If a majority of the population decided bank robbery was okay, does that mean we should re-evaluate if robbing banks is really a bad thing? Of course not!
Of course yes. This is exactly what happens in most impoverished countries, by the way. If the only way to survive for a good part of the population is to steal and to rob, then stealing and robbing become commonplace and the population's own intolerance towards these acts naturally diminishes, or even results in anti-hero figures (see Jamaican gansters, for example). At that point, people in charge often concentrate on stopping the crimes rather than addressing the cause of it (i.e. scarcity of alternatives to survive), and the country falls even further in a downward spiral.
Does that remind us of something? :)
Ultimately, copying someone else's IP, to which you have no rights, means someone didn't get paid. Period.
Er, no. It results in me enjoying IP that otherwise I wouldn't have had a chance to. If I don't have the money to go see a movie then I don't pay for the movie, and somebody doesn't get paid (a percentage of the original sum). So hey, in both cases (me copying or me not going) have the same effect on the producer. Should we then be forced by law to go to the movies, because otherwise "somebody will not get paid"?
And if you copied it, you have assigned some value to it
Even if I did, it might not be economic value, and it might not coincide with what the producer wants me to pay; hence, in different circumstances the deal simply wouldn't have happened, so the producer wouldn't have gained any of "my value" anyway.
At best, it means you've inflicted direct financial harm by devaluing of the product in question.
Not really. Look at the record profits being posted recently by entertainment industries.
The product has NOT been devalued. The distribution chain has been devalued; which is why music stores are closing, but record companies are making more money than ever before.
if you pirate IP, you absolutely are harming the IP owners.
Except that you aren't. They still have their music, their artists (hell, even *more* artists and *cheaper* than ever before, thanks to reality shows), their tours, their merchandising, their advertisement deals, their followers ready to depart from cash... etc etc. This is what they're telling their shareholders, by publishing record profits, so I guess that's what they believe.
IP owners are not being "harmed"; IP resellers are suffering, yes, because they've been made technologically redundant.
Either that, or *everything* published on economics is wrong.
Either that, or you didn't read a lot of stuff published on economics. Which I guess is the most likely option, here.
If you worked and didn't get paid time and time again, you'd be begging for help and relief with the law too.
Or maybe you'd look for another job?
You know, that's what happens IRL, when you care to join the adult population.