Illegal downloading is not theft - its something new

[L.B. Jeffries]

Any person who willfully infringes a copyright

See, so we don't even call it theft. It's called willful infringement. To willfully "encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another." To trespass on someone's intellectual property. To allow your thoughts to exist inside thoughts that belong to someone else.

Literally, from the law, it is to think thoughts you are not allowed to think.

Uh, I think the part that the courts find illegal is the whole reproducing of the game without the company's permission part.

 

[Morderkaine]

By downloading a game off the internet are you not effectively giving yourself financial gain by taking goods and not paying for them? Your still x$ richer then you would be if you legally enjoyed playing on the game, Id call that for monetary gain.

Difference between monetary gain or just not spending the money for whatever reason.
Lets look at an example of a poor kid who never has any money at all and could never afford to get a computer game. One day he finds $50 laying in the street. There are 5 games he wants, but can only afford 1. He buys the one he wants most, and finds out about downloading and gets the other 4. If he had never heard of downloading, he never would have been able to afford to buy the games anyways.
The companies who made the other 4 games, have they lost anything? No, he could have never afforded their games anyways. Did he do something illegal? Yes. So the companies lost no item off the shelf, no physical object, and didnt even lose any profit.
Now im not saying downloading is ok in this or any other situation, but im showing how it is not just black and white, and it can be a victimless crime - literally.
SOrta like walking into a book store with pen and paper and copying out a book. Its copyright infringment, but its not theft.
The main point of this thread was to stop people from comparing downloading to theft of physical property or cash, and to use proper terms for it, and it mostly seems to have worked.
Zhoomout - it was a lot of analogies in other threads that were annoying me. plagiarism is closer to it.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

See, so we don't even call it theft. It's called willful infringement. To willfully "encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another." To trespass on someone's intellectual property. To allow your thoughts to exist inside thoughts that belong to someone else.

Literally, from the law, it is to think thoughts you are not allowed to think.

Uh, I think the part that the courts find illegal is the whole reproducing of the game without the company's permission part.[/quote]

You haven't said a word different from what I've said.[/quote]

The whole "to think thoughts you are not allowed to think" is pretty different from what I said. So is "To allow your thoughts to exist inside thoughts that belong to someone else." I don't really know what that's on about.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

The only difference in what you and I have said, is that you think this is a fine state of affairs and I don't.

I would ask someone like you to defend libraries, but I fear this is simply "it's a law so it's a law" mentality.

I never said I thought there was anything fine with it. I would defend it except that isn't how a copyright works. A basic wiki would've explained it to you. You're mixing it up with a patent. A copyright gives you sole ownership of the expression of an idea for a finite period of time. So if two people made a movie based on Romeo & Juliet, they aren't infringing on one another because they are separate expressions of an idea. The play itself is now too old to be protected by a copyright.

You may have noticed that there are a wide variety of FPS games. The reason those don't infringe on each other is that you can't copyright an FPS. It's an idea. You can copyright your own unique expression of that idea. When you download a game without paying for it, you are reproducing their expression of an idea without their permission. That's illegal. The law isn't meant to be fair to you, it's meant to be fair to everyone.

 

[mooncalf]

Agreed that Illegal downloads are bad and wrong, but not -theft-.

I've referred to it as digital counterfeiting. Look at the definitions of counterfeiting and you will see that the term aptly applies.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Well to throw my two cent in...

If they made content and material that was WORTH paying for then I *might* feel bad. Doubtful but maybe. The stuff i feel is worthy of purchase gets purchased. The stuff that i feel is a load of ballocks but will occupy my tiny attention span for hours will be cloned whether they like it or not. (example: Spo..well actually i bought that one coz i thought it'd be worth it and turned out to be ballocks...better example!...cant think of any coz surprisingly all of my recent stuff that i can buy is actually bought...apparently I've become law abiding...when did i turn good from evil bastard? wierd...)

anyway moving on:

I pretty much only download things i cant get here today (or within a year) like dexter, house, Naruto, Bleach (They take at least 5 years and the dubs are horrific. I'll stick with fansubs tyvm since your translators are useless bastards and your voice actors sound like molested children on speed rather than proper emotionally relevant characters.

 

[Death916]

\

I know there are other posts on illegal downloading, but this is not the same thing. This thread is to try and stop people from using the wrong words in their arguments, and to realize that in our digital world, old terms and systems dont nessecarily apply. You cant use the same rules for a digital signal that can be reproduced 1000000 times for free as you can for a loaf of bread.
Over and over again I see people making comments like `You wouldnt steal a BMW would you?` or `How would you feel if you were mugged on the street`, but these comments have nothing to do with downloading, even as an analogy.
Downloading movies, music and games is not theft. A definition of theft : The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same.
When something is downloaded, the music artist, game company, etc loses nothing, there is no piece of property that vanishes from their homes or businesses. If I download a game for free, the only thing that company loses is the CHANCE to POSSIBLY sell that game to me, a chance they may never have had in the first place. For example - if someone in a country where a game is not sold to downloads it, what did the company loose? They could have never sold to that person in the first place, it would have no effect on their profits at all, so is it theft? Of course not! Did the company lose a cent? No! Is it illegal? Apparently.

Now, I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with illegal downloading. It is illegal, it can hurt the game, music, movie, etc makers. But it is not theft, it is something new that needs its own name. I just dont want to see anymore stupid arguments comparing it to breaking and entering, stealing cars or chocolate bars, etc, as I know the downloading issue is one that will be constantly brought up over and over again as new legislation passes.

In short, downloading can reduce profits, in some cases increase them by spreading knowledge of a product, and in some cases make no change in sales at all. It is not theft and should not be referred to as such. You may as well say that if you walk into a book store, sit down and read a book, then put it back on the shelf and leave that you stole from the store. Maybe call it `potential/possible loss of sales`, or `reduction in maximum possible revenue`, but not theft, and its nothing like stealing a car or any physical object.

Any posts to this thread, please lets avoid posts on if you agree or disagree with downloading, keep it to the topic of whether it is theft or something different, and maybe options for what to call it.

i agree with you completely. they llse nothing if they dont offer it where your at

 

[Aid n]

I dont see what all the problems with pirates is, Johnny Depp sort of change a lot of peoples perspectives. Plus look at them somalian pirates I may 'borrow' some digital information from time to time but i dont raid ships with AK47's, but to end my argument aaaahhhhhhhhhhh pieces of eight.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

I don't get it, whats the difference from downloading a game and stealing a copy from Gamestop? Isn't it the same thing?

Basically, if you steal the copy from Gamestop, that's one less copy they have to sell to someone else..

Yes you are. Your stealing a copy they could be selling to YOU. It doesn't matter if you steal a copy, they will have another for someone else anyway. The point is if you download it, they lose money straight up.

Yes, but Gamestop purchased that disk from the company that produced said game. Gamestop would lose the money that was spent on that copy of the game. Where as in pirating, what is lost is an non-existant profit that could be payed for the game, but no company loses additional money from the act.

How dense ARE you people!? The OP may be sick of hearing it called theft, but I'm sick of people who don't understand the concept of "potential profit." I'm not even going to try to explain it, because not even the simplest analogy seems to work. People continue with this "Well, I wasn't going to buy it anyway." Yes. Yes you would have if you had no other choice.

 

[TerraMGP]

I don't get it, whats the difference from downloading a game and stealing a copy from Gamestop? Isn't it the same thing?

Basically, if you steal the copy from Gamestop, that's one less copy they have to sell to someone else..

Yes you are. Your stealing a copy they could be selling to YOU. It doesn't matter if you steal a copy, they will have another for someone else anyway. The point is if you download it, they lose money straight up.

Yes, but Gamestop purchased that disk from the company that produced said game. Gamestop would lose the money that was spent on that copy of the game. Where as in pirating, what is lost is an non-existant profit that could be payed for the game, but no company loses additional money from the act.

How dense ARE you people!? The OP may be sick of hearing it called theft, but I'm sick of people who don't understand the concept of "potential profit." I'm not even going to try to explain it, because not even the simplest analogy seems to work. People continue with this "Well, I wasn't going to buy it anyway." Yes. Yes you would have if you had no other choice.

But again I have to say that at this point nothing is going to change. They can't Jail everyone who downloads illegally, they can't fine them all especially in a state where the economy is so bad they would most likely all become destitute. A few token strikes now and then maybe but its not going to help all the industries as a whole. Something Radical needs to be done to games, books and shows that allows for the makers to get something out of file sharing. Yes I know it sounds absurd but frankly its that or jacking up the price on items so much that it crushes all of the industries suffering from it. People will go to great lengths to get the things they want free, so Corporations are going to have to get creative and get something out of it.

 

[Aurora219]

Question:

Under said copyright infringement laws, and in terms of, say, torrenting a game folder, would it be illegal to download and play the game, without seeding it? I mean, from what I can see on that law alone, as long as you don't distribute the game you're not infringing it. I assume that this is correct, but is there any other laws that affect the leechers?

 

[Jimmyjames]

It's all one big grey area. I personally feel that it's a shit thing to take someone's work without giving them compensation, but it happens all the time and is more and more common in every medium. I recently discovered that people pirate comic books. COMIC BOOKS. That was a medium I thought would be impervious to piracy, but I guess not.

I work in the games industry, and after spending 2 or more years on a game and them seeing people pirate the shit out of it before street date is irritating as all hell.

I think that it boils down to the fact that people put no value on something they can download.

When I was in highschool, I had like 200 CDs, which was a ridiculously huge collection back then for a teenager. Now kids have volumes and volumes of MP3s I'll bet a good percentage of kids have never actually paid for an album.

Is it good or bad? I think that morally it's wrong. I think there's some validity to the idea that it's expanding people's tastes, but if they never actually BUY the music, what good does that DO?

Downloading games is never going to stop. Unfortunately companies are responding with stuff like online-play only and DRM, which doesn't seem to me like a good thing to do. There's also the in-game advertising and the free to play things like "Battlefield Heroes" and (formerly) "America's Army", which DO seem like good responses.

I think that in the very near future, systems like STEAM and XBox Live/PSN will be the ONLY way to get games. Consumers won't have the games on their machine at all, it will be a subscription service to play whatever they want over a network.

 

[incal11]

Something like steam without the bad :
drm , accounts, required internet connection.

...would be great , especially if they lower the prices a bit.
that's if things turns out cool.


Now I certainly hope that something like what's mentioned above does not happen:
entirely online games through paying accounts , accessible for limited time periods at large prices and on the one computer used to make the account ,while we're at it.

This is a gamer's dystopia ...
hopefully those who are so inclined will always have the option of retro gaming ; and maybe some crafty criminals will still put the new games online...


but i'm all for a humane and intelligent version of steam.

on topic:
I guess that "piracy" , or copyright infrigement, is indeed a (lesser, non violent, non profitable) form of theft .
The gaming industry , though , needs to learn that they just can't loose the money they can't earn !

...I'm proposing
DENIAL OF POTENTIAL HYPOTHETIC PROFIT

"Illegal reproduction" applies too, but is taking things from a different angle.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Baha, so the real thieves are Gamestop and the used game sales!

 

[sheic99]

I don't get it, whats the difference from downloading a game and stealing a copy from Gamestop? Isn't it the same thing?

Basically, if you steal the copy from Gamestop, that's one less copy they have to sell to someone else..

Yes you are. Your stealing a copy they could be selling to YOU. It doesn't matter if you steal a copy, they will have another for someone else anyway. The point is if you download it, they lose money straight up.

Yes, but Gamestop purchased that disk from the company that produced said game. Gamestop would lose the money that was spent on that copy of the game. Where as in pirating, what is lost is an non-existant profit that could be payed for the game, but no company loses additional money from the act.

How dense ARE you people!? The OP may be sick of hearing it called theft, but I'm sick of people who don't understand the concept of "potential profit." I'm not even going to try to explain it, because not even the simplest analogy seems to work. People continue with this "Well, I wasn't going to buy it anyway." Yes. Yes you would have if you had no other choice.

Not necessarily, I could have rented it or borrowed from the game from somebody who already has it, or even play a cloned version of the .iso file from the disk itself. None of these are illegal, but they all involve me not paying for it.