Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"
- Thread starter Saucycarpdog
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In the court of law, it is.
Morally things start getting ambiguous though. I don't pirate, but developers aren't necessarily losing money from people pirating, as said pirates may not have bought the game anyway. Still, if you can't afford something, you simply don't get it.
There are way to many intricacies in this issue for me to make a solid decision. So my opinion is this:
1) I will not pirate because I personally believe it is morally wrong in general.
2) Pirating should stay as an illegal practice, although not necessarily equal to physical theft.
3) If you pirate, I won't judge you if you don't have the means to afford the product. If you DO however, I will most likely curse you out.
Morally things start getting ambiguous though. I don't pirate, but developers aren't necessarily losing money from people pirating, as said pirates may not have bought the game anyway. Still, if you can't afford something, you simply don't get it.
There are way to many intricacies in this issue for me to make a solid decision. So my opinion is this:
1) I will not pirate because I personally believe it is morally wrong in general.
2) Pirating should stay as an illegal practice, although not necessarily equal to physical theft.
3) If you pirate, I won't judge you if you don't have the means to afford the product. If you DO however, I will most likely curse you out.
Prove they would've gotten paid in the absence of piracy. Law is not absolute. Bananas.no oneder said:
You can argue all you want about it, but they make the laws and they're pretty adamant about the situation. Complaining about it isn't really gonna do anything, no matter what your stance.
You didn't quote me but mind if I try to answer it?no oneder said:
Before we go into that, what is law? Law and justice are man-made concepts created at the dawn of mankind. Before people had money or shops there was trade of goods and workers and farmers. It was decided that to forcibly take an item from another person was to deprive that person who worked or traded for that item and so the concept of theft as crime was born.
Then the advent of currency now we had shops and money was used as a medium of tradable goods or services. A universal middle man to symbolise trade if you lacked specific items which was redeemable at a later date or time. Theft as crime was also applied to stealing money because it was depriving the victim of money or items that could be traded for money which could be traded for the desired item.
Now in the modern ages we have concepts and ideas as "copyright infringement" and "software piracy". Even ideas can be stolen, we have given the tangible and the abstract a value and an owner. In olden days if you stole an apple from a store the owner would lose the money for sure from not selling the apple, however with regards to copyright piracy there is no clear cut guarantee of the loss of money. As such the punishment should not be as harsh from a moral and even a philosophical standpoint.
To further illustrate a point: Hundreds of years ago if a man had a book and another man wanted it, he would lend it to him and he would copy it down onto fresh paper and bind it himself. This is what one would consider "copyright theft" is it not? Yet it was perfectly legal, in fact if I were go to my friend right now and transcribe an entire book word for word onto paper to read at my own leisure it would fall well within the realms of legality. Yet when a book becomes removed from ink and paper to 0s and 1s and the act of manually copying becomes an automatic act I have become a criminal, yet is it not the same in principle even though the execution has evolved?
Big whoop lock us all up sue us to the nines and undercut your entire future. They have let piracy go on under fair use for ages and now they want to slap some wrists. Well guess what there is no future for anyone when they take down the billions of pirates, literally billions. Such a common thing theses days to attack people who do it would be the end of the internet and world.
Law is not absolute, it is dynamic and constantly changing. Did you know it is perfectly legal to pirate software in Iran as long as the author of the software is not Iranian? There are actual Iranian Government FTP servers full of pirated versions of Windows, Office, Photoshop etc etc.no oneder said:
What is permissable today is illegal tomorrow, what is law yesterday is history today. Law is not absolute.
I, from time to time, do pirate.
This is just because my household is very lucky to have any computers at all, and a stable internet connection. We have trouble with bills. If I had the money to buy games, I would.
However... Piracy in the original sense of the word (yarrr) and in the digital sense of the word are different. Copying and distributing just isn't the same as flat-out stealing. It's not like every time you pirate a game, a copy disappears out of the warehouse.
That said, it is illegal, but not because it's "theft," but because it's distributing copies of an item that is not making money for the developer.
Piracy is, in essence, used game sales pushed to the cost of your internet service for the time you take to download it.
(I also agree with the whole "lock this thread" thing. It's probably going to end up going overboard)
This is just because my household is very lucky to have any computers at all, and a stable internet connection. We have trouble with bills. If I had the money to buy games, I would.
However... Piracy in the original sense of the word (yarrr) and in the digital sense of the word are different. Copying and distributing just isn't the same as flat-out stealing. It's not like every time you pirate a game, a copy disappears out of the warehouse.
That said, it is illegal, but not because it's "theft," but because it's distributing copies of an item that is not making money for the developer.
Piracy is, in essence, used game sales pushed to the cost of your internet service for the time you take to download it.
(I also agree with the whole "lock this thread" thing. It's probably going to end up going overboard)
"I lost 11 million pounds in the lottery today."
instead of
"I didn't win the lottery today."
I won't pretend mass-piracy isn't a bad thing or something that should be heavily discouraged but it just isn't theft, it just isn't. They don't lose anything, they just don't gain anything. By that train of logic simply not buying it is almost theft since they don't gain anything.
instead of
"I didn't win the lottery today."
I won't pretend mass-piracy isn't a bad thing or something that should be heavily discouraged but it just isn't theft, it just isn't. They don't lose anything, they just don't gain anything. By that train of logic simply not buying it is almost theft since they don't gain anything.
When they crack down on piracy, they better make it mandatory for game companies to release and keep game demos out so you can test the 50-60 dollar game out before you buy it. You know because your system may not handle it and a number of other reasons like no returns on PC games?
Otherwise piracy is how I demo'd 4/5 of the PC games I could play.
Otherwise piracy is how I demo'd 4/5 of the PC games I could play.
Personally, I think Obama just trolled half the internet.
Not sure what the laws on theft are like in the US, as far as specific elements of the offence. In Victoria, Obama would either be right with his assessment or it'd be "obtaining financial advantage by deception" instead of theft.
Not sure what the laws on theft are like in the US, as far as specific elements of the offence. In Victoria, Obama would either be right with his assessment or it'd be "obtaining financial advantage by deception" instead of theft.
Not to go off topic or anything, but... How would this ACTA work without infringing upon the rights of Americans?