Piracy was NEVER stealing
It doesn't matter if it's a CD, a Film, or manual with the instructions to build a spaceship. If you copy it, the original owner doesn't lose anything. If you don't copy it, the only one missing something (the experience) is YOU.
Enjoy!
Of course, if you happen to have some extra money for donations to creators, please do so. If you don't have that, try contributing with a review somewhere or recommending the content, spread the word. Piracy was shown to drive businesses in several occasions by independent and biased corps (trying to show the opposite).
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Your entire counter-argument is based on a strawman. I never said piracy was stealing. I said piracy is, at best, morally grey.
If you live in a society in which people make a living either directly, or indirectly, through the creation and sale of goods and services and you willingly choose to avoid paying for access to these goods and services whilst still using them as if you had paid for access to them, you are operating in, at best, a moral grey area. This societal system relies on people paying for access to goods and services to either directly or indirectly support the lives of others. When people choose to circumvent payment, others suffer financially and that impacts their quality of life. Whether that's a direct loss of a sale for an independent musician, or a staffer who loses their journalism job at a media company that operates on a subscription model everyone just bypasses, piracy does hurt people. Pretending it doesn't, or that it's all okay because of some "REEEEEEEEE CAPITALISM" whataboutism is juvenile.
I pirate a lot of stuff but I do so with the understanding that it is a selfish act that benefits me at the expense of others living within this society. I do not celebrate it, nor do I pretend I am the good guy fighting against the bad guys in some war of freedom. You can live in mental gymnastics land if you want, just don't be surprised when other people point out how delusional you are.
You're initial closing statement criticizes people for "...hiding behind word definitions..." when the OP's post is arguing that copying is not Stealing.
It's very telling that your criticisms aren't ever leveled at the system itself, but instead, the people who object to how it is structured.
You frame yourself as a pragmatist who just operates honestly, never raising issue with the exploitative and often abusive practices of these corpos, record labels, executives. I never said piracy doesn't hurt anyone, I said it isn't theft.
Piracy hurts exploitative corpos the most, which is a good thing. It's good to cause harm to evil structures and subvert their authority and power. That's literally the point of social activism.
The fact that some well-meaning and innocent folks are going to get caught in the crossfire is sad, but such is the cost of subverting abusive power structures. Remember, pirates never created those structures, the corpos, billionaires, and corrupt politicians did.
I respect some pirates, I despise others. I tip or buy merch from small time artists whenever I can, often far more than they would have gotten from me buying their art, and far far more than if I streamed their song a few times of Spotify, YT Music, or dutifully watched an ad that played on their channel.
Piracy can be done in an ethical way, or an unethical way, but it's certainly not, "at best, morally grey."
You better go out and buy fast food at every drive-thru you can find, you not buying food from them might contribute to lower sales for that chain, which could lose those workers their jobs. Obviously that's ridiculous, but that argument uses the same reasoning you just used. If your argument is true, then you're a morally grey person at best if you aren't spending as much money as possible on fast food every month, or any other good/service in existence for that matter.
And there it is. The “REEEEEEEEE CAPITALISM” whataboutism, as predicted. Congratulations on instantly living up to the stereotype of the "ethical piracy" activist lol
Nice thoughtful response to my comment, really compelling points!
Oh wait, you couldn't think of any refutations to my arguments, so you just resorted to an ad hominem.
Weak and disappointing. Go somberly stare at your torrenting client, thinking of all the people you're putting out on the streets by "stealing" from them, your darkened and evil soul too corrupted by piracy to ever be redeemed. Lol get over yourself.
What else is there to respond to? You started off by once again trying to frame my original comment as debating the definition of "stealing", even though I have never once done that. Then you went into the stereotypical rant of "CORPOS BAD CAPITALISM BAD" and tried to frame yourself as a reluctant hero who pirates for the greater good. You literally proved my point that piracy directly and indirectly hurts people when you said that "innocent people get caught in the crossfire" but then tried to hand wave the moral implications of this away. And then you finished off with yet another moronic analogy, this time about...fast food (???????). It was so nonsensical that I can't even begin to guess the point you were trying to make. You seem to be trying and failing miserably to catch me in some moral hypocrisy gotcha, which is bizarre considering you are the one claiming that piracy is morally good and ethical.
Yeahhh, obvious you don't have anything left to say.
You disputed the OP's post where they stated that piracy wasn't stealing by claiming that people like them "needed to hide behind word definitions"
Corpos are bad, Capitalism is bad...yes, I stand by those statements because they are true.
Yes, it would be better for society at large if everybody pirated from the corpos and stopped funding their monopolistic, anti-consumer, anti-repair, privacy-violating practices. Again, yes this is true, I stand by that, that's the definition of "greater good."
Never hand waved the moral implications away of innocent people getting hurt by piracy. What I actually did was contrast the moral bad of that harm, against the moral good of harming the corpos that abuse society at large. I determined that the overall moral good of harming the corpos outweighed the moral bad of harming innocents. I also pointed out the fact that the real harm has been perpetrated by the Capitalists, billionaires, and big media conglomerates, not the pirates.
You obviously lack the ability or at least the willingness to address my counterexample about what your philosophy entails. The fact that you thought that was an analogy instead of what it actually was, (a reductio ad absurdum) demonstrates that.
I don't need to try, you clearly haven't thought very hard or deep about your position, it's shallow and filled with knee-jerk argumentation.
I suspect strongly that you feel very guilty about your actions, and instead of addressing those feelings, you project them onto others.
I think you do this because you cannot stand the idea that other people pirate things guilt-free, you are jealous of them, so you project your own feelings of shame onto those other people and claim (without any compelling reasons), that those people aren't actually guilt-free, they are just lying to themselves to deal with the shame.
You rage and seethe at those with a clear sense of purpose and vision because you lack those things in your own endeavors, and it galls you.