this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Physical media and digital media are different beasts. When he hands you that book, he no longer has it. I would also assume he didn’t steal that physical copy. Someone got paid initially for the physical media, which the person is now deprived of by giving it to you. It’s not quite “apples to oranges” but it’s definitely not a parallel situation.
This is assuming - like digital media - some one took the time to spend his own free time to make copies of a physical medium.
There is no way of knowing whether the person has copyright or stole the first copy.
Or compare school books: the whole class buys one copy together, makes copies for every person to share costs. Likewise, a whole family can chip in to buy a car - you wouldn't force them to buy a car each.
Whether someone spends their personal resources to copy a medium digitally or physically doesn't really matter to the copyright holder or author. They won't get paid either way
The two examples in your later paragraph are wholly different cases: the second is a completely different use-case and the first one is actually less morally unambiguous than you think.