EU withheld $430,000 study that concluded most piracy doesn't hurt sales after all

Lucien wrote:...Piracy is theft to be fair, they might have not wanted to promote its increase.

No, it’s NOT! It’s copyright infringement, which is civil, not criminal law. The onus is on the victim to prove that they’ve actually lost anything, which in most cases they have not, so how is that theft?

Lucien wrote:Whatever you call it it's still immoral.

I think in some scenarios it can be immoral. But if you legitimately would never (or maybe can't in your region!) buy a piece of art, then viewing a copy of it is literally by definition victimless. Can a victimless action be anything bar morally neutral?

EDIT: I don't pirate anything I could (reasonably*) buy by the way, I think as an adult with a job I 'should' support artists I like. I just don't think it's difficult to come up with scenarios where piracy isn't actually impacting anyone. (* I occasionally download works if I could only buy them by actually importing them from Japan -- I would never go through that effort for anything, so the creators haven't really lost out, right?)

Karl wrote:

Lucien wrote:Whatever you call it it's still immoral.

I think in some scenarios it can be immoral. But if you legitimately would never (or maybe can't in your region!) buy a piece of art, then viewing a copy of it is literally by definition victimless. Can a victimless action be anything bar morally neutral?

EDIT: I don't pirate anything I could (reasonably*) buy by the way, I think as an adult with a job I 'should' support artists I like. I just don't think it's difficult to come up with scenarios where piracy isn't actually impacting anyone. (* I occasionally download works if I could only buy them by actually importing them from Japan -- I would never go through that effort for anything, so the creators haven't really lost out, right?)

What are you trying to import. It's pretty easy to order stuff off amazon japan these days.

Lucien wrote:I agree with that Karl. It depends on the circumstances. I can see why the EU would hold back that information, although they shouldn't have, as it could create more of the bad type of piracy.

Sure.

There's an interesting debate in the philosophy of science about when, if ever, results should be withheld. On more realistic scenarios I lean towards 'yes, publish' but obviously there are some situations where you where you'd want to classify it and take steps to mitigate the impact of the research, only making it public years later. If someone discovered a process that allowed a normal person to make a nuclear bomb in their garage out of household goods, you'd need to withhold that until the household products that could be used have been banned/controlled worldwide. In the vast majority of cases though I think all research should be published.

That's just my view, it's an interesting debate!

lex-man wrote:What are you trying to import. It's pretty easy to order stuff off amazon japan these days.

Aye, I should take a look -- an interesting edge case here you might have thoughts on: what about things like fan-translations of light novels? Even if I important an LN I couldn't read it!

Lucien wrote:I agree with that Karl. It depends on the circumstances. I can see why the EU would hold back that information, although they shouldn't have, as it could create more of the bad type of piracy.

The bad, presumably immoral type? What’s that then?

mic wrote:

Lucien wrote:I agree with that Karl. It depends on the circumstances. I can see why the EU would hold back that information, although they shouldn't have, as it could create more of the bad type of piracy.

The bad, presumably immoral type? What’s that then?

If you actually pirate something you really want to see to avoid paying for it, with the mindset of "Oh, I'll go see it at the cinema if I can't find a decent copy online", that's immoral IMO. You have the means and desire to pay for it and are just being stingy when you should be supporting the people who made it.

There are lots and lots and lots of scenarios in which I don't have a problem with piracy but it's hard to defend that one IMO.

Not that I would judge anyone for it, I would still be friends with a pirate

You both seem to feel that there are situations where piracy is fine, but can it really be decided on a case by case basis?

Case in point - downloading weekly tv shows. I have sky, but don’t want to be subjected to ads (and enjoy watching shows early or at my convenience). Is it right for sky (also my isp) to send me written warnings not to download? Surely I should be able to download shows I pay for if I want to?

Even if I don’t have sky, what material difference does it make?

You can only make meaningful moral decisions on a case-by-case basis by thinking about the consequences of your actions in a world where you do a thing, vs. the hypothetical world in which you don't do that thing.

Well that's technically circumventing a contract i.e. a license agreement although it falls outside of it. If you have no contract or any means to pay or would never pay anyway, I consider piracy a victimless crime and therefore not morally wrong. It is illegal, but there are all sorts of legal caveats and civil infractions that people don't even know they are committing, for example having a loud party after 11pm or breaking their journey on a train ticket when the ticket does not allow this.

Giving Sky money is also immoral.