Just butting in here. Students come from a large spectrum of economic backgrounds. For those with parents who are not financing their educations, I see pirating material as a moral equivalent to stealing bread to feed yourself. It helps poor students compete in this crazy competitive space and levels the playing field against richer students, who can afford vastly more and better quality resources. And then you have idiots like me who didn't think they needed 3rd party resources until way late in the game 🫠
Not particularly, I don't consider it a black-and-white thing.
Not going to get into this debate here, will happily take it to DMs as it's not really relevant to OPs post, but if you think people are choosing to steal bread over "getting a job like everyone else" I'm sorry but you really lack perspective on what it means to be homeless or in poverty.
Dry snitching on their self 💀
Nope. There is no excuse for stealing
Calm down, Immanuel Kant.
No one said thieves were smart.
You cry every time someone steals a candy bar from Walmart? Some things just aren’t worth being upset over. If these services want to crackdown on pirating they have money and avenues to do so. Leave big business problems to big businesses is my attitude. I’m not gona feel guilty about not caring about someone pirating. Some things just aren’t that serious and not everything is a high level moral threat.
My stance was regarding medical professionals, not stealing everything, including candy bars from Walmart. We’re talking about people that are supposed to be movers and shakers. I think it’s reasonable to expect people in the medical community to be held to a higher standard.
The subject of conversation is literally about pirating expensive educational medical school materials. It’s a million dollar business and similar to people stealing from Walmart honestly. They aren’t hurting for money. People can have a high moral compass and still not care about things being pirated. Idk how you equate or compare pirating to unethical and potentially dangerous medical treatment. That’s super dramatic and someone being ok with pirating doesn’t mean they don’t have a high moral compass or don’t hold themselves to a high standard. People love blowing things out of proportion though.
I agree with you 100%. I just don’t care to berate people pirating nor do I think it’s some huge moral failing on their part if they do pirate. There’s just so much more important stuff to worry about in the world than pirating 😐
I’ve been around long enough to know that these discussions in on online forum are essentially pointless. No one will ever change their minds and it feels like people yell a berate through texts. I also know that every decision we make has moral implications. For example, I drank from a disposable water bottle today, I’m typing this on an iPhone, I’m wearing adidas shoes. All of these have ramifications (bad for the environment, exploitation, and what not). And we’ve all made compromises on a moral level for these conveniences.
I don't think it's contradictory. I think you can create a product and the way you distribute it you can put whatever security mechanisms you want. However, once the product is purchased, it becomes The property of the owner to do with it as they see fit. If your product is such that it can be replicated, that is your own bad luck. I wouldn't say that I'm stealing if I make a photocopy of a page from a book in the library. In fact, most libraries have copy machines. If I obtain a copy from someone, that's my own private transaction with that person and not your business. Do you understand now?
This argument is completely asinine and I hope you aren't serious. You might want to actually look into copyright laws and intellectual property laws and ponder why they exist. The very reason we have copyright laws is to prevent such behavior and ensure that the person who created the material is not taken advantage of in the manner that you are describing as acceptable. Violating these laws is tantamount to stealing. Yes, you can photocopy parts of books when that photocopying amounts to "fair use", which is a vague term admittedly but it would be determined by courts. If you copy 10 pages to take home and study, thats likely fair use. If you make 100 copies of a chapter and then pass it along to others freely, thats likely not fair use. So no, you can't just do whatever you want with copyrighted materials.
Nope. Physicians are public servants and should work for free. They should live in cardboard boxes outside of the hospital and devote their lives fully to patient care. /s
A fair middle-ground would be the dismantling of the capitalist system that pits the proletariat against each other and not against the bourgeoisie who profit off of the proletariat's labor, in this essay I will
How do you suppose that would happen? Would someone force them to lower their prices? Even if they did lower their prices, would people actually pay?
I don't understand this. So steal from the rich and give to the poor so that we can all be equal? Lol. I don't know why liberals think they can just take things that don't belong to them either for themselves or someone else.
Here's my hot take. I don't think medical professionals should be held to a higher standard than any other person. We're people. We make the same mistakes, have the same moral quandaries, are just as error prone as everyone else. I think the higher standard thing is garbage. I am not better than other people. Nor am I worse. I want to be held to the same standards as everyone else I share the street with. No more and no less.
Your entire argument is an appeal to authority. You're saying "it's bad because there's a law!" Would you take the side that segregation was okay when a law existed for it? No? Did you all of a sudden discover nuance? I can tell you exactly why copyright and intellectual property laws exist. They exist to benefit those profiting. My argument is not a legal one. I'm answering why I don't find pirating morally wrong or akin to stealing. Now do you understand?
With the free market argument I feel like you could argue that if the price on something is too high, you run the chance of people stealing or imitating your work. Look at the clothes industry, lots of knock offs for brands that are more expensive for no reason other than the company deems that it's worth more than the others.
Dr. Ryan and others created valuable products for medical students. I think we can all agree on that based on the number of medical students who use these resources whether they pay or not. Why should their work not be copyrighted to protect their products and ensure that they are able to profit from creating these valuable products? Sure, everyone knows that given that it is an online platform it can easily be pirated, but do you really think thats perfectly okay? My argument is not simply that "its the law" but I'm trying to convey why these laws exist.
There are many things I disagree on and could comment on in your post, but I think the fact that we fundamentally disagree on this point renders it not worthwhile. I believe that a society should be one in which every individual operates according to their own best interest. If someone wants to be generous for whatever reason, great. If not, I don't believe they should be forced to be.
What’s the point of a society then?
Those clothes companies charge an optimal price for their goods. Other companies making cheaper products is simply competition in the market, which is a good thing. Luxury items are a bit different from other goods and services I will say because often times the reason people buy them is due to the fact that they are expensive. A certain percentage of the population is going to prefer a $200 dollar shirt with "Dior" written across the front over a $5 dollar shirt with some other name simply because its a status simple. If those high end companies felt that they were being outcompeted they would have already lowered their prices, but they aren't because that pricee is optimal for them (ie it maximizes aggregate profit). THIS IS DIFFERENT IN THE CASE WE ARE DISCUSSING HERE BECAUSE PEOPLE ARENT SIMPLY COMPETING WITH DR RYAN, THEY ARE JUST STEALING HIS WORK THUS IT IS NOT A FREE MARKET. Given that they can so easily do this, even if the price were cut in half that would not result in a significant increase in people actually paying for it.
People have been burning cds/dvds/ getting passcodes to sites without subscriptions, and sharing them since the start of the internet. To expect people to not magically do it is insanity. The trick is to make the product cost what the consumers think is fair to purchase, or provide extra services that cannot be obtained through bootlegging it. This is the free market at work. Alot of medical students have deemed that the price is too expensive, and this is likely tilting decisions to the side of using the resources without purchasing them.
These seem to be in contradiction.
Yes, if you are the one profiting, that is what you want. It would also be what I would want if I was making the product. In your original post you proposed it was immoral and theft. I'm arguing that you can genuinely believe it isn't. For me, if I buy a product, it is mine to do with it as I wish. I understand the law disagrees and why. I also understand my philosophy has unintended consequences such as creators not wanting to make products. I think we will just have to agree to disagree here, but I hope at least you can see that not everyone thinks it's cut and dry theft and immorality
This is a native pov. You can’t be this individualistic in your approach to life in such an interconnected society / world. Your best interest is affected by or affects others.
You have just been made a moderator of the Subreddits r/antiwork and r/LateStageCapitalism
Stop moving the goalposts and being purposely obtuse lol there's a difference between directly stealing someone's property and stealing intellectual property on the internet
What if they steal your NFTs or dogecoin?
