Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
That might have been an error on the part of the poster you criticize, but the comparison is easily corrected.
Piracy is comparable to shoplifting your average new release PB, which, at the margins, will be remaindered and then pulped if not stolen. One similarity is that shoplifting appears to be, like piracy, a behavior that most people, at some point in their lives, engage in.
Do I want to give that majority criminal records which would impede their getting productive jobs? No. But, knowing that only partial success is possible, we should discourage such behavior. |
Copyright infringement is NOT stealing. Please don't muddy the waters with another inaccurate analogy.
I lean rather Libertarian in my views. In my opinion, if something does not cause harm to an external person, then I just don't care. Shoplifting deprives a store owner of an item for which they paid money.
Piracy, in this context, does not deprive anyone of a physical thing. It is argued that it deprives content creators of 'possible' income. However, no creditable study has borne this out, let alone come close to a rigorous estimate of true cost.
Until we can identify what the exact costs of current behavior are, we cannot evaluate the costs inherent in new laws/forced behaviors. However, the costs of proposed legislation like SOPA holds a cost that is too high for even the ridiculously inflated estimates of lost revenue by media giants.