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Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

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Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#121

Post by kybernetikos »

cremnob wrote: post #94
kybernetikos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think it's impossible for people to genuinely believe that copying is not theft. You're wrong. There are a lot of people who genuinely believe that sharing is not theft, and far from being something that we should persecute, is something that makes humanity richer and the world a better place, and many of those people do not believe it simply in order to feel better about copying stuff, since they don't a…

I don't think you've read my posts because I KNOW people think pirating isn't wrong. And they go through a variety of mental hoops to rationalize why it isn't. They're wrong. And nothing you've said defends their position, all you've said is that they have it.

That's nearly what I've been saying in this thread.

What I've been saying is that for many people it is not a rationalization. They genuinely believe, because of arguments from history and logic that sharing isn't wrong. They aren't jumping through mental hoops, this is their honest belief after considering the alternatives and arguments.

Now that isn't to say that there aren't some, maybe many people for whom it is purely rationalization, but your posts seem to entirely ignore any other possibility.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#122

Post by pringles »

cremnob wrote: post #27
Devilboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing a car deprives someone of a car. Copying a car does not.

This trope comes up every time piracy is discussed. The point is no one is talking about the legal meaning of "stealing" versus "copyright infringement". What people are saying is that it's immoral. The fact that a content company's product is easily stolen simply because the nature of his business means it is effortless to do through the internet doesn't change anything. If you go to a lawyer for legal advice and th…

> If you go to a lawyer for legal advice and then refuse to pay him saying "I haven't deprived you of a tangible product so it's not really stealing" you are missing the point, it's still theft.

That is theft because you've robbed the lawyer of his opportunity cost. For the time he was spending giving you legal advice, he could have been giving it to someone else that would pay him.

A more apt analogy would be secretly listening in on a lawyer giving legal advice to a paying client. You haven't taken anything away from him or the paying client, and all you've done is "copied" what was being heard anyway.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#123

Post by yozmsn »

meritt wrote: post #9

It's always been rumored that Adobe software, especially Photoshop, has been easy to pirate to encourage adoption with a user base that might otherwise seek alternatives. As those people hone their skills and eventually find jobs, Photoshop is the norm and what their employers purchase licensing for.

Adobe Software in no longer easy to pirate. From what I understand people have to go to great lengths to pirate CS6, same goes for Office 2010, a friend told me that to pirate it he had to call Microsoft and mess around with files, it's not just a keygen anymore.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#124

Post by vidarh »

gizmo686 wrote: post #50
Devilboy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll stop bringing it up when people stop saying that piracy is the same as car theft. Otherwise why not go all the way and say piracy is genocide.

Becuase saying piracy is theft has truthiness, whereas saying piracy is genocide does not.

Neither "has truthiness". Copyright exists as a separate legal doctrine for a very simple reason:

It is materially different from theft. Enough so that making property law fit copyright is not feasible in any reasonable way.

One is based on an presumptive right of the individual to protection of their right to continued use of something.

The other is an artificial government monopoly restricting the public from exercising their right to full use of their own property, by preventing them from copying and distributing information that is legally already in their possession, and where nobody are deprived of continued use at all.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#125

Post by niyazpk »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #32
eli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that too, but I have no idea if it's true. (Surely, Photoshop would be pirated regardless of how much DRM is added). But it's definitely not only the goodness of their heart that leads many companies to offer free or cheap software to students. Microsoft BizSpark is all about giving startups free Microsoft software in the hope that they'll build on the MS stack.

For the longest time, cracking Photoshop was a 1 byte change. In effect, there was a conditional JMP. You patch the address of the good JMP to the bad conditional side. Voila: enter a good or bad serial, and it works. A bunch of us under +Fravia came to an agreement that this simplicity was intentional. I think we all can come to the conclusion to why that is... As to your supposition that no amount of 'junk' would s…

I was under the [naive] impression that _every_ security check finally boils down to one JMP statement. Can you please explain what makes other programs more difficult to crack than flipping the one JMP location?

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#126

Post by barrkel »

javert wrote: post #109

I’m just saying that it’s not all black and white. It is black and white. It's theft. The issue of whether you shold steal in certain conditions is a separate issue, as discussed some in the article. But it is black and white, it's theft.

Are you using black and white to mean a clear distinction, or to mean moral good and bad? It's not black and white to me.

It's obvious that copyright violation is not directly equivalent to theft on a black and white basis; there are clear differences, such as theft depriving someone else of a physical good, so under the "clear distinction" interpretation of your statement, it is plainly wrong.

And as to moral interpretation, it's not obvious that theft is always wrong either.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#127

Post by learc83 »

yozmsn wrote: post #123
meritt wrote: post #9

It's always been rumored that Adobe software, especially Photoshop, has been easy to pirate to encourage adoption with a user base that might otherwise seek alternatives. As those people hone their skills and eventually find jobs, Photoshop is the norm and what their employers purchase licensing for.

Adobe Software in no longer easy to pirate. From what I understand people have to go to great lengths to pirate CS6, same goes for Office 2010, a friend told me that to pirate it he had to call Microsoft and mess around with files, it's not just a keygen anymore.

For Adobe Software it's easier than it has been in years. No need to install a patch. You just have to edit your host file to block all the domains CS uses to phone home.

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#128

Post by colonD »

rdl wrote: post #113
glomph wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private torrent trackers are also fuelled by this drive. The 'game' abstraction has been made so real with ranks, stats, leaderboards and so on. It really is quite amazing how willing people are to sink time into providing a service, moderating, sourcing, encoding (people sink LOADS of time into learning the finest details of x264), cracking, uploading and distributing all for for no material gain outside 'the game'.

All that stuff existed with TOPSITES, ftp, etc. before the torrent sites. The torrent sites are just the "retail" level of the game; the real players are getting prereleases, ripping, potentially cracking, and doing stuff on topsites.

Especially appropriate considering the language used by the FTPd scripts to announce releases on the sites -- upping a new release was known as "starting a race."

Re: Editorial: "How piracy changed my life"

#129

Post by jrockway »

glomph wrote: post #102
kstenerud wrote: post #76

I'm one of those people who would pirate just because I could. It was almost a game, trying to amass as much warez as I could, to the point that 90% of the stuff I got I either never used, or used only once. That changed over time. As my time became more valuable, I couldn't spend all day fiddling with software anymore. I became more focused, downloading only stuff I used a lot. And then it hit me: It would be far ea…

Private torrent trackers are also fuelled by this drive. The 'game' abstraction has been made so real with ranks, stats, leaderboards and so on. It really is quite amazing how willing people are to sink time into providing a service, moderating, sourcing, encoding (people sink LOADS of time into learning the finest details of x264), cracking, uploading and distributing all for for no material gain outside 'the game'.

Interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_scene
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