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Iraqi book market culture (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 25 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

on the basis of semantics

It's not semantics when "stealing" results in the loss of the original by the owner while "copying" just results in a new one being created.

TL;DR: ✨die mad✨

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Publishers don't lose money when I download their products, but I wish they did.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    Too bad. Because it's being redistributed through a third party, you aren't even stealing a negligible amount of electricity, bandwidth, or CPU time from them. Damn, when you think about it, it's just not "stealing" in any capacity, is it?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    That’s a semantic point. The truth is that artists deserve to be paid for their work. Whether you “copy” or “steal”, you’re getting the work without paying the creator. That’s fundamentally shitty behavior.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Okay, but I literally just expressed how they're fundamentally, pragmatically different while you keep reaching for the word "semantics". You can still disagree that it's wrong to copy – that's not what I'm trying to litigage. To call it only semantically different from stealing is asinine.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I never said it was only semantically different, only that you were making a semantic argument: namely, citing the semantic distinction between copying and stealing as grounds for one being acceptable and the other not (“stealing” is wrong but I’m “copying”), ignoring that the injustice against the work’s creator is not pragmatically different. Practically speaking, the author is equally robbed whether you “copy” or “steal”; therefore, arguing that copying is not stealing obscures the heart of the matter behind a semantic distinction.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Is it stealing if I buy a second hand book? I'm still getting to enjoy the work without paying the author (even if the original person paid). Multiple people can own a physical copy at different times (with the author only getting paid once).

    Just like downloads. I don't feel bad about downloading stuff that's out of print. No one is making money from it now anyway, so what harm. If anything, digital copies help to stop these books being lost.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I mean that's literally semantics but whatever, if that's the definition you're going with then sure. If you ask me, you breached a contract and got a product out of it anyway, I'd call that stealing. I don't think scarcity even factors into whether it's stealing when it's all about whether it was a legit transaction. Lack of scarcity may help justify it when the distributor is a shithead but it doesn't make you not a thief.

    -a proud thief, steal your shit, especially from Adobe fuckem

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