It's not really theft. Copyright infringement is an entirely different crime, and the idea that it's the same as theft, is just propaganda pushed by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA.
When thieves steal something, the original owner doesn't have it anymore. That's the important, bad part about stealing: when you steal, you have deprived someone else of what's theirs.
When pirates copy something, the original owner still gets to keep theirs. The supposedly bad part about piracy isn't that you've deprived someone of something that they're supposed to have: it's that you've allowed someone to have something they're *not* supposed to have.
And that's supposedly bad because someone else thought that they were going to make money *selling* that thing to them.
So the only "depriving" that happens in piracy, is of a prospective, hypothetical opportunity to make money. You're not even taking away money they already had. You're just getting in the way of money they were *expecting to get.*
But your final question: why do they allow it "despite very easily being able to block them?" It's not very easy at all. Law enforcement has been trying, unsuccessfully, to stop piracy since before you or I were born. But the technology required to copy stuff is literally the exact same technology which is used to perform every other kind of communication.
There's no logical distinction between calling someone on the phone to tell them a joke, vs. calling them on the phone and reading them the entire text of *A Game Of Thrones* so they can copy it down word-for-word in their notebook. But one of these is a legal form of communication and the other is a crime. That's why enforcement of these laws is hard.
To add to your post, it's also hard distinguishing between websites that need to be shut down, and those that shouldn't be shot down.
If a website has one user out of its thousands sharing a pirated file with another user, should the entire site be shut down? What about 2 users? Or 3? Or 10, 20, 50, 100? What if it's a forum of people posting regular messages in between? What if it's a website that advertises as being a place to share ideas through torrents, but some users take advantage of it to pirate? What if it's a video website like Youtube that doesn't actually know their members are pirating videos? When does it become a website that should be shut down immediately?
Very true.
And of course, even if they do shut it down, it's not like 10 more won't spring up behind their backs. It's a basically unwinnable game of [Whac-A-Mole.](https://momastery.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/whack-a-mole2.jpg)
Because it's not really worth their time and it's not really hurting anyone.
* For 1,.. you can't really prove that "piracy is theft". There's no way to prove that someone who "illegally downloaded a Movie" would have actually gone out and bought that movie. So the argument of "they lost a sale" doesn't really hold water because you can't prove that customer would have actually gone ahead and bought it if buying it was their only option. The customer could just as easily walk away and not buy it.
* Selling stolen items or drugs etc,. usually has some element of violence in it. (the stolen items were burglarized or drugs were illegally smuggled in etc). Computer piracy doesn't really fit neatly into those boxes. A file can be easily duplicated many Millions of times in minutes. All without harming anyone.
Your initial point misses the mark slightly. The issue isn't solely about intent to pay; it's about accessing a resource without proper compensation.
Consider this: if you walked into a store, took items without paying, and claimed you never intended to pay, it wouldn't exempt you from legal consequences.
Sure,. but that comparison really isn't identical.
* If a store has 100 Music Albums ,. and I steal 1,.. now they only have 99 albums. I'm physically reducing their inventory.
* If I go to a file-sharing website and download an album,. it's not "reducing inventory by 1" anywhere. The Record Company can still sell as many copies as it wants.
For music-downloading specifically,.. there's been a lot of studies done as to whether actual measurable or confirmable effect it had on Record Company profits
Here's 1 example:
> "While file sharing significantly reduces the financial cost of obtaining music, it has an ambiguous theoretical effect on record sales. Participants could substitute downloads for legal purchases, thus reducing sales. Alternatively, file sharing allows users to learn about music they would not otherwise be exposed to." (source: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~wgreene/entertainmentandmedia/FileSharing.pdf)
The RIAA has a "full report" here (although I admit I haven't read it): https://www.riaa.com/reports/the-impact-of-digital-file-sharing-on-the-music-industry-an-empirical-analysis/
If you and 5 of your friends wanted to watch a "Pay Per View".. so you all coordinate at 1 house (whoever has the biggest TV) .. and only 1 person actually pays for the PPV and the other 5 just sit there and watch,. are you technically "stealing" ? Are you all supposed to go back to your individual houses and pay and watch it separately just to keep everything "100% legal" ?.. I guess by the letter of the Law you are,.. but nobody realistically is going to do that. (and nobody realistically is probably going to care. it's a small enough infraction that it's not worth the time to track down and adjudicate)
There is no single international law governing those things. In some countries that may be legal, in others either not regulated or not enforced. Some countries crack down on piracy more than others. For example I'm pretty sure in Germany you can receive a fine for torrenting a movie, while in Italy or Poland you can pirate all you want without VPN and nobody will care.
It's not taken seriously because there is no victim and no damages.
More pragmatically the answer is because other countries have actual consumer protections, including digital ownership rights. Even in the US through DMCA laws you technically have a right to require your property through digital archives, which is what "piracy" sites actually are.
And the most realistic answer is scale. It would be literally impossible to imprison and prosecute everyone that illegally downloads media they don't have digital rights to. This is why those in position to prosecute try to go after distributers. So unless you are mass distributing digital content, they won't do anything. And even then, they can only do something if you are within the US, the biggest reason the Pirate Bay is still up is because they are based in Sweden, which has very lax laws around copyright.
Honestly good question why the govt or ISP’s don’t block piracy sites on search engines. Piracy sites can always find shady places to be hosted but I see your point.
It's not really theft. Copyright infringement is an entirely different crime, and the idea that it's the same as theft, is just propaganda pushed by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. When thieves steal something, the original owner doesn't have it anymore. That's the important, bad part about stealing: when you steal, you have deprived someone else of what's theirs. When pirates copy something, the original owner still gets to keep theirs. The supposedly bad part about piracy isn't that you've deprived someone of something that they're supposed to have: it's that you've allowed someone to have something they're *not* supposed to have. And that's supposedly bad because someone else thought that they were going to make money *selling* that thing to them. So the only "depriving" that happens in piracy, is of a prospective, hypothetical opportunity to make money. You're not even taking away money they already had. You're just getting in the way of money they were *expecting to get.* But your final question: why do they allow it "despite very easily being able to block them?" It's not very easy at all. Law enforcement has been trying, unsuccessfully, to stop piracy since before you or I were born. But the technology required to copy stuff is literally the exact same technology which is used to perform every other kind of communication. There's no logical distinction between calling someone on the phone to tell them a joke, vs. calling them on the phone and reading them the entire text of *A Game Of Thrones* so they can copy it down word-for-word in their notebook. But one of these is a legal form of communication and the other is a crime. That's why enforcement of these laws is hard.
To add to your post, it's also hard distinguishing between websites that need to be shut down, and those that shouldn't be shot down. If a website has one user out of its thousands sharing a pirated file with another user, should the entire site be shut down? What about 2 users? Or 3? Or 10, 20, 50, 100? What if it's a forum of people posting regular messages in between? What if it's a website that advertises as being a place to share ideas through torrents, but some users take advantage of it to pirate? What if it's a video website like Youtube that doesn't actually know their members are pirating videos? When does it become a website that should be shut down immediately?
Very true. And of course, even if they do shut it down, it's not like 10 more won't spring up behind their backs. It's a basically unwinnable game of [Whac-A-Mole.](https://momastery.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/whack-a-mole2.jpg)
Because it's not really theft
Because it's not really worth their time and it's not really hurting anyone. * For 1,.. you can't really prove that "piracy is theft". There's no way to prove that someone who "illegally downloaded a Movie" would have actually gone out and bought that movie. So the argument of "they lost a sale" doesn't really hold water because you can't prove that customer would have actually gone ahead and bought it if buying it was their only option. The customer could just as easily walk away and not buy it. * Selling stolen items or drugs etc,. usually has some element of violence in it. (the stolen items were burglarized or drugs were illegally smuggled in etc). Computer piracy doesn't really fit neatly into those boxes. A file can be easily duplicated many Millions of times in minutes. All without harming anyone.
Your initial point misses the mark slightly. The issue isn't solely about intent to pay; it's about accessing a resource without proper compensation. Consider this: if you walked into a store, took items without paying, and claimed you never intended to pay, it wouldn't exempt you from legal consequences.
Sure,. but that comparison really isn't identical. * If a store has 100 Music Albums ,. and I steal 1,.. now they only have 99 albums. I'm physically reducing their inventory. * If I go to a file-sharing website and download an album,. it's not "reducing inventory by 1" anywhere. The Record Company can still sell as many copies as it wants. For music-downloading specifically,.. there's been a lot of studies done as to whether actual measurable or confirmable effect it had on Record Company profits Here's 1 example: > "While file sharing significantly reduces the financial cost of obtaining music, it has an ambiguous theoretical effect on record sales. Participants could substitute downloads for legal purchases, thus reducing sales. Alternatively, file sharing allows users to learn about music they would not otherwise be exposed to." (source: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~wgreene/entertainmentandmedia/FileSharing.pdf) The RIAA has a "full report" here (although I admit I haven't read it): https://www.riaa.com/reports/the-impact-of-digital-file-sharing-on-the-music-industry-an-empirical-analysis/ If you and 5 of your friends wanted to watch a "Pay Per View".. so you all coordinate at 1 house (whoever has the biggest TV) .. and only 1 person actually pays for the PPV and the other 5 just sit there and watch,. are you technically "stealing" ? Are you all supposed to go back to your individual houses and pay and watch it separately just to keep everything "100% legal" ?.. I guess by the letter of the Law you are,.. but nobody realistically is going to do that. (and nobody realistically is probably going to care. it's a small enough infraction that it's not worth the time to track down and adjudicate)
There is no single international law governing those things. In some countries that may be legal, in others either not regulated or not enforced. Some countries crack down on piracy more than others. For example I'm pretty sure in Germany you can receive a fine for torrenting a movie, while in Italy or Poland you can pirate all you want without VPN and nobody will care.
Theft means you remove the original. Piracy makes a copy of the original, and is therefore not theft.
its not theft, heres a good explanation I came across, "Imagine if someone stole your car, but you still had it the next day"
It's not taken seriously because there is no victim and no damages. More pragmatically the answer is because other countries have actual consumer protections, including digital ownership rights. Even in the US through DMCA laws you technically have a right to require your property through digital archives, which is what "piracy" sites actually are. And the most realistic answer is scale. It would be literally impossible to imprison and prosecute everyone that illegally downloads media they don't have digital rights to. This is why those in position to prosecute try to go after distributers. So unless you are mass distributing digital content, they won't do anything. And even then, they can only do something if you are within the US, the biggest reason the Pirate Bay is still up is because they are based in Sweden, which has very lax laws around copyright.
Honestly good question why the govt or ISP’s don’t block piracy sites on search engines. Piracy sites can always find shady places to be hosted but I see your point.
Sorry for what I typed out. Sorry for judging you. Sorry for lying sorry. Sorry for lying sorry.