Pirating = bad, borrowing from the library = perfectly fine

I can't help but notice that almost every time I borrow a movie from the library, it's got some kind of ad beforehand thanking me for not pirating it.

These usually riff in various ways on the theme "By buying this movie, you helped support x number of jobs. Thanks!"

Only I didn't buy it. Somebody did, but now I'm just one of potentially hundreds of people watching it for free.

Which makes it different from pirating how, exactly?

The main objection to piracy, of course, is that you don't pay for it in any way, shape or form. You are contributing nothing to the limited amount of money a movie can make on its video sales. Yeah, it's illegal, and yeah, sometimes it results in movies getting seen even before they've been released to video. But those would be relatively minor considerations for the aggrieved parties if money were exchanging hands.

Money does not exchange hands when I borrow a movie from the library. And nowadays, in the absence of video stores, libraries have far better collections than they ever did. It's getting increasingly rare that I can't find a movie I want through inter-library loan, which basically means not only am I watching this movie for free, but I'm watching pretty much every movie for free.

And that supports x number of jobs how, exactly?

Libraries as institutions cast a sheen of respectability over almost everything, but I can't see how it doesn't annoy studios or distributors to know that more and more people are watching their movies for free through these respectable institutions.

Then again, I don't recall seeing publishing houses getting up in arms about books being available at libraries. What is a library for if not to prevent people from having to purchase books?

Because I don't really feel like taking a deep dive into the internet right now, I'm not going to search for the ways these conflicts were once adjudicated before they were resolved and ultimately relegated to the realm of standard practice. And besides, if you want really aggrieved parties, you need look no further than the music industry, which suffers most in this scenario as it seems always to do. Because most people can easily burn CDs to their computers, borrowing music from the library is basically the equivalent of buying it. Just without money. Which is also called piracy.

Anyway, just something I've been thinking about.