Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

[MisterShine]

Wait what? piracy isn't theft.

Legally speaking you are correct, and the supreme court agrees with you [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparison_to_theft], however colloquially calling it theft or stealing would not be out of line. You are gaining something to which you have no right: you are stealing.

What's troublesome to me is that whenever these debates crop up is how the first thing so many people say is "Piracy isn't theft!", and that is all they have to say on the matter. Well, unless you're referring to a legal document or court ruling, the difference between them is semantics and you're (general you) missing the point, either purposefully or not.

From a purely fiscal standpoint there is no difference between the sale of a second-hand good and a copy pirated - if everyone who buys used games now pirated them instead, publishers would have made the same amount of money.

From a purely fiscal standpoint from the view of the publisher. And if you want to care about the publishers position, that's good on you. Legally speaking, it makes a hell of a difference.

they'll yammer on about how those used copies all still had to be sold originally and pirated copies didn't, so that must make them better, but that reasoning is a load of bullshit: if 30,000 copies of a game are sold new at full price, and through the course of trade-ins a total of 60,000 are re-sold as used titles, the publisher/developers make exactly as much as they would if their title sold 30,000 new full price units and a million people pirated it. Yes, used copies had to be purchased originally, but that doesn't change the fact that, by buying a title used, your purchase has the same benefit to the content producer that software piracy does (none whatsoever).

Setting aside the numbers issue here, this is correct, but missing the point I think. It is legal to sell something that you have purchased. It is not legal to make copies of it and distribute it without the copyright holders consent. A lot of our economy is based off of this principal, patenting ideas and using those ideas solely at your discretion to make money.

While from a fiscal perspective of the developer they are the same, one is illegal and the other isn't, and for good reason. If we didn't have copyright protection, people would never make money off of their ideas and inventions, they would always just be copied immediately and driven out of business.

So if used game sales, which are perfectly legal mind you, if those cannot be considered theft, how can unauthorized copying be an act of theft when it produces an identical financial outcome? Theft is taking somebody's stuff, piracy (or rather, the way the term is used in this context as actual piracy has nothing to do with discussions of copyright infringement) is copying it. That members of the Obama administration seemingly cannot tell the difference is not a good sign at all.

Your limiting of the viewpoint only to the publisher/developer is making you misrepresent this argument. Buying the game allows you to resell it at your leisure and at whatever price you think is fair. This includes selling it to the store, and because they purchased it from you, can now sell it to someone else at what price they feel is fair. They have to sell one-to-one from what they bought, either from their customers or from the producer of the game directly.

As opposed to a pirate, who for sake of argument, lets say goes out and buys a game, copies it, cracks it, and then puts up the crack for tens/hundreds/thousands/millions of people to take it and use it themselves, when they did not purchase the right to do so. They took something that they did not have a right to, thus they stole it. I think differentiating between legal definitions and what we say either on forums or on speeches to a symposium in Nashville are allowed to be different.

No matter how you slice it 60/5 or even 60/20 is better than 60/1000000.

That's not even really the issue. You are allowed to sell something you have purchased, no matter how many times it has been owned before. You can't copy someone else's idea (or video game code, or words in general [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism]) and give them away, or sell them.

 

[XT inc]

Not to go off topic or anything, but... How would this ACTA work without infringing upon the rights of Americans?

Simple they bend your rights over a table, yank down its pants and give them a nice unlubricated probing with no permission [ they dont need a warrant]. Its okay though I'm sure they wont use this to search houses just because they have data storing devices.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

Why are people pissed that the government takes piracy as stealing?

Seems like pure common sense to me. If you loose respect for someone for them pointing out the obvious, you probably aren't deserving of a whole lot of respect yourself.

I mean, it's called piracy. PIRACY. If there's one thing that should link to theft in your mind, it's the word piracy. If it doesn't, you should probably stop and think for a second why that is, and why you blame Obama for pointing the relationship out.

Besides, this will not stop me pirating, even though I only pirate games with insane DRM on them, just out of pure spite.

I am disappoint people.

Why do games have DRM?

 

[murphy7801]

Then spend some money and go sort out Somalia

 

[inFAMOUSCowZ]

Well good job guys on realizing this. Now maybe you can realize that the new health care is terrible. As well as the retarded new treaty thing to be voted on in September.

 

[MagicMouse]

Pirating is not theft. Its copying.

There is no evidence that supports that it's harmful to the creators of pirated media. It makes more sense to me that it INCREASES sales.

It is illegal and thats fine, but don't make it out to be something it's not.

If companies want to slow down piracy then they should lower the cost of digital media to something actually reasonable. It costs them ALMOST nothing to distribute.

 

[Grey_Focks]

Well yea, it is, but you know what's worse? that ACTA treaty shit that may be passed in response to it.

-1 respect, Obama, if this passes, you will be right there with Bush for "worst presidents in recent memory, if not all time."
Fucking asshole.

 

[ryai458]

I just lost respect for this administration.

Wait now?!, ha ha ect...

 

[Paragon Fury]

I just lost respect for this administration.

Cuz it's such a stretch to consider piracy theft? I mean, the only people who've fooled themselves into thinking otherwise are pirates and idiots.

Is it different than physical theft? Absolutely. But it's still theft.

HOW many times will I have to EXPLAIN THIS?!

PIRACY does not DEPRIVE the holder of his object. It COPIES IT. There's a fundamental difference between copying and stealing. Piracy is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, NOT THEFT! Let me repeat that for you. YOU ARE NOT, I REPEAT, YOU ARE NOT TAKING ANOTHER PERSONS PROPERTY, YOU ARE COPYING IT!

It's not theft, it's not even a form of theft, it's C O P Y R I G H T S - I N F R I N G E M E N T


Piracy is many things, including a form of sharing, but it is NOT THEFT.

I just lost respect for this administration.

You're really of the opinion that obtaining something for free, when it was only able to be created because somebody sunk a lot of money into it with the intent of having their investment refunded (at the very least) by sales... is in no way a form of theft?

It cost somebody else a lot of money to create what you're pirating. If you obtain it without payment, and without their consent, you're taking money from them without their permission. That's a very basic form of stealing.

Fine, let's go down this road again.

Let's say my neighbor has an orchad and sells apples for a living. I buy an apple from him and use the seeds from that apple to grow my own orchad. I then start distributing apples for free. Is what I'm doing illegal?

It's still taking something without permission. It's kinda half-theft. You get something that's someone else's unlawfully (that's theft right there), but they don't lose it (the not-so-theft bit).

NO YOU'RE NOT! What I an downloading from the internet isn't the game I bought at GameStop, I'm downloading a copy of that game.

Piracy is theft, one way or another. You cannot avoid that, no matter how hard you wish to try to.

For one, you are most likely looking at games the wrong way. No matter what mom, dad, uncle Joe or anyone else tells you; by purchasing a disc or the ability to download a game you in no way, shape or form own any part of that game. You are not entitled to any part of that game. You aren't entitled to exactly what the developer/publisher says you are, and no farther. Violation of these terms means they can simply tell you are no longer allowed the subject in question, and they don't have to refund you.


What you are doing you pay $60 for a game is buying mission to see that game. It is the equivalent to buying a ticket to a game, movie or art show. Games sometimes even go a bit farther by letting you share your ticket or bring quests, but at the end of the day its still the developer/publishers show, and they have complete control over the whole proces. You aren't allowed to copy your ticket or sneak in, because that is stealing from the show; you're stealing the cost of the ticket, and not paying for the service/show you recieve.


"So you're saying that sharing is wrong!" Yes, I am. By defintion in this case, it is. But I am a practical man, (as are most companies) and realize that lending someone a game, or even making a couple copies and giving them out does not legitimate harm; the scale simply is too small. Most sales predictions even iunclude that in the "Potenial Losses" part of planning.

But then you scale that up to the level of piracy, and now you have a large, very harmful problem. So many people stealing either the product or the admission into the product creates big losses for a company. Like it or not, you're stealing from their bottom line, and though you can argue technicalities until you're blue in the face and the last man/woman on Earth, what you're doing has the same end result as stealing, and therefore is considered the same thing.

 

[geldonyetich]

Yes, piracy is flat, unadulterated theft. It's also very popular on the PC platform. Which is why a significant number of people on this forum are going to fight back against any attempts to having one of their favorite privileges revoked: getting stuff you're supposed to pay for for free.

That, and I think that by default a lot of people don't really have a real good understanding of the concepts of intellectual property. They're genuinely ignorant to the damage they do when they pirate.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Right or wrong, that's not really the topic being discussed. I was simply saying that, for example, your average used game may go through for example 5 owners but if put up on a torrent that same single copy could be distributed to thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of downloaders. I'm not going to say where one should draw the line, and I'm in agreement that rentals/used sales are not anywhere near as good as new sales where the creators are concerned, but there is a pretty clear and debatable difference between common sharing and internet file sharing if that's what someone wanted to discuss. No matter how you slice it 60/5 or even 60/20 is better than 60/1000000.

Yet the 60 remains a constant across those 3 variable situations. The only difference is either 65, 80, or 1,000,060 people enjoyed the experience. The more people enjoy something the more they discuss it and create fandom around it, which may lead the author to create sequels to the original item. This would not happen if the numbers were limited to 65 or 80.

Except if the publisher/developer don't make enough money off of a title to fund a sequel or re-visit a good idea. Sadly, the videogame industry is a business and doesn't run on good ideas alone.

 

[sanitornator]

OK, I just recently created this account to point something out. lets say I subscribe to Netflix and choose the first month free deal. I can watch as many movies as I want to on instant watch for the length of my subscription. Throughout this first month I watch dozens of movies that I have no need to pay for. sure its not exactly having a copy of the movie on my hard drive, yet I have still watched both big and small budget films without paying a dime. This is all legal! now lets say instead of going on Netflix, I pirate the movies that I want to watch. I'm watching the big and small budget movies without paying a dime. This is Illegal.

Now I want to know the difference between accepting the deal that a big name company like Netflix is offering and watching these movies via pirating; and why one is illegal and the other is not.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Locke then lamented the fate of songwriters. "Recently, I've had a chance to read letters from award winning writers and artists whose livelihoods have been destroyed by music piracy. One letter that stuck out for me was a guy who said the songwriting royalties he had depended on to 'be a golden parachute to fund his retirement had turned out to be a lead balloon.' This just isn't right."

He should've got himself a REAL job then and done like everyone else and put money away that he actually EARNED. (que flaming contraversy).

Yes there is reason to give him money for having done such a thing. But not so much that he can make his retirement off it. Unless he's written thousands upon thousands of songs. At which point I somewhat doubt pirac has wrecked his idiot pension plan unless all he ever wrote were say...britney spears songs.

Music is a career path just like any other - if a guy is good at writing songs, let him write songs and pay him to do so. Music has to come from somewhere, so someone has to make a living out of it, given the effort that goes into creating mainstream music. As much as the indie crowd would beg to differ, music on a global scale really can't be created in basements on weekends.

I get you pointed out that it's a controversial statement, but you seem to be saying that a professional songwriter shouldn't be able to make a retirement out of songwriting...?

No retirement from a small volume of songs. A thousand songs or less is a small volume (depending on career length, i would expect 15-20 years of work for 1000 songs).

 

[Dags90]

Fine, let's go down this road again.

Let's say my neighbor has an orchad and sells apples for a living. I buy an apple from him and use the seeds from that apple to grow my own orchad. I then start distributing apples for free. Is what I'm doing illegal?

It depends, if your neighbor is Monsanto and the apple is copyrighted then yes. However, even in this highly similar scenario of copying someone's patented genetic engineering it's never considered theft. Stealing is a criminal offense, this would be a civil copyright matter.

Perhaps scarier is that Monsanto has (successfully) sued people for having their GM crops on their land, even if they admit that the offending party didn't plant them knowingly (i.e., seeds blown in the wind/off a truck). Makes you wonder the legal status of a copyrighted self replicating worm. Could someone claim copyright infringement on that?

I also really don't buy into "OMG THE STARVING ARTISTS!" schtick. When a new, risky artist starts out with any media publisher (music, porn, literature) their pay is almost always front loaded and not heavily influenced by sales. It's not until after they have an established following that they have the clout to bargain for royalties in their following contracts.

 

[Deshin]

Except if the publisher/developer don't make enough money off of a title to fund a sequel or re-visit a good idea. Sadly, the videogame industry is a business and doesn't run on good ideas alone.

So would it be ok to pirate Modern Warfare 2 because they made enough cash from that game to stack pennies to the sun and back and still have enough leftover to make a few rings around Venus? There are too many variables and shades of grey for anyone to morally (and legally) draw a line on the consequences of piracy to industries and individuals. But it's always fun to try.

 

[logiman]

i live in Romania where it is legal to pirate games as long as i don`t sell or distribute them..and i`m 90% sure Obama has no clue where Romania is and that we speak russian (our language is a latine one..kinda like italian)

 

[Spencer Petersen]

Jesus was a pirate
He took a product and then made copies and distributed it to those who wanted it for no cost.
I think that's why he was crucified, piracy laws must have been crazy back then.

 

[ALuckyChance]

Well, from what I know about pirated PC copies, most of them can't access multiplayer (don't want online verification of a bad copy, after all), and can't give out trophies as achievements usually use Windows Live or Steam. Not to mention, many pirated PC games downgrade the cutscene quality to save download space.

So, you could say that a pirated game (again, probably only for PC's) is inferior to a paid-for copy.

 

[HereForFreeFood]

Now that Obama says it, it all makes sense!