Comments on: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:10:39 +0000

I wouldn’t say pirates say they ‘own’ what they steal. I don’t claim I made a movie or game, but my frustration comes in when I buy a game and a software company claims I didn’t actually buy the game, just a license to use the game. At any point, then, a game company can ‘revoke’ my ‘license’ to something I paid money for.

Piracy, on the other hand, gives me a game or movie and says “do what you want, how you want”. I can still give my money to the company that made it by going to see the movie in the theaters or buying a legit key from the game company, but I still have a copy I can use however I want.

Fighting freedom of information will always be a losing battle.

By: Texas shredding

Texas shredding — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:20:05 +0000

Claiming that you own something that is not truly yours, or using someone else’s identity for your own benefit is indeed an act of piracy. Without permission, you are stealing something – song, movie, data, etc. – to those who truly owns it. Others might consider it a light misconduct because there is not physical injury committed but a little wrongdoing can go a long way if it is not stopped. This is why it is important to safeguard one’s information or intellectual property rights.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 07:25:28 +0000

I find it ironic that many record companies and movie studios are reporting record profits, but in the next breath they say they are losing billions because of downloading. People have been using vcr’s and dvd players to record content for years, and tape decks used to dub tapes and record music off the radio. People are still buying the physical product, and in many cases people who might not have bought the product in the first place end up getting exposed to it. For every artist that is against downloading, there are many artists who see it as another medium to expose their work to more and diverse audiences.

By: John

John — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:10:30 +0000

Sorry, you’re wrong. Downloads don’t equate to sales; no “profit” is lost/taken/’stolen’.

By: JustOneVoice

JustOneVoice — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 06:00:02 +0000

edit: Three kept expanding. “A few points” perhaps.

By: JustOneVoice

JustOneVoice — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 05:58:29 +0000

Three major objections:
1. Copyright, in it’s original form (and today, although with reinterpretation) does not allow numbers or mathematical operations to be copyrighted. This makes sense. Even if you were the first man to discover pi, it’s still not your property. Everything in digital format is reducible to numbers, hence should be outside the scope of copyright.
2. The numbers on loss are not discernible. Studies have found positive revenue generation via filesharing, revenue loss via filesharing, or no effect. And since 1 pirated copy != 1 lost sale, even counting copies wouldn’t tell the story. Even assuming that there is a loss, and that said loss should be subject to renumeration, a “loss” that vague shouldn’t be prosecuted under any condition.
3. Property is stuff. Information, shy of a physical expression, is not stuff. Copying information in it’s rawest form can hardly be deemed theft.
4. Copyright is a privilege, not a right. It is a governmental exception to anti-monopoly policies, designed to foster development of culture and science for the public good. Eventual entry of said work into the public domain is the goal, as is the creation of derivative works. It is easy to argue that the benefit to society of unmitigated access easily trumps the comparatively minor issue of loss of revenue to a small segment.
5. In addition, the lack of copyright prior to 1700 did not, seemingly, prevent the Renaissance, so one can hardly argue that lack of copyright prevents artistic innovation. In fact, it’s fairly plain to see that at this point, with multi-generation copyright, the innovation of many artists and designers has been harmed by copyright: a documentary about MLK Jr was delayed a decade due to copyright concerns, most notably a scene in which “Happy Birthday to You” was sung (Copyright owned by Warner).
In addition, laws such as the DMCA have resulted in weakening of fair use, and subsequently of the benefit that creative works have to society in general.
6. Even presuming the above were not the case, the laws and “rights” of digital copyright are not enforcible today. At best, they result in selective enforcement, a comically random bad luck lottery. “Nothing promotes disrespect of the law more than passing laws which can not and should not be enforced.” -Albert Einstein

Due to the above, and the degree to which modern copyright law has strayed from and abused it’s original purpose, it would seem that infringement has become a form of de facto widespread civil disobedience.

By: Blount

Blount — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:46:07 +0000

Let’s say I find an apple tree on public land, pick an apple and eat it. Is that wrong? Did I steal any revenue from my local supermarket because I picked an apple from the tree rather than buying an apple from them? If the apple tree did not exist, would I have necessarily gone to the local supermarket and bought an apple? If one or two people pick apples from the tree probably no one will notice, but if everyone starts doing it, the supermarket will complain to the city and the city will remove the tree; but by then, some people will have saved their apple seeds and will grow new apple trees on private land for everyone to share. Trying to stop piracy is like trying to stop people from doing anything else; It just isn’t going to happen. Once people know they are able to do something, it is impossible to get them to stop.

By: timmy

timmy — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:59:30 +0000

My dream is that piracy will destroy the music industry and no one will be able to make a fuck ton of money selling crap music. Just think if an actual artist made some music, then was only able to make any money by performing their music live and possibly selling a few CDs or T-shirts at the show. We would be left with only talented artist that create music because that is what they enjoy doing, not because they can sell cookie cutter crap to the mindless sheep that still buy music

By: Brad Anderson

Brad Anderson — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:45:58 +0000

If people stop paying for RECORDED music, then obviously people will pay more for LIVE music, and the wanna-be bands can get work.
That’s good for everyone, since there will be more live music– the way it USED to be– rather than a few pop-stars living high on the hog, while everyone had to listen to their recordings instead of live bands.

Corporations exist to DESTROY the little guy, so they can live large and control the market; but now the tables have clearly turned, as the internet has destroyed Big Music Inc.– just like it destroyed Big Media; and for the simple reason that EVERYONE has access to it, it can’t be controlled by some fat-cat.
FIGHT THE POWER!

By: Brad Anderson

Brad Anderson — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:38:32 +0000

P.S. As for saying “piracy is theft,” you might want to get your facts straight.
Legally, “theft” is defined as “acting with intent to permanently deprive the owner of their property.”
Obviously, this doesn’t work with INTELLECTUAL property, since you can’t deprive a person of that; you can only cause them to LOSE INCOME.
So it’s NOT “theft” in the legal sense– it’s copyright-infringement, intellectual-property violations, lost expectation-damages, or something else– but it’s NOT “theft.”

If you want to make up your own laws, fine– but don’t make claims about EXISTING laws.