[SmokeAndMirrors]

Theft is not an accurate term at all. And it doesn't need to be in order for piracy to be bad. You can't just stick any old negative-sounded word in there and claim it's equivalent.

A person pirating a book is not doing anything close to theft. They are essentially generating a copy of a work of unknown original, acquired in an unknown way. Nothing has been taken from anyone. Files are replicating. No one has lost any property due to piracy.

Have they lost revenue? Possibly. However, this new copy is not directly responsible for that. The person who originally obtained the file and then used it for copyright infringement is the true responsible party.

This does not mean a pirate is not doing something unethical. They may or may not be - depending on whether they understand what piracy is. I didn't, when I first pirated a song when I was 13. I don't believe that what I did was unethical, because I didn't understand that I was generating a copy that may reduce the value of an artist's work. Lack of knowledge impairs judgment.

I do understand that now. And I don't pirate now. It's not because I think piracy is "theft." It's because in the cantankerous world of the emerging internet business model, artists are suffering in part because of piracy. An individual pirate probably isn't directly responsible for that, but they are contributing to it.

I think DRM and artificial price inflation worsens piracy. And I avoid giving money to entities that perpetuate those things. But this reflects my disagreement with their license terms. It doesn't give me license to pirate. They gave me the terms, and I decided they were not acceptable. That doesn't give me permission to go around them.

I don't think piracy is necessarily as bad as theft. But it is certainly copyright infringement and it has a turbulent effect on an already turbulent industry.

It is uncertain at this point what role piracy might play if license agreements were less insane. They might actually help sales. They might have no effect. Or they may continue to harm sales. There's a valid argument for all of these possibilities.

But until such a time as I know which one it turns out to be, I disagree with piracy. It isn't theft. It's another beast entirely, for which we currently have no accurate name. But whatever it is, I feel it currently has a degrading effect on artists making a living. And I don't know what effect it would have in an environment that's more fair to consumers.

This article brings up the great point that we are constantly making the futile attempt to equate digital products with physical ones. This simply doesn't work because of the replication factor - a factor which exists for legal content as much as illegal content.

But it's also clear that the current model, which I'd define as a fear psychosis on the part of companies, is harmful to consumers and feeds piracy.

We need something else. We need better language, and a new model.