If not, then your argument makes sense;
Somehow you don't discuss at all the argument I made -- that without having the practical option to sell it, people that make commercial-level goods might end up offering them to the public freely -- and yet you list an irrelevant criterion (that these goods must not be superior) which must be satisfied for it to "make sense".
People that make something sellable very often want to sell it.
If they don't have that option, some people may not create this sellable thing in the first place -- other people however may however make it and offer it to the world for free (as is done with fanvid/fanfics and all these other non-sellable things).
Especially if this currently-sellable thing is superior, the former case is a loss for humanity, and the latter is a gain. But do you have data to indicate that cases of the former will outweigh/outnumber the latter?
I didn't mean to avoid your argument. You're of course correct, people who don't have the option of making something sellable might create free things to give away. Or they might not create the thing at all.
To my mind, if the result of eliminating that option is that equally good stuff gets created and distributed for free, that's a win (all else being equal). Conversely, if the result is that there's less good stuff created, that's a lose (all else being equal).
I can't tell if you're actually claiming that the result will be the former. I'm skeptical, m...
I could discuss the large scale effects of piracy (copyright infringement) for days! From a game-theoretical/utilitarian -, ethical - or any other perspective. I have a set of views and suggestions for topics that could be interesting to break down and address, but instead of writing a long post addressing many different topics, Ill start with the first one in my mind.
Just a thought:
For a subset of activities you could map the question of the ethical status of illegal downloading of a software p (preferred choice) to the existence of a certain kind of element a in a set S, which I'll call the set of alternatives (assuming the risk of getting caught is very small).
Lets say that you for some reason need a graphics editor and your preferred choice is Photoshop CS5. You could either:
In the case you have chosen to illegally download a copy of the software, some people would compare that to stealing (certainly the folks at Adobe). Would that really be fair to say? At least in my opinion that depends on whether or not you would have bought a copy in the absence of the 'download' alternative. Your preferred choice is indeed Photoshop CS5, but that is one among many choices, the rest being in the set of alternatives S. Most users with illegal copies wouldn't pay the 650$ when there are free alternatives. Those alternatives may be much less attractive with less features but many of them would still do the job.
So if there exist an a in S, such that you would prefer a over p in the absence of alternative 2, then in a game between you and Adobe, the choice a would not be Pareto optimal. Your utility is maximized by choosing p (downloading Photoshop), Adobes utility left unchanged. --> Maximizing total utility (ignoring potential side-effects, such as effects overall attitude towards piracy and so on)
Today there exists an S for almost anything.
Whats your opinion on this in regards to utility maximization (utility of society). Can we really break it down like this looking at the individual case?