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Q u o t e:
Originally posted by Thalamus1

Wow this is some pseudo philisophical bull crap going on in here. Just because goods have crossed over into a digital medium doesnt mean they are like ideas floating around for any shmuck to take/tryout/STEAL for themselves. They are exactly like any tangible product you could buy at any store.

Is it acceptable through any of your "logic" that because you dont have bars on all the windows of your house, I should be able to break in and take all your belongings home to "tryout" under the false pretense that i will after a time buy them for my self? Of course not; If you can get something for free why the hell would you go back and purchase it.

If every interview you went to could end up with your employer essentially enslaving you for a undeterminate period of time (unpaid of course, this is piracy after all) until he deems it necessary to start paying you what he feels is fair (probably nothing and never), would that be acceptable?

Useing goods/services that were created with the intention of being sold without paying for them in the intended way is stealing.

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They're not exactly like tangible products.

@ Soldonzo

I'll just preface this with one comment... I have a feeling you're just playing the devil's advocate here, but i feel like playing along and indulging you.

Just going to pull you up on a point from page one that you made:

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Q u o t e:

Not at all actually, I just try to get all of the facts first before I draw conclusions. Someone asked me a question and I answered it by quoting some source material.

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I wouldn't consider what you posted as reliable source material. Just like anything i read from wikipedia, hell, the plethora of websites out there that have an agenda, i take them with a grain of salt. A very LARGE grain of salt.

If you can find me accredited source material, i would be happy to read it. What you posted, i only skimmed over it. Either scholarly or peer reviewed articles, please. Not a writeup by someone that gives an alias and a g-mail account.

I only say this because you yourself are making sweeping generalisations about the issue, not just others that you're pointing the finger at.

Example:

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Q u o t e:
You have a problem with that? Perhaps you're not really big on the whole free speech thing, which would explain why you hate piracy as it is essentially a free exchange of information.

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Important bit is bolded.

I would only classify a free exchange of information as anything that cannot be categorised as intellectual (or physical) property.

I really hate how you used free speech as a means to discredit someone's opinion. It's such an obvious bait.

The only other thing i'll say is that, going on what i said earlier, piracy is absolutely not the 'free exchange of information' that you are talking about, it's the spread of property that someone has legal ownership over. Whether you're downloading music, or you nicked a ton of cd's from someone's car and sold them to your friends,it's still piracy... when the legal owner over distributed property is not recieving a royalty for said product, it's going against the law.

As someone who is acquainted with the finer details of the publishing industry, i also find it morally objectionable for anyone to do it. As cliche as it sounds, you are stealing from someone, whether it be a writer, a game developer, or a large corporation... it doesn't matter.

It's just wrong.

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Q u o t e:


Dr. Morality now eh?

Here's something for you consider:
Nothing is true, and everything is permitted.

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Sorry, i deal in absolutes.

I knew it would sound cliched, but i stand by what i said.

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Q u o t e:


I deal in absolutes as much as I can myself.

However, limiting yourself to absolutes quickly becomes a vital weakness.

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I wouldn't necessarily call it a limitation. If you see absolute, it does not necessarily blind you to abstract.

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Q u o t e:
Originally posted by Soldonzo

1. All copyright Infringement laws within the USA should immediately become null and void. Laws against trademark violation, counterfieting, and robbery would of course remain unchanged.

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Yeah, because that will make content producers feel safe about their business.

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Q u o t e:
Originally posted by Soldonzo

2. Copying or "pirating" information that has been trademarked is not stealing

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I'll grant you that for the sake of argument.

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Q u o t e:
Originally posted by Soldonzo

3. Pirates must remain commited to the financial and creative success of "artists" or "inventors" (whatever you wish to call them) as they've always been, by respecting trademark laws and purchasing that material which is favored in order to encourage innovation, which they've always done.

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"Which they've always done"? How do you figure? I don't know about you guys, but I have never once bought something I've pirated...and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

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Q u o t e:


This.

I will add that in the case of software piracy being "stealing," that is entirely dependable on one's moral compass. How do you steal something that can be infinitely copied?

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That could be said about practically every product that currently exists today. A simple example would be, say, a cookbook. You can scan the whole thing, bind it up and sell/give it to anyone.

Another point i'd like to make is this:

What stops you from grabbing something off the shelf in a store and walking out with it under your jacket? The fear of being caught.

What stops you from hitting the 'download now' button for a torrent? Absolutely nothing.

There is no fear of being caught, which is entirely the failing of law pertaining to intellectual property as a whole. Even patents aren't bulletproof against something being stolen.

Whichever way you swing it, pirating is still against the law.

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Q u o t e:
Originally posted by Dtdee

That could be said about practically every product that currently exists today. A simple example would be, say, a cookbook. You can scan the whole thing, bind it up and sell/give it to anyone.

Another point i'd like to make is this:

What stops you from grabbing something off the shelf in a store and walking out with it under your jacket? The fear of being caught.

What stops you from hitting the 'download now' button for a torrent? Absolutely nothing.

There is no fear there is no fear of being caught, which is entirely the failing of law pertaining to intellectual property as a whole. Even patents aren't bulletproof against something being stolen.

Whichever way you swing it, pirating is still against the law.

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I don't think anyone is arguing that pirating is not illegal. Rather, they insist that it is not wrong--instead, it is the unfair intellectual property laws that are wrong.

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Q u o t e:

I misspoke earlier when I said intellectual property, I don't believe there is such a thing. it's an oxymoron. Thoughts and information should be completely free. Better instead to call them owners of trademarked material.

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I'm digressing a bit, but i have to stop you on this point right here. Trademarks are used to service a very distinct sector of intellectual property. Whether you 'believe' in IP as a name or not, it is a legal term, and one that is needed in many industries. Where trademarking is used as a specific way to brand a logo, phrase or buzzword for company association, IP is the umbrella that covers everything else.

The way you put it makes it seem like you don't necessarily understand what intellectual property actually is. It's not as simple as saying it covers 'ideas and information'...

Without it, there would be NO copyright law for writers, musicians, artists, photographers...

Intellectual property doesn't protect joe random's chord progression in a rock song... IP protects prototypes with patents, drafts of novels with copyright and musician's songs as a finished product.

That being said, it doesn't exactly do a fantastic job of it, as is evident in this discussion.

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Q u o t e:


Excellent points, however, you are putting a value on something that can be infinitely distributed, which is what my point was. I can go down to the store, buy one movie and my whole family can enjoy it. I can buy music and blast it on my iPod or car stereo. I can buy a loaf of bread and share it with my family. I can buy that cookbook and loan it to my neighbor.

If I go down to the store and buy one video game, I am not allowed to share it with anybody because that's piracy and piracy bad. %!#! that. Companies don't have the right to tell me what I do with their software that I purchase any more than a jacket designer or cookbook writer has the right to tell me how I use their products.

Intellectual property turns the word "customer" into "licensee," and it's not right. Intellectual property owners are just as criminal as the people who pirate their work.

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I'll direct you above to my post about intellectual property, and i won't mention it again. I'll just say that IP covers a huge array of things and i -personally- don't like those kind of generalisations. Anyway, enough on that.

You raise an interesting point about the use of physical products vs virtual products. I'll probably be backtracking a bit here on my previous argument, but i think it warrants it for this kind of discussion.

The biggest problem, and i think the one that most people have a hard time accepting is, how you put it quite succinctly : consumer vs licensee.

With a physical product, (i'll stick with books, because it still pertains to the whole IP issue as well) the distributor always has an exact idea of just how many products are in circulation. They know this because a sold copy of a book means that at any one time, only one person can realistically be using it at one time. It could be a stretch, but if you really wanted to, you could say that this is a kind of forced license on the product because of a physical limitation.

Unfortunately for copyright, the abstract concept of one product can equate to infinity hasn't really registered in written law yet.

To expand the idea of forced licensing -> physical limitation further, cd keys are a perfect example of this. If cd keys actually worked the way they were intended, i.e. one user at one time can only use one product, i don't think piracy and the moral grey area, which has basically been this entire discussion wouldn't exist. You can loan it out to your friends, you can install it on another computer... it still means that there is only one copy being used by one person.

The thing that everyone always gets pissy about is when software companies are forced to introduce stringent copyright protection methods (like starforce and securom) to try and get people to use their product as it was intended, which opens up a plethora of other issues, which i'm sure we can agree, can be left for another debate.






TL;DR version:

If software was used as it was originally intended (one user per copy) piracy would not be an issue.

I think if they continue down the path of their logic, the answer would be yes. I think they will say no though for obvious reasons.

TRADE, moccasins for fish all economies are based on simple trade. If someone puts their resources (be them time, physical effort or property) into something you use, you should have to give back. For this specific example: Developer/Artist/Whoever puts time and resources into making a game. I buy the game to give them back their time, so I don't have to spend all my life trying to make a game I have no ability or resources to make. However all the time/resources used from people not compensated (dead, etc...) to make the game have not been factored in. Technology developed by humans for over 5k years is almost certainly used w/o paying a dime. Some of that tech is even used to make the game. The creators should get the cost of producing and the cost/value of their time. Which is how much the CD's/Computers/Servers/Software, etc... cost, plus whatever the economy values their time as. Then you divide that by all the times their product is purchased. It's not perfect but it's based on truths. So no you should not get it free because you are stealing someones time and/or resources, but if you pay more then the value of the resources (divided by the copies sold) they are in fact stealing your time. It's not likely to ever work perfectly and right now our economy sucks for this sort of thing.