Jimquisition: When Piracy Becomes Theft

[Aardvaarkman]

You haven't read the case yet you feel you know that he was only talking in this context (Protip: no he wasn't, he was talking in general) and the other judges were all in agreement and all made comments to the effect that copyright infringement and piracy are not theft.

No, they said that the Theft Act did not apply, as it's already covered by the Copyright Act. That doesn't mean it's not theft in the generic sense. One doesn't have to be a legal scholar to understand the English language. It wasn't a legal argument that was being put forth in the first place. The courts don't define words as commonly used.

All of this nonsense aside, what I really want to know is why you made the claim that people who say that piracy is theft are equating it to mugging? That was a deliberate emotional manipulation on your part. Nobody said "piracy is mugging" - yet that is what you claimed.

 

[Alterego-X]

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.

It doesn't really do that. Copyright doesn't actually give it's holder the same rights as physical property. For example, phyisical property can be entirely sealed away from the public, but copyright allows for fair use. If I go on a joyride ride with your car, I can't claim that it was fair use, like using screenshots from a movie. Or, for example physical property can be infinitely inherited, while copyright disappears after an arbitarily chosen length of time.

At these points, any comarison to physical property falls apart, because IP itself isn't really the digital equivalent of property, and therefore it's holders can't "own it" in the same sense, and it can't be "taken away" in the same sense. In a generic sense, rather than physical propert, copyright is the closest to a Government-granted monopoly. A license to exclusively dominate the distribution of a certain product, under whatever conditions the government chose to grant to the license holder. In this case, mainly the right to profit from the forced scarcity of limiting the creation of copies.

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.

But if we take out that little part, that "owner", and replace it with "the licensee", that makes it a lot different. While ownership is a sacred concept that always existed in civilizations, licenses come and go, depending on how practical they are, and they aren't even necessarily moral. The Roman Empire gave away licenses to tax collectors to charge whatever rates they wanted, robbing the people blind, as long as they transferred a fixed sum to the senator. James Bond has a license to kill.

If intellectual property is property, then it's owners always had it, even if they didn't know about it, and piracy was "morally reprehensible" even when it wasn't written. Even the codex-copying monks were morally reprehensible.

Either that, or if only the fact that authorities chose to grant copyrights made it into a true right, then you are mixing legality and morality. The fact that it happens to be illegal right now, tells absolutely nothing about it's morality.

 

[PoweD]

There is one problem with this, some people have no possible way of paying stuff over the internet.Me for example living in a country still not available on Paypal, all i am left with is showel-ware in a nearby supermarket.Sure, there are stores that sell games like GTA 4 and such but they are 60 miles away, and charging gigantic prices for old games.

 

[Rheinmetall]

If you accept that illegal downloading of World of Goo is "theft", then I'm afraid that piracy of an EA product can be called theft too. That's how it goes. The law is the same for everyone (at least in theory), the moral issues is a different subject. The judge doesn't care if EA is hated by people and an indie developer is likable.
I'm totally with you in this subject, but your argument is disputable.

 

[Kenji_03]

Really like the new opening. The old one never made much sense to me...

 

[rankfx]

I get what you're saying, but the semantics are what people are hiding behind. I stand by trying to stick an "X = Y" onto it because someone added something of value to the world, and they choose to ignore that value, even as they go out of their way to add it to their own life.

If you go to work and are paid by the hour, if your employer doesn't pay you, you don't think "Oh that's fine." You're gonna get pissed off. Even if your job doesn't actually produce anything and you're in exactly the same position as when you started, it doesn't mean you didn't do the work, and it doesn't mean that you should be short changed for it.

The thing is, that the laws against the described situation, fraud, just like theft, and many other crimes, are universal laws of mankind, that always existed in their basic format, as they are required for any functioning society.

But the same isn't true for the current copyright mechanics. Blindly equalating copyright infringement with these crimes, is just a tool to hide the fact, that copyright isn't a self-evident, universal law, just a specific mechanic that happened to be set the way it is, because of various legal, pysical, and political circusmstances in the 18th century.

For example, what if someone in 1840, copied a then 50 years old book? Did he steal it? After all, by our current standards, the copyright length is 120 years. If I torrent a song in the Netherlands, where it is entirely legal, am I still *stealing* it from the artists? Even if some people don't practice copyright properly, shouldn't there be an objective "right" for everyone to get their IP protected exactly the same way as we do?

If it would be truly like theft, there would be. Just think about it. If a roman slaveowner forcefully took away his slave's belongings, would we say that it wasn't stealing, because he had a legal right to do it? If a feudal lord forced himself on his wife, would we say that it wasn't rape, just because medieval law doesn't recognize matrial rape? If Ghenghis Khan burned the population of a city, would we say that it wasn't a crime against humanity, because it happened before the Geneva conventions?

Just like rape and genocide, theft has a self-evident objective definition. Comparing piracy to theft, ij just a tool to hide the fact that piracy has no such obvious foundation, it's just a temporary business mechanic that might come and pass, depending on it's usefulness.

You aren't morally repulsed by it therefore it's not bad? What I want to know is whether "copying isn't bad" people see the big picture. Do you see the other side of the equation? When you copy something without paying for it, someone isn't getting the money that you would normally have paid. Sometimes that's a big ugly company like EA or Activision in which case I agree with Jim- totally fine to rip them off. But sometimes it's actually someone trying to feed their kids and make video games at the same time. In this case it's not fine.

I'm a musician, and if I write something and I don't want people to copy it then I like to think I can say "Hey! Don't copy my song," and not have those five words dissected by people who say "copying isn't rape, therefore it's not bad." We've progressed as a society from those examples you leave above, and you're judging them by current standards. Yes, you're right about their actions being wrong, but we've progressed as a society from then.

 

[DanHibiki]

BS on the Humble Indie Bundle.

I have heard directly from the HIB developers and they actually asked the people running pirated copies of the game why they did it. The overwhelming majority of the responses were that they had issues downloading or installing the game through their service or simply didn't have a credit card or a way of paying them. Many of the people that had issues downloading the games, got the cracked copies but paid any way.

The percent of ass hats that just didn't bother was insubstantial.

 

[Alterego-X]

You aren't morally repulsed by it therefore it's not bad? What I want to know is whether "copying isn't bad" people see the big picture. Do you see the other side of the equation? When you copy something without paying for it, someone isn't getting the money that you would normally have paid.

My issue is, that what they "would normally have paid" isn't based on any universal right, just on a legal fiction, that happens to be in effect.

For example, if Fair Use laws wouldn't exist, and copyright would extend to every detail of a work, then sites like the Escapist would have to pay every time after using a screenshot from a game, and publishers would get more money. In such a case, using fcreenshots for free would be piracy, and it would deprive publishers from what they "would normally have paid".

If you say that pirating screenshots would be morally wrong in such a system, but morally right now, you are essentially saying that laws should define morality.

But if you say that it would be morally right in either case, that would be a very similar arguments to what pirates say, that it's ok to breach laws, and limit the rights of publishers, as long as you don't think that their moral rights extend as far as their legal rights.

Sometimes that's a big ugly company like EA or Activision in which case I agree with Jim- totally fine to rip them off. But sometimes it's actually someone trying to feed their kids and make video games at the same time. In this case it's not fine.

I don't think that either case is better than the other. EA is made of people too, and they need to feed their kids. I'm just not certain that they should be feeding their kids from that specific government-enforced monopoly, instead of the several other ways to profit from IP.

I'm a musician, and if I write something and I don't want people to copy it then I like to think I can say "Hey! Don't copy my song," and not have those five words dissected by people who say "copying isn't rape, therefore it's not bad."

On the other hand, if you are a musician, and you want to get money from street performance, that doesn't mean that you can just call the cops to lock the street where you happen to be playing, and force every passerby to pay, so no one gets to listen to your music for free.
It's obvious that if you want to perform on the streets, you are forced to accept that payment is optional there.

Artists don't get to do whatever they want with their IP. They are limited by cultural history, legally available options, and technical abilities.

There are sensible reasons, why the growth of the Internet is changing the Status Quo, and turning the previously well-established idea of IP owners charging for copies, into as much of an insanity as street-performers locking down streets.

1. It's inconvinient for society: SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, remixes removed from youtube, family photos deleted along with Megaupload, etc. On the internet, that is mainly about shaaring files, it's impossible to perfectly select out all the "corrupt" links, without shutting down legit content, bothering legit users a lot, and stifling the development a net.

2. It's culturally ineffective: There are studies showing that people are spending a fixed budget on media. If everything would be legally accessible for free, that would increase the amount of entertainment enjoyed, without significantly harming the creators as a whole, therefore creating a society with more value. Not to mention the cultural benefit of rewarding the kind of content that grabs the audiences attention and builds a loyal paying fandom, and punsihing the kind that curently only tricks people into separating them from their money, with fancy advertising.

3. Legal problems: See my earlier posts about how copyright enforcement as it is, is incompatible with the Rule of Law maxim.

These three things together make the copyright system at least as senseless as the above analogy with the musician.

We've progressed as a society from those examples you leave above, and you're judging them by current standards. Yes, you're right about their actions being wrong, but we've progressed as a society from then.

Yeah, but while we "realized" that from our progressive point of view, slavery, rape and theft, were what they were all along, the same doesn't work for piracy.

You can't say, that the same way as we realized that the slaveowner was actually a thief, now we also realized that someone who copied a 50 year old book when copyright was 30 years long, actually committed piracy.

That shows that the artist's copyright is not an inherent moral Right, just a state-provided "right". It doesn't exist objectively in reality, the justification for it's existence is simply that lawmakers thought that it would be useful to have.

If in the Information Era, it would prove to be useless or worse, there is no objective reason to follow it.

 

[Freyar]

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?

Copyrights are important to allow someone to make a fair amount of money off of what they make. However, that doesn't mean that I agree with Disney's point of view which is to expand copyright coverage each and every time their material comes up for release to the public domain. Sadly, the US and the EU has been in bed with each other for so long that they've kind of built themselves up into their own coffins. Neither can reject it without violating agreements overseas.

Copyright needs to be reduced to twenty years, that's it.

 

[Raesvelg]

Yeah, but while we "realized" that from our progressive point of view, slavery, rape and theft, were what they were all along, the same doesn't work for piracy.

Fallacy. Morals are purely subjective, never absolute. You may perceive slavery, rape, and theft as morally reprehensible crimes, but that was not always the case. You perceive them as such because of the society in which you are ensconced.

People may decry such things as violations of fundamental rights, but the concept of inalienable rights is, itself, another fallacy. There are no such things as "rights" outside of the context of the civilization that grants them.

People survive in no small part because the people around them collectively exchanged the right to kill people who irritated them for the right to not be killed by people they irritate.

 

[Freyar]

Everyone yelling `piracy is theft!' is wrong because piracy is not technically theft, theft implies that something has been lost.

Piracy is theft because the theft is in terms of the value of the product. People that continually shout down trying to claim that it isn't theft because there's still the original fail at economics. It is THEFT of the VALUE inherent in the PRODUCT that took a significant amount of investment to create. If [x] manhours cost [y] amount in the game, and you steal the game, the value of [Y]'s investment drops and thus the value of [x] drops. In short, you're stealing from the value of the hard work the developers did.

"But the developers were already paid!" While true in some cases, it still devalues the work that the developers did which in turn will prevent them from being able to do additional work in the future. Combine that with the likes of potential milestone-oriented royalties and it's even more clear cut.

Piracy. Is. Theft. Be it against Sony, Ubisoft (of whom I have a huge loathing for right now), Nintendo, Introversion, or Clover Studios (RIP).

 

[El Dwarfio]

Copy Right infringement technically is theft though and by technically I mean by the legal definition.

I'm not one of those "kill the internet types" but this seems a little unnecessary, like its beating round the bush of the real issue.

 

[Alterego-X]

Yeah, but while we "realized" that from our progressive point of view, slavery, rape and theft, were what they were all along, the same doesn't work for piracy.

Fallacy. Morals are purely subjective, never absolute. You may perceive slavery, rape, and theft as morally reprehensible crimes, but that was not always the case. You perceive them as such because of the society in which you are ensconced.

People may decry such things as violations of fundamental rights, but the concept of inalienable rights is, itself, another fallacy. There are no such things as "rights" outside of the context of the civilization that grants them.

People survive in no small part because the people around them collectively exchanged the right to kill people who irritated them for the right to not be killed by people they irritate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

 

[goliath6711]

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?

Your argument is weak.

You're saying that walking in a bookstore, grabbing a book, and walking out without paying for it is theft. But walking into a bookstore with a camera, grabbing a book, taking a photo of every page of the book, putting it back, and walking out with those photos which you use to read the book isn't? I dare you to try that and see if any author or employee at any bookstore would agree with that.

 

[Epona]

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?

Your argument is weak.

You're saying that walking in a bookstore, grabbing a book, and walking out without paying for it is theft. But walking into a bookstore with a camera, grabbing a book, taking a photo of every page of the book, putting it back, and walking out with those photos which you use to read the book isn't? I dare you to try that and see if any author or employee at any bookstore would agree with that.

I wouldn't have the patience to try that but no, I wouldn't think that would be theft. Just like going into a bookstore and reading a magazine or a book and the putting it back on the shelf. Do you know there are people that hang out all day at Barnes & Noble sitting in the comfortable chairs and reading books they don't own?

Oh an what about those pesky libraries. You can actually take a book home that you don't own.

So are these people thieves?

 

[Raesvelg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

Which, unsurprisingly, disproves nothing I said. Philosophers operating within a society will frequently produce philosophies that coincide with the values of that society.

Hell, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union enshrines intellectual property as a fundamental right.

 

[awsome117]

And what exactly makes the authors or employees experts at what does or does not constitute theft?

I guess going to wikipedia or coming to this site, as everyone seems to be experts on the subject.

Theft by definition (the legal definition, i.e. the only one that actually matters)

As society changes over time, so do laws to fit the society. Whether or not the laws will change has yet to be determined of course.

requires an element of permanent deprivation.

Well true by definition, not always true by practicality.

If you photograph the book it is still there to be bought, it's not a weak argument at all.

Yes, but now you have a book on the web, given for free and made easier to get (I mean what's easier than getting up and going on your computer, typing in the book and having it for free).

Using theft in a non legal context makes absolutely no sense considering that this whole debate about whether it is theft or not is a fundamentally legal issue.

Then I guess we should move the debate to "should it be or not be a legal issue".