Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Do you not think that it's true to say that the fact that so-called "piracy" enables people to get content for free only works because the majority of people do pay for what they consume? If nobody paid, there would be no works to pirate. Pirates are leeching from the honest purchasers.
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I think this is too broad of a brush, Harry. Obviously, people downloading things falling (or deliberately placed) in the public domain aren't leeches, by any definition. But what about long out-of-print work still under copyright? Nobody is getting money from these works, so who is being economically harmed.
Potentially harmed, perhaps, but then again, aren't the people doing the illegal download being harmed as much but not having digital access to the works? It's not all cut and dried...
What I find frustrating is the following. Author/publisher work hard to create production to interest people. They are among the successful ones, economically and creatively. After having gone to the effort to please their customers, and building a base of customers who will buy their product, the author/publisher then get on their high horse and state that their customer
can't have the product the way they want it, and they'll throw them in jail for doing it the way they want it, boasting their works are
their property, to do with what Author/Publishers wish, even denying it to their customers. No other business in the world treats their customers with this kind of contempt...
And publishers wonder why there is so little moral outrage at piracy...