While people keep knocking you down for trolling, I think that's actually a really good point.
I don't equate "piracy" to theft (or piracy, for that matter), but I think we're culturally trapped in a very curious mindset. I don't think anyone would argue that the value in a movie or television show or book or any other creative work lies solely in the cost to reproduce a copy -- if anything, we'd be more likely to argue that the cost to reproduce it is incidental to its value. To me, the logical outcome of that is that we should pay for copies of creative materials regardless of the marginal cost because that's never really been what we were paying for in the first place -- and it seems perfectly reasonable to me that, thus, we should honor the wishes of the creators when it comes to price (or the people the creators have ostensibly delegated that responsibility to, i.e., publishers and distributors). But instead we're often arguing that if the cost to copy is effectively zero, the creators and publishers are unreasonable authoritarian police state thugs for saying, "Hey, the cost of the copy isn't where the value lies, and if you're going to enjoy our work you should still pay us."
And, yes, I know all the arguments about publishers (and creators) making unreasonable demands, but I think that makes the line even murkier, not clearer. We don't say "the price you're asking for this physical object is unreasonable, so I'm just taking it without paying for it at all"; why do we think it's fair to say "the price you're asking for this digital object is unreasonable, so I'm making a copy without paying for it?" Yes, the cost to do so is zero, but the value isn't derived from the reproduction cost.
I don't equate "piracy" to theft (or piracy, for that matter), but I think we're culturally trapped in a very curious mindset. I don't think anyone would argue that the value in a movie or television show or book or any other creative work lies solely in the cost to reproduce a copy -- if anything, we'd be more likely to argue that the cost to reproduce it is incidental to its value. To me, the logical outcome of that is that we should pay for copies of creative materials regardless of the marginal cost because that's never really been what we were paying for in the first place -- and it seems perfectly reasonable to me that, thus, we should honor the wishes of the creators when it comes to price (or the people the creators have ostensibly delegated that responsibility to, i.e., publishers and distributors). But instead we're often arguing that if the cost to copy is effectively zero, the creators and publishers are unreasonable authoritarian police state thugs for saying, "Hey, the cost of the copy isn't where the value lies, and if you're going to enjoy our work you should still pay us."
And, yes, I know all the arguments about publishers (and creators) making unreasonable demands, but I think that makes the line even murkier, not clearer. We don't say "the price you're asking for this physical object is unreasonable, so I'm just taking it without paying for it at all"; why do we think it's fair to say "the price you're asking for this digital object is unreasonable, so I'm making a copy without paying for it?" Yes, the cost to do so is zero, but the value isn't derived from the reproduction cost.