A piracy defense walks the plank at the Post

[Commentary] There are many problems with Timothy B. Lee’s Washington Post blog post on Hollywood’s supposed culpability for the theft of its own movies, beginning with the morally unserious jujitsu deployed in arguing that Hollywood is culpable for the theft of its own movies.

The Mercatus- and Cato-connected editor of the Washington Post tech blog that aims “to be indispensable to telecom lobbyists and IT professionals alike, while also being compelling and provocative to the average iPhone-toting commuter” also had a major correction that undermines the entire premise of the piece and reveals its one-sided reporting. Here’s the thing: If you make a movie, you should be able to sell it however you see fit, not however free-Internet types see fit. Perhaps how you decide to sell it will not be the best way you could sell it. That doesn’t in any way excuse tech companies from aiding theft via piracy, much less the people doing the actual pirating. People steal pirated movies largely because they’d rather not pay for something they don’t have to pay for, and because the consequences of breaking the law are almost nonexistent. It’s not very complicated.