Downloading is a human right.

[TKretts3]

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a human right. A civil liberty for sure, but not an innate right which all humans are entitled to. The same as any privilege, it should have requirements (In this case technological and monetary), and restrictions (Piracy), and repercussions when used maliciously.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

It should be, but as everyone has stated the world doesn't work that way, as least as it is now. I wasn't saying people should produce their commodities for free, apologies if it appeared that way.

If you're going to sit here and argue that artists shouldn't do art for money, then you clearly don't know anything about how the art world works. Many artists get education, which costs money. They buy supplies, which costs money. They either produce their own pieces or produce pieces on commission, and then either sell them freelance or get themselves and their works known through galleries. In the galleries, they can either sell them or gain more commissions.

I know all this because I am an art major in college, and I am in a senior class with many other artists who are about to enter the "real world" of art. It is a business. Galleries run like businesses. Museums run like businesses. They may have mission statements that say how much they're about art, and if they are owned and operated by artists themselves then they may be more about the art. But in the end something has to pay the rent in those spaces, somebody has to pay the gallery workers who put up installations and schedule exhibitions, and somehow the artists themselves have to afford more supplies to work with.

You have no idea what you are talking about. If you think I'm wrong, then find an art instructor at a university or talk to somebody who works at a gallery. They'll tell you how much business sense you have to have in order to make it as an artist.

First, I didn't say "artists shouldn't do art for money". That would be a silly thing to say and I don't really care what artists should or should not do.

Secondly, as you pointed out I'm not an artist which makes it all the more disappointing that I haven't received a single reply that gave thought to what the artist actually is and what their relationship to other people in the world is, which seems to be necessary to answer any question relating to artists' rights. You say you are in art school. Are you really of the opinion that an artist is someone who makes goods to be consumed for payment? Is that really why you're studying art?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

If your not concerned with getting paid, then you are also not what I would call, "Well fed" or "Not homeless".

Seriously, there is a middle ground here. Artists want to get paid for doing a good job, just like every other person in the world, and that is a good thing. There's mitigating factors for piracy, and problems with the way things are now, but the idea that artists shouldn't want to get paid for there efforts is fundamentally absurd.

I think you assumed that when I say "artist" I was talking about the person who produces art. I wasn't. That should clear up the misunderstanding.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

your kidding right?

are YOU an artist? like I already said...its not always fun and it takes dedication, if you want to be at your best as an artist then you need time, the most valuable thing.Feeling burnt out by your day job may be nessicary somtimes but not good if your want to put out good work

exposure is great and if the art in question is in a place where it is for free then fine

but in cases when it is a product then its not right to take for free...YOU do not dictate what the artist should/does want, thats just arrogant

Again, we're talking about artists. You're talking about a trader of some sort. Artists have not always produced art in return for material benefits and it is not outrageous to claim that the greatest artistic works in history were produced without any returns, nor the intention of any. It need not even be mentioned that artists who do their "work" for the money and find no reward in the production itself, are generally useless.

It says a lot about our modern era that an artist's role is narrowed down to a "job" in and of itself and therefore deserving of payment for services.

Yes it is....

It is for a fact an outrageous claim.
Our greatest artworks of almost any era has been works of commission.

The Sistine Chapel was made on the wealth of the church.

The great symphonies were composed for the entertainment of the noble or use of political parties.

The whole idea of purist art for the sake of art denies people the ability to live on their craft and hone it. Really it is an absurd suggestion. We like their artwork for their talent and their skill to execute said talent. Talent is what you are born with in my opinion, but skill takes practice. Practice takes time. And time is money.

It's not a purist idea, it's what the artist in fact is - the medium through which art is produced. As long as we cannot see this and we can only view art through the commercial structures of the day, it's going to be difficult to answer the crucial questions which are raised by the encounter between art and technology.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Well if we take that logic to an extreme, many of the classic artists like Da Vinci and Michaelangelo weren't artists either as they did work by commission, as in, people paid them (very generously) to make portraits of nobles and other prominent figures, granted, some of that money was used to fund pet projects with some artists, but others basically spent their whole lives working commissions. Others tried to sell off (older) works of theirs to try and stay aloft financially. And I personally don't feel that invalidates them as artists. Or their creations as art.

(Captcha: love-hate)

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

If you expect someone to live on nothing and produce something you want to enjoy, you can suck a big fat one. Even artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci had rich patrons allowing them to actually live and eat etc. If someone's doing handstands on the street for general public consumption, of course you owe them nothing - there's no written contract and they're taking their chances. In fact, you're doing them a favor not complaining about them if you don't like what they're doing. That's different from people trying to sneak into a show or pirate games/movies etc, which is an invasive kind of theft.

The real villains of the piece are selfish idiots, whether they're middle men giving themselves undeserved excessive cuts or consumers stealing the end product. You need a sensible business strategy that doesn't shaft people or you.

 

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

It's a human right in Sweden, where Piracy is legal.

It's not a right anywhere else in the civilised world. Particularly Europe, the UK, North America, Australia, or Japan (the biggest regions for the industry)

Eh? I think you are referring to Switzerland there.

Piracy is not legal in Sweden, especially since the Ipred laws were enacted in 2009.

 

[chikusho]

snip

Noone is arguing that commissioned work can't be art.

If you expect someone to live on nothing and produce something you want to enjoy, you can suck a big fat one.

But you can rightly expect someone to live on nothing while they produce something you don't enjoy.
The point is, money on its own is a lousy motivator, and passionate people will create works of passion forever, whether or not anyone pays them, which has been proven time and time again by the passionate people who create works of passion since forever whether or not anyone pays them. The phenomenon of free content spread on the internet (including illegally, such as piracy) is helping these people get discovered and generate interest in their work, which in turn will help them transform their passion into a source of income. It doesn't work the other way around.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

There's certainly a lot of truth to what you say, there's no denying that financial motivation is not the only source of motivation. It's more once they've established a channel of income and if people then steal from that, where the problem lies. If you don't like what someone produces, you shouldn't be motivated to steal it. And it wouldn't hurt if the artist had a backup job to minimise the chance of financial disaster from people stealing their work.

It's like Nassim Taleb says in 'Anti-fragility' - "You can't predict exactly when and how something can fail, but you can build systems that aren't so fragile." So anti-fragile business "plans" where something like piracy can be a positive really should be what the artist does. Maximise the upside (through exposure of your product) while minimising the downside (possibly losing everything through theft and overcommitment to your art without any other means of support). Easier said than done of course and you have to experiment to try out new ideas (which is what a lot of art is)

 

[SteewpidZombie]

(Gonna CLEAR up some things, because obviously too many people are arguing about Piracy without understanding the context of the whole situation).

You can upload and download ANYTHING related to the pursuit of knowledge or culture in Europe, and nobody can say no. So if you wanted to read a book about the ancient history of Rome, you CAN! And it's no longer illegal, even if the book was published only 10 minutes earlier. So long as you can prove (In a court of law) that you were pursuing knowledge/information for cultural or important reasons, and that you NEEDED to use that particular source. Which of course means that simply hitting 'DOWNLOAD' on half of Amazon.com is still illegal, but if your country banned the sale of a particular book or source of information or a company simply put a absurd price on it, it is perfectly legal to obtain and read it if it is providing you with information.

HOWEVER

Downloading videogames, Music, and Movies that are considered 'Entertainment' is still illegal.

It's supposed to be a law that PROTECTS the right of everyone to receive information. Which is the same as if all the schools suddenly decided that all students with Green eyes weren't allowed to read books. This law is just a way to ensure that REGARDLESS, those Green eyed kids can get ahold of that information and read their books even when someone says they can't. Or for another example if you're from a poor family and cannot afford to attend school, you can download or get ahold of those books/information illegally IF it's merely providing you with the Right to Education.



EDIT: Because the 'Right to an Education' is protected in most first world, and developing nations. So if someone tries to prevent the public from becoming educated (Propaganda, Blocking websites, ect.), they cannot sue or have you arrested for pursuing that knowledge for yourself. Basically making Knowledge/Human Rights TRUMP Copyright Laws. (A modern version of when Scientists were finally being able to publish theories and pursue knowledge WITHOUT the interference of the Church).

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Snip

Aye. I don't think a company really loses money over piracy to the amount they claim, but the problem is that.. they *could* lose that amount of money. Companies who make games and blame their failure on piracy need to check themselves. Because if you make a good game you won't have an issue in succeeding. I think a lot of companies are too busy making cash outs, stupid dlc, half-assed games to get a quick dollar while great companies like cd projekt red are making it big because they take their games seriously.

I *could* die tomorrow and I have a higher chance of it because I drive a motorcycle during winter. Doesn't mean it'll happen, doesn't mean that I'm anywhere near the statistic, because anyone who takes precautions and makes an effort will do well. Accidents happen, but that's an exception, not a tendency, so you should forget all about potential losses.
The entertainment industry has mostly realized this and is trying to find ways around it and so should you.

I apologize for the analogy, I hate making those and it's obviously not completely relatable. At least it makes sense compared to the string of theft analogies that so many constantly come up with.

Lol, I agree.

But still
"Cysis 2 clinches the dubious honour for the most pilfered PC game of 2011, with an estimated 3.92 million illegal downloads. " That's almost 4 million copies. I know this is old, but that's still a problem. I don't know like the way companies are handling things with DRM (Mostly the always online DRM crap.) I think it would help if they started to release demos again instead of expecting people to throw out 60 dollars every time EA decides to throw out a cash grab.

 

[Lilani]

Are you really of the opinion that an artist is someone who makes goods to be consumed for payment? Is that really why you're studying art?

For me, those are two very different questions. Yes I think an artist makes (or at least can make) goods to be consumed for payment. You can go to Hobby Lobby or a furniture store and buy factory-prints or handmade furniture, so why wouldn't an individual be able to do the same? I see no difference between paying Hobby Lobby for a print to hang on my wall and paying an artist for a handmade work to hang on my wall, apart from a greater percentage of the money going to the creator and the uniqueness of the product. They don't have to, if that's what you're trying to get me to say, but they certainly can. An artist isn't just one thing, but I thought for the purposes of this thread we were talking about artists who were selling their things.

As for your second question, why am I studying art, I suppose yes I am wanting to make money for studying art, but I suppose knowing my degree would be more helpful to you. My major is computer animation, so what I'm hoping to make money from is producing animations and motion graphics for either a single client over time or multiple clients at an ad firm. I still consider that art, even though it might not be character animation I still use principles of arts and graphic design to make my work. I don't really want to freelance if at all possible, I do want a certain amount of security and regularity.

But as for everyone else, I don't think I could name a single person I've met in the art department who doesn't have some desire to make money for what they do. Many consider it to be the perfect job--creating stuff day and night, and paying the bills with their work without having to have a day job. Of course they're doing it for the art, but there's no reason they can't make money off of it as well. Just because the job is their passion doesn't mean they can't plan to make a few bucks off of it. I mean, just holding onto the stuff they make isn't reasonable from a practical standpoint. Professional artists can produce hundreds, if not thousands, of works in a single year. You can't just hold onto that stuff, you have to get it moving either through galleries or into the hands of buyers or else you both run out of space and money.

 

[DracoSuave]

The problem is, people usually don't get paid for the work through game purchases. Somebody ELSE who then funds the artists/programmers etc gets paid.

Publishers are the ones at stake here, not gaming itself. Video games have already proved themselves to be a highly desired item. Even if one means to make money off of it is destroyed, someone else will come up with a different method.

You fail economics forever.


The artists get paid for their work--if it's the publishers doing so, where do you think that money comes from to pay the artists? Do you think that if you don't pay the publishers the artist will end up paid still?

No.

Because without the reason to make that money, there's no need for the artist to make that product. And if there's no need for the artist, he doesn't get paid because he doesn't work.

Developers get their pay beforehand.

It doesn't matter if you pay your worker beforehand or afterhand. If you don't have work to give them, you have no reason to pay them. And if a company goes out of business because they're not getting paid, there's no work to give the developer.

No work=no pay.

This isn't difficult, man. No money=no work. No work-no pay. No pay=artist has no food.

 

[DracoSuave]

Assuming the rights of an owner amounts to appropriation, which copying without authorization amounts to.

Read again that britsh law:

A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another

That law only talks about PROPERTY, it says nothing about "appropriating someone's monoplistic licenses of exclusive production", since there is no such thing. Appropration refers to actual enumerable objects that can literally be taken away, not to infringement of exclusive selling rights.

Copyright is covered by entirely separate laws.

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

I find it more telling that you villainize the people who produce the things you want, rather than those who attempt to sponge of their work.





Okay, let's put it in different terms.

Let's say you're a father, a family man, and you decide to make a home movie with your kid. Your kid's flying around in a cape, and you film it, and it's cute.

Do you have the right to decide not to show that video of your kid goes onto youtube?
Do you have the right to decide not to show that video on the evening news?
Do you have the right to decide not to have pedophiles wanking off to your video?

Do you have those rights?

If you answer yes to ANY of those, you've just acknowledged that the creation of a piece of art does, in fact, carry specific rights to the distribution of that art. You can make the decision to distribute OR NOT distribute that video of your child as you see fit.

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer. You do NOT mind if I take videos of your children and post them against your will as a parent. You do NOT mind if I steal photos of you and your girlfriend having naked time and putting them on redtube. You do NOT mind if I do these things, because you do not accept those rights exist.


This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

 

[chikusho]

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

Actually, "intellectual property" is an excemption to property law. If it was property, existing property laws would suffice.

The copyright monopoly is actually four different conceptual monopolies. It is commercial monopolies on duplication and public performance, and it is so-called moral rights to be associated with one?s work and to have the right of veto against conceptual violations of it. These are four quite different mechanisms.
...
Something given or shared of free will cannot be described as theft in any philosophy, and somebody else is sharing their copy with you of their free will in a typical file-sharing process as you are manufacturing your own copy. It is, however, infringing a governmentally-sanctioned duplication monopoly, which is a completely different beast than property rights.

http://falkvinge.net/2013/02/13/five-basic-misconceptions-about-the-copyright-monopoly-and-sharing-of-culture/

 

[Entitled]

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

IP is a form of property in the same way as "character assassination" is a form of assassination, or as "gold farming" is a type of farming.

In other words, it's not. It's a figure of speech, an analogy, and not even a very good one.

I'm not saying that IP rights don't exist, just that comparing piracy to theft on the basis that both are outlawed by laws that are sometimes compared to each other, is an argument from a false analogy.

Okay, let's put it in different terms.

Let's say you're a father, a family man, and you decide to make a home movie with your kid. Your kid's flying around in a cape, and you film it, and it's cute.

Do you have the right to decide not to show that video of your kid goes onto youtube?
Do you have the right to decide not to show that video on the evening news?
Do you have the right to decide not to have pedophiles wanking off to your video?

Do you have those rights?

If you answer yes to ANY of those, you've just acknowledged that the creation of a piece of art does, in fact, carry specific rights to the distribution of that art. You can make the decision to distribute OR NOT distribute that video of your child as you see fit.

I didn't understand the first question, and answered no to the third. The second one depends on whether by "evening news" we are talking about a commercial TV network that is getting a profit from ad revenues around the news, in which case I think YES, it should belong to the IP holder's exclusive publishing right, but no in a non-commercial sharing of video clips.

I'm aware that people have a number of legal Intellectual Property rights, and I believe that they are morally entitled to a number of these (even if not all of them).

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer. You do NOT mind if I take videos of your children and post them against your will as a parent.

That's a slippery slope fallacy. IP is a series of commercial regulations, that's limits were constantly reinterpreted and rewritten over time. It can be an entirely consistent idea to want to add certain further limits to it, and not others.

Besides, privacy rights are especially different from copyrights. I believe that I have a right to protect my actual property, such as my home or my hard drive, and my body, but I don't believe that I have a right to stop other people from watching the digital data that I already distributed, or to tell people what they are allowed to do with their penis while watching my public youtube videos.

This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

IP doesn't protect privacy, it protects economical benefits. As the US constitution says, they are written "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". IP laws need to be exactly as wide or tight as it is necessary to promote progress.

 

[Entitled]

At what point did the product get raised to become public? I still haven't been convinced a private product privately sold to individuals is culture. At what number of individual sales is it no longer private?

Why wouldn't it be culture?

In this thread, I've never attempted to use an esoteric, special definition of "culture" that somehow explains copyright reform on it's own, I just used the phrase interchargibly with "art" and "creative work" and "data", and specifically clarified it as "pop-culture" (to differentiate it from separate meanings of the word such as "ethnic/local culture", or "civilization").

What is unfair about stopping them? I hate the word fair. It is not used right and is used too often and is not accompanied by a basis of comparison (thank you Jim Henson, we still miss you). The closest to a basis of comparison you gave is "it is naturally accessible through a publically available technology" so we shouldn't "stop others from repeating it" (I hope you don't mind that quote I believe I kept your thought in tact). My rebuttal is: it wasn't available in the n=1 case. Someone had to be first. So someone uploaded it when it wasn't "naturally available". Or is this an example where the n=1 case is false but the n+1 case and the nth case is true and the principle doesn't violate logic.

Maybe instead of "unfair", a better term would be that it is "dispropotional" to stop them.

Let's say, that you have the chance to magically build a whole skyscaper in New York by giving a thousand people migraine for a week. Let's say that you can also magically equip it with all furniture by giving ten thousand people migraine. Let's say, that you can also give it free wi-fi access, by giving one billion people migraine.

The funding of media is a bit like that. I cen see the reward, and a price, and I see how it's getting dispropartionally heavy on the general population around the end.

There are already plenty of possible ways to fund the creation of art, and most of them only has to slightly limit the freedoms of a few rival publshers to work. (such as granting exclusive rights to creators for being the one who can place ads around a show, or sell merchandise), and overall, they are good enough to do the job of letting our favorite well-known genres and mediums exist.

Yet at the same time, someone also had this "brilliant" idea, of making somehow more money, by making sure that no unauthorised digital copies of these shows ever appear on the Internet. And to guarantee this, publishers get to patrol all the video sharing that I and millions of others would otherwise do on the Internet, remove content that I just uploaded, make me hit a brick wall as I would try to rewatch a video that was still there a week ago, force me to blindly pay for every content solely based on reviews and ads and hype, install game-breaking DRM, entirely lock out countries from experiencing their product that they can't make a deal with, etc.

Constant headache for a billion people, a bit of extra for the industry.

I feel as a consumer that I benefitted from them profitting.

That's the one claim I can't really argue with.

If you think that it's worth having all these limits in turn for having the exact AAA games and blocbuster movies that we have now, as opposed to risking that under my plan, publishers would be a bit less profitable, and maybe a few of our favorite works couldn't have happened (or not the way they did), that's your call.

I disagree with it, partially because most of my best media experiences in the past years were low-budget, and/or non-copy-protected to begin with, but also because I feel that there is very little fundamental difference between a $20 million mid-budget movie and a $200 million blockbuster, not just in artistic merit, but even in terms of production values. It mostly goes to bloated celebrity talent fees, marketing, publisher fees, and frivolous details.

I wouldn't care the least bit if the biggest games would have to have PS2 graphics, or if sci-fi blockbuster movies like Transformers, would have to be made from the budget of District 9.

But that is largely a matter of personal taste. I guess there are also some people who wish publishers would have even more control, so they could afford even more expensive projects that they can't now.

 

[DracoSuave]

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

IP is a form of property in the same way as "character assassination" is a form of assassination, or as "gold farming" is a type of farming.

In other words, it's not. It's a figure of speech, an analogy, and not even a very good one.

I'm not saying that IP rights don't exist, just that comparing piracy to theft on the basis that both are outlawed by laws that are sometimes compared to each other, is an argument from a false analogy.

What bothers me here, is that this is what allows you to move the goalposts, as pro-piracy advocates always do.

This is how it works.

An anti-pirate advocate describes it as theft, describes it as property rights--in a moral sense. The argument is about the -morality- of piracy, not the -legality- of piracy.

Then, a pro-piracy advocate says 'Oh no, it's not technically theft under convenient law XCSDFG' and thus, having redefined theft from the moral sense to the legal sense, has shifed the goal posts, and redefined terms that the original proponent did not intend.

That's not a valid rebuttal.

Okay, let's put it in different terms.

Let's say you're a father, a family man, and you decide to make a home movie with your kid. Your kid's flying around in a cape, and you film it, and it's cute.

Do you have the right to decide not to show that video of your kid goes onto youtube?
Do you have the right to decide not to show that video on the evening news?
Do you have the right to decide not to have pedophiles wanking off to your video?

Do you have those rights?

If you answer yes to ANY of those, you've just acknowledged that the creation of a piece of art does, in fact, carry specific rights to the distribution of that art. You can make the decision to distribute OR NOT distribute that video of your child as you see fit.

I didn't understand the first question, and answered no to the third. The second one depends on whether by "evening news" we are talking about a commercial TV network that is getting a profit from ad revenues around the news, in which case I think YES, it should belong to the IP holder's exclusive publishing right, but no in a non-commercial sharing of video clips.

I'm aware that people have a number of legal Intellectual Property rights, and I believe that they are morally entitled to a number of these (even if not all of them).

The first question is really simple. If you made a video of that kid, do you have the right to say 'No' to someone publishing it on Youtube. Say I want to publish that video--do you have the right to tell me to fuck off?

The point of this is not whether you agree with the specifics of intellectual property rights, but merely their existance. If you do, then we have communicated a term correctly, and we both agree those rights can and should exist.

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer. You do NOT mind if I take videos of your children and post them against your will as a parent.

That's a slippery slope fallacy. IP is a series of commercial regulations, that's limits were constantly reinterpreted and rewritten over time. It can be an entirely consistent idea to want to add certain further limits to it, and not others.

Besides, privacy rights are especially different from copyrights. I believe that I have a right to protect my actual property, such as my home or my hard drive, and my body, but I don't believe that I have a right to stop other people from watching the digital data that I already distributed, or to tell people what they are allowed to do with their penis while watching my public youtube videos.

See there's the problem... you don't see the similarity between your own personal right not to publish and someone else's right not to publish. You don't understand that it's the same concept--your privacy rights are bolstered by your intellectual property rights. It's why people can't just break in and publish your movies.

Now obviously, you cannot control what people do with your published material, should you decide to do so. But you're not giving up your publishing rights, the fundamental RIGHT to decide the fate of your own product.

If the consumer hasn't bought from you the right to distribute your product--they haven't paid for it, why do they have an intrinsic right to distribute that product? This is a strictly moral question here... does selling something to someone ALSO include giving them the rights to manufacture exact copies and redistribute them for free?

Does selling something to someone give them the right to pick the locks you put on that thing in order to make it tougher for them to distribute it to others for free?

This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

IP doesn't protect privacy, it protects economical benefits. As the US constitution says, they are written "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". IP laws need to be exactly as wide or tight as it is necessary to promote progress.

Yes, it -also- protects economical benefits. There's the rub. Finally someone admits it.

You've JUST admitted there's economical benefits from someone making a work and publishing it--which means there's something to be deprived from them.


So... do you admit they have intellectual property rights? Yes.
Do you admit that some of those rights should be respected? Yes.
Do you admit that their own personal work can have economic benefit? Yes.
Do you admit that intellectual property rights protects the creators' economic interest? Yes.

So the big question is... do the creators of a work have a right to economic benefits from the distribution of that work? Do they, in other words, have the right to sell something you clearly agree belongs to them?

And do you, as a customer, have the right to make copies of their work, distribute it for free, and thusly undercut someone you made a deal with?

Remember, this is NOT the same as you selling your own copy of that work. Doing so is fine, you were sold one copy and you do with it as you please. This is you manufacturing knockoffs and distributing them for free.

If you don't want to call it theft because you're hung up on legal definitions... it's most certainly some sort of violation of contract law at best, it'd be similiar to counterfeiting or whatnot. The fact that it's digital and thus your manufacturing costs are negligible doesn't make the concept any different.

I'd rather not get hung up in the legal definitions in what is plainly a moral argument on my side. It's morally theft--you are violating their property rights and causing them harm, specificly by creating knock-off products in order to produce a competitive advantage.

Something given or shared of free will cannot be described as theft in any philosophy, and somebody else is sharing their copy with you of their free will in a typical file-sharing process as you are manufacturing your own copy. It is, however, infringing a governmentally-sanctioned duplication monopoly, which is a completely different beast than property rights.

But it ISN'T given or shared of free will, is it?

Or rather, the 'free will' here isn't the 'free will' that matters. By this definition, proper theft, is not theft.

After all, the thief certainly exercised free will, even if the owner did not.

This argument completely boils down to 'It's not theft because I have the ability to perform the theft' which is like saying breaking into someone's house ceases to be immoral because you own a set of lockpicks.

The question is, who owns the COPY. And it's actually pretty clear--if you buy a product, you're not buying the right to make cheap knock-offs and distributing it as the original. If you went in, studied the code, and recoded it from the ground up, or made your own original product from scratch that acts as a similar version (What Zynga does), then you'd be manufacturing and distributing of your own free will.

And that's the hypocrasy of it--if it's Zynga making a similar and competing version to a game, they're knock-off artists, and they're stealing from others' creative works blah blah blah. But when YOU do it, and you don't even bother to make your own, all you do is just copy-paste bits and distribute them... you're a hero of the internet!

When, by ANY reasonable definition, you're actually worse--because unlike Zynga, you AREN'T manufacturing something of your own. All you're doing is stealing someone else's idea, making a copy, and distributing it because you just don't want to pay for it.

 

[Vegosiux]

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer.

Not the best analogy. One might still mind the "breaking and entering" bit even if they had not minded the "taking the data from my computer" bit. After all, they'll likely have to replace a lock or something.

Put that computer in a place where you don't need to commit a second offense to get to it, though, and the analogy stands.

 

[Xanadu84]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

If your not concerned with getting paid, then you are also not what I would call, "Well fed" or "Not homeless".

Seriously, there is a middle ground here. Artists want to get paid for doing a good job, just like every other person in the world, and that is a good thing. There's mitigating factors for piracy, and problems with the way things are now, but the idea that artists shouldn't want to get paid for there efforts is fundamentally absurd.

I think you assumed that when I say "artist" I was talking about the person who produces art. I wasn't. That should clear up the misunderstanding.

It absolutely does not, because I don't think there is a better definition for, "Artist" then, "A person who produces art".

At the end of the day, whoever you are talking about as an, "Artist" is a human being who needs to eat, and who should be specializing in whatever job you think that artists do. Not scraping by with a day job and only donating there remaining time and energy to a financially free endeavor.