Poll: Can piracy be justified?

[The Artificially Prolonged]

For me if the media cannot be obtained legally or is unsupported in your country it is okay to pirate to a degree. I think it is should also be alright to pirate copies of media you already own (ie. digital copies of dvds and cds instead of re-ripping them) or to remove drm from them. But as I said you should have to buy them first in order to justify that.

EDIT (to avoid possible mod wrath)

Any other form of justification for piracy is just an excuse to not pay for stuff. If you can afford the bandwidth to pirate then you could likely afford to buy the odd game or two.

 

[NotALiberal]

But prepare to be educated.

What. The. Fuck. Man?

Seriously, what the bloody hell was that? You forward-slashed-thread-ed this so thoroughly, that I don't think any other thread about piracy should exist on the Escapist ever again. Also most other websites.

Spoiler: That's it

Seconded. This is really all that needed to be said.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Wait, what? I said murder was worse then piracy and you agreed but disagreed... or are you saying that they're incomparable? Are you saying that one being worse means it can be justified but something else bad can't? I don't know what just happened.

Yeah, it is their problem. They want to, for whatever reason, not distribute their idea/product/whatever, which is legally theirs and people are doing what they like anyways. It's also the problem of the victim when their house is burglarized. That's why laws exist to combat such situations.

I think you need to brush up on your understanding of logical fallacies. I am saying that they're incomparable. Your whole argument started with you trying to equate murder to piracy - two disparate things that you decided to smash together to make an argument. No, they're not comparable.

By the same token, you're now trying to equate physical theft with piracy - again, two disparate things. If I went and illegally downloaded a game, I'm not going to the developer's house and physically taking the source code to their product. I'd be copying already-existing information - the original still remains.

Not only that, but there are plenty of well-defended institutions/products that still get burglarized, regardless of their security. Now you're trying to say it's always the "victim's" fault if they get pirated, regardless of how much they've tried to secure their work?

I've realized that it's a waste of time talking to you, seeing as your whole argument is predicated on backwards logic and fallacies.

No my argument is that this whole thing is silly since anything can be justified. I noted that murder can be justified in order to prove that if that can be justified then surly something as simple as piracy can be justified. However everyone who quoted me seem to think that my logic is that they are the same when I'm clearly that would;d make my argument in valid since it relies on them not being the same and murder being worse. I can see someone arguing that they are incomparable, but nobody who quoted me did, only assuming I was making a different argument then I was. Laos, at some level theft of intellectual property and physical property has to be comparable.

I am tired of this idiotic cop-out that they are so dissimilar that one is perfectly justifiable. You stole something that a person posses, his ideas which he wishes to keep. A person has a right to control what they created. I don't give a shit if it means they aren't making money or you suffer, you can't just take what they control and do what you like with it. I don't care if they don't lose a physical item or arn't harmed, you stole something they have control over, the right to control their own product and determine what happens to it. It's not a victimless crime and its it doesn't make you blameless for making a copy You are taking the owner's right to determine the fate of his work by enforcing your own opinions of what should happen on it.

Also, don't be an asshole. If don't think the person you're arguing to is listening then stop replying to them. Don't stroke your ego by posting about how superior your argument is and how the person must be stupid and full off fallacy. That an asshole thing to do. Even if you're right be nice.

 

[mgirl]

I think it's justifiable if the individual either already owns a copy of the game and has either lost it or broke it, or if the game is completely impossible to own legally in that specific region.

Apart from that, I cant think of any valid reasons. One I hear a lot from friends is that they can't afford games, and my argument to them is that games are not a matter of life or death, save up, or wait for games to go on sale but don't go stealing them! I hardly have any money and I just wait for the steam sales, it works a treat.

 

[crazyrabbits]

No my argument is that this whole thing is silly since anything can be justified. I noted that murder can be justified in order to prove that if that can be justified then surly something as simple as piracy can be justified. However everyone who quoted me seem to think that my logic is that they are the same when I'm clearly that would;d make my argument in valid since it relies on them not being the same and murder being worse. I can see someone arguing that they are incomparable, but nobody who quoted me did, only assuming I was making a different argument then I was. Laos, at some level theft of intellectual property and physical property has to be comparable.

I understood your original post just fine - your execution (pardon the pun) was lacking. You later explicitly said "murder is seen as worse or more offensive then piracy". You were trying to equate them both (even under the guise of saying it's just as easy to justify piracy as it is to justify murder) and you failed with your argument. That's not my problem - I'm simply pointing that out to you.

I am tired of this idiotic cop-out that they are so dissimilar that one is perfectly justifiable. You stole something that a person posses, his ideas which he wishes to keep. A person has a right to control what they created. I don't give a shit if it means they aren't making money or you suffer, you can't just take what they control and do what you like with it. I don't care if they don't lose a physical item or arn't harmed, you stole something they have control over, the right to control their own product and determine what happens to it. It's not a victimless crime and its it doesn't make you blameless for making a copy You are taking the owner's right to determine the fate of his work by enforcing your own opinions of what should happen on it.

You're debating semantics, and you seem to think this is black and white, which it's not.

It's nigh-impossible to protect data distributed to a public audience, whereas it's much easier to protect physical assets through real-world deterrents. The industry, instead of innovating by making their games easily accessible, affordable and/or well-crafted, heap on draconian DRM that punishes legit customers just as much (if not moreso) than pirates, and they blame the fanbase and piracy when their game doesn't sell 2 million copies. Again, it can't be classified as outright "stealing", because the original source code still remains with the owner - the only thing you're doing is making a copy of a copy.

Not only that, but you made the amateur mistake of assuming that every unit of a product pirated automatically equates to a lost sale, which it doesn't. In fact, I can quote you plenty of legal studies that show that the only thing piracy affects is the user's redistribution of disposable income. The amount of money lost to piracy is far, far less than the MPAA/publishers tell you.

I'll give you an example. Eight years back, I started downloading episodes of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series' first season. It was only airing on British television at that point, and it wouldn't air on American channels for another nine months.

I downloaded the entire first season, as it aired, and greatly enjoyed it. I told other people to watch it. Later, the show's creator came out and made a public statement telling people not to download it because it would hurt their bottom line.

What actually ended up happening when the show aired on the Sci-Fi Channel was the exact opposite. The show garnered the highest viewing figures for any Sci-Fi Channel series up to that point, fed completely by word of mouth. I ended up not only buying the first two seasons of the series at full price, but I bought the Complete Series after the show had ended.

That's $300+ dollars that I gave them for their product, and I had initially downloaded episodes to watch. I can sit here and quote examples of artists/developers being positively affected by piracy (McPixel, Lost (TV series), etc.), but I think you see my point.

Also, don't be an asshole. If don't think the person you're arguing to is listening then stop replying to them. Don't stroke your ego by posting about how superior your argument is and how the person must be stupid and full off fallacy. That an asshole thing to do. Even if you're right be nice.

Hey, you're the one getting all bent out of shape, not me. I learned to stop taking the insults of other people seriously years ago.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

For more reasonable people, piracy can be seen as an issue of service over money. If the publisher of a media product or service is making things unpleasant or uncomfortable for the consumer to acquire their product or service, not have the product or service readily available, or not even giving a confirmation of its release date, people will often turn to piracy to compensate. If there are easier ways to get the product or service that you want, most people will tend to do it.

From a moral standpoint, however, it's still considered bad. Yes it might suck that what you want isn't readily available for your guarantee purchase, but sometimes, those are the breaks.

 

[incal11]

quote

quote

Blah Blah it all depends on personal morales.

People will find ways to justify anything they do, piracy is among them.

And there is nothing necessarily wrong with those justifications either.

But otherwise I think Keoul ended the thread, beyond this is hearsay and grand standing.

I guess you nailed it, but to stay in topic rather than devolve into the same old piracy debate (blah! serious studies are more than hearsay. Blah!) I think it's actually interesting to look into why we justify certain things and not others.

I haven't studied the subject in depth but it seems justifications can be broken down int two kinds: the personal, and the general.
In any case justifications are either along the lines of "I wanted to", "I had to", and "it is for the best".

Personal justifications are often selfish, regardless of morality (which is also a justification anyway): "I had to, he was going to kill me" or "it was in my best interest to kill him, he was going to get that promotion before me".
Personal justification, like the ones given in the OP, is a bad way of going into a debate because of the element of selfishness. The ones whose morality (or justifications) you are attacking automatically get the upper hand: "in the end you just want stuff for free".

General justification is an attempt to avoid the selfishness, this time it's "for the best of the community/village/country/etc...". Again with the classic murder example: "I have to, for my country (sings national anthem)" or "we have to, they are of an inferior race".
This is also a bad way of going into a debate, because you doom yourself into endlessly repeating the same arguments to people whose own general justifications are incompatible with yours. Not acknowledging that their frames of reference are different, one or both sides are going to accuse the other of only thinking of themselves: "you just don't want to admit you are wrong" or "you just make stuff up, the truth is you don't want to pay".
It does not make things easy since that this kind of reasoning always has a grain of truth in it. But the thing is, to make a general justification (being humans after all) we have to start with our own personal justifications. Then see if a relevant number of people more or less agree with it.

In an actual debate (which is definitely not just grand standing, even if some sure do like them words) the goal is not to see what can be justified, because absolutely everything is justifiable from a certain point of view. The goal is to see whose position can be proved to be in the best interest of the greater number, or for the longest term. That is also a justification but, rather than face the chaotic senselessness of the universe or trapping ourselves in an infinite justification loop, let's go on...
I hope we can agree that the best justification is the one that is proven to defend the well being of the most person for the longest time. In short the "greater good", in an objective and practical sense.

A justification, by itself, leads nowhere. "Access to culture is a basic human right" is indeed a disguised selfish personal justification. "Access to culture is a basic human right because it's in the creators best interests, and here's why. With proof" is a little better because it's not just a justification, but a test to see if your justification is more than personal or if you are missing something.
Ideally the response should be "No, this proof does not stand because... and here are my own sources" but usually it is "you make some interesting points, but in the end it's still stealing" (when it's not "who the heck do you think you are").

Simple murder can also be justified in so many ways, but proving that the right to kill bystanders is for the greater good of humanity is a lot trickier. A murderer can say "the voices told me to do it" or "it made me feel powerful", his reasons will always provably be only selfish and personal.

About piracy, "In the end it's still stealing" Is the ultimate wall I am facing. After asking myself if I should feel ashamed, after going from personal to general justifications and then from justifications to logical questioning. Accumulating (true, actual, existing) proof in favor of piracy, then asking myself over and over again if I was not being biased, and never finding reliable proof against "piracy" being for the greater good. No matter how hard I tried.
Seeing this ultimate answer so many times, from people who at first looked like they actually used their brains, I have to ask myself if I finally succeeded not only in justifying piracy but in proving that it is for the greater good.

Not obeying provably stupid laws like the current copyrights is not placing yourself "above the law" or being an anarchist. It's simple civil disobedience (look it up), and denying civil disobedience in the face of a harmful law makes as much sense as saying that someone who rises against a tyrant is just being "unlawful".

Even if downloading something actually is stealing, as the revised definitions of the word "piracy" make it out to be, is a tolerance toward file-sharing wrong even when it's for the greater good (and provably so) ?
"In the end it's still stealing" is then a simple minded appeal to sentiments, with no real value in a discussion. The ones uttering it generally know it, and that is why they refuse all discussion past that point. Piracy in general cannot be justified to them, but it does not mean it cannot be justified at all.

If you're asking yourself what are my proofs and arguments I'll gladly show you (not you Theultimateend, unless you want another go)

 

[Something Amyss]

- The media is not being released in your country

Import it.

- The media is being censored or otherwise is inferior in your country

Import it.

- The media is released at unfairly high prices (I'm looking at you Australia)

Don't buy it. The Australia Tax is due to the willingness of people to pay it. You can do without.

- The media is being released with (intrusive) DRM or other kind of regional restrictions that makes the media unplayable for you

Don't buy it.

Personally, I think all of the above examples are a good arguments.

I think they're pretty lame. You don't need this media. You can get it legally in most cases if you really want it, so piracy is still self-serving. In any event, copyright is the right to control your product, which means deciding where to release it. Who are you or anyone else to tell someone that they have no right to control their own copy because you really really want it?

On the other hand....

it's stealing

Only in the sense that speeding is murder and littering is terrorism.

 

[Rastien]

it's stealing

Only in the sense that speeding is murder and littering is terrorism.

No it's just stealing, taking something you havn't paid for that doesn't belong to you is stealing?

Speeding is going above the speed limit

Littering isn't illegal here just frowned upon, personally i flick my fag butts where i please.

 

[kickyourass]

I agree with the Extra Credits crew in that...

Piracy can sometimes have its place.

Son of a ***** you've beaten me to it. Anyway yeah if you can legally purchase the game/movie/whatever where you are, there's no justification for piracy.

 

[Mr F.]

Property is theft. Intellectual moreso. The only way I passed my last college course was through downloading textbooks which were not available in the public library and which were prohibitavely expensive.

Information, of all kinds, should be free. Creativity should be limitless. Piracy, in its essence, is sharing things. From music to tv shows, through to books and software. Pirates are "Good" for the economy, a study done in Switzerland showed that pirates habitually spend more on media than non-pirates.

Lets talk about music for a moment.

Everyone these days has a music collection. A lot of us have collections that are made from friends collections. Personally I only own one CD, a birthday present, yet I have a library of (Checks) 718 songs currently. I lost most of my collection when my computer went down. Now, none of those songs were personally downloaded by me, all of them are built from my friends collections. Those collections were, by the by, built from other peoples collections. Down the line someone, somewhere, bought a CD. Yet the music was shared. It is a natural human impulse, to share music.

Piracy of music falls into this neatly. Someone, somewhere, bought a CD and then shared the music. Yet with piracy people have more "Friends". Everyone is sharing everything with everyone else. This is how the world used to be, this is the most equitable way for the world to be. Music is priced in such a way that to build up a decent library of songs would cost hundreds of pounds. Piracy allows everyone to get access to those songs for nothing.

Now, the reason why I am using songs as an example (First, at least) is because the music industry has largely adapted to piracy. Musicians make far more money from gigs and concerts than they ever did from CD's, tapes and records. The amount of royalties that a musician actually gets is criminal, buying music does not support an artist half as much as sharing music. The more people who hear a song, the more money the artist makes through gigs.

Decent artists make lots of money. Crappy artists don't. Small artists get shared and shared again until suddenly they have worldwide exposure and can make real money from gigs.

Now lets look at movies.

People will still (And will never stop) watching things in cinemas. Piracy is not killing the cinema, hell, if it was cinema would already be dead. There are so many pirates (I live in the piracy capital of the United Kingdom) that if piracy was really damaging cinema then cinema would have collasped by now. Yet this is simply not the case, you still have huge films making crazy profits. Piracy has not damaged film. Or, if it has, it has not done any real, lasting damage. Maybe a few studios make a few less million overall, they can take the hit.

TV Shows? The same applies. They make the money through add revenue. The most piracy does is take away money from people buying the DVD's once a show has finished airing. Most of the money has already been made and, well, some pirates DO buy things they already have digital copies of. Case and point my sisters bloke, he introduced me to firefly through the copies on his harddrive and now owns the complete box set. Cause if something is worth buying, it is worth buying.

I fear this is getting long so I will slap on a tldr and await the banhammer for stating that piracy is a good thing. Oh well.

tldr;

Sharing is a natural human instinct. It is good for the economy and cannot, will not, be stopped. Piracy is allowing people all over the world to share with each other and allowing those with small incomes to still appreciate the fine works of music, films and games that are out there. Piracy is good for the economy in more ways then it is bad.

Y'arrrr.

 

[4RM3D]

No it's just stealing, taking something you havn't paid for that doesn't belong to you is stealing?

Yes, but piracy is not stealing, it's copyright infringement, which is different. A lot of people have the urge to compare it with stealing, but it just can not be compared with it. The concepts are completely different.

- The media is not being released in your country

Import it.

You left out the other part of my story where I said that I was importing media whenever possible. But I can understand if people don't want to.

Now, lets take one example: Japanese CD's and DVD's.

Japanese CD's and DVD's are expensive to begin with. If I want to import those CD's/DVD's I also have to pay a lot on shipping and on top of that I have to pay customs (import tax). The total price tag is not pretty.

- It is fair that I have to pay that a lot more just because I don't live in Japan? No.
- It is fair to pirate the CD's/DVD's? Yes, the publisher doesn't care about Europe. Their market is only Japan. Thus there is no loss in sales and thus piracy has no negative impact (in this case).
- It is legal to pirate CD's/DVD's? No, not in most countries (though it's legal here, in the Netherlands).

 

[4RM3D]

*huge snip*

Well, that was an interesting read. I want to mention two things though:
- Piracy is not stealing, it's copyright infringement.
- Talking about what is the greater good, is going to be a tricky discussion. But it's also going to be interesting one. So let's have it.

The greater good...

Criminals in prison take up space and money. We should just kill all the criminals who have a life sentence. It is for the greater good.

True or false?

Regardless, the law tends to ignore the greater good.

If you're asking yourself what are my proofs and arguments I'll gladly show you

I am curious. Please do tell.

*snip*

I am not too sure about some of the things you mentioned.
- Not every artists makes more money of gigs than of (digital) CD sales. I actually think (digital) CD sales is the most important source of income.
- Piracy hasn't killed cinema, but is does hurt cinema. Though not in anyway that will threaten the cinema business.
- For TV shows I am also not sure the majority of the money comes from ad revenues. Also, if people pirate TV shows instead of watching them on TV, the numbers get skewed, which might have (indirect) consequences.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I do like Steam, but yes, their download servers are crap.

I can't hear you over the sound of my Steam download whooshing by at 11.4 MB/s!

what the flying shit man! 1.5 Mbps steam download speed. Speed Test 13 Mbps

 

[kickassfrog]

No, the excuses I've heard all range from "Well, I've got kids, and literally taking them to the cinema to see films is so difficult when I can do it at home." through to "Well, I wanted the game right, but I didn't have any money, so I figured I'd just download it for free"

I primarily blame piracy for various forms of media being as expensive as they are.

But on the other hand, they do realistically need to form a proper digital passport, as an example, that you keep for yourself personally, that all your downloads are managed on. That way, you buy a game, you have that game for all consoles it's available on. You buy songs on iTunes, you get to keep them forever, not just your next few laptops.

So, what I guess I'm trying to say is it's both the pirates fault, and the manufacturers faults (the pirates moreso, especially with games downloading them for free would be akin to someone telling you to do your job but they didn't feel like paying you to do it, so suck it) and frankly I would happily pit them against each other in an arena fight to the death, then keep the remaining party. (Yes, that is kind of evil, I'm in that kind of mood right now. As long as I don't really do it it's fine)

 

[kickassfrog]

The greater good...

Criminals in prison take up space and money. We should just kill all the criminals who have a life sentence. It is for the greater good.

True or false?

False, we should use them as unpaid labour in dangerous conditions.

 

[Aeonknight]

I've seen a few people pull out the arguement that "I already own the copy but lost it, so torrenting another is ok."

No.

It's not.

Part of owning a physical copy of anything is taking care of it and being responsible. I've bought Diablo 2 at least 3 times because I keep losing the damn discs whenever my buddy decides he wants to fire it up for old times' sake 5 years apart (and then drop it again after less than a week of playing it.)

If you lose it, it's your own fault. That does not justify piracy. And if you know you're terrible at keeping track of these things after years and years, there's always digital distribution. So again, "I lost it" is not a valid excuse.

 

[kickassfrog]

Property is theft. Intellectual moreso. The only way I passed my last college course was through downloading textbooks which were not available in the public library and which were prohibitavely expensive.

Umm, because the author put a lot of time into doing that, and with a relatively small pool of potential purchasers needs to charge more money to buy food and other extravagant things.

Dude, studying costs money. I'm going to university next year and it's not the cost of the books I'm concerned about.

 

[kickassfrog]

It can't be justified but anyone who does it wouldn't care. If I went and downloaded a movie or game I would not lose any sleep wondering if I was a bad person.
Its all neighbors dead pets under my bed that make me wonder that.

That's terrible.
Why would you store the carcasses of animals under your bed? They'll decompose and stink up the place.
(I had a brief paragraph on what you should do next time prepared, but I neglected to type it up lest it make me look worryingly psychotic)

 

[IamLEAM1983]

This thread. Again. Damnit.

Anyway. Piracy's fine and dandy in one condition, and one condition only. You have to be utterly unable to legally acquire what you're looking for, either through standard purchase or through the use of abandonware sites. In the case of abandonware, no one has the rights to the product. This means that you're not cutting anyone out of their deserved share of a deal, so nobody's suffering from your unpaid download or other method of acquisition.

Otherwise? There IS the very flimsy "Try Before You Buy" excuse and the fact that decent and representative demos seem to be a thing of the past, but I'm one of the few persons I know who's ever done the slightly insane, if righteous thing and purchased Fallout New Vegas after caving in for a free, if highly buggy and illegal version.

I say "insane" because basic logic implies that you'd consider your ill-gotten copy of the game as being able to deliver the same service as a legit one. Above paying the dev team for its work and saying "Thank you!" with your wallet, there's no practical difference between a pirated copy and a legit copy.

Of course, it'd also be logical to argue that piracy doesn't quite offer the same service, seeing as multiplayer is taken out of the equation by the forced necessity to keep the game offline. I'd retort that anyone who pirates a game is already well aware of that fact and is ready and willing to pay that price. Considering this, it's not really an inconvenient.