This is true; I agree completely.

Have to be careful about that though, as I read that quite often, by the third generation of inherited wealth, the descendents go bankrupt because of this fact.

I'm actually a little amused this happened. Haha, because I said their women are ugly! Come on. How could that be true? Not ALL of them. Just most.

You actually can put kids who steal in detention centers with other delinquent kids. You can put them in with adults if they do something horrible enough. Myself, I'd rather they had to join the marines. I personally watched a girl go to jail for stealing a t-shirt from a retail store. It was a happy time for me.

You might be able to piss farther than me. Who knows? You'd have to arc it or something though. Can you do a handstand?

I understand why you'd rather have inhabitable winter year round. People in Maine love it.

Why do you ask me about my health? I don't even get that one. Is it because our health care system isn't socialized? That's the way I like it. Much like the situation with piracy, socialized medicine reduces the incentive for doctors to do a good job. I value that incentive. Good luck getting a doctor to perform a surgery any time soon. But I'll buy your medicine. That's a good deal .

The one problem with this particular logic is that all too often the developer does end up giving the pirate support:

1. In the form of forum help. How many times have you read a forum post for help and "wondered"? It may be easy to spot the pirate posting on your forums, but you as the developer/community can't refuse them help without proof (which in many cases may be impossible to get).

2. Software patches/updates sometimes addressing issues brought to the forefront by the pirates themselves. The pirates always have ways of updating their software, along with the rest of us licensed users.

These support-efforts of the developers were paid for by the licensed user. The licensed user's dollar receives less mileage each time a pirate is successful.

As unfortunate as it is, it would be naive to expect that there aren't pirates playing SINS with us on ICO with "legitimate" accounts and receiving game-updates, forum-help etc. like the rest of us.

Social engineering is a hacker/cracker's best tool and some of them are damn good at it.

...just my .02 cents

the Monk

My beef with calling piracy "theft" is the fact that while it may be immoral and potentially harmful to the owner of the IP, it's far too different from physical theft to be directly comparable. Physical theft is very straight forward; you take something from someone, they no longer have it and you do. But if you pirate, say a movie, what exactly has the pirate "stolen"?

The main issue for me when it comes to calling downloading of media theft is the fact that there are multiple LEGAL ways for a person to enjoy the very same product without paying a single dime for it. Take a movie, for instance:

I could watch it over at a mate's place. This copy may or may not be legally acquired, but practically (not morally) this makes no difference as I (not my mate) still get the movie experience while the producer gets no additional payment from my enjoyment. I could have pirated it instead, and the same result would happen. I get experience, the producer gets nothing. One is legal, the other is not, but the result is exactly the same. There is no equivalent scenario in physical theft, so the comparison is in my opinion flawed.

I could watch it on TV either at home or at a friend's place. You could argue that the TV channel has paid for the rights to broadcast the movie, so no loss is involved and the IP owner is compensated. But it makes no practical difference for the producer if I watch the movie or not, there is no difference in income either way. If I download a movie that has been broadcast on my TV, am I still a thief?

Keeping in mind that I can get the experience for free legally, I'd argue that downloading media isn't "stealing" the experience it offers, but the ability to freely access it as you wish.

And this is where my major beef with today's increasing amount of draconic DRM comes in, be it in games, movies or music. The producers try to limit the access to a product, the very thing that I, in my opinion, was paying for in the first place. Not the experience, because that I could potentially get for free legally by visiting someone with this product. I'm paying for being able to access this product at will, and suddenly they want to restrict access to when I'm connected online, to when I'm at the "correct" PC (the definition of which apparently changes at the slightest provocation when I upgrade a part in my PC or the installation gets borked), etc etc. Is it any wonder that many choose not to pay for an inferior product (restricted access with DRM) when the pirates offer unlimited access for free?

Piracy is a problem. How big a problem and the actual loss caused by it (aka people who would have bought legally if piracy was not possible) is unknown, and in my opinion blown out of proportions, and most likely less than the amount of money that has globally been spent trying to stop it, both in direct expenses and loss of sales due to intrusive DRM/lawsuits chasing away actual customers.

Seriously, drop intrusive DRM, you're not primarily selling an experience, you're selling access. Don't try to sell a product inferior to the "free" version, and start to make being a paying customer better than being a pirate. When you can offer superior access and service over what pirates can offer, that's when you'll truly curb the piracy that matters to you; the lost sales. Stopping pirates who have no means of purchasing your product legally might make you feel good about yourself, but it's a royal waste of time and money.

Ah well, now I'm just ranting. For the record, yes piracy is wrong. Piracy is not theft, it's piracy. You've lost nothing, but you've gained nothing either. It's like watching a soccer match through binoculars on a hill above the football stadium instead of paying for a ticket. I guess we should position snipers on the hills now to deal with the filthy thieves. Because that's what this measure feels like. Downloaded an MP3? That's 1 year in prison and a $200,000 fine for you, kid. Good thing we were here to stop your destruction of the livelihood of working men and women.

Exaggerated slightly for dramatic effect, of course. But yeah, monitoring the net traffic of billions of people in order to stop a (most likely) small amount of lost sales, yeah, that's kinda overkill in my opinion.

Who the hell thinks these kids have the billions of dollars between them to spend on legal copies of the 5000 MP3s they've downloaded last month anyway?

Regarding the forums, you can restrict forum users, at least in the support forums to those who have registered the game, and at least with stardock's system (from my understanding) the key is server generated and accounted for, so there is no code to crack.

Regarding updates, you are correct in that the pirates do get the updates for free, though from my understanding, it is somewhat more of a hassle for them to keep hunting those updates. But I will grant you that they do get tend to get that support for free, though at a somewhat greater inconvenience.

This is why I find it more similar to a kind of virtual tresspassing rather than theivery.

I know not all of you are ugly, but, now I'm not sure how your ladies go for a pee! I suppose kids with hardened criminals was slightly exagerated. Unless their parents brought them up in a damn good way! Or the polution,or growth hormones our animals are force fed,didn't affect them in utero. How can you even think you get the Hole picture? I guess yours is not to wonder why. But I can't help it. Oh and the best hackers get jobs in the government,windows,hired by ceo's,etc. Now if that ain't irony.
I don't condone anything illegal,but,there's definitely Grey in this Matter.....
My docs the Best. Thanks

The Problem is that you have actually successfully defined the *difference*, in economic terms between piracy and stealing.

Because Customer Number 2 has *three* option - he can buy it, he can pirate it from the 'net, . . . or he can steal (shoplift) it . . .

Now - if he buys it, then customer number three has nothing to buy. If he *steals* it, then customer # three has nothing to buy *and* the store and publisher get no money for it.

If he *pirates* it, then Customer # three gets to buy his copy - and the publisher gets the exact amount of money they would have gotten if customer # two had bought it in the first place.

And that (while vastly simplified) highlights the difference between Piracy and Theft. You can't sell me the merchandise someone stole from you. You *can* still sell me the merchandise someone pirated from you. It's not a minor distinction - in economic terms, it's all the difference in the world.

Among other things, it means I still get to *buy* my copy of Galactic Civilizations II, and two expansion packs, no matter *how* many copies were pirated.

Pirate one copy or a billion copies, the market for *honest* buyers, goes down exactly 0%.

Jonnan

And the irony of it all is that if piracy was made impossible, the amount of physical game, movie and music thefts from shops would probably rise dramatically (though of course not as much as the reduction in illegal downloading)

Ah! Well explained - I get your point there now
What about the other example, though? Granted that it's just as overly simplified as the first, if we assume infinite supply (as opposed to extremely limited supply, as in the first example), then shoplifting and pirating come to the same thing, right? I know that's not how it works, but could one say that piracy is theft at least in spirit i.e. the taking of something without due payment? (My position, to restate it, is that even if piracy isn't theft, then it is, morally - not necessarily legally - as bad as theft)

Good. People would be faced with the fact that their commiting a crime, and this will lower game prices by $5-10.

I hope the 4th time (going online illegally) means jail. If it was up to me, thieves would go to prison.

 

I'm inclined to agree with this.

However, if someone walks into BestBuy and snatches a copy of Windows Vista off the shelf and walks out, that is theft. But if they download it off the net, it's piracy. What's the difference?

The store paid for the copy (and thus loses money while publishers get the money anyway) and when you download it no one paid for it (both the store and the publisher don't make money BUT they don't lose anything)

So, are anti-piracy laws wrong, or will your no doubt righteous rage convince the authorities otherwise?

^ ^

I'm not going to say piracy is right, but I won't say it's absolutely wrong either.

I'm currently vacati- err, DEPLOYED to Guam, and I couldn't bring along a lot of games. Furthermore, even at my home station, I don't even have all the games I own in hard-copies. My BG2 CD2 disappeared ages ago, making the game unplayable (well, uninstallable). I left my CD copy of Deus Ex, Total Annihilation, at home in San Diego, and so on.

So in leiu of bringing fragile CDs around in a huge wallet, I downloaded a ton of .isos and threw them on an external HDD. If it weren't for piracy, I wouldn't be able to play Fallout 2, a game I've bought at some point or another. I refuse to be shackled to a CD, and I sure as hell can't wait for some tool to suggest I re-buy the game to 'support the developers' (someone always does every time I talk about my missing CDs).   

I also exceed the speed limit 90% of the time too, and my only justification for that is that I'm too god damn impatient to drive 45 mph.

And some of the bufoons around here would have you believe that somehow, piracy is worse than speeding.

IMO it's easy to say that downloading and using a piece of illegal software is theft (I mean the fact that you are using a serial number you didn't purchase ought to give that a way).

Where I think most people have issues is the fact that in all honesty what's the difference between downloading a movie/song or slipping a cd/tape in your stereo/VCR/DVD Burner and recording your content in that manner? As a teenager I spent hours upon hours of making tapes of the songs I wanted off the radio, then my friends and I would exchange tapes. Most also think what's the difference between passing an MP3 through the instant messenger and handing the cd over to my friend to let them make a copy (something I did frequently as a teen). My own parents had a huge collection of movies all recorded off of cable(that's not to say they didn't purchase movies either a few years ago when they moved they sold about 3000 movies all of which were bought at the store), and now you can burn them to CD instead of using a VCR. Everyone gets so caught up in the fact that it's online. I think they all forget that for years before the Internet people we're copying their media just in a different way.

While I understand that theft is theft and yes if you break the law you'll go to jail, I do think they are trying to enforce the un-enforceable. Eventually when enough people have sued due to "wrongful" Internet bans they will have to rethink this law.

Now I was a kid when VCR's first came out but I do remember people then becoming quite upset saying that it was wrong for people to be able to record their movies off of t.v. however that never went anywhere either.

Piracy is wrong, and it should be dealt with but I don't believe this is the answer.

I wonder how many people die needlessly each year just because people speed? You are right. No worse. But it's probably no better. I, for one, don't speed more than 5 mph over.

You don't have a clue. Nearly all *physical* property laws are state laws. Only if the stolen goods are transported over state borders does any sort of federal law become involved. Intellectual property laws are (mostly) handled by the federal government, as responsibility for such was explicitly given to Congress in the Constitution.

By the legal definition of theft, you are correct. Piracy is not theft, it is more akin to trespassing - which in many areas you can legally be SHOT for, if the owner catches you doing it. On a more practical level, though, piracy is the equivalent of sneaking into a movie theater. While you would be arrested for unlawfully being on the theater's property, the actual crime is "stealing" the movie experience.

How about the virtual good known as money - it has no 'true' value in its cotton fibres. If I were to borrow a $100.00 bill and create a perfect counterfeit then return your bill, it doesn't cost you a thing, yet I recieve the full benefit of the bill. Now lets say I couldn't obtain the bill legitmately anyway, so everything should be cool...er...right?

There is a slight difference.. that $100 dollar bill has a huge power behind it, while software someone pirated has only the ability to entertain or improve your experience while using PC. You can't use it to buy a car, a gun, a whore or whatever else that comes on your mind... well exept if you sell that same software that you pirated... Now, that IS a genuine theft, since your costumers would be willing to pay for the software and represent real potential costumers, and money they give you for pirated copy is money stolen from the creators.

I'd like to add something that is not directly connected to the subject, but its still quite intriguing.. I was surfing one private torrent tracker, and I saw pirated version of ToA there.. anyway, what amazed me is that 1/2 of the comments made for that torrent were from people who actually bought the game and recommended the rest of the people that wanted to illegally download the game to buy the game if they like it, because it and its creators deserve it... Now, remember that we are talking here about private tracker, so most of the people there are genuine pirates, and most of them hardly have any piece of original software in their possession.
Point that I made out of this story is: Yes, piracy is a problem, and it will always remain, but it is also fact that people respect quality and originality, and are willing to reward it, if able.

I think the real problem is being missed.   Copyright/intellectual property laws are the problem the are out of control and need to be changed.  There is some merit to some of the laws but even most of those are taken way to far.

This is great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

 

What if you were banned from the internet for the cracks, which are technically illegal in the US?

That said, I believe this law is completely unenforceable, especially in Europe, where they're more concerned about "hate speech" then Muslims beating defenseless women.

(sorry if some of my disdain for European government is showing, but I think it's well-deserved)