@msh @packbat

"You wouldn't download a car," is a joke rephrasing of lines from the ad, "You wouldn't steal a car. ... Downloading pirated films is stealing."

Like you said, it's mocking equating digital piracy to meatspace grand theft auto.

@Thunderfree @msh (confession time: I actually sort of forgot what the actual text of the ad was when I was writing the toot. >_>)

@packbat @msh

(it's all good. I just figured you're in a region that didn't get shown the ads)

@Thunderfree @packbat yeah I do get that but it is nonsensical to assert download==steal. If they really were equivalent and you could indeed download a tangible item as if you had a replicator a great many people would do it.

Information does not suffer from scarcity. Saying it is legally equivalent to tangible goods that do is asinine. This isn't an argument as to whether copyright should exist or not, but piracy != stealing

@msh @Thunderfree *nods*

I think, given the current state of society on Earth, "are we undermining the livelihood of people" is an important question that we should be asking ourselves when we decide what we do (along with "are we opening ourselves up to a world of trouble at the hands of people who might not *deserve* power, but very definitely have it").

I also think, given the news article I linked, that quite a lot of the investors who buy the rights to creative work don't care one whit about whether they're undermining the livelihood of people, and we should be contemptuous of them for their demonstrated indifference to the very ethical principles they claim to advocate for.

...didn't really convey the subtleties of that in my original toot.

@packbat @msh @Thunderfree nicely put.

@msh @packbat
Its only 80mb to download this car
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:476016

@libgrog yeah, so, I don't support piracy either

my issue isn't that they're anti-piracy, it's that they're exploitative pieces of shit stealing the creative labors of others

just fyi