Is this Pirating?

IamQ

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Zyst said:
Salute Escapists!

Anyhow, I'll get straight to the point. I own and bought Skyrim and all its DLC (steam owned) however some mods have slight issues with Steam support and overall I didn't want to go through the headache of fixing that so I downloaded through torrent the game and the DLC I owned which is all of it. Then I happily installed the stuff I desired and it all works perfectly.

However, is this pirating? I do own the game itself so to say but you might also argue I only own a license available through steam and not the game per-se.

What are your thoughts on this particular kind of 'piracy'? This might also apply to, for example owning your old Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time cartridge but not owning a N64 anymore, so you DL a ROM. Is that pirating? You still own and have the cartridge. Where does one draw the line?

Thanks for all and any input!
The question you're asking is not if this is piracy, because it is. You are downloading a game for free instead of buying it, and therefore it's piracy.

The real question you want to ask is if it's right or not, and in this case, I'd say you're in the right. You bought the game already, and you're just using the downloaded version because it works better.
 

spacevagrant

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Daverson said:
On a side note, though, isn't the Steam version of Skyrim the only version of Skyrim? What sort of person makes a mod that doesn't support the only legal version of the game? D=
This is the question that I keep asking myself. What mods are you using that don't work with a legal copy of the game? I use mods heavily from various modding sites and I have never found a mod that had an issue with steam and like people have pointed out SKSE allows you to play without steam running in the first place so I see absolutely no need to obtain an ill gotten copy of a game so you can "mod it".

OT, it is pirating like it or not. The fact that you can play the game without steam because someone has manipulated the game files to do so is also against the TOS so even if it wasn't pirating it would still be considered a no no. Morally I don't think it is wrong but when it comes to laws morals mean nothing.
 

Not Lord Atkin

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Not Piracy. by purchasing the game on steam, you have also purchased the right to use the software license. It doesn't matter where the software comes from, you have paid for it so you can use it. The only difference in this would be if the steam version was somehow different but I believe that skyrim on PC being a steam-exclusive game in the first place, torrents would contain the exact same version but cracked.

So no, torrenting a game you already own is perfectly legal. The software itself does not really matter, you did not pay for the files, the important part and the thing you actually paid for is the right to play the game.
 

RivFader86

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Pretty sure downloading it isn't piracy since you buy the right to use the game not just that one physical copy or download from one source.....but....don't you upload the part of a torrent you have already downloaded aswell as you download a torrent? Which would be illegal i guess as you make the content available to people who might not have bought the game
 

userwhoquitthesite

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in the united states, it is a legitimate defense against a charge of piracy if you have paid for the material. This includes digital transactions, provided the purchase does not expire (zunepass, etc) and a record can be produced.
Companies might still take you to court, but unless they prove that you then illegally provided copies to others, you will win the case.
 

crazyrabbits

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Johny_X2 said:
Not Piracy. by purchasing the game on steam, you have also purchased the right to use the software license. It doesn't matter where the software comes from, you have paid for it so you can use it.
Yes, it does matter where the software comes from. This is where the inaccuracies in this topic come from.

If I downloaded a product from a torrent site, and (in the process) allow 3 or 4 more people to get the same product via sharing of chunks of the same file, that is piracy. Plain and simple.

In the strictest sense of the term, a software licence only gives you the ability to make a personal backup copy of your product. It does not cover whether you should download it off a site and allow others to piggyback off your incomplete file at the same time. Unless you're setting your upload speed to "0" (as others have mentioned), you'll unwittingly share your product with other users. Even in that case, the fact that you still downloaded a copyrighted file off a torrent site would make it an act of piracy, regardless of whether you had good intentions or not.

As I've said before, if you're going to pirate something, pirate it. Don't hide behind weasel words and ridiculous arguments, because morally, you have no ground to stand on.
 

Sansha

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I'm fervently anti-piracy, but as you already paid for the game, you're actually legally entitled to download the same thing for free all you wish.

And I think there's nothing morally wrong with it. You bought the game, you ran into technical issues, so you downloaded the same product from a different source.
 

Leg End

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Legally, it's in the gray area, possibly the darker or lighter end of the spectrum depending on how deep into law you want to go.
Morally, you probably won't find too many people berating you for it.
 

Shadowcreed

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I think its 100% fine to download a copy of a game you've already bought and paid for, It's not like you're freebee-ing the product.
As regards to uploading it while downloading it via a torrent - yeah I suppose you can think of that as a gray area.
The way I see it, and this might not be in line with what the law says;
Your reasons for downloading the copy is for convenience - you actually do not intent to distribute the copy to others. The torrent program is doing that regardless, though the intent is not to enable people to 'steal' something. Consider that everyone else might have [though probably not] paid for the product in question themselves much like you, and are looking for the same convenience.

What I'll ask - do intentions matter in this case? Probably not for the law. It does for me.
Morality goes a long way in my book.
 

RubyT

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Yes, it is "pirating"?

Depending on where you're at, it is very likely that you violate laws by obtaining copyrighted software from an illegal source. However, seeing as you are a private citizen, you actually bought a copy of the game and the monetary value of Skyrim+DLCs should be under 100$ these days, you will not be punished for downloading. I don't think any private person has ever been tried for that.

Seeing as you used BitTorrent, chances are you also uploaded data. That might get you into real trouble, once again depending on where you are.
 

Shadowcreed

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spacevagrant said:
Daverson said:
On a side note, though, isn't the Steam version of Skyrim the only version of Skyrim? What sort of person makes a mod that doesn't support the only legal version of the game? D=
This is the question that I keep asking myself. What mods are you using that don't work with a legal copy of the game? I use mods heavily from various modding sites and I have never found a mod that had an issue with steam and like people have pointed out SKSE allows you to play without steam running in the first place so I see absolutely no need to obtain an ill gotten copy of a game so you can "mod it".

OT, it is pirating like it or not. The fact that you can play the game without steam because someone has manipulated the game files to do so is also against the TOS so even if it wasn't pirating it would still be considered a no no. Morally I don't think it is wrong but when it comes to laws morals mean nothing.
The downloading in and of itself isn't considered piracy in this case is it? The fact that you're uploading the files to others is.
The way I see it is you're entitled to the product in question since you've already paid for a license to it.
The place where you get the same piece of software shouldn't be a factor.

If you'd buy a 20 dollar coupon for some product - does it matter where you get the product? All that matters is that you've paid for it - and thus are entitled to your product.
It doesn't matter if you get it in store A or store B, as long as the coupon stays legit.
For software it's basically the same story - only that you don't need to turn in the coupon upon acquiring the product.
 

Entitled

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DoPo said:
I'm almost amused at the piracy threads. When people go "Well, MORALLY, it isn't" what's next "Was I speeding" "Well, MORALLY you weren't speeding"? It's a legal thing not how one feels about it.
That's just a terminology debate.

It's not uncommon for words to have both legal, and moral definitions.

Is it rape if a Kenyan man in Kenya forces a girl to marry him, and then to have sex with him? According to the law, it isn't. Is it rape if two Californian 17 year olds willingly have sex with each other? According to the law, yes, it is statutory rape. Is it still rape if two West Virginian 17 year olds do the same? No, it isn't.

Yet, it wouldn't be that strange for one to say that only the first of these three is "morally rape", and the latter two shouldn't be comparable to it.

While a word like "rape" can be applied to either a legally allowed sin, or a morally neutral illegality, it's even worse with piracy, that is also used by piracy apologists to describe a morally neutral and legally neutral act, as in "Switzerland legalized piracy, and we should as well", and also by copyright apologists, as in "Those dirty commie Swiss even allow piracy, they don't respect our moral properties".
 

Not Lord Atkin

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crazyrabbits said:
Johny_X2 said:
Not Piracy. by purchasing the game on steam, you have also purchased the right to use the software license. It doesn't matter where the software comes from, you have paid for it so you can use it.
Yes, it does matter where the software comes from. This is where the inaccuracies in this topic come from.

If I downloaded a product from a torrent site, and (in the process) allow 3 or 4 more people to get the same product via sharing of chunks of the same file, that is piracy. Plain and simple.

In the strictest sense of the term, a software licence only gives you the ability to make a personal backup copy of your product. It does not cover whether you should download it off a site and allow others to piggyback off your incomplete file at the same time. Unless you're setting your upload speed to "0" (as others have mentioned), you'll unwittingly share your product with other users. Even in that case, the fact that you still downloaded a copyrighted file off a torrent site would make it an act of piracy, regardless of whether you had good intentions or not.

As I've said before, if you're going to pirate something, pirate it. Don't hide behind weasel words and ridiculous arguments, because morally, you have no ground to stand on.
I can mostly see what you're saying, I didn't really think of the seeding thing. Oh well.

That said, that last sentence is not exactly correct. There is no moral issue with this. From the moral standpoint, you own the game and therefore should be able to play it by any means necessary. Even if it means pirating the game.

What's harder to find is the legal ground for this and that's exactly what I was trying to get to. The fact that EULA does not mention torrenting games does not make it a no-go, quite the opposite actually. Seeding a torrent might be considered to be redistribution of software, which is illegal, I'll give you that. However, simply using defferent means to obtain the software data, i.e. the files, when you already own and have paid for the software license... well as you said, there's nothing in the EULA about that, which also means that there's nothing in the EULA that prohibits it.

Don't get me wrong, I do not pirate games and I resent the implication. And I do not have a personal stake in this argument. That's just what I think is the correct way to approach the issue.
 

DoPo

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Entitled said:
DoPo said:
I'm almost amused at the piracy threads. When people go "Well, MORALLY, it isn't" what's next "Was I speeding" "Well, MORALLY you weren't speeding"? It's a legal thing not how one feels about it.
That's just a terminology debate.

It's not uncommon for words to have both legal, and moral definitions.
I see no moral definition of "piracy". It is, and has always been, copyright infringement. And a bunch of people who don't understand what it means. Some of the justifications sound downright arcane, if we give it a couple of years, I suppose might start seeing "Well, it's not piracy, if you used this herb to make an ointment and rub it over your left hand at midnight".
 

Entitled

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DoPo said:
Entitled said:
DoPo said:
I'm almost amused at the piracy threads. When people go "Well, MORALLY, it isn't" what's next "Was I speeding" "Well, MORALLY you weren't speeding"? It's a legal thing not how one feels about it.
That's just a terminology debate.

It's not uncommon for words to have both legal, and moral definitions.
I see no moral definition of "piracy". It is, and has always been, copyright infringement. And a bunch of people who don't understand what it means. Some of the justifications sound downright arcane, if we give it a couple of years, I suppose might start seeing "Well, it's not piracy, if you used this herb to make an ointment and rub it over your left hand at midnight".
While I support descriptive linguistics, I admit there are some limits to it, where a single, consistent authority has always held to a single definition. For example, whales will never become fishes just because enough people ignore the rules of taxonomy.

HOWEVER this would only be the case here, if "piracy" would be the formal legal jargon for copyright infringement, as opposed to... well... "copyright infringement". And that's not the case. In an actual legal text, "piracy" would still refer to high-seas robbery and kidnapping.

The problem is, that while publishers starting to apply "piracy" to a specific crime is a sort of "legal definition", it's still also as much of an informal slang as users applying it to cases of "harming the artist's profitability", or pirate parties applying it to "obtaining digital content without the creator's permission".
 

Shadowcreed

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DoPo said:
Entitled said:
DoPo said:
I'm almost amused at the piracy threads. When people go "Well, MORALLY, it isn't" what's next "Was I speeding" "Well, MORALLY you weren't speeding"? It's a legal thing not how one feels about it.
That's just a terminology debate.

It's not uncommon for words to have both legal, and moral definitions.
I see no moral definition of "piracy". It is, and has always been, copyright infringement. And a bunch of people who don't understand what it means. Some of the justifications sound downright arcane, if we give it a couple of years, I suppose might start seeing "Well, it's not piracy, if you used this herb to make an ointment and rub it over your left hand at midnight".
All good and well what the law sates, though you're not doing any harm here to anyone if you've already bought and paid for the game previously, and simply get your merchandise some other way. What other reason does this law of piracy and copyright infringement have than to protect the producers? They've got their share of the money, you already paid for it! Where's the harm done?
I'll agree on the uploading part - you be causing him [and probably are] to the developers by enabling people to freebee the product in question.

Hypothetically - if you avoid uploading the files, you've already paid for the product but you choose to download it from a torrent - is it piracy?
If that would be considered piracy than I'll say that the piracy laws are heavily flawed. Unless there's actually real harm being done here that I'm not seeing.
 

fenrizz

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ThisGuyLikesNoTacos said:
You're only authorized to the copy you bought, the steam version.
It's piracy.
Norwegian law says otherwise.

It's not black and white, and the law varies from country to country.
bastardofmelbourne said:
Look, from a strict legal standpoint there is no difference betwen making a copy of Skyrim and scanning and printing a full copy of a book you bought. Both infringe the rightsholder's copyright, because he or she is the holder of the right to copy. It is that simple.

Where it gets complicated is where copyright infringement is required because of a function of the software, as DoPo described. That's the problem with copyrighted software. The problem isn't that it's not theft; the law knows that copyright infringement isn't theft, that's they it's called copyright infringement and not theft.

We all know that the OP hasn't stolen a copy of Skyrim. The question is whether he had the right to make a copy of it, and if his EULA was written by anyone sane, he definitely didn't.
Problem is that the law of the land varies.
Also, I don't know of many countries where the EULA actually is legally binding.