We can quibble over the meaning of the word "distributed," but I don't think this has much to do with anything. At the end of the day, the primary function of TPB is to allow users to download TV shows and movies for free. Indeed, the world-changing consequence of TPB shutting down, according to Sunde himself, is that "[i]t tilted people's brains into knowing that tomorrow, their favorite TV show must be downloaded somewhere else." (Though, granted, he imagines that this will cause people to perceive some sort of slippy slope. His argument here seems to depend, however, on conflating TPB with the BT protocol itself.)

Nor is it especially relevant that computers, cash, the Internet, etc. all facilitate crimes, in some sense. TPB is easily distinguishable because its express purpose, and dominant actual use, is to facilitate crime.

I do respect that Sunde was willing to go to jail for his cause. But given the dubious specific goals of TPB as it was actually operated (despite whatever ideology might have supported or motivated it) I can't say that I'm particularly cowed by his moral courage generally.

No, it was a lot different from Reddit or HN. Please stop trying to support the "pirating is okay". It's not. It's theft. You do not need or have to see those shows. You want to watch them and you fulfill that want by pirating. That pirating may cause purchases later is a horrible argument for theft.

>It's theft.

Stop repeating that. It isn't. Even the courts agree on this one.

And TPB did not engage in it either way.

Just because no one was strong armed for a loaf of bread does not mean that a theft did not occur. No one may have been deprived of physical property, but we do not live an entirely physical world. Piracy deprives content creators of opportunity: the opportunity to distribute their products in the way that they see fit. Perhaps this means that they give all of their work away for free through the channels of their choosing. Perhaps they sell it. Perhaps they don't sell it to people who live in certain regions.

As a content creator, shouldn't I have the opportunity to give away my products (or sell them) in a way that I see fit?

Well, sure, you can sell it or give it away for free, that's up to you. But once you give it to someone you give someone a blob of information. Which is identical to the one you still have. That chunk of information is not intrinsically tied to you anymore.

So you can easily control initial distribution. But to restrict further distribution you have to restrict actions of others. You have to limit their freedoms to do with that new copy of information.

Is there a good reason to limit their freedoms? Maybe. But it doesn't occur to me as a natural right. Once you handed over a copy to someone else each of you control an identical set of information. You severed your ties.

So if you want the rights of others restricted then - in my opinion - the burden of constructing a case why they should be is on you.

> "to restrict further distribution you have to restrict actions of others."

... in a way that's not particularly different from the restrictions we place on physical books. JK Rowling doesn't give up her right to control sales/distribution of Harry Potter just because someone bought a hardback edition and owns a scanner or photocopier. Making a pdf or a photocopy of Harry Potter doesn't result in "stealing" any of her physical inventory, but if you resell it or even give it away (private personal use as a backup copy is OK) you can get in serious legal trouble (it would probably be termed "copyright infringement" rather than "theft", but IANAL TINLA.)

If you want to argue that purely digital goods should be handled differently than a digital scan someone made of a physical book, the burden of proof is back on you. Why should Rowling be entitled to sell Harry Potter in dead tree format and be able to treat scans as infringement, but not entitled to sell Harry Potter in digital format while treating unauthorized copies as infringement?

>If you want to argue that purely digital goods should be handled differently than a digital scan someone made of a physical book, the burden of proof is back on you.

I do not. And those restrictions are exactly the same, they are about information. It's not about the dead trees with some pigment sprinkled onto them. It's about the particular arrangement of ink.

And I also say that I am naturally free to do whatever with the book - and the information therein - once I have obtained it.

If my freedom to do anything with it what I want should be restricted - as above, there may be good reasons to do so - then one would have to explain to me why that is, because I see no natural right that the author have over things they passed on to others.

> "I also say that I am naturally free to do whatever with the book - and the information therein - once I have obtained it."

In US law, you are free to resell the book, but you are not free to produce a copy to resell (or to keep the copy and resell the original). You bought a copy of the book, not the rights to redistribute the content as you see fit; those still reside with the author. Others have made the argument about incentivizing content producers by granting those rights, so I will not rehash them.

(I reject your treatment of "natural law" as the only relevant system; I recognize the additional value of "common law" and "positive law".)

Hmm...

You place me in a tricky position, as I am generally against the limitation of freedom.

Yet, it seems that some basic limitation on freedom is an essential part of society.

In general, the most agreeable limitations involve restricting a person's freedom to harm others.

Have content producers been harmed by piracy? I would argue that they have.

Since piracy harms content producers, the rights of others to infringe on their content should be limited.

But that harm is only financial. It's a harm relative to potential profits they could have made if other people's rights to make copies were restricted in the first place.

If you do not assume such a right then no harm is done.

You trivialize our economic system when you describe it as "only financial." People die over money.

I don't want to defend the actions of the copy-write robber-barons. I do not know what the appropriate response for infringement should be. I ignore violations of my own content. Yet I believe that I have a right to the content that I produce. And I respect the rights of others' content. Do you believe that content producers should not have these rights?

You missed half of my point. It's not only "just financial". It's also "just financial harm only if we are pre-supposing the the rights whose natural existence you're trying to prove in the first place"

I do not argue that the rights are natural. They are a legal and economic construct.

There is nothing natural about them. But that does not mean that these rights do not exist.

The question I ask you is, to whom should these rights belong?

The entity that has labored to produce the content? Or the entity that has obtained a copy of that content?

I'm not sure if we're even talking about the same thing then.

In a previous post you said

>"As a content creator, shouldn't I have the opportunity to give away my products (or sell them) in a way that I see fit?"

Which seemed to me like an argument for an intrinsic, natural right that a content creator should have, irrespective of current law.

So either we are arguing over current law, in which case the questions you ask are already settled by courts and we should be discussing whether current law is acceptable.

Or you are arguing about rights that people ought to have, but then you cannot say

>"But that does not mean that these rights do not exist."

If we are arguing about rights that one ought to have then they do no exist a priori, they have to be constructed first.

The point is that copyright infringement isn't the same as theft. Just because they're both illegal doesn't mean they are the same thing.

I dunno. At a low level, piracy is just copying bits. It just so happens that certain bits contain some people's "intellectual property". If we concede that this makes sense and want to fight a losing battle anyway, it becomes a philosophical line-drawing fiesta about the bits you're copying. I propose instead that it's futile for people to try and monetize a certain sequence of bits given a certain interpretation. Then the natural conclusion is to move toward services, like free-to-play games or streaming products where the actual "bits on sale" are free, but the "action of using those bits to bring in the bits you want" is what costs money, rather than whatever the actual bits are.

You could say that about almost any activity in today's digital age. Sending abusive emails, making harassing phone calls, stealing money from people's bank accounts - these are also activities that essentially are also just copying bits.

Describing these in such a way doesn't imply anything about the moral implications.

First, I never said "pirating is okay". Please stop putting words in my mouth. I support the idea that content creators paid for their work. Sometimes, in the context of F/OSS for instance, the creators choose to forgo that directly and often indirectly (e.g. donations).

Secondly, downloading a work under a non-permissive copyright is not theft, and may not even be illegal. Content shifting is a legal thing to do. If I own a DVD one could argue that I could download an already ripped version of the DVD (CSS issues aside).

Third, not everything linked to on TPB was covered under a non-permissive copyright.

Please stop assuming everyone is an idiot and immoral.

>Content shifting is a legal thing to do

Small point, but it actually depends on the country's laws. In New Zealand, it's illegal to do that. It's even illegal to rip a CD you own. It's stupid and would never be enforecd, but it is the law.

What about content that you cannot legally obtain? For instance, TV shows that haven't aired in your country yet (or won't ever) due to greed or a whole load of other reasons?

It's absurd that there are people there are people waiting cash in hand to get content, and they are denied because of some sort of broken mentality on how content should be distributed.

Calling it theft is using a legal concept that is outmoded for the digital world. Theft implies that an object is removed from someone's possession in order to be taken.

You can argue all you like that it deprives content creators of income (although even that is complex, in many contexts), but it is not, and never will be theft.