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[Leafsnail]

A: You steal goods that production costs and selling price added up to $50. The person who made it and who was going to sell it now has $50 less then he would if you had not stolen it.

B: You steal a game that you would have purchased for $50 if you could not steal it. The person who made it and who was going to sell it now has $50 less then he would if you had not stolen it.

Actually, A is twice as bad according to your logic, since the seller has lost a $50 good AND has been deprived of a potential sale of $50 (from you).

[Sheb]

Criptfiend, piracy isn't theft, it's counterfeiting (or buying counterfeited goods). Not to say it's moral or anything, but legally, logically and all, it is not theft.

Put otherwise, piracy make some people loose money but that doesn't mean it's theft. There is a lot of criminal offense that result in someone loosing money.

[Neonivek]

piracy isn't theft, it's counterfeiting (or buying counterfeited goods).

Actually when I think about it... Yeah it is closer to that.

[olemars]

Piracy isn't theft. It's generally not even a criminal offense unless you try to make money off it. It's a copyright infringement, and up to the copyright holder to enforce (through civil lawsuits).

The UK government received a report they'd requested today, which is an interesting read:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview-finalreport.pdf

Choice quotes:

    "We urge Government to ensure that in future, policy on Intellectual Property issues is constructed on the basis of evidence, rather than weight of lobbying."

    "On copyright issues, lobbying on behalf of rights owners has been more persuasive to Ministers than economic impact assessments."

    "Much of the data needed to develop empirical evidence on copyright and designs is privately held. It enters the public domain chiefly in the form of 'evidence' supporting the arguments of lobbyists ('lobbynomics') rather than as independently verified research conclusions."

Accompanying ars.technica article for the tl;dr (and also where I nabbed the quotes from the report).

[Aklyon]

Until there is proven, data-based (not lobbynomics-based or made up ridiculo-statistics) independent proof that Piracy is a substantial problem to the corporations, it is not. A miniscule drop in profit won't hurt them when they have so much of it anyway, since they likely do not pay any taxes after all the loopholes are found.

[freeformschooler]

Criptfiend, piracy isn't theft, it's counterfeiting (or buying counterfeited goods). Not to say it's moral or anything, but legally, logically and all, it is not theft.

Put otherwise, piracy make some people loose money but that doesn't mean it's theft. There is a lot of criminal offense that result in someone loosing money.

This is better understood when I present the time worn, annoying but true argument:

When you steal from a store rack, that is theft because the object is now yours (and thus out of the store's physical stock) and not somebody else's, who would have paid for it. However, when you download, you're not taking an object -- you're downloading a copy that was made specifically for you. If you had not downloaded that copy, it would not have been downloaded or bought or anything by someone else -- they would have downloaded an entirely different copy, made for them. Even when you pay for it, legally, on iTunes, the copy you get may be identical to the one someone else got, but you're not reducing their stock of the object/service, since what you get is a copy that, again, was made specifically for you.

[G-Flex]

I'd have no problem paying the price of any  of the "total war"game (if they worked on Linux, of course) if I didn't boycott the entertainment company because of their support of privacy killing laws.

A better way to boycott a company is to not use their products at all. Seriously. Even if you pirate a game, that's still less time you're spending looking for alternate companies/products whose practices you agree with, and paying for those instead, and even pirating a game and playing it is still playing into the hands of the company a little; you're still a user of their product and support it in that sense.

If you really want to boycott a company you don't like, stop using their products and find better companies.

This is less directed towards you personally than towards gamer culture as a whole.

Oh, and paying for upgrades is still an issue of copyright, as upgrades are still infinitely replicable data.

[Phmcw]

I'd have no problem paying the price of any  of the "total war"game (if they worked on Linux, of course) if I didn't boycott the entertainment company because of their support of privacy killing laws.

A better way to boycott a company is to not use their products at all. Seriously. Even if you pirate a game, that's still less time you're spending looking for alternate companies/products whose practices you agree with, and paying for those instead, and even pirating a game and playing it is still playing into the hands of the company a little; you're still a user of their product and support it in that sense.

If you really want to boycott a company you don't like, stop using their products and find better companies.

This is less directed towards you personally than towards gamer culture as a whole.

Oh, and paying for upgrades is still an issue of copyright, as upgrades are still infinitely replicable data.

Well I don't use them : as I said I use Linux, but if they would be on my list if I didn't boycott them and they were available under Linux.

For the upgrade I guess a lot of people would pay for easy, transparent update compared to unbought vertion that would have to find the patch and download it.

[Criptfeind]

If we reduce it to the first case like you did, it does share extreme similarity with the case you put forth (with the important exception that the seller retains their copy, which they can sell again).  However, in the real world ANY of these cases can happen, at unknown probability to boot!  While loss of potential profit is certainly probable, you can't say for sure.  This doesn't make it ok, it just means that people shouldn't treat every copy pirated as a theft, or even as a total loss.

Yes. No. Yes.

A: You steal goods that production costs and selling price added up to $50. The person who made it and who was going to sell it now has $50 less then he would if you had not stolen it.

B: You steal a game that you would have purchased for $50 if you could not steal it. The person who made it and who was going to sell it now has $50 less then he would if you had not stolen it.

Actually, A is twice as bad according to your logic, since the seller has lost a $50 good AND has been deprived of a potential sale of $50 (from you).

You need to read it again.

piracy isn't theft, it's counterfeiting (or buying counterfeited goods).

Actually when I think about it... Yeah it is closer to that.

I really do not care about semantics (Lie)

This is better understood when I present the time worn, annoying but true argument:

Your argument, like everyone else here but G-Flex, misses the point of what I am saying.

[Phmcw]

Your argument, like everyone else here but G-Flex, misses the point of what I am saying.

Your point, raped by everyone, is that because there is alleged loss of profit, that is theft.
It's null because :1) every loss of profit isn't theft, every theft doesn't result in a loss of profit either btw,
2)theft only apply to material good strictly speaking,
3) said loss of profit isn't proved, and
4) that system isn't adapted to intellectual concept therefore they weren't supposed to make a profit hat way therefore there is no loss of profit.

CQFD

[Leafsnail]

You need to read it again.

[/quote]
...It's the same.

In the first instance, you've deprived the shopkeeper of a $50 items he could have sold, AND you're depriving him of $50 of your potential custom.  In the second instance, you're depriving the game company of $50 of potential custom.

[freeformschooler]

Your argument, like everyone else here but G-Flex, misses the point of what I am saying.

Your point, raped by everyone, is that because there is alleged loss of profit, that is theft.
It's null because :1) every loss of profit isn't theft, every theft doesn't result in a loss of profit either btw,
2)theft only apply to material good strictly speaking,
3) said loss of profit isn't proved, and
4) that system isn't adapted to intellectual concept therefore they weren't supposed to make a profit hat way therefore there is no loss of profit.

CQFD

QFT except for 2 and 4 which I'm not so sure of. 3 is on a case to case basis AFAIS.

[Phmcw]

You need to read it again.

...It's the same.

In the first instance, you've deprived the shopkeeper of a $50 items he could have sold, AND you're depriving him of $50 of your potential custom.  In the second instance, you're depriving the game company of $50 of potential custom.

Yeah beside i's another huge difference between theft and file sharing : theft cause a direct loss to the victim (the loss of profit only count for goods destined to be sold). The damage done is completely different.

[Criptfeind]

You need to read it again.

...It's the same.

In the first instance, you've deprived the shopkeeper of a $50 items he could have sold, AND you're depriving him of $50 of your potential custom.  In the second instance, you're depriving the game company of $50 of potential custom.

It does not work like that. At all.

[Darvi]

Technically, stealing something deprives a vendor only of the money they'd gain from selling the product.

So e.g. stealing a game that gets sold for 19.99 deprives the vendor of 19.99, not more, not less. That's because it doesn't matter how much they paid for it, they'd have spent that money either way.