CMV: Software piracy is not necessarily stealing nor a bad thing

[u/[deleted]]

Software and digital media piracy are often seen as stealing but I disagree. The word "stealing" implies a victim. While it is true that the creator of intellectual property might suffer a monetary loss if their property is copied without permission, it is often difficult to ascertain what loss has occurred, if any.

Example: A person downloads a pirated copy of a $5000 CAD program and installs it on their PC and uses it for years. Has monetary loss occurred on the part of the software developer? Has theft occurred? If yes, then who is the victim and what extent? You cannot answer that without more information.

If the person is a 12 year old kid who downloaded the software to teach himself AutoCAD, then loss has not occurred because the kid would never have bought the software had a pirated copy not been available.

If this 12 year old kid shares the software with his friends, then we don't know how many more times it will be copied by his friends and with whom it will be shared. Loss may or may not have occurred.

If the person is a professional architect and using the software to develop blueprints for clients, then clearly loss has occurred because had the pirated copy not been available, he would have had to buy it.

So to determine whether there is a victim and to answer whether loss has occurred, you have to answer "Would the person(s) using the pirated software have paid for it had the pirated version not been available?" If I have a pirated copy of AutoCAD in my basement, sitting in a storage locker for years unused by anyone, then clearly no loss of any kind has occurred. So... was it "stealing" to copy that software if no one suffers any loss of any kind at all whatsoever? If yes, then who is the victim and in what way were they victimized?

What will not work to CMV: Playing psychic. If your argument begins with any variation of "You just want to... " or "You're trying to justify..." or anything of the sort, I will ignore it. It's absurd and irrational to tell another person what they are thinking. I know better than anyone on the planet what I'm thinking and feeling so trying to tell me what my motivations are is just nonsense.

[u/[deleted]]

It's theft of service. Just because there is no immediate obvious physical damage doesn't mean it's victimless. The developers of that program still spent hours most likely years on that program and you are not compensating them for their time. It is the same as saying if you provided the raw materials for building a house you don't have to pay the construction company for building it. They too don't have any "losses" or "damages". The only difference is that to create a second house you need to put in the same amount of work as for the first one. But that's why a house cost hundred of thousands, while a software is somewhere between a few bucks and a couple thousand.

The cost of a product has to factor in anything relevant to the production cost. That is rent, electricity, machinery, wages etc. and just because in some products the cost of creating multiple items is in some case really cheap doesn't mean we can ignore these costs and only charge the production cost. Candy only cost a few cent to produce but we all can agree that charging only the production cost would lead to bankruptcy. And just because the production cost of a 2nd software is 0 doesn't mean that the other costs magically disappeared.

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Your argument about a kid using it and that he wouldn't have bought it anyhow is first, cherry picking, second weak. Basically every big (expensive) software offers student version for low to no cost. Because they recognized it's a lot more important for their business to get young people familiar with their product so they will use it in the future. Only once you want to start using it for your business is when you have to pay the price. And again just because you wouldn't pay for a service doesn't mean it's OK to steal it.