Why is it immoral to steal movies?

[Lincoln]

I just heard on the radio that Hollywood is all upset that people are "stealing" their movies. Apparently they are traded over the Internet and some people try to take recording devices into the premier showing to sell copies later etc. My question is, on what basis can you say that this is "wrong." Or, how can you say that it is "right"? Who are what determines the moral standard? Do people just vote on it? What if someone was "stealing" the movies to show to poor orphans and widows who are shut up in some institution somewhere. Is it OK then? Again, what is the basis for your moral standards, or do you have a basis at all? And what prevents your standard from evolving to something evil? After all most evil empires thought they were doing the right thing. Even Hitler thought he was cleansing the world and most of Germany agreed with him. So how does your particular moral compass prevent such abuses, either individually or collectively?

[yavoon]

do u really not understand the concept of intellectual property rights? or is this thread some sort of bait for a certain response? I can't tell.

[Lincoln]

B

[General Ludd]

It's not stealing, and it's not immoral.

As for who decides that, everyone does. Morality is relative. However, I think most people would agree that Hollywood is one of the last places that you would find any morals.

[Jaguar]

It is going to be on TV in 2 years anyway.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Lincoln
B

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you know what it means to me...

[Lincoln]

It is kind of funny that Hollywood is complaining about the lack of morality. I never though of it from that angle. Maybe they are reaping what they sowed. Somehow there seems to be some justice here...

[Giant_Squid]

Just in case you were expecting a serious answer to the question:
Moral relativism does not negate such logical principles as noncontradiction and cause and effect. If one believes in and supports the concept of "fairness", then one has to go through the necessary logical steps to determine that taking a movie without paying for it is unfair, and hence this is bad. If they cannot go through these steps, it is an error of logic rather than of morality. If they desire for fairness to be applied to themselves but not to others, they are making a similar logical error. If they claim not to value fairness, then this claim is logically untenable if they value something like human happiness or that manner of thing. If they don't value human happiness, then you can't logically tell them they have to do so, but you had probably better make sure there are some pretty good laws to prevent them from hurting anybody.

[Lincoln]

I have to go to bed now but I should say that I base my morality on the words of Jesus: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If I made a movie I would want to get the money from the sales. On the other hand, if it had a social value I would give it away. Stealing is wrong. You can only take something if you have the permission of the owner.

[Lincoln]

Good post GS, and can you answer this question:

And what prevents your standard from evolving into something evil?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Giant_Squid
Moral relativism does not negate such logical principles as noncontradiction and cause and effect. If one believes in and supports the concept of "fairness", then one has to go through the necessary logical steps to determine that taking a movie without paying for it is unfair, and hence this is bad.

On what premeses do you make the conclusion? Or rather, why is it "fair" if you pay what the price it is asked for, istead of at a price that you yourself deem as fair? Is it fair that movie studios make bajillions a year?

It's not that simple.

[Giant_Squid]

Lincoln: I think your question is a little odd. What I was trying to say is that we can't say something like "his standard is evil" or "my standard is evolving into something evil". It's possible that your standard could disagree with my standard (for example, you think fairness is good, I think fairness is bad) in which case it's your job to either convince me my standard is wrong through logic (which you have no way of doing unless we can agree on a premise - your "treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated" would make a decent premise as long as I agreed with you) or if there's no possible way to convince me through logic, either leave me alone or, if your moral system tells me that what I'm doing is too horrible to be left alone, try to stop me. Would this lead to vigilanteism and anarchy? Of course...except that most humans, luckily, have the same basic standards, like suffering = bad and justice = good that can be used for more rational argument. In the same way that mathematics can't be "proven" but can be obtained reasonably from certain postulates people just happen to like, there's no objective "proveable" morality, but one can construct one out of the postulates upon which we all agree.

UR, you're quite right. That was an awful argument I used, and I only used it as an example of the sort of debating technique I might try, since Lincoln (I think) doesn't actually care about the movie issue and is just trying to have a philosophical debate about the origin of morality here. If I had to actually debate it, I would probably hope that your standard of fairness implies honoring a contract and that the movie company distributes the movie under the implicit contract that you'll pay them for it. if you wanted to get all utilitarian and say that it probably causes more happiness when I got to see the movie than it does harm when the movie company misses out on $8.95, I would throw in the categorical imperative and say that with enough of that sort of thing no one would make movies at all and THEN where would we be. But in both cases I would be working off of a relative system of morality (in the first, our postulate that it's good to honor contracts, and in the second, utilitarianism)

[Dinner]

For some of the crap Holliwood has put out they should be thanking us for taking it off of their hands.

[reds4ever]

If hollywood doesn't get it's act together people will stop sealing their films! In a shocking display of negligence last week a top hollywood distributor, sent me a copy of Spiderman when I specifically entered XMen2 in the Kazaa seach engine! My bandwith was tied up for hours D/Ling the incorrect film, when will the RIAA clamp down on the studios willful and misleading practice of erroneously advertising films on Kazaa?

[St Leo]

It's evil to steal independent movies. It is your social obligation to kill MPAA by stealing its movies.