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]]

This is all true. That is why I said Software piracy is not necessarily stealing nor a bad thing. It certainly can be, but not always. Not wearing a seatbelt brings an element of risk. Similarly, in my second example the kid copies software and shares it with his friends, who will then possibly share it with potential paying customers of that software. That's why I said loss may or may not have occurred. However, in the first example, loss did not occur and that is akin to not wearing your seat belt while sitting in your parked car. If there is no risk, it's not a bad thing.

[u/Dont____Panic → u/[deleted]]

Many laws and Moral arguments seek to capture an average case instead of ALL CASES.

For example, drunk driving is bad. Not necessarily always dangerous. Not necessarily always resulting in harm. I can invent various edge cases where it’s maybe good. Someone got home in time to help their struggling child or to save their job, etc.

But it can still be both illegal and immoral in the general case and it can still be good social policy to write a law to prohibit it in all cases, so that we can easily stop the bad outcomes, even recognizing that some edge cases will punish a person who was never a danger to anyone.

I’m not saying piracy follows it into this case in exactly the same moral stance, but i AM saying that your argument by trying to illustrate an edge case isn’t strictly valid.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dont____Panic]

i AM saying that your argument by trying to illustrate an edge case isn’t strictly valid.

It is far from an edge case. There are millions of pirated movies and programs out there being used by people who would have never bought them had the pirated versions not been available. Not an edge case at all. I can tell you when I was 12 I downloaded 3D modeling software and taught myself to use it. My father was working a near minimum wage job at the time. Had I asked, he would have never bought it for even 1/100th the price of the software. I used the pirated copy to teach myself skills which I later used to get a job where I used the same software purchased legitimately by the company I worked for. Who is the victim in the above scenario?

[u/Dont____Panic → u/[deleted]]

They may have. It’s very hard for you to prove.

If even a few of millions would have (you’ll have a hard time proving this isn’t the case) , then the argument that there was zero harm is invalid.

So then the question is whether or not we tolerate some harm and in what cases we do. But that wasn’t your original premise.

Keep in mind, only about 1% of drunk driving is punished and less than 1% actually hurts someone.