Poll: Piracy is legal

[Lonewolfm16]

You do not have a right to take something someone else made. Period.

So, what do you think about my right to "take" a novel that someone else made 96 years ago?

I would hold that that largely depends on if anyone with claims on the book is still around. I would argue that by this point the author has probably made as much money as they will off that work, and entering it into the public sphere could be beneficial, however I would still hold that you should buy the novel from the person who has a legitimate claim on it if at all possible.

What would you consider a legitimate claim? Not the original writer after 96 years, I assume.

The person the author left the rights to, probably his descendant mostly. Or in some cases a publishing company but things can get a little iffy there.

 

[Entitled]

The person the author left the rights to, probably his descendant mostly. Or in some cases a publishing company but things can get a little iffy there.

So, if there is a 20 years old novel, that's writer died without any descendants, and his publisher went bankrupt and got bought by another one, that seems to be a pretty obvious case of very iffy copyright claims, would you say that illegally downloading that book against the latest IP holder's wishes doesn't harm any legitimate claim, any more than legally downloading Gulliver's Travels does?

 

[Lonewolfm16]

The person the author left the rights to, probably his descendant mostly. Or in some cases a publishing company but things can get a little iffy there.

So, if there is a 20 years old novel, that's writer died without any descendants, and his publisher went bankrupt and got bought by another one, that seems to be a pretty obvious case of very iffy copyright claims, would you say that illegally downloading that book against the latest IP holder's wishes doesn't harm any legitimate claim, any more than legally downloading Gulliver's Travels does?

Personally I would prefer to aquire a novel legally in this case as well, but would begrudge a person much less for pirating the novel in this case.

 

[Entitled]

Ok, just checking. And trying to thread the thread back into it's original theme, of whether people ever see a moral difference between legal copying and illegal copying based on that factor alone.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I'm fucking sick of these....

Morality is a human creation. No two people have the exact same morality system.

We each come up with our own system. Thus, there is NO SUCH THING as "Objectively Moral" or "Objectively Amoral".

In terms of MY morality, Piracy is something that falls in between and greatly depends on who owns the copyright and for what reason the person is pirating.

Pirating is not stealing, but neither is it always perfectly fine, ok and dandy.

Finally, the whole "Law = Morality" thing is one of the dumbest concepts ever conceived. If I go to Germany, it is, therefore, morally fine for me to have consensual sex with a 14 year old. If I then step over the country's border to Poland, that act suddenly becomes morally wrong until they are 15. Morality doesn't work like that.

Now stop making these threads and decide for yourself.

EDIT: Mr. Vault, you seem upset. You should lie down for a while.

 

[Bvenged]

I don't see how the legality of piracy ever really mattered to anyone, who apart from a few providers was actually was at risk of being caught and punished?

It's always been a morality thing. Whether it's legal or not, my opinion stays the same.

QFT

If it's bad to do it illegally, is it bad to do it legally? Of course!

If a company is dodging tax illegally, is that morally wrong? What if they find a legal loophole and do it through that? It's still wrong. Morality isn't proportional to the legality of the subject. It's not even related in the broadest sense.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Legality and morality are two very different things my friend. One does not really influence my opinion on the other in the slightest.
My personal view on piracy is that it's ok in some situations, but mostly it just comes down to greed.

For example, I think that it's ok to download some music if you can't afford to buy it outright, but you should make an effort to support good bands if you're able to. Especially by spreading the word about them. Most bands these days support themselves on ticket/merch sales, and would rather you downloaded their stuff and brought new people into the fold that would see them on tour or w/ever, rather than not listening to their stuff and being a missed opportunity.

 

[z121231211]

I would still find it morally wrong. I'm playing a game that people spent countless hours to make and I haven't given them any money. Though I'd prefer piracy being legal over having no demos or trials for a game.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I still would avoid pirating. Fact is that if no one paid for games then no one would make them. Or at least not to the quality level we get today.

 

[Morph]

I am not generally against taking a small part of a work (like a short clip from a movie or a quote from a book)but if you are going to get full benefite from a work I think expecting you to pay is reasonable. To simplify, if I write a book or make a movie or a game ect ect then I don't think that expecting people to pay you to read/play/watch it is unreasonable. YOU made that, not them and you deserve control over it. It is a product of your labor, and doesn't belong to them, but to you. This is why, when pirates talk about "rights" and "freedoms of information" I am very confused. I must have missed the part of the transition from someone making something to you gaining the right to unfettered and free access to everything that anyone made. You do not have a right to take something someone else made. Period. It is harmful to creators and a violation of their rights to the product of their labors. You are in no way entitled to play video games or read books or watch movies. people have to go out of their way to make those, and if they wish to distribute them for free, good for them. But if they expect money (and since these often take years of effort and millions of dollars that seems reasonable.) then you should pay them before taking the thing they made.

It's sad that my first instinct on forums is to reply with snarky, mostly unproductive comments in response to other comments that have irked me. When I started replying your post, I had actually intended to be fairly childish and borderline uncivil.

I'm going to generalize a bit here, to try to clear up some of your confusion about what exactly is being referenced when other 'pirates' cite 'rights' and 'freedoms of information'. Most of the discussion on this page has been about piracy of games, movies, and music more than it has been about copyright law in general. Piracy and copyright law tend to come up in the same discussions, and so arguments can end up a bit muddled.

Based on my own background, its easier for me to articulate why people are anti-copyright law (or pro-copyright reform, or whatever semantics you prefer) in the context of medical and pharmaceutical patents. Imagine you have two companies, both conducting research on ways to treat cancer. Company A files a patent for a super-effective method of targeting cancer cells without many negative side effects. Company B files a patent for a new wonder-drug that is highly effective at killing cancer cells, but they lack a good targeting method. With current copyright laws, unless one company purchases rights to use the other companies invention, this combination therapy will not reach market until the 20 year expiration date on the patents is reached.

Now if people advocating 'freedom of information' had their way, this situation would not arise, because both companies would have access to the other's work, and so one (or both) of the companies would be able to produce the drug. So in that sense, that sort of sharing of information would lead to more 'progress' on the whole, for medicine and the human race in general. The problem with that sort of freedom, is that the people investing money into the research aspects are looking for a pay-day. They want to recoup what they've spent, and make more on top of that, which is only possible if they possess sole rights to that IP for some time.

Copyright laws, in this specific realm, have to walk the fine line of allowing a company to make money, but also allowing the health care industry to offer quality care for most people. (On a related note, that '20 year' period is why when new drugs come out, they're often super expensive. The clock on that 20 years starts relatively early in the research phase, and so companies only usually end up with 10-13 years to make back all their research money, and so they jack up the prices as high as possible during that time).

If any of you took the time to read all that, I hope it was more coherent than it felt to me, writing it. And I hope that even if some of my information wasn't completely accurate, I've still offered you a slightly different perspective to view the complexities of this issue from. And also, I apologize that this whole thing was only a tangent to the discussion of "is piracy moral".

 

[NightmareExpress]

No in most cases, morally ambiguous in others.
Because you have to understand that there exists unique circumstances for each individual.
It's nothing to be proud or ashamed of in that case. I do know that the actual creator of the content would be happy with one more person praising their work, though.

It's a complex issue with the ease of acquiring things, but I think I agree with Neil Gaiman's stance on the matter.

 

[Raesvelg]

These threads... Ugh.

Piracy, in the sense copyright infringement, is a matter of questionable morality.

What you've got, essentially, are two camps.

On the one hand, you have people who believe, correctly, that in the total absence of copyright law, we would lose out on a great deal of artistic creation. They believe that creators have the right to benefit from their creations, and that a copyright of reasonable duration will grant that ability to those creators.

On the other hand, you've got people who want free shit.

Honesty compels me to admit that a tiny fraction of the "I Want Free Shit" camp genuinely believes that somehow, magically, having creators give their creations away would lead to an outpouring of public generosity and those creators would see profit from their endeavors as a result. We can call these folks idealists.

We also have another tiny fraction of the "I Want Free Shit" camp who believe, correctly, that copyright duration has been extended far beyond its original intent, largely at the behest of corporations attempting to extend the rights to their property indefinitely into the future it at all possible. I'm not sure what to call these folks, since it's difficult to find fault with their position, but at the same time it's not especially relevant in the face of the vast, vast majority of piracy.

Speaking of that vast majority: there really is no excuse for their behavior. They can attempt to cloud the issue in any number of ways, and they're always ready with an excuse to justify what they do. I'm not going to bother listing those justifications and obfuscations, since it's entirely likely that they've all been used in this thread already. But the ultimate truth is that they want something, but they don't want to pay for it.

 

[Kathinka]

i live in one of those countries where i can download copyrighted material completely legally at my leasuse.

i take advantage of that fact a lot.

besides that, not a single sale has ever been lost by me doing that.

yes, that's right. none of the games i downloaded i would have bought, even if it hadn't been avaiable for free. many of the games i downloaded i bought later, when i found them to be awesome and worth it.

so, no, i don't feel bad since i didn't cost the industry a single cent. merely taking advantage of a consumer right to try a product before i buy it. only the gaming industry gets away with trying to take that from its customers.

 

[tysonn101]

I'd say piracy is always wrong, unless your streaming a show or film online and later buy it (is streaming piracy? idk, same principle could apply to all of the mediums I guess).
I've always hated the "its not stealing, its copying as the product stays where it is" argument, fair enough the product may stay where it is but you've essentially stolen the profits the creator would have made which is morally wrong

 

[conmag9]

It's not a binary value. There's a spectrum. Copying a brand new game that you could totally afford and would love is one thing. Copying a piece of literature whose author is now deceased is quite another. I find myself interested in the topic mostly because of the frankly ABSURD abuses to the legal system that are currently in place, the shocking amount of bribery (sorry, "campaign contributions") that goes toward making stricter and more intrusive laws to deal with it, the ridiculousness of paying customers being hit by DRM that gets stripped in days if not hour, leaving those who didn't pay in the clear...The entire setup needs to be taken apart and reset into a sane system. Of course, whenever anything like that gets pushed forward, it's opposed violently by those who benefit from the nuttiness, who have enough money to more or less buy the laws with the threat to politicians ("...or else you wont have enough funds to get re-elected").

I do think it's morally dubious at best, legality aside, to copy recent material that a creator could still realistically get compensation for. It's not stealing, a fact I find incredibly annoying to have to point out, either of the product itself or the profits it might entail (in the former case, the object would literally have to be gone, depriving its owner of use. In the latter case, you can't steal from a potential future ideal, as this would invite ridiculous abuses on top of the current idiocy. "I wanted to make $100 000 000 on this product! My rival company made something that took attention away from what I would have made! THEFT!"). Nor should the insane system for public domain introduction exist in its current for (creator's life + 70 years? It's farcical).

SO, basically, in some cases, it's more wrong than others (and when the original creator's dead, or the product literally cannot be obtained otherwise, not really morally problematic at all). It'd be much easier to take a moral stance against it if it was legal, however, given the state of the system.

 

[olza]

I'll stop considering pirating moral when parents stop teaching their kids to share.
It'll never happen. sharing is human.
piracy isn't theft. it's the distribution of experiences.
experiences kept from spreading by copyright, patents, etc. don't contribute to the development of mankind, they stall it.

 

[olza]

Very well put.

 

[Madkipz]

I don't think pirates are bad people, but that doesn't mean piracy isn't a morally wrong thing. Do you honestly see nothing wrong with it? Only a few providers are at risk of getting caught, everyone who doesn't pirate does it because they think it's morally right, not because they're afraid of getting punished.

Honestly, you see nothing morally wrong with piracy?

I think it's morally wrong on the same level that jaywalking is morally wrong. As in, not very.

The problem with talking about piracy as a moral question is that it opens up a whole bag of moral quandaries that you don't really need to address. Let's say copyright infringement is morally wrong in the basis that you are deriving the benefit of a creator's work without paying for it. Under that framework, I can think of a number of equally wrong but socially acceptable activities, such as;

- borrowing a book from a friend
- buying a used video game
- accepting a hand-me-down iPhone from a sibling
- reading a comic book or a magazine in the store
- watching a DVD of the Avengers at a friend's house
- listening to music played on your friend's music player
- watching a clip of a comedian's stand-up routine on Youtube

You can keep going. Under the moral framework for copyright infringement, literally any scenario where you obtain the benefit of a work - reading it, watching it, listening to it - without paying money to the artist is morally wrong. That's unworkable. There isn't a single human being in the first world who hasn't done one of those items on the list at some point in their lives. They're all about as malicious as eating the last slice of cake, or telling your girlfriend she doesn't look fat in those jeans.

Add that to the fact that, as I said, if you take a moral view of copyright law it's morally wrong to pay anyone other than the creator. How much of the money made from music and films goes to the creators and how much goes to the lobbyists and industry powerbrokers behind the MPAA and the RIAA? How much of the money made by sales of Batman comics goes to Bill Finger? If I buy a copy of the Hobbit, does the deceased Tolkien get the money? His descendants get the money - people who are passively deriving a benefit from their grandfather's achievements.

Once you apply a classical moral framework to copyright law, the whole structure collapses. If the point of copyright is to benefit the author, why does it persist past the author's death? Why is it possible to sell your copyright in a work?

So how do you answer those questions? You don't. Copyright infringement isn't illegal because it's morally wrong - it's illegal because the law says so. This might seem unjust, but it's what happens when powerful lobbyists use a shallow appeal to morality to justify expanding the scope and length of copyright far past the point of absurdity. Better to think of it as a legal question concerning legal rights and governed by legal principles. That way, at least it makes sense.

When you get down to it, the only time anyone is going to care about copyright infringement is when you're being sued for it. And when you get put in front of a judge, talking about morality isn't going to get you very far. The judge is sitting in front of a big book called The Law, and he wants to find out if what you did was illegal, not if it was wrong.

Indeed you are quite correct. Imagine my surprise as I ventured into a piracy thread and actually got a reasonable presentation of the argument in question. I am currently in the process of reading a book by Acemoglu and Robinson dubbed "Why Nations Fail" which dealt with growth from extractive and inclusive institutions.

And in threading the notion of piracy with the hindsight from the book in mind. I looked to indie`s and more open systems, as-well as the newly formed pirate parties attempting to get reworked patent / IP laws with a smile on my face. It seems almost inevitable that we can finally get away from these dark ages of large corporations vying for what is in essence a monopoly on the creation of said intellectual properties for the benefit of enriching an elite.

As for any comments in this thread about piracy fostering creative destruction and making for insecure Intellectual property rights so as to dissuade innovation. I disagree.

If anything the opposite (corporations and / or publishers hoarding IP while promoting artificial scarcity) fosters more destruction then piracy ever will.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'd make me mad. Why would anyone ever play a game when you can download it off a perfectly legal site for free. That'll mean either the game industry would go in the toilet (fuck everyone and all their shit if games become a piddly shell of themselves because there is no money in it anymore), games wouldn't be imported into my country anymore since there is no profit in them there(fuck that noise, I like games), or all games that I could play would use free-to-play or similar method that has micro-transactions to earn money (that would get boring fast).

 

[Archer666]

About as morally okay as renting something from a video store or library.