Yes yes, and paying for your groceries is more expensive than shoplifting too, can we please not have the discussion where people pretend that stealing stuff is just as good as buying it? Most people are law-abiding citizens.
Stop using the S word! Seriously. When you steal something, the rightful owner no longer has the item. You cannot by definition steal digital content. You can merely copy it. Does that result in damages to the original owner? Maybe. Is it stealing? No.
> honest question: do you think identity theft should likewise be renamed?
I don't care about that one so much. The reason is that nobody's agenda is being pushed each time that we say identity theft. We also all know what identity theft is and what it does to the victim. OTOH saying "don't steal music" makes it sound like a different issue than it really is.
Essentially it's a way to accrue benefits while pushing any negative consequences on someone else. Those negative consequences can be material and not merely opinion. (E.g., your actual bank account can be drained and your checks can bounce.)
Further, opinion does translate into material consequences. Your options largely depend on the opinion that other people have of you.
Even narrowly construed, a mere credit score is a source of opinion that can affect everything from housing (buying OR renting) to employment, to getting a cell phone or any other type of service. Straightening out your credit can be very difficult, and even if you are successful, the fraud was a denial of service attack against your time. Credit bureaus rarely if ever face penalties for maintaining inaccurate information, so the onus is on the person whose identity was stolen.
If you don't think the individual is victimized, I invite you to post all your credentials and see where the experiment leads.
Can we please not use the "stealing from a shop" analogy as it is not a parallel. Cloning and taking a copy of the groceries would be closer.
IP theft is not the same as literal theft. It's similar but this analogy is terrible brain food.
Last year? I downloaded a pirated copy of the movie Ink. I wasn't ever going to go to the cinema nor was(and won't) I going to buy it on DVD. I did however buy 2 copies totally about $30 IIRC from the creator directly. This is just one case from one person. Many people who pirate movies also buy the ones they think are worth their money. The think most people like you don't realise is that most of the people who don't pay for any of it in any form wasn't going to do so even if it wasn't available for free. And I too can just blanket everything under a misguided and biased argument; No it's actually more expensive to shoplift because if you were walked out with enough you'd very very likely get caught and you're likely to face some legall challenges not to metion the fact that many people won't hire you unless they have to. That doesn't even take into account the other point you so conveniently misse: it's harder. That point is actually more important than the cost as shown in my case of buying Ink for $30 which is at least 3 times more than it would have cost me to go to the cinema.
