Poll: Piracy is legal

[Morph]

I am not generally against taking a small part of a work (like a short clip from a movie or a quote from a book)but if you are going to get full benefite from a work I think expecting you to pay is reasonable. To simplify, if I write a book or make a movie or a game ect ect then I don't think that expecting people to pay you to read/play/watch it is unreasonable. YOU made that, not them and you deserve control over it. It is a product of your labor, and doesn't belong to them, but to you. This is why, when pirates talk about "rights" and "freedoms of information" I am very confused. I must have missed the part of the transition from someone making something to you gaining the right to unfettered and free access to everything that anyone made. You do not have a right to take something someone else made. Period. It is harmful to creators and a violation of their rights to the product of their labors. You are in no way entitled to play video games or read books or watch movies. people have to go out of their way to make those, and if they wish to distribute them for free, good for them. But if they expect money (and since these often take years of effort and millions of dollars that seems reasonable.) then you should pay them before taking the thing they made.

It's sad that my first instinct on forums is to reply with snarky, mostly unproductive comments in response to other comments that have irked me. When I started replying your post, I had actually intended to be fairly childish and borderline uncivil.

I'm going to generalize a bit here, to try to clear up some of your confusion about what exactly is being referenced when other 'pirates' cite 'rights' and 'freedoms of information'. Most of the discussion on this page has been about piracy of games, movies, and music more than it has been about copyright law in general. Piracy and copyright law tend to come up in the same discussions, and so arguments can end up a bit muddled.

Based on my own background, its easier for me to articulate why people are anti-copyright law (or pro-copyright reform, or whatever semantics you prefer) in the context of medical and pharmaceutical patents. Imagine you have two companies, both conducting research on ways to treat cancer. Company A files a patent for a super-effective method of targeting cancer cells without many negative side effects. Company B files a patent for a new wonder-drug that is highly effective at killing cancer cells, but they lack a good targeting method. With current copyright laws, unless one company purchases rights to use the other companies invention, this combination therapy will not reach market until the 20 year expiration date on the patents is reached.

Now if people advocating 'freedom of information' had their way, this situation would not arise, because both companies would have access to the other's work, and so one (or both) of the companies would be able to produce the drug. So in that sense, that sort of sharing of information would lead to more 'progress' on the whole, for medicine and the human race in general. The problem with that sort of freedom, is that the people investing money into the research aspects are looking for a pay-day. They want to recoup what they've spent, and make more on top of that, which is only possible if they possess sole rights to that IP for some time.

Copyright laws, in this specific realm, have to walk the fine line of allowing a company to make money, but also allowing the health care industry to offer quality care for most people. (On a related note, that '20 year' period is why when new drugs come out, they're often super expensive. The clock on that 20 years starts relatively early in the research phase, and so companies only usually end up with 10-13 years to make back all their research money, and so they jack up the prices as high as possible during that time).

If any of you took the time to read all that, I hope it was more coherent than it felt to me, writing it. And I hope that even if some of my information wasn't completely accurate, I've still offered you a slightly different perspective to view the complexities of this issue from. And also, I apologize that this whole thing was only a tangent to the discussion of "is piracy moral".

 

[NightmareExpress]

No in most cases, morally ambiguous in others.
Because you have to understand that there exists unique circumstances for each individual.
It's nothing to be proud or ashamed of in that case. I do know that the actual creator of the content would be happy with one more person praising their work, though.

It's a complex issue with the ease of acquiring things, but I think I agree with Neil Gaiman's stance on the matter.

 

[Raesvelg]

These threads... Ugh.

Piracy, in the sense copyright infringement, is a matter of questionable morality.

What you've got, essentially, are two camps.

On the one hand, you have people who believe, correctly, that in the total absence of copyright law, we would lose out on a great deal of artistic creation. They believe that creators have the right to benefit from their creations, and that a copyright of reasonable duration will grant that ability to those creators.

On the other hand, you've got people who want free shit.

Honesty compels me to admit that a tiny fraction of the "I Want Free Shit" camp genuinely believes that somehow, magically, having creators give their creations away would lead to an outpouring of public generosity and those creators would see profit from their endeavors as a result. We can call these folks idealists.

We also have another tiny fraction of the "I Want Free Shit" camp who believe, correctly, that copyright duration has been extended far beyond its original intent, largely at the behest of corporations attempting to extend the rights to their property indefinitely into the future it at all possible. I'm not sure what to call these folks, since it's difficult to find fault with their position, but at the same time it's not especially relevant in the face of the vast, vast majority of piracy.

Speaking of that vast majority: there really is no excuse for their behavior. They can attempt to cloud the issue in any number of ways, and they're always ready with an excuse to justify what they do. I'm not going to bother listing those justifications and obfuscations, since it's entirely likely that they've all been used in this thread already. But the ultimate truth is that they want something, but they don't want to pay for it.

 

[Kathinka]

i live in one of those countries where i can download copyrighted material completely legally at my leasuse.

i take advantage of that fact a lot.

besides that, not a single sale has ever been lost by me doing that.

yes, that's right. none of the games i downloaded i would have bought, even if it hadn't been avaiable for free. many of the games i downloaded i bought later, when i found them to be awesome and worth it.

so, no, i don't feel bad since i didn't cost the industry a single cent. merely taking advantage of a consumer right to try a product before i buy it. only the gaming industry gets away with trying to take that from its customers.

 

[tysonn101]

I'd say piracy is always wrong, unless your streaming a show or film online and later buy it (is streaming piracy? idk, same principle could apply to all of the mediums I guess).
I've always hated the "its not stealing, its copying as the product stays where it is" argument, fair enough the product may stay where it is but you've essentially stolen the profits the creator would have made which is morally wrong

 

[conmag9]

It's not a binary value. There's a spectrum. Copying a brand new game that you could totally afford and would love is one thing. Copying a piece of literature whose author is now deceased is quite another. I find myself interested in the topic mostly because of the frankly ABSURD abuses to the legal system that are currently in place, the shocking amount of bribery (sorry, "campaign contributions") that goes toward making stricter and more intrusive laws to deal with it, the ridiculousness of paying customers being hit by DRM that gets stripped in days if not hour, leaving those who didn't pay in the clear...The entire setup needs to be taken apart and reset into a sane system. Of course, whenever anything like that gets pushed forward, it's opposed violently by those who benefit from the nuttiness, who have enough money to more or less buy the laws with the threat to politicians ("...or else you wont have enough funds to get re-elected").

I do think it's morally dubious at best, legality aside, to copy recent material that a creator could still realistically get compensation for. It's not stealing, a fact I find incredibly annoying to have to point out, either of the product itself or the profits it might entail (in the former case, the object would literally have to be gone, depriving its owner of use. In the latter case, you can't steal from a potential future ideal, as this would invite ridiculous abuses on top of the current idiocy. "I wanted to make $100 000 000 on this product! My rival company made something that took attention away from what I would have made! THEFT!"). Nor should the insane system for public domain introduction exist in its current for (creator's life + 70 years? It's farcical).

SO, basically, in some cases, it's more wrong than others (and when the original creator's dead, or the product literally cannot be obtained otherwise, not really morally problematic at all). It'd be much easier to take a moral stance against it if it was legal, however, given the state of the system.

 

[olza]

I'll stop considering pirating moral when parents stop teaching their kids to share.
It'll never happen. sharing is human.
piracy isn't theft. it's the distribution of experiences.
experiences kept from spreading by copyright, patents, etc. don't contribute to the development of mankind, they stall it.

 

[olza]

Very well put.

 

[Madkipz]

I don't think pirates are bad people, but that doesn't mean piracy isn't a morally wrong thing. Do you honestly see nothing wrong with it? Only a few providers are at risk of getting caught, everyone who doesn't pirate does it because they think it's morally right, not because they're afraid of getting punished.

Honestly, you see nothing morally wrong with piracy?

I think it's morally wrong on the same level that jaywalking is morally wrong. As in, not very.

The problem with talking about piracy as a moral question is that it opens up a whole bag of moral quandaries that you don't really need to address. Let's say copyright infringement is morally wrong in the basis that you are deriving the benefit of a creator's work without paying for it. Under that framework, I can think of a number of equally wrong but socially acceptable activities, such as;

- borrowing a book from a friend
- buying a used video game
- accepting a hand-me-down iPhone from a sibling
- reading a comic book or a magazine in the store
- watching a DVD of the Avengers at a friend's house
- listening to music played on your friend's music player
- watching a clip of a comedian's stand-up routine on Youtube

You can keep going. Under the moral framework for copyright infringement, literally any scenario where you obtain the benefit of a work - reading it, watching it, listening to it - without paying money to the artist is morally wrong. That's unworkable. There isn't a single human being in the first world who hasn't done one of those items on the list at some point in their lives. They're all about as malicious as eating the last slice of cake, or telling your girlfriend she doesn't look fat in those jeans.

Add that to the fact that, as I said, if you take a moral view of copyright law it's morally wrong to pay anyone other than the creator. How much of the money made from music and films goes to the creators and how much goes to the lobbyists and industry powerbrokers behind the MPAA and the RIAA? How much of the money made by sales of Batman comics goes to Bill Finger? If I buy a copy of the Hobbit, does the deceased Tolkien get the money? His descendants get the money - people who are passively deriving a benefit from their grandfather's achievements.

Once you apply a classical moral framework to copyright law, the whole structure collapses. If the point of copyright is to benefit the author, why does it persist past the author's death? Why is it possible to sell your copyright in a work?

So how do you answer those questions? You don't. Copyright infringement isn't illegal because it's morally wrong - it's illegal because the law says so. This might seem unjust, but it's what happens when powerful lobbyists use a shallow appeal to morality to justify expanding the scope and length of copyright far past the point of absurdity. Better to think of it as a legal question concerning legal rights and governed by legal principles. That way, at least it makes sense.

When you get down to it, the only time anyone is going to care about copyright infringement is when you're being sued for it. And when you get put in front of a judge, talking about morality isn't going to get you very far. The judge is sitting in front of a big book called The Law, and he wants to find out if what you did was illegal, not if it was wrong.

Indeed you are quite correct. Imagine my surprise as I ventured into a piracy thread and actually got a reasonable presentation of the argument in question. I am currently in the process of reading a book by Acemoglu and Robinson dubbed "Why Nations Fail" which dealt with growth from extractive and inclusive institutions.

And in threading the notion of piracy with the hindsight from the book in mind. I looked to indie`s and more open systems, as-well as the newly formed pirate parties attempting to get reworked patent / IP laws with a smile on my face. It seems almost inevitable that we can finally get away from these dark ages of large corporations vying for what is in essence a monopoly on the creation of said intellectual properties for the benefit of enriching an elite.

As for any comments in this thread about piracy fostering creative destruction and making for insecure Intellectual property rights so as to dissuade innovation. I disagree.

If anything the opposite (corporations and / or publishers hoarding IP while promoting artificial scarcity) fosters more destruction then piracy ever will.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'd make me mad. Why would anyone ever play a game when you can download it off a perfectly legal site for free. That'll mean either the game industry would go in the toilet (fuck everyone and all their shit if games become a piddly shell of themselves because there is no money in it anymore), games wouldn't be imported into my country anymore since there is no profit in them there(fuck that noise, I like games), or all games that I could play would use free-to-play or similar method that has micro-transactions to earn money (that would get boring fast).

 

[Archer666]

About as morally okay as renting something from a video store or library.

 

[EtherealBeaver]

Yes I do think piracy is not intrinsically evil and often can have its merits. I like to think its because that - instead of listening to money grubbing old businessmen who just wants more money but doesnt understand how the internet works - I have considered the facts for myself and supported it with an unbias study such as the Swiss study.

Taking advise from studies made by people who think they can make more money with a certain outcome of said study is not, strictly speaking, objective handling of a matter and as such that study should be disregarded on basis of adacemic bias - just like it would be in any real academic environment like a university.

Naturally there are problems with piracy and yes it is often a moral grey-zone but judging based on a grey zone is like giving someone a fine because he "might" cross the street at red lights. The main complaint from the industry is that they lose revenue but according to the swiss study, they would actually gain revenue if piracy was legal so the only objective monetary argument against piracy is, more or less, debunked. What remains is the intrinsic moral questions about filesharing sites.

Personally I make print-and-play board games, I write roleplaying games and scenarios and I make inspirational material for roleplaying games and storytelling and I just torrents for this purpose because it is easily accessable to a large audience - specifically did I use the piratebay until it became illigal. Why it became illigal and why I am not allowed to give away my own work for free in a specific manner, I do not know but it is quite frustrating.

 

[SadisticFire]

Well I don't think piracy is wrong unless you're doing it frequently, when you have the disposable income for it, and can get it without issue. Piracy is a really big grey zone. If you buy a game used, you arn't really making it any better for the publisher/dev that made that game, cause no money goes to them. An argument used frequently by anti pirates. If you bought a game, but don't want to bother with the DRM, would pirating still be wrong? If you want a demo, but there is none, is pirating still wrong?(though that reason is used often, enforced little.) It's just a shame that it seems majority of people have to be complete for, or not.
As for me, I think it's fine for small, non-profiting use. Not constant, or profiting use.
I have a feeling this post wont get read though, seeing it's on the seventh page..but oh well.

 

[Rastrelly]

Liked it - pay. Didn't - screw those losers. It's information. You cannot physically steal it, so unless you've taken a disk from a store without paying, developer loses 0 profit. It is absolutely obvious. If you won't try to resell information you've "pirated" you are absolutely morally clear. And I say it as a wannabe developer, if someone will try to tell me "I'd look at you if you were at developer's place". I always said and will say - if I will ever reach level to make a commercial product, I will neither add any copy protection to it, nor try to awoid it's "pirating".

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'd make me mad. Why would anyone ever play a game when you can download it off a perfectly legal site for free. That'll mean either the game industry would go in the toilet (fuck everyone and all their shit if games become a piddly shell of themselves because there is no money in it anymore), games wouldn't be imported into my country anymore since there is no profit in them there(fuck that noise, I like games), or all games that I could play would use free-to-play or similar method that has micro-transactions to earn money (that would get boring fast).

The same reason free concerts still make a boat load of money, the reason musicians still make obscene amounts of money even though you can find damn near every song ever made from the day its released on youtube.

People like to support things that they enjoy. Just a few posts above we have a person from a nation who allows it, he buys things, when I was poor and pirated, I bought the games I enjoyed when I got a job to pay for them all (part of the reason my steam library has a 45% unplayed list ~.~)

Its a scare tactic that people like to throw out saying "well if everyone can get it for free no one will pay! That is wrong, and bullshit. Just because YOU might not buy a bit of media you were able to get for free doesnt mean other people wont.

If you (editorial you this time) have the money to get the game, have enjoyed what you played of the game (pirate, borrowed from a friend, what not), and the ability to buy the game, but choose not to, that makes you a bad person. But if you didnt enjoy the game (No matter how it was played) theres no problem, as it wasnt a lost sale anyway. If you cant afford the game, no problem as you wouldnt have been able to buy it anyway. If they wont sell it in your country, no problem, they didnt want your business anyway. I dont support piracy naturally, people should be payed for their work, which is why I buy all my games now that I have a job that allows such a luxury, but there is nothing MORALLY wrong with it.

People don't go to concerts to hear songs, they go to concerts to see musicians. CDs are cheaper and easier then going to a concert.

That said, you overestimate how much people with good will would be able to do. The best Kickstarter for a game ever raised what, a few million. Not enough to make a modern AAA game, that's the super popular one. The idea of supporting something because you like it may be a very altruistic notion but ti isn't one shared by everyone and it generally doesn't get you that much money. Lots of people may want to help but fewer will and fewer will donate more then about 20 bucks for a project. Trying to hide behind this notion of people support people out of the goodness of their heart is stupid. There are good people but not enough to fund anything big.

You're right, if people can get it for free, some people will still pay. However it's not going to be enough to be profitable. That still means that no business is going to develop software because it's a losing proposition.

What's more is that if piracy and file sharing becomes legal and its going to become very very easy to do so. Instead of having to search for torrents or files, they'd be put on the front page of websites, they'd be out in the open. That means that average Joe Blow will be far more likely to get a free version that he found with a Google search then to buy the game in the store.

 

[squeekenator]

Legality and morality are completely unrelated, it wouldn't change a thing.

 

[Henkie36]

Spoiler

Well, it is, assuming that you live in one of the countries [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerland] such as Switzerland or The Netherlands that either already legalized it, or at least decriminalized it.

For the rest of you, the question is this: If piracy (that is, individual, non-commercial sharing of otherwise copyrighted data) would be legal in your country, would that change your feelings in any way about whether or not the people using it are thiefs/assholes/self-entitled freeloaders respectively?

(Vote "other" if you feel that it was always a morally ambigious or acceptable or neutral act to begin with).

I'm asking this because in te usual "morality of piracy" threads, we tend to hit a wall when we get to the point of wheter it is the letter of the law that makes something right or wrong, or it's something that's inherently there. So this time, let's focus on just that.

File sharing maybe legal in The Netherlands, but the government is trying pretty hard to stop piracy, like for instance, forcing the major internet providers into shutting down The Pirate Bay.

OT: Like you said, it's still not legal. I still think it's morally ambigious to simply steal copyrighted data, but on the other hand, I do see where it comes from. With so many shitty stuff being realeased, paying 15 to 60 bucks depending on what you are buying is quite a gamble, with sizeable stakes. I understand it, even if I don't have to like it.

 

[CriticalMiss]

I believe information and knowledge should be shared freely, but that people should be paid for what they produce, create etc. Pirating just isn't what it used to be. Yo ho For the most part, if something isn't worth paying for why would you want it in the first place? (unless it is vastly overpriced)

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I say if you can't get it normally, like if it's really old or was never released in your country, pirate away. If not, buy the product and support it's creators.

 

[Entitled]

What's more is that if piracy and file sharing becomes legal and its going to become very very easy to do so. Instead of having to search for torrents or files, they'd be put on the front page of websites, they'd be out in the open. That means that average Joe Blow will be far more likely to get a free version that he found with a Google search then to buy the game in the store.

Everyone knows how to use youtube, yet we still have a music industry.

In fact, to give a specific example, literally every Internet user in the world has watched the Gangam Style video on youtube, yet it still reached the top of sales chats as well. Piracy is easy. Even using torrents isn't more complicated than using an e-mail client.

By your own logic, you essentially admit that formal legality really is the only difference between whether piracy is right or wrong, or at least most people would see it that way.