In reply to pheller :
That is an interesting question. A variation of that is the scenario where I own several xboxes, have only purchased one copy of say....gears of war, but I can load it to all 3 of them at the same time as long as I am listed as the owner of said xboxes. They even give you instructions on how to share the game across consoles that are not yours for use- as long as your gamertag is tied to them. I suppose I'd argue it fell under that.
RevRico said:Duke said:Apis Mellifera said:How is a public library that freely distributes books, magazines, and DVDs for free not, by the definition put forth here, guilty of piracy?
Because libraries, by definition, are included in the "fair use" clause of copyright law.
A library can lend a book or DVD to 2,000 people with no legal or moral issue. But they can only do it one at a time for each copy of the book they buy. They cannot make 2,000 bootleg copies of the material and lend them to 2,000 people at once.
This is actually something my local library is annoyed with. They only get the privilege to purchase X copies of ebooks, so instead of everyone being able to read them at once, you still have to wait your turn in line to borrow the ebook. Even though everybody has a library card and does their library duty.
Now granted you couldn't give 5 people a single copy of a physical book at the same time, you can with digital, just not allowed.
Since the provider has already been paid for X copies, what would it matter if they went to 5 people or 15 at the same time? If anything, it would lead to more exposure, faster, to generate more buzz.
You still just don't seem to understand that intellectual property is a real thing just as much as a physical object is.
If the library pays for 15 licenses to a given e-book, they can lend them to 15 people at once.
But they don't get to pay for 5 licenses and still lend them to 15 people at once.
If the provider is paid for X copies then the buyer doesn't get the use of 3X copies just because it is physically possible in the digital world.
I'm just going to leave this here, purely because it's funny and on topic. 'You Wouldn't Download a Car...':
I'm just going to say - legal and ethical are different things. They frequently overlap, but not always. Sometimes, what's ethical isn't what's legal. Sometimes what's legal isn't what's ethical.
It's up to you to decide whether you're more concerned about doing what's legal or doing what's ethical.
It's also subjective what's ethical.
I'm pretty confident that I'm not going to change anyone's minds here of what they consider to be ethical.
GameboyRMH said:Duke said:You cannot go to Nintendo and buy a new NES/SNES or your favoritest-ever out-of-print Nintendo game. However, that is irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant is that Nintendo still owns and controls the rights to those things.
You are correct that if you go to eBay or the flea market or Gamestop and buy a used NES and a used copy of Goldeneye, Nintendo will not see a penny out of that sale. However, those systems and games were sold with the understanding that the right to use it went with the system itself.
No matter how many subsequent buyers owned the system, no more than one of those owners could play it at a time. Each time the system is passed to a new owner, the previous owner loses the right and ability to play that game. But if someone pirates copies of that game or system, then multiple users can play the game. the seller doesn't have to forfeit their ability. It's also irrelevant if the pirate sells copies or gives them away. Duplication of the original purchase is not in compliance with the terms of the sale.
It sounds like you're very concerned about the sanctity of intellectual property regardless of any monetary/ethical/moral/practical aspects, which is a view I would simply have to disagree with. Intellectual property is far too powerful already - it locks up culture for amounts of time that can easily exceed human lifespans, ever-increasing along the Mickey Mouse curve, and in this overpowered state it benefits the most popular content creators at the expense of all other creators and consumers (with all of society and culture included as consumers).
Also consider that most people work once and get paid once. If you think about the idea of working once and getting paid an infinite number of times, it's a rather farcical pay structure unseen in the vast majority of professions, and something I would argue is economically unhealthy. Intellectual property as we know it looks like a dire example of regulatory capture IMO.
Nintendo's patent for the original nes hardware itself expired several years ago. You can buy any number of new nes clones at the mall, perfectly legally. They still DO own the copyright information for most of the in house games, which is why those are now sold digitally through the online shop on the switch. As it sits I can count...at least 4 ways I can play super Mario brothers legally, currently in my possession. At least one of them is available at target right now.
Duke said:GameboyRMH said:Duke said:Here's why piracy IS theft:
[words]The way you 'punish' publishers for putting out what you consider unfinished or bad products is by NOT BUYING THEM. If it's not good enough to play, then don't play it. If it is good enough to play, then pay for it.
The problem with this is that it relies on the assumption that anyone who pirated a thing would have paid for it if they were unable or unwilling to pirate it. An extreme example to demonstrate it:
Nope, not logical.
As a purchaser, you get to buy it or not, your choice. You don't get to tell the seller how much they should charge by any other means.
As I stated in my example, if the seller puts out a bad - or even just overpriced - product, then sales suffer accordingly and the seller fails to make money. BUT that's their risk and their decision to make. You may be right - some of those piracies wouldn't have been sales anyway. But if they weren't piracies, then the pirates wouldn't be pirates and they wouldn't be using a product they decided was not worth buying. They would just be lost potential customers, who decided they didn't value your product enough to use it and pay for it.
I explicitly stated that the creator risks poor sales on their own merits (or lack thereof). That's on them and that is fair. But saying "I wouldn't have bought it anyway, but I'm OK with stealing it" holds absolutely zero water.
If it's not worth the asking price, don't buy it and don't use it. End of story.
Sounds like we may now be in agreement that piracy doesn't necessarily equal theft, for any traditional definition of theft. Now if I pirate and run the I Am Rich app in the middle of a forest and then delete it, does it make a sound? Who did I harm by doing this? I wouldn't have paid for it. Maybe I didn't even enjoy it - does it matter if I did? Does it matter if the developer finds out I enjoyed it?
Also, what do you think about this device?
https://gizmodo.com/a-pirate-bay-founder-built-a-machine-that-copies-100-mp-1749109965
GameboyRMH said:Duke said:[...] the "victims" of piracy most often tend to be super-rich movie and videogame studios who have no shortage of money.Here's why piracy IS theft:
Ah, there it is. We're back to the "eat the rich" thing again.
Stealing from a rich person or corporation is still theft. How rich the entity is totally irrelevant.
I'm not advocating piracy... or libraries, for that matter. I just think the approach to digital media and the arguments here do not apply directly. It seems to me that the argument for piracy being theft is based on depriving someone of a tangible asset (either loss of compensation or the actual taking of physical property). Digital media does not degrade the original in any way. If I borrowed your Jeep, cloned it, and returned yours, you are not harmed in any way.
So my point is there has been both an inferred and directly stated component to the discussion and that is: morality. Without an agreement to defer to some higher ruling party, two people cannot argue what is morally right or wrong. Legally, yes, morally, no. Fair Use sweeps away the morality issue despite the mechanics of libraries and piracy site being essentially the same. What does it matter if a library shares a movie 2000 single times versus 2000 downloads in an instant from a piracy site (numbers/potential is irrelevant).
pheller said:What happens when I buy a game for my household? Lets say my household is 10 kids.
If the game has a multi-player option, they are"legally" and morally able to play that game at the same time.
Now, if I make copies of that game for my "personal" use - does that extend to allowing my kids to play that game in separate rooms?
What if my kids are college aged and take the copied games to college across the country?
All of that is illegal. You can play multiplayer on the same screen if its allowed, or on different devices if it is explicitly stated in the license, but 99.999% of the licenses do not allow that.
If you really want to throw a wrench... how many of us share a Netflix/Hulu/Disney/whatever account with another household?
GameboyRMH said:It sounds like you're very concerned about the sanctity of intellectual property regardless of any monetary/ethical/moral/practical aspects, which is a view I would simply have to disagree with. Intellectual property is far too powerful already - it locks up culture for amounts of time that can easily exceed human lifespans, ever-increasing along the Mickey Mouse curve, and in this overpowered state it benefits the most popular content creators at the expense of all other creators and consumers (with all of society and culture included as consumers).
Also consider that most people work once and get paid once. If you think about the idea of working once and getting paid an infinite number of times, it's a rather farcical pay structure unseen in the vast majority of professions, and something I would argue is economically unhealthy. Intellectual property as we know it looks like a dire example of regulatory capture IMO.
You could almost argue that intellectual property is a class-based construct.
In order to license or protect intellectual property, I've gotta have enough capital to protect that property. You can find numerous examples of people who may have invented something first, but because they didn't patent it, they found themselves being sued by large companies who copied the idea and then later sued the unprotected originator, sometimes successfully.
It's also ludicrous the amount of things that you can claim patent on with enough money. I think there are some examples of mundane things going to court even though the "copier" wasn't making any money. I know of one example in particular: fiber spokes for bicycle wheels. A guy on MTBR devised a way of making his fiber spokes, and even though he wasnt planning on selling his product, he was threatened with litigation if he made public the relatively easy way a manufacturer was producing components of the spoke. He had to develop a new way of making the spoke...even though he would offer that design to other for free, but at that point, he started to wonder if he should patent his new design so a manufacturer doesn't copy his design and then prevent him from distributing that.
I think there are a lot of things in our daily lives that were REVOLUTIONARY to mankind's societal progress, but because they could not be patented or protected, they are found everywhere cheap, much to humanity's benefit.
pheller said:It's also ludicrous the amount of things that you can claim patent on with enough money. I think there are some examples of mundane things going to court even though the "copier" wasn't making any money. I know of one example in particular: fiber spokes for bicycle wheels. A guy on MTBR devised a way of making his fiber spokes, and even though he wasnt planning on selling his product, he was threatened with litigation if he made public the relatively easy way a manufacturer was producing components of the spoke. He had to develop a new way of making the spoke...even though he would offer that design to other for free, but at that point, he started to wonder if he should patent his new design so a manufacturer doesn't copy his design and then prevent him from distributing that.
The instructions he posted were deleted...but I may have retrieved them 
(It's a very labor-intensive process, not worth it to me as a fairly casual rider, but it may have been if I had pointy-end bike racing skills).
In reply to ProDarwin :
I don't even share my Netflix with people in my house I dont like. Get your own damn service.
Apis Mellifera said:If I borrowed your Jeep, cloned it, and returned yours, you are not harmed in any way.
It harms the guy who makes and sells Jeeps. Whether that's me or someone else.
Apis Mellifera said:I'm not advocating piracy... or libraries, for that matter. I just think the approach to digital media and the arguments here do not apply directly. It seems to me that the argument for piracy being theft is based on depriving someone of a tangible asset (either loss of compensation or the actual taking of physical property). Digital media does not degrade the original in any way. If I borrowed your Jeep, cloned it, and returned yours, you are not harmed in any way.
So my point is there has been both an inferred and directly stated component to the discussion and that is: morality. Without an agreement to defer to some higher ruling party, two people cannot argue what is morally right or wrong. Legally, yes, morally, no. Fair Use sweeps away the morality issue despite the mechanics of libraries and piracy site being essentially the same. What does it matter if a library shares a movie 2000 single times versus 2000 downloads in an instant from a piracy site (numbers/potential is irrelevant).
Let's say I'm a dealer. You "borrow" my jeep, and clone it. Sure I get my jeep back, but I've a- lost you as a customer because now you have a cloned jeep and you don't want the one I've got, and b- I've potentially lost other customers because you now have the ability to sell/give a cloned jeep to them or even teach them how to clone it.
(Why you'd want to clone that E36 M3 box is beyond me, but people pirated limp Bizkit....so here we are)
In reply to SV reX :
You're talking about loss of revenue. As was clear in my example, I am talking about the asset and how the duplication thereof does not physically degrade the original.
Duke said:RevRico said:Duke said:Apis Mellifera said:How is a public library that freely distributes books, magazines, and DVDs for free not, by the definition put forth here, guilty of piracy?
Because libraries, by definition, are included in the "fair use" clause of copyright law.
A library can lend a book or DVD to 2,000 people with no legal or moral issue. But they can only do it one at a time for each copy of the book they buy. They cannot make 2,000 bootleg copies of the material and lend them to 2,000 people at once.
This is actually something my local library is annoyed with. They only get the privilege to purchase X copies of ebooks, so instead of everyone being able to read them at once, you still have to wait your turn in line to borrow the ebook. Even though everybody has a library card and does their library duty.
Now granted you couldn't give 5 people a single copy of a physical book at the same time, you can with digital, just not allowed.
Since the provider has already been paid for X copies, what would it matter if they went to 5 people or 15 at the same time? If anything, it would lead to more exposure, faster, to generate more buzz.
You still just don't seem to understand that intellectual property is a real thing just as much as a physical object is.
If the library pays for 15 licenses to a given e-book, they can lend them to 15 people at once.
But they don't get to pay for 5 licenses and still lend them to 15 people at once.
If the provider is paid for X copies then the buyer doesn't get the use of 3X copies just because it is physically possible in the digital world.
That's starting to sound like Sony's argument when they started suing ps3 owners for turning features of their consoles that existed at purchase back on after an update took them away.
At what point does ownership change?
If I buy something, it is mine when my money goes into your account. Be that a physical thing like a hard drive adapter, or a digital thing like Cooking Simulator on Xbox. When it becomes mine, I can do what I want with it as it is MY property. If that includes sharing it with my friends, I can because it's mine.
So I buy 5 copies of an ebook. You have been paid for the 5 copies purchased and that's all you'll be getting from me until you write a new book. I can keep them all, I can lend them out, I could sell them somewhere else as "used". Aside from hidden pixel tracking, or going online only with it, there's no real way for anyone to know how many times or to who I lend a digital product too, so why restrict if you can't enforce?
And if your forcing people to buy your product through an online only device to control is usage AFTER purchase, then you aren't actually selling the product are you? You're selling access to a product, which allows you control even after purchase. That's a rental, not a purchase, and that changes your position from a legal standpoint.
GameboyRMH said:Duke said:GameboyRMH said:Duke said:Here's why piracy IS theft:
[words]The way you 'punish' publishers for putting out what you consider unfinished or bad products is by NOT BUYING THEM. If it's not good enough to play, then don't play it. If it is good enough to play, then pay for it.
The problem with this is that it relies on the assumption that anyone who pirated a thing would have paid for it if they were unable or unwilling to pirate it. An extreme example to demonstrate it:
As a purchaser, you get to buy it or not, your choice. You don't get to tell the seller how much they should charge by any other means.
As I stated in my example, if the seller puts out a bad - or even just overpriced - product, then sales suffer accordingly and the seller fails to make money. BUT that's their risk and their decision to make.
If it's not worth the asking price, don't buy it and don't use it. End of story.
Sounds like we may now be in agreement that piracy doesn't necessarily equal theft, for any traditional definition of theft.
Also, what do you think about this device?
https://gizmodo.com/a-pirate-bay-founder-built-a-machine-that-copies-100-mp-1749109965
We are not at all in agreement. How in the name of trees did you ever arrive at that conclusion?
If you use a product or service that the creator / owner charges money for, without paying and outside of established fair use, then you are stealing that product or service. Period. Full stop. End of story. If there is any ambiguity left in that statement please show mer where so I can assassinate it.
I think that device is an irrelevance that only highlights the logical fallacy of the "piracy is victimless so it is not a crime" argument. There is no logical way to assume that 100% of piracies would not have been a sale anyway. If that was true, people would never bother to pirate things in the first place. The whole point of piracy is I want this thing but I don't want to pay money for it.
If 100,000 copies of a song get pirated and 99,000 of those pirates decide they hate it and immediately decide to delete it, that's still 1,000 stolen copies of the song. And do you want to get into arguing the percentages? They are irrelevant. What is relevant:
The owner of X is selling X for Y price. You get to decide if X is worth Y to you or not. That is the sum total, 100% absolute end of your rights in the matter. If you are willing to buy it, you get to use it. If you are not willing, you don't get to use it, no matter how briefly.
We can have a productive discussion about how demos and trial versions are a great business practice. I agree 100% and think it would be a good idea for many business models to include them. But that is not what we're talking about here.
I always find it helpful to look at the extremes.
What would happen if there was 0% piracy? A game studio would sell X games.
What would happen if there was some piracy? At best, they will still sell X games. Most likely they will sell <X games though, so they have lost money as a result.
What would happen if there was 100% piracy? They will sell 0 games.
pheller said:You could almost argue that intellectual property is a class-based construct.
To be fair, IP is not. The legal system - the means by which it is enforced, may be another story, but I'll stay out of it for this thread.
Arguing against the value of IP is not something I'm ever going to side with. I work on stuff that has value orders of magnitude more than the physical product would suggest because of the IP associated with it. Thousands of hundreds of thousands of engineering hours go into the generation of that IP, thus the effort of companies to protect it.
There's a semantic thing going on here. Illegal copying may be wrong, illegal, unethical or worse. But I just don't agree with calling it theft. There needs to be a new descriptive term for this.
Apis Mellifera said:Digital media does not degrade the original in any way. If I borrowed your Jeep, cloned it, and returned yours, you are not harmed in any way.
But JEEP is harmed because now you don't need to buy one from them. If we can infinitely clone Jeeps then Jeep will never sell another new one and A) they will go out of business, and B) then we will be stuck cloning 2022 Jeeps forever, even in 2040, because Jeep isn't there to keep creating and selling new ones.
And see above about buying a used Jeep. The sale price of your used Jeep doesn't go back to Jeep, true. But just like a game system, the seller forfeits the use of their Jeep in exchange for your money. The right to use that Jeep is traded from owner to owner along with the physical object. It is not multiplied.
Apis Mellifera said:In reply to SV reX :
You're talking about loss of revenue. As was clear in my example, I am talking about the asset and how the duplication thereof does not physically degrade the original.
The product is not the asset. The product is just a hunk of metal. The right to make and sell the product is the protected asset.
Chrysler doesn't care who owns Jeeps. They care who makes them and sells them (because THAT is their asset protected by IP laws)
In reply to ProDarwin :
Sure, so long as you start with the assumption that every pirate is able to afford and purchase said video game. What if it's not available for sale in my region and I pirate it? 0 loss of sale. Or lets say I download a Veyron that I will never be able to afford? 0 loss of sale. Or a football game where I'm outside of the allowed viewing range with no reasonable avenue to view said game? I wasn't going to buy a cable subscription and an overpriced bundle to compensate for an out of date business model so yea, I stole the game but so did the refs and I wasn't going to fork over money anyway. 0 loss of sale and, arguably, 0 harm. The appropriate argument is the licensing. So I buy a new car that comes with heated seats. I use the heated seats. Then the heated seats stop working because I now have to pay a subscription to use the thing that I bought. The only reason that the heated seats weren't stolen from me is that I don't have the wealth afforded by my class to employ an army of contract lawyers.
None of this is going to convince anyone because, whether we like it or not, this is not a black/white issue that can be solved like an algebra problem.
Apis Mellifera said:In reply to SV reX :
You're talking about loss of revenue. As was clear in my example, I am talking about the asset and how the duplication thereof does not physically degrade the original.
The whole point in creating the original asset was to sell copies of it in order to generate revenue. If you are stealing copies, you are stealing revenue, even though technically the original asset still exists in its original form.
Duke said:GameboyRMH said:Duke said:[...] the "victims" of piracy most often tend to be super-rich movie and videogame studios who have no shortage of money.Here's why piracy IS theft:
Ah, there it is. We're back to the "eat the rich" thing again.
Stealing from a rich person or corporation is still theft. How rich the entity is totally irrelevant.
If we are complaining about "theft of revenue" then yes, money is involved. Billion dollar companies that systematically over work and under pay their staff, while abusing and harassing them, have no moral ground to stand on that someone didn't shell out $60 for their rushed, broken game that had a bigger advertising budget than development budget or their garbage remake of a remaster of a retelling of a story that wasn't any good the first time.
That really comes down to a question of morals though, and while many people may like to think they hold the key to universal morality, that varies person to person, case to case.
A morality discussion, while I feel would be enlightening here on the board with the vast difference of people, would probably not end well, so it's probably best not to go there.
I'll admit that I didn't read the entire thread, but as an artist myself and working in the arts, rights and copyrights are part of my daily job.
The bottom line is (according to the law), piracy IS theft. Theft has nothing to do with physical property, so comparing it to a car is pointless. If Weiand takes an Edelbrock intake and makes a pattern and makes a copy, it's theft. It doesn't matter that the item stolen is the intellectual property represented by a void in some casting sand, it is theft. A few years ago we were sued (it didn't go anywhere - basically evolved into a cease and desist) because we accidentally let our ASCAP/BMI license expire. We played some 60s/70s british music for pre-show, and somehow word got back to Liverpool that our tiny community theater in PA was playing music. We got sued by the Beatles for 30k Euros (about $45k at the time). They had every legal standing. It doesn't matter that their organization makes billions of dollars every year and they were only going to make 35 cents off our ASCAP license.
It's not about getting richer for the big names, it's about plugging leaks in the hull. People like me are in a 12' aluminum boat. People like Paul McCartney are in a 150' yacht. We both have leaks in our boat if we don't keep an eye on our rights infringement. If we don't, both of our boats will sink eventually. It doesn't matter how rich you are, if you sell a product, you deserve to be paid for that product. In the case of software, music, performance art, or another intangible entity, the law is crystal clear. It is a crime. The law was created for this exact purpose. Creators of the intangible products had no protection from piracy, so it's why the law was invented in the first place.
Their product is a song, a line of code, or an inventive idea. Just because it's easy to steal doesn't make it legal. Just because you're not stealing a physical, tangible item doesn't make it moral.
Saying that piracy is not theft is (from a legal perspective) a completely indefensible position. There is zero basis in law that supports piracy. This is why it's called Identity theft and not Identity Piracy. If someone steals your identity, you don't cease to exist, but it's still called theft.
Imagine being me for a moment. I write a song in my moldy basement with a $50 used guitar, a friend hears it and calls their friend who knows Taylor Swift. T Swift records it and makes millions and I'm screwed without that law. Taylor makes money from my idea which could have made me money. That is the very definition of theft.
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