Piracy
Over the last couple of years the issue of internet piracy has become extremely heated, both because piracy has become easier and copyright holders have become more determined to stop pirates. Because copyright holders like the movie and recording industry have money on their side, they also have the government on their side, earlier this year that combination resulted in the attempted passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. These bills ultimately did not pass because of a vocal and dramatic public outcry. However, the fact that online piracy generates so much controversy forces one to consider whether it is morally permissible, independent of whether or not it is legal (because many things that are legal might not be morally permissible). When considering the issue on internet privacy from multiple perspectives, it becomes clear that not only is it morally permissible, but that it is actually a good thing because it helps diminish the current system of copyright which favors a few wealthy groups over the population as a whole.
The first thing that is important to point out is that despite its name, online piracy is actually not that similar to actual piracy. This is important because determining the moral permissibility of something depends on figuring out that action's potential harmful consequences, its possible violation of others' rights, or whether it embodies certain vices or moral failings. With actual piracy, the most central harmful consequence is that someone is actually deprived of something, because that thing was stolen. This is not the case with online piracy, because nothing is actually being stolen; instead, it is being reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder. This might seem like a minor distinction, but it is very important, because there is a major difference between reproducing a digital version of a movie and actually stealing a DVD, even if copyright holders argue that their "intellectual property" is what is being stolen.
Instead, what is actually being "taken" is the potential profits that the copyright holder would have gotten if the online pirate had instead decided to buy whatever it was he or she downloaded. However, even here it is hard to determine if something was actually taken, because saying that online piracy means losing potential profits assumes that everyone who pirates something online would have purchased that same thing if piracy was not an option or if the consequences seemed too steep. In reality, many people would simply not buy or pirate the product because the purchase price and the potential punishment for piracy were both too high. As Peter Singer (2012) notes, in that case "we are now a long way from the standard cases of stealing," and thus one cannot easily say that online piracy is not morally permissible due to its harmful consequences, simply because it is too hard to accurately say what those harmful consequences are.
One could make the argument that online piracy violates the rights of copyright holders, but even then it is a difficult argument to make, because it is nearly impossible to actually demonstrate how online piracy actually violates those copyright holders, especially if they are not actually losing potential profits due to the piracy. Even if they are losing potential profits, the right to profit from holding a copyright is very different from the kinds of rights considered inalienable, and it is hard to argue that society is morally responsible for protecting the profits of copyrights holders (especially if one believes that the entire system of capitalism is itself immoral). Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that some reasonable amount of online piracy is actually a good thing, because not only are people still spending money on other things, but the coverage and exposure something can get from being pirated can actually help increase legitimate sales (Yglesias, 2012). Furthermore, online piracy increases competition, because no matter how much of a...
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