In essence, you were never paying for the news, and so unfortunately, you don't have a firm grasp of the true cost.
This is such a critical thing to understand. No one understands the true cost, because no one has ever paid for the news, it's always been advertisers. And now, for whatever reasons, advertisers don't want to pay for the digital equivalent, and they don't seem to be coming around.
This correlates to brandnewlow's comment above as well. It would be fascinating to see a news source that was paid for entirely by customers and thus not beholden to advertisers--something like HBO. But it would very hard to sell such a thing, because $15-$30/month for news, historically speaking, seems insanely high.
In my eyes (and maybe this is unreasonable of me, anyone else?), you lose credibility when you state, as fact, your own opinions that you know other people disagree on.
You begin your comment by saying "You make one good point…" Is that a fact? No. Did you state it as a fact? Yes, in that you stated it without qualifiers. Does that mean you have no credibility? Of course not, come on.
For the rest of it, let's rephrase your own logic a bit: "I don't know if sending people to the back of the bus is wrong, but I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the foreseeable future" would be a pretty weak argument against declaring segregation unethical.
It hinges around the idea of whether or not you're hurting people. You started your original comment by saying that "clearly unethical" is a debatable point, but then you tried to draw an equivalence between piracy and a three more victimless acts. You then say "ethics don't matter" and follow that up with "I don't hurt people." I'm saying you do hurt people. It's debatable, but you dismiss debate of it by trying to argue that ethics don't matter and you're not going to think about it. That's not a good counter an assertion that piracy is unethical.
(As a side note, the Stanford Experiment and related studies suggest that both of us would beat and murder women if it were socially acceptable. Creepy stuff that, which is one of the reasons why I think it's important not to tie "ethical" too closely to "socially acceptable." It's also why your notion that "ethics don't matter, I don't really have to think about it" upsets me, perhaps more than it should.)
Here's hoping your current position as comment #1 means you're not the only one who cares. You certainly aren't! But this kind of stuff has become religion here: I'm seeing perfectly valid comments being downvoted if they take the side that these things are unethical, and admittedly I get pretty hot when I hear the roar of "piracy is a-ok!" that now seems to drown out any contradiction.
I think the MPAA and groups like it bear the brunt of the responsibility for the creation of this mentality, though. I don't think they really understand how many enemies they made due to SOPA and things like it, or the level of bad will they're generating by consistently refusing to embrace better distribution models, or how much they undercut their own arguments by refusing to behave in an ethical manner while they demand ethics of others. And the worse it gets, the more they dig in to absurd positions.
Their behavior seems to have led many to conclude--fairly--that they're simply a mafioso organization and that there is no validity to any of their concerns. And so copyright ceases to exist, and it's hard to discuss, even here, without being accused of being an MPAA shill. But it started with the copyright organizations: they started calling fans thieves and demanding they all be put in jail or fined into bankruptcy, and then they started demanding that the Internet be locked down and controlled without due process, and now people are firing back with equal vitriol, and often an equivlaent unwillingness to listen to the other side. Sad indeed.
That only works if you contend that every single person who pirated something would not have purchased the thing otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's wrong in the same way that saying every single pirated copy of something results in lost revenue (as the MPAA and RIAA contend.) It might not be as wrong, but it's still wrong.
And while there are plenty of studies that suggest piracy might help sales, there are also plenty that suggest that it does not:
In fact, while the issue is plenty debatable I'd say that most of the evidence comes down on the side of "yes, piracy hurts sales, just no where near as much as the MPAA would have you think." (Though even the article above suggests that piracy wouldn't be as much of an issue if movies were released worldwide simultaneously.)
Furthermore, "hurting the creators" needn't necessarily be financial. There are many, many artists, programmers, etc. -- not big publishers, but creators -- who hate piracy with a passion. They often feel under assault by Internet companies the way that people here feel under assault by the MPAA. I think they're misguided, but it's irresponsible to just say "fuck you, this doesn't hurt."
So no, "hurting the creators" is not false, probably not financially and certainly not ethically (you're doing something with their work they don't want.) It's valid to say that the creators have to suck it up and adapt, and that many of them won't be able to make money in the ways they did before. But they are getting hurt.
Using drugs, "facilitating underage drinking" and even jaywalking are quite a bit different than stealing. You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok, but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal, you lack empathy for the act, and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another.
Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble. You do steal, and you do hurt people. You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.
I'm one of those that really wants trial versions, but I wonder if this evidence suggests that trial versions would be equally pointless for conversions to paid. The primary reason I search for ad-supported versions of apps is because I always want to try something first, and then I upgrade to paid if the option exists. It sounds as if I'm in a small minority, though. Still, a trial version, which forces an upgrade to paid after a while, might be more effective for conversion than an ad-supported app that remains forever functional.
In nirvana's defence, if you spent any time in video editor's forums when FCPX was launched, it would have been very easy to get the impression that editors, as a group, simply didn't like anything new. The amount of misinformation was staggering. Think of the worst, most misinformed emacs vs. vim debate you've ever seen: it was like that almost everywhere. That isn't to say that there weren't (and aren't) legitimiate complaints, but there was a massive amount of noise.
Your comparison also discounts the fact that the workflow in most modern video editors is extremely broken. Emacs and VIM users can make a good argument for a code editor being vastly customizable or controllable by keyboard only, but there are fewer defences for the way most video editors work: they behave as they do due to intertia, and because editors 20 and 30 years ago had to work a certain way due to the limitations of the hardware at the time. Many of the changes in FCPX are hugely welcome, but many editors -- including "pros" -- can't (or refuse to) see it.
That's just like saying 'programmers' don't want to learn Logo because they are programming by rote in Java or whatnot.
There are many programmers who resist learning another language because it's different than what they originally learned. I believe pg himself wrote an essay about that once. There are absolutely blub video editors.
FCPX might be a good tool for a small time editor that needs an occasional video, but it is not up to professional standards yet.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of FCPX, but this stuff is nonsense: there are plenty of professional editors using it already.
This is such a critical thing to understand. No one understands the true cost, because no one has ever paid for the news, it's always been advertisers. And now, for whatever reasons, advertisers don't want to pay for the digital equivalent, and they don't seem to be coming around.
This correlates to brandnewlow's comment above as well. It would be fascinating to see a news source that was paid for entirely by customers and thus not beholden to advertisers--something like HBO. But it would very hard to sell such a thing, because $15-$30/month for news, historically speaking, seems insanely high.