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Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

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Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#51

Post by jrockway »

tptacek wrote: post #48
alextgordon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, people don't like being called thieves, especially when they're not stealing anything. I may be a pirate, but if US TV companies actually gave me a choice to buy their programmes with some degree of timeliness, perhaps I wouldn't need to be.

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I actually think what you'd doing is a form of theft. I don't think the word is inappropriate. You are free to disagree. I think many objections to the word "theft" in this context are reasonable, even I don't agree with them. But I am genuinely amused that people expect political correctness from people whose livelihoods they are probably disrupting unlawfully. (I chose my wor…

If you're someone who makes copyable content for profit, it's best to think of purchase rate instead of piracy rate. You make as much money from someone who pirates your Cocoa app as from someone who uses Linux. But the Linux users aren't "stealing" your revenue.

Anyway, I wrote a book. It ended up on Scribd, Google Books, and the Pirate Bay. I still made plenty of money. Could I have made more? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly don't know what percentage of the pirates would have bought it had it not been available on TPB. My estimate is zero, which means piracy cost me nothing.

Piracy, in my opinion, is just a scapegoat for "nobody wants my crap anymore". Yeah, piracy happens. But even in the absence of piracy, it's possible that nobody wanted to pay $50 for a season of a TV show anyway.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#53

Post by jcl »

ThomPete wrote: post #10

It's funny how the word Piracy is used. One has to wonder what kind of pirates we are talking about. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" type of pirates did loot ships, but what they stole where often goods produced by slavery and itself stolen from the colonies. Piracy or as I prefer to call it – copying is the result of a disconnect between price and cost. When you steal you take something away from others so it's not t…

For the record, the use of the word "pirate" as "one who takes another's work without permission" dates back to the 1700s, when Daniel Defoe wrote of one of his novels: "Its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates"... hardly newspeak.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pirate

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#54

Post by protomyth »

btilly wrote: post #2

I knew that this was the position the administration would have once chose Joe Biden as VP. Frankly I'm amazed that they haven't attempted more to date with copyright enforcement. See http://www.betanews.com/article/Where-does-Joe-Biden-stand-o... for a quick overview of Biden's background on copyright issues.

I always wondered how his views on copyrights jived with his plagiarism.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#55

Post by semanticist »

cynicalkane wrote: post #46
byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

I would like to see something like a Netflix or Hulu for music. Something where you have unlimited access to all the music you want to listen to, but musicians are fairly compensated for their work. The Internet has made the information cost of music distribution vanishingly small, but there's no way for producers or consumers to take advantage of this. Actually, now that I think about it, there were once services li…

I think you've described Spotify.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#56

Post by wildjim »

fendrak wrote: post #34
byoung2 wrote: post #15

I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item. If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's pi…

The only problem with this argument is that it's made only with regard to you, the consumer, vs. the content creator/distributor. If theft is defined only as the removal of a physical good from one individual to another without consent, then indeed, it's not theft in that sense. However, if theft is defined as depriving an individual of what they are due for providing some product/service, then this is theft. One way…

It's still not theft -- i.e. taking something from. It's explicitly a lack of compensation, which is still not "taking something from" -- though there are laws which require compensation for services provided, they vary hugely across the world, and can get people in trouble when they apply their local knowledge in other jurisdictions. Several countries don't apply copyright/patent/IP or even contract law(s) in anything remotely like a USA style (for want of a better sterotype).

"Depriving" is a somewhat loaded term that implies a "take" behaviour to you, but it's just not strictly true.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#57

Post by tptacek »

jrockway wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I actually think what you'd doing is a form of theft. I don't think the word is inappropriate. You are free to disagree. I think many objections to the word "theft" in this context are reasonable, even I don't agree with them. But I am genuinely amused that people expect political correctness from people whose livelihoods they are probably disrupting unlawfully. (I chose my wor…

If you're someone who makes copyable content for profit, it's best to think of purchase rate instead of piracy rate. You make as much money from someone who pirates your Cocoa app as from someone who uses Linux. But the Linux users aren't "stealing" your revenue. Anyway, I wrote a book. It ended up on Scribd, Google Books, and the Pirate Bay. I still made plenty of money. Could I have made more? Maybe, maybe not. I c…

So basically your argument is that when people like something, even if it's trivial for them to pirate it, they'll pay.

Yeah, I respectfully call bullshit on that.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#58

Post by alextgordon »

tptacek wrote: post #48
alextgordon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, people don't like being called thieves, especially when they're not stealing anything. I may be a pirate, but if US TV companies actually gave me a choice to buy their programmes with some degree of timeliness, perhaps I wouldn't need to be.

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I actually think what you'd doing is a form of theft. I don't think the word is inappropriate. You are free to disagree. I think many objections to the word "theft" in this context are reasonable, even I don't agree with them. But I am genuinely amused that people expect political correctness from people whose livelihoods they are probably disrupting unlawfully. (I chose my wor…

It is especially interesting to hear this from a Cocoa developer, by the way, considering the rate at which Cocoa apps are pirated. (I'm not calling you a hypocrite; no, quite the opposite. "Suicidal" might be a better epithet here.)

There's nothing I can do about piracy. The options are to either (a) treat it as the enemy and fight it or (b) accept the benefits it brings and write off the losses.

Judging by the progress the RIAA and co are having with option (a), I think option (b) is a far more rational alternative.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#59

Post by wildjim »

Bootvis wrote: post #29
byoung2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I download the mp3 copy of a CD I own a physical copy of, am I a criminal? Did I steal from the artist? To the first question, I would say that you are guilty of copyright infringement. Compare it to buying a bootleg DVD of a DVD that you already own that was scratched and is now unplayable, or sneaking in to watch the re-release of Avatar now that you own it on Blu-Ray. To the second, no you haven't stolen anythi…

Was downloading music you already owned really illegal in the USA pre-DMCA? After all, the music company did sell you the right to listen to that music. I know it's legal in most of Europe.

But isn't legal (even now) in the UK. Though I believe they're reviewing copyright law, atm.

Re: Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft"

#60

Post by protomyth »

Qz wrote: post #5

I keep telling myself, this has to be better than if we'd elected McCain -- right?

If nothing else, having a Congress and President of different parties probably would have changed the situation where this would have dropped off the map on the priority list given the current economic realities. Particularly since McCain is also a Senator who has never been a governor of a state which means he (like President Obama) hasn't been through a real budget cycle or done legislation from the executive side. Aides are great but don't seem to be compensating.
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