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Software Piracy Seen as Normal
Spad writes "The BBC is reporting that people don't see downloading copyrighted material as theft, despite concerted efforts by the games, music and movie industries to convince them otherwise. The report, titled Fake Nation, claims that '[People] just don't see it as theft. They just see it as inevitable, particularly as new technologies become available...The purchase of counterfeit goods or illegal downloading are seen as normal leisure practices,' However, they also found that while people are generally not buying counterfeit software from dodgy dealers on street corners, they are still happy to purchase them from people they know at the office/pub/school in addition to downloading them.
Nobody can really be that suprised by the 'popularity' of downloading pirated software, but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it."
Piracy isn't theft. Theft is the action in wich one denies others acces to the stolen goods. Piracy doesn't deny anoyne acces to the pirated goods. So piracy is per definition not theft.
People don't mind paying for software\music etc. They just don't like being ripped off with overly inflated prices.
There has been a popular meme throughout history, back to the days of the Old Testament that said that beggars were entitled to the excess of any farmer's crop. If the vagrant were to walk past a farm, they could take as much as they needed from the outer ring of crops, but they were not to venture inside.
This is because it is thought that the person doing the work of farming had more than enough to feed himself and his family, after all, he's got huge tracts of land and will sell the amount he doesn't keep for himself at the market. What little scraps are taken by the passing beggar will hardly be missed.
The same attitude exists with regards to copyrighted materials. "I, one lone person, can't possibly make a dent in the amount of revenue that the copyright owner will make." (It's the same reason many people don't vote.) And they are correct. Individually, they make no impact on the final numbers. They aren't even a rounding error in many cases. But in large numbers, all these individuals refusing to pay for the material (to the copyright owners) make a huge impact.
When every vagrant takes their "fair share" from the outer ring of a crop field, the crop gets smaller and smaller until the farmer and his family starve.
people don't see downloading copyrighted material as theft
that's because:
CopyrightINFRINGEMENT != Theft
-Sj53
... despite concerted efforts by the games, music and movie industries to convince them otherwise ...
Here (germany) these TV-commercials are as bad as the mainstream (streamlined) popmusic. They are without heart. In cinemas they often get booed at. They are even less convincing than the products these guys want to sell.
People think it is okay to pirate software because they think it is okay to steal if they are stealing from the rich. Problem is if everyone starts believing that no one will have any high paying jobs in the tech industry anymore.
It's copyright infringement and the punishments for that are much much higher. You're better off shoplifting a CD or Software than actually copying it. At least if you consider the possible punishments.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
its natural - give us a bunch of extremly efficient copying devices and what else are we gonna do? Information wants to be free as in not fenced in.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Fast forward that to the present: IT'S STILL EASY! Games, movies music are so readily available(for free) i'd be embarassed if i produced any of it. For the less techno-savvy people under us, it's still relatively easy, maybe a magnitude or 2 less, plus they now have a little disposable income to throw around for the sake of convenience, so they might buy the latest movie released from some dodgy bloke out of his trunk. Is this right? NO. Is this illegal? YES! Is it easy? You bet! They're basically doing it because it's convenient, easy, cheap and they've been doing it for years.
Having said that, personally i'm now working and have a lot more money to spend, so i'm buying stuff all the damn time. The solution to all of this: I have no clue, but DRM-short-of-a-gloved-hand-up-the-ass isn't the way to do it.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
What's sadder is that the BBC is going along with this campaign of misinformation. They imply that there are only two viewpoints: It's theft, or it isn't a crime at all. Way to inform your readers... not.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
The media industries have to change their policies and their view of consumers first in order for people to change their beliefs and views on piracy. Period.
-willkill
Obviously people don't think it's worth the money buying from the established wendors. It's percieved as unjust then it cannot be wrong.
Piracy isnt theft at all.
If I download a piece of software made by NoWares Corp. on eMule, does the NoWares Corp. immediatly feel that they are missing one copy of their software product?
No matter how you put it - Software piracy is not theft. Even if there are pirated 100.000.000 copies of any give software, the "offended" company can still sell a billion copies to anyone.
Software Piracy is just what it is. When will people get that apples != oranges, and that piracy != theft?
Piracy == piracy != theft
Also, who'd think that the only people who pirate stuff, are people who wouldnt/couldnt/etc pay for the software at all?
Look at the open-source world. Piracy isnt a problem there, and they make heaps of money even though they give away freely their products.
It's copyright infringement and that's neither theft (the act of taking some property away from someone) nor piracy (the act of robbing ships at sea).
If the cost of downloading that software/music is zero, then why would I pay more than that?
Your post is a self-justification for your refusal to follow the law. Yes, people don't like being ripped off, but no one is forcing them to buy the music or software.
The same goes for the "I'll try it and buy it if I like it" and "I can't afford it, so the company isn't losing any money anyway" crowds.
I don't know when this attitude of entitlement started becoming so prevalent. It seems to have reached a fever pitch in the past couple years.
> [People] just don't see it as theft. They just see it as inevitable, particularly as new technologies become available...
Userfriendly has hit the nail on the head with this explanation of the economics of software piracy. The costs of piracy had hit companies way back in late nineties, these days the piracy factor is calculated into the initial pricing. Where I was working before, they had estimated ~19% piracy rate for a mobile phone app. It is slowly starting to become a market force for the software industry - and the companies hate that. (price it too high, we'll pirate !)
The american corporate's blood sucking is slowly starting to show on the economy. what price for - America Inc (specializing in mergers with oil rich countries with dictators) ?.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Pedofiles don't see looking at pics of kids being raped as wrong either....
Come to think of it, car theifs don't see anything wrong with it either... Just the normal way of life you know.... Car theifs need free drugs too!
When these corporations purport that they're losing $2 billion every year because of Piracy is it because that is the value of the total software that is being pirated and distributed (counting each copy as unique..) ? Because if they are, then they're pretty wrong in their estimates and are just blowing figures out of their arse. (Uk related pun ;))
It isn't necessary that every piece of pirated software would have been sold legit if there existed no piracy. There is no proof that people who download/buy pirated software would buy the originals if there were no pirated versions available...
I for one, certainly wouldn't. If I were making commercial profit from a certain software, I would definitely buy it. For example, I own a legitimate copy of vBulletin (even though I could have used the free phpBB). And my website isn't exactly 'all that legit'.
However, if I need to pay for MS Windows, and there are no pirated versions available, then I would rather use linux. And I'm sure most 'teenagers' (RTFA) would do the same, to cut costs.
In a way, come to think of it.. anti piracy is good for linux ^_^.
Downloading software or music is one thing - making money off of "pirated" copies is another. I don't even think about using Gnutella or downloading MST3K DAP releases from eDonkey (using eMule) because no one is making a profit from those actions(ok, my ISP). I would never use Kazaa, because piracy is their business model (and if you think Kazaa is just a tool, I think you are).
In fact, one torrent supplier of rare Star Wars stuff always points out to *NOT* buy stuff from the "Dark Side Dealers" and make copies available so those trying to cash in on piracy can't.
I'd copy Windows, Office or even UnixWare for you no problem - but if I saw you selling copies of any of these I might just kick you in the nuts.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I, too, can't understand why people would pay for copied software. I suppose people just don't have the time to technical knowledge to get it for free. Perhaps they also kid themselves that they are helping a poor self employed buisness man. Who knows?
While I don't condone wide spread piracy there are some types of pircay that I don't have that much of a problem with. For example, go back a few years, you were interested in ray tracing and 3d modelling. You had a choice of pov-ray and coding all the scene files by hand or paying megabucks for 3d studio (I know this is a little simplified). If it is something that you are only semi-interested (you would never consider doing it commercially) that I don't see a big problem with you grabbing a cracked copy of 3ds. After all you would never buy it, and in reality what has discreet lost? They didn't even have to pay for the bandwidth used in the download. I pick 3ds because it was widely cracked (and still is I believe). It used to be protected with a dongle (not sure if it still is) and there was no "entry level" version. They seem to have finally figured it out though as you can now get a feature restricted free version which is supprisingly good.
As for music piracy well I say eat as much as you can. Reproduction costs of music now must be tiny yet the price of music in real terms is still sky high. I can't help feeling that we, as a consumers, are being ripped off left right and center. If we aren't beign riped off then the music industry needs to be prompted to look at ways of cutting back on costs. Perhaps the problem is that there are to few music producers.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
It's what you get from trying to push DRM
I've never paid money for pirated software. Most pirates swap or give stuff away.
People who have no problem with this often still consider it wrong to make money from piracy.
It is taken for granted by the younger generation. I remember being in a record store once, overhearing young girls saying aloud that they could 'just download it' instead, like, who cares anyway.
Funilly enough, I can tolerate people who copy in private amongst their closer friends and family members, but I have a bigger issue with people who sell pirated software and corporations pirating, because these people are actually profiting from it in some way. People will pay for something if they see fit, but if it results in some virtual loss for some company that never would have seen the money anyway, then "boohoo". Programs are not physical objects, they are state, which can easily be duplicated without effort. When software stops being developed commercially due to piracy (riiight), then the next generation would start a new wave, and the process repeats, until at some point it would even out when people respect each other a little more. Right now both sides are egotist assholes, the laws just slow 'evolution' in this matter by acting prematurely.
It's like the drug trade. People want it, the more difficult (expensive) you make it to get, the more creative and inventive folks get at it.
How would you stop the criminal side of the trade? For example, with marihuana, many have said that de-criminalising personal usage and growing of limited amounts would lead to less money made by the criminals, less crime.
If by the same token, copyright owners would (use modern technology) lower the costs then piracy would not be profitable and people would be less inclined to entertain the criminal market.
If cd's would drop from 26 Euro to about 10 euro I think that piracy would end in Europe. Not the I copy my buddies cd piracy but the I make 150 copies and sell them in the street kind. The buddy system has always existed and in most places is considered fair use. Heck even drm-iTunes allows me to share my music with my buddy...
So the analogy with the farmer should be that the vagrant take his fill and not fill the chevy...
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Why is software piracy considered "theft" when there is a perfectly better kind of illegal classification for it: espionage? It is, after all, gleaning information from the interaction of two parties that wish that information to reside between themselves (or, if one does not, is still bound by contract to keep that information private).
Well looks like the farmer is quite the idiot, then. All he has to do is plant weeds and the like on the outer fringe and the problem is solved.
But here's where your analogy fails. One, by taking crops to his/her heart's desire, the vagrant denied both the farmer and others from it. That is stealing. However, 'pirates' do no deny others from partaking in media they are 'pirating'. That's the difference.
The second point is that there is no evidence that the 'pirate' would consume the product if (s)he couldn't get a 'pirated' version. The logic is that a person may watch something because it is free (via 'piracy'), so (s)he has nothing to lose, except leisure time. If (s)he were to buy or consume the product legally, the cost might exceed the benefits, for him/her, and thus the 'pirate' may not consume the said product.
Thirdly, a lot of 'pirates' are from overseas where they have no access to that product (especially in the case of TV). I'm sure many 'pirates' would pay for it if content providers actually provided it to them at a reasonable cost.
It's not all plain and simple as your farmer and vagrant analogy make it appear to be.
I don't know about your dictionary but mine describes stealing as "To take (the property of another) without right or permission."
To any sane individual who doesn't have a bug to bear, this is quite a different thing from copying something without somebody's permission. Theft and unauthorised copying are very different things, both morally and legally.
If you steal my bike, I lose the use of my bike. If you copy the book that I just wrote, I don't lose the book I just wrote. I still own it and can do with it as I wish.
Your argument that this thing is theft because it deprives the author of a sale is complete nonsense. Like so many record & movie industry funded studies, you assume that for every single copyrighted work downloaded, the industry loses a sale.
This flies in the face of hundreds of years of economic theory. I only know the basics myself (to degree level :-) but it's widely accepted that if something costs less than something else, then for all normal goods, you will consume more. So it's really not shocking that people will actually download stuff they wouldn't buy. Why? Because it's free.
Such studies also tend to ignore the *positive* effects of unauthorised downloading. Take this scenario: you download something you've never heard of. You like it. You go on to buy it. Therefore, downloading can increase sales through a free advertising effect.
The only non-record industry-funded research I've seen so far (it was posted to /. a while ago, the link avoids me) backed up roughly this logic. The very most popular bands did lose out a little to unauthorised downloads, it's true. However, for the vast majority of bands who aren't reaching the top 10 with every album, downloading actually *increased* sales.
*Increased* sales.
piracy != theft.
All the content companies would love to convince the general public that copyright infringement is theft, then they can paint everyone as thieves, rather than simply people refusing to pay exorbitant fees.
And when they produce all their figures of X amount of revenue lost to "theft", our congresscritters are much more inclined to enact tougher legislation. However, the public, much wiser than they assumed, is not buying into it.
Somehow, I don't feel very sorry for organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA and I would bet that a whole generation is just like me...
Microsoft have built their empire on software piracy. Without piracy, Microsoft would lose their position as the dominant OS - and they know it.
Sure, they pretend to be high and mighty, and try high-profile stunts and publicity such as "Aw. Gee guys, y'know, right, we busted these guys who were, like, pirating our software and stuff, coz, y'know, like, we're all anti-piracy and that". Its sooooo transparent!
Every time I go to the cinema there is some advert or other by FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft, a UK org) telling us how naughty copying is and how much trouble we'll be in if we try to record the film.
And every time there is a ripple of giggles. The more serious and ominous the warnings, the harder people laugh.
For better or worse, most people just don't think that copyright infringement is a serious crime. Most people acknowledge that it is "wrong", but probably regard it as no more serious than eating a penny sweet from the pick-and-mix. I am of the generation that grew up home taping (LPs, CD, Spectrum/C64 games), most of my friends don't see a little low level piracy as being a bad thing, in fact most would say they discovered new bands from friends tapes and ended up buying more (some would be lying, but not all).
The media world has got an uphill struggle before it convinces people that casual copyright infringement is anything like the serious crime they think it is.
Paul
Paul Leader
While that may be true for physical goods, I am not all that convinced it is true for 'intellectual property'
For someone taking crops out of a field, it reduces the total amount of crop. However, when I download music off the net doesn't mean that the total amount of music on the net has been reduced.
I would also tend to believe that CD sales have an inelastic demand curve. The people who are willing to fork cash for a Brittany Spears CD are going to pay for it regardless if it is downloadable or not. The people who refuse to listen to Brittany Spears will not listen to it even if it is made available for free. Food isn't like this at all. Offer free food and people will stuff themselves with all they can possible eat even if they would not normally eat chocolate covered hotdogs otherwise.
One way they are alike, however, is in loss leader. I personally have purchased CDs after hearing samples I have downloaded off the net. Likewise, I have made purchases at a grocery store of food I would not have otherwise purchased because I was handed a free sample.
From TFA:
"The government has spent millions of pounds to change public awareness of drink-driving and smoking.
"As a society, we need to go through a similar process for creativity and intellectual property."
This isn't the change that needs to happen, and it won't happen. People don't see downloading material as wrong because it isn't wrong: nobody gets hurt by it.
I think big change is required, and the new system should consider these points as axioms:
1. The transfer of digital information deprives nobody of anything, and should be lawful.
2. People who create digital works that society considers desirable should be compensated.
This suggests to me a system whereby the creators are paid once, up front, for their creation, and then it must be freely distributable.
Of course, that's the thinnest shell of a new system, and it would raise many questions and problems. But people aren't going to drop their belief in points 1 and 2, and I see this sort of system as the only way of resolving them.
I'm doing a bit of copying for my friends, and every time I burn a DVD I ask for a few bucks to cover the media and my time burning. Now, I would charge the exact same amount even if I were burning out something completely legitimate, like Linux ISOs. In my eyes they aren't charged for what's on those DVDs, they are paying for the media and labour involved.
So, are my friends (and probably the people in the article) really paying for the pirated software?
The anti piracy messages and lawsuits came in too late. Many people have grown up with piracy (I prefer the phrase copyright infringers more) as a way of life. I copied my first game in 1984. A whole generation grew up knowing and doing these sorts of things and due to the popularity of 'free' and the growing momentum of these numbers, its too late. Even now children at the school my children go to talk about how they watch all the latest movies at home before they hit the cinema (or while they are at the cinema). Is is societal corruption or evolution? And what does this mean for the future?
The farmer is just paying his contribution to the social security system. If farmers dont grant beggars a small amount of their crop to keep them alive, the beggars will become violent - everybody looses.
I wonder if you could define 'profit' for me.
The reason I ask is this... you take issue with people who pirate media/software for profit of some sort. But those who don't, you tolerate.
However, is John Doe downloading Photoshop and learning it not profiting from it as well ? Sure, it may not be monetary profit. But he did profit from being able to learn how to use it. His immediate profit is skills. Long-term profit may be a job.
Compare that to Poor Schmuck who 'did the right thing' and bought Photoshop (Elements, Edu, whatever) and profited in the same way.
In a purely hypothetical fashion, if they both gleaned an equal amount of information from it, developed an equal amount of skill, etc.
Then Poor Schmuck is still minus whatever amount of money it cost him to legally acquire Photoshop. John Doe is not. This is all regardless of whether Adobe will still sell a copy of Photoshop to whatever place John Doe goes to work at. Not to mention that with Joe Schmuck they got 2 sales. *shrug*
Why can't "the powers that be", the record companies, the law, etc, see that this is the way people want to get hold of their content (films, music, tv). What they want, when they want, easily.
Trying to stop this is like standing on the beach with your arms wide trying to stop the tide coming in. Its that stupid. Repeat after me: THIS CAN NOT BE STOPPED.
The challenge, should they choose to accept it, is
1.) for content owners to make technology that can charge for any copy made anywhere anyhow and
2.) secondly, and equally importantly, to drastically lower the cost of each copy so consumers feel it's fair - how about a trying a "pay what you like" scheme, and giving buyers the option of just the digital copy, or digital copy plus plastic case+colour inlay.
3.) To allow true try before you buy for all digital media - afterall that's what a lot of piracy is for these days.
I think many people if they felt they were actually being treated fairly (rather than ripped off or prosecuted), would pay a fair amount, especially if they felt the bulk of the payment was going to the artist and not the fat greedy media companies.
Media companies have one, and only one choice - to go with the flow of copying, or to to be drowned in the incoming tide.
In order for something to be theft, there has to be an "intention to permanently deprive". You have to take something away from someone. That's the legal definition.
If you copy something, the original is still perfectly usable. Nobody is deprived of the original for a moment.
The copyright "industry's" attempts to equate breach of copyright with theft has fallen upon deaf ears because people aren't that stupid; they know the analogy is stupid from the start.
Bodies which name themselves using the phrase "copyright theft" are open to public ridicule, because everyone knows that breach of copyright absolutely not the same nor even similar to theft.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I mean, everybody knows that... it's not even a matter of people "seeing it as inevitable", people don't even "see" it as anything. It's considered something perfectly normal, something that people don't even think about. An interesting article would be why we came to this point. IMO, because of the reasons some other people already stated here. First of all, because it's so easy. Second, because people don't like to be ripped off. Third... well, we could carry on from here but you get the point.
Piracy? Forget piracy.
You want to know what the biggest problem for small developers is? All those idiots making free games and applications, like all the flash games or even Mozilla.
How is a guy supposed to compete with FREE? I'm a shareware author, and most shareware games don't sell at all anymore because there are THOUSANDS of free games out there. And I'd like to write an FTP app that is better than any other out there, but how can I compete with a free product which is very good? Even if my product is better, it's not going to be better by a large enough margin to matter.
Piracy? HA. Piracy is the LEAST of MY worries. The reason I'm not making money has nothing to do with people copying my software, and everyhting to do with people who are willing to throw away their free time writing apps and games that they then give away.
There's another problem with piracy, besides the theory that the producers are out of pocket as a result.
In Ireland at least, the warning that piracy (of films in particular) supports terrorism, is quite true. While those actually pirating the stuff themselves aren't, those who buy pirated movies at the market, etc., are most likely buying from the equivalent of an IRA high street store. One of the IRA's rackets is pirated goods (the others being smuggled cigarettes, diesel, etc.)
Not sure how true the ad at the start of the movie is in the States, but just to let you know, it's not as crazy as it sounds.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
People see 'theft' as being when you walk off with an object that belongs to somebody else. Simply copying data is never going to show up on most people's moral compass as being even remotely close to the conventional view of theft.
"look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this download is mine, OK?" (modified Zaphod Beeblebrox from HHGTTG) :-)
To a certain extent, shareware and free (as in freedom) software is now the new model. Don't prevent copying - instead encourage copying - and have a business plan which makes copying an asset, not a liability.
Will this happen in film and music? Not soon, but there are models which could spring up. For example, imagine software which allowed many people to collaborate on a piece of music over the Internet - they wouldn't need to be in the same place, or even at the same time. Or how about software which generates film-quality movies from a script and simple director commands? Not possible now, but surely in the future. If this software became widely available it would turn everyone with a script into a director, and dramatically reduce the cost of making films. Of course, most films produced this way would be crap, but that just means that a reputation system could be used to filter out the diamonds.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
If you feel compelled to do the same, be my guest - though I suggest personalizing the text so that they don't simply assume it's spam and ignore it.
I sing my own songs, make sure the material is either out of copyright or provided by generous folks as Creative Commons.
I write my own software, and use that given freely by those who have GPL'ed before me.
I have no problem with the people who say I shouldn't download their stuff without paying. I have no money for that purpose, and I don't like their stuff anyway.
I share my stuff, for the reputation.
All copyright; but I'm no 'pirate'. I play by the rules. Works better that way.
Just keep the laws the way they are now (in the UK, at any rate). I plan to win.
6 hours on Broadband, and we're there.
How did the Statue of Liberty get there in the first place, anyway ? A gift, by any chance ?
I'm a big fan of buying software from the guy at the pub
a/ Do law must follow general ethics (street guy's ethics) or
b/ does it must promote ethics even though it goes against general ethics ?
Either answer is problematic.
if a/ then why some law are not still removed ? For instance most people dont care about homosexuality or abortion and they are still forbidden in many places.
if b/ then why some ethics are still against the law ? Looking at the % of "illegal" downloading it should be put as "legal". And what to say about prohibition (whether alcohool, drugs or guns) ?
Who does law must serve ?
The biggest number ? They migth get spinned or just loose their ethics.
Some guardians of ethics ? Now people refuse to follow religion or philosophy ethics and prefer their very own personnal ethics.
Some commercial or political influence ? They tend to only server their own interests, but this has imppacts on wide scale.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Actually from my own research, it's much more likely that the participants knew that it was wrong but have developed fairly compex ways of justifying their activity. It's called "neutralization", whereby deviants 'neutralize' the social controls that normally inhibit illegal behaviour. This theory was originally put forward in 1957 by Sykes and Matza, and you can read about it here and here.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
How can people take copyright law seriously when it's completely obvious that the laws in these areas are formed by negotiation among white collar crooks? This notion is deeply embedded in popular culture.
Spoiler Alert
Raising the question of what Tony does for a living, Meadow asks bluntly, "Are you in the Mafia?" Tony replies that some of his money comes from illegal gambling, and probes, "How does that make you feel?" Meadow replies, "Sometimes I wish you were like other dads. Like Mr. Scangarelo, for example. An advertising executive for big tobacco."
If you can handle the sex, violence, copulatory interjections, and (most difficult) the moral ambivalence, rent the episodes and pay attention. It might haved saved the poster of this topic from his career in gormhood.
Theft has an impact on people's lives, and you're not entitled to their work without fair compensation.
Second, from an earlier /. post, "At one now defunct company that I know about they had 20 real licenses for about 150 work stations and servers. In my experience this isn't a very uncommon at all."
Further, from my own experience implementing a software protection scheme, and seeing sales suddenly double from "loyal" customers, I'd say there's quite a bit of "evidence" that people would pay for it... if they had to.
Unfortunately, kid's can now steal from the privacy of their parent's basement without going to the mall and without a good chance of getting caught. High reward, little risk.
But please, don't tell me they wouldn't or couldn't have paid for it otherwise. When I was a teenager we somehow always found the money for the things we really wanted.
Or (scary concept) did without.
Third, if you think the price is unreasonable, then... and here's another idea: don't buy it. The company will get the idea and adjust prices.
But don't steal the work anyway just because you think you're somehow entitled to it.
Sorry, but too many of your "points" are nothing more than the rationalizations a thief always makes, as in "He shouldn't have left that door unlocked. Really just asking for it."
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If Jesus and his crew didnt have problems with doing this kind of petty theft then I cant find any moral fault in it either.
I ranted about this sort of thing on my blog recently. What's happening here is simply that companies are failing to supply what consumers want.
For example (and to wander ever so slightly off-topic), consider the recent debacle over the leak of Star Wars Episode III onto the newsgroups.
The only legitimate way to see that film was in a cinema/movie theatre, where one must endure people chattering away, texting their friends, munching on their popcorn. Not to mention that cinema projection technology is really showing its age now and you have to watch the whole thing in 24 frames-per-second stutter-vision! I HATE AND DREAD going to the cinema with a passion for these reason.
Many people now have huge widescreen TVs at home with Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS sound systems that can display a picture at an effective 100 frames per second (well, I have anyway). Suddenly all of the disadvantages of the movie theate have gone, but now you can sit and enjoy a beer or two while you watch your movie (and pause it when you need to pee)!
The current market model is old fashioned and needs to change to fill the gap between what people want and what companies will provide. Here's an idea. What doesn't the Lucasfilm website allow people to download all their movies, but in a format that is a little less than DVD quality?
As a side note, I wasn't originally going to see Episode III at the cinema at all, given the dreadful prequels that preceeded it. After downloading and watching the first 20 minutes of the famous timecode version, I changed my mind and ventured to the cinema. I still had to endure children in my row rustling sweet wrappers and constantly getting up to go to the loo. And the opening sequences gave me headaches, as I am used to the 100Hz display off my home TV. And the sound was rather weak too, despite being in a THX certified theatre. Since then, I have downloaded far better quality versions of this film and will continue to watch them at home in peace!
Ppl start to think if value of software is zero or near to zero as open-source spawned programs claim, then its hard to convice them otherwise. Bricklayer or hotel waiter doesnt know what u know, but they see examples and they are able to compare. Its like if one car dealer sells car for 0$ and the other car dealer sells for 50000$. They feel cheated by high prices and here u go piracy.
In your little fable, it is the performing of work on the Sabbath that is unlawful, not the plucking of corn.
Note that it was never insinuated in the original post that taking of corn was wrong, only that too much was detrimental to the farmer.
It's quite appropriate that, where a piece of work is still being sold, there should be protections over it. I'm even easy about Disney getting an extension over Mickey Mouse... MM is still being commercialised, so I'm not entirely comfortable with a Mickey free-for-all by any Johnny-come-lately.
But there is no place for 90-year copyrights for works that are not being commercialised. Copyright should operate on a 'use it or lose it' basis where, say, after five years of non-exploitation, the work is decopyrighted and opened to anyone who wants it.
Then perhaps we can get our DVD box set of "It's like, you know". [and "Nightingales" too, please]
Visit Snowflake Showers
it certainly doesnt mean a rich minority can impose draconian protection methods
The basic fact is that we can copy material whether we have authorization or not. Those who would profit from our purchasing it wish us to purchase it, and they appeal to our altruism -- they want us to purchase their copies because we want them to have our money, as if they were a charity. This is not far-fetched, in general. There's nothing wrong or silly about asking for charity. Charity and altruism are things I am willing to offer, and many others are too.
But are the people asking for charity here people who would ever give the same to us? They claim to be in need, and us to be able to help; but if we are in need, will they help? Will Microsoft ever lower its prices just because it can afford to and it would save us money? Or do they price their software wherever it makes them the most money?
If corporations base all their decisions entirely on their own personal profit, how can they ever expect us to sacrifice our personal profit for their good? Is that fair?
I believe in sharing, but when I share with others, and they don't share back, I stop sharing. I only pay for free software.
Well, the software industry wants to have their cake and eat it, too. You spend $50 on a game, but you don't own it (according to the industry), you've *licensed* it. If the disk gets scratched, though, you can't just get another copy, you have to spend another $50 on another license for something you've already licensed, at least according to the industry.
Sure, there might have been some provision in the law at some point about keeping one backup copy, but what if the CD has copy-protection? In the DMCA world, you're not even entitled to circumvent their protection to make a single backup.
Yet, while they're perfectly happy to stick it to the consumer, if (heaven forbid) someone were to stick it to them, they'd cry a river, lobby congress, have legislation enacted, and hire jack-booted thugs to conduct raids on anyone they suspect.
A little over a decade ago, I got completely fed up with spending good money - and lots of it - on software that sucked. I decided then that *all* software was shareware, that I would never again purchase a program without trying it out first - even if the trying it out was accomplished through piracy.
Copyright infringement is neither theft nor robberty. True enough. But it's *still* a crime. You are not physically depriving the creator of the orginal. No, what you are actually doing is stealing the creator his right to do with the original as he choses.
To be more exact: you are violating his *exlusive* right to reproduce and sell copies. Buying an album, DVD or a game doesn't give you the right to make copies of the content (unless for home use that is) and distributing them!
This is the very basic meaning of copyright and it seams in all the FUD spread by either big firms or the pirates, that meaning is getting lost and deformed. Copyright is not something tangible. It's a basic right which shouldn't be violated.
There's plenty of free stuff out there that you *do* have a right to use.
Deleted
I agree, theft does have an impact on people's lives. But this is not theft. I guess you skipped out on that rationalization.
Yes, people can go without many products. Of course, the money issue only crops up if the product is available legally in that market. What if it isn't?
I already said that many people would pay for it if the price was reasonable. I'd like to see you charge an exorbitant price for your software, with or without software protection, and see how your sales fare. That is a demand/supply issue, and not a piracy issue.
Will the company really adjust prices? Has Microsoft, whose software is amongst the most pirated, adjusted its prices? Nope. It only offers cheaper, lower-quality versions of its software for those markets. Has Hollywood lowered its price? No. Going to a movie costs an arm and a foot, and some extra if you want popcorn.
I'm not saying people are entitled to piracy because companies charge too much. Rather what I meant was that if companies really want to see an end to piracy, charge less, making their products more effective alternatives to pirated products.
Seriously. Don't do it.
I thought I was getting a bargain when I bought a bunch of stuff off this pirate I met in a pub, but I later found out that the parrot was in fact dead, and not just pining for the fjords as he claimed, the eyepatch was for the wrong eye, and the cutlass was made of plastic.
Still, at least I didn't feel quite as ripped off as the time I bought a DVD from this bloke I know - he works in a place called "HMV". Paid £20 for the DVD, I did.. what what do I find when I get home and pop it in my player? I'm forced to sit through a bloody two minute intro lambasting me for my evil criminal pirate ways, and how I, personally, am causing the entire film industry's collective children to die a horrible death from starvation. And it was all encrypted so I couldn't (legally) make a backup of it for my own personal use.
Bloody inferior quality goods. I've learnt my lesson. I'm sticking to Bittorrent in the future.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Piracy was used in those days by some companies (read: Micro$oft) to promote inferior products (like FoxPro) in developing countries. This was a typical marketing tactics to kill better products like Paradox from Borland. The goal was to create a pool of FoxPro developers.
Borland took extreme precaution to avoid piracy, and their superior products were never popular in countries like China, India and many other nations.
hilarious
If farmers dont grant beggars a small amount of their crop to keep them alive, the beggars will become violent.
yeah, because all beggars behave the same; never has it happened that someone chose differently and did not give in to crime. after all, everyone is doomed. you have no chance to change anything in your life. just look: all the people made the same choice as you did. easy isn't it? i guess you feel so... irresponsible now? hey what the hell, i hear you say, it's not like i can shape my life is it. it's not like i have to go out of my way to actually better myself and do something useful so i can stop stealing. no sirree.
fucking idiot. it's people like you who ruin this world.
Global warming is a cube.
You cannot just expect your product to sell itself. This is the problem with the music industry, instead of selling the peer to peer network and access to the music itself, they want to try to sell the license to listen to the music. Selling access is how ISPs profit, if we had to pay $5 a day to visit Slashdot how many of us would be posting here?
While your analogy isn't bad, it isn't entierly correct in this instance. Software Piracy in particular is also a rather undervalued advertising medium. After all, what better way for people to be aware of good software such as games than to actually play the games themselves? Not only that, but with the spread of these games, word of mouth from all the people who pirated it quickly gives further advertisement for the product which potentially leads people to buy it, and those who pirate it will sometimes buy it if the product is deemed good enough.
Now, granted there are certainly people who won't pay at all and will just take this free stuff for granted, but while I admittedly have partaken in piracy before, I always only do it with products that I either could not otherwise afford to obtain, or products that I may purchase in the future.
That said, piracy isn't right, but my point in this is that it's also not as wrong as some would have you believe; it's a very hazy issue when it comes to good and bad, which is one reason why people feel it's ok.
Like the uproar over Valve's use of Steam. But of course we got the standard "If Valve goes out of business in 10 years I'm screwed"
After Carmack's comments about being uber-pissed about the number of pirated doom3 copies out there days after the release, expect Id and others to follow the steam model.
Who blames them. You spend $10 million on developing a game and the day its released its all over P2P
News just in from Italy: Buying bread supports the Mafia
Linux is not Windows
I'm lucky. I know lots of really fast FTP servers with lots of high quality software on them. And best of all? It's completely free, and legal.
Get your own free personal location tracker
When justifying war, the argument is often made that the death of a few is justified by the saving of many more.
We often say the moral action is the one that brings the greatest benefit to the largest number of people.
Therefore copying software, many gain something for free, at the cost of depriving a few of income.
By the above argument you have a moral obligation to copy as much software as possible... Or the justification for 'moral-war' is invalid. Both cannot be true as that would be a self contradiction.
You could argue that by copying, people will stop writing software - but that is obviously rubbish as we can see from the free-software movement.
Besides, if people stop writing generic software because of piracy, people will have to pay programmers directly to adapt free software to their needs. If the ammount of money available to invest in new software is constant - more money will now be spent on new features and entirely new software products... In other words copying software stops companies writing one product and then sitting back and collecting money for effectively doing nothing.
The core concept of copyright law is that "We the People" defend certain rights to your intellectual property in exchange for "Fair Use" and ultimate release of your IP into Public Domain.
"Fair Use" is non-commercial personal or educational use, which describes the majority of the "Piracy" that occurs.
Nothing has been legally mandated into the public domain since the 40's. "Fair Use" has all but been eliminated. So, why are we spending taxpayers $$$ to defend these "Rights" without the reciprocal benefits to society?
If I download a copy of a $700 program like Adobe Photoshop, with the mere goal of learning how to use it, or learning what it's capabilities are, I am downloading it under the very definition of "Fair Use". When I use this program to produce graphics that people pay me money for, that's when I am in excess of "Fair Use".
I used "Pirated" copies of Photoshop to learn how to use it. When I had a client come to me and offer me $7500 to make a few graphics for them, I promptly went out and laid down $700 for Photoshop.
This is the spirit of Copyright law.
Ignoring all of this the lesson that IP owners can learn from this study is that you can charge money for IP, even if it could be copied under "Fair Use", as long as what you charge is reasonable.
I am very careful about what I buy on the iTunes music store, as I may not have heard it in it's entirety, and if I download 20 songs just to hear them once I spend $20. If they put them at, say, a 10 price point, it wouldn't hurt me badly enough financially after downloading 100 songs that I would feel any regret. As it sits I spend maybe $10 at the iTunes music store a month. If songs were 10 a piece, I would likely spend $100 a month at the iTunes music store.
If people are willing to pay for copyrighted works, even if they are using it in a "Fair Use" manner, doesn't it stand to reason that they would pay a similar amount to acquire this IP "legally?"
-=(Lord Crosis)=-
I cant help but feel absoloutly no simpathie for the music industry nor the large software companies and of course the movie industries...
If they simply moved into the future sell movies online and music online without licences which require you need some on with BA in there name to read and understand just to download a simple single.
If they sold CD's for £5 rather than £13 for a album i would buy it.
but until they do i will download the matrial which i enjoy rahter than spending my entire alouance on one cd and not being able to do other things i enjoy which also cost money.
and perhaps i would if i knew the artist made some money of it... but they dont and if i dint know that the cd's cost pennys to make.
You can smell the stench of there greed where ever you go, always trying to take the little money i have !
GRRRR
Sure you can argue that copyright infringment is not "theft". Sure you can argue that copyright infringment is not "piracy", because copyright infingers do not have eyepatches, cutlasses & parakeets on their shoulders. Still, if somebody produces a piece of software and wants to have some money from those who would like to use it, should he not receive it? If his price is unreasonably high, cheaper competitors or OSS coders will fill the need. If you still want his software, pay him. It's that simple.
All those word games are just excuses from greedy guys who want something for nothing.
If I could take a Jaguar, and the original purchaser would never percieve any repercussions, and the manufacturer would never find any parts missing, I would be bling bling. Awww yeah. (Hoping I could register it somewhere.) There is a difference. You can say there's not, but you're spewing corporate rhetoric. We can't make a weak analogy and say the same rules apply. Information is something which could be given away, but isn't. It is a commodity. But only if both parties agree and are willing to participate in the concept. Those who know how will get it for free. But saying that 'in reality' it's a tangible item when it is not is simply some sort of shared madness. I think the problem is that, amazingly, we haven't yet quite defined what software is. People work to create it and expect some compensation, as do the corporate entities their sweat blood and tears are often exploited by. What are we left with? We lack a system to deal with software. It's dealt with as a tangible object, and that simply won't do. It is an intangible. I could create it. I could remove it from my HDD without any real effort. If it's tangible then we are all magicians. Even the script kiddies.
Personally, I think this says something quite large about the software industry; that is, of course, that prices range from high to exhorbant for most of the code rights sold on the market.
Not that it really impedes the market in its ability to turn a profit...
From TFA:
"The government has spent millions of pounds to change public awareness of drink-driving and smoking.
"As a society, we need to go through a similar process for creativity and intellectual property."
No, the government does not have to spend millions of pounds to change public awareness in this case, because copyright infringement doesn't kill people, drink-driving and smoking does! Shame on anyone who mentions lining-the-pockets-of-media-companies and drink-driving in the same argument
While not technically a theft, copyright infringement is a crime. And you know who hurts? It doesn't hurt Microsoft/Adobe/Macromedia whose software are the most pirated, no sir. It hurts any little producer of software. I've seen lot of photo retouching programs die because people preferred to pirate Photoshop. Those programs were like 30$, 40$ and well worth the money. For many home users they were actually better/easier than PS, but still people wanted what the Pro used. This is just an example of how what you may think a little damage for a big company becomes and HUGE damage for little software producers.
Let me add my voice to those pointing out that it's not theft but copyright infringement.
I realize it won't do any good. I realize that there is a solid, stable population of people on
Yet I persevere.
It's not theft. It's the more serious, and utterly unrelated, crime of copyright infringement, covered by a totally different area of law in both the US and UK.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
On the subject at hand: I agree that illegal downloading is copyright infringment and denies the copyright holder of revenue.
But I was wondering about the bigger picture here. If the public at large condones such behavior and doesn't see it as a crime, should it NOT be a crime in the legal sense?
If laws and guverment are put in place to represent 'the people' shouldn't they reflect the people's view?
Here I'm thinking of: illegal downloading, speed limits, ID cards, airport security checks and other laws that differ from the general public's view.
Richard
I've never understood the US War On Some Drugs, because it seems to me that Americans of all people understand the economics of supply and demand.
It's a bit different with copyright infringement, because first world countries would rather get rich off ideas in perpetuity than have to do manual labour.
Which itself is unsustainable. There's a proverb, I think from India, which says, "If I be a queen and you be a queen, who will pound the butter?"
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Instead of writing shareware, perhaps you should invest your new-found free time in improving your trolling?
The law makes a clear distinction between the two things, it's a pity that journalists can't do the same.
No sig today...
isn't the public not understanding that "piracy" is theft, its the industry not understanding that it isn't.
Dueteronomy 24:19-20: "When you are harvesting your crops and forget to bring in a bundle of grain from your field, don't go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. Then the LORD your God will bless you in all you do.
When you beat the olives from your olive trees, don't go over the boughs twice. Leave some of the olives for the foreigners, orphans, and widows.
In all cases this law makes it clear that the owner has first claim to all of their farm's produce, but that they should not pick them clean but should leave whatever was missed during the first harvest for the poor. The poor don't have first rights to any of the owner's property.
For a practical example of how this actually worked see Ruth 2.
Also note that this was for basic sustance. These people would have faced starvation or out-and-out begging (and potential exploitation) if this type of law wasn't in place. Copying music, movies, or video games has absolutely no impact on your ability to survive, it's for pure entertainment.
Piracy isn't theft. Theft is the action in wich one denies others acces to the stolen goods. Piracy doesn't deny anoyne acces to the pirated goods. So piracy is per definition not theft.
I am no lawyer but from what I remember of the legeal course I took at Uni, the definition of theft consists of two parts:
Actus Reus - The unauthorized taking or use.
Mens Rea - The intent to deprive.
So if you use pirated software you first take a copy of a piece of Software that somebody else put alot of effort and money into. Does that act in it self qualify as Actus Reus? I suppose that can be debated. However you then use this software without compensating the original maker of the product knowing full well that you are supposed to pay for the privilege. Now to me that is definetly Mens Rea. You are making a copy of that software with the intent to deprive the producer of the software of the revenue your use of a copy of this product would otherwise generate for him. This intent to deprive automaically makes the act of making and using your pirated copy of said software Actus Reus. So, so it would seem to me that using pirted software does indeed fulfill the definition of theft. It is not traditional zero-sum theft but a form of theft none the less. If you are pirating software at least be honest about the fact the you are doing something wrong.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
In Ireland at least, the warning that piracy (of films in particular) supports terrorism, is quite true.
Not really. It is the combination of three things that supports terrorism:
1) Our current copyright laws.
2) The way in which the industry licenses their work under those laws.
3) The public ignoring those laws.
Any one of the three could change and the market for selling pirated movies disappears.
All we are seeing is a black market that has sprung up as a result of monopolies and cartels. It's nothing new but I personally thing that when a legal environment allows monopolies and cartels to form then it is the laws that are wrong. It's no good blaming the consumers for trying to avoid the cartels.
It is funny that you mention cigarettes, diesel etc. These are all things that the government tightly controls. How much terrorism is funded by the sale of things that goverments haven't heavily taxed or otherwise intervened in?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Yes, but this is an invalid argument. Suppose that an IRA supporter owns stock in Microsoft, Sony, GM and Ford. That doesn't make it wrong or immoral to buy from these companies.
I'm living in France, and media prices are rising at an incredible pace. In 2003 I probably bought 15-20 DVDs and about the same number of CDs, and some more books.
This year, the online retailers where I bought my stuff (at an average of 12-15EUR/DVD) increased their prices to a level where I can buy only half of this.
Mind you, this increase occured while the dollar was decreasing, and this while most movies are made in the USA and in Japan.
It's the multinationals who actually steal. While not having pirated media myself, I see piracy as healthy, as it is the only way some (young) people can have a normal access to media.
If they have a piracy problem, the multinationals should lower their prices to a civilized level, and not keep the markets captive using region control shit.
Because it's copyright infrigement, it is not illegal to download copyrighted material. It's illegal to upload it.
It could be that a reason people don't see downloading material as "theft," is that the law doesn't see it that way either.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
They do: prison industry.
That's a lovely metaphor. It's also (IMHO) somewhat flawed.
First of all, what's the grain supposed to represent? If it's music, or software, or copyrighted materials, then the "vagrants" don't actually take anything. It's still there after they pass on by.
If the grain represents money, then who is the farmer? If the farmer represents musicians, say, then all the grain gets taken by the farmer's absentee landlord who promises to give him part the profit, after he's taken what he needs. The record labels don't actually add any value, they just control the distribution channel so as to create an artificial scarcety and thereby inflate their profits.
There's another persistent historical meme for your collection: Hatred of absentee landlords. Not without reason, either; they make temendous profits from the hard work of lots of other people, and yet the workers scarcely see a penny of the value they create, and when their useful working life is done, they're left with nothing.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The recording and movie industries would love to see this particular bit of hyperbole become widespread,
It already is widespread. That ship has sailed. If it helps, this article proves that people don't see it as "especially evil".
Frankly I cannot understand why you would be thrown by it - it seems very logical.
Suppose someone wants to buy Office, for example - it sets them back several hundred euros/dollars. Everyone I know in the software industry gives you (or can give you) a copy for one euro.
If you can save that amount of money, whether or not it is legal, wouldn't you pay for it?
If software was dirt-cheap, do you think people would still do the effort in copying so much?
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
rates of unauthorized copying ever since the very beginning. And meanwhile they have grown into the behemoth it is now. Govenments please stop wasting your citizens money with ineffective, even if possibly amusing, intellectual property indoctrination campaigns and with raiding private homes of file sharers. Instead, use it to support useful freeware and OSS, which gives a much better benefit/cost ratio to society.
This finally explains Star Trek!
Clearly the RIAA got the government to make copying illegal, so that they could claim downloading music does reduce the amount of music on the net, and therefore really is stealing!
I can't think of any other rational explanation of why Star Trek computers never have copies or back ups, anyway.
No way I would eat a chocolate covered hotdog. Even if it's free.
There's Chinese proverb that states: many laws make many criminals. It isn't just that reasonable activities are criminalized; it's that acts that ought to be criminal become more respectable by association.
Unauthorized use of software somebody has created with the idea of supporting himself through selling it most certainly is theft. It is not theft of the work, it is theft of the revenue that the author could expect. Granted, the author can't name any arbitrary price the way SPAA does in press releases; it's ecnomically naive. But pirates don't have a moral leg to stand on: they can't say this thing has no value so I shouldn't pay for it; if it had no value they would not pirate it.
The problem is that the entire system of intellectual property has become imbalanced, incomprehensible harmful to the public good. In part this has to do with bad laws like DMCA, in part with legal practices like blending licensing and copyright in mass market sales. But nonetheless, the public can't work productively with the current IP situation. One great overlooked advantage of F/OSS is that it is comprehendable. The most complicated F/OSS license is GPL, which (a) is not complicated by commercial license standards (b) standardized and widely used and (c) completely safe for anybody who isn't in the business of selling software.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
By they way, you may not have noticed, but there has been a ceasefire since 1998.
.... so what is your point?
His point was that it's unsurprising that people don't consider copyright infringment to be theft, because it isn't. They probably don't consider it to be murder or illegal parking or treason either. Because it isn't.
An elephant and a hand grenade are both not fish. That doesn't mean the words "elephant" and "hand grenade" are interchangeable. There is more to the meaning of words than "well, they're both not X".
However in the case of Microsoft you probably need a population of vagrants signficantly larger than the population of Earth to consume the entire crop for several years in a row before the family staves.
Bottom line: people know that copying a CD is quick and easy. They just see a cheap, simple means of distribution and instinctively grok that the prices asked bear no relation to the intrinsic distribution cost. That's why it's no big deal to them.
Yeah, I know that there are development costs, artists' costs, all that - but those considerations are simply beyond the complexity horizon of the average consumer.
.sigs: Just Say No!
Most people have long forgot the purpose of copyright.
And no, folks, it is not meant to reward authors.
Copyright has for a long time stood without legal basis (Violating the "Limited Times" clause), but for the last 20 years, its also violating its original purposes.
Lets restore the original copyright:
1. Limit all copyright times to the minimum required to pay back for creation costs (along the lines of 5 years).
2. Cancel copyright on functional information (such as software). The power it grants the copyright holder over its user, even in a limited time, is too great. Software creation, in most cases, requires little to no financial incentive, and in niche cases where it does, payment to programmers is still possible.
3. Allow copyright, but only apply it to inter-legal-entities copying. This would mean that EULA's have no effect (You really shouldn't need extra permission from the copyright owner to run the copy you bought!).
4. Disallow copyright of the binary-form of software and creations. Only allow copyrighting Software in source form (And yes, music in its "source" forms). This is because copyright is all about making the derivative works possible in the future, in order to grow society's information base. You can make derivative works from public-domain software source, but you cannot make derivative works from binary blobs, even if they go into the public domain. How does it promote Science and Useful Arts to create dead-end pieces of information?
People are stone-cold thieves and they try to justify their thievery in order to squelch their conscience.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Oh, but isn't "piracy" such a lovely broad term? you can prove almost anything with it.
Let's look at your argument.
- Terrorist organisations often support themselves through links to organised crime
- Organised crime often sells pirate DVDs
- Selling priate DVDs is often referred to as "piracy"
- Copying your mate's DVD is often referred to as "piracy"
- Therefore copying your mates DVD buys guns for the paramilitaries.
- Case proven, your honour, take 'em away!
This is one of the reasons that the term "piracy" is less than helpful in this sort of debate..Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
...as Proudhon once put it (and I think Douglas Adams may have borrowed the phrase too). So relax, you're already a criminal!
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
If Jesus and his crew didnt have problems with doing this kind of petty theft then I cant find any moral fault in it either.
Woah.. way to misread a passage dude.
The unlawful act was eating corn *on a sabbath day*. The issue was not theft at all.
The reason why people don't consider piracy theft is becaue most people have never had a worthwhile thought, so they don't see the value of thought or how much effort it takes to come up with a useful thought and put it into action. In fact, they don't even see thought at all, only the materialistic aspects of it. Most people are oblivious to immaterial things.
It's revenge for not having flying cars and a 3 day work week by now.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell lays out some very interesting points about outrageous prices and the evil greedy corporations that charge them. Everyone should read it.
Software piracy isn't SEEN as normal. It IS normal.
tell that to the McCartney family! Robert McCartney was killed by the IRA on the 30th of January this year. There may be a ceasefire, but that doesn't mean the IRA are no longer terrorists.
Ok, I'll feed the troll...
You have a point, but not really. It's wrong to use (commercial) software without paying for it - I agree. But it is *more* wrong to charge money for software you don't have the right to.
If something is OK to do, then it should be OK to do it for money.
But I never said that it is OK to do... just that one action is more wrong (hey, I know it's wrong but it doesn't keep me up at night). Downloading mp3's is one action, selling mp3's that you don't have the distribution rights to is another. (And I still maintain that any P2P software that makes a profit is wrong, along with mp3 download sites riddled with adverts)
I mentioned those Star Wars torrents. Now in our little group we assume that Lucas & Company knows about what we are doing, but since it's trading and out-of-print material they do nothing. If you did the same thing on eBay, you'd be in jail.
And that is the proof: Bootleggers end up in jail, p2p'ers get sued because one is more wrong than the other.
Get your Unix fortune now!
But yeah, I don't spend that much on DVDs unless it's a gift for someone else. I tend to buy a lot of things used, and I do a lot of library borrowing. I'm the same way about books. As for computer games, I'm the type of person to play a game to the ground, trying everything before moving on to the next one. ^_^ And, at that, I buy those used unless the game is being self-published and I really feel the game company needs rewarding. Bethesda and Irrational Games are in this category. I bought Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic at full price at Wal-Mart too, but in my defense I was drunk at the time. I mean, good game, but $50 of good game where I know a fraction of that is going to the game deelopers and the rest was supporting Wal-Mart? Ick!
To be perfectly honest, the last time I bought a game at full retail price before that was Sim-Life by Maxis. That was worth every penny.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it
If you dont have enough money to buy the original product, then go for a copy. As a student you can bet your ass I did it. If people werent so eager to earn enough money to buy a castle or drive a rolls royce or if industries werent so eager to own the whole damn planet, maybe they would start charging affordable prices for all.
A thought has just struck me.
:-)
These organisations try to claim that by buying pirated DVDs and CDs etc, you are supporting terrorism.
But...it's the high prices they enforce that cause people to turn to pirated media. So these organisations are ultimately responsible for funding terrorism.
So, they should reduce their prices to reasonable levels, and they could stamp out terrorism. Think of the good they could do!
See - I've worked it all out.
Who's with me?
...and is therefore reporting according to British law. Here downloading isn't illegal (although uploading is). Copying copyrighted material for personal use is also legal, although copying for profit or for someone else's use isn't. So you can't copy a game and give me the copy, but I can legally copy a game that you lend me. That's why we pay a levy on blank media. Downloading according to British law is not theft; it is not piracy; it is not copyright infringement; it is 100% legal. The other end of a download is an upload though, and that part IS illegal (unless the uploader owns the copyright or is acting with the consent of the copyright holder).
Exactly my point. Taking the corn in the first place was totally natural and neither Jesus nor the Pharisees though anything was wrong with THAT at all. They might have disagreed on if it was or wasn't ok to do it on the sabbath, but absolutely nobody thought it was wrong to take crops that belonged to someone else.
Jesus had no moral or ethical hangups with taking corn that wasn't his, therefore I claim he would also not have any issue with taking music that "belongs" to someone else.
Exchanging goods for money is an old and well trusted system. It has worked well for centuries because those doing the selling were generally the only ones who could comfortably produce the product.
However, we are now entering The Information Age. Many businesses no longer sell goods, or services, but rather sets of instructions, plans and ideas. As these are not tangible objects, they are easily reproduced.
Previously it was possible to bind these ideas to tangible objects, thus making them harder to reproduce. Recipes were printed in books. Music was pressed into vinyl. Because of this, businesses could stick to the age old business model, but now that the consumer can also easily reproduce products, cracks are forming in this model.
All well and good, but what's the solution? How can businesses make money on the ideas/information/programs they produced initially? At the moment there seems to be a knee-jerk legal response, but this doesn't seem to me to be a viable solution in the long term (but I am not an economist).
One alternative could be to scrap the "sell multiple, low-cost copies" model and go with a "Sell one, high cost copy which will cover expenses and profit". For example, 20th Century Fox makes a new movie costing $100,000,000. They release it to the public for free (and Free) and keep track of how many copies are in circulation. Depending on how popular it is, they are then paid $5,00,000,000, or what ever, by a central organisation. The consumers have to pay this organisation a set amount each year to cover their costs, but are then free to do whatever they want with the movie/music/software.
Will people be happy being forced to fork out a few grand a year for products? They fork it out already voluntarily.
Do people get a say in what's produced? Who do we insure the producer is producing a quality product? Through market research and strict auditing of the producers.
A crazy, poorly formed idea, but one which does eliminate the problem sellers we are now facing.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Of course Piracy sounds nefarious, but we really know it is sharing and that is what we should call it.
Before the net we used to make mixed tapes for our friends. Loan them books or VHS tapes etc... Now I share TV episodes often sharing the Download effort to get multiple episodes.
I am old enough that I had pretty much bought all the CD's that I was going to own when Napster Hit the scene. I might have bought 1CD in the previous 2 years. Napster rekindled my interest in music. I bought 10 new CD's in my first year of Napstering. But after the lawsuits and my growing awareness of the way the industry operated, I have sworn to never by another RIAA supported CD.
Humans are not you. Therefore, you are are not human. X is not theft because theft does not include X (well, at least in my opinion, not the law!). Trying to define your problems away is not an argument. Please try again.
Yes, I'm sure this shrill overreaction will work in changing people's minds... 'cause getting that copy of Batman Begins is definitely the same as driving a car while drunk, endangering and possibly killing innocent bystanders.
The problem faced by the Content Cartel and their lackeys is this: Copyright infringement is in fact not as serious as these "sexier" crimes. People won't take it seriously because the harm is of an entirely different type.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
That's because it's not. Merriam-Webster defines theft as "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it". When you copy media, you are not depriving the owner of it. They have a copy and you have a copy. Naturally, you could walk into a store and remove physical media. That would be theft. Considering further that someone who "pirates" something would not have purchased the it in the first place, you really have to wonder where the loss is. Now, I would agree that if someone buys copied software, the line has been crossed. Clearly the recipient was willing to pay money for the goods and now the producer is deprived.
All in all, I am encouraged to see that people in general are not willing to accept something that isn't true. The simple notion that copying bits is theft is really quite absurd. (Would we consider it "theft" if we could simply copy food products and distributed them to the hungry? Hardly. It would be a miracle.)
Join Tor today!
Those complaining about 'theft' and 'piracy' kick and scream like crying babies. Once they finished wiping the tears out of there eyes and blowing there noses using $100 bills, they lash out and attack the hand that feeds them.
If they cant behave in a manner that will earn my respect. Theres no chance they will earn my money.
I for one am glad the many (general public) are having such a sharp impact on the few (mainstream music publishers)
Its about time they woke up and realised, who, is serving, who.
...because who would actually pay $150 for Windows XP Home?
It isn't theft, it's copyright infringement.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
It's a pity he's not around today when some of his targets are getting to be so big again.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
So you can stop arguing about the cost of rice and beans now.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
That even though they are both illegal, they're not the same thing. Murder is illegal too, but you don't go around calling people who make unauthorised copies of copyrighted material murderers, do you? Why not? They're bot illegal, aren't they?
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ELSEIF in
Why the hell do you NEED to pirate software, music, and movies? I have precisely zero copies of pirated files of any type. Yet I have access to tons of music (300 CDs I have gathered over the years, internet and broadcast radio, borrowed material from friends), movies (about a 100 DVDs of my own, plus renting and borrowing), and all the software I need and more, both freeware and paid. Honestly, I have far more media lying around than I could possibly consume - all for a minute fraction of my income (less than 2% in the last five years). And that is even before I waste tons of time in places on the internet like slashdot or (heaven forbid) the local library. Come on, folks. Quit whining and pay for your goodies - and learn to appreciate what you already have.
NO, GODDAMNIT, IT IS NOT THEFT.
A good has to be taken from the legitimate owner for the act to be theft.
I don't take the software away from anyone. It's a copy.
I don't take revenue from anyone when I make a copy of something. He still has all the revenue he had before I made the copy. If a is the same as b, then the difference a-b (which is what is removed) is 0, zero, nothing.
Everything else is just wishful thinking. Like, if 10% of the people who pirate Photoshop would buy it, Adobe could buy Microsoft. Yeah, except there is just no way to arrive at that number with a clear conscience. Chances are, NOBODY would buy it if they couldn't pirate it. Chances are, even fewer than today would buy it because the masses could not afford Photoshop and would buy something else (or use the GIMP, raising motivation and participation resulting in a much better product than Photoshop ever was). Like I said, wishful thinking. So not even the prospect of revenue is taken away. In fact, the what-if dream of riches is GIVEN to the one whose products are pirated.
The people who make our laws, despite all the corruption and shortsightedness in their circles, at least understood the simple and obvious difference between making a copy and taking something away. That's why only one of them is "theft" and the other one is "copyright infringement". SO STOP CALLING IT WHAT IT SO CLEARLY IS NOT!
BitTorrent is a high-tech weapon in the war against Terrorism! By downloading movies and music from the Internet, we can deprive Terrorists of their ability to fund operations. We're at threat-level yellow: rev up your downloaders!
BTW, al Qaeda is also supposed to support their operations by selling bootlegs.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
I completely agree with your well thought out post. However, I'd like to point out that most intellectual property in the hands of the consumer is, in fact, worthless. I say it's worthless because that consumer can't sell it, hence it's value could be argued to be $0. Historically, this hasn't been the case. Consumers have always been able to resell their books, records, tapes, CDs, etc. But most software is not resalable. Music bought through ITMS cannot be resold (so I've heard, Apple still refuses to let me buy from them, but that's a different rant). If the item you're buying cannot be resold for any price, then it could be considered worthless (though it usually does have some other value to the buyer, otherwise why buy it).
:(
Also, in some cases, the publisher refuses to sell licenses for the item (such as abondonware). If the publisher won't sell the item, there's no active market for that item, and again, it could be argued that the value of the item is $0.
Now, I don't particularaly like these arguments since that property does have value, but the publishers are making it seem to consumers that it does not. Or at least they're leaving the door open for the arguments to be made. And people are great at using arguments like these when they want to rationalize behavior they think (or know) is wrong.
Personally, I think that dropping the copyright length to something more reasonable (on the order or 10-20 years) would really help curtain infringement. People who want the item now will pay for it. People who can wait will wait. People who can't afford the latest and greatest can now use something older rather than priate the lastest stuff.
But I'm way to cynical to believe this will ever happen
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
I think one of the reasons people are willing to pay for pirated software even though they know it's illegal and that they could probably download it for free on their own, is that it adds a shade of legitimacy to the process. Even though no money is seen by the actual producers of the software, the person gets to think in their mind, "I paid money for this. This is a valid transaction. It's obviously not stealing because money exchanged hands." They're wrong, but I suspect that's their train of thought. And, at that, some of them may actually be able to believe that the process is legitimate. I know that the first time I bought a copy of Windows XP, I didn't blink tiwce when I saw XP Pro advertised for $79. I figured that it had to do with extra copies being ordered for some office out there which they couldn't use, and which were therefore being dumped on the market. *wry grin* Somewhere in there, the blurry logo on the front of the disc and the fact that there was no license paper that came with it should have tipped me off. Knowing now what I didn't know then, the fact that it didn't require a product activation code should have rung more alarm bells; back then, I thought XP Pro didn't require an activation code, on of the reasons it was more expensive. *shrug* Then again, Microsoft avows that my copy is legit when I checked, so maybe that should just be good enough for me.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
But in large numbers, all these individuals refusing to pay for the material (to the copyright owners) make a huge impact.
Might be theoretically be able to make a huge impact.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Why in the name of all gods accepts everyone (including ./ crowd!) this stupid buzzword "piracy". No one uses ships, guns and sabers and no one kills other people to copy software - so it is "copyright infringment", nothing more.
So please stop echoing the industries' biased and manipulative blubs!
Greetings, IceRa
Sig? Where I go, I don't need
for being the clown that posts this identical comment on every damned story. At least wait until someone contests otherwise?
If I steal Britney Spear's clothes, I'm a criminal and a pervert. If I copy them, I'm just a pervert.
" ... and use the fluffy-bunny-friendly-sounding "copyright infringement" instead."
Burns: Look at them Smithers, enjoying their Embezzlement.
Smithers: I have a much uglier word for it sir....Misappropriation!.........
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
I miss the days when the only people who were afraid of piracy were those on the water.
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
Maybe true, maybe not. I'd still worry more about the support to terrorism the tank of gas to get me to the black market is providing.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
This just in:
Many cities have found that Microsoft products are so prevelant in private businesses that the software is costing them millions of dollars a year.
Therefore, they are taking the property away from Microsoft and giving it to the businesses and charging a small tax. Microsoft, in turn, is being paid "fair market value" based on the cost of obtaining the property which turns out to be next to nothing from a guy down the street called Hank.
To make your analogy apply to modern times, the actually farmers don't own the land or their crops. The farmers (who are the musicians and artists) are actual slaves (or serfs) to the wealthy land owners (the RIAA and MPAA) who do nothing but order them around and sit comfortably in their castles.
Although the slaves are often in fear of starving to death, the land owners don't do anywork themselves (don't produce any material) and have no worry of going hungry since they own the labor of thousands of slaves.
These land owners watch from their feudal towers and see the many vagrants picking away at their crops and get all fussy. They even get a few starving slaves to go to the town square and decry these actions as pure sin when they are promised more food and better shelter (see money).
To put it bluntly, the farmer was already starving on a collective wheather you steal from him or not. In truth they make more money selling clay pottery at the market. (see Tour T-shirts.)
Btw. I run an indie record label (see my link) and we give a great deal of music away for free and as far as I can tell it helps more than hurts.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Cost.
No way in hell am I going to pay £13 upwards for a CD or DVD. They simply are not worth it.
Games at £50 a go, are you kidding?
The whole of my computer life the industry has blamed piracy for forcing up prices, yet not a single attempt has been made to lower prices in order to combat it.
If music, games and movies were cheap people would buy the genuie article to get the manual, the extra bits, the guarenteed quality etc. Yes you will still have piracy but it certainly wont be at the same levels as with high pricing.
Problem is, you try explaining this to the board or the shareholders...
I mean for god's sake its basic economics!
I don't it's flawed, it's just that software/music isn't a fysical thing. And that fact only amplifies the feeling that you can't hurt the farmer.
So you need to do 3 things
1) Change the way we feel about this.
2) Lower the prices since we are not compelled to purchase anything at the current price. The price difference between free software/music and commercial software/music is just to big to explain the feature difference (if any).
3) Don't make it so easy to access the cropfields, it's just to easy to copy/download stuff.
In some sense, I think copyright infringement of things like Photoshop is even more destructive than theft, insofar as there is little risk involved and there is this perception of it not being a serious thing.
When you download Photoshop, you are forcing Adobe to compete with a free, easy to get version of their own product. This is incredibly destructive to the free market as it applies to software. Instead of paying Adobe for the goods they provide, you pay them for those goods in light of the fact that you can also get them for free. Note, this is not an attack on Free Software, I'm talking about the situation where a company is forced to compete with a low risk free version of their own product once it hits the market.
So, my bet is that if they were to offer a $50 version of Photoshop and piracy were impossible, maybe half the Photoshop pirates out there would buy it. If, however, piracy were possible, they may have to make their price, say, $20 to get half the pirates to buy a copy.
So that's that. Piracy devalues the product. It doesn't matter if you wouldn't have bought a copy anyway, or that it's overpriced or anything. By pirating, you are taking away the expected revenue of a product by making the company that releases it compete with a free product. You may not see it as stealing, but that company had to put a certain amount of money into development and they are losing some portion (not all) of their revenue due to the fact that piracy has devalued their software.
By your argument does that company have to lose enough revenue that they lose money in the venture before you call it stealing?
Come on, how many Libraries of Congress worth of drugs are the **AA people doing?
My parents see nothing wrong with taping songs from the radio or movies off TV. And not just "time shifting" but keeping copies. My parents are average middle aged professionals, and they have been "stealing" songs and movies since the 60's. So why the hell would their kids see downloading from the internet any differently?
People don't see it as a problem, because it isn't a problem. And I am someone who pays for 90% of my movies, albums and games. The only thing I reguarly "steal" are single songs that I wouldn't have at all if I needed to pay $15 each to get the album they are on.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Yes software piracy actually ruins open source software more than we think. If people really had to shell out the original prices for m$ products and if people were denied access to pirated cheap m$ products, most home and small users will prefer opensource for pricing and reliability.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
My original post was modded troll and both comments to date have slammed the defintions themselves saying dismiss this definition as having been mechanically separated from someone's rectum and you read those definitions from a NewSpeak site. So I decided I'd check w/ another source, my PRINTED copy of The American Heritage College Dictionary, third edition. Printed in 1993. The first MP3 encoder was not publically released until July 1994. Obviously there have been conversations about copyright in the digital age, but prior to MP3 and Napster (released in 1999) this wasn't such a mainstream topic. Anyways... so here's how the definitions I cited, from DICTIONARY.COM held up.
Piracy - 2. The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material.
Theft - 1. The act or an instance of stealing; larceny.
Stealing - 1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
Property - 1c. Something tangible or intangible to which it sowner has legal title: properties such as copyrights.
All of the definitions are exactly the same, with the exception of property which ADDED "and trademarks" to the end of the defintion. These are english defintions folks. They've been commonplace for at least 12 years.
Corn is a new world food. (Mexico/Central America)
Any quote containing the word "corn" claiming to be from the bible is false.
The author ends the story by saying how they are not surprised people download pirated software but are surprised that people will pay for pirated software on CD, etc.
I share that surprise.
I think that when people use Bittorrent, et al to download wares, movies, TV, etc, they feel like they are just pulling it out of thin air - like tuning their computer into the broadcast radio channel where this stuff is being sent out for free anyway and they are just listening in. Plus, there is nothing "in it" for the distributor. They must be sending this stuff out for good reason becuase they get nothing in return (in reality they get more warez).
When you pay for something, you are setting up an exchange - I bring this to the table, you bring that and we swap. Now becomes more clear what you are doing. Now you are paying for pirated software.
It's kinda like drugs - "I didn't buy the drugs, Pete gave/shared/whatever them to me". Once you go to Pete and pay him for them, all of a sudden Pete isn't your friend, Pete's your dealer and you are a druggie.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
IMO, I don't think piracy will change. No matter how hard the original creators of content try, people who want something badly enough will always find a way to acquire it for free.
I'm planning on creating software for a living, and I accept that some of what I create may be pirated. There is _nothing_ that can be done to stop it. If other people can't accept it, they should move to a different business.
if your customers think globally too. And they do too. They want the benefits of playing on a level field.
So we have laws, tariffs and taxes saying its one thing for manufacturers to want to extract the maximum profit by going 'off shore' and another thing entirely for the consumer to try and buy from there.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Unauthorized use of software somebody has created with the idea of supporting himself through selling it most certainly is theft. It is not theft of the work, it is theft of the revenue that the author could expect.
You can't have your cake, and eat it too. If it's not theft for someone that coppies and share's a work for free 20 years after the copyright expired, then it's not theft for someone who sells a copy for 20% off on the first day it came out either. True rights are timeless, eg. freedom of speech only when no profit is made, and with an expiration date would not be free speech.
No matter how you look at it, property rights that are based off incentive are subjective, and it was only a matter of time before things ended up like the way they are today. Nobody would say Ford was violated if GM stole 50% of it's market share. But in essence, this is exactly the argument being made about copyrights - the artist is entitled to 100% market share once the cats out of the bag. Well No. Nof if it was argued the artist is entitled to throw a concert with 100% the original reputation that comes from being the creator, then sure I could really go for that.
Interesting: "without intending to return it" implies that you have an undividable good that you posess and they don't.
In the software case, the good is dividable (you copy it), thus the "without intending to return it" holds no ground: the original owner still has his copy. It is probably more borrowing than stealing.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
The press rightly continues to use the word 'piracy' for illicit copying and distribution of original materials. Some think it's a new phenomenon, and hard to square with the traditional image of the Jolly Roger and swashbuckling robbers-at-sea. The use of the word 'piracy' as signifying an unauthorized copy of a manuscript is hundreds of years old, long before modern Copyright doctrine was developed. From http://www.ninch.org/forum/price.report.html: There was very little trust in the print medium when it was first developed--it was seen as unstable and subject to piracy and fraudulent copying. Authenticity was hard to guarantee: indeed, the term "piracy" was first used by John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, to describe certain pernicious practices of early printers and booksellers. A "pirate" was someone who participated in the "unauthorized reprinting of a title recognized to belong to someone else." "Stationers" eventually emerged as the trusted practitioners who were placed in charge of various aspects of publishing--practices we would now recognize as printing, publishing, editing, and bookselling. Stationers worked out the conventional practices of making books, and thus made printing a viable economic enterprise with the elaborate complexity of producing a book eventually invisible to all but the practitioners in the trade. That's Dr. John Fell (1625-86), who was given the title of Bishop of Oxford in 1675.
[
Here (Greece) commercials are very clever, and more often than not, funny. OK, it's not like I'd rather watch the commercials than the actual programme, but that's mostly because I have seen the commercials before :P. There are some very funny ads which I cannot get enough of, and many ads become catchphrases.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
1) There's a difference between 'the poor' and 'orphans and widows.'
2) There's a difference between 'the poor' and the majority of people who are pirating music/software.
3) There's a difference between CDs and food.
Just because the music industry has a higher net worth than me doesn't mean that I am now poor and should be able to steal their product.
Not true:
"they are still happy to purchase them from people they know at the office/pub/school"
I know about warez. I know about usenet. I actively have traded. (as in dl/ul, no money) I also work, for +15 years in IT.
Whilst it no doubt has happened, most people do NOT pay for warez traded at offices or schools. People share, and swap.
95% is like that. At least in "Going Dutch" The Netherlands it is not done to ask money for a cd trade. The "commercial" pressed warez cd's, are very uncommon.
20 whats? 5 whats? 35-45 whats?
If you don't put in the units your message is just noise. (and annoying.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Actually, he's more likely to say "Uuuggh!!!" before bopping you over the head with a crude mallet andthen taking your pasty skinny carcass back to the cave as a trophy. The "Uuuggh!!!" translates to: "He's not for us! He must be against us!" ;P (Remeber, I take no one and nothing seriously on Slashdot)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
No. Piracy of PhotoShop is one of the prime reasons it is unchallenged as an image editor. If every aspiring graphic artist had to cough up hundreds of dollars for a legal copy, many of them would think seriously about the much cheaper alternatives (PaintShop Pro, [until recently], Gimp, Ulead, PhotoPaint, etc). There would be many more if there was a market, but there isn't. If you're poor you use pirated PhotoShop, when you get a job in the field you insist on using it and the company buys it. Pretty much the same way that MSWord became the de facto standard. Consider that though MS and Adobe make a lot of noise about piracy in the Third World, the only time they do anything serious is when countries decide to get honest, and start looking at Linux instead of Windows, for instance. Then MS brings out the hugely discounted version. Until then, they were happy for the pirates to build their market share, knowing that if the economies grew to the point of being able to afford to buy software, they would be already locked in. Adobe has brought out several cut-down versions of PhotoShop for similar reasons, like PhotoDeluxe, which was bundled with scanners and such, to fend off other cheaper image apps that would have been bundled otherwise and obtained a foothold in the market.
You forget a crucial thing: the IRA is just not a political/terrorist org anymore.
It has long time descended into a full swing criminal org.
You are not -seriously- thinking the IRA gves a flying fuck about Ireland anymore do ya? Its all bout the dope trade, the moneys and the missing kneecaps nowadays.
Legal, whether you like it or not, is defined by the law defined by government and courts action in respect to that law. Copyright law has been upheld and as of today you have no rights to copy movies, music, software w/o the owners permission.
You are correct. However... What those who make and enforce the laws fail to realize is that they breed utter contempt for the rule of law with unfair and unreasonable laws and decisions. Every day there is some new reason to question authority: The DCMA, the Supreme Court decision giving government free reign to seize property to promote "economic development", bankruptcy "reform", copyright perpetuation, and so on. People see government as a tool for business and the wealthy, not "We the People."
If I truly believed that the DCMA protected people like myself; not Sony, Time Warner, Paramount, and Disney, I would be a lot more supportive.
And before I begin a politics war, I think that the Democrats and Republicans are both just as guilty of it. Yesterday's Supreme Court decision and the absurd marijuana decision last week both came from the liberal Justice cabal. Clinton signed the DCMA and Bush pushed bankruptcy reform.
Please reread what I wrote. The expected revenue is wishful thinking. It is a what-if scenario with far too many unknown variables. Your scenario is plausible, but there are other scenarios which are just as plausible (again, it is impossible to quantify this). For example, yes, piracy is harmful, because it means that the GIMP has to compete with a "free" Photoshop which would not be available without piracy. Piracy takes away user awareness and participation, crippling the truly free product. Without piracy, the GIMP would have dwarfed Photoshop in every respect by now, reducing it to a hardly profitable niche. That, just like your "50% of the pirates would buy a $50 Photoshop", is wishful thinking.
It's truly idiotic to shoehorn piracy into the definition of stealing by declaring something as unquantifiable (possibly negative) as the revenue loss due to piracy to be the good which is taken away. It doesn't make sense and the law doesn't allow it. Why people still refuse to stop calling copyright infringement theft is beyond me. But then I remember that there are people who reject the theory of evolution and I stop wondering.
Can you sell used disks to someone legally in Europe? If so here's a scenario that might satisfy the law technically and allow people to get cheap media-you sell a used disk of music or a movie to your friend for one euro, he now makes a legal single copy from his legal original. He sells you the original back for the same amount of money. He keeps his copy. Not loan for free, sell for money. Laws are constantly argued on technical points, this seems to satisfy the copyright laws then.
Looks like no laws broken then unless there's a law that if you no longer have the original you must destroy your one legal backup copy.
Seems like disk buying and selling clubs could be established almost like a library, but purchasing and reselling back for the same price.
Unauthorized use of software somebody has created with the idea of supporting himself through selling it most certainly is theft. It is not theft of the work, it is theft of the revenue that the author could expect
And there's the rub. If Microsoft won't let me upgrade directly from Windows95 to WindowsXP without paying for Windows98 and/or WindowsME and the cost being prohibitive, I pirate a version of XP, how am I stealing revenue that MS could expect?
Given that my "theft" isn't depriving anyone else of using Windows XP (in the way that, my theft of a Ferrari, say would) and that I'm not paying for windows because I can't afford to, doesn't that mean that "revenues the author could expect" would, in this case, be precisely zero and therefore, I'm not actually stealing anything?
The access that is denied is not to the pirated goods, but to the legitimate profits that the author is entitled to but denied because of piracy.
Shame the mods haven't noticed it yet.
fucking expensive, people would buy legit copies. If you buy a new PC for about $1,500 and want a new copy of Winblows XP, Office, and maybe Photoshop and a few other things, you'll end up paying the price of the PC or more. People think they are being ripped off, and I would agree.
In the UK, this is not seen as theft for one simple reason: legally, it is not theft. Sorry for all those who want to debate whether this is or isn't so, but in UK law, there is no debate. It is copyright infringement. Theft is a criminal offense, for which you can be fined or imprisoned. Copyright infringement is a civil offense for which you can be sued. All talk of FAST, BPA or whoever, fining offenders is nonsense since they have no legal powers. They can ask for a payment, and back up with a threat to sue, but that's it. Until the law is changed, unauthorised copying of software is not theft, it's infringement. And the infringer is the person who publishes the unauthorised copy, not the downloader or buyer. That's why they only try to sue uploaders. When FAST 'busts' an office full of hooky software, they do it on the basis that unauthroised copying took place in the office. If the owners could show they bought the right number of 'pirate' copies, FAST wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Of course it is completely upside down. Photoshop (and some other programs) is popular thanks due to piracy.
Why?
Almost everyone, whom make living from creation of graphics (pictures, painters, adv, art, etc) and whom use Photoshop, almost everyone used in past (most likely on beginning) pirated version of Photoshop.
And later come times when you must pay for photoshop. Why? In-home pirated Photoshop no longer apply. In bussiness possesing pirated sofware is too risky and your boss must buy Photoshop. Why? Because your get hooked in past with pirated version of same program. If were no piracy, you never will get hooked, because Photoshop costs insane amount of cash for typical student.
Yes, for some companies (BIG companies, of course) piracy is under certain circumstances very profitable. Microsoft is of course another example of this phenomenon.
What modern Obelix would say today? Of course, "Those crazy Americans!".
Every time I download a movie or software to evaluate it and then decide to buy the product, the movie or software industry owes Bram Cohen some money.
Like most people, I work hard for my money and I am careful about how I spend it. I would not steal someone else's money or possessions. I do not want to be robbed or feel robbed, either.
The movie industry established a "home library" market for movies when VHS tapes began to be marketed. Watching a movie in a cinema is a one-time experience, like a roller-coaster at an amusement park. HOWEVER... if they want me to build a library of movies for their profit, I will exercise my right as a consumer to evaluate their products. If most of their products are rubbish, it is their fault, not mine. If they give me no other means of evaluating their product, it is their fault, not mine.
It is my right as a consumer to try a functional software product before buying it. I have downloaded software to do this. If I like it, I buy it, otherwise I delete it. Also, when I must use Windows, I still use Windows NT 4.0 because it is fast, stable, and does not need constant security patching as do Windows versions that use Internet Explorer as the file manager. Some of the software that I need for Windows NT 4.0 is not commercially available anymore. The market has passed me by and the vendors don't want my business; downloading solves the problem.
I use FreeBSD and Mac OS X regularly. I use a lot of FOSS but I will prefer a commercial product to FOSS if it gets the job done better for me. FOSS puts pressure on commercial software to be ~better~ as well as less expensive.
I support OS X because I love the product. Did I try Jaguar before I bought it? Yes. Did I try Panther before I bought it? Yes. Did I try Tiger before it was on the shelves? Yes; I don't heed marketing hype. Will I buy Tiger? Yes. (Although, of course, the recent announcement about switching to Intel means that I have to consider waiting until I have an Intel-based Mac.)
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
You can't just play around with words to make yourself feel ok for downloading and distributing things that you never paid for ( and some noddy will always reply to this that he has paid for it and has a right to make backup copies and we should feel so sorry for his rights being infinged and ... snore )
Just simplify the issue for yourselves a little and it becomes pretty clear.
Most of you are coders and many of you do jobs for which you are paid to do. Say you Bob have arranged to do a job for XCorp for which you wish to be paid $10,000 for. Just before delivery you find the work has been *stolen* off your server by an employee of XCorp. They now have your code and don't need to pay you for it. According to the parent this is just copyright infringement, not stealing, cause they only took a copy of the software not the software itself. Even if that is so for the software itself they have still stolen something. It is still the slightly less tangible but still calculatable value of the software. The work you have done is now worth nothing. Previously you owned $value$ now you own nothing and this was due to the illegal actions of XCorp.
Following the parents logic, stealing money from the bank is copyright infringement not stealing because nothing has really disappeared except an intangible concept of value. However that intangible concept of value is what drives our economies and lives and is traded swapped and stolen all the time. Stealing software is no different than stealing money. You are appropriating somebody elses $value$ against the law. That is stealing.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
I'm not sure how you can equate copying software for which one has to pay, by law, to 'shopping around'.
:)
It would be one thing if a reseller of Adobe's Photoshop offered a limited-time offer of $1 and John Doe bought that, and Poor Schmuck didn't.
John Doe just blatantly violating copyright law just seems quite different to me.
I think maybe 10 years ago I would have agreed with you. But if somebody is only touching up their family pictures, they don't need Photoshop. They could get The Gimp - for all the things where it's not Photoshop, it's fine for touching up your photos. Or they can pick up some graphics editing application and get a DVD full of clip art, fonts and whatnot for $10 at their local Best Buy / MediaMarkt / whathaveyou. Times have changed too much for me to think it is still 'acceptable'.
Now, meet me again in whatever time where physical objects can easily be copied (Star Trek-style, whatever) - assuming I'm not dead - and assume I work at Adobe. Then I'd fully agree with you that those who want to are free to copy Photoshop. As long as I'm free to copy the baker's bread, the farmer's crop and that villa down by the beach.
Until that happens, I don't think I'll find it acceptable for some time
off-topic:
the above situation would be interesting. I think those in control of raw materials would then be the true powers that be.
like a policeman.
:-) and the same thing should be done for the law books otherwise you can't draw breath without breaking some 'edict of Nuggan."
Our laws accrete like dust motes settling on a dining room table.
Eventually, the dining room table gets cleaned (I'm not a neat freak but my wife has a higher tolerance for mess than I do, so its 'my job'
And we're going to collect laws like lint, until we wise up and put in sunset clauses which will clear the books (like, 5 years after a law's last application, or seven years after the introduction of a law.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...and most insightful post I have yet to read in any copyright debate. The whole purpose of copyright is to promote Science and Art. The way copyrights are now, it almost does the opposite. People will sit on ideas and attack others who promote similar works even though they came up with it own their own.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I don't understand how this comment gets modded +5 Insightful with no dissenting opinions on a forum for computer technology professionals. When did the average Slashdot moderator become a warez kid?
How else could I explain such support for cancelling copyright on software? Software patents yes, copyrights no. I know this is an open source community but you can't seriously believe that you should ban closed source software development.
Open source is great, forcing open source on companies isn't. If someone should decide not to disclose source for his program, that should be up to him, it shouldn't be up to the warez kids to scoop it up and claim "oh, but I am entitled to violate the contract because of my interpretation of the historical meaning of copyright."
All software isn't fun to develop, and even if it is, you can't waste time trying to assemble a team of dedicated and qualified volunteers to work on your huge project. That's why finanical incentives sometimes are necessary. And don't forget that developers are being paid as we speak to develop open source software.
As is often repeated, most software development is done in-house. If a company develops a tool for itself, do you really believe a competing company should be allowed to use that tool without the creator's permission just because it is in binary form? Even the GPL enforces terms on binaries.
Finally, don't forget that the distinction between binary and source is only in your head. Assembly language may very well be the only source for some programs.
If a multinational artificially limited the supply of food to drive up food prices in 3rd world countries to make more profit - most people would see this as the pure evil that it is. But if they artifically limit information distribution in the form of copyrights - then oh my God -it's a right!
I think I would feel very violated if people nickeled and dimed away all my crops, but hell, if they could make a copy of my crops, then hell, have the whole field! The whole reason we have property rights to begin with is to deal with and manage limited resources, not to create personal monopolies and provide special incentives to special interests.
It would be interesting to know how much more money this would make them. I'm guessing a lot.
ROFL. Sony, BMG et al as starving farmers is a particularly hilarious analogy...
they just found that people are selfish, and will do all they can to save a couple of bucks. duh-uh
wanna stop piracy ? lower the prices. convince the government to slash the taxes in x% in exchange for y% increase in sales, wich will make the tax income at least equal to what it was before. advertise heavilly the lower prices of original goods.
in other words, use mankinds natural selfishness as a sales advantage, works better than strongarming 12yr old girls.
What ? Me, worry ?
1) Change the way we feel about this.
I don't think the way we feel about things is going to change. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the great tape fuss in the 80s. Basically tapes desks started coming out with two casette slots and everyone started copying tapes, mixing their own compilations, trading tapes to friends... sound familiar any of this?
Of course, the labels did their nuts and deprived loads of starving artists of their share of the profits by spending those pofits on a massive ad campaign that "HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC". The news showed regulat footage of police busting pirate tape operations where guys were using comercial rigs to mass produce tapes for resale... and pirate tapes were bad bad BAD!
Anyway, the point there is that there was a massive co-ordinated attempt to change the way people felt about this same issue twenty years ago, and it achieved absolutely nothing. I can't see modern attepts having ant more success.
2) Lower the prices
no argument there.
3) Don't make it so easy to access the cropfields
That's been tried too. Back in the tape era they tried to stop the two cassette rigs from being made, tried to make them play-only (and oddly, no one bought these crippled items, a lesson some electronics giants should take to heart today), and eventually they phased out tapes and vinyl in favour of the read only non-recordable CD. Which just meant that eveyone taped their CDs and gave the tapes to their friends. Now of course we can make new CDs. They tried digital encryption... but you probably know how well that works.
I would also add
4) Reduce the copyright period to something sane once again
5) repair the damage done to the concept of "fair use"
At the end of the day, the important thing to reaise is that the record labels are largely charging for the cost of distributing the music. It takes money and overhead to keep a production line printing CDs, covers, cases, warehouse them, transport them to the stores. All that costs money. The labels have been grossly over charging for this service and using control of the distribution channel to exercise control over the artists.
The trouble is that now that same distribution network is unnecessary. Consequently the organisations that grew up to facilitate that distribution are doomed, for exectly the same reason that you did't find very many blacksmiths after the advent of the automobile.
That's the tragedy of it all really; the record labels started out as the good guys. They were facilitators, the people who made it all happen. Then they turned parasitical and started gouging both ends of the supply chain and interfering unreasonably with production. Now their monopoly on distribution has been blown wide open, and they're resoirting to ever more draconian measures to prop up their business.
They're like King Canute, standing before the incoming tide and yelling "stop!". And like Canute, they're going to get soaked.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
...but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it. Downloading pirated software and copywrited material is often a hassle, especially if you are uninitiated in the process. Perhaps some people are buying pirated copies to get them early/cheaper, and perhaps some are doing it just so they can get the software/movies they like without supporting a company they do not wish to support. Hey, if you can have your cake and eat it too...
Why is it always called "online piracy", and not say "online stealing" or "online dacoity" or "online burglary", or.... any ideaS?
How can you be expect people to pay for a 30 buck DVD when you can get the same piece of shit Movie DVD that costs 1.36 USD WITH PROFFIT to the counterfitter already included!!??
;)
You can also bring back the DVDs you purchased and exchange them for any other title for a mere 0.90 USD!
These are current NOT wholesale prices in Mexico, I bet bulk prices in china MUST be way cheaper!
Dont get me wrong here, but are works really worth the extra 28.64 USD that only make 5 or 6 assholes richer?
That extra 28.64 USD will NOT even go straight to the artists paycheck anyway!
I think the industry FAT guys are the real thieves cornering hard working people to buy the only entertainment they can afford, and get to save 28.64 USD to feed their families.
I for one, just watch my movies on satellite TV, and skip the whole bullshit of actually having to go and buy the darn thing in the first place.
But if Yahoo includes movies in their unlimited music deal for a low monthly price, Im all for it!
you sir, have the economic know-how of a cloth pin. go ahead, become Mr. Batman, go fight crime all day and see what it's really like. And we wonder why people like Bruce Wayne doesn't exist IRL... Your line of thinking get the said farmer stabbed and put out of the work-force. Everybody starves. Since you want to better yourself that much, let me give you a piece of advice to better you. Economics make sure you are fed, clothed, and shieltered. It gives you the free time you enjoy right now to pounder your idiotic train of thoughts. Try live on your so called "Ethics" for a day, see how you earn your bread and butter, then come back. Maybe then, you will be less of a whiney idiot.
Still does not change the fact that copyright infringement ("pirating") does not steal the copyright holders' privileges... it only infringes on them.
For copyright theft, I would have to trick the copyright owners into handing their rights over to me or impersonate them to have the registrations changed myself.
So copyright theft and copyright infringements are two very different things. Making copies does not magically transfer or duplicate copyright ownership.
I think you have something backwards.
I won't use the word respectable, but acts that ought to be minor offenses, or even non-offenses, are turned into major criminal acts. Robbing the muisic store at gunpoint and taking some CD's will get you less time than what the RIAA wants you to get for ripping a track to your mp3 player.
You have it backwards. It is not that major criminal acts (copyright infringement) are becomming respectable. It is that minor criminal acts (that maybe should even be fair use) are turned into major criminal acts. Labels warning you that you dare not copy this vinyl phonograph record onto cassette tape.
The problem is that the entire system of intellectual property has become imbalanced, incomprehensible harmful to the public good. In part this has to do with bad laws like DMCA...
Let's not forget infinite term copyrights.
I think I saw it on Groklaw recently, what the constitution should be ammended to say about copyrights and patents... The copyright cartels have no respect for the law, the constitution, and they have no misgivings about bribing congress against public interest; yet they expect us to abide by laws that they write and then purchase. (DMCA was written by Jack Valenti former MPAA spokesdroid, and then congress was paid to pass it.)
Plese use your time more wisely preaching to the copyright cartels.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I've been reading more or less the same thing, on an emerging basis, since about the mid-90s. I think the gist was that the political goals of the IRA became increasingly unobtainable, and not just due to loyalists; as Ireland proper became more financially successful they began to see Northern Ireland as kind of an "East Germany" that was out of step with Ireland socially and economically, and didn't really want to assume all the problems associated with Northern Ireland.
The IRA itself "grew up" with members who were more versed in strongarm tactics and black marketeering than political struggle. They cared less about the political goals and more about organized crime style profiteering.
I think there's a great book to be written about the history of political/revolutionary movements and their involvement in crime and the underground economy. On one hand you have almost purely political movements like those of the first half of the 20th century that depended largely on Superpower largesse to finance them, on the other hand you have almost purely criminal organizations like cocaine cartels whose political ambitions seems solely linked to their criminal goals. And then there are those in-between groups that seem partially or completely motivated by politics but are heavily involved in criminal enterprises, like IRA.
I wonder what the first documentable linkage between drug trafficking and politics is -- US heroin running during Viet Nam? I know that heroin and hashish were big exports from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon at one time (to whose profit? Syria? PLO? Other Lebanese factions?).
Unauthorized use of software somebody has created with the idea of supporting himself through selling it most certainly is theft. It is not theft of the work, it is theft of the revenue that the author could expect.
This is, in a nutshell, one the more insidious claims. What is stollen is either immaterial (IP in the earlier discussion), or nonexistant ("expectations", in your spin). By your arguement, then, anyone who obviously can't afford to purchase a piece of software isn't stealing? There would be no denied expectations.
That's funny because if I remember correctly, Ancient Israel was around for 1000+ years whilst also having the laws of the 'corner of the field'. I don't think it harmed the farmers too much.
What?
The revenue was never guaranteed. I didn't sign a contract saying I'd pay up and then not pay. I have in no way deceived the author by downloading his works instead of buying them from an authorized distributor.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
I know people who work hard to download copies of Futurama. They search for avenues. They tie up resources, both bandwidth and CPU/CD-RW time. The result is barely watchable. I use a VCR. It is simple, cheap, and independent of my computer. I'm not "cool", lol, but I'm not stupid. If basic functionality was available, as you prescribe, at low enough prices to make it not worthwhile to download pirated versions, then only the stupid would download. Likewise for music. Price piracy out of the picture.
So then, as FOSS advocates, should we be against software piracy?
How did I learn? On a pirated version of Photoshop, making desktop wallpaper for my own use. I sure thought they were wicked cool, too. Lots of lens flares, bezels, and drop shadows.
I agree with you, and still I don't think the software/record company's are interested in these steps as all hurts them.
1) Change the way we feel about this.
Propaganda cost money, and the effect is not significant if we look at the past 10 years.
2) Lower the prices
Costs the company money, mainly because if this would happen we still have problems 1 and 3
3) Don't make it so easy to access the cropfields
DRM technology costs money, however this is relatively cheap compared to the initial costs and great number to which it can be applied.
4) Reduce the copyright period to something sane once again
I agree, but as you know now the companies cannot make a profit as long as they want to.
5) repair the damage done to the concept of "fair use"
Is related to point 1, it goes hand in hand how we feel about copyright infringement.
All in all Itunes is highly popular, mainly because of point 2 and 3.
IT's cheap and easily accessible. I think the general product doesn't care about 4 and 5. Or even point 1 because with every commercial everybody is happy and rich...
So basicly we need an Isoftware shop. As seen as in Linspire but with cheaper prices.
Perhaps we need some model how much something is worth.
X grams gold = Y dollars
X grams rice = Y dollars
X hours work = Y dollars
Software and music doesn't scale that way. It would be great though! Just imagine 1 piece of software = 8000 hours = Y dollars (Y dollars / number of estimated sales) + 50% profit= 50 dollars
The problem is the estimated number of sales. And apparantly is huge number of sales isn't of benefit to both sides.
I find it interesting that usually the most vocal villifiers are the ones connected to profit (past or pressent) through IP rights. Too often ethics is a thinly disguised tool for the advancement of self-interest.
Then there's that complex where people are driven to follow any given rule with little consideration of legitimacy. Although its often unconscious, people love to assemble any construct so they can feel morally superior (while assuaging lingering guilt from other perceived shortcomings in their life).
Then there's the altruistic faithful who always dutily seek to do the 'right thing'. What they fail to realize is that while they faithfully pay their part in small matters such as these, myriad entities are screwing them over in the larger picture.
If a free or discounted pirate copy were not available, would you then be willing to purchase the digital information (software, music, whatever) at the asking price of the real owner?
If the answer is no, as it usually is, then you see why the numbers of "lost revenue" is complete BS. If you wouldn't buy it anyways, you are not depriving anyone else of using it, then by recieving it for free or discounted, you've not deprived the original owner of anything at all.
That, of course, doesn't answer the question of whether it is moral to use something you couldn't afford, but it answers the question relatively simply about what companies "really" lose.
Last I checked, for instance, the average Chinese worker makes 6 to 10 times less than I do, and I don't make very much at all. Software piracy is high there. Gee, I wonder why, Windows costs half a year's wages for some over there. In that context, Microsoft's "lost revenue" is completely imaginary. Nobody is going to give a software company half a year's wages for their product. But, if they "can" get it cheaper, they will. Either way, MS makes no money off them and loses nothing if they do or don't pirate. To not pirate for them simply means to do without. (Or go with Linux, like the Brazillians... which IS the smartest choice, imho.)
If you can and would be willing to pay? You're a pirate, and have no moral grounds at all to stand on, really. Stop being a penny pincher, and buy it legally already! You're the reason why Walmart uses child labor ya cheap bastard!
I8-D
Call a spade a spade and just admit that in some small way, the RIAA and the MPAA getting taken to the cleaners by filesharing and it's unfair. Yes, I know that they are unfair in their pricing, artist recoupments, etc but still. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Music companies take their contracted artists to the cleaners too. And they keep money which is obligated for artists. And they were found guilty of monopoly price manipulation. And they lobbied to change the law to make recording artists copyrights "work for hire."
And they expect sympathy when Joe Sixpack downloads his favorite tune???? Just because you can buy a law, doesn't automatically buy you moral high ground. I knew the war was lost when my 60 year old, computer phobic, accountant told me she had been downloading mp3s and making CDs. She had no guilt or remorse and she is as straight laced as they come.
In addition, I'd like to see some consideration for a legal means to compel companies to open-source their old abandonware. IANAL, nor am I a software developer, so I don't know what would be an appropriate means, of what exceptions should be granted. However, it seems to me that if you're a software company who wrote something 20 years ago, you're not using it, you're not selling it, and you have no plans for it whatsoever-- well, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to me that someone with use for the software should be able to get the government to compel them to release the source code.
Using a VCR or PVR to record video and archive it is certainly easier and of better quality than downloads (in general) but it does not solve the problem of accessibility. Most television shows, movies, music, books, etc. are not available for sale in stores and are not played on television. Many of these are available for download on the internet. It's not just price but availability that drives piracy.
If they actually steal it, of course it is stollen. But in order to be "stollen", they would need to delete it (and the backups). Once they have deprived you of use it no longer matters if they made a copy. This is "theft". If someone makes a copy, that too is criminal, but it doesn't meet the legal requirements of theft. Hence, a whole body of code to deal with illegal copying.
Here's the analogy I've always used to compare piracy with conventional theft.
Let's say a teenager goes into a supermarket and steals a Mars Bar. After the teenager took it, that then meant that there was one less Mars Bar *physically on the shelf.* The Mars Bar is a physical object. So the supermarket has to suffer a loss on the money they were expecting to make from that physical object.
Now let's say that same teenager goes home and later that night, uses his T1 cable to download a warez copy of Windows XP. The teenager has downloaded a copy of XP...but in doing so, there has actually been an *additional* copy of XP created...one which didn't exist before...as a result of the downloading process. Nothing is missing from the shelves of any shrink-wrap boxed software shop, either.
So that's the difference. Shoplifting *removes* an item which the store then has to cover the loss of. Piracy on the other hand does not physically remove merchandise...what it really does is to create alternate sources of said merchandise...sources which are not necessarily under the software author's control. The software author might not make the amount of money he/she/they were expecting, but given that software doesn't exist as a physical object, it's a lot harder to quantify with any real accuracy the amount of money you could expect to make from it anyway.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-a p-unesco-iraq-museums,0,1589516.story?coll=sns-ap- nationworld-headlines
Looted art, DVD-/+R/RW, CD's etc., bullshit.
Blame people not objects and get the fuck out of Ireland. You've no fuckin business there and never had any. You've been raping, looting, torturing the world since time began. Every Euro that passes through your hand is blood money. India, Africa, South America, Asia etc. not one continent on this earth has managed to remain free of some european tyrany at some point in history. You'all still have your grubby paws clutched around nearly every island nation in the world as they're to puny to put up much of a fight. If it weren't for you stupid fucks the FBI would have Whoreand Vaneder Slut's Nut's in a vice right now in Aruba.
Instead of spending my entire life learning how to write software I should have become a doctor. Instead of people stealing from me, I could steal from them.
yeah, because all beggars behave the same; never has it happened that someone chose differently and did not give in to crime. ... ... fucking idiot. it's people like you who ruin this world.
Some of them will chose to starve. However, some of them will riot if they have no alternative. This is a establishes a balance of power - an asymmetric nash equilibrium. This is why people rarely starve even in societies where there is no formal social system.
The comparison with IP (which I didnt come up with) is farfetched, because one rarely needs IP for survival. So the position of the equlibrium is shifted
[lots of nonsense]
There has always been a balance of idiots like you and idiots like me. None of these will ruin the world.
IANAL but (1) copying something (illegally) is not the same as taking (stealing) it. Illegal duplication, whether photocopying a book or software, music, movies, or pictures is copyright violation, not theft.
And (2) by equating copyright violation with theft, the RIAA attempts to cast people in the role of masked thieves who break into stores at night and make off with a truckload of CDs: It's a lot easier for the RIAA to intimidate people and get a settlement when they think of illegal downloading as theft than "merely" copyright violation.
Don't sing the RIAA's song, folks!
--Udo.
Your line of thinking get the said farmer stabbed and put out of the work-force. Everybody starves.
Actually, it gets everybody to *do* something useful. Nobody starves. Well maybe idiotic whiners like you who just long for free launches will starve.
Economics make sure you are fed, clothed, and shieltered.
Assuming what you mean is that they shelter me, then you're right. I fail to see where I said they don't. I was criticizing the fact that most people seem to ignore the existance of free will and rely on switching their brain off so they can say that it's not their fault. Besides throwing insults at me, you're not attacking my point. Maybe because you can't.
Try live on your so called "Ethics" for a day, see how you earn your bread and butter, then come back.
Easy done, I'm already back. I've lived on these ethics since I was 18 and I have earned my bread and butter. And my education. And my hobbies. My computers. My business, that is just being born. My holidays, my travels. My everything. Now, seeing that you're envious... well actually I don't care about how you feel. Just fuck off and die.
Global warming is a cube.
It IS normal. Its not theft.. Its not wrong
( morally ).
The laws need to be changed back to represent the peoples wishes, not the corporations. Once that is done this whole issue will be dead and we can move on to something that actually matters.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This from the people who would give up their passwords for a chocolate bar!
Theft is depriving someone of profit or the ownership of property.
If you download something you (a) want to try before you commit to buying it or (b) would never buy anyway but just want to take a look at, then you have not deprived anyone of profit. And downloading a copy of something doesn't deprive anyone of ownership. So it cannot be defined as theft.
I've seen this since the dawn of personal computers, when Commodore 64 owners would accumulate boxes full of floppies of cracked C64 games that they had never even booted up, just to be able to say they had them. These kids couldn't afford to buy all of those games, anyway. No one lost any money. Occasionally, someone who would maybe have bought the game would get a copy for free, and that could definitely be construed as 'loss of profit', but as long as no one charged for the copy nobody else profited from the transaction, so the point could be argued.
I agree that anyone who sells an illegal copy of commercial software is guilty of theft. But if there is no profit or property lost, how can it possibly be construed as theft?
The problem is that our laws have not caught up with our technology, and the business models of content providers have not been modified to reflect reality. If movie studios, record companies, et. al., would aggressively pursue counterfeiters who actually profit from their activities, and leave casual copiers alone, I think they would be amazed at how much support they would garner from making consumers their allies instead of their enemies.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
There has always been a balance of idiots like you and idiots like me. None of these will ruin the world.
Well, the world has gone through lots of changes. They happened when some idiots tipped the balance. For good or for worse.
Global warming is a cube.
Thanks snopes
/Canadian
And no, folks, it is not meant to reward authors.
Progressing art & science in a market system usually implies innovation, and innovation usually implies profit. Profit isn't necessarily a reward, though it could be used as such. Profit's function in an economic system is covering the costs & risks of future development.
Limit all copyright times to the minimum required to pay back for creation costs (along the lines of 5 years).
Limiting terms is fine, and the current trend for unlimited extensions is dangerous, but I disagree that it's about covering creation costs. It's about creating a market for content, thus ensuring revenue flow for the creation of future works.
Cancel copyright on functional information (such as software). The power it grants the copyright holder over its user, even in a limited time, is too great.
I'm curious why you would think this. Copyright is what allows things like the GPL to exist. Without it, you don't have a community of open source with forced contributions, you have public domain artifacts.
Software creation, in most cases, requires little to no financial incentive
In most cases? In general, this could be applicable to any profession in which one gains pride and/or fellowship from their work -- Habitat for Humanity building houses, or Amish barn raisings at one end of the spectrum, pro-bono legal work as another example.
Just because financial needs aren't the ONLY incentive, this does not eliminate the fact that people need money.
and in niche cases where it does, payment to programmers is still possible.
Niche cases? Those niche cases would be where someone spends 8 hours a day developing software, and thus don't have time to make money in exchange for another form of labour? That's a strange definition of niche.
Let's break out this scenario....
Software creation, as with all forms of human activity, requires incentives. Financial incentives certainly aren't the only incentive. However, if one is to spend the majority of their time creating software, they require financial incentive. That means a wage, or a salary.
Wages and salaries must be paid by people or groups of people that undertake some kind of activity that provides economic value. Thus, they too must have incentive.
In a world where software licenses are no longer valued (i.e. public domain artifiacts), then the value is in:
a) the time you spend (e.g. customization or support time); or
b) the complementary products you associate with the software (e.g. retail websites, advertisments on the web, or selling hardware or business consulting)
c) the usage of the software (e.g. software-as-a-service, metered usage, etc.)
So software-for-hire is developed by a consortium of volunteers in their spare time for certain classes of software plus full-time developers that are remunerated by manufacturers or software-service firms, or consulting / support firms.
Is this the model you seek? Is that really superior to today's model? I wonder.
Most popular open source software today is subsidised by hardware sales, business consulting, support contracts, and advertising (IBM, HP, RedHat, OSDN, Google, etc.).... Is this sustainable if the hardware business starts to falter, or if the business consultants lose large deals?
I do agree something needs to be done about the perpetual tax placed on desktop software upgrades, but I think that's slowly fixing itself -- people are upgrading less as the software becomes more commoditized and clones/alternatives appear. It's a long process, but probably in the next 10 years, Office won't be the cash cow it is today for Microsoft.
Allow copyright, but only apply it to inter-legal-entities copying. This would mean that EULA's have no effect (You really shouldn't need extra permission from the copyright owner to run the copy you bought!).
Hm
-Stu
If stores (supermarkets, 7-11's, etc) began selling lock-pick sets off the shelf, and break-ins became common, would that mean we should give up locking our doors? That we should give up trying to protect ourselves?
Where do these people think the money to develope those games and programs comes from? Gaming companies, especially, depend on the income from the sale of their product. The more it gets stollen, the less money they have to recover from the losses of development, and the less they have for their next project. I can't tell you how many gaming companies have dropped like flies because of people stealing their products. Remember Impressions? The makers of such fine games as the Pharaoh and Caesar city builder series? Killed due to piracy. The HL2 project had to be cut short of true completion, and the release was delayed for months, due to piracy.
Programmers and developers expect to get paid for slaving away to build software products. Companies depend on income to survive, not to mention that they are in the business to make money in the first place! So to protect their income, they have to start creating more and more stringent licenses and locks...which translates into more hassel for us.
We need to start policing P2P networks, start enforcing the existing laws, upgrade those existing laws to just "kill the fucker", and take this problem head-on.
I've re-read this, and I have no idea what you're saying.
Can you state in one sentence what your point is? I'm not trolling, I just don't know what you're trying to say.
Repeated often enough, lies become truth? I don't care how long that term has been in use: there's little resemblance between the kid downloading a Metallica album and the bloodthirsty murderer, cutlass clamped between his teeth, stealthily climbing over the gunwale of an anchored yacht.
Continuing to call it piracy is still as stupid as it has ever been. Is it theft? Is someone being deprived of property? No? Then are sales being lost? How many studies have shown that in the general case, for software "piracy" at least, the pirate would not likely otherwise have purchased the item in question?
If you really need to categorize the wrongness of unauthorized copying, if you need to name the type of crime to which it belongs, I want you to contemplate the class of sin which includes Adultery but excludes Theft. Consider:
Where's the similarity between the three?
I believe that Adultery used to be punishable by imprisonment. Perhaps, even, some previous era's equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security would break down doors in the middle of the night to arrest wrongdoers. Possibly, adulterers were once regarded by some as undermining all that is sacred to society -- the terrorists or communists of their day.
I dunno, perhaps we should bring back branding for this class of criminal.
Since the most recent Supreme Court ruling it seems you don't own anything except the fair market value of a thing.
That's good to know actually, because when those bastards come for my tax inflated property I'll get a hell of a lot more than it's worth.
Mark 2:23-2:28 KJV
Not to ignore other countries but I would like to see an equivalent study done in the US. I used to download all of my music but in the past two years I have bought all of my music legally. I started feeling guilty about it. I still don't like the RIAA but I am still buying my music. I think the campaign against it has gotten to me. Anyone else?
We're still discussing this? Hmm... odd.
The bottom line is, and you can try to argue this all you want, but just don't come crying to me when your arguments completely fall apart... if you "steal" something, and the very item you stole remains in place for others to use (in other words, a duplicate), it's not stealing.
Don't try to say it is. Don't use technicalities, and please, for the love of GOD, don't use the fundamentally flawed, "But if you steal a candy bar..." analogy.
Software, music, movies... are a virtual commodity that can be duplicated, so unless you're stealing an actual physical CD... the data on there is free reign, really.
Truth is scary.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
> In order for something to be theft, there has to be an "intention to permanently deprive".
In that case, copyright owners commit a theft against the society, because they intend to permanently deprive the society of their works. =^.^=
you're not entitled to their work without fair compensation
I quite agree - if only the RIAA member payed their artists fair compensation. Unless young artists are lucky enough to have access to decent contract lawyers, that is unlikely to happen.
I like to make a point of buying the work of musicians I like, now I'm earning an ok income - preferably at their concerts, where they are less likely to be ripped off by all the middlemen in the business. When I was young and poorer, I would tape from the radio and buy 2nd hand. Only if I was particularly struck by something would I stump up the cash for new material. I fail to see how P2P use by today's young (and presumable poor) differs from my home taping in my youth, except it dramatically improves the range of available music.
Of course the music industry used to winge on about "HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC" back then, but it obviously didn't, and the US Supreme Court's Betamax ruling meant we had the law on our side. Of course RIAA and company are busy issuing writs to music uploaders, but has anybody taken them up on their offer of legal action? Or been backed sufficiently to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary? From what I've read, everybody so far has caved in to the threat.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Price is based on several factors, one being PROFIT.
Programmers and developers charge for their time.
The question to ask should be:
"How much do I, as a consumer, feel I should pay these people to build me what I want for my entertainment or career future"
Trouble is....the question asked dealing with time is: "How long will this take to download on a T1?"
You keep going until you die..."Me".
One of the things that can end your chances at reproduction is contracting a major STD. The urge to get ones face close to the genitals of one's prospective partner comes from that. If you aren't exclusive, you can at least look and see if they have sores. If you think you are, you can potentially smell any other sex partners they have on their crotch.
Homosexuality is evolutionary, too. In the same way that drone ants or bees who don't themselves breed are evolutionary, homosexuals can help their relatives procreate. They can give same sex realtives early experience that helps them get a mate (I know, sounds gross. Evolution often is.) They can also form same sex pair bonds that reduce violence and increase goodwill. If my two brothers and my cousin, between them, carry all of my genes (statistically likely) then helping them procreate will pass on my genes to the next generation. Genes don't care how they get passed on. Whatever works.
As far as victimization, choice, and consequences go, try reading Mark Twain's essay, "What is a Man?" for an interesting take on things.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
that we are discussing the nature as such of the 'crime' and therefore need precise terms.
The problem with the term 'pirate' is that it's a loaded term. In speech and discussion it imposes certain moral vices on the imagined subject.
As I'm in favour of the idea that law should follow morality and not vice versa, it appears that we have, through the word 'piracy' created a circular definition.
Pirates are bad, therefore we need to have a law to protect against them.
This man is a pirate because he breaks the law regarding infringement of copyrights.
Increase the scope of the law, and you've increased the problem, which is ever-more rampant piracy. Perhaps only because the scope of the law is ridiculously beyond what is moral?
It doesn't matter, I suppose. They're all pirates and should be hung anyway!
Just ask yourself: Is the term conducive to rational analysis? To give you a contrast, my country has just started a program to help Malaysia or some country in South East Asia get their piracy problem under control.
The only thing is that this is the year 2005, my country is among the largest shipping nations of the world, and the 'pirates' are land-based gangs of scoundrels with assault rifles and high speed boats boarding the ship, seizing cargo, possibly murdering the crew in the process.
Does it strike you that, perhaps, the fluffy sound of the term copyright infringement is a result of nobody taking copyright seriously anymore?
To further my ramblings: I propose we start discussing gay men using the term ass bandits. Yes, 'ass bandits', that's what we should call them.
Then we'll try to have an intelligent discussion on gay marriage.
So, as I just spun into generating a troll, I would like to conclude that: "Yes, the motherfucking, cocksucking term matters. Even though we're supposedly more stupid than lawyers, we could at least try to steer clear of using ambiguous and emotioanally loaded terms that bestow negative moral qualities upon one party in a discussion, and making the other party a victim* by default.
*)Which *I* should feel sorry for and say: Yeah, what the hey, let's throw everything else aside, so all of western culture will eventually be _owned_ . Just to help these poor people in the 'creative' industries squeeze more out of each creator they sign up. And most likely keeping the excess for themselves.
This suggests first usage in that way in 1701.
(with various cutscenes)
...
You wouldn't steal a car (clip of a guy crowbaring a car)
You wouldn't steal a candy bar (picture of a kid snagging a candy bar on a store walkthrough)
You wouldn't steal a DVD (picture of a kid slipping a store DVD into his pocket)
Downloading movies off the internet is theft!
Or my favorite: Buying copied DVD's is stealing!
Neither of the above qualify as theft in a legal sense, and frankly I'm getting fucking sick of seeing anti 'piracy' ads in a movie that I've paid to see... in which case obviously I'm not pirating it.
The most sensible thing said on this thread yet.
So, if I walk into a corner store while the clerk is in the back and take his cash register, then get caught by the police. If I tell them I was intending to return the cash register the following day, then I did not commit theft. My intent was not to permanently deprive.
Somehow I don't think they'll believe me. Sorry, this is off topic, I'm not trying to draw any metaphores regarding software piracy.
In the Netherlands, and perhaps in other countries as well, we pay a fee on all writable media we buy. This fee is used to pay artists their due. Apparently, the government considers piracy normal as well. In fact, piracy is so normal the the few people that use writable CDs for other uses are apparently worth this measure.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
That's what the dumb son of a bitch gets for farming. Should have gone into weapons manufacturing instead, I'd like to see a vagrant try and eat an ICBM.
If you think about it, it would be bad if the consumer was responsible for that actions of whom ever three gettng there merchindise from.
If SOny Music is found out to have breached a copyright when selling a cd, should you be punished for it?
Now, I don't know british law, and I am not giving an opinion on it, only pointing out one of several reasons why downloaders might not be committing copyright infringment.
Here in the states, evryone that the RIAA has gone after was also uploading music. Sadly, some of them didn't know they were doing it. More correctly, they didn't know the software they were using allowed for uploading.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Look, you and the gp poster both make the same mistake. You make it explicitly, he makes it implicitly. Something that isn't theft may still be morally objectionable. For example, we condemn murder without that condemnation hinging on the argument that the murderer is depriving his victim. I object to people driving while talking on their cell phones, without resorting to some convoluted argument about my personal safety being "stolen".
Copyright infringement is not theft. Copyright infringement is also usually morally wrong. In your hypothetical example, your copyright on your work was infringed by XCorp. You probably contracted with them to deliver the software in exchange for money. So it's probably also breach of contract. If no contract existed, then they're no better off, because they have no right to the software unless you explicitly licensed it.
Your last paragraph doesn't make any sense: There is no copyright on money. Counterfeiting laws don't derive from copyright law; they derive from the government's constitutional authority to print money. More important, money isn't infinitely copyable the way software is. I can't take a dollar bill from you without you losing a dollar bill. I can't print a dollar bill and buy something with it without inflating the rest of the economy by a dollar.
No, it's copyright infringement.
Imagine two worlds: In the first, I woke up today, put an illegal copy of Adobe Photoshop on my computer, and start using it for some productive purpose. In the second world, I slept through the day. In the first world, the illegal software is helping to create value that would not have existed in the second world. Yes, it's outrageous (and illegal) for the software creator to not get a portion of that value. But the increase in the value of the software wouldn't have existed but for me. So how was anything "appropriated" from the owner of the software?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it.
Mom and pop, yeah. But when people who know what's going down start throwing around money, they're not paying for the copies. They're paying for the labor. They could spend their time tracking it down and testing it and burning it. They just don't feel like it.
I would personally love it if they spent money making people more aware of the criminality of duplicating media. If we spent the money we do on fighting drugs on educating the public about this, they'd be much more aware.
And then the shit would hit the fan.
I think most people are unaware of how long copyright last on so many things. People don't seem to be aware of the ridiculousness of current legislation. That's why these organisations don't go after the average guy. They make bold statements about so much money being lost, and they whine and lobby lawmakers, so that they can entrench market share by making it illegal to have copyrighted software on your machine that you didn't pay for. (Some legislation as of late has been so poorly worded as to possibly make software you wrote yourself illegal.)
Yeah, go for it. Please. Maybe then the people will take back the concept of public domain. Personally, I think any music company that engages in payola to the point where a crappy song is stuck in my head all the time should lose rights quickly.
Oh, and I'd be far more willing to support a lot of these guys if they had a decent licensing scheme in place where I could upgrade media cheaply, so I could go from VHS to DVD to whatever, without having to pay a second time for the same licence to view.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
I'm fairly sure that there were pre-historic wars over drugs.
The article had this whole tone like this was a terrible finding, and we should all be mourning.
Then it puts in a blurb at the end about piracy hurting creativity. I think it helps creativity, I'd love to see more Homestar runners and less Britney Spears.
You've tried to paint copyright restrictions as communistic, but unlimited copyright is not consistant with a society of maximised individual freedom (classical liberalism). Once you put an idea out into the world, whether it be a software algorithm, a story, a song or painting, that idea now exists in the minds of other people.
There are many copyrighted ideas that exist in my mind, such as songs I could recite, stories I could re-tell, or pieces of art that I could recreate given enough skill. Copyright restricts my freedom as an individual; it says that I have no right to use these ideas that now exist in my mind or in my posession.
We as a society recognise that if we demand our rightful individual freedom then artists will suffer for it, and that this will hurt us because the existing artists will stop creating art, and future artists will be discouraged from creating anything in the first place. Because of this, we as a society agree to grant artists a limited monopoly on their ideas, we agree to let them limit our personal freedom, so that they may profit from their ideas.
This is an ideal solution because it benefits the artist, in that they can profit from their ideas, and it benefits society in that artists are encouraged to create art so that they may profit (or at least survive). We only grant a limited compensation because this is best for society (it means artists must keep creating more art) and because we are only willing to allow our personal freedom to be oppressed for a limited time.
The perpetual extension of copyright and the general corruption of the intellectual property concept means that the balance has shifted away from equal individual/artist benefit to a scenario of heavy artist benefit with little individual/society benefit (and it's not even the artists who benefit, it's their corporate masters). We as a society of individuals agreed to the oppression of our personal freedom because we recognised the benefit it would give us, and now that benefit has been taken away. The artists (or their corporate masters) have broken the deal first, and so we damn them for it.
We, the individuals who comprise society, are the ones who have balanced individual freedom (NO copyright) with social conscience (SOME copyright). It is you "artists" who call for unlimited copyright who oppose true freedom.
Definitely. How would you like it if some company used your GPLed code in their proprietary application? Now that's software piracy!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I think a major part of the problem is that software companies want to sell software as a product and a service, in the contexts that are most objectionable by the consumer.
In the product sense, you buy software off the shelf at some store. Software is the only product you can buy off the shelf that the manufacturer argues has a value that goes down to $0 the instant you buy it. If it doesn't fit your needs, you can't return it or sell it to someone else. In this context, piracy is promoted in the try-before-you-buy sense.
If it were a service, in which case the idea of not owning something you can resell makes sense, why is there no liability for bugs? Any other contract where one party fails to provide what they claim to offer creates a liability for the provider.
They want to sell software as a service, so you can't redistribute your copy, and have all the benefits of selling an as-is product.
Pricing is a significant factor in promoting piracy. Individuals who want to use a piece of software for personal use don't want to pay several hundred dollars for something they will use infrequently. In this context, a personal or education license at a reduced price is a good approach. I had an educational version of Mathematica that cost $125 when I was in college. That was a lot of money at the time, but it was worth it for me. The $1000 it would cost for the regular version was simply not going to happen. I didn't have a *need* for it, so I could have gotten by without it. However, in this situation I see a lot of people rationalizing their pirating the commercial version. Those people are never going to pay full price for the product, so no money is actually being lost.
Piracy is about as morally objectionable as friends who come over uninvited and eat your food. It's nothing more than a nuisance to most people.
Can often be heard in the theatres here in the states when those messages play.
The analogy doesn't really work; it is illegal copying of the corn, not illegal taking of corn. And, pack-sheds sell the corn directly to people, or atleast closer than what farmers do.. The farmers make the corn, and the pack-sheds basically steal it and sell it to super-markets or whatever.
The beggars simply have a handy dandy little replicator and make a copy of the precious corn. We all know that these beggars wouldn't buy this corn in the first place, and they aren't preventing the pack-sheds or super-markets from selling it since the supply of corn actually increases with this replication.
The only thing that is taken is the possibility of the super-market selling to that beggar; what could be doesn't make it a would be. The majority of people will, probably, keep buying shrink-wrapped corn with a handy dandy seal of approval on it from the super-market because it is easier. Or some may just have a little sampling, and if they like it they will buy precious corn from the super-market. Of course, some may continue to replicate, but it really isn't a potential loss unless they were going to buy it.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes something special to be different
I have to disagree here. You make a point that, on the surface, sounds valid - but it's actually quite flawed.
For one thing, you're making the assumption that the only value an artist receives for his/her work is the sales of his/her albums. Actually, it's well known that the recording industry generally places such restrictive terms on their recording contracts that artists receive very little from their sales.
Why does an artist ever agree to such terms in the first place then? In a word, *exposure*! He/she wants to become popular, famous, etc. There's not much rewarding about spending your life writing and recording music that practically nobody listens to afterwards. No matter how much people hype the whole "do it yourself!" publishing methods leveraging the Internet, etc. - right now, we're still suck in a world where achieving true "popularity" pretty much requires the marketing muscle of one of the big record companies.
To illustrate, not long ago, the artist John Waite was in town for a show, and stopped by one of our local radio stations for an interview. The D.J. asked him why, after all these year, he was still going around the country trying to do these small club tours? He said he simply needed the money to pay his bills. Know where he was staying when he was in town? Motel 6! That's right! He couldn't afford anything else. And this is the guy who sold HUGE numbers of albums with "The Babys" and "Bad English". He openly admitted that he didn't really make much of anything with those bands by the time the record companies got their cut.
I'd argue that artists simply need the blood-sucking record companies to act as a "launch pad" for their careers, but the real money they make tends to be from doing live performances, once they achieve a "critical mass" of listeners.
When you look at it that way, artists are often being helped much more than hurt by people "pirating" their music around. It's more free exposure for them. And plenty of people who only owned bootleg copies of all of a band's music still shelled out the $40 or even $80+ for a concert ticket to see them afterwards.
If you can get a bootleg version of something cheaper, wouldn't you get the cheaper one? So price the legitimate version at the bootleg price. Obviously it can be sold at the lower price at a profit otherwise nobody would bother selling the bootleg versions.
'they can't say this thing has no value so I shouldn't pay for it; if it had no value they would not pirate it.'
If I can reproduce a song without having to listen to it then the recording of the song no-longer has any value to me.
This is why I say that if you haven't managed to milk an idea to death in 25 years then someone else should be given the opportunity.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Actually if you want to bring Jesus and friends into a piracy discussion, the loves and fishes thing is a much better fit.
Jesus and pals had a few loaves of bread and a few fishes. Jesus then shared it with his multitude of followers, and miraculously it was enough to feed hundreds of people. So somehow Jesus duplicated the food matter.
Since the multitudes he fed got to skip buying a meal, I'm sure many fishermen and bakers lost sales that day.
People don't view copying as theft, because it is not theft. It's copyright violation. Copyrights are an artificial means of protecting ideas.
If I liked a shirt you're wearing, and made an exact copy of it for myself, you wouldn't accuse me of stealing your shirt. You still have it.
The reason why this is such a problem in the digital realm is that the costs of copying (manufacturing) bits is practically free.
What will happen when the cost of copying physically stuff is just as easy? Will companies be be crying for piracy laws to prevent me from making a backup of my favorite coffee mug, in case I break it?
You should read 1984 sometime. It gives some good insights on why we says certain things in certain ways. In order to make certain things better or worse all you have to do is say it in a certain way.
Take these two sentences that you might find in a news headline (mind you I have no opinion on the War in Iraq or terrorism but it's the first thing that comes to mind when putting twisting on words):
A.) The freedom fighters killed 30 members of the occupying forces.
B.) The terrorists murdered 30 members of the Coallition.
Those two sentences say provide the same information. One makes one side look like the bad guy and the other looks like the good guy (Al Jazir vs Fox News).
Piracy is an evil word in a sense and entails assumption of one is no better than actual Pirates who murdered, pillaged, and raped on the high seas. "Copyright infringers" may be still criminals but you don't think of murderers when you say it.
I think it's safe to assume that pro-copyright side will continue to use the word piracy and the anti-copyright side will continue to use Copyright Infrigment.
My personal belief that the anti-copyrighter at least have some moral highground in this argument. Well... I mean they aren't calling anyone who supports pro-copyright as "fascist capitlist pig dogs". Although, I want to call members of congress that all the time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Downloading digital binary that happens to contain copyrighten material is not a crime.
Mass-Distributing such material on some shady irc/ftp/p2p network, is a crime.
Anyone who buys warez is a moron!
Anyone who sells warez deserves whatever fate the bsa has waiting for them.
Downloading warez, and then giving a copy to your friend could be classified as distribution, but it is harmless overall, unless your friend plans to use that software to earn money from.
This is why I just stoped using windows, and proprietary software in general.
The law makers would like to make everything black or white, but there are far more variables and circumstances that need to be accounted for in laws. (similar to algorhythm programming)
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
it is normal... everywhere... you think we don't notice what corporations and business do everyday. If you can find and edge an advantage to get what you want when you want it, You do it!
WE all need money... If I know peeps are willing to pay m 10 bucks for a quality batman begins DVD. that cost me 33 censt to burn... and the risk of being caught (Jail time) is minimal. Sounds like a solid investment to me.
Bootlegging is not a crime... It's just another investment opportunity. It's not what you do... It's what you can get away with.
As far as artists and creators having there work sold but not getting royalties. Thats their problem! They will go back to the marketplace and purchase security systems to help themselves. In the end thats what survival is, helping yourself.
(My needs come first, you'll just have to suffer untill i've had my fill. Get in my why and I'll have you removed, fired, laid-off, criminalized or worse.)
If you doubt that, Go re-read the IBM article regarding 14000 jobs going overseas.
Maybe if it's ok to borrow a CD, then other forms of piracy like boarding a ship at high sea and stealing it's good is also ok.
Perhaps we should look into this...
Shouldn't this read "you're not entitled to their work without fair compensation if it is requested"? Are we making it wrong unintentionally to download freeware/open source, and independent artist with this statement?
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
"Two humans for any movie, please!"
Goes to show what I've been saying all along. Prohibition supports terrorism.
What?
Goto any pre-civlization hunter-gatherer group and ask the men there what age they prefer in a mate. They'll say "Between Puberty and First Child." That's rather young, you know.
That may be the case, but during those times, people only lived until they were about 30. This puts things into perspective.
There were many things accepted during the pre-civilization days that is considered wrong today. It's called evolution. Our civlization has learned over time what is right and what is wrong.
Regardless, you can't argue that having a $0 version of the exact same piece of software as you have to pay $n for, with very little risk involved in obtaining it, doesn't have any effect on revenue. The effect is no doubt inflated by executives, but to say it has no effect is just plain wrong.
Someone who really wants Photoshop (or whatever other software, as it seems like a lot of responses got bogged down in this example) will most likely weigh the cost of buying it with the effort of pirating it. Piracy is a downward force on the value of goods in this case. If piracy were not an option, and you only have one avenue of getting the software, you are more likely to buy it.
Perhaps it's not worth paying $1 for a song to you if you could otherwise get it for free. But, in any given pirated music collection, there are most likely a couple of songs that the owner would have paid $1 if piracy were not an option. To say that the owner would have bought all of the songs is stupid, but to say that the owner would have bought none of the songs is equally stupid. The answer lies somewhere inbetween. Piracy does hurt revenue, by some undetermined amount.
It's absolutely true that some people will pirate a piece of software even if it cost a penny. That's not my argument. I simply argue that pirates are forcing a company to compete with a free version of its own product, and that absolutely does devalue its product.
Does this remind anyone else of the studios' influence on the actual artists?
Your last paragraph doesn't make any sense: There is no copyright on money. Counterfeiting laws don't derive from copyright law; they derive from the government's constitutional authority to print money.
Makes perfect sense. Most money stolen these days is not through physically appropriating bank notes. You can only clear a few thousand dollars if you are lucky if you walk into your local branch packing a Smith and Wesson, even less if you bag snatch from Grannies. Most money is stolen symbolically by fraud, electronic or otherwise. There may not even be a physical paper trail when money is siphoned off from one bank account to another. The concept of $value$ is extremely important in the transfer of money.
Stealing money by illegally transfering $value$ ownership is not too disimilar to stealing intelectual property. Nothing physically has changed hands. The only thing that changes is the transference of rights to excersise the $value$ of the commodity.
Money is just a symbol for $value$. $value$ can be represented in many ways other than money such as a barter system. For example in a barter system where you as a programmer swap your value as a programmer for a couple of pigs from the local farmer you have come to an agreement on the equal ( maybe ) transfer of value. However if you steal his pigs he has no value to purchase your software. Vice versa if he steals a copy of your software then you are unable to excersise $value$ to purchase his pigs.
I don't understand why so many programmers schooled in the ways of abstract thinking can't see software and services as a specialized sub classes of a commodity that can be bought sold and stolen.
By the way many courts do consider murder/violent assault a form of stealing and can impose penalties payable to the victim or families as compensation. There is also commonly held expressions such as "His life was stolen" or "She sole my heart" which the common man/woman understands to be the theft of value not just physical goods.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Stealing also does not require you to take a physical object
You seem to be missing the point. Stealing means taking something away from it's owner. Now note how the idiom you so elgantly quoted takes something away from someone.
Now please explain how something gets taken away from people when you pirate stuff.
And finally, even if it were the case that once the word 'Steal' required an object, it doesn't any more.
Because you say so? Because the RIAA says so? Why should your definition of a word be the correct one, and not ours? I call your BS newspeak, and as we all know newspeak is only used for propaganda purposes. People who resort to propaganda are rarely trustworthy.
Also, see my sig.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I fail to see how terrorists win because I'm not paying ANYONE for a particular piece of software/music album/movie. If anything, ISPs win because they make money off the people send/recieving said "pirated" goods.
I would recommend enlarging the deposit requirement for software, cribbing heavily off of the disclosure requirement in patents.
Essentially, the author of the software would be required to deposit with the Library of Congress any and all materials and documentation that an ordinarily skilled software developer would need in order to recompile, or alter the software.
That is to say, you'd have to send in a well-commented copy of the source code, and notes as to how things work, how to compile (and with what), etc. It would be a requirement in order to get a copyright at all. Authors that don't want to do this would not get copyrights.
Since there is no reason for the copyright system to protect trade secrets, it doesn't matter that the deposit is done up front and would be publicly examinable. You could learn methods and such (which aren't protected by copyright anyway) but copyright would preclude you from using the actual code during the term.
Of course, drastically shortening the terms for works incorporating software is also a good idea.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
You have it backwards. It is not that major criminal acts (copyright infringement) are becomming respectable. It is that minor criminal acts (that maybe should even be fair use) are turned into major criminal acts. Labels warning you that you dare not copy this vinyl phonograph record onto cassette tape.
Well, you can also think about it that the minor crimes become major ones when they reach a certain quantity. Petty theft is, what, anything below $5000, where grand theft is above? It's the same criminal act, just a different amount. Now, if 10 people steal $500, that is a bunch of petty theft that is equivalent to grand theft. If a million people steal $0.10, it is still a lot of money.
I think this article kind of shows that happening to software. If someone downloads photoshop to check it out, and later asks his company to buy it for him, that's cool. The problem is that pirating has become so common that there is no stigma against it for most people. Odds of prosecution are so low that without a social stigma the only difference between legit software and pirated is the price. Since people usually go for the lower price, there is no reason to buy when you can download.
Look at the industry response, and they are going overboard in panic. Rather than looking for an optimal solution, they look for one that favors them. They want onerous laws that give them far too much influence, and too often they get them.
Then turn around again, and the public reaction to the industry reaction is just as overboard. Many people seem to think that two wrongs make a right. As long as 'they' are trying to wrong me, I can wrong them without a guiltly conscience.
I can think of two outcomes of this, but there are probably more. One is that people actually come to their senses and compromise. A good, strong political leader pushing for appropriate laws might be able to make this happen. It's really hard at this point, though, because I don't think the people abusing filesharing are going to stop even if the RIAA, BSA, and MPAA become true saints out to help the people. A politician who tries to balance things can't get votes anymore, because our society has become so polarized. You have to have an enemy to attack and a friend to defend. You can't try to point out that both sides have some merit.
The other option is a meltdown of some sort. The software industry collapses, and we're left in the early 80's again. The film industry dies, putting a million people out of work (but at least it stops Lucas' madness.) Ten thousand geeks march on Redmond only to be run over by Microsoft's tanks. Once one side of the equation doesn't exist anymore, then we can rebuild in a way that makes more sense.
While what you day is valid, it's important to understand the cause and effect.
Similar to illegal drugs, criminals and terrorists are involved in these products BECAUSE they are illegal. The fact that they are illegal causes the profit margin to be large and worthwhile to the criminals. If they were NOT illegal, the profit margin would be small and the criminals would not be interested at all. There is nothing intrinsic to the product that causes the criminals to be involved. If no one buys the unauthorized DVDs, the terrorists would surely move on to something else that can fund their activities.
Using the word "piracy" is implicitly accepting the copyright monopolists' interpretation of events. "Sharing without our permission" would be a less slanted way of describing what's happening.
And, you might ask, if I bought it, why do I need your permission to do anything I like with it that doesn't change its content? The only reason is that it's a vestige of an ancient system of royally-granted monopolies, and in earlier days when there were high barriers to entry for publishing, it encouraged authors.
But this is not the 1600s anymore. So where are the unbiased studies of how much impact copying-without-permission actually has on the motivation of content creators? Or is it all propaganda paid for by MPAA and RIAA?
I'm not taking a position either way on whether P2P sharing of copyrighted material is harmful or immoral. But however much free-riders might be scroungers, they are not pirates and they are not thieves. Saying they are is accepting the terms of debate as defined by a self-interested and unethical lobbying group that has resorted to lying and purchasing legislation to enrich themselves. Any sensible discussion should not be framed by them.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Missing the point as usual .... The physical removal of goods is not the issue of stealing. Stealing is the appropriation by illegal means of another entities $value$. Thus you can steal money, barter cards, identiy. Try this . type into google
...
....
"identity theft" site:slashdot.org
And see how many of the resident slashdot software pirate whinge about the term theft being used in relation to identity.
You could just as easily say that siphoning petrol from your neighbours car is not stealing as there is no trouble in going down to the petrol station to get some more. You haven't really stolen the petrol as the petrol is easily duplicated
I allready see your objection and you write
But they don't have the petrol in thier car anymore and they have to go and $buy$ more petrol to drive thier car so that is stealing whereby if you steal software from the owner they can still use the software
Sorry but no. The owner of the software isn't interested in using the software. The software is only usefull ( $valuable$ ) to them if it can be sold/licensed. If it has been stolen and distributed it can't be sold ( effectively ). It's value has been degraded. The $value$ in the petrol is it's ability to drive the car and the $value$ in the software is its return on being sold. Both the value in the petrol and the value in the car can be traded identically. If thier value can be identically traded it can be stolen as well.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
fucking idiot. it's people like you who ruin this world.
Well... I don't know about ruin the world but I can give you some examples of when this happened.
1.) French Revolution - Lots of heads chopped off.
2.) Russian Revolution - Lots of starving angry mobs there killing lots of rich people or putting them on trial.
3.) German Political Problems between 1918 to 1930s - You know the ones that brough Mr. Hitler into power.
4.) Various other food riots like Irish potato famines etc.
Now you make think such things are morally wrong, but I'm sure you have never experienced starvation. It's nasty... Trust me you will become a different person. After a while you'd find murderin a fellow man to be acceptable. And in some cases eat them! (as seen with sailors stranded in the pacific)
Now the US has never had this problem. Hopefully never will... But if we had lack of food and tons of starving angry poor people they'd riot too just like all the other angry starving mobs throughout history.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Thats the King James version. For some reason when he translated it they put Corn instead of wheat. Corn was known at the time by King James. Here is the English Standard Version from http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?search=Mark%20 2:23-25;&version=47;
"3One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24And the Pharisees were saying to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" 25And he said to them, "Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him:"
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Oh, nobody can deny that you can divide misappropriation of something that is in the control of somebody else into cases where the use of the thing is exclusive or non-exclusive.
And, if you choose to call one "theft" and the other "infringement". It's a useful distinction when calculating the nature and extent of harm caused (if any).
However, it doesn't follow that "infringement" cannot cause harm, or indeed is any less harmful than cases of outright theft.
For example, suppose I am an author. A contracter working in my home sees one of my books and steals it. Clear theft, of a book that retails for $29.99. The guy at the computer repair shop notices the final copy of my much anticipated sequel on my hard disk and makes a copy, leaving my copy intact on the hard disk. He then releases it on P2P, resulting in a 5% reduction in total sales. Who has harmed me more?
I don't take revenue from anyone when I make a copy of something. He still has all the revenue he had before I made the copy.
This is so financially naive, it bears correction. Future revenue has present value. You might as well saying a company reneging on a stock option agreement doesn't harm their employees, or not paying a bill for something that was delivered on credit doesn't harm a store.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
. If mankind was only driven by instincts and emotions, there would be no free will, no morality.
Okay, this is a pet peeve of mind. Free will? Who says we have "free will"? What exactly does free will mean? Most of the standard definitions that I've heard don't hold up at all; mankind doesn't have these kinds of "free will", and I'm always puzzled at what kind of "free will" people think we do have.
"Free to think whatever we want"?
No, there are clearly ideas that we can't wrap their heads around: advanced calculus is hard or impossible for many people, for instance. So no, we can't think whatever we want: we can only think as well as our brains and experience are capable. We can only learn at a certain maximum rate.
"Free to decide without outside influences"?
No, body chemistry plays a huge role on how we think and act: being hungry, tired, distracted, or on drugs completely alters how our will works?
If I want you to believe or desire something, I can use drugs, torture, indoctrination, or a whole host of other methods to manipulate your mind; I can, in many case, get you to will or desire exactly what I want you to. To a lesser degree, this is what marketing is all about.
"Free to do whatever we want?"
No, we're bound by a whole host of conditions that we can't violate, including the gravity to start with. We can't stop gravity just by wanting it; we can't ever think what we want without outside influences (see above).
"Free of deterministic influences: able to choose without predestination"?
This is hard to argue either way; it's both nebulous and philosopical, and largely comes up theological, rather than rational, debate. A lot of it hinges on what you assume "predestination" means.
If you don't assume either point a priori, however, you're left with a few possibilites.
(a) Everything is determanistic, and thus, there is no free will.
(b) Everything else is determanistic, but humans are entirely immune to determanism because of our "free will". This point of view is clearly wrong, because human decision making processes can be strongly influenced, and sometimes decided, by outside forces (eg. if someone doesn't eat long enough, he will feel hunger, regardless of whether or not he "wants" to).
(c) Some things are deterministic; some things aren't; human minds aren't. This is somewhat hard to argue without a list of what is and isn't determanistic, and the reasons why each category of thing is or isn't determanistic. However, if the categories overlap at all, determanistic things interact with "non-determanistic" things, thus causing a contradiction (if the outcome of all determanistic things is determined, and the outcome of all non-determanistic things is not determined, then any determanistic thing that can interact with an non-determanistic thing results in a mis-categorization). I've as yet to see a valid partioning that doesn't result in a counterexample, let alone a proof (or a strong argument) for why free will must exist in humans, but not other areas of existance. It seems reasonable to suspect bias in any notion that we humans are a special exception to the rest of
the universe.
(d) Everything is non-determanistic; some things just appear determanistic. This is hard to argue for or against, since we can't judge by emperical evidence (anything that looks "determanistic" may just be an illusion).
Since we can't argue this true or false by emperical evidence, it's little better than sophistry. For all we know, we may not exist.
Quantum mechanics in some sense assumes case (d) (everything is non-determanistic probability), but the way physical laws are deemed to be collective probabilities allow us to recast the term "determanistic" as "highly probable", and still make meaningful predictions about the outside world, returning us, for practical purposes, right back to case (a) for macroscopic events.
In all thes
What you're doing is holding everything in place while changing one factor. Your argument only holds if you assume that nothing else changes when you remove the option of copyright infringement. That is obviously not going to happen. Widespread copyright infringement is a very significant influence on a lot of things and you can't expect to change this factor without producing a completely different environment for your revenue determination. There are many possible scenarios, but removing the option of copyright infringement and expecting that all else stays the same has to be the most naive (unlikely) scenario. There are compelling arguments for "positive" effects which copyright infringement can have on revenue: free advertising, early fixation on a high priced product and abundant availability of user-to-user support come to mind. These and other positive factors are removed from the equation as well when you remove the negative influence of "lost" sales. The balance in absence of copyright infringement is impossible to predict, so the negative or positive effect of copyright infringement cannot be determined. IOW, it's wishful thinking either way.
... So then you're implying that the responsibility to prevent "unauthorized duplication" is on the distributor, because the distributor signed a contract saying that they would SELL the author's work, and not allow it to be acquired without remuneration? That sounds like a case for DRM...
Seriously, people. I've posted my stance on this issue several times, and have never been able to engage in a coherent discussion about it (because most repliers don't present a valid counter-argument).
You may not be depriving the author/artist/programmer any quantifiable sum of money, but you are going against the very premise of capitalism, which is to compensate someone for the products or services they render. Of course most "pirates" wouldn't consider it right to do this with physical items (or perhaps it's simply the risk of bad consequences that deters them), yet somehow it is okay to do this when copying a digital medium, because no actual "theft" occurs. Except it does occur, because the product is not the bytes that are copied, it is the information contained therein, and all the work that went into creating that information. So you are still taking something without compensating the author, which is theft.
One counterargument I've heard is that people "pirate" (I use quotes so the pedants won't pounce) as a display of dissent towards the **AA/IP laws/The Man/etc. But that is complete bullshit. There is a very prominent difference between dissent and deviance; the former is intended to prove a point about your beliefs, the latter is to veil your selfishness in someone else's belief. Depriving yourself of art because you disagree with the laws concerning it and don't want to fund the **AA is dissent. "Pirating" the art so you can enjoy it without abiding by the rules concerning it is deviance.
My argument is not for or against intellectual property (though I do support the idea within reasonable limits), it is for people to declare that what they do is wrong by social standards, regardless of what their personal standards are.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
You claim that a commercial transaction of copyrighted material which does not benefit the work's creator is THEFT???
Maybe Half.com and Ebay should be shut down for copyright infringement?
There is a long and very established history of consumer behaviours which do not pass capital to the original producer of the good. In fact the passing of 'royalties' to the original producer of the work is an EXTREMELY recent invention.
The failure of revenue flow to the original producer of a product is a failure of his/her business model.
It is not the responsibility of the consumer to alter their behaviour to preserve flawed business models.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
It is very difficult to prove that a particular thing is right or wrong ethically/morally. Not many philosophers even try it. And I am not aware of any that have succeeded. I think it is mostly based on our own individual feelings. It's all about our emotions. What do the majority of people feel to be fair, to be right and wrong.
To most of us I think it seems unjust to pick someone else's pocket, take their wallet and buy stuff with their cash and credit cards etc. To some extent it's the whole 'do unto others' golden rule thing (not the one about the rich ruling). Those of us with empathy would feel bad for the person from whom we stole. We took away something of theirs in what seems like a very unfair way. The same would be true of hitting them or killing them etc. We wouldn't want someone else to do it to us. How could injuring someone else (except maybe as revenge) ever seem fair and just? So various societies tend to make laws against this. Private ownership is a construct that most (but not all) societies deem useful.
Copyright is somewhat different. It seems that many of us just don't feel that it is wrong. I have never felt guilty about copying software because I realized that the creator would never even know about it. I do not feel like I have hurt him or deprived him of anything. That's the inherent problem (discussed by Neal Stephenson in his excellent essay) with software. It is all too easy to copy any kind of information or data. That makes it kind of impractical to sell. Once the secret recipe or whatever gets into the world people can tell others about it etc. This is the sense in which information really does 'want' to be free. It is so difficult to control.
It is also hard for me to feel bad about photocopying a library book or taking a photo of a painting for instance. I would like for artists and programmers to make money, but I am not personally preventing them from doing so by not giving any to them. If I weren't so poor and there were convenient ways of donating money to my favorite programmers and artists I would certainly do so. To thank them and encourage them to produce more. I have actually done this in the past when I had a bit more money. I sent one of my favorite music artists some money directly. I would like to see more opportunities for fans to be able to donate directly to artists, authors, and programmers. Unfortunately the tragedy of the commons comes into play here. It's like voting. No one individual matters. It is only large groups that have any effect.
Having said all this, I do feel that copyrights for a limited amount of time are a useful construct whether the data is in bits or natural language. Certainly copying something in order to sell it seems quite unfair. But I have problems with any actual laws against copying for personal use. How can you prosecute someone for just copying information that you chose to release into the world? It would be like trying to 'own' an idea or a certain phrase just because you invented it and prevent any others from using it without your permission. Trying to artificially control information like that seems wrong to me. So I don't see any easy answers to this. Unbreakable copy protection would seem to solve the problem of trying to sell data, but that may not be possible.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Software piracy is not about profit!! Hoarding and elitism is about profit!! Piracy is supposed to be a means of enabling a greater portion of the populace to have access to current technology that they otherwise would not be able to access. Remember when the powers that be outlawed reading for the black man? How about the catholic church murdering people for being able to read latin? These technologies were only available to specifc people for the purpose of keeping them under foot and under control. If every computer on the planet had nothing but legitimate software on it, the money grubbing elitist control freaks would be the only people with enough money to use them. Teach the people Latin I say and let them see what you really are all about.
Nice as it would be to have the source code, such a policy would be a step in the wrong direction. It'd require a Department of Source Code, with a byzantine set of regulations defining:
With an army of "regulators" crawling up everyone's ass with a microscope, checking your source trees, fining those who fail to file timely source updates, demanding reams of paperwork documenting everything, this sounds like a nightmare on par with the IRS. And all this just so a few basement-dwelling fat guys can diddle with a 20 year old version of "Hallmark Card Maker Pro"? Better to side with the "more freedom/less regulation" way. I vote no.If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
While I agree with almost everything you say, I have to disagree with this
Unauthorized use of software somebody has created with the idea of supporting himself through selling it most certainly is theft.
It most certainly is wrong, given a system in which we've all agreed this is an appropriate method of supporting ones-self, but it is important to remember the subtle distinctions between tangible assets and knowledge. If I chip off a little piece of a sculpture you've created to keep for my own, everyone will notice. If I wholly copy a book you've written it affects no one but myself. This is a very important economic differernce, and to ignore it is likely to create a very stupid and inefficient economy. Open and unprotected knowledge almost always benefits everyone, open and unprotected property usually just gets beaten down and worn out.
Notice how carefully Macaulay chose his terms, he equated infringement with:
pillaging and defrauding the living.
I think this is a very apt description which begins to capture the spirit of what is actually wrong with copyright infringement.
(Note: Pillaging is not the same as stealing, it's taking things just lying around on a battle-field when you don't know whether the taking will hurt anyone or not... That's already leaps and bounds closer to the meaning of copyright infringement than "stealing" or "piracy".)
Why is this important? Because the words we use and allow to pass by us helps control which the propoganda that gets accepted from either camp...
It would be interesting to know how much more money this would make them. I'm guessing a lot.
They do. PhotoDeluxe, Photoshop Elements. Easy to find for free, or almost, from bundles wiht scanners and printers. I was quite happy using PhotoDeluxe to make web graphics, the company couldn't budget for PS, but we had Deluxe free. These are all based on the PS software, and can use PS plugins and filters. Deluxe was limited to RGB rather than CMYK to stop you using it for pro printing, though there are workarounds.
You're completely wrong.
Piracy is nothing but a plarform used by large companies to increase their market share.
Here's what Bill has to say about it:
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
I refrained from replying to the rest of your lunacy, but there is only so much a person can take.
With respect to money, there are two ways to acquire it unearned. The first is to take it, either physically or electronically, which is theft because the rightful owner no longer has it (or cannot withdraw it). The second is to create it, either physically or electronically, which is not theft (but is illegal because government maintains a monopoly on the creation of money). With respect to value, you miss the point of its importance to the definition of theft. It matters as a measure of what a person or entity no longer has. It is neither abstract nor potential. To make a copy is not to deprive of actual, existing value, and so is not stealing!
Finally, your sample phrases have nothing to do with copyright, though they do represent theft. I'll explain: When "his life was stolen", he was deprived of his life, just as "she stole your heart" by (figuratively) depriving you of your decisions. If you insist upon using "theft" with respect to copyright, at least use it logically and say that what was "stolen" was exclusive control of a work's reproduction.
Like cases where you can't find the song you want on iTMS, but you *can* find it using LimeWire.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
If not, does poor programming style count as obfuscation and is therefore prohibited?
That would be yet another another legal case against Microsoft.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
"...they can't say this thing has no value so I shouldn't pay for it; if it had no value they would not pirate it."
You are making the logical fallacies of Begging The Question and Circular Reasoning, as well as making a crucial economics error.
You are assuming that the people who illegally copy copyrighted materials would have still wanted those things if they weren't free. That is certainly true in some cases, but certainly not true in other cases. I'm not trying to address the morality of the former, but the assumption is simply incorrect in a substantial number of cases.
You are also assuming that just because it is used, it has market value. Your proof that it has market value is the fact that it is used. You have only to look at the pet rock idiocy of the early 80s to see the fallacy of that. Was it piracy to pick a rock from your local field rather than buying it from the store? Just because someone's selling and someone's buying doesn't make it valuable. It just means that P.T. Barnum was correct.
The economic error is the assumption that something with zero reproduction costs, and that can be trivially reproduced by anyone, fits into an economy of scarcity (the management of scarcity is the foundation of economics).
The (relative) scarcity of digital works exists solely in the initial creation of those works. This cost is the same whether no units are sold or a trillion units are sold. Reproduction cost is so low as to be essentially free. I'm intentionally not counting per-unit costs of manuals, CDs, etc. as those are not required for a successful reproduction of the digital works they accompany. While I think that producers of nontangible goods should be paid by those that use those goods, the problem here is not one that fits into an economic model of scarcity.
People see a distinction between stealing a car and copying music/software/ebooks/etc. for this reason. If you steal a car, you are costing the owner the per-unit cost needed to produce that car. This per-unit cost exist even after the car is designed and the initial production is completed. You are depriving the owner of real, tangible assets.
If you copy a song/program/book, the owner of the copyright loses no per-unit asset. The loss is purely theoretical in the sense that the copy consumed no additional production resource, incurred the copyright owner no additional loss of time or effort, or in any way involved the copyright owner.
That is the basic problem facing the creators of digital works. People consider stealing the disc that stores the music as wrong because that disc cost money to produce, but copying the bits on that disc as perfectly fine because making that copy didn't deprive the owner of a per-unit production cost.
Lets see, taking and gaining something without permission of the copyright owner. Of course here is where you will start to derail the conversation, so just skip the crap like "OMG, you must think libraries and used XYZ stores are illegal"(when you should know darn well we are not referring to the fair use of second sales of the actual goods; you don't still have the goods after the sales, and that with places like the library the loaned book/movie/music are not copies and the library loses use of them until they are returned).
I say the journalists is correct, and you copyright infringers just don't like hearing the truth. I guess "copyright infringement" sounds much nicer and is a lot better to renationalize in your own minds then associating what you are doing with thief.
That happens all the time though. For example, routers or media boxes that use Linux as an operating system. They make modifications to the kernel, but they are often things that are product-specific which have no use. So if you ask for the source code, they will usually give it to you without a fuss, but it doesn't do you any good for anything except their piece of hardware.
Similarly, Apple has incorporated GPL software into its OS X. No, the programs may not be linked in with proprietary code, but their functionality is available and they extend the usefulness of a proprietary product. GPL intentionally allows for this as long as improvements are released back to the community.
My other first post is car post.
There seems to be an inordinate amount of discussion on exactly what word or words (e.g. steal, pirate, violate copyright, etc) to use to describe the activity that occurs when one downloads, copies, or otherwise obtains software or music against the wishes of the copyright holder. I propose we coin a term for this activity and then get on with the debate. The Slashdot community is composed of enough alpha geeks that the term would quickly enter the nerd vernacular.
I propose the verb "sket". Others? Example sentences?
It's important to argue the substance and the terminology.
If someone accuses me of "IP theft" I'm going to pin them down on what kind of IP they are refering to, and how I "thieved" it. Copyright? How do you steal a copyright? Trademark? Patent?
In the case of sharing music, my personal belief is that I do not want to pay the RIAA to shove ads of Britney Spears down my throat, and to lobby congress for a broadcast flag, and a permanent control that forces us to view them.
I'd much prefer to pay the artist directly - what are the distributors providing for their cut?
With todays technology, the artists are well able to distribute music without the distribution companies taking a huge percentage, with which they bash their customers like a stick.
What would a one week shopping list contain for less then $50.
I get by on about $50 a week, with minimal cooking, all vegetarian, and almost entirely organic/natural foods (which adds a bit). Granted, I don't eat like a king, but it's better than beer-and-pizza or ramen-and-toast. Better for my body, too.
I'm too lazy to post the entire thing, but my last bill has pretty normal stuff: sodas, frozen foods, fruit, vegetables. It's just less of the expensive stuff and more of the cheap stuff. One six pack of natural soda, but three pounds of organic apples, and so on. If you look at the price of things vs. how long they really last, you can easily cut your bill down quite a bit without completely swearing off the things you like.
Bringing this back on topic: if you know how much your budget averages out to per day ($50/w = $7.15/d), it puts your purchases in perspective. Is that CD really worth 2 days worth of food? Maybe, maybe not.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You are assuming that the people who illegally copy copyrighted materials would have still wanted those things if they weren't free
No, not at all. I'm assuming they have value because of the effort to obtain, copy, and learn to use the software, it must have some utility for them. This needn't be the market value; nor need they be willing to buy the product at any price, even a penny. So, they are benefiting themselves. I am also assuming that this damages the author, not necesarily at the market rate, but because it encourages the practice of copyright infringement.
You are also assuming that just because it is used, it has market value. Your proof that it has market value is the fact that it is used.
No, I am assuming because it is sold it has market value. However the damage to the author is not necessarily equal to the market value. It may be less, or more depending on circumstances.
Just because someone's selling and someone's buying doesn't make it valuable.
Well, perhaps we should make a distinction between things tha are valuable (like air) and things that have economic value (like pet rocks). That seems to be where we're not connecting. I say that the work is valuable to the infringer, even if it has no economic value. In a sense, he has decided not to participate in the market, so you can't put figure on it, but he is enriching himself; furthermore I'll show below it's at the author's expense. The magnitude gain and loss don't happen balance the way a theft of a dollar bill or a ounce of gold would, but it's irrelevant. The author could be harmed a great deal at little gain to the infringer, the infringer could gain a great deal at little loss to the author. A lot depends.
The economic error is the assumption that something with zero reproduction costs, and that can be trivially reproduced by anyone, fits into an economy of scarcity (the management of scarcity is the foundation of economics)....While I think that producers of nontangible goods should be paid by those that use those goods, the problem here is not one that fits into an economic model of scarcity.
Well, that's why we have copyright laws to create artificial scarcity for the physical representation of non-tangible goods, the production factors for which are scarce (talent, time, and skill). Naturally, if a the creation of something consumes scarce resources, but it's reproduction does not, you either have to have a model where artificial scarcity is introduced, or by which the thing is created as a side effect of something else (e.g. software created for a consulting contract and then open sourced).
People see a distinction between stealing a car and copying music/software/ebooks/etc. for this reason.
Sure, there is a distinction, but the differences they infer from it aren't all there (in particular that authors are no harmed).
If you copy a song/program/book, the owner of the copyright loses no per-unit asset. The loss is purely theoretical in the sense that the copy consumed no additional production resource, incurred the copyright owner no additional loss of time or effort, or in any way involved the copyright owner.
I can see what you are saying as being theoretically true if you adopt a labor theory theory of value. Of course, that also would mean any body who creates intellectual works is wasting his time, economically speaking.
I think the point you may be missing is that what exclusive control over a work represents for (some) authors is a future revenue stream, which has a quantifiable present value. The loss of exclusive control, in itself changes the risk factors in that future revenue stream; we may not no specifically what will come to pass of course, but that's the nature of all future revenue.
That is the basic problem facing the creators of digital works. People consider stealing the disc that stores the music as wrong becaus
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Slaves cost money, freeing them is wrong.
It's that simple, isn't it?
Oh wait, the *law* could be wrong?! Who knew?!?
But that immediately begs the question, how is it that I am to tell between software that I'm *supposed* to pirate as a business tactic, and the software I oughtn't?
By your definition, piracy isn't bad unless the entity whose IP is being passed around wishes it wasn't. I can accept that, but I'm going to need a metric by which to gauge what I can and can't copy, and lacking it, I must necessarily take the right of judging that question to myself.
But then, I have claimed some rights of distribution over some other entity's property, which I believe is explicitly illegal in copyright law. So while I see your point, I see no practical benefit from it.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
Isn't that effectively "downloading" copyrighted material? How is that, and how should that be viewed? Is taping music off the radio "stealing?" Do we refer to those who tape their favorite TV shows at home on their VCR "thieves?" How is that different from downloading music from the internet?
Also, copyright was written into law to promote publication.
It had nothing to do with preventing others from singing or performing or stealing precious IP. It had nothing to do with morality.
There is nothing moral about preventing others from building on the useful sciences that currently exists. Or sharing ideas and expression. (Patents and copyrights)
And furthermore, copyright didn't originally even restrict copying! It was intended to give authorsand publishers an incentive to publish.
Printing had become cheap, and publishers were worried that they could sell enough copies to cover expenses if competitors were allowed to undercut them.
Hence copyright gave the author the monopoly on publishing, which they could license to a publisher.
So don't even suggest that there is anything moral about locking down precious IP
I can mentally picture Jack Valenti reading this and getting apoplectic. joy!!
I think that copyright is a basic moral right that in principle belongs with the artist, and is not something to be lightly toyed with in order to maximise the benefit to society, as if we're communists dividing up the harvest.
You're the one with the communist ideals! You're saying that if someone makes a product, the state should step in, and "for the good of society", prevent any competitor from producting a related product. That's communism!
If you paint a nice picture, make a nice statue, design a nice car, or invent a neat song, great! Don't tell me I can't paint a nicer picture, make a better statue, design a nicer car, or sing a better song, just because you made a similar product. That's a state monopoly; you know, like those communists have.
I want copyrights gone, and replaced with a competitive marketplace. You know, capitalism? Not communism? Fair competition, not 100 year monopoly rights for the first person to stumble upon some re-organization of old ideas? A real, old fashioned, marketplace of ideas? With real free speech rights, and everything? No some commie "you can't print that book", "you can't sell that statue", "you must stop production on these cars" nonsense! Real free enterprise!
Artists have the right to be paid for the work they created; but not the work other people do. They should not get to tell other people what they can and cannot do with their property. That's commie thinking, taking from guy who made the profits to give to another, "more deserving" person. So don't talk about communism while you're talking about government handouts, and giving away citizens rights wholesale.
Sheesh! How much more RED can you get!!!
It is my understanding that Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists was the first recorded instance of the "share code == theft" idea. Granted, the grandparent poster was talking about the use of "pirate", not "theft", but he's not far off.
It would be an interesting academic exercise to see where the first usage of "share code == piracy" came from; however, "copy==pirate" is clearly a derivative of the "copy==theft" idea, and owes its roots to Microsoft, even if it wasn't born there.
Cut the guy some slack.
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From an ethical point of view, counterfitting and piracy are two completely different things.
Someone trying to pass pirated goods off as the real deal (fake instruction manuals and box art, etc) is counterfitting. That is unethical because it's a form of deceipt.
If a friend burns the content to TDK CD-R blanks and writes on them with magic marker and gives it to me for free, that's not counterfitting, and it's not unethical. They're not trying to "pull one over" on me or trying to make money on someone else's content. They're just trying to share something with me and save me some money. There's nothing unethical about that.
Finally, all these claims by companies that every pirated copy represents a lost sale are complete bullshit. The vast majority of piracy occurs because people can't afford to pay the retail price to purchase it legitimately. The only two choices in front of the person are "pirate it and have it, or don't pirate it and don't have it". The piracy is not a lost sale by any stretch of the imagination.
Plus, think about it -- Microsoft wouldn't be where it is today without millions of people pirating DOS and Windows and Office over the last twenty years. The rampant piracy of those software packages is a large part of what established them as standards.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Right now in my start menu I have 9 pieces of pirated software. I am currently living below poverty level, through no fault of my own.
Although I pirate software, I believe that programmers should still get paid for their work. When I download software I am not recieving anything material, no packaging, no user manual, no cd.. only executable code. Who worked to create that code? The programmers.
I take note of every piece of software I download illegally, so that I can send donations to the software companies when I get the money. Of course I wouldn't donate the full price of the product (as sold retail). It doesn't make sense to pay more than the total cost of the software minus everything you didn't get (packaging, profit margins, manuals, cds).
However, it doesn't follow that "infringement" cannot cause harm, or indeed is any less harmful than cases of outright theft.
Where did he say that?
I'm fed up of reading stupid comments by stupid people that automatically think that just because you draw the distinction between copyright infringement and theft, that you are automatically a pirate that is trying to justify illegal actions.
For example, suppose I am an author. A contracter working in my home sees one of my books and steals it. Clear theft, of a book that retails for $29.99. The guy at the computer repair shop notices the final copy of my much anticipated sequel on my hard disk and makes a copy, leaving my copy intact on the hard disk. He then releases it on P2P, resulting in a 5% reduction in total sales. Who has harmed me more?
Precisely. Copyright infringement is completely different to theft - it has had a much worse effect on the copyright holder than mere theft would have - so why do you want to call it theft when it's actually copyright infringement?
Yes, you are right, both are forms of misappropriation. But you could equally say that murder and theft are merely two different forms of illegal action. So why bother making the distinction? Let's just call thieves murderers!
Oh wait. Theft and murder are two different things, with different consequences and viewed as being morally different by many people. Maybe it's not such a good idea to call thieves murderers.
Oh wait. Copyright infringement and theft are two different things, with different consequences and viewed as being morally different by many people. Maybe it's not such a good idea to call copyright infringers thieves.
This is so financially naive, it bears correction.
You missed his point. If somebody doesn't have something, you cannot steal it from them. It's fundamental to the nature of theft. They don't possess the revenue. You cannot steal it from them. Their bank account doesn't go down when you infringe upon their copyrights. They still possess everything that they possessed before you infringed upon their copyrights. It's simply not theft. Even the Supreme Court has said so. What is the problem with calling copyright infringement copyright infringement?
Interesting points, but I'd like to comment on a few of them.
First, I'd like to reiterate that unauthorized use of software is not theft. It is unauthorized use, period. In order for a theft to have taken place, a thief must have deprived a vicitim of private property. This does not occur when people copy bits. This is probably mostly akin to trespass. When you walk onto land that someone has restricted access to, you're not stealing it. The reason it is important to contemplate this is because it directly influences what what we do to someone who uses unlicensed software, music, and so forth. Punishment for theft is often proportional to the material losses suffered by the victim. Where are those losses in the case of copying data? (Of course, that is intended to be rhetorical. There are none since unauthorized use of software and entertainment media is the direct result of an utter lack of incentive to buy.)
Second, I don't think anyone is trying to moralize or support unauthorized anything. Whether you want to call it theft, trespass, or what have you, you will be hard-pressed to find someone willing to justify it. The point of this debate, again, goes back to what do we do about it. Think: does it really make any sense, whatsoever, to fine someone $250,000 and sentence them to five years in federal prison for making a copy of a music CD? That is utter nonsense. You can kill someone and get a lesser sentence. We have to be rational about what copying bits without permission actually means in terms of punishment, rather than proceeding with the bizarre policies we have today.
Third, nobody is trying to say that software, music, and movies have no value. This goes back to the incentive issue. It's a matter of perceived value being significantly less than the stated value. Both, incidentally, are almost entirely arbitrary because in the case of reproducable bits, you can stamp out as many discs as you want and sell them all for the same price for a virtually unlimited amount of time.
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The problem is the market for creative goods.
"Creating creative works" is now, for most people, something that other people do.
It doesn't have to be. If the cost of bringing creative works to market was reduced, and the level of lock-in on mainstream supply chains was reduced, then everyone could get in on the idea of being rewarded for their creativity, and copyright would be far more respected.
And don't say "most people are just not going to be talented enough". There is *plenty* of stuff out there that is of high quality but being lost because of the high cost of marketing.
You have a point. On the USENET warez groups that I frequent, Adobe and Microsoft are by far the most seen items. Over the space of 1-2 months, all of their products will be available. Yet both companies seem to make handsome profits.
Gee, so you have no problem taking something without the copyright owner's permission in a way that isn't covered under fair use, and being able to use(software)/play(games)/view(movies)/listen to(music) it without paying?
What right do you have to take these "virtual commodity that can be duplicated"? Just because it is digital and you can copy it for free, why should you get off from not paying those who produce their works and only chose to offer it to those who buy it? Why should you get to enjoy, for example, video game XYZ without compensating those who worked to produce it?
Don't use fundamentally flawed logic, if you were not going to pay for it anyway, you shouldn't have it. Nor should you try to change the subject and derail the discussion by talking about stuff that is already covered and is not the same(i.e. libraries and second sales of items such as books).
Maybe those who view these actives as "normal" are not really questioning their morals enough and are using excuses to justify their actions.
The truth is scary.
[1] To ensure quality; buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" and copyright allows Bob Dylan to ensure that it's an accurate copy. I'm all for that.
[2] To reap money; buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" and Bob Dylan should get money from it. That's OK. But he doesn't own the copyright, a record corporation gets the money, not him.
[3] To limit access; just try to buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" in the legal CD shops in Thailand. The legal movie shops have hundreds of movies, the pirates have thousands, the Internet has tens of thousands. Adolf Hitler used his copyright on "Mein Kamph" to prevent an accurate English translation from being published. I am opposed to this. Once a work is published, it belongs to humanity; it should not be possible to block distribution through copyright law.
Intellectual Property was a bad idea.
It is generally conceded that if there were no copyright laws, 98% of the books published each year would not have been written. It is also generally conceded that 98% of the books published each year are crap. Some of us believe that it is the same 98%.
Why should record companies or any corporation recieve welfare from the government to protect its "right" to profit? A corporation has a right to wealth but a person does not? Who decides these laws?
So now corporations have guarenteed income, while people have to struggle to survive. Are we corporations or are we people?
Oh absolutely, wholly agreed.
:/
Heck, I'm only using Photoshop because it is the ubiquitious example - and I find that a sad thing. I don't think Photoshop even is all that good of a product. In fact, I think it's a shame that it's the defacto/industry standard. It's holding back development too much; see acrylic/expressions vs photoshop wars (acrylic reigning supreme with vector brush strokes.. not even in photoshop, but all the comparisons whine about raster functions), see photogenix HDR (now there's true 32-bit editing, none of this 'only levels and blur' BS), etc.
I support The Gimp not so much because it's Open Source and free as in beer, but mostly because it has the potential to be something larger than Photoshop - even if it will never reach the same status. Too bad too many people want it to -be- a free-as-in-beer Photoshop
Look up the origin of the term "assassin".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm pretty sure that the deal was that at harvest time the owner of the field was supposed to not bust his hump gathering every last bit of -insert crop name here- but to leave a little for the poor. Note that this leaves the decision of who gets what percentage up to the owner of the crop and none of it is fair game until after the harvest.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The other day, I bought a $40.00 PC chess game, a 25 console game collection for $5.00, and a financial sim game for $3.00 [prices rounded up a penny or so.... :) ]
;) Look at the situation from this particular vendors position: They spent *MILLIONS* of dollars to develop this operating system and have priced it at such a level to recover their costs (labor and materials) and make a healthy profit which they share with their investors (the stockholders). Don't like it? Use that alternate operating system initially crafted by that Finnish guy back in 1991. ;)
All three game packages were interesting to me and were worth the money I paid for them. I *almost* didn't buy the chess game but was glad I did when I read the instructions which contained a complete list of its features.
Anyway, my point is the old adage that merchants price their goods as high as "what the market will bear" must be possible in order for them to recoup their production costs and make as much a profit as possible. This is why we have '50 cent pieces of plastic' selling in computer stores for around $200.00 just because one particular computer operating system is optically encoded on them.
To get back to the bootlegs issue, yes I've bought a few (no I won't identify them). This was due at first to ignorance but then to the glaring fact that no legitimate commercial pressing of the item existed at the time I got the bootleg. In some cases, commercial releases was made available and I bought them without hesitation. In one special case I admired the bootleged work so much I sought out and bought a legit release of it which was twice as expensive in order to reward the artist who made the work in some small way. In another case, I deliberately passed up a 'good' deal on eBay that interested me because it was quite obvious the items were bootlegs (except one of them). Had they all been legitimate, the price would have well above what I could have paid for them.
The media cartels cry 'Piracy! Piracy! Piracy!' all they want since the days of 'original flavor' Napster and nobody listens to them until they sue children and dead people so I quite understand their business model is at risk. The only way I see they can stop 'piracy' is to stop mass encoding and distribution of the works they own. But that is a conundrum: to do that would essentially put them out of business -- not if they made their works 'uncopyable'.
For example, the movie studios could go back to the practice of renting theatres and projecting their movies using loyal(?) employees as projectionists and ushers wearing night-vision goggles looking through the audience for 'camrippers' to bust and prosecute. This would be the only way to see movies as it was before the advent of the (in)famous VCR. If done today, there would be no more DVD movie releases(!) This model is 'sorta' used by one particular studio who regularly re-releases their handful of world-famous movies on DVD every 5-7 years (with more and more 'bonus features' to them) after having them deliberatly pulled from the market at the expiration of their 'sales window'. This practice keeps their movies in high demand with the consumers at large. Indeed, an 'out of print' copy of these movies can easily fetch two or more times the original retail price of the movie themselves!
Instead of 'waging war' against potential customers, the content industries can simply turn their current business model based on 'artificial scarcity' that can involve 14 million copies or more of the same work available for sale (I own one copy of a particular work that actually sold that many copies), into one of real scarcity akin to a limited show run on Broadway in New York City or your city's equivalent live entertainment forum.
Then the media industry and consumers would have to deal with ticket scalpers who buy up blocks of prime
Nobody can really be that suprised by the 'popularity' of downloading pirated software, but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it.
That is because the people paying the money are not paying for the pirated copy. They're (generally) paying for someone who is more technically savvy than them to have considered their needs (in terms of a application or a game), their resources (what is their computer up to running? how much can they pay?), and come up with a program that will be appropriate. The savvy person is also expected to have checked for viruses, malware etc, and quite frequently is expected to go round and install the program too (there is enough news that people know there are "viruses" out there, whatever one of those is).
It's that service (plus the actual provision of media, time for copying etc) which people are happy to pay for.
Pay for software? Don't make me laugh.
Just because this is Slashdot, don't forget there are plenty of people who will buy a 5th hand P-200 machine and get very badly burned (financially) when the kid persuades them to spend a week's leisure money or half a Christmas-cost on a current game, then find that it won't work on a machine that works perfectly well. And that's when they turn back to their mate down the pub instead of the vultures in the software-retail industry. It's hard enough to convince some people that there's a difference between a PC game and console game even when there's a physical difference in the packaging.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
If what is pirated is a binary distribution file (an installer) then it is not even a copy of the copyrighted work. The copyrighted work the the author created is the source. The binary files are not a cop[y of it but are a product created according to instructions in the source. The source code is a set of instructions for producing the binaries. Theinsteller is not even a copy of this. The installer is a different set of instructions for translating compressed information and recreating the binaries from it (and it is also instruction on puting those binaries in certain locations on the users file system).
In much the same way an MP3 file is not a copy of a musical work. It is a set of instruction that if followed can recreate a copy of the music. Only when an MP3 file is used to play sound a copy is created.
In theory you can take the instructions that recreate music or software abd translate them into a subset of a natural language. Then is that escription a copy of the original? It seems that copyright is developing into something similar to patents. Any description of a thing can be considered a copy. This can then be used to obtain monopoly on ideas, even when those are not patented. Perhaps not now, but in the future if thing continue to evolve this way. Think what would happen if DRM in hardware is implemented and people try to overcome it by creating protocols to encode things like music in text files. Even for binaries, it is certainly possible to convert binary instructions into source code that simulates them, then later compile the code and optimize it to get something that does the same thing as the original using just a bit more resources. Would it be considered copying? If so, and if such practice would become widespread, then a compiler would become a tool widely used for infringing copyright, and then makers of compilers would be liable under DMCA...
I wasn't talking about morality, ("evil"), or legality, just how piracy can build mindshare and eventually marketshare and entrench a monopoly. They know that many users of bootleg software will eventually become legal customers; but few using a competing product will do so.
while I see your point, I see no practical benefit from it.
I wasn't offering advice, merely an observation. MS and Adobe will cheerfully prosecute you for using bootleg versions of their software, especially in their home markets.
People think they should be able to find "out of print" stuff on P2P networks if they are not avilable elsewhere. But this is precisely what anti-piracy advocates (that are mainly distributors of copyrighted work) want to avoid! They don't need competition from multitude of "out of print" works, that include a lot of stuff that is nuch higher quality than the new stuff they have to sell (There is much more old stuff than new stuff. The percentage of high quality stuff in both is probably the same, but there's nuch more old stuff than new stuff. Actually, new suff might have less because in the past making derivative work was not considered copyright infringement, so writers could build on high quality work to build yet more high quality work. Nowadays building on higher quality work might present greater liability).
Would you rather give MGM 15.00 for a DVD or your brother or best friend 5.00 for a DVD? Many people think they are helping friends or family while saving money themselves and that makes them more than willing to force themselves to sleep at night over a little "corner cutting". I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that people don't think of their little part in the overall big picture as having any noticeable impact. However when you have 1 million of those people it becomes a big deal instead of a small harmless act. Just my opinion as usual ;)
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
No, it's only wrong in your opinion. What you've said begs the question. There is no proof whatsoever for your claims that it is wrong based on our lifespans. That's absurd. There were many things accepted during the pre-civilization days that is considered wrong today. It's called evolution. Our civlization has learned over time what is right and what is wrong. Evolution tells us what's right and wrong? That's stupid. It tells us how to survive. Evolution doesn't make subjective decisions.
I help a lot of colleagues set up cheap "end-of-life" PCs they buy from the office we work in, and the common theme of "can you set it up for me ..." always continues with "... you've got a copy of Windows you can install haven't you?" or similar.
... but I've started trying to ... the only victory I've had for common sense in buying software was to persuade two people to spend the money on an Internet Security suite (Antivirus & Firewall).
... running Xandros Open Circulation Edition 3.0 :-)
Because they paid only $100 or $200 dollars for the (wiped) PC, they see it as ridiculous to pay $325 for Windows XP Home.
I haven't yet persuaded any to use Linux
It was a minor victory, they'd both had virus attacks at some stage.
Just by the way, I'm typing this on a Dell Optiplex GX1 I paid $57.50 for
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
The attempt to move from existence to "use" is at the heart of the revamping of "property" to include all sorts of things. The taking of the gasoline is theft. If I could scan the chemical structure of your fuel, and then duplicate the fuel using my Chemical-RW device, then I haven't stolen your fuel. I've copied your fuel. You wouldn't even know I had copied it. I've not effected the utility of your fuel, but rather I have impacted your ability to sell *me* your fuel. In terms of the utility of sales, that is dependent on market forces. That you want to set up a legal fiction where I have to buy fuel from you without using my (now) illegal copy will have an artificial impact on those same market forces. You want to create an infinite loop here, whereby your artificial legal fiction creates the loss that you state you need said legal fiction to protect. I call bullshit.
Yes, your point is correct and well taken that "It's not just price but availability that drives piracy." Nice correction.
I don't think I'm saying anything too nutty if you think about it. We're talking about expiring the copyright on software and releasing it to the public domain, right? The idea of IP protection and public domain is, as far as I'm concerned, should be that the people, by means of the government, offer protection to certain ideas and innovations for a limited time, and in return, the idea/innovation is offered for public use after that time expires. Well, offering software to the public domain without the source code is like offering DRM'ed books and music to the public domain which don't allow sampling or rewrites. What's the point?
As far as the purpose of this particular social contract, I believe that if software developers aren't willing to share their 20 year old products (which they aren't even offering for sale) with their fellow citizens, then maybe we citizens should bother protecting their rights to a monopoly on those products in the first place.
I don't have an idea for enforcing it to offer. I just have the principle in mind, and the belief that such a principle should be kept in consideration while formulating any laws involving the protection of intellectual property.
Please! That was a bar fight, something very bad, but not a terrorist action.
P.S.: Just to make things clear I am no fan of the IRA, but I am also against twisting the facts.
There is no proof whatsoever for your claims that it is wrong based on our lifespan
fact: people did not live as long as they do now, thousands of years ago.
Therefore, women had kids at a younger age. (read some history on ancient civilizations).
I never said it was wrong based on our lifespans, I was giving a reason why it was right based on their lifespans.
No, it's only wrong in your opinion.
and 99.9% of society. Why don't you give a reason why it's okay?
You're confusing wars over drugs with wars over something else _financed_ by drugs.
And I suppose there can't be all that much history to it, to answer my own question, since prior to maybe the late 19th century there weren't any laws regulating drugs. Without laws, the only economic cost associated with drugs is what it takes to make them. It's not profitable without laws banning them and driving the price to multiples of thousands of dollars.
The posts above show that the use of piracy to mean copyright infringement goes back about 300 years.
Shouldn't this read "you're not entitled to their work without fair compensation if it is requested"? Are we making it wrong unintentionally to download freeware/open source, and independent artist with this statement?
No.
Fair compensation is compensation that the seller/owner of the work decides is fair. Not what you decide. And if that person decides that zero is fair, you get it for zero.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
If you read the post, that is EXACTLY what I stated.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
If you read the post, that is EXACTLY what I stated
Not quite. Your "if requested" part was redundant.
Coming soon - pyrogyra