Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
I have no interest in seeing people punished just because they get something for free, they should only be punished if they both: (i) get something for free; and (ii) getting that something for free causes a harm to someone else.
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This discussion seems to me to be getting deeper into the real issues than past ones.
As for my view, since
40 percent of books are pulped, I don't see the harm in in shoplifting a few of those from Barnes and Noble. And yet it is wrong.
One piracy harm is that a lot of authors feel violated, comparable to how they would feel if burglarized. True, if the pirate was really careful and discrete, the author will have no way to know. But pirates are not that discrete, so authors do know about them.
Piracy is also comparable to insider trading. The victims don't know when they've been victimized by successful inside traders, and there are academic disagreements about how much, if any, harm these victims suffer, but they are still victims.