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[Capntastic]

You probably have and failed to notice.

[0x517A5D]

Moderators of company forums like this are not allowed to support torrenting or discussions of torrenting, regardless of what their personal opinion may be, and regardless of the specifics in which you are torrenting.

Speaking as someone who has been employed as a Mod at a publishing company, I'd implore you not to argue about this. Mods don't make the rules, they simply enforce them. They aren't paid to have an opinion, they are paid to keep the forum as 'pleasant' and uncontroversal and positive as possible, so the company has a good image and isn't embroiled in heated debates over legality and morality. They don't want anything to do with that shit.

You're not being silenced, they just don't want it on their forums. They are well within their rights to delete your thread. Please don't make their jobs harder and more stressful. You can argue until you're blue in the face, but the simple fact is that Mods cannot change these rules. So just deal with it.

Read my first post and then reply with something relevant. :p

It is illegal to torrent software even if you already own a copy.

It really is.

A lot of the posters said that it shouldn't be illegal.

A lot of the posters said that it's not immoral.

A lot of the posters said that no harm is being done; that it's a victimless crime.

Whatever.

It is illegal.

Full stop.


The owner of a forum can and should set policy for that forum.  The mods should enforce that policy.  Unprivileged users can comply or find another forum; there are many thousands.

If the owner decides that there shall be no discussion of piracy, so be it.

The mod was well within his rights and was doing his job properly.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

It is not illegal to torrent stuff. Now the legality of torrenting copyrighted software is up in the if you own it and definetly illegal if you do not but that is not the question the OP asked. Its fine that they had a policy against it on the forum and if the moderator had just said so instead of whining about the legality of it would have probably been end of story.

[ECrownofFire]

To everyone that says that bypassing DRM is illegal.

"'Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act's) anti-circumvention provision,' Judge Garza wrote for the New Orleans-based court."

Sounds a lot like it being legal to bypass DRM if that DRM prevents you from playing, now doesn't it? Or even non-DRM issues. If you cannot play due to whatever technological issue, it's not illegal to bypass it. If you cannot access a game that you legally own, then it's within your rights to bypass any and all DRM that is preventing you from playing. Within reason of course. You can't just go around cracking DRM because you don't like it or something.

[Farseer]

It is illegal to torrent software even if you already own a copy.

It really is.

A lot of the posters said that it shouldn't be illegal.

A lot of the posters said that it's not immoral.

A lot of the posters said that no harm is being done; that it's a victimless crime.

Whatever.

It is illegal.

Full stop.

Offer me proof of this, and we'll see.

Hint: It's perfectly legal to do it based off the fact that we buy licenses, not game CDs.

The owner of a forum can and should set policy for that forum.  The mods should enforce that policy.  Unprivileged users can comply or find another forum; there are many thousands.

If the owner decides that there shall be no discussion of piracy, so be it.

The mod was well within his rights and was doing his job properly.

Again, it's not piracy. It's merely gaining another copy of something I own.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Is it not the point of the uniform to be innocuous? If it was something that stood out then it would not do the job it was meant to do. Also its not something we just "created", the use of such things has been around for as long as people realized that a human shape was easier to find then one that is not human shaped. Its just in the past the people who used such things by necessity where not out giving speeches though a world wide transmission device. They just look better because we streamlined the production side of it.

Camouflage is actually a fairly recent mainstream military concept. Presumably because when you have tens of thousands of soldiers marching on a city, your enemy is going to know they're there, whether they look like trees or not. The concept didn't really become relevant (outside of hunting) until you got precision rifles, and even then it was fairly primitive in concept (solid fatigues colored sort of like the terrain you expected to fight in). I'm talking specifically about the modern digital camouflage used by the US military, this. More primitive camouflage doesn't have the same "your eyes slide off it regardless of the surrounding terrain" effect.

[Untouchable]

I'm reminded of a concert I went to a few months ago, where the lead singer, between songs, announced: "Our next song is one we didn't write [it was a cover, either Linoleum or Punk Rock Girl], it's from out new album, 99 Songs of Revolution, and if you don't have it, then go on the internet and steal it because it's great and we think everyone should hear it." The same person also said (in an interview about one of their earlier albums (which was then tacked onto the end of the album)) "For that we sacrificed months of our time and our money, and now we feel what we have is worth paying for. Although, truth be told, I don't care if a single record is sold... Do I think it's worth thirteen dollars? Yes, very much so, but that's my opinion. What other people decide, that's their own opinion. We're going to keep doing what we do whether or not a single record is sold."

Ah yes, Streetlight Manifesto. As they have said, it would be massively hypocritical to tell people not to download their stuff since they've also done that same thing. They also say that people should just see them live since it's always the best way to listen to a band.

[Soadreqm]

Ah, camouflage and software piracy! A proper bay12 topic, I see!

Whether torrenting a game you already own is illegal probably depends on local copyright law. I know it's illegal in Finland, where copying anything classified as "software", even for personal use, is specifically prohibited. For torrenting, say, a movie, it'd be a lot more ambiguous. You're allowed to make copies for personal use, and to get someone else to make you copies, but I guess there might be something illegal taking place that a sufficiently motivated lawyer could latch on. Elsewhere? I haven't the foggiest. Either way, most publishers probably aren't going to push it if you can show that you legally own the stuff you downloaded. I'd say that it's de facto allowed. Depending on your court system, this might be more important than whether or not it is technically illegal.

[Shades]

Either way, most publishers probably aren't going to push it if you can show that you legally own the stuff you downloaded.

Almost certainly not going to try I'd say, they'd stand a fair chance of losing the case and that is a precedent they wouldn't want set.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Plus it would open a whole can of worms and earn the hate of the Internets worst kind of people. Anyway trying to legally do something to anyone like most of us would be useless because I doubt they would get anything out of it seeing as I personally would have a hard enough time just paying legal fees let alone them.

[Sergius]

I am sure SOMEONE does, just like some people still rock the Hitler stache.

Fun fact: Brasilians don't infact call a certain style of... female crotch-moustache a "brazilian", they call it a "Hitler"

and nobody names their children Adolf anymore

I actually remember this one story where child services took away a kid from some people in the US who named the child "Adolf Hitler". Not just Adolf. Adolf Hitler.

My cousin is called Gustav. Gustav Adolph (ok, Gustavo Adolfo).

Don't forget how they totally ruined black and silver uniforms for everyone else as well

No, that ruined itself. Sure, back then they were *fabulouuuus*. But now... they're just meh.

Are you kidding? They had the best looking military uniforms ever. Much better than the meh green and brown suits military officials wear these days.

Hugo Boss designed those uniforms, and they were made with concentration camp labor (unlike today, where they're made in sweatshops by underage kids). Of course they're fabulous!

[SHAD0Wdump]

Fun fact: Brasilians don't infact call a certain style of... female crotch-moustache a "brazilian", they call it a "Hitler"

Yeah, that'll stick with me for the rest of the day.

[G-Flex]

Did Hugo Boss actually design the uniforms? I know his company supplied them for a significant amount of time, but he wasn't around from the start, so I find it unlikely that he was the designer.

[Virex]

Offer me proof of this, and we'll see.

Hint: It's perfectly legal to do it based off the fact that we buy licenses, not game CDs.

As far as I know you buy a license tied to a (physical or digital) copy instead of a plain license. Also you don't own the IP, so you're not allowed to make copies in the first place (by law, morally it may be a different story) and the exception that making copies for backups is allowed is a specific clause in the IP laws surrounded by a load of reservations (you wouldn't want someone to start "backing up" perishable products on which an IP rests by the truckload. Or at least the ones who wrote the IP laws in most countries don't.)

[SeaBee]

I've said this before but it needs repeated: downloading software is not illegal in most countries, license or not. Uploading software is, however. The fun thing with torrents is that you're usually uploading while you're downloading, unless you're using a naughty torrent client. That makes you a distributor of copyrighted crud.