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This only gave grief

3 (6.1%)

Grakelin is not stupid

6 (12.2%)

Are you happier now?

1 (2%)

------ Haiku, the encore -----

17 (34.7%)

Disagreeing, Fine

0 (0%)

Why you make a fuzz 'bout it?

3 (6.1%)

Lets just be happy

19 (38.8%)

Total Members Voted: 48

[Siquo]

Well, the whole "timmeh has $50 bucks" story won't hold, for instance. So yeah, you're depriving the people-who-did-the-work of money when asking money for stuff you didn't make. Which makes it a lot closer to "theft". When discussing the semantics of "theft", there's a lot of fine lines. When I take something that isn't yours yet, but would have been yours if I hadn't taken it, is that theft? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't...

Although my gut feeling sais the same as you: information cannot be stolen if you copy it. Only if I went to the company, took all their sourcecode, and deleted all their copies of the sourcecode, I would've stolen it.

[Cheeetar]

When discussing the semantics of "theft", there's a lot of fine lines. When I take something that isn't yours yet, but would have been yours if I hadn't taken it, is that theft? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't...

Were that a valid definition of theft, simply not buying the thing would be theft, as my money would have been theirs had I not chosen to keep my money.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The point of the "little timmy" example is that after timmy has given them all his money, he has no money and thus would be unable to buy the games at all, and since he is costing no one any money by downloading them, no one loses anything. The publishers lose theoretical money, theoretical in the sense of "if he theoretically had more money, he might give that to them as well, but this is a moot point because he doesn't".

[Siquo]

@Cheetar: no. It's about my action depriving you of something. If you make a game, ask money for it, and I copy it and sell it to someone who otherwise would have paid you, that's kind of on the "thin line of theft".

Same with timmy and the moneypirates: If timmy spends his 50 bucks on the pirates, the game company gets zilch instead of 50.

So I'm just advocating the "free pirates" as opposed to the "paid pirates".

[Sir Pseudonymous]

:|

"Timmy" is spending the $50 to buy an authorized retail/digital copy, in the example.

And though we all agree that selling bootleg shit is despicable, it's still not "theft". It's illegal under entirely different laws, for entirely different reasons.

Hell, bootleggers probably hate torrenters even more than publishers do, because if someone isn't going to buy a legitimate copy, why would they pay for an illegitimate one? I understand in third world countries they've got a market, because there's no legitimate market there, while people don't have the capacity or knowledge to get a free copy, or sees the bootleg vendor as the legitimate option.

[dragnar]

Why all the discussion of whether or not piracy is "theft"? It is illegal, just for a different reason. Also, the "little timmy" example doesn't hold up unless those 50$ are the bits of money he will ever spend.

Pirates are a problem, and companies have the right to try to stop them. The problem is, DRM does not stop them, and therefore has no excuse for existing.

[sproingie]

Having a stretched analogy as justification handy that one kind of theft does not exactly equal another kind of theft doesn't actually make it not theft.  Screaming "libel" is just ... 

I do hate those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads in movies.  I wouldn't mind one that recognized that since I'm actually watching that ad, I'm a paying ticketholder, so, uh, thanks?  My car keys also don't go telling the manufacturer where I am at all times that they might allow me to drive if it suits them.

Anyway, my two yap coins

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A coin from the Yap islands:

 

Ubisoft is run by suits who are increasingly out of touch with the reality of where they have to stand in the line between loss control and customer satisfaction.  This is the same company that was previously the largest user of Starforce.

It's not just the software world you see this in.  The Walgreens stores in my area put these plastic shields over high-theft items, probably based on loss statistics since it often didn't make sense where they went.  At any rate, I ended up having to ring for and wait for and ask store personnel to fetch items for me.  They put condoms behind the counter, you had to ask for them.  Yeah, welcome to the 1970's.  Real funny that they put Durex behind Duracell, so out of my concern for the tiny lady who has now twice gotten up on a very unsafe jerry-rigged stepladder, I actually SHOUT out "DUREX EXTRA SENSITIVE 20-PACK, IN THE PURPLE BOX!"  She was a lot more mortified than me -- she should be glad I didn't ask for "ultra excitement" or something.

Yeah, I can see those things disappearing just about more than any other item in a convenience store.  But when a convenience store makes a purchase INCONVENIENT, people are going to stop shopping there.  I went out of my way to avoid Walgreens for months.  And when I went back in recently ... there they were on a shelf, not even a plastic shield.  I can't imagine they listened to customers, but I bet their sales plummeted.

[The Architect]

Your understanding of the realities involved is refreshing.

We all know it's about profit (and lost profit), and we all know that the current measures are both extreme and ineffective. However, I believe it's well accepted by everyone except those who pirate or stand to benefit from piracy that it is simple theft, and that it's wrong. Nothing the producers, distributors, management, developers, (or however you want to nitpick the point, have I covered them all?) do makes piracy anything but a crime.

Media isn't an intellectual public property like the wheel, or the process for refining sugar. It's a product that is generated from the work and time of individuals and organizations, and the fact that it is easily duplicated does not make it fair game for redistribution. This is a recognized principle throughout the world, and I do not believe that a half-dozen individuals arguing the contrary here can hope to stand in the face of that reality.

To reiterate: none of the possible schemes, conspiracies, or simple money-grubbing behavior of the origins of media products excuses the theft of said products. FYI, copyright violation is another form of theft and is prosecuted as such, so let's not have anyone else preaching against the syntax as if they were qualified attorneys.

That said, your opinion is your right. I won't be continuing to post on the subject when we obviously will never come to any kind of agreement over it, but I wanted to lay out my viewpoint very clearly for the questionable benefit it might have for those of the opposite opinion.

[Cthulhu]

Normal logic:  The restrictions they put on the use of this are ridiculous, I won't buy it.

Pirate logic:  The restrictions they put on the use of this are ridiculous, I'll still get it, I just won't buy it.

Note that the pirates, in their debauchery, have failed to correct their run-on sentence.  A shameful pirates.

[Micro102]

That little Timmy story, Timmy buys a game and has no more money left, but now he can't pirate. So what does he do? Asks his parents, gets an allowence later, does something to get money to buy a new game.

That won't be Timmy's only $50 and since games are made by different companies, downloading 10 games all made by one company while saving you money for something from another company can be considered theft, because Timmy would have spent money on company #1's games.

[Draco18s]

Piracy is theft, but a special kind of theft called "copyright infringement".  Now that we've established that, can we move on?

As for me, while I recognize that it is theft, I have some pretty buggered morals.  Two weeks ago I helped steal an oil tanker and got my share of the loot: 5000.*  One of my most favorite Wednesdays so far this year.

*35000 split 7 ways.  The bear doesn't really know what to do with his cut.

[fenrif]

words

Just beacuse you keep saying its theft, and ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, doesn't make it so. It's not prosecuted as theft, FYI. This is why it's not called theft in court. A lost sale is not the same as theft. Taping a movie off the tv isn't theft. Taking a picture of a painting isn't theft. Writing a tablature of a popular song isn't theft. The media corperations would love to have you belive this of course, but it's simply not true. Theft involves you taking something into your possession deliberatly depriving someone else of that SAME THING. not copying it, not creating a facsimilie, not doing something which leaves that person still in possession of the item. This is simple word definition stuff here guys. A quick google search would clear this up for you... (sorry to keep harping on this, but it really annoys me how the music and movie industries are trying to change the definition of this word to suit their own needs ¬_¬)

You're oversimplifying a complex concept because you want to villify people you dont agree with. Anyone could easily do the same thing to the coorperations who have completely bloated the concept of copywrite to the point that there is no such thing as public domain anymore, and monopololies are easy to maintain. Copywrite was intended to encourage competition and creativity, instead it punishes those things and rewards huge media conglomerates for flooding the market with crap.

Funny how we were talking about how horrible DRM is, and you've turned that into a discussion about how pirates are vile evil sub-human creatures unworthey of life, or whatever hyperbole you're spouting. We simply said that the pirates fix the game ubisoft intentionally broke. I was reading the ubisoft forums this morning, and someone posted a link to a crack, so people could play the game they paid for, and the ubisoft forum drones banned him for posting illegal links, guess you'd agree with that?

As we were saying DRM has very little to do with piracy, and very much to do with producers robbing you of your rights as a consumer. Piracy is a good excuse for this, nothing else.

Pirates arent some faceless amorphous mass of hatred and villany. They're people, just like the publishing execs, and the movie moguls. Different people pirate different amounts for different reasons. One guy may download any and every game that comes out, another may just download cracks to fix his broken games, yet another may download games to test them out (most games don't have demos, are released buggy or broken, and over marketed to the point of blatantly lying about the game itself).

[Draco18s]

(most games don't have demos, are released buggy or broken, and over marketed to the point of blatantly lying about the game itself).

*Cough* Spore *cough*

Spore got prettier as demos went on and while they never overtly lied about what the game would offer they didn't let on that the game had changed from the initial demo that got millions excited about the game in the first place.  They deliberately showed off stuff the game couldn't do before while making no reference and not showing off the stuff it could no longer do.

Hell, the game supported realistic 3 legged creature movement right up to release day (the creature creator could do it until sometime mid August, IIRC).  Though because it was a little buggy they revoked it entirely in a silent update.

[Micro102]

Speaking of which has any lawsuits for spore gone through yet? I would really like to here the word "Yes".

[Soulwynd]

Piracy isn't theft

Fixed for the greater good.

Guys guys. I've learned from previous experience that the piracy vs anti-piracy chatter wont get anywhere. Stick to recent events and things you hate in games. I only brought the piracy subject back up because of the ubisoft drm crap. If we could stick to that, I'd appreciate it.

Meanwhile, I've been playing shadowrun for the genesis. How come nobody has made a fucking decent shadowrun game/mmo in ages? Microsoft took the shadowrun name and put it in the crapper with that stupid xbox game.

Oh, and draco, besides disagreeing with you on copyright/piracy, *highfives* ... Shadowrun rocks. Were you playing 3rd of 4th ed?