'T call it stealing!!")

I don't think anyone is claiming it doesn't hurt anyone (if everyone did it... etc), rather protesting against the fact that the copyright maximalist lobby has campaigned, with great success, to conflate two unrelated crimes in people's minds. (I'm not even going to touch the whole 'piracy' thing) I don't know about you, but I hate seeing people be played for fools.

Copyright infringement and stealing have about as much to do with each other as speeding and vehicular manslaughter.

I like the word "pirate". Everybody understands its meaning. Its not confused with the unlawfull appropiation of somebody's property ( stealing ), but it does have a negative connotation.

Was that supposed to be a joke? Piracy is robbery at sea - ie stealing by force using a boat.

It's like calling bullying 'murder'.

Check a recent dictionary. Take it up with Princeton if you don't like the definition:

* (pirate) copy illegally; of published material

* (pirate) someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation

* (pirate) commandeer: take arbitrarily or by force; "The Cubans commandeered the plane and flew it to Miami"

The parents point was that it is not confused with 'stealing' though. Whilst, as you and I both noted it in fact means stealing (well robbing).

Copyright infringement is just that, or 'unlawful copying' if you're afraid of longer words.

Except it also means, as per pretty much every dictionary, to copy unlawfully. The same cannot be said of theft/stealing.

So if a headline refers to, let's say, 'Somali pirates' you disavow any confusion in the scope of activity in which the subjects are engaged?

In which case you rely on the context (you know, like you have to do with every other ambiguity in English ^^)

Considering how often Somalian criminals have been hijacking ships, and how this has been covered on pretty much every media form, I don't think there will be any confusion on this matter anytime soon.

Also, the verb form (Someone is pirating something) is in my experience almost exclusively used for copyright infringement. I've never heard of pirates pirating a shipment, but I've heard plenty of pirates pirating music.

In my completely uneducated view of the world, this situation is different because, whichever supermarket you pay at, you're cashing in on the skill and time which you previously contributed to society. You're also "voting with your dollar" and giving society some feedback about what it needs less and more of.

When you take something without paying for it, and that thing has a price, then you're saying that society owes you more than what it has judged your own value to be. That price of that object has been set relative to the price of your wages, in a long process of trial and error. Others need to work in order to pay for this thing, but you don't think that you do. That's how I see it from a moral standpoint.

I'm not following your train of thought in the second paragraph, but the statement "copying is needing" needs more qualification. And on the topic of needing: if you truly don't need something, then you should in fact let society "cut the fat". But if there was no one to make the software that you pirated, and if you actually never got to use the thing which you claim (I think) not to need, then would you have been just as happy? I think, if you use something that you "don't need", then you're just lying.

My own restaurant analogy for this is that piracy would be like a very stupidly run restaurant opening a free all-you-can-eat buffet out back, in addition to a full price menu. In the absence of a disincentive, no self-serving person would pay full price.

The supply of copyable software is infinite, but not the supply of time needed to make it. In order to make sure that B isn't undervalued, we can do any of the following:

- Artificially limit supply of A (drm).

- Find someone who values A more than you do (advertisers).

- Make people pay for B rather than for A (kickstarter).

You bring some interesting points so let start with the moral standpoint. If voting with your dollar should be the method to give society feedback what is needed, roads and water should be the most expensive items one pay for. Voting with your dollar sound fine in theory, but try to find a single study proving it. There is none, and studies like "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" by Economist George Akerlof, and those produced by Amartya Sen should shine some light on why.

Copying is as simple as needing, that is the amount of energy and action needed to copy something, is about the same as just simply needing something. Like star trek replicators, you ask for something, and a perfect copy materialize. If I was hungry and I asked the replicator for a piece of bread, would I be depriving the baker of salary? So the question ends up, how should the baker be payed for the first loaf of bread. A dollar for each copy made from it? When the poor is then denied said bread and dies because he does not have that dollar for a copy, is that then murder or good for society?

So how do we make it valuable to develop. My answer would be:

- Society should pay for infrastructure, be that roads, water, or network infrastructure. (Tax)

- Industry regulations should regulate the industry, not private people. If a company want to do earn profit by using software made by others, they should pay. (CC-BY-NC)

- Concepts like media tax would work quite fine, if distributed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The current media tax seen at places like Canada and Sweden are twisted forms of that where the collectors take the largest share, and then popularity in radio takes the rest. (Media tax).

- Products do compete against free and sometimes wins. Look at the "$9.99" bin at the supermarket. When the product is offered as convenience, it does not matter if at the back, down the stairs, through the window, next to the gutter, there is a "free all-you-can-eat buffet" of pirated goods. This goes back to Industry regulations. Regulate people who are running for-profit operations and that is enough to create value for the producer. (lets call that economics)