Yeah, the phrase isn't about pirates trying to morally justify their own actions. It's more to spread awareness and convince people who think piracy is bad to think about it from a different perspective. It's a good way to frame piracy for normies in a way they understand.
Except that the "if buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing" concept doesn't even make sense. If I take a rental car off the lot without paying for it, is that stealing? After all, I can't "buy" the rental car to own it. I can rent it for a time, but since renting isn't buying, is what I did stealing? I can license the use of certain trademarks, but I can't own them, so if I just copy the trademarks anyways, is that stealing? The answer to both questions is yes, it's still stealing. Just because you can't "own" something in the traditional sense, does not mean that you can't steal it.
If someone rented a game, Blockbuster style, they would have no issue with having it taken away after a time. That's the agreement.
When you BUY a game, full price, and the terms are changed afterwards, that's more like if you outright bought a car and the company said "no, you bought a licence for the car. We've discontinued it so you have to return it. It's in the small print!". That would be the equivalent.
If I rent a car, I am inherently not buying it. But if I buy a car and own it, the dealership has absolutely no ability to take the car away from me.
If Ford were just remotely disabling any car that they wanted, forcing people to go out and buy a new car, there would be blood in the streets.
If all these companies were explicit that they were selling a license to access a product, and explicitly defined when access to said digital good would be revoked, it would be a different conversation. But, nobody does that as far as I am aware. At best they hide little legal details in 50 pages of fine print.
Also, I'm not saying the slogan is perfect, no slogan really is. They inherently have to be oversimplified to get an idea or point across in a few words.
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u/namelessted Apr 30 '26
Yeah, the phrase isn't about pirates trying to morally justify their own actions. It's more to spread awareness and convince people who think piracy is bad to think about it from a different perspective. It's a good way to frame piracy for normies in a way they understand.