Is Internet Piracy a Symptom of Greed?

Is internet “piracy” greed?

Isn't “greed” a bit strong?

Was it greed when we popped in a Memorex to record our favorite songs off the radio?

Made a mix-tape for our crush?

Did greed play a hand in cracking the shareware version of some DOS game for a buggy “full” version?

In giving it to a friend?

Was it greed when we used our Tivo to record our favorite show to watch later, commercial free?

When we later shared that show with our family?

Is it greed when one looks at an art print online?

When one prints it themselves and pins it to their wall?

I don't buy that it is greed that makes us want to experience art that we may not be able to afford.

Copyright laws are clearly outdated and have been abused and expanded for decades to benefit mega-corporations. They hold onto licenses way after they should be in the public domain, they charge fees for every possible use of their properties and they abuse the laws to censor derivative works and criticism.

Should Micky Mouse STILL be a profitable and protected property for Disney with Walt Disney himself long dead and the mouse's first appearance having been in 1928? Nineteen-freakin'-twenty-eight?!

So where, truly, does the greed lie? In the pirates or the mega-corporations who have lobbied for laws that allow them almost complete control and monetization of more properties than they know what to do with that won't expire until the end of time if they get their way?

Both perhaps, but it is not as black and white as the rights holders paint it for they, themselves, are very tarnished.

I'm not so sure that it is greed alone that gives a person the desire to make a digital copy of a digital file composed of harmless ons and offs, ones and zeros; like so much Morse code, to appreciate something they don't have and want to experience or make use of?

Not greed, I don't think, but a feeling of entitlement, certainly. An entitlement that is witnessed not only in those pirates who download those copies of those files but also in the actions of the corporate rights holders themselves.

As Louis D. Brandeis said: “If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.”

If the law makers made the laws surrounding copyright respectable there would be much less of a problem. It wouldn't go away of course, but nothing unethical ever does.

Also; I'd like to see a revenue analysis of piracy correlated with music sales (people who pirate music then buy it) and the money that artists earn from legit streaming services. That's something someone should look into because streaming don't seem to pay the bills.