We perhaps need a different term altogether because really it's not just copyright infringement either.
If you take something from me that is meant only for sale to others then it helps me absolutely zero that I still have it.
With copyright infringement, it used to mean selling cheap knock-offs of your work, including your work illegally into someone else's dime novel, etc. With digital copyright infringement people are literally selling or giving away the authentic item (i.e. the data). This is much closer to 'theft' than the old idea of copyright infringement.
You have a good point about market value but those are economic principles, not moral ones. It's like saying I only took a gumdrop instead of a pallet of candy bars, but either way it's still wrong.
> We perhaps need a different term altogether because really it's not just copyright infringement either.
Why does copyright infringement not work?
> If you take something from me that is meant only for sale to others then it helps me absolutely zero that I still have it.
That still does not make it equivalent to theft. If I somehow started distributing copies of your digital goods and made it impossible for you to distribute the originals, would you say that's worse than me only doing the former and not the latter?
> This is much closer to 'theft' than the old idea of copyright infringement.
No, it is not. From WikiPedia [1]: In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
In no way is pirating something fitting that definition. The only thing that piracy might deny you is potential profits, which are not property by any definition.
> You have a good point about market value but those are economic principles, not moral ones. It's like saying I only took a gumdrop instead of a pallet of candy bars, but either way it's still wrong.
I agree! Piracy is wrong. Does not matter how little or how much you do it, it ends up hurting someone.
Well, it's more complicated. For example, I currently have a song in my iTunes library that I bought from iTunes when they sold DRM encumbered audio. I bought it with an Apple ID I no longer have access to. iTunes refuses to recognize it in any way and I cannot decrypt it, but I did pay for it fair and square. Would it be amoral for me to download that song on a file sharing network? What if I had an LP that I bought in 1979 instead of an m4p file?
If you take something from me that is meant only for sale to others then it helps me absolutely zero that I still have it.
With copyright infringement, it used to mean selling cheap knock-offs of your work, including your work illegally into someone else's dime novel, etc. With digital copyright infringement people are literally selling or giving away the authentic item (i.e. the data). This is much closer to 'theft' than the old idea of copyright infringement.
You have a good point about market value but those are economic principles, not moral ones. It's like saying I only took a gumdrop instead of a pallet of candy bars, but either way it's still wrong.