Pirating software is unethical. This is irrefutable

>Proprietary software is unethical
How so?

Non Sequitur. Try again.

>"""intellectual property"""
the fundamental attribute of property is exclusion. If one person owns it and uses it, another can't. If I come to your house and take your TV, you can't watch the TV. Only one of us can have use of it at a time. Physical objects, land, and so forth are inherently like this.

This isn't the case for intangible information that can be instantly and infinitely copied at a cost of approximately zero. If I make a copy of your music files, that does not deprive you of the use of them. Intellectual property isn't property in any meaningful sense of the term. Therefore you have no claim to prevent others' use of it based on property rights.

user, are you new to the internet or this board in general?
fsf.org/blogs/rms/20140407-geneva-tedx-talk-free-software-free-society/

>harvesting data from your users is unethical.
>killing services your users still use, but those services don't have 200% profit margins anymore, is unethical
>selling cds with rootkits is unethical
>locking the device your user bought from you is unethical
>changing your products based on your political views is unethical
>selling pop-corn at 1000% profit margin is unethical
>selling a program and then disabling it's online service is unethical
so yeah, coprorations in general are "ethical" and users are "unethical".
don't be unethical, just buy it goy.

Sure it can be copied at close to zero cost but you're disregarding the effort, skill and equipment that went into creating the product in the first place

I know what RMS arguments are but he is a commie and his version of society would end up like USSR. I was asking you why it's unethical

Once the information exists, that's completely irrelevant.

In other words, suppose I hire you to record a song. You want payment for the labor you use in providing that service. That's fine, no reasonable person would object to that. So we agree on a price and a service and you record the song and I pay you. But now no further labor or effort need be expended to copy the resulting song a million times. (okay, so you need use of a computer and a half-cent worth of electricity, these are trivial and ubiquitous and we can disregard them) In other words, neither of us has to give anything more per copy of the song made. Copying the song doesn't cost me more money and it doesn't require any further labor from you. We aren't being deprived of anything.

>muh intellectual property
Intellectual property means nothing, it's not protected by any law.
On the other hand, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks and patents do have laws protecting them and defining their respective scope and purposes.
"intellectual property" is just the bullshit corporate version of "donut steel".

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[laughing in MIT]

I suppose it depends on whose ethics you are referring to since they are subjective.

>piracy is not only ethical, but your moral obligation
/thread

What about advertising cost? If people could only sell software when commissioned, most software wouldn't exist. Also, if you commission a program and then decide to make a million copies to give away, you're helping ensure the programmer wont be commissioned again because everyone can get it for free. Again, it's an unsustainable model since food, electricity etc isn't free

Property rights are a spook.
You only own what you can defend. If you can't defend the copy of the software you claim to own on my computer, it is not actually yours. If you can get either private or public leg breakers to take my computer away from me, then it's not actually mine.

in general companies are like
>hey, don't abuse our 2000 year old corporate plan where we apply the same techniques, that were used to buy/sell wood and stones, on software.
>don't take advantage of our inability to find a business model to sell our IPs.
if you won't evolve, you deserve to die, no1 rule of nature.
companies that rely on ethics, they are ethical first and then they attract ethical customers.

>1s and 0s
>property

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Fair point but that does not necessarily support privacy but rather more modern business models

yes, and?

The skill, effort, and equipment isn't discarded. It's just not attributed a valuation.

Again, that's an entirely separate thing, with no connection to the creation of the software, data, etc. Once one side has paid the other for the labor and the desired thing exists, its over. Its done. Why would one side get to go back to the other and demand continuing payments for the advertising of, or use of, the information?

>its an unsustainable model
Wrong, it's perfectly sustainable. If it wasn't sustainable, there'd be no free software. For practical things, like software, needs change over time, and people will continue to hire programmers to create things that don't currently exist, or modify things that do exist to meet new situations, even if they then can't use copyright to lock up the result from others.

For creative works, like music, there's no reason to incentivize their creation by granting arbitrary monopolies, because people just innately like creating them and will continue doing so even without copyright. And the model of paying for labor rather than royalties from """intellectual property""" is still completely viable. Plenty of people will pay to, for example, see live performances.

>atoms
>property
Get a job hippie
Splitting words but the point is, it should be valued

'Ethical' companies die as ethics often comes at an additional operating cost compared to 'unethical' options. You are better off pushing propaganda making you look ethical to the general public than actually being 'ethical', since it's often cheaper and good PR.

>Why would one side get to go back to the other and demand continuing payments for the advertising of, or use of, the information?
Because otherwise the programmer wouldn't be able to afford food, rent etc.
>If it wasn't sustainable, there'd be no free software
Often that free software is not nearly a capable as the proprietary equivalent so while some could get by making it, everyone would suffer because of lower quality since many truly skilled people would not dedicate themselves to making software. The music part i agree with
Being unethical is bad in most cases

He is not a commie if you actually listened to him.

>Because otherwise the programmer wouldn't be able to afford food, rent etc.
That's his problem. If he can't make a living off programming then he needs to either find a way to charge more for his labor, or find another line of work. You know, just like literally everyone else in every other profession.

>everyone would suffer because of lower quality since many truly skilled people would not dedicate themselves to making software. The music part i agree with
A lot of proprietary software is lower quality though - it just has to be good enough to sell, not be as good as it can possibly be. That aside, have you seen all the people who program either because they like it or because they're "scratching their own itch"? The same logic applies as it does with music.

So sure, in a copyrightless world, we'd have less software, like we'd probably have less music too. We'd still have plenty of it though, and the stuff that goes away would be the dross that's pumped out just for a quick buck.

I said above that companies grab money, they don't care about the product when their profit margins fall under 200%, they have been caught spreading rootkits with their software and in general companies do not care about their customers.
How would you feel if a company released something like lawbreakers, you pay $30 or even $60 for the game and then later that year the game goes free to play and then 12 months after the release the game goes offline.

the arguments behind all "piracy bad" comments are like "it's ok if you get screwed by the company, as long as you make your purchases".

I personally don't play most of the games anymore, because I am not a sucker to buy games and then have lootboxes cuckolding me.
I play dota2, poe and I recently bought Rust because on Rust you can make your own server even if the game goes offline for ever.

I totally justify pirates, I am against the cash-grab the companies do, like football games that release every 12 months and your 13 month old copy is EOL'd and never gets any updates any more.

I don't care.
This is also irrefutable.

He is a dirty fucking commie

Not only is he a commie but he is insane
stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
Those are the ramblings of an insane person and invalidates anything he has to say about, well, anything

Ethics are a spook. This is irrefutable

piracy isn't a thing in free software

If piracy is unethical then ((google)) tracking users everywhere is unethical too

lol nice bait

based

Yes, there are plenty of examples of companies acting unethical. What about the companies that aren't though? Do you think most people pirating software distinguish between the companies or even bother to research them beforehand?

Fuck ethics

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It absolutely is but 2 wrongs don't make a right

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Piracy is fair game

>We'd still have plenty of it though, and the stuff that goes away would be the dross that's pumped out just for a quick buck
That's simply not true. Where are the open source competitive CAD software? The photoshop alternative? Zbrush alternative? And these are just from the field i know about, i'm sure the same goes for most other areas except maybe programming and network

Tumblr, is that you?

You're not only wrong about libre software being worse, you're missunderstanding the whole thing completely. Proprietary software must be made to trap you in, and is thus convenient, fast, hand-holding and shiny. You know people have succeeded when their products are referred to as """industry standard""". If everything were libre, the software would be at least as wonderful, but there would be less redundancy and no spyware included (unless compromized). This hypothetical world is far away, though - people prefer to pay because they believe that automatically makes the thing good, and it gives you a free phone number you can call and complain when it doesn't work.

>unethical
toppest fucking kek

They do, yeah. People enjoy pirating a game after denuvo is removed because they get better performance. People pay for GOG games that have no DRM.

A very great deal of paid proprietary software is an absolute shitheap that only sticks around due to network effects and lock-in, not because its higher quality.

If that was the case then how come they're laying off a number of employees?

>Sharing botnet software is piracy.
>The only way to pirate GPL software is by not sharing.

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>Where are the open source competitive CAD software?
Tbqh they could be competitive, but they're made by brainlets. There's a reason AutoCAD uses lisp, but FreeCAD has to use Python.

>Pirating...
Absolutely the wrong term, there are no maritime activities in the context you're trying to imply.
Refuted.

Yes, but the best of it is unmatched by free alternatives in most areas because it turns out money is a driving factor in making good products

That's so hypothetical and unprovable that i'm not sure it's relevant. We can't know for sure that free software would be at the level of the best proprietary software if only free software existed since that situation wont happen barring a global revolution

>When your position is so weak you have to resort to autistic word splitting as a smoke screen

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>and no spyware included (unless compromized).
Firefox, Ubuntu, etc.
This was just the poke freetards with a stick easy to point out. Try again with far less fantasy and fanaticism.

>that situation wont happen barring a global revolution
Working on it, join in

nothing about a world without the concept of copyright or intellectual property prevents that from happening though. If some user of the software wants it to be better, they can pay for programmers to improve it, instead of paying a license fee just to use it. Actually that's superior to the present model, because it aligns the economic incentives properly: programmers will get paid to work on areas that people want improved, and won't be paid to work on areas that people are happy with and would rather just be left alone.

Watch that edge, son.

>Being unethical is bad in most cases
you couldn't make more npc response even if you tried

Yeah, and that's sad. Hopefully some revolution does happen and both proprietary hardware and software are outlawed for consumers. Until then, companies will remain unchecked and unethical, and I'll be unethical right back.
Spyware and telemetry should be outlawed. Of course it happens, so does compromised proprietary software. Because it happened doesn't mean that it should.
>fantasy and fanaticism
cope

While that company locks you into their software and charges a fortune for new versions that deliberately breaks compatibility with the older versions.

>when your position is so shit, you won't even use accurate words to describe it

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But it does because since, in that world, there would be far less professional programmer since you'd only be able to sell one copy of a given program, many highly skilled people would work in other areas instead
That's literally the worst use of the NPC meme i've seen. Congratulations on surpassing discord trannies and tumblr retards
>I know you are but what am i

How so? It's not stealing if that's what you're implying.
It's _literally_ not stealing.

Definition of "steal"
>take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
Definition of "take"
>lay hold of (something) with one's hands; reach for and hold.
>remove (someone or something) from a particular place.

This literally cannot be done by downloading or modifying software, nor does the concept of "returning" said software that you downloaded have any meaning at all since the person you got it from still has the software and doesn't need another copy.

Ergo, "pirating" software is just a silly name for COPYING software and cannot, beyond the shadow of any doubt, refer to "stealing" since that is impossible to do.

>there would be far less professional programmer since you'd only be able to sell one copy of a given program, many highly skilled people would work in other areas instead
Why is that a bad thing?

A lower number of developers is not really a bad thing, it just makes the work of those who stayed more valuable and will thus attract more to return. Making version 1.0 is not the only thing a software developer does, either. Supporting one's libre software is the best thing that can happen to the software world: if you can't do it well, someone else will, and that someone doesn't need to take over your company just to be able to. Free software would ideally also cut most of the fat that is perpetual design and advertisers.

That's a nice strawman but i haven't implied i equate piracy with stealing once. Not in the OP nor in any other post in this thread
Because we'd miss out on the software those people could have created

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I download everything but don't use it. Is this also unethical?

Of course it's a bad thing if we're deprived of great software because of it. Organic 3d modelling was a bitch before Zbrush. Adobe pretty much established digital graphic design etc. You're assuming the people remaining are competent but there is no guarantee of that

I only use FOSS software so I have no need to pirate.

>>Because we'd miss out on the software those people could have created
Again, so? We have enormous amounts of software already. There's a lot of people who'd actually say we have too much and we need to prune the overgrown thickets we have.

remember what I said above, if we get rid of the absurd notion of intellectual property, that doesn't prevent people from deciding that they really do need more software and either creating it themselves if they're willing to go to the effort, or paying someone else to create it for them. In other words, we'd still get all the software we need.

>Because we'd miss out on the software those people could have created
Yeah, I'm sure people will miss the next new app. It's like Uber, but for carrier pidgeons. When there's a need, people will answer. What we see today is excess at best, and far from a need.
>You're assuming the people remaining are competent but there is no guarantee of that
And you're assuming that what we have today is good, or even okay. I can easily claim that we can have much much better. You're also assuming that a portion of people participating in the creation of proprietary software would just disappear from the business if it were to change.

>Because we'd miss out on the software those people could have created
If we're talking about hypothetical losses, we also lose out on the potential software that could have been made by people without access to a computer, people stuck under contract to not work on anything outside of their employer, and people who would like to program if they weren't stuck trying to survive day to day.
I would say this is a bigger problem.

>thou shalt not
holy shit dont think i've ever cringed this hard in my life

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Property is a characteristic of scarce resources and ideas are not scarce.

Yet the Zbrushes, Photoshops, CADs etc. didn't emerge from free software programmers even though the need was clearly there. Why is that?

As for paying someone to make a program, the ones mentioned above aren't exactly something a guy could make on his own. It takes large teams and lots of equipment. Very few people would be able to afford that so essentially only the extremely rich would have access to it
When there's a need, people will answer
But that's demonstrably false because the above mentioned programs did not emerge from the free software crowd despite the need being there
>I can easily claim that we can have much much better
We can always do better but i know that in many areas, proprietary software is better than free alternatives which lends little to the argument that we wouldn't miss out
It's not hypothetical though. We wouldn't have Zbrush, Photoshop and good CADs and my job would be a lot worse for it

Lol if I rob you and defend it is it mine?
You only own what you can argument it was obtained either from your work or voluntarily traded with/given to you.

it will never be called unauthorized copying because that doesn't sound bad kek

But ability to make those ideas become reality is. You don't just grab 200 of your closest friends and create the next operating system

By that token, getting lawyers to force you to pay up makes it mine to license to people as i see fit. What are you arguing here?

that's from some shrinky dink community college. real universities maintain ownership of everything you do for class, just like businesses maintain ownership of everything you do on company time

>Lol if I rob you and defend it is it mine?
not even a comparison, if you copied some of my property i wouldn't give a fuck because i'd still have my property

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Modern societies are inherently unethical. Pirating software is much less, or at least no worse than:

- Companies evading taxes, or breaking laws and paying off fines or officials

- Using copyright law to stifle innovation or attack/destroy competition.

- Coming up with new schemes to pay your employees less, or outright making your employees contractors or "consultants" to avoid employee laws.

- Money laundering, insider trading, embezzling, comitting tax fraud, cronyism, anti-consumer/worker/government lobbying, and/or encouraging other dishonest (or outright criminal) business practices.

Piracy is less than a drop in the bucket of modern unethical and crimenal practices. Piracy has no real discernable effect on modern profits, and it only upsets the egos of modern white-collar corperatist leeches. If nothing else, it's necessary to pirate, so the modern citizen can recoupe a modicum of the losses wrought by corperatists.

>Lol if I rob you and defend it is it mine?
Yes, are you stupid? How do you think property claims are ultimately justified? By force.
Your libtard homesteading nonsense is also a spook, even more than intellectual property since its never existed.

This. Laws for thee, but not for me.

Sorry, I was a retard and read wrong.
Proprietary software is indeed ethical, ip is unethical.

If you can, than sure. But if I could evade their reach, you could fuck off.
>What are you arguing here?
All conceptions of property are spectres of the mind and can only be enforced by violence, even the NAP though ancucks will deny it. All this thread is arguing about is what should be defended with violence over something else.

You have a very relaxed life.

Ok, got it. In the most basic sense, that is true. So your stance would be to pirate if you want and as long as you don't get caught, the other party has failed to establish ownership by not protecting their property?

Sure. That's how it works for those outside and above the prevailing justice systems of the world.

The established form of copyright is just one of the ways of stimulating creativity. I pick different way and I do not care if somebody hates me for it.

>unethical
lol homo