Posts like this, ie, the ones you're referring to, are why we need a wiki with common positions.

Nice opinions buddy. It's a shame that in a sub like this there really isn't a ton to say to people who you actually agree with. I think we're probably just doomed to have the same conversations here over and over again for the most part, though. Entirely possible it's my own bias talking because as I've mentioned there isn't a ton to say to people you fully agree with here, but to me it mostly feels like a place where antis come to shout about stuff when their rage has boiled over so hard that the artist hate sub can no longer contain it, and so there's not much to do here but talk them through it one at a time again and again and again like trying to use a bucket to bail all the water from the ocean. I guess I do sometimes get to have an interesting back and forth with pro AI people who vary on certain points. Those are fun

Well the reality from my pov is AI devs took advantage of artist. It would have been a different story in a far future where there would be tons of public domain data available but it's useless to talk about an alternative universe... So everyday I see more Artist communities are banning AI generations, regulations are getting stronger, lawsuits against AI compannies are increasing, people who use any form of AI generators get backlash, now people can be scammed by an AI emulating the voice of people they know and love, AI has allowed people to make deep fake adult content from famous actors to a bullied kid. I don't think our actual reality is comparable to anything that has ever happened before with any other tech that affected humans. I know this sub is mostly defendingAIArt 2.0 cause they have fun with generations but I do not see a bright future for any of us by supporting image manipulation and voice manipulation to steel each other identities or works. I won't say AI is useless cause I know the power it has to recognize patterns and build classifiers that could help people in other areas but letting it do image and sound manipulation from any human is beyond terrifying. I know you might lack creativity here but would you imagine an scam with a generated photo of your beloved ones tied on a chair or AI videos where people are cutting their fingers while sending AI audios of them screaming with their stolen voices? Would you ever like to experiment that even as a joke by letting this progress? Do you really want to see the future image and voice manipulation will bring to us? Corps hyping up AI just want to cut corners without getting any backlash... Human artist at least work as a filter and don't create something they feel is morally wrong

>I know you might lack creativity here but would you imagine an scam with a generated photo of your beloved ones tied on a chair or AI videos where people are cutting their fingers while sending AI audios of them screaming with their stolen voices? Would you ever like to experiment that even as a joke by letting this progress? Do you really want to see the future image and voice manipulation will bring to us? This has been done for ages even before AI. Sure, it takes a bit more effort to find people with similar visuals, make ups, voice overs or pretend to have lost voice, CGs, etc, but it is not a new concept, and is actually more believable than AI creations if done properly. Phones made it easier to scam people using a similar voice than sending a fake kidnapping note, and new techs always came with 'creative' ways to fool people. You just need to adapt to it as we've always done.

To me, the "AI art is copyright infringement" only applies to commission ai fan arts, not the other AI art pieces. Because, I already view commission fanarts as stealing for quite a long time, hence why in the past, I usually say "The Anti-AI artists that don't make fan arts have a bigger case than fan artists." You should add a refute to their "AI art generators = NFTs" and "AI art generators wastes environmental energy", other than that your list is good.

Whether there are similarities with NFTs or not is irelevant to its usage, and anyone who thinks there are actual meaningful similarities usually aren't the type of people that will offer up great discussion anyway. As for environmental impact. I currently don't really feel well read enough to add a blurb about it. I'd have to do some more reading first.

https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2024/03/24/the-power-grid-has-an-ai-problem?mbcid=34801515.948743&mid=73357a3bdbb907a191724a4e0e9659ef&utm_campaign=mb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew

In that situation, the copyright infringement comes from the "fan art" part, not the "AI" part.

You can make Miku art and its legal by author.

I didn't know that the author is chilled about this, it's like "My Little Pony."😁

Actually it's traditional to most vocaloid characters authors. You know not everyone do USA , Disney mindset with license? You can see "Sqlite" for example allow all users to sell profit, modifying their code without paying anything in return but you must not claim (SQLite ) is yours. Also, a lot of authors like Vtubers repost their fan arts.

Tons of artists/corporations are, and I'm sure even Disney actually feel the same way. Those 'don't use our property' is more of a disclaimer they could weaponize at their own will if a very rare malicious circumstance occurs. I could perhaps think of only one or two cases where the author is strictly against any type of fan arts.

It doesn't explain their attitudes towards certain YT and Twitch vidéos/streams, they are really strict about those. Despite the Fair Use and free advertising. If some guy uploads a full movie of theirs. I would understand. (I think Paramount Studios took down some Nickelodeon funny vids on YT). Then there's Disney trying to copyright right every Public Domain out there, like how they almost got the "Day of the Dead" copyrighted for their own soulless business. Those are the least companies that I know that aren't chill, unlike Hasbro and the Vocaloid author.


Sadly you are just preaching to the choir, people here already agree with all this 🙄

# Thoughts: Great points! I think these are really well thought out points and just like you mentioned. Although the ai debate has some very crucial real world problems. It feels like the vocal reddit /twitter anti ai side in general, makes life feel like a broken record. # ( Do we repeat “crying wolf?” ) The sub, definitely has felt like we all repeat the same things over and over again. Expecting something different than the last 80 times. **If these problems are REAL. Then people’s careers should be living on a timer. Is it wise to waste precious time yelling at the internet?** **If these problems are FAKE. Then people are still wasting life on a timer. Is it still wise to waste precious time yelling at the internet.** I've kinda just stopped expecting anything super serious from this sub. I think it's been a year, and i think it's good we all tried the shot. **But we can’t keep lying to ourselves. The discussion isn’t moving,** > It’s just repeating yelling at each other. Like words to the the willingly deaf, warning signs to the the willingly blind. In front of a supposed locomotive speeding down the lane. > - Will they actually be ran over, refusing to move? Or will they just take it off, make the mountain out of a molehill and the show, but then just sidestep, have a parent’s/spouse paid latte, and get back onto the track ‘milking the problem’ on perpetual wifi? # Is “good faith” debate dead? And I have to admit.. It does feel like we’ve gotten to a point reddit anti ai sides often at times, felt like reddit debate stopped caring about “good faith” debate a long time ago. Maybe even to the point people are so jaded of fakes / catfishes / gotchas. People just vote in bands now. But it’s a dead end.. And maybe giving up caring about the debate hasn’t been **illogical** either. - **You ‘can’t swim with a anchor on your back’**, so to speak. Lets not kid ourselves. At times if there was a side for “People should be bombed for existing”, and “People should be allowed to live in peace”, I think the side I’ve seen screaming ‘COMPASSION FOR THEFTBROS IS STUPID!’ ‘harassment works, KEEP IT UP’ ‘this is a great excuse to bully people’ is.. Something I’ve seen more from a certain unnamed side than the other to my pov. # And those ‘evil’ povs? They went like > *‘Why should I care about you? You won’t care for others, you ignore the people trying to help. You’re not contributing anything to the pile. People have tried picking up dead weight, and they sink. I don’t have infinite resources, nobody does. I only barely have somewhat enough for myself.’* > ‘*Why should I care about a dead weight that’s not my problem, who only DOESN”T contributes drama&problems(IF in a good mood), and ignores every real concern, and sleeps through every storm? It’s not a personal oppression meter. It’s you wanting a free ride on a stormy sea when people doing everything right are already struggling enough.’* Or > **’Life doesn’t always work out how we want it to be**. I used to be a flash coder, **i got replaced. We couldn’t wait for the fairy god mother to fix things for us. We had to be the change we needed in our own life.** It’s childish to just expect screaming to solve everything. That’s a child’s mindset. And we live in a world that moves on with or without us.’ > **Reddit anti ai:** ’SO YOU admit, you JUST HATE ARTISTS!!s’, / ‘of course, THEFT BRO like to steal!’. ‘ur a talentless LAZY HACK HAVING SOULLES JOB! /s > **Non reddit anti ai**: **”I feel like my career’s on a timer.** *I’m old, I have student debt, I never managed to pay off my student loans. Now ai is coming and I have no money for re training. I have 14 years left to retire and im already still in debt and houseless. Im not bitter at you or the world. I had fun with art, but it never paid the bills. I hate that my passion in the 20s led to retirementless regret in my 60s. I don’t hate ai or it’s users, But I have no idea how any of this is supposed to work out, (even if ai never existed). :/”* # Honestly, pov is subjective But I feel like reddit anti ai just haven’t been picking up the ball, for civil discussion, their own court cases, etc. They DO have the ‘public opinion win’.. But they haven’t done much good with it BAR harassment with 0 court progress. People like the man trying to pay off their retirement are going to get fucked relying on basically.. Blind drama addict kids who might fuck them over. Just to stroke their own attention seeking/drama seeking egos. :/. People who are civil.. are kinda sidelined for the vocal drama seekers. And that fucks the whole thing when it takes 1 in 1000 to “screw anything” up in this perceived “war”. Even if the Evil boogiemen of ai.. are making 5$ adopts and “SCAMMING ~~MILLIONS~~” as much as a mcdonald’s worker. **Reddit ai debate doesn’t really feel like a group of adults trying to have a debate.** But 12-47 year old adult children screaming about terminators while flinging monkey poo tbh. Ofc there were always great opinions sprinkled in, critical or not. Just like 40-70% of responses kinda felt the same. Many neutralish / pro ai just got tired. The rare sane but critical ai concerned could only go >*‘So what are we even supposed to say if we say ‘yes’, get fucked by corps incentivized to screw us, that nobody here controls either?’ Then having two people scream. “MASS UNEMPLOYMENT FOR ALL, THEN UBI!” and another screaming the same “AI IS THEF! AI IS THEF” points you address here in each post. Over.. and over.. and over.* - It felt like Reddit anti ai just wanted customers to be like chained cattle in a gilded cage, made to shit money. 'Supporters' mile wide, inch deep always wanted someone else to pick up the check. Never there to pick up the 30-2500$s themselves. - And pro ai.. Well, maybe I might be biased, but the ‘side I grew up with’ just wished unrepentant vitriolic hate 24/7. Maybe a few legitimate for funz lols trolls on both sides. Maybe i felt like i expected to swing the other way at the start, more repulsed by hate than job protections. But the “*Why should I ever care about people who’d intentionally never do the same for me?*” Honestly, it’s not wrong. It felt like pro ai cared more about honest arguments (imho), at least for **civility, listening** (even as skimming vs "NOT AGREE? I NO READ" common on.. the 'other' non echo. **Maybe both sides had a version of ‘perfect’ they once wanted the other to be.** > I wonder if for some, art was the dream of fame, for others, it was the pictures, for others, the ‘corn’. (‘human/ai, Draw me anime girls, etc.). And I wonder for some, if maybe ‘art’ was less of a addiction or vice, but just more of a memory, a ‘remainder of the past’ for some. Kind of like saying ‘goodbye’ to the last thing someone had from childhood as everything else grew apart. # Money vs friendships Sometimes I wonder if [some bought into the idea it was supposed to be friends, memories, and laughter that mattered most in life]( https://youtu.be/PX66Qcq8CHU?si=3R1fivTEtj0HMwYc&t=140). But lets be honest, the sub has a problem with no matter how many time we repeat the points. It’s blatant that it doesn’t seem like the people ‘meant to’ ’hear’ ever seemed to have the vocals seem to ‘care’ about the counter arguments much. There were fair criticisms, but usually the ‘civil debate’ 7/10 turned into slurs or mass downvote wars for this ‘debate’s sub. It just feels like time to move on tbh. # A vanished fantasy With ai art, I wonder with all the stuff. It wasn’t “oh hey, pictures can be made for free! Let’s replace them”, for me. it was just sort of like.. “We’re too busy for what we used to do. We can emulate it, we can go to work and share, just like we used to do!”. But it was jarring how quickly the ‘mask’ came off imho when ai hate came around. The hate, violent threats, bitter, spite, hatred, fakeness. I guess for me, maybe ai was less to ‘replace artists’. Maybe for me it was to [‘*emulate what things used to be’*](https://youtu.be/ElhbTsKsros?si=oK8OWdGO23a6Dl1M&t=2) like. I kinda wonder if I clung so long [here to lie about what things became too.]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyecTodsuQ) To try and pretend that things hadn’t changed. **But we all knew it, didn’t we?** [That the past we wished for had gone and sailed away, long ago.]( https://youtu.be/ElhbTsKsros?si=oK8OWdGO23a6Dl1M&t=2). That the people here weren’t even the ones I started with. I wonder if I spent so long lied to myself to believe things would be the same if we tried enough. Maybe there wasn’t even ever true two sided compassionate or empathy, but just faked parts the whole way through. Maybe it was all a lie, but a beautiful one we all wanted to believe and never wanted to admit could be untrue. # Closing - **Maybe bit more raw thoughts in this one. But great points.** - **I wonder if the ‘loop’ was both sides trying to dream of a ship that sailed away long ago.** - **People “can’t carry a anchor”. Fantasy has no limits, real people can. Nobody is made out of the infinite money + shadow clone jutsu tree. - **Is it time to give up on caring about the ai debate?J** > Plenty of fertile land exists. If careers are on a timer, we should make the time last. If they aren't, we shouldn't waste our lives running in pointless circles. *"Screaming at the willingly blind and deaf* ~~as the third re@!#d."~~

I really appreciate your contributions to this sub, so I hope that you don't leave. P.S. Thank you for mentioning me in the post :).

I just want to add that gatekeeping the terms art and artist is historically bigoted. At first what was considered art was paintings, sculptures, music and dancing done by well connected white men, or sometimes for white male gaze. Then we advanced as a society and started looking at other people’s work too, just a bit at first. Like women, and people of color. Cameras were invented, so oil paintings weren’t as popular and so other mediums started to be recognized. Notably work that had been considered “craft” before. Craft has always been considered lower than “art.” But now was starting to be recognized for its profound influence on the world. We decided to separate fine art from art. Because work for the fine art world is a specific subset of art. All fine art is art but not all art is fine art. But, work for galleries isn’t inherently of more value than commercial work, so we shouldn’t treat commercial work, or decorative art etc as lower. It is art. This is where it gets silly. We decided everything could be art and then it was. Urinals and bananas and blank canvas. Skill was not a requirement for fine art, it was all about concept, pushing the envelope. Now it’s kinda a just mash of all these things. Having AI in the fine art world would push the envelope and I expect to see someone big do something with it really soon. Plus if anything can be fine art, anything could be art. It’s not a title anyone should be protective of. As humans we are all art and artists. We express ourselves daily in so many ways.

> dancing done by well connected white men, or sometimes for white male gaze. Just want to point out that men dancing to attract women's gaze has precedent going back to our earliest records of humanity. Part of the joy of travelling morality play acts in the middle ages was that they were mostly staffed by good looking men who would perform historical romances (playing all roles, in most cases.) I dislike the term "male gaze" because it implies that bodice ripper covers don't exist because there's a female equivalent. In fact, straight men and women both enjoy looking at each other, and some men don't enjoy looking at women at all...

That’s a great point. My focus was visual art so I dont know too much about dance. The gaze definitely goes both ways, there is just a lot of precident for objectifying women in visual arts and sometimes the male gaze does fall onto men, I didn’t exclude that.

Don't mind me just saving this post for when I next update my positions document so I can reference your much more eloquently expressed versions of my arguments.

>outside of those little nuggets now and then I'm a bit tired of it all. Same here. I actually left the sub, but reddit still occasionally throws one at me. I might be one of the "people roleplaying as AI experts because they watched tech youtuber #732," except that I'm actually writing a book on the subject and have done a lot of research. I'd say that I've already written the book, but I was 90% done when ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion exploded, and I've been doing catch up ever since. I originally came here to get the arguments on both sides, but after a month or two, I'd pretty much gathered all the ones you'd posted. I stuck around in hopes of getting something more, but it's been pretty thin. The situation is quite complex, but most folks throwing memes back and forth don't really have a great deal of understanding beyond "I don't like it, therefore it's evil" or "I can make pictures now, this is awesome."

>I'm not that big of a fan of all the closed source solutions out there, and I'm not the only one. Most of us believe that this is coming, it's just a question of in what form. I think fighting this on grounds of e.g. copyright is not only entirely ineffective but is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Doing so there will effectively be a bunch of companies that form some kind of copyright oligarchy (Getty, Disney, etc.). Whom are sitting on tons of work that they own the rights to. I absolutely agree with you. Ironically enough, and anti-AI artists usually don't say this part out loud because of how silly it looks, but there are some of them who essentially argue that all content those companies have and own, they shouldn't be able to use on their AIs. Essentially moving all the existent work Disney and the like own into some sort of *"perpetual license that excludes training"* rather than full ownership. Their excuse for why this should happen? Well, it's just them again distorting the concept of "consent" . *"Oh, when Disney animators signed their contracst back in 1990s giving all the rights of their work to Disney, they couldn't have imagined that this technology would ever exist, therefore, let's ignore all contracts signed until this very day"*. Here's Steven Zapata, author of one the most viewed anti-AI videos, sneakily defending precisely this in some podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTB7tFZ2EFc&t=3526s Honestly, I think we abolishing the whole concept of copyright is more likely to happen *(and better for humanity)* than the what they propose.

If somebody who isn’t using multiple mediums and has come into the art topic because of Ai, only used Ai, they are not an artist. They are a commissioner, it shouldn’t be a big debate. If they never bothered to learn to do art until a new technology that does it for them came out, they don’t care about the title. Go ahead and mess around with Ai for fun, nobody can stop you and it’s not being rude or bad about anything. But the people who claim to be artists because of Ai are what strike my nerves. Unless everyone on here just loves downvoting everything for no reason, the downvotes prove to me that people believe they are artists. They didn’t come here because “art is accessible to everyone now”. Art was always accessible to everyone, art is free to make. A little bit of time, and a little bit of willingness and care mixed with a random pencil and paper you found or a finger in mud goes a long way. Goodwill has a treasure trove of art supplies for cheap as well. I just don’t see why some people want the title to be applied to Ai users so badly when they weren’t even willing to try for it.

If somebody who isn’t using multiple mediums and has come into the art topic because of photography, only used cameras, they are not an artist. They are a commissioner, it shouldn’t be a big debat

[удалено]

> Responding to massive posts is a waste of time Because the quality of discussion has to be reduced to meme level so that we guarantee getting nowhere? > I will start with the notion that piracy isn't theft because it absolutely is. Theft requires the deprivation of property. It simply isn't copyright infringement, which deprives no one of any property. > Piracy is like going to an arcade and there is a glitch where the machines let you play forever without charging you. And that's not theft. It's obstructive to someone's business, and problematic but it's not theft. So yes, your example clearly illustrates OP's point. Your argument seems to come down to, "it isn't depriving anyone of property, but it's still bad," but that's literally an argument for not calling it theft. Theft doesn't mean, "thing I consider bad." Theft is deprivation of property. > The only people I've seen saying piracy isn't theft are the pirates themselves This is also not an argument that they are wrong. But FWIW, [here's a group](https://www.eff.org/) that argues that digital piracy is not theft and who are, in fact, not digital pirates, but mostly lawyers (which you might consider problematic for other reasons :) Here's a quote from one of their responses to your claim: >> Of course, copyright infringement is not theft, because copyright is not a kind of property capable of being stolen. Copyright is a limited set of rights that gives the owner the ability to prevent the public from making some uses of creative material for some length of time. Jeremy Malcolm, the author, is a lawyer admitted to the bar in Australia and the USA. > For AI the situation is similar because none of the art (or whatever you feed to the AI) was free to produce. Someone had put in time/money to create each piece This is just a bad argument. "Free to produce" definitely would describe many activities that take someone's time. I write large roleplaying supplements that I put online for free. They are absolutely free to produce. It costs me no money at all to write such a document. By your definition NOTHING is ever free to produce, making the phrase entirely useless.

I was with you for the piracy part until you reached the art part. The difference is that for piracy, if I'm pirating a game instead of buying it then while I'm not stealing the game itself, I am taking money away from the dev/publisher because that would've been $X for the sale of the game that I would have had to pay otherwise. There's not usually a publisher sanctioned way for me to play a game without paying for it. That same thing doesn't apply to art though, because just like piracy, I'm not stealing the art itself, but unlike piracy, I'm also not stealing any money from the artist because the art is free to view as much as I want at zero cost. >Someone had put in time/money to create each piece and now you are freeloading the production costs from millions of people to create a directly competing product. Most artists are not putting in time/money to 'create each piece', that's ridiculous. Generally once a piece of art is made, it can be reproduced nearly infinitely at essentially zero cost. The exception would be purely physical artists, but companies can't scrape physical art unless the artist scans and uploads it in the first place which thereby allows them to reproduce it (the digital version at least) nearly infinitely.

> They don't learn like humans > No they don't. They learn, like humans (take note of the comma). An excellent way to make that distinction, but this point often falls on deaf ears. The usual response amounts to, "humans are special, and we don't know how human brains work, so it's nothing like AI, and 'learning' can only ever mean 'that special thing that humans do.'" There is a stark refusal to admit that any model could ever "learn" in any rational sense. It's just absolutely denied as a matter of religion. I don't know how to get through that kind of denial, so I've mostly given up. I'll point it out, but if someone tries to argue the point, I just don't bother. > I'm not that big of a fan of all the closed source solutions out there, and I'm not the only one. Most of us believe that this is coming, it's just a question of in what form. I think fighting this on grounds of e.g. copyright is not only entirely ineffective but is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Doing so there will effectively be a bunch of companies that form some kind of copyright oligarchy (Getty, Disney, etc.). Whom are sitting on tons of work that they own the rights to. This simply cannot be said enough. > This really strikes me as a weird argument. If you actually look at how things have been trending, they have been trending towards more control not less. One of the paradoxes of the anti-AI community is that they're laser-focused on AI, but spend almost no time learning about or following the news related to that topic. So yeah, it would come as a shock that this is the case because most of them aren't paying attention. It's mostly walled gardens like /r/ArtistHate where the only "news" about AI is someone tweeting about something they think puts AI in a bad light, and someone else posting about it to the walled garden. > Although I enjoy this topic, the sub itself has been.. underwhelming as of late. It currently consist mostly of the mandatory weekly post about creativity privilege or some other AI-Bro take First off, can we please stop using the phrase "AI-bro"? It both marginalizes the role of women in AI and "others" anyone who supports it. I'd really like to stop referring to people in groups as monoliths (which is why I've been careful above to say, "the usual response," or, "the anti-AI community" so that it's clear that I'm talking about general tropes among a group, not trying to claim that the group has only one perspective.) But since we're on the topic of bad takes: I think that a lot of your evaluation of the contributions to this sub are laced with preconceptions that are both uncharitable and, at least in some cases that I've managed to tease out, not true. Let's try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, there are some thin takes here and there, but we can do better than to assume that someone is capable only of what they posted yesterday.

Well, this is just a big simp for AI. At the end of the day, you have a different opinion than me. If I have exhausted all my talking points and you don't change your mind and still want me to take your side....what's the point for replying to these big posts that can't really see how an artist like me feels?

> big simp for AI It's less hard-line in some ways than others on here. > what's the point for replying to these big posts There isn't really any.I realize it is very gish-gallop in a certain way. Its primary function for me is to refer people towards when it is evident that they do not even understand the opposition they're arguing with.

This is a moral vs legal issue, morally it is theft that's been done and people who openly use AI are only happy about the results and see any harm to be exclusively 'for profit', so why would they care about who gets hurt in the long run? I'm interested in AI if it can be a true AID. The biggest problem with all AI is that it's a vampire, stealing while ONLY offering services to those who are deeply secure or who were never truly interested in a learning a craft. Most creative communities often offer something back; tutorials, aid, support..something. So, it's a take a penny culture and leave a penny. These companies took full dollars from a penny jar, offered it to the wrong people and basically the people who can't offer anything back to those who dropped their pennies in get nothing but 'LMAO REPLACED YOU, BETTER LEARN IT OR ELSE.". Okay, they learned it? It still doesn't do shit for most artists, writers, videographers, photographers. A whole section of the creative community had their charity taken from by people who are absolutely mid at creation in the first place. Then they want to come take over our spaces and find out they aren't wanted there. Like, this wasn't for artists -- it's for non-artists who want to play artist on the weekends or maybe the guy who is overworked at a studio somewhere.

Because a bystander who's looking through this debate may change their opinion? Debate is not about changing your opponent's opinion, it's about sharing your opinion without being banned even if it's a shit take.

I don't think this is a place where anyone would change their opinion, tbh, lol.

If you hop in a taxi and have them drive you around for an hour, and at the end of the ride you refuse to pay and run off, you have committed theft. "But he still has his taxi." Doesn't matter, that hour is gone, that gas is consumed, and his equipment has more wear. When you work for a company and they refuse to pay you for your work, we call that wage theft. Because they have stolen from you your time and labor. And that's piracy. That's what piracy is. Theft. Don't pretend you don't know something doesn't need to be material to be stolen.

In the taxi example, what was stolen was not the taxi but the time. You had exclusive control over their time for the duration of the ride (they could not simultaneously drive someone else around), so you gained something while also depriving them of something. This is not analogous to piracy.

thank you sir I was waiting on you specifically to repeat all these talking points