Is this Pirating?

[Tsun Tzu]

Probably because you picked a bad example.

Hurtful. :/

Mind providing me with a better one?

This is true, but we're not making a sweeping mandate. We're asking if it's copyright infringement if you download a copy of a game to use as a backup to your purchased copy. Answer: it totally still is.

We at least agree that this is nonsensical, right?

Yes! It is, and it does. You've been listening. The law is stupid, but it is also the law, and no-one has a better alternative other than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing the Power Rangers theme song while trying to extradite Kim Dotcom.

I'm not sure if it's intentional, but you're coming off a bit aggressive, sir. If you'd like, I could try coming up with a few refinements of my own. I'm not entirely sure you'd enjoy most of them though.

The thing about intellectual property is that it is inherently intangible; that's why it's called intellectual property and not real property. You seem to think that it's not possible to draw a comparison between tangible and intangible copyright infringement. This is true, but not how you think it is; it's the other way around.

When I photocopy a book, the subject of the copyright is not the physical book itself. The book is a collection of papers in which are written a series of words. The words are the intellectual property, and they're the subject of the copyright. The book is just the paper the word is written on. That's why it's still copyright infringement for me to make a scan of the book, even if the resulting document is physically very different to the master copy.

You're sort of going "Copyright infringement doesn't work on intangible objects!" That's not the problem. All copyright applies to intangible objects. When you claim copyright in a book or any work of art, you are asserting a property right to the idea behind it, not to its physical form. That's why an artist can sue a person who scans their painting and uploads it to the Internet, or who repaints it with different paint on different canvas. It's why a sculptor can sue for a man copying their statue even if they make it out of plaster instead of marble.

Yes. I know, sir. The physical book itself, should it be taken, is then the subject of theft. The words themselves are the "data" I was referring to, which is the intellectual property. I'm arguing that the data, in this case the 1s and 0s which make up the game proper, is subject to a different rule set due to the medium it inhabits.

The concept of licenses supposedly takes this distinction into account. Using your example, you're effectively paying for the ability to make use of the idea behind the artist's sculpture, though even that isn't a valid comparison since we're talking about code that replicates by design.

I understand that copyright applies to concepts and not necessarily physical objects. I'm attempting to operate within the confines of this particular case, ie. the OP's post. I apologize if I'm not being clear here.

The problem with copyright and software isn't the intangibility of the software. It's the fact that software functions by making copies of itself on a regular and unavoidable basis. That's the legally tricky part. You commit copyright infringement by installing the software on your hard drive, or by backing it up onto an external storage device, or by emailing it to someone. This is why guys like Richard Stallman hate intellectual property; you literally can't make good software without infringing on someone's copyright or patent or what have you.

The question then becomes how extensive your license to use the product is, and that's a practical question asked by examining the end user license agreement.

Now, that's all very dumb, and we both recognise that it's dumb, but the important thing is that it's still the law, so if OP wants to know whether what he did was legal or not, the answer is "hell no" not "in my opinion this should be legal."

So, essentially we agree on the overarching problem. Laws relating to software need to be reexamined and, most likely, given their own set of variables to operate under.

All right, I'll concede that under current copyright law this action could be considered illegal. However! Whether he would be charged with a crime under said law is anything but concrete, given the nebulous nature of the law itself.

...Though I suppose that a law being eye-gougingly stupid hasn't stopped people from being crucified due to its existence.

 

[RicoADF]

INAL (I'm not a lawyer).

Legally, yes, that is copyright infringement ("piracy") in most jurisdictions. This is because you have made a copy of the file without authorisation or license from the rightsholder. I'm surprised that so many people in this thread think that this isn't the case; it should be obvious that copyright infringement includes making a copy of something.

The license given to you when you purchase a game obviously does not cover making copies of the game, even for the purposes of backup or improved performance. It only covers use of the game software for personal purposes, and sometimes allows modifications (Skyrim obviously does). This is extensively covered in most competently written EULAs, but even lawyers don't read them, so whatever.

Even if the EULA allowed you to make a copy of the game for the purposes of backup or personal use (they sometimes do), you haven't actually done that; you've downloaded a torrent, i.e. copied another person's copy of the game. Your license should only cover your copy of the game software. It doesn't covered Billy Anonymous' copy which you torrented.

Morally, no. No-one on Earth is going to tell you you're a bad person for making a copy of a game you paid for so that you personally can play it without DRM. You've given the creators your money; in the popular moral consciousness, that means you "own" the game and your moral obligation towards the creators is fulfilled.

Copyright infringement in general is a morally grey area - in most cases, the rightsholders themselves are doing shadier stuff to screw over the creators who made the work in the first place. This is the whitest possible case of copyright infringement I can think of, off the top of my head.

the legality depends on where you live, in most countries it is legal, US is actually very backwards in that regard/needs updating.

 

[DoPo]

All right, I'll concede that under current copyright law this action could be considered illegal. However! Whether he would be charged with a crime under said law is anything but concrete, given the nebulous nature of the law itself.

I think that's the main thing that seems to confuse people - he could be sued but nobody would actually bother. Well, unless it was a single MP3, in which case I expect RIAA would make an offer he cannot refuse. But most sane companies simply have better things to do than go after single users. And that's seems to suggest to other others "it's not piracy".

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

snip

Sorry if I came off as aggressive; I think I got a bit animated there. It's not often I get to talk to people about copyright law, y'know.

We seem to be on the same page, anyway, so that's all good. Just as long as the other people reading this thread understand that;

a) copyright infringement and theft are two different things
b) copyright law is problematic when applied to software, but not because the software is intangible.

Those are just two really common misconceptions about the piracy debate that I see all the time, so I felt the irresistable urge to right the wrong. [http://xkcd.com/386/]

snippity snip

For anyone interested, what Costco was doing is called parallel importation, and it's fully legal in the US due to something called the first sale doctrine, which states that the rightsholder's distribution right (i.e. the right to control the distribution and sale of the copyrighted content) expires after the first sale. This is what allows you to sell secondhand books and DVDs and so on.

The reason Omega's highly creative misappropriation of copyright law succeeded in that case was because Omega's first sale - the retailers - was outside of the US, and it was held that this meant the sale was not subject to US law and the first sale doctrine. That's a big deal, since it stops you from buying cheap luxury goods overseas and selling them for three times as much in America. There's a case ongoing in the US Supreme Court right now called Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons which is hopefully going to resolve the issues caused by the Omega case.

That article DoPo linked also has a really good explanation of the problems with applying copyright infringement to software and the issues with the sale of virtual goods in general, so anyone interested should read it.

On the legal vs. moral natter that seems to have cropped up in the past page; people are being silly. Whether an act constitutes copyright infringement, colloquially called "piracy," is a legal question. Copyright infringement is an act only defined by law, not by principles of morality. Citing any definitions other than the legal definition is a waste of time.

Whether a selected infringement is "moral" or not is a valid and interesting question, but it has no impact on it status as copyright infringement. These are two separate inquiries. If you decide that an act of copyright infringement like the OP's is morally justified for whatever reason, that makes it morally justified copyright infringement - but it doesn't stop being copyright infringement.

This conflation of moral and legal questions is one reason why the idea that piracy is theft is so fucking deeply embedded into people's brains. Case in point; those goddamn cinema ads.