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The whole concept of intellectual property rights is a social and legal construct designed to promote innovation in an economy. If you don't care about that, then there really isn't any moral or immoral aspect to it. The immorality of it and associating it with stealing was just MPAA propaganda to try to shame people into paying for stuff.

If I found some DVD lying on the ground and watched it and I didn't pay for it, it's really up to me to decide if I want to pay the creator so they can continue to produce content. If I don't pay then obviously it doesn't help them produce more content... but the consumption of the content itself neither felt nor heard by the creators.

The bedrock of the argument is that you give for what you take. This is very fundamental, not just some capitalist drivel. You'd be hard pressed to find a single level headed individual who could form a coherent argument against it (generally speaking, not just protracted edge cases). Even your most hippie communist commune requires giving in order to receive.

People act (many even think) like this doesn't apply to digital goods, since copying has no material cost. But producing that digital good costs time and money (anyone on HN care to disagree?). So then you have to decide who are the ones who pay and who are the ones who get free copies. Conveniently, everyone who is getting a free copy thinks that they have a rightful stake to it for free. And because nothing is actually free (see the first line), the ones paying are the ones also covering the cost for those who get is free.

I wouldn't expect teenagers to grasp this, after all we were the teenagers who devised this "piracy as a moral crusade" back in the 90's/00's (how convenient that a side effect of this moral crusade was all the free content your dead broke ass could imagine). But now, if you are in your 30's or older and still haven't logic'ed this out, it's time to catch up.

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