Jimquisition: When Piracy Becomes Theft

[Agayek]

I don't think that piratebay, or a Megaupload-like site, or a youtube-like streaming site, should be sueable. They only provided an interface for sharing data, it's not their faultt that the data that most people want to share is pirated. Eventually, every filesharing system, is destined to be filled with piracy. If we are trying to limit that, we are back to square 1, with SOPA PIPA trying to stifle basic features of the Internet.

The problem with that is that it's essentially a form of plagiarism. They are profiting from someone else's work without putting any of their own time or effort into it. My example may have been a bit off though. The idea I was aiming for was that someone who intentionally profits from pirated material (much like the megaupload guys have, to my understanding), than they should be punished. If someone is not making money off of it though, then they should not face litigation. The difference is sharing vs profiteering mostly.

 

[kenten]

I do find it rather disrespectful, that you starts picking on the persons who makes the "cracks". Since even those people doesn't have anything to do with the "Bittorrent-era" of the internet.

Because the more "cracks" that are realesed to the public more exposed they get, which is people who is just like any suburban family.

Since that is just what the realease-groups are, they started out in the 80's making cracks for various games and shared it to people with similar intrests and that is not for the sake of "Hey! Sharing is caring!", it's only to impress the others who got the same interest.

And also, in all the might of indie games, they aren't all that "original", sure they got different mechanics within their genre of game they are developing, but it is almost always a 2D/3D platformer with some spicy on it.

Instead of actually supporting the small companies which produce different types of genres and keeps the games in a good condition (just look for example, how well Blizzard went), the big companies didn't become BIG by some magical wand/wish but by making just like some small company is did, making good games.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Sorry Mr. Sterling, but sensationalism has no place trumping hard facts; that's the path that leads to ignorance. Copyright violators aren't thieves; they cannot be no matter how convoluted the reasoning. It is not a matter of interpretation or intent.

I do agree with your stance on the nature of the people who "cracked" and distributed the humble indie bundle. They're human scum. Simple as that. They encourage honest developers to put crippleware into their titles. It begs the question: Why go to the effort when it costs one penny?
The only rational answer: To be an asshole, that's why.

 

[Alterego-X]

I don't think that piratebay, or a Megaupload-like site, or a youtube-like streaming site, should be sueable. They only provided an interface for sharing data, it's not their faultt that the data that most people want to share is pirated. Eventually, every filesharing system, is destined to be filled with piracy. If we are trying to limit that, we are back to square 1, with SOPA PIPA trying to stifle basic features of the Internet.

The problem with that is that it's essentially a form of plagiarism. They are profiting from someone else's work without putting any of their own time or effort into it. My example may have been a bit off though. The idea I was aiming for was that someone who intentionally profits from pirated material (much like the megaupload guys have, to my understanding), than they should be punished. If someone is not making money off of it though, then they should not face litigation. The difference is sharing vs profiteering mostly.

Most of these sites profit from piracy the same way as Google profits from it. Ad revenues from people searching for anything, including piracy. Megaupload's crime was not taking down some user-uploaded content when they were asked to, the same way as youtube does after every report.

And we can see where taking down everything leads with youtube. Remixes, Let's plays, and similar creative fair use-protected content gets taken down, because the IP holding companies can take everything down at a first wish, because Google can't risk hesitating too much about the lawfulness of a claim, and getting shut down like Megaupload.

Every big site that allows any sharing of content is destined to have large amounts of piracy on it, much more than what can be manually found, so the owners can either blindly shut down everything at the first suspicion, and stifle the site's usefulness, or have piracy on the site, and "profit from it".

That's why I think that copyright should be entirely lifted from that area, and limited to physical copies, (where a pirate factory can be easily located), or public performances.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

FFS, since you're too lazy to do some reading.

Whereby "do some reading" you actually mean "read hundreds of pages of legal documents to respond to my spurious arguments."

From Rank Film: "No offences under the Theft Act arise as copyright is not capable of being stolen and it is not necessary to strain the provisions of that Act since the offences already outlined are available."

This does not say what you claimed it does. It does not say that copyright infringement cannot be theft, it says that the Theft Act is not applicable in this case. That does not mean that the general term "theft" cannot be applied. His comments are also confined to this particular case. He is not speaking in general terms.

Also, it does not say that copyrighted materials cannot be stolen, it says that copyright cannot be stolen. Of course it can't as copyright is a concept and a legal code. But that's not the same as works being stolen.

You are aware that judges frequently disagree on interpretation of the law and terms of law, right? There are plenty of other cases where judges do refer to copyright infringement as theft.

 

[Agayek]

Most of these sites profit from piracy the same way as Google profits from it. Ad revenues from people searching for anything, including piracy. Megaupload's crime was not taking down some user-uploaded content when they were asked to, the same way as youtube does after every report.

And we can see where taking down everything leads with youtube. Remixes, Let's plays, and similar creative fair use-protected content gets taken down, because the IP holding companies can take everything down at a first wish, because Google can't risk hesitating too much about the lawfulness of a claim, and getting shut down like Megaupload.

Every big site that allows any sharing of content is destined to have large amounts of piracy on it, much more than what can be manually found, so the owners can either blindly shut down everything at the first suspicion, and stifle the site's usefulness, or have piracy on the site, and "profit from it".

That's why I think that copyright should be entirely lifted from that area, and limited to physical copies, (where a pirate factory can be easily located), or public performances.

I'm not saying a site that has pirated material on it should be taken down, simply that those who deliberately and knowingly profit from it should be punished. I'm actually very much against taking down the websites and the like there.

I used the MegaUpload thing because the people facing litigation are essentially being charged with deliberately encouraging piracy to further pad their wallets. If that happens to be true, I am 100% behind whatever punishment they face. Sites that actually follow cease & desist requests should be completely immune from persecution, regardless of what was actually posted. They don't need to have no piracy, they simply need to remove it when they are made of aware of it.

All of this is predicated on them fixing copyright itself though. As things currently stand, I don't think it would work properly, but if they were to implement changes to copyright in line with what I defined earlier, it should work out just fine. It allows content creators to profit from and protect their own work, while not inhibiting the sharing of information.

 

[electric method]

Wow, I missed a fair bit of this thread... but after reading most of it since my last post, I guess I didn't miss all that much really.

Food for thought, in the US there is a reason why piracy and the like is prosecuted under copyright infrigement versus theft. That reason being, criminal copyright infringement is a federal offense with much harsher penalties attached. If it were prosecuted under "theft" it would be at most petty theft as the avg cost of a game is 60 bucks. With it being copyright infrigement it's now a felony with the possibilty of up to 5 years in prison, 250k fine or both for each incident. I am not saying this is right at all, my personal belief is that this is an excessive punishment for the crime.

All that being said, games are, indeed, wants not needs. It's not like someone put a gun to a pirates head and said "if you don't pirate this I'll kill you." There is a choice to either buy games legally or pirate them. If one choses to pirate they are breaking established laws that come with the aforementioned consequences. No one made them pirate. QED, pirate something and get prosecuted.

Saying that piracy harms no one is an utter fallacy. It harms not just the person(s) or business who's product or service was used without payment but ends up causing increased prices, obnoxious drm and the like to paying customers. This again is action and consequence. The consequences of piracy stretch past the indivual pirate and effect others in harmful ways. Personally,I dislike drm in almost all it's forms. I dislike having to pay higher prices because devs/pubs are trying to recoup their loses from copyright infrigement/piracy.

Imagine you write a book, then publish it. Then someone takes your book and inserts their name as the author, republishes it and you get zero credit or cash for your work sold under that person's name. That'd piss you off right? Of course. You worked hard to create that world, populate and make it a living entity. This type of situation is exactly why copyright laws exsist. In other words, There is no such thing as a free lunch.

In short, people are entitled to recompense for their work be it a physical type of labor or those of intellectual/creative pursuits such as creating games, music etc.

 

[Jodah]

Some of the pirates may not have access to a credit card to pay 1 cent for HIB. That in no way excuses them, they should go buy a pre-paid card at Wal-Mart but lets face it, there are a lot of people too stupid to figure that part out.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Who gives a fuck if it can be filed under theft or paedophilia, pirating a pro-consumer game from a company that deserves the money, regardless of whether they're an indie developer or not, is despicable.

Fuck. You guys are the most pedantic, nitpicking people I've ever seen. In your bid to be correct on every level you can be, you've missed the point entirely.

 

[dbenoy]

And now we're back to semantics.

AGAIN.

I have no interest in debating the meaning of words. Let's make a new word up, just to completely rule out the possibility that I'm trying to manipulate the language to my own ends.

When you take an object that belongs to someone else, and thereby ensure that they are permanently unable to access it, and you've done this without consent, then you've done XYZ to them.

Coppying is not XYZ. Using copyright litigation against 'pirates' to IS XYZ. XYZ hurts people, because they are permanently excluded from accessing what is rightfully theirs.

When you institutionalize XYZ in order to incentivize or otherwise favor a certain type of business, that is protectionism, and it makes victims of harmless people.

If you have a word that exactly matches XYZ, then I would like to use that word instead.

 

[dbenoy]

Food for thought, in the US there is a reason why piracy and the like is prosecuted under copyright infrigement versus theft. That reason being, criminal copyright infringement is a federal offense with much harsher penalties attached.

What makes you believe that?

The concept of "Intellectual Property" being equivalent to actual property is something very new, and you don't actually see it in the legalese. In fact, in cases where there have been accusations of 'transporting stolen property' because of moving 'pirated' CDs over state lines, courts have ruled, explicitly, that unauthorized copied materials are not stolen property.

 

[DarthFennec]

I dont understand how you can say piracy is not theft. It is the use of a product or service without paying for it. It doesnt matter why you pirate games it is still theft. Even those who defend it by saying they will pay later it doesnt change the fact that you stole a product, it doesnt work on credit like that.

If I steal your bike, then you lose a bike. That's theft.
If you copy one of your games, you lose nothing. See the difference?

These two posts embody about 95% of the debate about piracy which I've seen on these forums, and it's annoying that there doesn't seem to be a way to reach an agreement about such a silly incidental thing. Because that's what this has become, it's incidental, we're just arguing over semantics. It was never about whether the law considers it theft or not, because honestly the law should never be an argument in any moral debate, ever. Law is naught but the opinions of lawmakers, and therefore it should hold no higher authority than the opinions of the debaters, or anyone else's opinions. And other than in law, I can't think of any circumstance where the application of the word `theft' to an action makes any difference whatsoever. Piracy may or may not be technically theft, but the question we should be asking is, does it matter? Well actually I've already answered that question: it doesn't matter. Everyone yelling `piracy is theft!' is wrong because piracy is not technically theft, theft implies that something has been lost. Everyone yelling `piracy is not technically theft!' is wrong because they're completely missing the point. The debate shouldn't be about whether or not piracy is considered `theft'. The debate should be about, were one to pirate something, how much of a douchebag one would be for it.

Given that piracy and theft have nothing to do with each other (just for the sake of simplicity), let's consider the moral implications associated with piracy. On one hand, if a giant company makes a game and someone pirates it, I personally cannot imagine it damaging the company in the slightest. One could argue that it's stealing money from the company because if you had gotten it legally you would have paid for it, but I disagree because it's not as simple as all that. I don't own any of the Guitar Hero games, but I play them at friends' houses, so technically I'm playing Guitar Hero without paying for it. Does that mean I'm stealing money from Activision? I sure hope not. My friends lend me games all the time, and nobody in their right mind considers that stealing. Sometimes people argue that, since I have to give the lent game back instead of keeping it forever, it's not a problem, because playing it for that limited time makes me more likely to buy it later. But does that mean pirating a game and then paying for it or deleting that copy later on is perfectly okay? Of course not. Why, though? And I've seen this argument take its due course a thousand times, and it never leads anywhere. So let's ditch it and reach our first conclusion: piracy is complicated.

When it comes to big companies and money, there's a lot of padding. A lot of the money a company makes and loses is through shares in the stock market. A lot of it's also through sales and advertising. When the good people at Valve write HL2e3, they get their money every month as a paycheck. If HL2e3 somehow doesn't do well, due to piracy or otherwise, the developers don't lose any of that money they've made. They just don't. Valve has already given them their paychecks. So what does happen? Well, the guys over in marketing decide that, since that game didn't do so well, maybe we should stop making Half Life games. So they start planning Portal 2 episode 1 or something, and detail the old HL2e3 guys to that project instead. They're just as happy with this new game as they were with HL2e3. They get paid the same amount as they always had. So, if this drop in HL2e3 sales doesn't harm the developers, who does it harm? I think it's the fans. The fans, who were looking forward to a Half Life 3, will never get to see it because Valve's marketing department made a decision to discontinue Half Life, which was influenced by the drop in sales which was due to the high piracy rate of the game. Again: piracy does not harm the developers, but it does harm the fans, or at least those fans who were pining for a sequel.

I realize this model breaks down after a while. If every game is pirated to the extent that no games do well, the company starts losing a substantial amount of money, people are laid off, and if it's bad enough the company goes under. Or, more realistically, the piracy rate will continue to increase (hopefully only up to a certain threshold), and the increase will be slow enough that the companies have time to get used to it ... in that case, they'll try a bunch of different ways to stop piracy, they'll try a bunch of different ways to squeeze more money out of those willing to pay, and eventually they'll stop making games altogether and move on to something else, or they'll have to risk going under. Right now this is what's happening, and they're on the `try in vain to stop piracy' and `try to get paying gamers to pay more' stages. But notice that this is all about the company. Again, the effect all this has on the developers is small and indirect enough that it's negligible. And if the entire game industry crashes around everyone's ears due to piracy somehow, most of those developers will still have jobs, because programming and 3D modeling and music and all those fields come in handy in a lot of non-game arenas, and by now they all have quite the resume. So I want to revise my statement from last paragraph: piracy does not harm the developers, but it does harm the fans of the game, and eventually, the quality of the game industry itself.

But of course, we can't stop there without bringing up the indie developer, could we? Of course not. First of all, I'd like to make a side note: pirating a game from an indie developer may not technically be thievery, but it's just as repulsive and morally wrong as picking that person's pocket would be. Unlike a corporation, the amount an indie developer gets paid is exactly equal to the amount his game has sold. There isn't a big money net here; every penny counts. When you play an indie game, you have a personal relationship with the developer: he's letting you play his game, and he assumes that you are decent enough to congratulate him on his hard work by paying for his ramen for the next week, so that he might have time to make more games for you later. So, if you play an indie game, and you like it, and you don't intend to provide at least some sort of compensation, then you are officially a despicable person. Of course, not all indie developers see it that way, which is fine. They do it because making games is really really fun. They don't base a decision to make a game on the state of the industry, like the marketing guys over at the corporation do. So, it should logically follow that if the industry crumbles to piracy, all new games will be indie games. And since, by this point, everyone is an asshole, the indie devs won't make any money either. Therefore, all new games will be free, probably open source (since making a nice looking game by any means other than open collaboration will cost at least some money), and ... well, they'd be different than they are now. Much different. Not necessarily better, and not necessarily any worse, just different.

I'm not saying any of that is bound to happen. Corporations will adapt, find ways to compete with piracy, and win. Piracy will never go away completely, but if companies continue to adapt to it, the piracy rate should stay around 10%-20%ish. And how do the companies compete with piracy? By doing what Valve's been doing: offering low prices and high convenience, or put more generally, by giving the customers more benefits than piracy does. And we're all about benefits, are we not? From that perspective, piracy could be considered a good thing in the long run, because it forces companies to rethink their business strategies and reform themselves in ways that are more beneficial to us, the paying customers. If we start thinking about fighting piracy in terms of fighting the drive to pirate, rather than fighting the pirates themselves, we'll get a lot more done.

See what stepping away from the `piracy is theft'/`piracy is not theft' bullshit for a little while can accomplish? If more debates on here were more like this, they would be a lot more constructive. There is so much more here to explore and discuss, if you take a step back instead of stubbornly repeating the same two arguments back and forth, over and over. I'm not a pirate, and I don't know if piracy is a good thing or a bad thing. I think it's both good and bad, for different people, in different ways, given different timeframes, as I've explained above. But nobody likes that answer, because that's not actually the question anyone's really asking. When someone asks `is piracy good or bad', what they really mean is `should I feel guilty for pirating, and how should I judge others who pirate?' To which I respond: `no, and no.' Because we've stepped into totally different territory, because I believe that nobody other than yourself should be able to tell you what you should feel guilty for, and because I believe that you shouldn't judge anybody you know so little about, for something so insignificant. But that's just me, I guess. This is all just me ... so carry on.

 

[dbenoy]

How is "unauthorized copying" not wrong? You reduce the value of a good set of people's hard work. You instead diminish that value and damage the value of the work people did to make that piece of media. Copyrights are NOT invalid, they are completely valid, that's why legally you can get hit for it. Now we can argue (and I'd be for) copyright reform or abolishment but that isn't the issue.

What makes you think copyrights are valid? You say that without them, things are diminished? In what ways?

What about copyright needs to be reformed?

 

[Sotanaht]

Lets be honest, I've pirated several of the very games mentioned on this video. I understand that the developers need support, but on the other hand the games were mostly shit (in my opinion). Most of them I didn't spend an hour on before either uninstalling or simply forgetting about them never to be touched again, some not even 5 minutes. If I had liked world of goo, for example, I might have bought it, but as it is I would have regretted the purchase for $2, much less $20. Same goes for many others, including those on the humble indie bundles.

 

[Benny Blanco]

Wait, paedophilia is a profession now?

 

[WineydeJacques]

Fucking 1st World Problems

 

[Raesvelg]

When you take an object that belongs to someone else, and thereby ensure that they are permanently unable to access it, and you've done this without consent, then you've done XYZ to them.

We'll call this "theft".

Coppying is not XYZ.

True enough, if we're sticking to the strictly legal definition of theft. Of course, by other definitions, the statement is arguable.

Using copyright litigation against 'pirates' to IS XYZ.

Completely untrue.

XYZ hurts people, because they are permanently excluded from accessing what is rightfully theirs.

If we exclude this statement from the one that directly preceded it, it works out reasonably well.

When you institutionalize XYZ in order to incentivize or otherwise favor a certain type of business, that is protectionism, and it makes victims of harmless people.

The failure here is that you've now created two mutually exclusive meanings for XYZ. XYZ cannot be taking something from someone that belongs to them, and simultaneously be protecting something from being copied by people to whom it does not belong.

Copyright is not theft. Copyright is, in many ways, the diametric opposite of theft. Copyright is, in effect, extending the same protections to intellectual properties as are enjoyed by physical properties.

Copyright infringement, while not theft by some definitions, certainly falls into that category by other definitions. The infringer has obtained something against the will of its owner, without recompense. The fact that the digital era has made this process both quick and convenient for the infringer does not mean that the act of infringement has become something other than morally reprehensible; it just means that it's easier to be a pirating douchebag.

 

[Raesvelg]

If you've got so many of other cases where they refer to it as theft, please provide them.

For giggles, this:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/641.html

is part of the case against Bradley Manning, and has been used for similar purposes in the past. Basically arguing that even the copies of government files are treated as "things of value", regardless of the fact that the government retained possession of the original files, to such an extent as any digital copy can be considered "original" in this day and age.

It's always rather interested me that the government has, in effect, extended protections to its own properties that it does not extend to the properties of others. One of the vagaries of bureaucracy I imagine.

 

[yundex]

Fucking 1st World Problems

Tell me about it. These piracy threads pop up almost every day, and each time people really have nothing better to do than argue about the definition of theft. Still provides 10 minutes of entertainment before bed each night, haha.