Poll: Piracy is legal

[Spambot 3000]

The legality of it does not dictate my stance on the morality of it. I still do not think it is a good thing.

 

[BrassButtons]

Yes, because more often than not, said company probably doesn't deserve the money. My latest purchase i wished i pirated was the shitshow known as Hitman: Absolution.

But if you don't pay them do YOU deserve the PRODUCT?

 

[Judgement101]

Theft is theft. Simple as that. If you didn't pay for a product that you then take, it's theft.

 

[micahrp]

In America this is more that just a legal issue, it's a Constitutional issue.

U.S. Constitution states the powers of Congress (which it is currently going way over), but it does include the phrase:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" - Article 1 Section 8.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

Legality is a non-issue. The law is merely the general consensus of those in power on what should and shouldn't be allowed, and quite frankly I give their opinions on law no more bearing than anyone else. It is about how you violate the right of a person to profit from the labor of their hands and take what sin't yours. Regardless of legality piracy is wrong in a moral sense.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

I know I'm opening myself up to people yelling at me but fuck it, I'm bored and I hate myself enough:

Piracy isn't right. Maybe it's easier for me to get that taking the creation of another sucks for the creator since I come from a graphic design background but it has always just baffled me why people believe that it's OK to take something just because it's not a physical product (which always seems to be the primary argument for why it's not stealing and that makes it OK).

If a Geek Squad guy comes to your house and hooks up your entertainment system, is it OK to not pay him? He just plugged some cords in, you're not getting a physical product out of it.

If the mechanic rotates your tires, is it OK to not pay him? He just untightened and retightened something, you're not getting a physical product out of it.

If a programmer puts together the code to allow a software to run on your PC, is it OK not to pay him? He just coded something, you're not getting a physical product out of it...

I have never heard an argument that has convinced me to think that piracy is OK. If you think you can change that, go ahead and take your best shot but I guarantee I've heard it all before. Just like you've heard my ramblings about why it's wrong before.

Agreed. I am also always confused by how people tend to imply that if you were to steal a physical copy of some music or a game or the like that would be wrong. You are not paying for the physical thing itself, it costs like 18 cents to produce, you are stealing it for the content that is on it. Why should stealing a 60$ game be any diffrent from pirating it when the actually physical item is easily produced and virtually worthless, while the content is valuble.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

http://www.theomag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/piracyflowchart.jpg

This image basically sums up my view on piracy. If you didn't like the game or you liked it and you bought it, it's ok, but if you liked the game and you decide not to buy it (i.e. you think it would be a worthy purchase, you just don't want to spend money) then there is a problem.

As for the legality of it, it doesn't really matter since legal or not people still do it since it's nearly untraceable. It's almost always a moral problem.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

I'd say there's some morality in play with more moderated copyright laws.

The idea that it's unfair for person A to come up with something and person B to then steal it and reap the profits is a moral one. And that's what copyright laws were originally based on, I think.

Believe it or not, copyright was originally (c. 17th century) vested in the printer rather than the author. This was done for censorship purposes; the government controlled the Stationers' Company, which had a monopoly on the licenses by which the printers were allowed to print, and thus could prevent the printing of seditious or irreligious material. We mostly have John Locke to thank for the liberalisation of copyright such that it vested in the author first and the publisher second; he had politically powerful friends and even more powerful ideals.

This is the irony; Locke's motivation for breaking the Company monopoly was grounded in his belief that the free exchange of ideas was vital for a culture's intellectual growth, and that the more restrictions there were on copyrighted material the less likely it was that such a free exchange would occur. He thought the idea of copyright persisting past the death of the author to be completely absurd.

Fast forward to today, take a look at the RIAA and the MPAA versus the Pirate Bay and Richard Stallman. Which one is closer to John Locke and which one is closer to the Stationer's Company?

This is why it's really silly to talk about copyright infringement in moral terms. The moral foundation for copyright has been inverted over the course of history.

Downloading films/games/music for your own use when normally you would need to pay is robbery, and robbery is illegal. I think they should crack down on this even harder than on actual robbery, as this is easier.

Robbery =/= copyright infringement.

Herp a derp

John Locke's philosophy was based around the idea of human rights and these included the right to property. Surely he of all people thought that the creator of a work should get his due from said work.

 

[Entitled]

Hell yes, it's not piracy if it's legal. As long as there's some sort of tax on blank media/computers that goes directly back to content creators, then unrestricted sharing is way preferable to our current system, because of all the free culture & research that would be openly available.

That's a nice idea, the only problem with it is that it would be inherently biased in favor of established media, and stun innovation by giving a conservative authority the power to decide what art gets supported.

If we would have had such a system a few decades ago, the government paying artists every time their movie is watched, or novel is borrowed from a library, then Pong and Pac-Man and Donkey Kong wouldn't fallen under that, as practically no one would have recognized them as "culture", or even as media. And then, the industry wouldn't have had it's roots.

There are new art forms being invented even now, and some of them will catch on. While I agree that unrestricted sharing is the way, but it must still have some sort of capitalistic model around it, that allows for surprise growth.

 

[mitchell271]

For a long time, it was legal to mistreat or kill a black man for being black. Was it moral? Of course not, but it was legal! Legality often barely brushes with morality but it hardly goes into a complex dance with it.

 

[averydeeadaccount]

I mean, take a look at my avatar. Do you know what went into making that image? MONTHS of work. I didn't just find something cool and snap a photo of it--I found an (open source) image of a Jolly Roger, adapted it to a pattern, played around with some of the details, spent no small amount of money on rings, and then proceeded to make the damn thing one link at a time--and then had to UNMAKE it in several places to fix mistakes (the weave is so tight that I couldn't just remove one ring out of the middle--if a link needed to go then every row under it had to be undone as well. I nearly cried when I realized I had a mistake 8 or 9 rows up). That's the biggest chainmail project I've ever completed. If someone were to steal that photo I would be insulted. It's not just about the image, but about what the image represents.

If I were to copy your profile image and use it for some forum that you had never heard of, then my action would not be effecting you in any way. You would never even find out. What's more, the people on that forum would admire the artwork and more people would be made happier from it, so why would you want to stop me? Why would you care?

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Is it morally ok to steal food you don't need?

Even better. Is it morally ok to steal food you don't need from someone who grew it themselves?

 

[Entitled]

John Locke's philosophy was based around the idea of human rights and these included the right to property. Surely he of all people thought that the creator of a work should get his due from said work.

Property relates to "intellectual property", in the same way as a killer realates to a "killer app", or a nazi relates to a "grammar nazi".

It was always supposed to be a FIGURE OF SPEECH, an analogy to compare authoritive control over a set of monopolistic regulations over a piece of information, to physical control over a sack of wheat.

Besides, that phrase, "intellectual property" wasn't even invented until the 19th century, or popularized before the latter half of the 20th century, when the copyright industry picked it up it along with other faulty analogies, so it's unlikely that Locke would have ever had even a chance to fall for the rhetoric and think of "IP" rights, first described in the Statute of Monopolies as a set of "property laws".

Locke was an early founder of libertarianism, he would have believed that "your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins". I'm pretty sure that if Locke would have read a book from a writer against the writer's will, he wouldn't have considered it a case of "harming the writer", analogously to punching him in the face.

But the modern copyright ideology is a pretty anti-libertarian idea, it basically say that "the viewer's right to swing his fists ends where an artist feels intellectually violated".

It's not about protecting a creator's "property", but about giving a creator all sorts of extra rights over the free market, over free speech, and over controlling the minutae of your daily life to increase their profitability, and identifies the defiance against these monopolies as "harming the artist".

 

[The Funslinger]

Morality is subjective
So it varies from person to person, there really isn't a right answer for this. Also just a word of caution

[HEADING=2]Use Our Forums Appropriately[/HEADING]
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Similarly, posts including, advocating, or linking to illegal or adult material are a very quick way to end your time as part of The Escapist community. An example of these are:
-Piracy
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If you got loot for killing Escapists, this thread would be the forum equivalent of a Minecraft Mob Farm.

 

[Entitled]

I mean, take a look at my avatar. Do you know what went into making that image? MONTHS of work. I didn't just find something cool and snap a photo of it--I found an (open source) image of a Jolly Roger, adapted it to a pattern, played around with some of the details, spent no small amount of money on rings, and then proceeded to make the damn thing one link at a time--and then had to UNMAKE it in several places to fix mistakes (the weave is so tight that I couldn't just remove one ring out of the middle--if a link needed to go then every row under it had to be undone as well. I nearly cried when I realized I had a mistake 8 or 9 rows up). That's the biggest chainmail project I've ever completed. If someone were to steal that photo I would be insulted. It's not just about the image, but about what the image represents.

If I were to copy your profile image and use it for some forum that you had never heard of, then my action would not be effecting you in any way. You would never even find out. What's more, the people on that forum would admire the artwork and more people would be made happier from it, so why would you want to stop me? Why would you care?

Given that he/she is already distributing that image over the internet for free right now, for all of us to download a copy through the net and see it, while calling it "stealing", I'm pretty sure that he is just sarcastically demonstrating exactly that.

Or I just have too much faith in humanity.

 

[Phlakes]

I know I'm opening myself up to people yelling at me but fuck it, I'm bored and I hate myself enough:

Piracy isn't right. Maybe it's easier for me to get that taking the creation of another sucks for the creator since I come from a graphic design background but it has always just baffled me why people believe that it's OK to take something just because it's not a physical product (which always seems to be the primary argument for why it's not stealing and that makes it OK).

If a Geek Squad guy comes to your house and hooks up your entertainment system, is it OK to not pay him? He just plugged some cords in, you're not getting a physical product out of it.

If the mechanic rotates your tires, is it OK to not pay him? He just untightened and retightened something, you're not getting a physical product out of it.

If a programmer puts together the code to allow a software to run on your PC, is it OK not to pay him? He just coded something, you're not getting a physical product out of it...

I have never heard an argument that has convinced me to think that piracy is OK. If you think you can change that, go ahead and take your best shot but I guarantee I've heard it all before. Just like you've heard my ramblings about why it's wrong before.

All this really hard.

"File sharing" isn't an option as long as it costs money to make things. I'm all for spreading culture and information, and I'd love to get everything for free, but unless one of you can come up with a way to let people make it all for free, pay for shit.

 

[BoredAussieGamer]

Before I say this, I'd just like to make it clear I AM NOT CONDONING PIRACY. But it's a grey area, so it's impossible to judge all cases of piracy under the same blanket assumption.

Say someone I know is pirating a game that has dick move DRM that can break a game, or he just wants to try it before he invests but there isn't a demo available, then I really wouldn't care one way or the other.

If on the other hand, he pirated World of Goo, or Bastion, or even the Witcher 2, games that have demos and no DRM and are sold on convenient platforms of distribution, then I'l call him out on his shit.

 

[barbzilla]

Yes, but mainly No. In certain situations I feel as though piracy is a moral option, but for the other 90% of the time I find it to be nothing more than theft. If you live in a place where you are unable to purchase said product through legal means, I fail to see a reason why downloading said product is morally objectionable (though still illegal). Same thing to be said for people that use it as an alternative to a demo (primarily as a way to test that the game will function and be playable on their machine), provided they A: Don't play more than 5 minutes to test it, and B: purchase the game if it functions properly. Anything else is just stealing (unless it is a free product). Does that make it right to do? That is a question that only pertains to the individual, as morals are as unique as the person who has them.

Now I have a question to you OP: Is it piracy if a person legally purchases a game through all the proper channels, and then modifies the game to suit their needs (provided it is single player and they don't distribute it)? Technically it is illegal in most cases as you are not allowed to modify the product, and you don't technically own the product. Most of the games you have purchased you do not own, you only own a license to use the product (that can many times be revoked without warning; I.E. always on DRM that uses a server to test for a legit copy and the server is suddenly shut down without warning). This is a big problem that I have with corporate America (or any first world country for that matter). The balance has shifted from protecting the consumer to protecting the provider. Once upon a time, we were treated as valuable individuals who's money mattered, now we are treated as potential criminals and thieves even if we are honest law abiding citizens.

 

[II2]

Acts performed are not total, in the absence of context. It's a spectrum of morality and "amoral" behavior.

A) Downloading a few MP3s doesn't make a person a captial C CROOK, nor does running a few cracked applications. Wrong, yeah, but in an underager having some beers kinda way.

B) Making a living running a massive, revenue generating, ad riddled server offering an encyclopedic variety of commercial media for free is more along the lines of petty (if forward thinking) career criminal.

I hope the introduced legislation exists primarily to protect the A) crowd and joe citizen from draconian punishment in the digital millennium.

 

[M920CAIN]

Depends on who pirated what, why, how, and for what purpose.