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"If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" is a stupid quote and I'm sick of hearing it

SecureBoot · 2026-04-20T13:58:48+00:00

There seems to be an increasing amount of fervor behind digital preservation. I see a lot of content about media destruction and revocation of purchased content. Without fail, the top comments on videos like this are "If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing". A nice-sounding sentiment for sure, and one that people seem to rally around to justify their digital looting, but if you apply any amount common sense to the quote, it entirely falls apart as nonsense. First of all, obviously piracy is not stealing. That's why those two actions are named different things. If piracy was stealing, you would just call it theft. You can remove the first part of the sentence and it remains equally as true. "Piracy isn't stealing". What piracy still is is the circumvention of payment to the rights holder for a product that they have the right to sell. Second, lets look at the first half of the quote. "If buying isn't owning". I want to be clear, I strongly feel that there should always be a path to DRM-free, non-revocable access of media. However, in a world that isn't the case, prefacing that thought with the word "if" does more to shine a light on the fact that you were too lazy to read the Ts&Cs before making a purchase. The information that you do not have complete ownership is right there in the Terms and Conditions and you actively decided to purchase the product anyway. Now you're turning around and lying about it like no one told you this information. It's like buying a meal at a restaurant where the menu lists "soft drinks are non-refillable" and then getting pissed that your soft drink is, in fact, non-refillable. Should the restaurant make the drink refillable to improve the customer experience? Probably, but that doesn't change the fact that you were informed of what you were getting into when you made the order. Third, the two clauses of the quote have practically no correlation. Buying isn't owning because these are the terms set by the vendor. If these terms weren't explicitly set, we wouldn't be having this conversation. The vendor does not set terms that say piracy is not theft. If you want this to be true, then that would have to be negotiated by you, the customer, with the vendor prior to purchase. By making the purchase, you agree to the terms whether you like it or not. You don't get to retroactively decide you don't like the terms any more and change them. Fourth, it's just an excuse to justify your piracy. Don't get me wrong, I have done my fair share of piracy, but piracy is not a clear or sustainable path to preservation. Piracy is often the only way some media is preserved, but that preservation is contingent on someone caring enough about the media to make a backup available for others. My guess is that the majority of people screaming this mantra, are just trying to absolve themselves of the guilt that pirating brings them. That's all. That's the tweet. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.