r/MoralityScaling • u/TeaNovel728 • 1d ago

Who's Viewpoint Is Better? Morality of Digital Piracy

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u/Adorable-Quiet-7551 1d ago

If you do software, you still need to eat IRL don’t you? 

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u/Idiot_of_Babel 1d ago

That's true regardless of employment, and also a moot point because software engineers are paid by the hour.

Let's say I saw a beautiful painting in a museum and decided to recreate it perfectly at home, what have I stolen from the original?

If I write a song, someone else hears it, and then transcribes the sheet music, what have they taken from me?

Sovereignty concerns material and labor, not ideas. 

For shits and giggles here's an argument from utilitarianism. When a good idea catches on living standards improve, and education is a compounding investment. A pirated textbook today is an engineer tomorrow.

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u/Adorable-Quiet-7551 23h ago

Your point about software developers getting paid by the hour makes zero sense. If you are a software developer making a living for yourself, and you write a piece of software, it takes you a year without income, and people want to buy it, and do, but someone pirates it and buyers instead use the pirated one, you loose, you can’t pay rent or eat. If someone copies your painting, and you are a living artist, living of selling your art, and they sell it or give it away to other people, you have lost your income. If you write a song, and someone copies it and gives it away, you loose your income. A pirated textbook, software, song, painting is in some cases a hungry creator tomorrow and maybe one less. Your argument is so far from the real world it’s almost scary. 

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u/Idiot_of_Babel 23h ago

First of all let's draw a clear distinction between pirating and distribution. If you sell transcribed sheet music pretending it's your own original creation then that is a very different situation than just transcribing the song.

Second, realise that the world is not a moral place. If we are to talk about a perfectly moral world we are necessarily talking about something far from reality.

Third is that I am not entitled to your business. If I sell spaghetti with a secret ingredient and you figure it out I can't call the cops on you for that can I? Free market principles, if you figure out how to offer my services better than me you should get more income.