Stealing is a term of art for the legal arena. Just like a million idiots who call their entire tower a cpu doesn't serve to redefine a technical term you "feeling" like not watching ads is stealing food from your mouth doesn't mean that it is.
There are a number of pieces of actual property involved but the user isn't carting off Spotify's servers and spotify isn't breaking into the users home and stealing their laptops.
What you do want to cart of is the users autonomy to manage how their actual property is used in service to an imaginary moral duty to be brainwashed by propoganda based on terms and conditions that we don't agree are a moral obligation.
You have a moral right to the actual money your users have agreed to pay you if you provide the agreed upon service.
The fact that you actually believe that you can buy their thoughts, their autonomy, their attention, and their time with your cheap crap doesn't mean if they opt not to give you those things you have been stolen from because those things were never for sale and you can't own them.
The best you can do is not do business if you feel like the deal isn't mutually beneficial. Take your ball and go home if you like but don't be dumb enough to call your users thieves for claiming unalienable rights to their own brains and machines.
> a: to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
Using Spotify without paying them, either directly or by watching ads, falls under that definition. The fact that there is no actual object being taken does not impact this.
If you create a great piece of software and I copy and then sell it, would you not consider it stealing? After all, you still have your copy.
Or, if a client contracts you to configure his network and then refuses to pay, is that not stealing your work? After all, you just used knowledge and time. Nothing stolen here, you still have your knowledge and you can surely make a copy of the configuration files :)
> The fact that you actually believe that you can buy their thoughts, their autonomy, their attention, and their time with your cheap crap doesn't mean if they opt not to give you those things you have been stolen from because those things were never for sale and you can't own them.
I don't believe you can buy their thoughts and I don't think Spotify attempts to. But you can definitely buy their time. That's exactly what you sell when you're employed.
> The best you can do is not do business if you feel like the deal isn't mutually beneficial. Take your ball and go home if you like but don't be dumb enough to call your users thieves for claiming unalienable rights to their own brains and machines.
Again, I totally agree. I would not use Spotify with Ads either. But if I'm not willing to fulfill my side of the deal, be it paying with time or money, I'm in no way entitled to their service.
"But you can definitely buy their time. That's exactly what you sell when you're employed."
The relationship you have with your employees is the inverse of the relationship you have with your users. I think you don't understand the idea of entitlement anymore than stealing.
They aren't entitled to spotify if spotify doesn't want to do business with them but they are entitled to have a negative opinion about spotify and or spotify's actions.
The fact that an increasing share of spotify's users neither want to pay them or watch their ads is a failure on Spotify's part to capture those potential users and reliance on a business model that is fundamentally stupid.
The fact that ad supported multimedia worked for so long is not an indication of future longevity. Horses were a great method of transportation for longer.
There are a number of pieces of actual property involved but the user isn't carting off Spotify's servers and spotify isn't breaking into the users home and stealing their laptops.
What you do want to cart of is the users autonomy to manage how their actual property is used in service to an imaginary moral duty to be brainwashed by propoganda based on terms and conditions that we don't agree are a moral obligation.
You have a moral right to the actual money your users have agreed to pay you if you provide the agreed upon service.
The fact that you actually believe that you can buy their thoughts, their autonomy, their attention, and their time with your cheap crap doesn't mean if they opt not to give you those things you have been stolen from because those things were never for sale and you can't own them.
The best you can do is not do business if you feel like the deal isn't mutually beneficial. Take your ball and go home if you like but don't be dumb enough to call your users thieves for claiming unalienable rights to their own brains and machines.