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No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

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Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#41

Post by ryanwaggoner »

philh wrote: post #37

>A much better analogy for digital piracy is sneaking into a theater to watch a movie. You are not stealing a copy of that movie, and the theater is free to show the movie to others. But you are stealing revenue that the theater would have earned had you rightfully purchased a ticket. Some cinemas are set up to facilitate sneaking in: having passed the usher to get into one film, you can then stay and watch any numbe…

I'd like to see some evidence or indication that this is deliberate on any level.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#42

Post by tlrobinson »

If you're going to get all pedantic about these terms, certainly you must bring up the actual definition of "piracy":

Piracy is a robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, without a commission from a sovereign nation.

That said, whatever you want to call it, it's hard to deny it's illegal in many places. If you're ok with breaking the law, and you think it's moral to "pirate", then by all means go ahead.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#43

Post by ericwaller »

lunchbox wrote: post #12
carlio wrote: post #5

People need to stop thinking of piracy as theft or not theft. It's a digitally reproducible item which makes traditional concepts of property obsolete and it's about time the law and the record industry started coming up with terms which match this status. Piracy does not take money away from sellers. It reduces how much they get. This is not the same thing. The best example I heard was this: say you're a baker and y…

"The best example I heard was this: say you're a baker and you sell bread. One day it starts raining bread, and people pick up their bread from the street rather than pay for yours. It sucks for you that you aren't getting money from your bread, but how can you blame people for what they're doing?" Inaccurate analogy. The baker played no part in making it rain bread. Software developers and other producers of content…

What if instead of raining from the sky, bread was atom-for-atom replicated from the original baker's product (bakers only input is "design" -- no raw materials). Would eating the clone-bread constitute theft?

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#44

Post by tocomment »

carlio wrote: post #6
tocomment1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good argument

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/01/Jun/pi.html

Has anyone found anything copyrighted in Pi yet? That would be awsome to share at song by saying "the 1e74 + 2 digit of Pi for 6000 digits."

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#45

Post by ericwaller »

krschultz wrote: post #28
carlio wrote: post #5

People need to stop thinking of piracy as theft or not theft. It's a digitally reproducible item which makes traditional concepts of property obsolete and it's about time the law and the record industry started coming up with terms which match this status. Piracy does not take money away from sellers. It reduces how much they get. This is not the same thing. The best example I heard was this: say you're a baker and y…

That's the worst example I ever heard. A better example would be a company that invested a huge amount of money into creating the perfect strain of corn that allowed farmers to get 10 times as much corn per acre, solving the shortage caused by ethanol production. They sold this corn to a few farmers, who then grew a lot of it and gave it away for free to others. The original company never recouped their investment, r…

Yes, of course giving away the better corn is "wrong," but it's not theft. In violation of multiple laws and probably legal agreements, yes, but the point of the cartoon is that it doesn't fit the accepted (to my knowledge) definition of theft -- unlawful, physical removal another person's property.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#46

Post by duhblow7 »

lunchbox wrote: post #10
noodle wrote: post #3

no, silly, piracy is not theft. piracy is piracy, its not a theft or not theft issue, its a different animal. the rebuttal makes the assumption that pirates will actually pay for the item if they can't get it for free. 90% (i made this number up) of pirates would not pay for the item that they're pirating. hypothetically, if i were unable to pirate photoshop, i'd use gimp instead. i wouldn't go buy photoshop. so, pir…

OK, accepting your made-up figure of 90%, what about the other 10% who would pay for the item they're pirating?

The simple fact that you can divide the users downloading copyrighted material into multiple groups would mean that the term 'piracy' is a broader term.

it's like piracy is the main subject and theft or non-theft piracy would be the stubs.

          PIRACY
         /      \
  LOST REVENUE  NO LOST REVENUE
        |               |
      THEFT          NOT THEFT
Piracy is not theft. This is one of those...a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn't a square...type of deals, or maybe not.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#47

Post by mattmaroon »

noodle wrote: post #3

no, silly, piracy is not theft. piracy is piracy, its not a theft or not theft issue, its a different animal. the rebuttal makes the assumption that pirates will actually pay for the item if they can't get it for free. 90% (i made this number up) of pirates would not pay for the item that they're pirating. hypothetically, if i were unable to pirate photoshop, i'd use gimp instead. i wouldn't go buy photoshop. so, pir…

Piracy most certainly steals income, it's just not 100%. If 10% of people who pirated a song would have purchased it for $1, then each pirate is effectively stealing 10 cents. Just because it's not 1:1 doesn't mean it isn't a loss of revenue.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#49

Post by mindslight »

tlrobinson wrote: post #42

If you're going to get all pedantic about these terms, certainly you must bring up the actual definition of "piracy": Piracy is a robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, without a commission from a sovereign nation. That said, whatever you want to call it, it's hard to deny it's illegal in many places. If you're ok with breaking the law, and you think it's moral to "pirate", then by all means go ahead.

it's hard to deny it's illegal in many places. If you're ok with breaking the law, and you think it's moral to "pirate"

It may be illegal, but that does not mean a pirate is breaking the law. The basis of piracy is to sovereignly act, without blessing from the land oligopoly. A pirate may be attacked by a nation, but the concept of law is absent from such interaction.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#50

Post by shard »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #40
mrtron wrote: post #15

Piracy is a strange beast, but it is definitely NOT theft. If I download a song - it does not directly negatively impact the artist. They aren't out anything. The indirect impact on the artist is another matter. They are potentially out of a sale that could have otherwise happened without the piracy. However, they are also potentially gaining a sale from a user who would have not normally purchased their music, but d…

"However, they are also potentially gaining a sale from a user who would have not normally purchased their music, but downloaded and decided to buy." The analogy breaks down because music and other forms of media are just pure information, so there is no reason to buy it if you already downloaded it, especially as the friction of obtaining an illegal copy is reduced to zero.

Actually this analog is exactly what drives Baen Free Library. They gave ebooks away free, in a multitude of formats, and found that:

1. Many downloaders ended up buying physical copies because paper books are easier to use.

2. It drove up sales of older catalog items, which had been crowded out of the shelves at physical bookstores.

3. It created new fans of the authors, driving up future book sales.

You can read about it at http://www.baen.com/library/

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