Downloading is a human right.

[micahrp]

That's why the lines of copyright need to be redrawn in a way that publishers rights no longer extend to filesharing, so there will be no one's copyright violated by ordinary internet usage.

The internet was created to share files, your files, the files you own the copyright on or files you have been given permission to copy. Information that is meant to be shared comes with permissions to do so (read all that text that comes with open source code). Anything else is not yours to copy.

Who gets hurt by that demand going unfilled? This court is saying copyright is an "interference with the right of freedom of expression and information." Since when is someone else's information your right (that is how many controversial acts became legal in America, not on the merit of the act itself)?

The very idea that information can be "owned" by someone in the sense that nop one else has the right to say it, write it down, or send it accross media, is a ridiculously bloated interpretation of intellectual "property".

Laws should be written around the principle "Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where My nose begins".

When the fact that I'm looking at certain information on my computer, alone, at home, is somehow a form of me taking away your "rights", that principle is heavily skewered in the favor of publishers, whose "intellectual nose" apparently has a mile-wide aura floating around them, where swinging my fist infringes on their moral right to stop me from swinging my fists.

Publishers should still have creator rights, as long as it's possile to help them be profitable, for example by giving them an edge over other publishers, but not at the cost of dictating everyday people's daily lifestyle, information access, net browsing habits, and personal data creation.

Copyright IS written on the principle of where liberty has limits, but you have the roles reversed. The file-sharers are punching the copyright owner by filling a demand that they have no right to fill.

The information you are suggesting you should be able to view at home would't be accessible if someone had not already violated a copyright. Yes, it is purposely written to favor those who spent the time and effort to create the information or those that have procured the copyright and against those who have not.

Information access should be limited. Why am I not allowed to access everyone else's health information or banking information? How do you feel about sharing your information? If you don't want to, that is your right because you own that data. What does personal data creation have to do with file-sharing someone else's information (other than this would protect the creator's choice to copyright that data)?

Everyone has the right to make their own data and control of that copyright which is completely even handed and fair. The only problem I see is the view of "equality of outcome", and that isn't true as long as someone else's data is better than yours, which should inspire people to make better data, but jealousy and laziness lead to stealing from those who did put forth the effort.

 

[micahrp]

Who gets hurt by that demand going unfilled? This court is saying copyright is an "interference with the right of freedom of expression and information." Since when is someone else's information your right (that is how many controversial acts became legal in America, not on the merit of the act itself)?

Okay, let me pull a blatantly ridiculous analogy.

Say, I bought and read a newspaper. You ask me if there was anything interesting in the news. I say "Not telling! Buy your own damn newspaper; you have no right to this information!"

But I think here it's more about not someone else's information being your right, but doing whatever you want with the information that you do have being your right. It's not a right to have any information anyone has, but a right to give the infomation you have to anyone.

I mean, that's, like, just my opinion, man, but I think that's the way it's supposed to be intepreted.

In the case of the newpapers, fair use says can tell them nothing, or you can paraphrase the news within limits or we still allow you to be a capitalist so you transfer ownership of newpaper to that other person completely and let them read it themselves. What is happening here is this court is saying now one person can go out and buy the first copy of the new days newspaper and post it online so anyone else who has demand for today's paper wouldn't have to buy it.

What happens when you would universalize a system that allows copying the product of someone else's work? Do the producers have to charge that first person enough to cover all their costs and profit and just assume that first person will share it with everyone else? Creators only make things they are willing to give away for free?

Please propose a system that can be enforced and satisfies both market suppliers and demanders.

 

[Giyguy]

Piracy DOES NOT help ANY industry. Just like breaking into a store and taking everything for free doesn't help. It actively harms the content creators.

why would you want to help a publisher who you hate who employs a developer that you like? why would you NOT want to help them?

either you pay for it and fuel the hated publisher, or you don't and the developers you like end up suffering for it.

there isn't a right answer here, mainly because the publisher/developer relationship is akin to that of a murderer holding a puppy hostage.

you do what he says and he goes free and takes the puppy with him and tortures it in his spare time after giving you a cookie for doing what he says, and you have to continue to do what he says or he will kill the puppy, but if he kills the puppy, he'll go to jail and suffer for his crimes for the rest of his life.

It's kind of a lose-lose situation, guy.

 

[Vegosiux]

What happens when you would universalize a system that allows copying the product of someone else's work? Do the producers have to charge that first person enough to cover all their costs and profit and just assume that first person will share it with everyone else? Creators only make things they are willing to give away for free?

It already happened, and not only once. The invention of printing press, for example, made literature widely accessible, breaking the monopoly over books the clergy was holding at the time. Yet the creators of literature don't seem to be doing too badly. The invention of telephone meant that soon people were able to communicate at distance without having to resort to courier service (if they could afford it), but I don't see postal services dying anytime soon.

The mechanisms of balance for internet information sharing, of course, are not yet fully developed, since historically, it's still a very new thing, but we'll get there. How, I do not know, since I lack a crystal ball, but it's an inevitability, the current framework of copyright protection will have to change to acommodate the new possibilities offered by free flow of information.

Next, just because you made an investment into creating something, you're not entitled to the return of said investment. Just because you did some work, you're not entitled to compensation. Do street musicians ask cops to arrest people who listen to them without tossing some money into their violin case? Can I grab a lawnmower one day and neatly mow the lawns of the whole street block and expect people to pay me for that without them agreeing to pay me before I started?

The publishers will need to adapt, and instead of restricting the freely available tools, maybe learn to use them themselves.

And finally; "Everyone's paying for everything or nobody's paying for nothing" is a false dichotomy. Without any restrictions at all, there will still be people who will willingly part with their money for something you made, and with the strictest restrictions in place, there will still be people who will seek to circumvent them.

Every new innovation is going to screw someone over. The "someone" can then either try to suppress it or go with it and work with it.

 

[Entitled]

The internet was created to share files, your files, the files you own the copyright on or files you have been given permission to copy. Information that is meant to be shared comes with permissions to do so (read all that text that comes with open source code). Anything else is not yours to copy.

You continue to fail giving any reason to WHY it should be their right, beyond repeating the fact that it's their right. Which apears to be nothing more than an appeal to present american legal system being automatically moral.

Exactly WHAT gives one the right to stop other people from sharing data, beyond the letter of the law saying so?

That's why I said that the laws need to be rewritten, so it's no longer their right. Problem solved. If individuals are given a right to copy content, and publishers are stripped of their right to limit individual copying, then no one's rights would be harmed by "piracy".

Information access should be limited. Why am I not allowed to access everyone else's health information or banking information? How do you feel about sharing your information? If you don't want to, that is your right because you own that data. What does personal data creation have to do with file-sharing someone else's information (other than this would protect the creator's choice to copyright that data)?

I agree that information access should be limited. It's always inevitable that our basic needs, safeties, and comforts eventually infringe on each other's. In those cases, the limits need to be drawn as tightly as possible, to give each individual a reasonably similar amount of personal freedoms.

Just like how my right to freedom of speech doesn't extend to crying "fire" in a crowded theatre, because it would infringe on your right not to get trampled to death in a theatre.

But that doesn't mean that my freedom of speech should be limited every time someone feels that their rights are violated, for example if I say something offensive to them.

Because your right to live trumps my right to free speech, but my right to free speech trumps your right to not get offended.

It's the same deal with copyright. Maybe your right to protect your personal privacy trumps my right to know about your personal rights, or your right to control your IP trumps my right to commercially sell your IP.

But that doesn't mean that your right to control your IP, should extend into ANY way of controlling what am I allowed to look at, or what am I allowed to write down, just as your right to privacy shouldn't be used to force everyone to only pass by your house with closed eyes.

Even if ou feel it inconvenient that people are looking at your house walls, you should have no right to place an even bigger inconvinience on the general population.

And that's what current copyright does:
While now copying is the natural state of the Internet, and digital data distribution is a default form of art and communication, it is inconvenient to the old entertainment industry, but instead of getting over it and figuring out some new business models that can fund production without selling units of copies, they are trying to force an even bigger inconvenience on the general population, and expect everyone to avert their eyes from all the forbidden links, pictures, videos, and text just so they can keep pretending that it's a form of "property" that owuld otherwise be "stolen" from them.

 

[micahrp]

What happens when you would universalize a system that allows copying the product of someone else's work? Do the producers have to charge that first person enough to cover all their costs and profit and just assume that first person will share it with everyone else? Creators only make things they are willing to give away for free?

It already happened, and not only once. The invention of printing press, for example, made literature widely accessible, breaking the monopoly over books the clergy was holding at the time. Yet the creators of literature don't seem to be doing too badly. The invention of telephone meant that soon people were able to communicate at distance without having to resort to courier service (if they could afford it), but I don't see postal services dying anytime soon.

The mechanisms of balance for internet information sharing, of course, are not yet fully developed, since historically, it's still a very new thing, but we'll get there. How, I do not know, since I lack a crystal ball, but it's an inevitability, the current framework of copyright protection will have to change to acommodate the new possibilities offered by free flow of information.

Next, just because you made an investment into creating something, you're not entitled to the return of said investment. Just because you did some work, you're not entitled to compensation. Do street musicians ask cops to arrest people who listen to them without tossing some money into their violin case? Can I grab a lawnmower one day and neatly mow the lawns of the whole street block and expect people to pay me for that without them agreeing to pay me before I started?

The publishers will need to adapt, and instead of restricting the freely available tools, maybe learn to use them themselves.

And finally; "Everyone's paying for everything or nobody's paying for nothing" is a false dichotomy. Without any restrictions at all, there will still be people who will willingly part with their money for something you made, and with the strictest restrictions in place, there will still be people who will seek to circumvent them.

Every new innovation is going to screw someone over. The "someone" can then either try to suppress it or go with it and work with it.

The Copyright was the solution to the printing press abuses and still is the solution in this case. The speed of the flow of the information has sped up and will continue to speed up. The ease of creating copies is getting easier and will continue to get easier. And that has NOTHING to do with creating copies you don't have the right to. File-sharing websites have legitmate purposes, you can willingly share thing you own the copyright to. The technology discussion is an attempt to muddle up the argument in irrelevant details. The simple base is if you do not hold the copyright and do not have permission to copy you are violating the copyright holder when you distribute no matter how easy or simple it is to do.

Copyright holders are entitled to compensation if someone else is distributing their works without their permission. Yes in the real world there is a middle ground that will be reached, but law makers don't write laws for the middle ground, they should be writing them to fit the universalized model.

Why did you compare the taking of someone else's product to a supplier trying to force his product onto a consumer? That makes no sense unless that was another on purpose muddle.

Oh and about the postal service not going away. The America Postal service just announced it is cutting Saturday service starting in August. They have been continuing to close branches and reducing workforce size. (And yes that is a muddle).

 

[Entitled]

The Copyright was the solution to the printing press abuses and still is the solution in this case.

What "abuses"? The printing press was a blessing for all writers, who formerly didn't have any copyright to begin with for thousands of years, and had to rely on patronage. Compared to that, having the ability to print thousands of copies of their work only opened up new possibilities, including the right to sell copies of their book (even if other publishers also printed and sold them, but well, so did they always before in history, so that didn't make their situation worse either).

You are trying to apply a 20th century worldview to 18th century people, as if our current copyright system would be the objective pinnacle of all morality, that was always secretly there in some sort of "natural law", it just took that long to discover it.

Besides, you are also wrong, in that even if we would assume that there was a "problem" the first Copyright system was not the solution, it was a real abuse of all artists.

It was the Stationers' Company [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Stationers_and_Newspaper_Makers] that held "copyright" for the first time in history, since 1557, a monopoly over all printing and book selling in England. It was a Publishers' Guild, that had nothing to do with creators' rights, and everything to do with getting all the publishing profits in the country, in exchange for making sure that nothing unfavorable gets published about Church or State.

It wasn't until a century and a half later, in 1710, with the Statute of Anne [http://questioncopyright.org/promise], that such blatant censorship became unpopular, and the Stationers had to justify their continued practices by formally giving writers the copyright, knowing that they will eventually have to sell it to them, the publishers, anyways.

 

[Nieroshai]

I'm sorry, but surely you can find a better source of information on this than a guy who founded something called the "Swedish Pirate Party" and whose Facebook profile picture has him wearing an eyepatch. I clicked his provided sources, and most of them are Wikipedia articles. The most reputible source I found was this, [http://echrblog.blogspot.in/2013/01/copyright-vs-freedom-of-expression.html] which looks a lot more reliable than this fellow. And it's not even that I think he's lying, I think it just feels like getting the pundit's opinion rather than the proper news source.

I've never liked the idea of a "pirate party" people. Yes people should be able to share open-source software and such, but to proudly go around shouting "Hey! Artists don't deserve shit for their work if we can find other methods!" just seems childish to me. Yes the debate on piracy is multi-faceted, and let's not muddle piracy and open-source stuff, but I feel like people who enter the debate as "pro piracy" are not doing anyone any favors. It would be like someone who is pro-choice going in saying they are "pro fetus killing." There are better ways than that to present yourself.

The Escapist needs "Like" buttons or thumbs-up or -down buttons. I wanna show how much I agree but have little to say to the OP himself.

It's a lot like Anonymous when they went from Robin Hoods in funny masks to straight-up thieves. You can say you support a side because of noble reasons, but in the end greed is an undeniable factor and so is revenge. While I'm pro-life (and don't want a debate here) I am going to say "pro-choice" is a brilliant way to market the concept of abortion. It implies that abortion is a freedom, and that the fetus is not the one in question but the mother is to a point of exclusivity. The mother has the right to choose, so "pro-choice" is an apt term for that side. It is much like how "pro-life" implies that choice doesn't matter in a case of life vs. comfort. Different sides, different creeds and propaganda. No one represents their side poorly. Just like pirates calling themselves freedom fighters.

Before incurring wrath, I know Anon is a collective not an organization, and the old guard is starting to make their (synthesized) voices heard again. I neither support or oppose the nebulous construct as a whole, just the bastards who punished me for Sony's "misdeeds."

 

[Therumancer]

It is a basic human rights issue. The pirates are not thieves but simply people who have brought the game that want to share their culture and their luxury with others for free.

The "pirates" are doing with their property that they have brought as they see fit, and precisely because it is a luxury means you do not fuck with the basic principles of human rights just because some backwater corporation wants to ensure they have a bottom line that they can nickle and dime.

You cannot police the internet without violating people's right to privacy and forcing ISP's to start policing their users.

Any attempt at this will only get the pirates that matter to resort to decrypting their files through the services like Mega, and the end result of following down the path of enforcing American laws on European soil would just be a lot of wasted money, and result in locking up even more human resources (jail).

It will be better to force that kind of industry to change, and let people keep their individual internet freedoms instead of conforming to some kind of pseduo american laws and making a ton of changes.

Actually, the thing is that American laws on subjects like this SHOULD be enforced globally, just as Europeans will argue for the global enforcement of laws that protect their own trade even from those who see no real benefit of it.

Like it or not, stealing is stealing, at the end of the day someone who downloads something illegally that they could otherwise buy is stealing from the owner of that IP.

The only real issue here is of course people who have little creative output or innovation see no real reason to protect things like IPs, especially if they benefit from stealing them en-masse. A tune which like everything rapidly changes if your in some way benefitting from the laws. If Europe was producing more in the way of IPs (it produces some, but not as many as the US) for it to be more profitable, the laws would be far differant.

As far as privacy laws and such go, that's a mixed bag. Truthfully the reason for rulings like the one we're talking about is that you don't have to go that far. People are simply stupid and confess to crimes like piracy or display it
in public all the time. The concern is that if someone confesses to stealing on their blog or facebook profile, or is caught with a bootleg tape/CD/etc... the authorities are legally obligated to deal with them harshly. As well as
reports of someone being involved in piracy. Someone who does care reports someone else for illegal media, the police go in like a drug bust, and then send them to jail for 30 years for being caught with copyrighted material they don't have ownership of. Or increasing sentences where say the police go in for a bust, find a bunch of bootleg media in plain sight, and then give the goober 20 years for the crack the guy was dealing and another 20 for having half a dozen pirated games.

I'm being extreme here, and yes a degree of common sense has to be used, the idea is you need to make people fear the penelties enough to stop doing it, without say making a pirated song on an iPad a worse offense than raping someone. That said I am very much against the idea of "hey, steal whatever you want from the creators, it's okay". That's like me saying "hey, it's okay to go and rob European shipping" as least as far as I'm concerned. It's still a property, whether it's tangible or not.

That said, there isn't much else for us to say to each other. Obviously we totally disagree and neither of us are going to convince the other they are right. With what I spend on video gaming and other media, I find the idea of people saying they should get everything I buy for free as a matter of entitlement repugnant.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I have absolutely no idea what was said in the original post, but I still support it wholeheartedly.

 

[Artemis923]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

So nice to know I'm paying thousands and thousands of dollars on my programming degree just so I can starve in the street when kids decide they don't want to give me compensation for a job well done.

 

[BeerTent]

*Feels quoted content is relevant... Must... Compress... Rrrrggghhhhh~

snop

It's still not theft. It might be something immoral, but it's certainly not theft.
Theft requires that something which is stolen, i.e. no longer in the hands of the person it was stolen from.[...]

Okay, I'll nab your bank account credentials and take all of your funds. Oh! It's not theft! Nothing PHYSICAL was taken!

False analogy.[...]
Again, I'm not endorsing piracy or saying it's okay, I'm just acknowledging that the way the market works is changing and those who work in it have to change with it. This isn't a pleasant period of transition, but it's necessary nonetheless.

You know what? This is actually the response I was aiming for. Someone out there to say. "Hey, saying it's theft is misconstrued. It's Piracy because..." If piracy is not theft, then it's its own category.

Indeed! I'm simply annoyed that people are quick to miscatagorize it, whether out of simple ignorance of the definition of theft or out of a deliberate attempt to argue to emotion.

But you're still taking. You're taking software, you're taking time, and money from the developer/artist. You can't return that...

And that's wrong. Which I pointed out several times. I am not saying piracy is not wrong. I AM saying it's not theft. That's it. Further, this is only one kind of piracy. There are, believe it or not, those who simply want DRM free copies of their legally purchased software. Others use them as demos for games that lack them. Now, those do get used as excuses quite a bit by those who legitamitly only take without giving back but that does not change the fact that those uses exist.

And while you may say that DRM is a waste of time, it's absolutely essential. We can't release a product without it now because of this problem.

That's just the thing, it's not essential. It's broken so fast, that it might as well not be there. And DRM is not cheap! Developers lacing their products with it have to spend a lot of money, which cuts into their profits. It's as effective as throwing money in a lake, without the potential of someone fishing that money out later and drying it off. Completely pointless, is my point. Further, it weakens the product and thus makes people even less likely to legally purchase it. So using DRM is basically just shooting yourself in the foot over and over and wondering why you're walking funny afterward.

Pirates can say that "DRM is the sole reason..." but how many times has a game from GOG been copied? The purpose of DRM is to prevent Day Zero piracy. Where the product is available for pirates before it's actually released. This does impact sales.

Which nigh-universally doesn't work. Or rather, it's cracked a day or two later, so the idea of "holding off" pirates until they've made their sales, while clever in theory, simply doesn't work in practice. It only gives the disadvantages I've mentioned in my previous paragraph.

I feel like it's time to shift things a little. I can agree that Piracy is not theft, it's it's own category, but I still feel that it shares it's own venn diagram with theft. Like you mentioned, the victim still has the the software and source, but I feel that time, and money is gone.

But on the DRM bandwagon, DRM is not designed for the coming weeks after release. That's icing on the cake. DRM is out there to prevent day zero. That's it. It's expensive as fuck, yes... But now the problem isn't the Cx, it's also the employee. While I feel that you shouldn't hire someone you don't trust, for HR, this can be fucking impossible. And some publishers really do feel that their customers are criminals because, I mean, look at how many copies of popular games go through piracy. Not only is Day Zero piracy a crippling black mark on your reputation, but Pirates get the game first. For free... That produces pirates.

You can turn around and say, "Ohh, well... Pirates're just gonna buy it if they like it." But how can you prove that? Sure, Keith might go for it, but how many pirates are like Drake? Who says he'll buy it, but he's beaten the pirated copy and got his fill? Why would he buy it? He's not going to play it anymore. Again, I agree, Draconian DRM is inexcusable. (I'm looking at you, AC) but turning that DRM into something useful the Cx can appreciate, (Anno2070) is worth it. (Steam)

Publishers look at this and say, "Yeah... If you could at least integrate SecuRom in there, thaat'd be greaatt..."

On demos... this is tricky. There's a reason why they've gone the way of the dinosaur. The exact same amount of resources that go to DRM, would need to be applied to the demo. It's costly, It's expensive, and it's a ***** to produce because now you've got two versions of the software you need to produce. One is incomplete with an ad in the end, and the other has DRM. Why do this? Consider there's 4 different scenarios that come from the Cx trying the demo...

• I try the game, like the story, I buy it to see what happens next.
• I try the game, and like it, but I'm fine playing with Terran ships, and I don't need the additional content. Why pay?
• I try the game, and the demo's awful. It doesn't showcase how fun the game actually is. I don't buy it.
• I try the game, and the demo shows it's not for me anyway. So I don't buy it.

So, that's a 25% chance of a positive outcome... Convince a publisher that's going to work for them. The publisher would rather hype the game, and if it launches, the hype will remain to support the sequels. So... Your demos are shot.

If you released a crack for my game, which is $5, and the tracker records 500 downloads, then you've taken me down by $2500.

Correction: the theoretical individual has possibly removed a potential $2500. Some may not have bought it at all if it weren't free, in which case the amount you're getting remains 0 from them. You can't steal a potential without opening up a TERRIBLE precedent in law. "I didn't make as much money as I thought I would. People not paying me is stealing from my potential." (this is also the problem with "voting with your wallet". Companies are much more quick to blame piracy for low sales than the fact that perhaps their product was simply not popular). This isn't remotely acceptable. Beyond that though, studies have shown that many pirates actually end up spending MORE money than the average person, so you may very well have made more money. I often here the retort "MAY make money isn't enough!", but that's exactly what you do when you put a product on the market. You can't truly guaentee sales, only make them more likely. And you're making them less likely to buy them legally with the current antics.

[...]

I mean, just look at Steam. Very light on the DRM, sell cheap and have frequent sales, be nice to customers. They make startling amounts of money because people want their products and want to support a company that offers them at reasonable costs.

This part involves Legalities. Which is something I'm not good at. My point here is that a publisher's lawyer can come in and state, "Well, we lost 2.5K in sales because of this." and easily get away with it. This is why we have the MPAA assaulting people. "Well, look at this torrent! 2,563,000 downloads! You seeded it! Pony up, *****!"

To look at your last paragraph, take a look at TPB. Read the "about" section on a good chunk of those torrents. Cracked by blah, Has X many discs, Copy protection: Steam. Steam is still good DRM, it prevents Day zero, by outsourcing part of the development to the publisher. It's still nice to the Cx, but it's still ripped to hell. We all say "Be nice to the customers and they'll buy." But it's not true and it's been disproved over, and over, and over, and over... EA treats it's customers like this. Ubi has Uplay... These two companies are booming. THQ has treated their Cx's great, despite releasing a few mediocre games and very poor business decisions... Bankrupt and dead... VALVe treats their Cx's great, but they rarely make a peep in the games market. It's all Steam and content updates for their little MMO project, TF2. This is a classic scenario of "Do as I say, not as I do." Because the Gamer can be quite an atrocious and unforgivable beast. Hell, even the Cx can kill your little multiplayer mod. Lookin' at you, Dystopia.

I had a much longer response planned, but this is the general gist of it. While I agree that you shouldn't serve 25+ in prison for downloading games, that's not the big problem here,

Wait, what? You agree that 25+ years is too much time (and yes it is, punishment fitting the crime and all that), but that downloading copies is more critical, therefore it's justified? [...]

Punishment? Maybe, but keep it in line with the crime. That's all I'm saying, and I'd hope that most would agree on that point. Disproportionate justice doesn't work. If it did, would we be having this discussion?

Okay, so this isn't worded right on my part. I don't agree that such a massive punishment is justified, only that this is how a scenario is seen. If one pan could cost your company billions, like the very unfortunate individual over at Reddit, he may as well have been setting people on fire. If piracy can damage your business so heavily, he's not just impacting the CEO's. The head hauncho at the publisher's office... He's affecting the lives of a great deal of people. If dead Space were pirated to oblivion, and there were very few sales as a result, that studio could go. Part of the publisher would feel a hit, and jobs could be lost.

Uprooting the lives of say, 1,000 people is worse than uprooting the lives of one family and a few circles of friends. This is why we have disproportionate justice. Just like piracy, this is also unfixable.

 

[The Funslinger]

I can't see how anyone would be stupid enough to think of piracy as anything other than theft.

And people who say artists expecting money aren't doing it for the art are just pretentious gits. In case you haven't noticed, being an artist doesn't absolve you of the need of food and shelter.

'Artistic' products like games, music, etc are worth something, just as much as the food or clothes you buy.

It's amazing how many people actually think that it is their right to have whatever they want. It does not matter to them that they are stealing something that others worked hard for, because those people are not them. That is what depresses me the most about the piracy problem. It's not that a bunch of idiots are stealing, or that creativity is being sucked out of pretty much any entertainment medium because of these pricks, it's the fact that they just do not give a shit about anyone but themselves.

Piracy is not theft.

Want creativity in an entertainment industry? Get rid of publishers. There you go.

I'm a writer. Only slightly successful, and I'm nowhere near close to being able to live by my work. I could not do that without a publisher to market my work to its best potential, which will hopefully happen in the near future. Keep publishers.

There you go.

I doubt I will ever meet anyone pro-piracy who is in any form an artist in any capacity other than a small hobby.

 

[Jubbert]

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

Wow.

It's remarkable how much bullshit you managed to produce in two sentences.

I'd clap, but I feel dirty for reading that, and I need to go wash my hands.

 

[Entitled]

It's a lot like Anonymous when they went from Robin Hoods in funny masks to straight-up thieves. You can say you support a side because of noble reasons, but in the end greed is an undeniable factor and so is revenge. While I'm pro-life (and don't want a debate here) I am going to say "pro-choice" is a brilliant way to market the concept of abortion. It implies that abortion is a freedom, and that the fetus is not the one in question but the mother is to a point of exclusivity. The mother has the right to choose, so "pro-choice" is an apt term for that side. It is much like how "pro-life" implies that choice doesn't matter in a case of life vs. comfort. Different sides, different creeds and propaganda. No one represents their side poorly. Just like pirates calling themselves freedom fighters.

I have already noticed this parallell between piracy and abortion debates, though I wouldn't call these brilliant propaganda, they change the focus from the issues that should actually be debated, to a screaming match between two tribes.

Most pro-choice people love to rant about how pro-lifers are enslaving women by taking away their choices, yet they themselves would just as cheerfully take away the choices of a woman in a later trimester of a pregnancy.

Likewise, I've seen very few pro-life people who would follow through the logical extremes of the "abortion is murder" paradigm, by banning all incest-, rape-, or genetic disability-related abortion, or to imprison tens of millions of women with the charge of murder. Apparently what most of them mean is really just "we want less abortions than there are now, and in less ways".

It's the same deal with copyright. There is a pro-piracy group screaming "information wants to be free", and about human rights, and about the evils of control over data, yet few of them would want their bank account data to be public, and some of them wouldn't even support Assagne-style data-leaking, they are content with freeing the information that they need. For pirates the filesharing rights, for fan-artists it's the trademark rights, for Makers it's the patent rights.

Meanwhile, there is a pro-copyright group, screaming really loud about THEFT much in the same way as pro-lifers scream about MURDER, but few of them would follow through with their claims that IP owners should ALWAYS be in TOTAL control, for MAXIMUM profitability, as soon as that would mean changing the status quo and giving up their own Fair Use rights, or digital reselling rights, in the IP holder's favor. In those cases, screw the IP holder's wish, because they suddenly have "no right" to ask for that.

In both issues, there is this great wide sliding scale of possible sets of regulations, with people arguing about moving the line slightly to their side, while pretending that they are at the extreme edge and there is a fundamental moral difference between them.


I say that this is a stupid rhetorical tool, and they ARE representing their sides poorly, because they should be talking about exactly what set of regulations to use.

Here we could be talking about what the positive/negative economical effects of regulating/not regulating private downloads would be on the entertainment industry.

Yet instead, we have to keep going back to whether or not piracy is "theft", and whether or not open file-sharing is a form of "freedom".

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Good news... If it isn't fake news anyway. It does seem to be too good to be true.

Anything that helps regular people not get shafted over corporate assholes is A-OK in my book.

instead the artists can get shafted by regular people!

On top of getting shafted by the afor mentioned corporate assholes.
I'm no fan of asinine copyright laws and I do agree that most entertainment corporations can be more than a little over-zealous with the protection of their intellectual property (to put it mildly), but this is ridiculous.
Of course, the way that other article that Lilani linked to makes it sound a little more reasonable.

 

[Vegosiux]

I can't see how anyone would be stupid enough to think of piracy as anything other than theft.

Congratulations, you just called the entirety of the people who understand laws "stupid".

And no matter just how badly you wish that piracy and theft were the same thing, tough luck. The law disagrees. And if there's a dispute or an infraction, the proceedings will follow the letter of law. So take your medicine like a man, and quit trying to force buzzwords into debates about clearly legally defined concepts.

You know what I can't see?

I can't see how anyone would be stupid enough to think that "Piracy isn't theft" and "Piracy is great, everyone should pirate!" are the same thing.

And if you try to spin it as if anyone who understands that theft and piracy are two different offenses both in definition and in effect is somehow in favor of piracy, it's you who comes across as foolish.

 

[Hyenatempest]

The thing with piracy is that it's hard to gauge on a moral, and sometimes even economic level. For instance, I believe that the artist should be supported, and that they should make money. On the other hand however, there are people who cannot afford them, just straight up cannot afford to pay for what they want. so from both a moral standpoint and an economic one, it's not entirely black and white.

For another example, what if somebody purchases a brand new copy of skyrim on the ps3, it barely works, so they download a copy of some torrent site for their computer that runs, or maybe they just want mods. Maybe they got a copy of Diablo 3 and can't play it so they get a cracked version they can play. The artist, publisher, or whoever get's the money they deserve, right? so this specific case wouldn't be an issue would it?

However this isn't always the case, but by how often I don't know.

All in all, I don't want piracy to go away, I just want individual people to take more responsibility and pay for the games, music, movies, etc. when they can, instead of making it their primary way of getting what they want.

 

[Silvanus]

I can't see how anyone would be stupid enough to think of piracy as anything other than theft.

If you don't understand a point of view, that doesn't mean it's stupid. I don't regard piracy as theft, because it's not removing anything from someone else. It's creating a copy.

Any immorality connected with piracy would be down to the loss of potential revenue. But, quite frankly, there are things that people want to watch/play/listen to that if they couldn't get them for free, they wouldn't buy them either. There are a lot of films, for example, that "person X" might want to see on a whim, but it's not worth him signing up for Love Film or watching it on the PS3 that he doesn't own, just so he can pay a studio some money to do so. If it costs, he won't do it, because he's only marginally interested in the film. There's zero harm in him downloading it.

And let's not pretend that this is about the artist losing money from piracy. It's the publishers and the studio. Someone I know, hugely into music (both making and listening), often downloads stuff from bands to see what they're like. If he likes them, he will frequently go to see them in concert.

If he didn't download them, he couldn't find out who he liked. If he had to pay for each and every new talent, he simply couldn't do it. And the artists themselves benefit far more from income from gigs than they do from record sales.

 

[micahrp]

All of us have unprecedented ability to create all the new art, music, video game we could ever want. Microsoft gives away it's XNA game library and visual studio so you can create your own video games and there are tons of tutorials for free online (this is what I've been spending my spare time on). GIMP is available with extensive tools to create your own digital art. I hate music, but I'm sure there is just as much available to create your own music which rivals the commercial music.

This is how you can share your culture if you choose to give it away for free, this is your right. And if you wish to turn commercial without going corporate you have more worldwide available markets that an individual can use than any other time in human history. What is the excuse to give away someone else's product that they own the copyright on and want to be paid for?