How about this: a young woman has a sick child in a jurisdiction without universal health care. Her income is insufficient to pay for his treatment, so she has sex with some rich men in exchange for money. Sadly, prostitution is illegal.
Is it ever right to break the law in order to improve your prospects (or those of your family)? Some would say it is a moral imperative.
Well.... If the easy availability of the torrent led to more sales than it diminished, then the crime is still victimless regardless of your datapoint, since the supposed victim actually received a benefit.
This may seem far fetched, but I understand that for all but the largest block busters, there is some evidence that this is true for films: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2176246
If you're a film maker, making non-blockbuster films, you should probably be supporting piracy from a purely financial point of view. I fully expect that the same is true in music as well. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/48001/pirates-more-music-onl...
By that definition a criminal who steals a a physical product from a store is guilty of both stealing the product and depriving the store of his hypothetical future patronage.
What about producing better substitute product. Am I guilty because I create a product that stops people from buying your product?
If it's not the act of piracy that makes it immoral, but the result, then anything else that has the same result should be equally immoral.
>> you are doing something wrong and...
>> keep doing it if you wish?
Because we believe there’s honestly nothing wrong with it.
Paraphrasing you: I don’t understand what is wrong with accepting that pirates are doing something right and... abstain from doing it if you wish?
Your belief is not required. Laws are laws.
To be honest, I don't care about people pirating stuff. It is the moral justifications that seem rather specious at best. What is wrong with accepting that you are doing something wrong and... keep doing it if you wish?