Is this Pirating?

[Entitled]

...while the woman should not have been trying to drink coffee and drive...

That's why she didn't do it, she was sitting in a parking car.

 

[DarthFennec]

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.

The only people who own "the game itself" are Bethesda, all the consumer ever buys is the license and sometimes the physical medium (disk and packaging, which isn't worth much). Since you own the license already, I wouldn't consider it 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?

Right, or maybe you do still own an N64 but you have no way of, say, recording footage from it for a Let's Play or something. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, and I think most game companies would agree.

When you buy a game, or any software, you're really just buying the license to use it, and when you do that you have to agree to a contract called the EULA. Basically an EULA says "I agree to these terms, and pay this amount of money, and in return, I'm allowed to use this software." So ultimately, what's "considered pirating" all depends on what's in the EULA, and therefore, it's always the decision of the copyright holder. When writing an EULA, the main concern is keeping yourself from getting screwed over financially, even if it means a consumer or two have less-than-optimal experiences with the software (I personally despise this mode of thinking, but hey, it's the world we live in). It can be very easy to lose track of whether something detriments the average consumer, when trying to outsmart the few people trying to steal your profit. But for the most part, it doesn't matter as much. If what you're doing is clearly not doing any damage to the copyright holder, and it's clearly not what they had in mind when they wrote the EULA, then they're very unlikely to prosecute you, or even to notice you. People don't just take other people to court lightly, and it's usually a corporation's last line of defense. It's fucking expensive. Also, if you take absolutely every insignificant little copyright infringement to court, you're going to get bad rep. So nobody ever does it unless they feel really badly financially threatened by the particular infringement.

That's the idea, anyway. I don't know how adherent Bethesda is to it. I know a lot of people haven't been in the past, though. I think that's mainly because of the difference in culture/thought process probably, consumers and lawyers don't really have a clue how each others' minds work and so they interpret the actions of the other incorrectly, leading to problems. I think that's what ultimately lead to the RIAA being the worst thing to ever happen to anyone a few years back. You can tell the MPAA doesn't really get it either, what with that anti-piracy advert with the foreign guy selling the burnt DVD, and then all the shots of gang violence and child labor and drug cartels and whatever the hell they think is going on. I feel like the only large corporation that really understands the mindset of the average pirate is Valve, and that's why Steam's been so damn successful.

 

[Savagezion]

The big question here is, did you torrent it? If so, you acted as a seeder for other people to download it who may or may not have bought it which puts you as an illegal distributor.The fact that you downloaded it isn't an issue, the fact that if you were torrenting it, you were illegally distributing it is.

I am not really anti-piracy anymore for reasons I am not allowed to discuss which I find ironic considering the nature of the site, but I still am pro-pay-for-your-shit/vote with your wallet. So yeah, morally, what you did is fine - even if it was torrented to me.

Torrenting is still being discussed on legal grounds and not many people want to pick up that banner in the legal field as there are way too many dodgy aspects to it. For example, the only way to track it is through IP address which is easily faked. A case last year involving the porn industry trying to extort money out of people based on IP address even ruled that IP address is not a valid form of ID as evidence. How many innocent people had money extorted from them fearing that such a case risks their job and/or their marriage? This case is one of many things wrong with the anti-piracy side of the debate.

So basically, if you torrented it, you pirated it. However, US law is not equipped to prove it yet. If you downloaded it from a file sharing site, you should be in the clear. However, once again the game companies need laws put in place to hold them accountable. If a game is a service (license) then obtaining a copy to use your license should be provided for you or you should be able to provide one for yourself. (Yet, they would have a file sharing site remove the game if they found out it was distributing it.) If it is a product, then you would have to pay for an additional copy. The problem is no law has been put into place either way and the game companies want it both ways so that they can charge for lost, stolen, or DRM blocked copies but you are not allowed ownership rights over the product so that they can maximize their profits. This is also the problem with the argument tying it to a "steam copy" of the game. If you are buying a license, and not a product, then the copy of DRM or where it was distributed is largely irrelevant as it doesn't pertain to the license in question. There may be something that could be debated over steam requiring a license but the cards don't necessarily fall one way or the other there without a proper investigation of both licenses.

This don't even cover all of it and I actually tried to keep it short. But, this'll do. I don't see a problem with what you did and only a lawyer or someone on with a high horse complex would even try to press the issue. The fact is, you have suppported the developers and people involved with making the game by obtaining the right to play through paying a fee they agreed to. Any pressing of the issue is futile at this point or a simple exercise in discussion of the stranger aspects of this topic.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

...while the woman should not have been trying to drink coffee and drive...

That's why she didn't do it, she was sitting in a parking car.

Ah yes, correct you are, my mistake.

 

[144_v1legacy]

You mean that case where a woman got hospitalized with third digree burns from coffee that was, as McDonalds quality assurance manager admitted, "not fit for consumption"? Or do you mean one of the earlier 700 injury cases where people complained that McDonald's coffee is fucking dangerous, and far hotter than normal coffee?

http://www.caoc.org/index.cfm?pg=facts

Ugh. Fine. Then pick a case you like better. How about the recent one between Apple and Samsung. The point I was trying to make had to do with doubting the security the poster felt that a court would "do the morally right thing." The "legally right thing," in an ideal world, is the same as the "morally right thing." It is legally the right thing to pursue those who would download illegally. It is also morally the right thing to fix something you own through your own means. In courts, for the most part, when those two zones of "legally right" and "morally right" intersect, the "legally right" usually wins.

WHICH IS WHY, (back to my original statement) in spite of whether or not the "piracy" was justified, it is almost irrelevant, and therefore a good idea to know what the actual law is before you break it.

 

[144_v1legacy]

snip

I already think its a bad idea to have a single person the be-all power to basically smash down his hammer and say .
Rather than having a tribunal with multiple people and a voting system to pleed guilty / innocent.

I agree with you that there has to be a simple, clear line that states when something is illegal or not. However;
I do feel that the court needs to take in account the morality and reasoning behind the actions before passing judgement.
dumb example:
There's a kitten trapped in a tree - you want to help the poor kitty out. You're actually an idiot and chug a rock to the kitty so that it will be startled and inclined to climb out of the tree. Instead what happens is the kitty is startled by your rock, jumps into a pool and drowns.
Would you say that the person throwing the rock should be punished by law? After all, he pretty much caused the kitten to die.
Would you say that he should be less severely punished? Because he obviously did not want this to happen and it wasn't his intention.
Or should he be unscathed? Since he took action when there was a need for it.

I'd go with the 2nd option, taking in account the reasoning.

Are you quoting the right person? I'm not making a point as to what's right or wrong. I'm adding my insight as to what would happen in a hypothetical legal scenario should one occur.

 

[Shadowcreed]

Are you quoting the right person? I'm not making a point as to what's right or wrong. I'm adding my insight as to what would happen in a hypothetical legal scenario should one occur.

And I agree with you on what would happen in a legal scenario - cause that's how the law works on this. Though what I'm asking - is that the proper judgement to hand out or not?
Just trying to get a moral discussion going really =]

 

[DoPo]

You mean that case where a woman got hospitalized with third digree burns from coffee that was, as McDonalds quality assurance manager admitted, "not fit for consumption"? Or do you mean one of the earlier 700 injury cases where people complained that McDonald's coffee is fucking dangerous, and far hotter than normal coffee?

http://www.caoc.org/index.cfm?pg=facts

Ugh. Fine. Then pick a case you like better.

related, just yesterday I read an interesting article [http://www.aaronsanderslaw.com/blog/virtual-goods-the-first-sale-doctrine] it's mainly going through some differences of physical vs virtual products. OK, it may not be actually that interesting for everybody, but one of the cases referred to was actually worth pointing out - Costco vs Omega. I'll summarise it - Omega sell watches around the world and set different prices in different places to maximise the sales (so you could have a 60$ watch in the USA and the same one being 30? in Germany). The retail chain Costco, however, bought Omega watches from some third party which imported them from another country where they were cheaper. This meant that Costco sold the same Omega watches for a lower price and Omega didn't get a cent of it, either. Right, this is the setup. But Omega couldn't actually sue, because there were no grounds to - being physical products, Omega couldn't exercise control over the distribution after they were sold. But Omega did something...erm, legally tricky, let's call it - they imprinted a small symbol on the back of the watches then sued Costco for copyright infringement - distributing the symbol without the right to do so.

Just something I thought might be of interest and slightly relevant to the topic.

 

[Rick Oortwijn]

I don't think it's considered piracy, even if by downloading the torrent you automatically seed it to others. You see the license you have bought is about the CD key or Steam key, so the the version you downloaded isn't really illegal, only if you use a keygen right? I think redownloading software and using the key you bought falls under home copying rights or something like that.

TL;DR The CD-key is the license you bought, redownloading the software isn't illegal I think as long as you use your own cd-key. Seeding the software isn't either if there's no keygen attached

 

[Something Amyss]

You mean that case where a woman got hospitalized with third digree burns from coffee that was, as McDonalds quality assurance manager admitted, "not fit for consumption"? Or do you mean one of the earlier 700 injury cases where people complained that McDonald's coffee is fucking dangerous, and far hotter than normal coffee?

http://www.caoc.org/index.cfm?pg=facts

Yeah, but think about how stupid that is! I mean, she expected food that wouldn't injure her and dared to take it "to go!"

 

[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.