Downloading is a human right.

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DracoSuave

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zehydra said:
The problem is, people usually don't get paid for the work through game purchases. Somebody ELSE who then funds the artists/programmers etc gets paid.

Publishers are the ones at stake here, not gaming itself. Video games have already proved themselves to be a highly desired item. Even if one means to make money off of it is destroyed, someone else will come up with a different method.
You fail economics forever.


The artists get paid for their work--if it's the publishers doing so, where do you think that money comes from to pay the artists? Do you think that if you don't pay the publishers the artist will end up paid still?

No.

Because without the reason to make that money, there's no need for the artist to make that product. And if there's no need for the artist, he doesn't get paid because he doesn't work.
 

DracoSuave

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amiran123 said:
Valkrex said:
Piracy = stealing.


That's all there is to it. Don't care what a law says, if you take a product (or a copy of a product as the case may be with digital products) you are stealing and depriving the creator their hard earned profits.


I really don't get why people defend piracy. They are essentially defending theft, and are being smug self-righteous assholes at the same time.

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.
Uhh, no. Piracy is a lot of thing but it is not theft. You're not actually taking something from someone else so that the person in question no longer has it, you are copying it.

You can discuss the moral implications of this for a hundred years but one thing is clear, piracy does not equal theft.

It's getting a service for free that the performer of that service is not willing to provide for free.

How, exactly, is that not theft?

It's disregarding the rights of a creator of something to determine the fate of their work and negotiate the terms for doing so.

How, exactly, is that not theft?

Theft is simply put the depriving of something for personal gain. Are you gaining something? Yes.

So therefore we must ask... are you depriving someone of something?

Well, given that they created a thing, and that you are ignoring their wishes to have done with their thing what they choose, you are, in fact, depriving them of something. You are reducing the value of their property, which indeed, is theft by the definition of the term.

If someone breaks into your house, and starts using your computer to send out child porn... yes, even tho they haven't 'taken' something from you, they've actually stolen from you. Your argument in this is very flawed on that basis--you'd be offended and rightfully so if someone did that. Otherwise, your arguing that it is okay to break into your house and use your things without your permission----unless you acknowledge that ownership exists in an abstract sense other than mere possession, and that your ownership of an object implies the right to determine what is done with it as well as merely the act of HAVING it.


Anything else is self-serving sophistry.
 

Bamba

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Well to be honest, I download lots of things and I think its completely fine that people can download and share things with everyone else. It sure harms the artists and companies and it does not earn them any money but their products also become more popular because of it. I download plenty of music and games and I never felt ashamed about it. Its not like I can afford every single music album or video game, so downloading saves a lot of money for me.

I think its also something that game developers and music artists should consider when they are developing a new game or recording a new album. They should know that its not like it was in year 1980 for example, when downloading was basically nonexistent, and therefore people had to pay for what they want to get it, which caused much more sales and profit for the copyright holders.
 

Entitled

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micahrp said:
Where did I say illegal or legal? I proved public versus private. Are you saying this privacy is immoral and should be illegal?
If all digital content would be open to the public for access, then the Internet as a whole would be a form of public domain. And vice versa, if listening on any open-air performance would be controlled by the artists through law, then the places where these are held would automatically be the artist's private domain.

That's basically my whole argument, that large, non-scarce portions of the Internet (that is, the content on it) SHOULDN'T be locked away as someone's property, but be a public surface, analogous to a street that anyone can walk on, and art and entertainment should exist without limiting my movement on it.

So you are basically just begging the question, by citing how "the street performer is a free speech user in a public setting." but "copyright holders have the right to keep their products private".

micahrp said:
Are you saying this privacy is immoral and should be illegal?
That's quite a loaded question. It's a bit like a fundamentalist asking a gay marriage supporter "Do you want to limit my religious freedom rights by allowing gay couples to marry?" Ugh, no and yes, I simply don't think that telling other people whom to marry was ever a part of other people's religious freedom rights to begin with.

It's not so much that I want "this privacy" to be illegal, that I think it shouldn't be considered a form of privacy to begin with. An already released content is already a subject of public discourse, it is lifted into popular culture, and it is naturally accessible through a publically available technology. Therefore, declaring that it is in someone's "privacy rights" to stop others from repeating it, is unfair.


micahrp said:
I got no response (not even a snear) to the fair use of private property example when someone stated there is no fair use of private property.
I didn't reply, because even if you are right about that one, you already conceded the other one about copyright expiration that made teh same point. You wrote a paragraph about how Public Domain is needed for creativity, which is a nice and true explanation, but it only underlines how the main difference between property and intellectual property is, that IP is to be defined in the way that benefits creativity the most, while property is kept with it's owner's heirs as long as it exists.


micahrp said:
For the company example here is my specific redress. The suggestion is an attempt to decouple supply and demand. In the supply and demand economy satisifing demand without also satisfying supply hurts the economy. If all the entertainment companies switched to that suggested model (which is an already saturated market) would jobs be lost or gained? Would all the companies make survive or what percent do you think would go out of business?
That's the luddite fallacy, claiming that more cheaply satisfied demand in a particular field of work, leads to overall job losses.

If the population would spend less money on the same entertainment, then yes, the entertainment industry would shrink down. But at the same time, the money that would have been spent on the no longer scarce data, can now be spent in other products and services, increasing their industries' size (and room for employment) by an equal amount.

Besides, if "creating jobs in the entertainment industry" would be our first priority, then we could as well allow corporations to legally enforce everything that they write in their EULA, to ban used sales, and to not allow fair use, and legalize every possible money-making scheme that they can think of, just to help the entertainment industry grow even larger.


micahrp said:
My suggested solution that has been repeatedly dismissed (when the only dismissal I can understand is laziness) is to GROW the supply side. If you disagree with the companies go compete against them with that better model and drive them out of business yourself. More supply leads to more jobs and often lower prices when there is true competition.


micahrp said:
Levels of technology creating unenforceable situations does not make those technologies morally right to use. What if someone could untraceably kill over the internet (just stepped into Deathnote territory) or untraceably steal money over the internet from bank accounts (Im trying to step back and give the more real current example) should we legalize that killing/stealing? Or would the government try to find some "unbalanced" way of enforcement? The governments response to all those technology-unenforceablity situations should be consistant.
What if we would have the technology to easily create tens of thousands of whales? Would that make whale hunting OK?

What if we would have the cigarettes that don't cause any smell or unhealthy effect to outsiders? Would that make ignoring the public smoking bans OK?

That's the difference between commandments that stem from natural law, and that had been the cornerstone of all civilizations for thousands of years, and legal regulations that exist for a specific practical purpose that may or may not stay relevant on the long term.

Copyright is the latter. It has been written solely because the early modern era's book printing needed to be regulated, and at the time, this appeared to be a simple way to do it.

That's what all the "piracy is theft" comments are about. Trying to associate it with a universal sin, as opposed to the infringement of a regulation that may not even be necesary to begin with.
 

chikusho

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DracoSuave said:
You fail economics forever.


The artists get paid for their work--if it's the publishers doing so, where do you think that money comes from to pay the artists? Do you think that if you don't pay the publishers the artist will end up paid still?

No.

Because without the reason to make that money, there's no need for the artist to make that product. And if there's no need for the artist, he doesn't get paid because he doesn't work.
You fail basic human understanding forever. A person isn't a vending machine that only creates things if you insert coins.
 

DracoSuave

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amiran123 said:
It's more along the lines of me possessing a copying machine that copies anything and copying something that you want to sell so that i don't have to buy it.

I'm not actually depriving you of the object in question i am merely copying it.

I never said that piracy was a good thing i merely stated that it is not theft.

Also, the definition of theft isn't reducing something's value, read a dictionary please.
A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and "thief" and "steal" shall be construed accordingly.

Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an appropriation, and this includes, where he has come by the property (innocently or not) without stealing it, any later assumption of a right to it by keeping or dealing with it as owner. (2) Where property or a right or interest in property is or purports to be transferred for value to a person acting in good faith, no later assumption by him of rights which he believed himself to be acquiring shall, by reason of any defect in the transferor?s title, amount to theft of the property.



That's straight from british law.

Assuming the rights of an owner amounts to appropriation, which copying without authorization amounts to. Only the owner has that right unless they give it to others, and by doing so, you've assumed a right of the owner dishonestly.


The part that you don't get is that if you make a copy of something I own the rights to, you do not own that copy. I do. I own the copy you have made. Thus, you are appropriating MY copy for YOUR purposes. I don't care if you have a copy machine--you don't own the copies it makes.


chikusho said:
You fail basic human understanding forever. A person isn't a vending machine that only creates things if you insert coins.
Good comeba--wait a minute, no it is not.


Those people are getting paid because their service is valuable and worth paying for. That value is inherent in the salability of their products. If people don't buy the products, then that value is nil. Not only that, there's no money to pay the artist.

So you can live in some fantasy world where screwing over the publisher is not screwing over the artist... but some of us recognize that it is removing the intrinsic value in the artists work--and thus their ability to make money.
 

Nielas

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Dec 5, 2011
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Entitled said:
It's not so much that I want "this privacy" to be illegal, that I think it shouldn't be considered a form of privacy to begin with. An already released content is already a subject of public discourse, it is lifted into popular culture, and it is naturally accessible through a publically available technology. Therefore, declaring that it is in someone's "privacy rights" to stop others from repeating it, is unfair.
This is already handled by Fair Use provisions. You are allowed to duplicate parts of copyrighted works for use in public discourse.
 

Entitled

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DracoSuave said:
Assuming the rights of an owner amounts to appropriation, which copying without authorization amounts to.
Read again that britsh law:

A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another

That law only talks about PROPERTY, it says nothing about "appropriating someone's monoplistic licenses of exclusive production", since there is no such thing. Appropration refers to actual enumerable objects that can literally be taken away, not to infringement of exclusive selling rights.

Copyright is covered by entirely separate laws.
 

Entitled

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Nielas said:
This is already handled by Fair Use provisions. You are allowed to duplicate parts of copyrighted works for use in public discourse.
Exactly.

You may say that what I want, and what the reform law in the OP describes, is basically a more liberal form of Fair Use, that applies to all non-commercial private access to othwerwise copyrighted content, in the name of reasonable public discourse.
 

Vegosiux

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DracoSuave said:
You fail economics forever.


The artists get paid for their work--if it's the publishers doing so, where do you think that money comes from to pay the artists? Do you think that if you don't pay the publishers the artist will end up paid still?

No.
Actually, I'd think the developer already got paid for the project, what's in danger if a game bombs and has abysmally low sales, is not their paycheck for the game in question, but the probability of a future project.
 

zehydra

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DracoSuave said:
zehydra said:
The problem is, people usually don't get paid for the work through game purchases. Somebody ELSE who then funds the artists/programmers etc gets paid.

Publishers are the ones at stake here, not gaming itself. Video games have already proved themselves to be a highly desired item. Even if one means to make money off of it is destroyed, someone else will come up with a different method.
You fail economics forever.


The artists get paid for their work--if it's the publishers doing so, where do you think that money comes from to pay the artists? Do you think that if you don't pay the publishers the artist will end up paid still?

No.

Because without the reason to make that money, there's no need for the artist to make that product. And if there's no need for the artist, he doesn't get paid because he doesn't work.
Developers get their pay beforehand.
 

Fursnake

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Jun 18, 2009
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Downloading is a perk of modern life, not a right. And downloading shit for free is a special treat when it is OFFERED, also not a right.
 

Naeo

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Dec 31, 2008
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[original text removed]

Actually, nevermind. I'm not getting involved in an argument where no one seems to really want to actually have a discussion and would rather just wave their views around in front of everyone.
 

chikusho

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DracoSuave said:
Those people are getting paid because their service is valuable and worth paying for. That value is inherent in the salability of their products. If people don't buy the products, then that value is nil. Not only that, there's no money to pay the artist.

So you can live in some fantasy world where screwing over the publisher is not screwing over the artist... but some of us recognize that it is removing the intrinsic value in the artists work--and thus their ability to make money.
Those people are paid because there's an assumption by publishers that their skill will produce something that people are willing to pay for. If people are _not_ willing to pay for it (for whatever reason) then that value is nil.

Your argument was implying that all creative works would cease to exist if noone was paying specifically for the creation of every single copyrighted, company controlled intellectual property.


Dijkstra said:
No, they only create things when you insert food, which they buy with coins.
... And said coins can come from exactly _any source_ that has precisely _none of the things_ to do with the art they create.