this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Software piracy isn't theft because you're not taking anything away from someone else.
That said, this meme makes no sense. You don't own a car you rent. The car can still be stolen.
But not from the person renting it.
You pay for it, sure, but I'm not sure you "purchase" a rental car. Imho there sould be a legistlation that says you can't use wording like "buy" or "purchase" for digital media that you don't own. Like "buy license" or "start rental"... IDK
Sure? Stealing from a rental car company is still theft. If software piracy was theft, making that software a rental instead of a purchase doesn't change that fact. You would still be stealing something.
Knowledge theft just can't be compared with object theft like that. If you had a device that could perfectly replicate a car just by sitting in it, that would be closer.
Alternatively, car companies that can grenade your car's engine if you drive somewhere they don't like, or otherwise prevent you from using the car, while still asking for $50k+.
None of that has to do with the definitional distinction the meme is making. I've already said it's not actual theft, my problem is that the argument presented is bad. Even if a customer transaction does not confer ownership, it is possible to steal the thing transacted upon. So piracy WOULD still be theft, if it was theft in the first place. The argument doesn't work, unrelated to whether or not I agree with the conclusion.
Any car that exists can be stolen. That describes a car I wouldn't want to buy or rent, it does not describe a car which could be taken without that taking being theft.
A device that destroys itself when stolen can't be stolen successfully. The metaphor still fails somewhat as making a new car isn't free.
I think I see your point though; theft isn't defined by ownership, so ownership status is not a case for theft (although they do tend to be caused by the same things). "If the plane wasn't flying, then I didn't crash"; crashing is not defined by flight worthiness, or even being in the air.
The logic of the idiom is in the simile though, "buying ≠ owning" has the same logical flaw; there are lots of things we buy that can't be owned, chiefly services. Yet the expectation of the saying is that buying to own is not owning. Perhaps more explicit would be "If not giving what was payed for isn't stealing, then taking what should be given isn't stealing either", or "If you take our right to own, we'll take your right to own".
Like most sayings, being snappy is more useful that being correct, but there's also an important meaning there if we take the snap out of it.
If someone invented a machine that could print out cars for cents on the dollar, that wouldn’t make stealing those cars fair; especially if inventing that machine cost him billions of dollars.
In fact that’s reasonably close to the case for certain kinds of food - the costs for producing them are infinitesimal, but the logistics of researching that development process, making storefronts, advertising them, and having staff on hand to process the purchase add up. Yet that doesn’t stop some people from pointing to that production cost as reason to shoplift.
Memes like this have always been backwards justification to excuse piracy.