"Let's say you snuck into my band's concert venue and didn't buy a ticket. Yeah you didn't physically take anything from me, but you are having access to something you shouldn't without paying."
And this is again a physical situation, where one more person takes up limited space, reducing something.
Copying does not reduce anything.
It also does not contribute anything, true, so I am not saying it is always ethical to do so.
But when a poor person in bangladesh or bolivia living under very different economic realities, where 10$ means a LOT and who could never afford to pay for western realities anyway, streams some hollywood movie from a warez site - than I see zero damage. And guess what, they all do. So do poor teenagers and students in the west and they usually start paying, once they can afford it.
Judging them all as "thefts" from a position of being born into wealth, is maybe not very ethical either.
So to repeat it again, stealing implies taking something away. Which is not the case here.
And this is again a physical situation, where one more person takes up limited space, reducing something.
Copying does not reduce anything.
It also does not contribute anything, true, so I am not saying it is always ethical to do so.
But when a poor person in bangladesh or bolivia living under very different economic realities, where 10$ means a LOT and who could never afford to pay for western realities anyway, streams some hollywood movie from a warez site - than I see zero damage. And guess what, they all do. So do poor teenagers and students in the west and they usually start paying, once they can afford it.
Judging them all as "thefts" from a position of being born into wealth, is maybe not very ethical either. So to repeat it again, stealing implies taking something away. Which is not the case here.