Why is there so much negativity toward piracy?

[binary solo]

ps3-sales! said:

Stop acting so high and mighty. Would the industry fail if everyone pirated things? Duh. Will that ever happen? No.

 

So a little bit of crime is morally acceptable. I think you confuse the difference between a socially tolerable level of crime and and moral acceptance of a certain level of crime. At this point in time it is not possible to eradicate crime, so social institutions are merely trying to stop it from getting out of hand. So the moral pradigm is that as long as crime stays below a certain level society can function reasonably well. But that's not to say that it is socially acceptable to commit crimes, so long as it's only a small group of people doing it.

If you want a new model for copyable products that are subject to copyright controls rather than discrete ownership controls, then you should be strongly advocating for that. But you should not be committing crimes as part of your crusade. I happen to think that the current copyright contruct is bad, but I still pay for content if there isn't a legal way of getting it (or similar) for free. I don't use pirated MSOffice, I use OpenOffice. I don't download movies / TV shows (which is illegal), I watch free streaming content (which is legal), though I do  also subscribe to paid streaming services (Netflix).

Personally I think Netflix and the like should have a free version (with ads and sub-HD quality) and a piad version (ad free and HD quality). People will still tend to go for the paid version because they don't want the ads and they want the HD quality. But for people with more limited finances the content is still available in a legit form.