Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"
- Thread starter Saucycarpdog
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I find it pretty funny how I've seen the phrases "plain and simple" and "...period" after stating both piracy IS and ISN'T theft. That basically proves you can't say such things about the issue, PERIOD.
You just can't really compare it to stealing a car or something like in those ads they have before movies sometimes. I would never steal another persons car, but if I had some magic ray gun that could copy the car, leaving the person with theirs, and creating a duplicate for me to drive away with, I would do that. The person wouldn't lose their car, the company wouldn't have had to pay for that copied car, and wouldn't even know this whole scenario went down.
Now I would still be profiting off of another person's work of designing it without paying them, and if a lot of people start doing it the number of people buying from them would decrease. So as a general trend is where it starts being a problem, and individually its still fairly dishonest. So treating it with the same harshness as shoplifting is a fair estimation of how to punish such a crime, but suing people for ridiculous amounts of money just alienates people, makes them bitter, and more likely to say "screw you its not real theft, everyone does it, so why shouldn't I".
The problem is, each individual person is committing a pretty mild crime, its bad, but even less than shoplifting because they don't LOSE product or money from any specific download, its only the combined culture of piracy that can lead to profit loss. Because of this its just not realistic to expect it to just go away, whether its fair or not the industry has to change to accommodate the influence the internet has had on it.
You just can't really compare it to stealing a car or something like in those ads they have before movies sometimes. I would never steal another persons car, but if I had some magic ray gun that could copy the car, leaving the person with theirs, and creating a duplicate for me to drive away with, I would do that. The person wouldn't lose their car, the company wouldn't have had to pay for that copied car, and wouldn't even know this whole scenario went down.
Now I would still be profiting off of another person's work of designing it without paying them, and if a lot of people start doing it the number of people buying from them would decrease. So as a general trend is where it starts being a problem, and individually its still fairly dishonest. So treating it with the same harshness as shoplifting is a fair estimation of how to punish such a crime, but suing people for ridiculous amounts of money just alienates people, makes them bitter, and more likely to say "screw you its not real theft, everyone does it, so why shouldn't I".
The problem is, each individual person is committing a pretty mild crime, its bad, but even less than shoplifting because they don't LOSE product or money from any specific download, its only the combined culture of piracy that can lead to profit loss. Because of this its just not realistic to expect it to just go away, whether its fair or not the industry has to change to accommodate the influence the internet has had on it.
Does this help?Deshin said:
http://www.google.com/products?q=Broken%20Sword&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US
fficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wf
Good move, but Broken Sword was just the first thing off the top of my head with regards to old games no longer in print in their original format/medium. Revamped releases for current gen systems do indeed shake things up but there is for sure a few hundred or so titles out there without modern variations that are impossible to get outside of piracy or used copies, no?NotSoNimble said:Does this help?
http://www.google.com/products?q=Broken%20Sword&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US
I miss Carlin too, but some of his political rants just became total shit. Like the one you said above.Deshin said:
Our owners? You know we elect those guys, we can run in those things? Seriously. Oh wait. He's dead, too busy fuckin' with god to hear me. Nevermind.
You missed his message entirely...MisterShine said:
The owners are the ones with the politicians (and judges) in their pockets. The ones who pay for the politician's campaign trail and funding, the ones who can turn around and shut down entire cities with a phone call.
And you both missDdemocracy entirely.Deshin said:
Politicians are busted in bullshit corruption all the time. They do have thousands of people and groups who watch pretty much everything they do, and all the reports they file. They get caught eventually. Plus, ya know, the whole checks and balances our entire government is founded upon. The reason why everyone calls "bureaucratic bullshit" all the time is because you have to go through 5 committees before you can even talk about changing the percent on a tax. We overthrow the government every 2-4 years about. Heck, it's in the first document our "government" ever put together.
If there really is a problem, it's the people. Our government IS the people.Declaration of Independence said:
Patriot Act, Japanese-American Internment, upcoming ACTA: that's democracy in action? Don't deny that money isn't today's ultimate power. If you've got enough of it you can get away with anything. Commit a crime and you're rich? Pay bail, then hire best lawyer you can who can probably get you off on a technicality. Commit a crime and you're poor? Rot away in jail til your hearing and get a state appointed lawyer who messes up and gets you locked up.MisterShine said:
and then theres people like me who know it's against the law and don't care.
If i buy a game it's cause i think the creators deserve the money for the product
If i buy a game it's cause i think the creators deserve the money for the product
Unless we're living in some sort of fantasy world, you cannot steal an idea. You can copy it, but that is not theft. You can use it first, but that is also not theft. Theft is a concept limited to the physical, depriving one to empower another. The idea that duplication is theft is simply contrary to reality and pushed mostly by those employing obsolete business models in a world thats quickly leaving them behind.no oneder said:
Enter ACTA, an ungodly pile of shit designed from the ground up to murder the future. Its goal, wording, and purpose is to force the advance of information technology to a violent halt. All for the benefit of those we should be leaving behind with nary a backward glance.
The idea it will be ratified because people don't understand the intrinsic difference between forcibly transferring ownership and duplication is suicide fuel.
The only people that want you to think duplication is theft are the people who's business model is built entirely around being the sole body capable of reproduction. The people you're defending by being staunchly anti-piracy are not the artist, musician, or developer. They're the studio, the publisher, the label.
Questions about piracy bore me a fair bit, and I'm pretty heavily affected by this issue, being on the corporate side of the music industry and all... thought I'd cherry-pick two of the more interesting comments:
As for the overall issue of piracy being theft, or whatever, I don't think that matters much, it still hurts the industry. I know, people say "if it's really good I'll buy it anyway", or "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" but not all those people are telling the truth, sales (and thus royalties for artists) have definitely been on one hell of a sharp downturn since torrents came out, I know this because I work in the industry and I've seen jobs lost and companies both big and small bankrupt or downsize drastically. I know plenty of teenagers who have massive music collections and haven't paid for any of it. Big, successful bands won't give a shit, they'll survive anyway (when you're as big as Radiohead you can afford to give away your new album for free), but it's the little artists that get shafted because they simply can't get a leg up, financially - their stuff appears on Russian MP3 sites sometimes before their CDs even hit the shelves...
I'm not going to comment on ACTA itself because the details are still being hashed out, but I'm not wildly concerned. What's being leaked at the moment isn't necessarily what it's going to be in its final form (remember the delay on ACTA has been because of negotiation) and even then it remains to be seen how it plays out in the real marketplace. Remember that most of you were already breaking the law anyway (nearly every single avatar on this site has been illegally copied, for instance) and if they're going to arrest you for that, where are they going to put you all? Of course they won't arrest you all. They'll take down a few bigger targets in order to scare off the rest - in other words, exactly what they do right now. Or they'll use it as a way to harrass specific persons that they might want on other charges (think about how Al Capone got done over). Also, a lot of current internet business models depend on copyright infringement (YouTube for instance) and that stuff isn't going to die quietly, the US isn't going to willingly shoot itself in the economic foot in this day and age. Even if ACTA gets passed in the fire-and-brimstone state that it's supposedly in at the moment, it's not that big a deal. Cops could just arrest you anyway.
Steve Albini has always been notoriously one-eyed about this issue. He's right of course, but the key word here is the "can" that I bolded. Artists certainly can make next to nothing even after a ton of sales, they can also do really well. Whether they do or not is dependent on things like their business savvy, their legal representation and contract negotiation skills. In a nutshell, whenever a band has a hit record they should immediately sit down with their lawyer and their label and renegotiate their record deal. Many bands don't renegotiate, or they don't use good representation that looks after their interests, and that's where they get shafted. Doesn't have to be that way though. Moving to a major label did wonders for Albini's pals in Sonic Youth who never regretted the move, but that was a band who had plenty of industry smarts and knew exactly what they wanted from a label going into the arrangement. Sadly, many bands are naive and clueless, they don't ask themselves that question, they just think a label is like this big machine that waves a magic wand and makes them a star/incredibly rich. Is it the fault of the industry for leading the bands down the garden path, or is it the fault of the bands for not opening a book or two and doing their research but instead believing in pie-in-the-sky "get a record deal and we've made it" rubbish? It's a good question. Industry practice has been recently that if a major label wants to sign you and you don't have legal representation, they won't let you sign until you do, they'll say "come back with a lawyer" - they know that if you sign without legal rep, if you then claim the deal was misleading/unfair you can always say "I had no lawyer plus I was drunk and high and they just shoved paper in my face" and a courtroom will be sympathetic. It's a deep and complicated issue and there are many sides, but if you think music artists get shafted, the print industry is even worse...Furburt said:
To an extent, this already happens. Your 12" vinyl doesn't play in your CD player in your car, you gotta buy the thing again. Why do you think record companies jumped on the inferior CD format so fast when we already had vinyl? Why do you think reissues, box sets, greatest hits compilations and "special editions" with bonus tracks or other teasers constantly come out? Sometimes singles are even released in multiple parts, forcing you to buy the same track over and over if you want the complete set, each disc with a different set of money-draining remixes...Gildan Bladeborn said:
As for the overall issue of piracy being theft, or whatever, I don't think that matters much, it still hurts the industry. I know, people say "if it's really good I'll buy it anyway", or "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" but not all those people are telling the truth, sales (and thus royalties for artists) have definitely been on one hell of a sharp downturn since torrents came out, I know this because I work in the industry and I've seen jobs lost and companies both big and small bankrupt or downsize drastically. I know plenty of teenagers who have massive music collections and haven't paid for any of it. Big, successful bands won't give a shit, they'll survive anyway (when you're as big as Radiohead you can afford to give away your new album for free), but it's the little artists that get shafted because they simply can't get a leg up, financially - their stuff appears on Russian MP3 sites sometimes before their CDs even hit the shelves...
I'm not going to comment on ACTA itself because the details are still being hashed out, but I'm not wildly concerned. What's being leaked at the moment isn't necessarily what it's going to be in its final form (remember the delay on ACTA has been because of negotiation) and even then it remains to be seen how it plays out in the real marketplace. Remember that most of you were already breaking the law anyway (nearly every single avatar on this site has been illegally copied, for instance) and if they're going to arrest you for that, where are they going to put you all? Of course they won't arrest you all. They'll take down a few bigger targets in order to scare off the rest - in other words, exactly what they do right now. Or they'll use it as a way to harrass specific persons that they might want on other charges (think about how Al Capone got done over). Also, a lot of current internet business models depend on copyright infringement (YouTube for instance) and that stuff isn't going to die quietly, the US isn't going to willingly shoot itself in the economic foot in this day and age. Even if ACTA gets passed in the fire-and-brimstone state that it's supposedly in at the moment, it's not that big a deal. Cops could just arrest you anyway.
Okay, don't get me wrong here, but I disagree with this. I am not pro-piracy, but I do have to point out that while it is theft, it still leaves the original in tact. Normal theft, eg, shop-lifting, does not.TheRightToArmBears said:
And man, do I want candy too.
That is because when they downloaded they could have shared those data packets to 10,000 people given them 1/13th of a song. That means they copied and spread those stolen goods. Making them not only steal, but to copy and "Sell" those songs forward, causing financial losses to the "Artist(Record label)" that must be repaid. So 1 cd costs ? 20euros that times 10,000 + legal fees.The Procrastinated End said:
And don't start with the movie downloads. If someone downloads a movie, they will share it with friend and will not go to see it in movies and will not buy DvDs or merchandises. So those great, story/plot writers and directors and whatnot don't get paid. Ofc, producers aren't the one demanding the moneys, the "artist are"
It is rather simple isn't it?
/sarcasm off