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No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

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Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#61

Post by mrtron »

mattmaroon wrote: post #47
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.

Do you have some evidence for that claim?

Because in Canada here we allow downloading music as part of fair use like listening to the radio. The artist gains exposure from music downloads which could increase your sales.

So what if this 'stealing' was causes 10% of the users to not buy the music, but 20% of the user to buy the music they would have been otherwise unaware of.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#62

Post by tlrobinson »

mindslight wrote: post #49
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.

I was referring to piracy of intellectual property. I should have been more clear.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#63

Post by boredguy8 »

duhblow7 wrote: post #46
lunchbox wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

You're inappropriately focusing on revenue and not access. Suppose I had a goose that laid golden eggs /ad infinitum/. I have infinite net worth, but if you take one of my eggs, you now have access to value which you otherwise wouldn't have had. Just because your theft didn't impact my revenue it doesn't follow that you didn't steal.

IP is actually quite similar. Suppose I wrote a book (.pdf) that contains important business information about the future of the oil market. I obtained this information at great personal cost. Your accessing that information doesn't remove that information from me, but it's still stealing access to information you otherwise wouldn't have had.

Saying, "But I wasn't going to buy your crappy business book anyway!" doesn't change the fact that you've still taken information that doesn't belong to you.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#64

Post by boredguy8 »

pg wrote: post #39

The mistake in this analogy is that the stars in boxes represent things one already has, while the dollar signs represent things one might get in the future. Causing someone not to get income they might otherwise have gotten is not theft. If it were, giving someone bad financial advice would also be theft. Because taking something someone already has is so much more serious than causing them not to get something they…

"Causing someone not to get income they might otherwise have gotten is not theft."

If it were, Blizzard would lose the biggest class-action lawsuit in the world! I mean, if all the time I spent playing Starcraft were spent doing something productive...

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#65

Post by randallsquared »

Leaving aside whether pirates would pay for the item, the idea that someone has a right to future sales is wrong. The guy who opens a competing business "hurts" Best Buy in exactly the same way that a pirate does, but this doesn't mean that he's actually taken anything from them, because they don't own future sales -- they only hope to eventually own them.

[Edit: but, reading down the page, I see that pg already made a similar point more concisely. Oh, well. :) ]

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#66

Post by boredguy8 »

mrtron wrote: post #61
mattmaroon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have some evidence for that claim? Because in Canada here we allow downloading music as part of fair use like listening to the radio. The artist gains exposure from music downloads which could increase your sales. So what if this 'stealing' was causes 10% of the users to not buy the music, but 20% of the user to buy the music they would have been otherwise unaware of.

You pay 'royalties' on anything that can record music in Canada, which is about a BAJILLION times worse than what the RIAA is doing here. In Canada, the fee on mp3 players (or audio cassette tapes) affects everyone, even if I didn't want 'free' access to music in the first place.

It's also illegal in Canada to upload or share music if you don't have the rights to do so , so at least theoretically you're downloading that music because the artist/label wants you to.

(( http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39118537,0... ))

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#67

Post by staunch »

elai wrote: post #52
lunchbox wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And adding to that, the piracy can become a very valuable form of marketing, where the kids pirate it for school and buy it for business, thus possibly increasing your net income.

I downloaded The Man From Earth and liked it so much I recommended it to a lot of people who had never heard of it. They mostly bought or rented the DVD.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#68

Post by lunchbox »

noodle wrote: post #33
lunchbox wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they may or may not lose up to 10% of potential income I want to remind readers that this 10% (or what if i made the assertion that, in addition, 10% of people who pirated something will also legally purchase the item they pirated? If you backed up that assertion with hard evidence, and demonstrated that this effect outweighs the loss companies sustain from piracy, I'd take you more seriously. Are you claiming that t…

i think the claim i'm making is that piracy is a wash. some people who otherwise would purchase something now won't, and some people who otherwise wouldn't have now will. canadian governmental study on music piracy: http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/pubs/music_industry/tdm_e.cfm When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among…

I'll read that paper when I have a chance.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#69

Post by blogimus »

pg wrote: post #39

The mistake in this analogy is that the stars in boxes represent things one already has, while the dollar signs represent things one might get in the future. Causing someone not to get income they might otherwise have gotten is not theft. If it were, giving someone bad financial advice would also be theft. Because taking something someone already has is so much more serious than causing them not to get something they…

I would say "A mistake" rather than "The mistake."

Another mistake in this analogy is that between criminal and civil law. Theft, in most if not all countries, is a criminal offense.

Piracy, formally known as copyright infringement (or copyright violation), is a criminal offense when done for financial gain, civil offense otherwise in countries which recognize software copyright. The vast majority of occurrences of copyright violation we see in the media are for personal use, not financial gain, thereby a largely civil legal matter, than a criminal one. Hence theft as a comparison is inaccurate.

Re: No, Silly, Piracy is Theft

#70

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mrtron wrote: post #58
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I read this: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and then purchased the book later on. Why? Because I found it was a useful book and wanted to support the author and own a physical copy. I also would have never purchased the book if I hadn't been able to go through it first online. I realize that I wasn't pirating - but the analogy doesn't break down in the manner you suggest.

Buying a physical copy of a book is a little different, as it does offer some additional benefit (in terms of portability, different medium, whatever). However, let's say that your argument is that some people will like the author and "buy" a copy of the music they already have, even though that copy offers zero additional benefit to the consumer.

That's a donation, not a purchase.

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