If buying things at the store was as painful as watching stuff on streaming services, and shoplifting was as low risk as torrenting, and my stealing an item didn't make that item disappear from the store, I'd probably do it there too.

I can name at least one country in the European Union in which torrenting copyright content for personal use is legal, people still do very much use spotify and netflix.

Gabe Newell got it right from the very start, piracy is a service problem.

Only consequences, physically speaking the two are not the same at all.

Copying of anything digital is not actual theft, nor will it ever be.

"You wouldn't download a car!"

Wait, I absolutely would download a car if I could... or food... or clothing... I'd download the shit out of physical goods if the technology existed. Who wouldn't? You could solve scarcity. If we had Star Trek Replicators, we'd be living in a literal utopia.

Thanks to 3D printing this is starting to become reality and not just science fiction.

The “download” catchphrase is a joke, it was originally “You wouldn’t steal a car”, which I’d argue is true for most people.

Stealing a car deprives the owner of their product. Privacy does not. They still have access and ownership of it. But now, you do too.

> it was originally “You wouldn’t steal a car”, which I’d argue is true for most people.

Sure, but it's only true if you stretch the definition of what's occuring. If we stretched it in the other way, in that "stealing" a car in fact left the perfectly fine original right where you found it, the vast majority wouldnt think twice.

So long as you’ve paid for it before… maybe not. In many jurisdictions you are entitled to a backup. The fact that you have to pirate it… might be a gray area.

How dare you steal these hn comments by copying them over to your PC using your browser? Thief!

Do you sneak into concerts or hop turnstiles too?

Those actually take the resources away (space at the venue for example). In piracy that's not the case.

Of course it's theft. The owner of that content didn't intend to give it to you for free, they expected to get paid for their work.

I could copy A New Hope once for every atom in the universe, and no money is lost and the original continues to exist.

Theft is moving stuff. You can't move software or digital assets, you can only copy them.

If I committed a burglary and instead of taking your TV I go to Walmart and buy a copy, then that's not burglary. You certainly wouldn't report me to the police.

Then how come a month ago you were talking about preventing zero-days from stealing files: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44578850 ?

This is the worst no you I've ever seen.

I'm not concerned about my files being leaked because that's stealing. I'm concerned because they hold sensitive information that can be used for actual stealing, like for example with money.

Malware isn't bad because it's stealing. That's stupid. I know you know it's stupid, so I don't know why you said it.

It's not comparable, because copying a bread with a bread copying machine should be completely fine.

I don't think analogy is comparable either though. With a bread copying machine, the baker of the original piece is not involved in creating the new piece of bread (other than the recipe), so it is more acceptable (though maybe not completely, if you consider that the recipe is also being copied) that the baker is not compensated for the new piece of bread produced by the copying machine.

With digital media, the creator is expecting people to pay to view the content. By making a copy and viewing it for free, imo, you are stealing the content.

If I am telling you a secret word, expecting you to pay to hear it, and you are telling it to someone else, it may be lying, it may be bad manners, but it's not stealing.

Digital content is information.

Thank god they overturned Butter Krust v. Jesus Christ!

And I thought religion of pirates is pastafarianism.

Depends on where you live.

Copyright infringement is generally a civil offence in Australia.

Whereas theft of physical goods is generally not.

Penalties for copyright infringement differ between countries as well.

Shops aren't there yet, but ISPs are. Where can I pirate the internets?