My father is a middle class worker, and I have more legal copies of games and music than my rich, CEO uncle and his son combined.
This shouldn’t be a debate over semantics. I’ve jumped in here without having read all the thread but I love how pirates always justify their actions by pointing out that the law calls it ‘copyright infringement’.
It is quite evidently a type of theft but people seem to justify it by saying that it’s an experience and so it doesn’t count, even if it has a value clearly placed on it. If people pay to have the experience of, say, one hour of music or a two hour film then anyone who doesn’t pay for that is effectively stealing that experience.
You simply don’t have the right to place the value of skilled craftsmen and artists at nothing whatsoever even if you do think they’re overpaid or too rich. Speaking as someone who’d like to end up in the film industry I can say I’d be delighted if I were ever successful though it’d have a somewhat bitter taste because apparently a significant percentage of people would then decide that my success wasn’t earned and I don’t deserve the money I worked hard for.
These people have jobs and their salaries are made up of what you pay (eventually - obviously publishers will give an amount of money upfront but they need to recoup it through sales). How would you feel if the finance department wherever you work just decided you were too rich and a bit of a cock and then kept you on the pay-roll but reduced your salary and pocketed whatever they kept?
I don’t know where the false sense of entitlement even comes from. Maybe it’s somewhere in the 7 pages of this thread that I didn’t read. I’ve heard loads of arguments in favour but am not really interested in constructing any strawmen here.
EDIT: Why do people have a problem with those who get rich off these industries anyway? Do we not celebrate success any more or are people just jealous or what? Put yourself in their shoes.
Fuck you. So-called success derived from shuffling ideas, and not by generating them, should be punished by any means available and at every opportunity. The distribution of free thought is in the interest of humanity; it comes only at the expense of the cancer that is copyright. Copyleft is the antidote. All art and knowledge (if it is to ever be of any earthly value) is destined to be absorbed into the public domain; there is no overall harm in accelerating the process… only common benefit emerges.
This post is hereby Copyleft 2010 by author Comrade Tiki. Any subsequent or derivative replies are subject to free duplication under the same copyleft condition.[/SIZE]
Are you in lawschool or something? Or are you purposefully trying to act like a smartass? Or does it just some naturally?
Team Fortress 2 is awesome by the way.
I’m naturally inclined to sound like a smartass in law school.
Seriously, I can’t believe people get so worked up about the reproduction of ideas. All advances in technology have come from the reproduction of knowledge. You think Gutenberg had it in his mind for people these days to need permission to download texts to their kindles? Of course not! You know, the server’s sitting there burning electricity. It’s not criminal to download what someone else claims rights over…it’s criminal to not enable its distribution.
I pirate every once in a while. All I have to say on that matter I guess.
Pira-I-I mean buying.
Look, I’m actually a supporter of piracy on a number of levels, but the old argument of “I only like one song on a CD and hence shouldn’t have to buy the CD” does constitute stealing, since you’re blatantly flouting the law because you can’t be bothered to use one of the legal alternatives.
[b]Everyone[/b] sounds like a smartass in law school.
But they’re not naturally inclined to do so, they’re merely learning. I sprung from lawyer brood.
Pirating, Singleplayer only games unless it’s worth to buy it (Think about the Orange box).
Buying: Call of duty / Battlefield series the real online games which are worth buying.
The Orange Box has Team Fortress 2.
Also, I always prefer a good singleplayer over multiplayer, so I’ll support singleplayer only games (like Mass Effect 2.)
:facepalm:
No, it isn’t. Why the hell do people keep trying to equate the taking of a COPY to taking the ORIGINAL?
My philosophy is this: Not paying when you have the means to pay = stealing. Not paying when under no circumstances (other than, you know, falling into a hole full of money) could you afford that particular thing = not stealing. Hence, standing up and saying “blah blah I don’t want to buy the whole album blah blah downloading” IS stealing.
I understand that you’re not taking the original, and therefore you’re not falling into the classic definition of thievery, but constantly saying “there’s nothing wrong with downloading” clearly isn’t true. If everyone who could buy games, movies, etc, just decided that they’d rather download it, then those industries would die overnight.
I say: if it doesn’t pollute, it’s not a real industry.
Anyway, loony636, I’m glad you believe downloading Maya isn’t stealing. We’re making progress.
What?
So I can get a car without paying for it just because I can’t afford it?
:facepalm:
And yes, I know piracy is COPYING, and “not” STEALING. I’m justputting lonny’s “philosophy” in the context of other scenarios.
Then you’re not using the legal term or the term as OTHER people use it. If you’re unwilling to use terminology as other people understand it, then you might as well say, “Paper chair CD, from Resonance Cascade Deskjet coin, river studio,” for what good it’ll do you.
Theft is the taking of an original without permission and/or denying the use thereof. Illegally copying something is not stealing.
Nono, my point is that if under no circumstances could you afford that car, there is no opportunity cost for the manufacturer in you copying a car. Since you would have never bought one, they don’t lose any revenue by you having downloaded one, because they never would have made any money out of you.
The issue with physical objects is that you have to take into account additional manufacturing costs. Hence, no ‘copy’ of a car is inherently worthless; each physical car has the net value of the raw materials and the manpower it takes to refine the raw materials into the finished product. The difference with music is, of course, that one digital copy has the same value of the next billion copies: Nil.
Sometimes the real thing is just one massive headache. I got a legitimate copy of Windows 7 Professional for christmas, and when I try to register my CD key, Windows can’t activate it/says it’s invaild or something of the like. wtf? I’ve tried the “slmgr -rearm” trick but it says I have to reinstall the OS before I can do it again -groan- Microsoft…
I bought a completely legal copy of the Orange Box from overseas, only to get it to Australia and not have it activate. I facepalmed.
I then bought a Blu-Ray disk from overseas, only for it not to work in our Blu-Ray player. I facepalmed again (I later got it to work, so its all good 
).