[bzax]

On the contrary, I am not making the claim that "it isn't theft because no such property has been deprived". I think whether it is theft is a nuanced question, and it can only be answered if we are clear on what we think that property is. The US constitution perhaps defines such a property - to paraphrase lightly - "securing for limited times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings". If a simple exclusive right to one's work exists here it is clearly being deprived! (notably, such a simple right is not a thing, at least under US law - or fair use wouldn't exist)

What, to you, is the property being taken here? One can disagree ethically with the constitution's "The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", or one might disagree either legally or ethically with the consistency of Congress's implementation of that power, or one might disagree ethically with whether a particular violation of that right that one believes exists is a deprivation.

[Bakary]

I'm not interested in the details of American laws or any national law for that matter or whether it meets the definition of theft in one locale or not. The dictionary-oriented debate about legal definitions or the appeals to the 90's information sharing ethos that I both often see come up in such discussions miss the overall point.

Presumably, the typical pirate enjoys having a wide variety of artistic and/or creative material at their disposal. For that material to exist, effort must be expended at some point, and for that to happen the creator must receive some support somewhere, if only to meet their basic needs.

If the legal option is less convenient than the pirate option, there is an argument in favor of piracy there. However, the question is what would happen if both services were equally convenient. Logically, only the willingness to pay would be the determining factor. Would the majority of pirates who now complain about convenience or cite informational freedom go out of their way to donate? My intuition makes me doubt that.

On one hand you have the freeloading pirate: either someone else pays for the material in time/energy/financing, or the material simply doesn't come into existence from lack of support. On the other, we tell artists and creators that it sucks to be them and they should just learn to deal with the fact that their work happens to be hard to finance and easy to pirate. They are held to a higher standard compared to other workers whilst we take their work for granted and enjoy its existence. Can we try to alter this state of things through laws? It's an open question I suppose. But the fundamental motivation behind piracy is only high-minded if the market is asymmetrical and punishes legal buyers.