A Terabyte of Piracy Ain't Art

[Iron Lightning]

Well gee, I was on under the impression that the definition of stealing and therefore theft was the taking of things that don't belong to you without permission of the owner nor the intention of returning them.

Definition of THEFT
1
a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

There is no removal of property involved with digital piracy. Therefore, piracy does not fully constitute theft.

Also I was under the very distinct impression that piracy=stealing. That impression heavily re-enforced by many an Escapist topic regarding the issue.

Merely a common misconception. Piracy is copyright infringement. A thousand ignorant voices crying out that it's theft doesn't, in fact, make it theft.

I think these definitions need to be re-evaluated. I know software companies would have a much easier time persecuting software pirates if they could they could persecute software piracy as theft and not copyright violation.

Yes, because clearly justice is not about fairness. It's about persecuting criminals as easily as possible.

I think we should change the definition of all crimes to "looking funny." Think of how easy it would be to prosecute crooks, the judge would take on look and the case would be shut.

All sarcasm aside, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that the punishment of a crime should be proportional to the harm caused by that crime? If you do believe in that, then why do you think that the nearly harmless crime of piracy should be equated to the very harmful crime of theft? If you don't believe in that, then I suggest you reevaluate your life and subsequently stop being such a cretin.

If you're going to resort to name calling and slander like a 5 yr old then I'm not going to debate with you.
In answer to your question, what I believe is that it is wrong to take things that don't belong to you without permission; which is what has taken place. Whether you want to call that theft or you want to call it something else, it is still wrong!

I think these definitions need to be re-evaluated. I know software companies would have a much easier time persecuting software pirates if they could they could persecute software piracy as theft and not copyright violation.

I also think the definition of theft needs to be re-evaluated. To more clearly express deprival and removal of owned property, that is.
Because that's what stealing is: if I could copy your car atom for atom, there's no way in hell you could accuse me of "stealing" it as long as it was still there and owned by you.
Categorizing the copying and sharing of digital media as theft would open the door to a thousand retarded lawsuits, such as with livestreams and youtube videos. Trust me, we don't want that.

Well you see I would define theft as the taking of things, by copying or otherwise, that don't belong to you without permission of the owner nor the intention of returning them.
I certainly don't want to see the kind of lawsuits that you suggest might occur, but at the same time I don't like seeing this kind of shit either; where a guy has taken a hard drive full of stuff that doesn't rightfully belong to him and put it on display for all to see.

If you paid attention to my first reply you would see that copyright infringement of this type is probably already a criminal offense. The only reason he is getting away with it is because no one cares enough to press charges. Any lawsuits would also be pretty bad PR and thus not worth it.

For the last time, taking a thing (i.e. the transfer of ownership of the thing from one individual or group to another individual or group) is NOT the same as copying a thing (i.e. creating a thing which resembles the copied thing.) Saying they are equally harmful is just plain stupid.

Yeah yeah, I heard(read, whatever) you. But as I was trying to imply, if it was not a matter of persecuting for copyright infringement and rather a matter of persecuting for something a tad more serious it probably wouldn't be such a PR nightmare.

And yeah I read it the first time you posted it, restating it 50 times is not going to make any difference. As I said above, taking things, by copying them or otherwise, that don't belong to you without permission of the owner is still wrong! Whether you want to call that theft you want to invent some other magical word for it, it's still wrong!
And the fact that this guy is able to put together a whole collection of stuff he took without permission and put it on display without anyone doing anything is just a whole heaping load of bullshit.

I never said pirating is not wrong, just that it's not equivalent to theft. Piracy is much less harmful than theft just like assault is much less harmful than murder.

I just don't understand your apparent belief that a crime that is a little harmful deserves the same punishment as a crime that is really harmful. Frankly, I find that belief to be patently ridiculous.

 

[Knobody13]

I actually think its pretty cool looking. Piracy aside this represents a very large portion of our culture in less than a 1' x 1' space. To me it's almost like a symbol of how far we have come technologically in this information age. But i guess it could also be a guy going hey look at all this money i didn't spend.

 

[lacktheknack]

I find it really sad how many people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to art.

This project is most certainly art, because it makes a comment about today's society. Art is not (just) about looking nice or creativity - it's about chronicling who we are as a people.

At the moment, according to this artist, we're a society that makes it possible to pirate 5 million dollars with comparatively little effort.

The artist isn't putting piracy up on a pedestal - he's CRITICIZING our society due to how easy piracy is. Why list the sources? Perhaps to get those sites shut down? Or perhaps to point out how many of these sites there are, and how no one is doing anything about it.

This piece is a powerful anti-piracy message. If you don't like it, fine, but don't say it isn't art when it very clearly is. People in glass houses arguing that video games are art shouldn't throw "this isn't art" stones when they don't even understand the piece.

My personal definition of art includes words like "skill" and "effort". This really didn't need much of either. So if it's art, it's a pretty poor piece on a purely technical level.

Although I do see what you're getting at.

 

[Princess Rose]

My personal definition of art includes words like "skill" and "effort". This really didn't need much of either. So if it's art, it's a pretty poor piece on a purely technical level.

Although I do see what you're getting at.

Oh, I didn't say it was GOOD art. Honestly, any work of art where you have to include an explanation isn't very well made.

What I'm saying is that bad art is still art. The question "is it art" is insulting - it's the same bullshit we get into with various groups over whether or not video games are art.

I'll repeat (since you didn't see my second post in the thread):

bad art =/= not art

When you say your personal definition of art, what you probably mean is your definition of Good art. And I'd add in a facet where good art can be appreciated without an explanation.

It is up to an individual to judge what art is good and what art is bad, but not if something is or is not art. If something is presented as art, then it is art, because the artist intended for it to be art. It might be shitty art, but it's still art.

Twilight is terrible art, but it's still art.

Kain and Lynch 2, Dog Days is terrible art, but it's still art.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Want to steal a collection of PC games released from 1979-2001 taking up 130GB and valued at $150,000? Well, you can go to the URL provided, you know if you were a jerk.

Jerk is precisely the word to use here. After all, we need to adequately compensate the people who own the intellectual property of games made ten to thirty years ago in order to incentivize them to host it on servers for download. Otherwise, how would we distribute these games? It's impossible.

On a more disturbing note, stealing the work of ten to thirty years ago could cause a nasty time paradox: the pirate doesn't pay for something that his parent worked on in the past, his parent starves to death in the past or, more likely, dissolves his or her marriage due to arguments over financial problems, and the pirate is never born and the file never shared. It is a very perplexing problem.

 

[infohippie]

It's art. As the saying goes, "Anything is art if an artist says it is."

Doesn't mean it's good art, though. Personally, I think it's kinda stupid. But it's still art.

 

[JonnWood]

I smell hypocrisy in this post.

Escapist clearly doesn't like piracy and warns/close threads with anything remotely promoting HOWEVER a link in the OP goes directly to a page where you can access pirate software.

Technically that promotes piracy.

Tut at you Greg, tut indeed.

Palou included a list of all of the files the drive contains [http://www.art404.com/5million1terrabyte.pdf]

Linking to pirate software. Bad Escapist post.

This was one of those posts that could bite you in the arse. Now when people get a warning for mentioning pirate software i'm going to link to this post and remind them their own posters advertise it themselves.

And yes, before anyone questions my logic a link that goes directly to pirate software IS advertising it. Remember folks, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

The link doesn't go to the pirated software. The link goes to a list that has URLs on it. The exact same list that one finds a link to, incidentally, when one hits "toggle info" on the website. In other words, you're complaining about a link that is, in fact, on the Art404 website, just slightly better concealed. The image doesn't ever go to the files, just the torrents on Pirate Bay. That's two removes from any actual piracy.

Like I said, I usually don't have a strong opinion on what is art and what is not, but spending time stealing content - even if many of the games and other content might be out of print - and putting it on display just doesn't impress me. To say nothing of literally putting piracy on a pedestal, Palou was just lazy and went for the big catch-all collections instead of curating what ended up on the drive.

I mean, if he had hand-picked each piece of content to be meaningful or culturally important, at least that would have been something. But with a high speed internet connection, this "5 million dollars, 1 Terabyte" might have taken Palou an afternoon to download.

And that's just not art at all.

**sigh**

I find it really sad how many people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to art.

This project is most certainly art, because it makes a comment about today's society. Art is not (just) about looking nice or creativity - it's about chronicling who we are as a people.

At the moment, according to this artist, we're a society that makes it possible to pirate 5 million dollars with comparatively little effort.

The artist isn't putting piracy up on a pedestal - he's CRITICIZING our society due to how easy piracy is. Why list the sources? Perhaps to get those sites shut down? Or perhaps to point out how many of these sites there are, and how no one is doing anything about it.

This piece is a powerful anti-piracy message. If you don't like it, fine, but don't say it isn't art when it very clearly is. People in glass houses arguing that video games are art shouldn't throw "this isn't art" stones when they don't even understand the piece.

You are really, really patronizing. Perhaps if you acknowledged that "what is art" is a controversial and somewhat subjective issue, people might be more inclined to listen to you.

I'd also like to know where you got that interpretation of the piece, when I can't find anything about it from the artist. Or are you one of those people who form an opinion on what a piece was intended to mean, and then insists it's the right and only one, regardless of what the people who made it did or didn't say?

 

[C2Ultima]

Sweet, I can download some episodes of The Walking Dead off some torrent site, put them on a flash drive, and it can be considered art!

 

[JonnWood]

Want to steal a collection of PC games released from 1979-2001 taking up 130GB and valued at $150,000? Well, you can go to the URL provided, you know if you were a jerk.

Jerk is precisely the word to use here. After all, we need to adequately compensate the people who own the intellectual property of games made ten to thirty years ago in order to incentivize them to host it on servers for download. Otherwise, how would we distribute these games? It's impossible.

False binary, straw man, obscuring language. People should get paid for their crap, period. Games are a luxury, not a right.

On a more disturbing note, stealing the work of ten to thirty years ago could cause a nasty time paradox: the pirate doesn't pay for something that his parent worked on in the past, his parent starves to death in the past or, more likely, dissolves his or her marriage due to arguments over financial problems, and the pirate is never born and the file never shared. It is a very perplexing problem.

Stealing something old doesn't justify it.

 

[Princess Rose]

You are really, really patronizing. Perhaps if you acknowledged that "what is art" is a controversial and somewhat subjective issue, people might be more inclined to listen to you.

I'd also like to know where you got that interpretation of the piece, when I can't find anything about it from the artist. Or are you one of those people who form an opinion on what a piece was intended to mean, and then insists it's the right and only one, regardless of what the people who made it did or didn't say?

When people say stupid things, I often treat them like they are stupid - I do this because their comment is the only evidence I have on the subject.

How did I get that interpretation? I analyzed the piece and came to a conclusion. Also, if you read my next post in the thread (that is, the one after the one you replied to) you'll notice me complimenting several people on an excellent, and very different interpretation of the same piece. I saw one thing, they saw another - and we're both awesome. That's the beautiful thing about art - two people will have entirely different interpretations.

Why would I need the artist to tell me what the piece meant? Who does that? That's rather missing the point, don't you think?

And, as I've said REPEATEDLY in this thread... just because you don't like something doesn't make it not art. There's good art, and there's bad art. But good or bad, it's still art.

Anyone who says that this piece isn't art, but argues that video games are art, is a massive hypocrite and deserves far worse than merely being patronized.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Want to steal a collection of PC games released from 1979-2001 taking up 130GB and valued at $150,000? Well, you can go to the URL provided, you know if you were a jerk.

Jerk is precisely the word to use here. After all, we need to adequately compensate the people who own the intellectual property of games made ten to thirty years ago in order to incentivize them to host it on servers for download. Otherwise, how would we distribute these games? It's impossible.

False binary, straw man, obscuring language. People should get paid for their crap, period. Games are a luxury, not a right.

Yes, I suppose Atari is desperately hoping that sales figures for Asteroids? on the Atari 2600 will pick up by the end of 2011. Indeed, they were assuredly thinking of their returns in 2011 when they hired people to actually make Asteroids in the years preceding 1981. They thought "this will really start to pay off in thirty years. It would just be so hard on us if networking technology allowed people to download our game at no cost to anyone but the server owner, thirty years from now."

Stealing something old doesn't justify it.

Listened to any Beethoven lately?

 

[mesoforte]

So? I have 2 terabyte hard-drives full of hentai and you don't see me bragging, although I think my tissue collage is art, its coming along nicely. *nudge nudge*

"You'll shoot your eye out kid!"

I guess this would work best with either a giant phallic image with the tissue or a collage that makes a pornographic image when viewed from really far away.

 

[Nickompoop]

1) It's not stealing. Stealing =/= piracy.

2) Pirating programs from the 1970s and 1980s that cannot be bought anymore isn't immoral at all....

Legally, piracy by definition is stealing, regardless whether you can actually buy the item in question. Sure, pirating old, out of print games isn't immoral, but it's technically illegal. Nintendo can sue your ass if you download N64 ROMS. Sad, but true.

OP: This "artist" is a douche-bag the size of Jupiter. He's also walking proof that you don't need talent for art; you just need to be good at marketing your "art".

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well gee, I was on under the impression that the definition of stealing and therefore theft was the taking of things that don't belong to you without permission of the owner nor the intention of returning them.

Definition of THEFT
1
a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

There is no removal of property involved with digital piracy. Therefore, piracy does not fully constitute theft.

Also I was under the very distinct impression that piracy=stealing. That impression heavily re-enforced by many an Escapist topic regarding the issue.

Merely a common misconception. Piracy is copyright infringement. A thousand ignorant voices crying out that it's theft doesn't, in fact, make it theft.

I think these definitions need to be re-evaluated. I know software companies would have a much easier time persecuting software pirates if they could they could persecute software piracy as theft and not copyright violation.

Yes, because clearly justice is not about fairness. It's about persecuting criminals as easily as possible.

I think we should change the definition of all crimes to "looking funny." Think of how easy it would be to prosecute crooks, the judge would take on look and the case would be shut.

All sarcasm aside, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that the punishment of a crime should be proportional to the harm caused by that crime? If you do believe in that, then why do you think that the nearly harmless crime of piracy should be equated to the very harmful crime of theft? If you don't believe in that, then I suggest you reevaluate your life and subsequently stop being such a cretin.

If you're going to resort to name calling and slander like a 5 yr old then I'm not going to debate with you.
In answer to your question, what I believe is that it is wrong to take things that don't belong to you without permission; which is what has taken place. Whether you want to call that theft or you want to call it something else, it is still wrong!

I think these definitions need to be re-evaluated. I know software companies would have a much easier time persecuting software pirates if they could they could persecute software piracy as theft and not copyright violation.

I also think the definition of theft needs to be re-evaluated. To more clearly express deprival and removal of owned property, that is.
Because that's what stealing is: if I could copy your car atom for atom, there's no way in hell you could accuse me of "stealing" it as long as it was still there and owned by you.
Categorizing the copying and sharing of digital media as theft would open the door to a thousand retarded lawsuits, such as with livestreams and youtube videos. Trust me, we don't want that.

Well you see I would define theft as the taking of things, by copying or otherwise, that don't belong to you without permission of the owner nor the intention of returning them.
I certainly don't want to see the kind of lawsuits that you suggest might occur, but at the same time I don't like seeing this kind of shit either; where a guy has taken a hard drive full of stuff that doesn't rightfully belong to him and put it on display for all to see.

If you paid attention to my first reply you would see that copyright infringement of this type is probably already a criminal offense. The only reason he is getting away with it is because no one cares enough to press charges. Any lawsuits would also be pretty bad PR and thus not worth it.

For the last time, taking a thing (i.e. the transfer of ownership of the thing from one individual or group to another individual or group) is NOT the same as copying a thing (i.e. creating a thing which resembles the copied thing.) Saying they are equally harmful is just plain stupid.

Yeah yeah, I heard(read, whatever) you. But as I was trying to imply, if it was not a matter of persecuting for copyright infringement and rather a matter of persecuting for something a tad more serious it probably wouldn't be such a PR nightmare.

And yeah I read it the first time you posted it, restating it 50 times is not going to make any difference. As I said above, taking things, by copying them or otherwise, that don't belong to you without permission of the owner is still wrong! Whether you want to call that theft you want to invent some other magical word for it, it's still wrong!
And the fact that this guy is able to put together a whole collection of stuff he took without permission and put it on display without anyone doing anything is just a whole heaping load of bullshit.

I never said pirating is not wrong, just that it's not equivalent to theft. Piracy is much less harmful than theft just like assault is much less harmful than murder.

I just don't understand your apparent belief that a crime that is a little harmful deserves the same punishment as a crime that is really harmful. Frankly, I find that belief to be patently ridiculous.

If it's not theft, then I wish people would stop calling it piracy then because when I think of piracy I think of theft. In any case, even if it's not as harmful as theft it is still more harmful than mere copyright violation. So it is in that regard I think the laws are more than a little screwed up. But all of that is beside that point, my main issue in regards to this topic is this this guy is has not only "pirated" a shit load of software, but he's put it on display for all to see and he's facing no consequence for it what-so-ever. That's what bugs me!

 

[Baneat]

Want to steal a collection of PC games released from 1979-2001 taking up 130GB and valued at $150,000? Well, you can go to the URL provided, you know if you were a jerk.

Jerk is precisely the word to use here. After all, we need to adequately compensate the people who own the intellectual property of games made ten to thirty years ago in order to incentivize them to host it on servers for download. Otherwise, how would we distribute these games? It's impossible.

False binary, straw man, obscuring language. People should get paid for their crap, period. Games are a luxury, not a right.

Yes, I suppose Atari is desperately hoping that sales figures for Asteroids? on the Atari 2600 will pick up by the end of 2011. Indeed, they were assuredly thinking of their returns in 2011 when they hired people to actually make Asteroids in the years preceding 1981. They thought "this will really start to pay off in thirty years. It would just be so hard on us if networking technology allowed people to download our game at no cost to anyone but the server owner, thirty years from now."

Stealing something old doesn't justify it.

Listened to any Beethoven lately?

You can't steal Beethoven, his works are public property now. There's a time limit on how long one can own intellectual property, I can't remember the exact length but it's pretty damn long.

 

[Seanchaidh]

You can't steal Beethoven, his works are public property now. There's a time limit on how long one can own intellectual property, I can't remember the exact length but it's pretty damn long.

A lot longer than patents for useful inventions, certainly. Copyrights, like patents, are useful legal fictions. The many examples of musical works that have passed into the public domain are illustrative that the rules surrounding such 'property rights' are quite arbitrary.