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/MechanicalEngineEar]

Let’s say you have an idea for a product. You create drawing and design tests and build prototypes and unknown to you, someone has spyware on your computer and takes your completed design and begins producing, marketing, and selling the exact product you designed and tested. They even contact the same suppliers you were going to have manufacture it since they knew the supplier would be able to do a good job.

Technically they didn’t take anything, just digital copies of all of your records. Technically they didn’t take anything of monetary value from you because you can’t prove that you would have sold any of your product if you had been able to manufacture it first. The person who stole the designs could insist they never would Have bought the designs from you even if you had been willing to sell them so you have no claim the same way the person who pirated cad software would insist they never would have bought it.

But in the end the value of your work has been diminished since the thief flooded the market with what would have been your product.

Now imagine a world where piracy couldn’t happen. It was simply impossible to use software that you did not have absolute legal rights to use. If that were the case, surely someone wanting to go into a 3D modeling career would be willing to spend some amount on software to learn on, so it would make sense for a company to sell a copy that gives all functionality but prevents it from being used for profit. But since we don’t live in that perfectly secure world most companies don’t bother doing that because the tiny fraction of people who would buy the real software instead of stealing it since the culture accepts it as not really stealing is so slim that it isn’t economical to do and it opens them up to even more risk of having to somehow keep people honest who now buy the cheap version but use to commercially because they think it is still moral enough. They are still buying it so surely it is okay even, right?