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[Goron]

Hey, the only point I'm trying to argue is that piracy is not the same as material theft.  Not that it's not wrong.

You are actually right. Material theft is 'theft', piracy is copyright infringement. Happy? 

So, is that justification for shoplifting? There are still people that buy the retail goods, and the store is still generating a profit as the sales cover the losses from shoplifting, therefore you claim the shoplifting is OK?

With shoplifting you actually take stuff away. When you make a copy, nothing is missing. Apples and oranges, been explained a million times over, and still people put up this straw man. Nobody's buying it, nobody's biting. Stick it in your backside and light it on fire already.

how about when I splice into my neighbor's cable, is that theft? How about when I hack their wireless, is that theft?

I am not taking anything away from anyone. No one gets hurt. No one loses anything (according to you)...


not to mention: I;d love to hear your 'perfect' system for the movie, music, game, cable, satellite, etc. industries. if the current one is wrong whats the right one?

[Sowelu]

The first one, cable, isn't theft--but it is vandalism and piracy.  If YOU had cable but no box (IE there's a connection but you don't subscribe), then using a fake cable box would be piracy, but not theft.

The second one, using their wireless, is absolutely theft of service, or...something similar.  You are stealing their bandwidth, and additionally you are very minorly misrepresenting yourself as them.  However, that level of theft is fairly minor in my eyes.  If you check your mail from your neighbor's wireless once or twice, that theft is along the lines of "Hmm, my neighbor has his garden hose sitting right there by the sidewalk with a valve on the end of the hose, I need to wash my boots off, let me just spray them for a couple seconds"--in that case you are also stealing a utility, but the amount is very small.

[Okenido]

The demos are also often too short to give you a taste on what the game is like.

reviews? trailers? viral advertising?
Still, thats like watching 3/4 of a movie then claiming "nah, don't like it, therefore I want my money back." or going on an amusement park ride and after the ride saying you are not paying for it because you didn't like it.  Damage is already done. You already benefited from the creative expression. Whether you enjoyed the game, movie, ride, or not, you still experienced it and therefore owe the royalty.

For me it's 1/4 of the game or less.

Do you wish for me to post demos of which I believe have an adequate amount of content to amuse you?

Either that or the game is no longer in print, so I cannot get it legally.

name five games that apply. And before you embarrass yourself, I suggest you go to this website called "Google" and type the game in and look for it for sale. Or you could try "eBay," or "Amazon." Have you heard of them? They are on this thing called the internet.

Tsukihime. (I'm going to buy the remake by the way.)
Zork. (Technically I do own this legally now due to business partnerships.)
Sword of the Samurai. (If it's ever remade I might buy it.)
Darkseed.
Ever 17. (RIP Hirameki International.)
Battlezone (1998 version.)
Alter Ego.

I'm not one who supports distributors, especially third party distributors.

Your attempted insults at my intelligence are of poor taste. I suggest you stop doing that before we get feed up with it, and report you for flaming.

[Darkone]

Get the "full demo", you'll know exactly what the game is.

Can't find it, that's why i'm asking.

-snip-

Excepting the fact that this post shows no personal opinions on the matter, only [smart] pre-action to avoid possible trouble, thats a pretty good argument! Also, don't come on IRC if you feel so vehemently that anyone who pirates games is a worthless dreg of society- you won't last long.

I'm not trying to be inciteful here, but I know firsthand how rude it is to twist someone elses statements to fit your own agenda 



Piracy isn't right. Most of us realize that, yet we do it anyways. As has been said before, many members of this board are self-proclaimed pirates, just to let you know. I make no justifications, only excuses.

edit:ninja'ed, deleted essentialy similar statements to what sowelu just said.

[Toady One]

Goron, I'd rather you didn't quote me on a forum rule when you are in the process of violating them repeatedly.  It would be better if you came into line first, and then reported any problems you find to a moderator.

As it stands, you've been reported three times and nobody else has been reported at all.  I think this reflects not the free-wheeling illegal nature of our community but instead the fact that you've been the only one in this thread to fail to treat other forum-goers with respect, or are at least the most egregious offender, though I haven't read every post carefully.

Now, I recognize that you might be failing to treat people with respect because you in fact do not respect them, but it would be a sign of maturity to be able to continue the discussion without resorting to condescension and insults or to just leave it alone if you aren't capable of that.  Part of maturity is being able to recognize your limitations in this regard.

This is a formal warning.

It would be good if the thread relaxed in general.  Also, the link/request-and-be-banned policy regarding illegal material is still in effect, of course.

[magellan]

I really think its like railroads. Owning one used to be a surefire way to get rich (in the few countries where you could own one), then technology changed and they could only survive with massive intervention. Same goes for distributing music. While we still need guys to make digital media, we do not need *anybody* to distribute them. 
If your service doesn't add value I am not going to pay you. Thats capitalism 101 actually.

[Sowelu]

I think the problem here is that some people say "The middleman is evil!  Kill the publisher!  They take all the money!"  And then other people say "Yes, let's steal the music!" and the first group kind of stands there blinking.

"Buying music/games" is not the flawed business model, it's the publishers that need to change.  Problem is, publishers DO some okay things sometimes, and in small scales it's a great thing.  They take a big cut of profits, but that can allow them to take risks they couldn't take otherwise, like funding that shiny new team with a good idea but no capital, or keeping an established team afloat if the team's latest game is a total flop.

There are many cases, especially in music, where the content creators are better off self-publishing, and doing that is easier than ever in today's world.  The content creators are the ones that need to change their business models to cut publishers out of the picture--it's not the publishers that need to change so much.

[Sordid]

Oh, I just remembered! As far as the whole piracy-kills-music/films/games/whatever schtick... lookie! http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
Granted, it's one study, but I'm still waiting for the opposite side to produce any solid numbers at all. The only argument they seem to have is "well if they couldn't pirate it, then they would've had to buy it, therefore we lost number of pirated copies times price amount of money". Which is of course ludicrous, as addressed earlier.

[buman]

Originally the thread was to bring news of the fate of the pirate bay but has become an excellent way to help dispel the myths about these related issues. I'm glad there are so many people here who find this interesting.

Thank you everyone for your input.

[dreiche2]

not to mention: I;d love to hear your 'perfect' system for the movie, music, game, cable, satellite, etc. industries. if the current one is wrong whats the right one?

Now we're getting somewhere...

I for my part didn't have a strong opinion on whether pirating is wrong or right. I surely didn't like simplistic arguments like "piracy=freedom of speech" and the like.

However, recently I talked to a friend and I'm starting to lean towards the pro-piracy side, at least for music/movies. Here's why:

First of all, let's for a moment focus not on the normative side of things - i.e. what should ideally be, whether artists *should* be paid for the distribution of their music etc. - but on the descriptive side:

Here, one could argue that the advent of computers and then the internet simply changed the way things work. To put it simply, to control the distribution of music, the industry would have to control what files people copy in between their computers. So, maybe this is simply not feasible, no matter what (unless you live under a non-democratic government). Much like they couldn't stop people from recording songs from the radio, or exchanging mix tapes, they just won't be able to stop people sharing files.

Now the situation with sharing files is different from sharing mixtapes in how it will impact the industry. But both things might be the same with respect to not being controllable.

Thus, maybe the only way out of this, *if* you want to ensure that musicians are being paid, is to acknowledge that what they do is some form of community service and to support them via taxation. Simply because there is no other feasible way, independently of what might be normatively right or wrong.

However, this line of thought brings me back to the normative question. What determines whether someone should be paid for their work or not?

Well, first of all, like others have stated, music is simply not the same as a material good. If someone makes a car, I buy the car from him, I have one car more, he has one less, simple. Not the same with music though, at least nowadays where the distribution is basically free (well, I pay my ISP for the internet access, but that's the service they provide, not the artist). Yes, saying it's different from a material good does *not* automatically mean it's right to pirate it, by itself.

So what is it about music then that should be paid for? Even people opposing pirating would probably agree that it's not the distribution of music I should pay the artist for (nowadays), but the *making* of music. In that sense, making of music is more akin to providing a service than producing a good. Thus, the classical business model might actually be 'unnatural' and an artifact of the distribution not being free originally.

Hence, the proper mindset might be, you should pay an artist for the service he or she provides, which is making music. Once it's out there, it's out there and can't be controlled.

The question is now, how would this work in practice? Apart from the aforementioned taxation system, how would the music industry look like in that model? Would this mean the end of music (which, then, might be unavoidable)? That's really an interesting issue.

I could imagine that, even though it sounds naive, a situation where artists live just from donations, merchandise, and gigs, could actually work. Think Toady, think Radiohead. Maybe these are not actually special cases. With Toady you could think that, because granted he's kind of special  . But on the other hand, he only serves a niche market, and *still* can live from it. With the culture and the flow of information becoming global, all you need is to find a small percentage of the six billion people on this planet who love enough what you do.

If it were to work, surely this could dramatically change the face of the industry, with a much more fragmented culture with many niches, and profits being spread out much more and a lack of super-rich superstars. But that might actually be a positive thing, right?

Thoughts?

[magellan]

If the service you provide is of no value to the customer anymore because of a new technology you need to find a different service. It's really that simple and is unfortunate for those who lose their jobs because of it but it happens. When VCRs hit the streets a lot of cinemas had to close. Ultimately cinema survived because they realized that they could provide other things than the plain showing of films, but still there are less cinemas around today than 30 years ago, and they are ... different. I have no idea where the nearest blacksmith would be from my place, but i surmise it would be rather far. I don't require his services, and i have no reason to feel sorry for that. There are so many examples for similiar things happening to industries much bigger than entertainment.

Very few industries have been deemed important enough to keep them alive artificially with tax payers money. I don't think publishers should be.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Very few industries have been deemed important enough to keep them alive artificially with tax payers money. I don't think publishers should be.

This.

[sneakey pete]

If someone came into my house, made perfect replicas of all my stuff, and took the replicas, I wouldn't give a crap.

But that isn't whats happening is it now? The music is being sold. The correct analogy would be

"if someone came into your shop where you sold your self made goods, and made a perfect replica of it and didn't pay you a cent, would you give a crap?"
The answer would be yes i assume.

To put it in another way: piracy isn't "stealing a product", its stealing a design.

[dreiche2]

I'm not sure any of these analogies really help, because the music/copyright situation is just too distinct. You have to water them down so much that they don't help anymore. Now we're at "stealing designs", which means we're pretty much where we started, namely copyright (patent laws) etc.

Even then, the patent issue might still be different from a copyright for music files. So why not discuss music/art/documents directly, without those analogies.

[Sordid]

"if someone came into your shop where you sold your self made goods, and made a perfect replica of it and didn't pay you a cent, would you give a crap?"
The answer would be yes i assume.

Actually for me the answer would be no, since a perfect copy would include my logo. I would lose nothing and gain a bit of free advertising - a net gain, from my point of view.