Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations.
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I find the reaction to this and hbomberguy’s plagiarism video interesting. Both pirating and plagiarism are forms of infringement of intellectual property rights but one is considered ok and even just while the same voices condemn the other.
What makes ok against a faceless corporation but not ok against an independent creator? Should be wrong in both cases.
Edit: I want to acknowledge that plagiarizing a work and then selling it causes more harm than the simple act of one person pirating a piece a media
While both are infringement on intellectual property, the cardinal difference is that plagiarism is stealing someone else intellectual work and passing it off as your own product. With piracy the pirate doesn't claim they themselves made the game, nor do they resell the game for profit.
Plagiarism involves an extra act of deceit. You're passing off someone else's work as your own. It appears most people find this immoral.
Also, copyright is a monopoly on the publication of the work - piracy as it's commonly used wouldn't even be considered infringement.
Plagiarism is fraud. In many cases the original creator doesn't expect anything financial, just acknowledgement.
What makes ok against a faceless corporation but not ok against an independent creator? Should be wrong in both cases.
Arguably, corporations benefit more from pirating than an independent creator. QBasic became the programming standard because it was the version most people had used, and that was because it was the version that was most pirated. That directly leads to the rise of Microsoft.