Instigator / Pro
0
1500
rating
1
debates
0.0%
won
Topic
#5840
Should Cyber Piracy be punished with heavy fines?
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
After 3 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
Ferbalot
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 1
- Time for argument
- Two hours
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Winner selection
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
3
1514
rating
6
debates
75.0%
won
Description
No information
Round 1
Forfeited
Definition
Without a definition or further clarification, it seems most probable that Pro is referring to online piracy when they use the term cyber piracy.
Online piracy is the practice of disclosing and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission
- Wikipedia
Software that's not legally available in one's country.
Among them including the usage of old media that is otherwise practically impossible to access. Mother 3, for example, was never released outside of Japan.
Mother 3 was never localized or released outside Japan [...]
It's unreasonable to expect people to move to Japan just to play this game legally. And if it's between getting an enjoyable experience (and possibly sharing it with other people, overall on average making it more popular and increasing average sales in Japan) and not experiencing it at all, it seems obvious that the former could definitely be preferable.
This is just one example among many games that cannot realistically be legally played, and I'm sure there are examples from other forms of software as well.
Software that's realistically unaffordable.
Oftentimes, software prices do not properly account for the economic situation that various peoples and countries face. For some people, a small piece of software can cost a fortune in their local currency, and it can be extremely difficult to really make a life outside of that country.
Unless such a person is exceptionally bad with finances, they would not buy the software. So it is again realistically between pirating it and never having access to it.
Piracy could even have a slightly positive effect on sales due to on average making the product a little more popular.
Evil companies
I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that many software development companies' success makes humanity overall worse off, and that there's always some software development company that is evil by virtually any common ethical or axiological standard.
Is it bad to deprive an evil company of money? If anything it seems intuitive to say that it would be good to pirate from such companies.
Final round Blitzkrieg
With only one round where Pro goes first and where the BoP is plausibly shared, I don't think I could realistically safely argue as Con without bringing up arguments that Pro cannot address. As such, I don't think this should be considered a final round Blitzkrieg, at least in the usual sense.
There are a bunch of counterarguments and nuances that I didn't properly address, but given that Pro unfortunately (and to no fault of their own) didn't provide an argument, I think this should be sufficient.
Sorry Trixie, you probably didn't realize either:
- you would have to be available in the 2 hours after someone accepts.
- or how long it would take for someone to accept.
@NoOneInParticular
For stealing of physical objects, does the punishment based based on how expensive the object you steal is?
One could steal an entire library of digital books,
Yet, it seems worse to steal a library of physical books.
. . . Since the digital books are 'copied, and the digital library is not deprived of it's books.
Public libraries are generally already free for the public though, they have to buy a copy I suppose.
But I'm rambling.