What exactly is the moral difference between pirating a game and borrowing one if you...

[crazyarms33]

Fine, but I don't see how my choice of word ("decide to like"), about exactly how you end up liking something, is influencing the issue about consumption.

I didn't even intend to imply anything about the nature of piracy with that word, it was just a turn of phrase.

You might replace the phrase with "end up liking", and the rest of my post would have the same overall message.

Excellent point. I read something there that wasn't. My mistake.

That claim only makes sense in specific circumstances where you can pirate, but it's complicated, for example if you have a very slow internet, or very little skill and knowledge to do it. That would explain why you think of "already having the game", as a special circumstance, compared to the game being availaable to you on the Internet.

For example, a few weeks ago, I torrented a game that I already own (Syberia 2), because I didn't feel like standing up from my comfy chair and walking over to the discs shelf and then put it in the PC. Starting a download took just a handful of clicks, and then a few minutes of casual web-browsing later, the client reminded me that the game is ready.

For anyone who is sufficiently familiar with how the Internet works, "I already have the game" is practically true for every game in the world, whether or not it already happens to be on your hard drive at the moment wouldn't make it easier or harder to decide to reward the publisher.

The only thing that stops me from pirating them all, is an ethical arguement, not the fact that I haven't downloaded them yet anyways so somehow buying is that much more practical than if I would have.

Gotta admit, ya lost me here. Are you saying that because it's available online it is ok to pirate it? In the example you gave, clearly there is no moral dilemma as you already own the game and were comfy, at least in my eyes its not a moral dilemma. You bought it, go ahead. But if you didn't already have a copy of the game is it the same thing? Sorry if I'm being thick, I haven't slept in a bit.

First, the belief that respecting laws is virtous for it's own sake. Second, the belief that everything that has a value should also have a price, so every value and benefit must be distributed proportionally based on how much of it we can afford.

Beyond these, copyright/piracy arguments are also riddled with logical fallacies, bad analogies (the whole "ownership-property-theft-product-taking away" circle), with statements that are unsupported by the speaker's other daily actions and beliefs, ("we must always respect artists' wishes on how they want to make a profit"), and economical ad absurdums ("if everyone would pirate everything, nothing creativewould every get made").

In this particular thread, the favorite seems to be the stetement that piracy can be large scale/piracy doesn't deprive the first user of a copy, without any explanation on how this actually makes a moral difference.

I agree with you here. This isn't so much a moral debate to my way of thinking in this thread so much as it is searching for vindication one way or the other. Also I do love those first two statements. Appreciate you taking the time out to respond.

 

[Entitled]

I don't see why deleting the game when they're done would make any difference. Either way they're enjoying the fruits of other people's labour without paying, what difference would it make whether it was on their computer for one week or one year?

To me, it's kind of like sneaking into a movie theatre or riding on a train without paying for a ticket. You can argue, "hey, as long as I'm not taking up someone else's seat, why does it matter?", but it's still pretty immoral.

Why?

There are also plenty of ways of "enjoying the fruits of other people's labour without paying", that are generally not considered immoral.

Living in a house that's property price just rose because the neighbor renovated his own house, improving the neighborhood's values.

Growing fruit trees right next to a bee farm.

Absorbing warmth through the floor from the heating of the apartment below yours.

Picking up a used newspaper from a café table that was intentionally left there.

Walking past a street musician without donating money.

Reading Wikipedia articles without donating to the big Jim Wales fact that appears time to time.


So if it's not the "enjoying the fruits of other people's labour without paying" part that makes piracy immoral than game borrowing, then what is it?

 

[crazyarms33]

2.) I have many friends who have downloaded games and loved them. Out of all of them, how many have gone back and purchased the same game? Zero. None. Not a one. To assume that people will pay for something they already have when they pirated/stole it just because they liked it seems a bit naive to me.

Actually, I know somebody who does that, pretty much. He downloads numerous albums just to see what they're like (and, if he had to pay for every one, he wouldn't; he downloads on the offchance he'll find hidden gems).

When he does find something he likes, he will frequently see the artist in concert (something that musicians tend to see a lot more money from than album sales, as it happens).

Certainly that happens, I wasn't trying to say everyone acts the same way as my friend. What I was trying to say is that in my eyes the issue with piracy, particularly games, is fairly substantial. I personally don't agree with pirating anything because I figure every investment is a risk. All I can do is research(reviews, playing it with a friend etc) and if I like it great and if I don't well shit, I got burned. I dunno, maybe I am a bit off.

 

[TomWiley]

I think the problem is that there are no established rights when it comes to digital games. With the transition towards digital distribution, I think we need a some kind of foundation of digital rights; like:



you have the right to digitally purchase a game and have it tied to your account where you should be able to access it anywhere,
give away said game and..
digitally share it with, let's say, up to ten people on your friend's list?


I think 10 people is a decent limit; I've never been in a situation where I've wanted to share a game with more than ten people, and if you allowed people to share games with like a thousand friends, that system would be very easy to abuse.

Obviously, there ought to be some restrictions when it comes to sharing, because a system which allows you to just share a full copy of every game you buy to ten people is inherently broken.

So maybe some kind of time limit, like, let's say 45 minutes or so?

When it comes to used games, perhaps a system whereby the developers get a small percentage of each resell? It would allow consumers to sell used games as always, but some of the profit should actually go to the developers, rather than GameStop.

Yeah, I really think gamers would love such a system. After all, people seem more than happy with Steam which doesn't allow the user ANY of these rights mentioned.

 

[Entitled]

Gotta admit, ya lost me here. Are you saying that because it's available online it is ok to pirate it? In the example you gave, clearly there is no moral dilemma as you already own the game and were comfy, at least in my eyes its not a moral dilemma. You bought it, go ahead. But if you didn't already have a copy of the game is it the same thing? Sorry if I'm being thick, I haven't slept in a bit.

This post in itself wasn't a pro-piracy argument, the point with my example was simply to demonstrate that piracy is ridiculously easy, that there is not much practical difference between those who have already downloaded a game, and those who didn't do it yet, so you can't really say that pirating a game makes you less likely to buy it.

Compared to your friends not buying a game because they "already have a copy", and you not pirating it "because that would be immoral", you don't have a separate starting point from them.

If you wouldn't have your moral convictions, you would be practically as close to possessing the game as your friends, it's already there a click away. You haven't been paying for your games "because you have not pirated them", you have been paying for them because you chose to ignore the availabilty of pirated copies.

And vice versa, if your friends would feel the slightest bit of moral imulse to reward the publishers, then ignoring that the the copy on their hard drive is already there, wouldn't be much harder than not downloading it and then ignoring that the piratebay exists, and only buy it instead.

You say that it's "naive" to expect that people would buy a game after they have already downloaded it, but if that's true, then expecting people not to download a game in the first place is also naive, after all, the downloading itself is easily done.

 

[Silvanus]

Certainly that happens, I wasn't trying to say everyone acts the same way as my friend. What I was trying to say is that in my eyes the issue with piracy, particularly games, is fairly substantial. I personally don't agree with pirating anything because I figure every investment is a risk. All I can do is research(reviews, playing it with a friend etc) and if I like it great and if I don't well shit, I got burned. I dunno, maybe I am a bit off.

Now, as it happens, I don't pirate games, but I don't see a problem with it-- a lot of people simply can't afford to spend £30-£50 quid on a game every time. If they couldn't get it second hand/ borrowed/ pirated, they couldn't play it.

Every purchase is a risk, but it doesn't need to be.

 

[rasputin0009]

I just love how companies in the west have ingrained in their societies that pirating is 'morally wrong'.

Is it 'bad'? Yes, it's bad for the producer.

Ya, it's pretty funny. There was a commercial here in Canada that tried bringing attention to that pirating cable and satellite signals was wrong. And it backfired on the cable companies. Piracy increased tenfold after the commercial run because paying customers found out that they could stop paying.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Why?

There are also plenty of ways of "enjoying the fruits of other people's labour without paying", that are generally not considered immoral.

Living in a house that's property price just rose because the neighbor renovated his own house, improving the neighborhood's values.

Growing fruit trees right next to a bee farm.

Absorbing warmth through the floor from the heating of the apartment below yours.

Picking up a used newspaper from a café table that was intentionally left there.

Walking past a street musician without donating money.

Reading Wikipedia articles without donating to the big Jim Wales fact that appears time to time.


So if it's not the "enjoying the fruits of other people's labour without paying" part that makes piracy immoral than game borrowing, then what is it?

Many of those examples are incidental, in that you couldn't stop them from happening if you wanted to. Yet you should still feel grateful towards whoever it is you are benefiting from. If you met the person responsible, the polite thing to do would be to thank them or buy them a drink.

Then you have the act of piracy, which is a deliberate, conscious decision that goes directly against the interests of the person you should be grateful towards.
If someone creates something which you enjoy, and you choose to partake, the moral thing to do is pay them for it. Beyond that, you're just twisting logic to suit your own sense of, well, entitlement.

 

[Entitled]

Yeah, I really think gamers would love such a system. After all, people seem more than happy with Steam which doesn't allow the user ANY of these rights mentioned.

People are happy with Steam because it co-exists with piracy. All steam games can be infinitely shared, in case your Steam account gets lost, or steam goes bankrupt, and you could just crack the games you own, or redownload them from "other sites". It's just not... legal, but it's there, and it's a large part of how Steam is used.

For example, those ridiculous sales wouldn't need to happen if Steam would only be compeing with other stores, as opposed to begging for you to choose the official option.

 

[Fox12]

The primary reason is that only one friend can borrow from you at a time, and only people you know can borrow from you at all. The number of people who can borrow from you is very limited. Pirated data can be borrowed by an infinite number of people at any given time, from anywhere in the world, regardless of whether you know them at all. Theoretically, as long as one person owns the media, everyone else in the world could get it for free.

The problem is that one of the most basic foundations of economic theory is scarcity. The idea that people have infinite wants, but we only have enough resources to produce so much of something. Therefore pricing is based on how much of something there is, and how easy it is to obtain. For the first time in human history, however, we have completely gotten rid of scarcity. Digital media can have a limitless number of copies. How do we set prices, then? It's an answer that still isn't easy to answer, and no ones entirely sure where it's all headed.

Steam seems to understand these principles, and while other companies flounder around trying to figure out what to do, Steam has actually used all of this to its advantage. It is quite possible that they are the next stage in market evolution, but we will see.

 

[Entitled]

Many of those examples are incidental, in that you couldn't stop them from happening if you wanted to. Yet you should still feel grateful towards whoever it is you are benefiting from.

Many of them, but not all. The newspaper and wikipedia examples were selected to ensure that.

If you met the person responsible, the polite thing to do would be to thank them or buy them a drink.

And I'm willing to accept the same thing about gaming. If a developer has provided you enjoyment, you should do your best to either provide them their own choice of rewards, or at least otherwise be thankful.

However, just as many of my own examples can't be the basis of a formally enforced reward system, likewise the Internet is moving entertainment in a direction where the right to ban file-sharing is not a self-evident right that artists have, and they have to make do with a combination of respect, and alternate revenue models.

If someone creates something which you enjoy, and you choose to partake, the moral thing to do is pay them for it. Beyond that, you're just twisting logic to suit your own sense of, well, entitlement.

Well, yeah, I am entitled to some things.

For example, I feel entitled to wander around on the public streets and squares and parks freely. If a street fiddler would decide to try and lock down a large area with the justification that everyone walking past should be paying him for his music, then I would disagree, and walk past that street anyways, and even if it is a "deliberate, conscious decision that goes directly against the interests of him", then too bad, there is a limit to how much you get to limit others freedom of movement for your own benefit.

The Internet is not dissimilar from this analogy. It's a public area, where we share and access information. If some businesses start to lock down large segments of it, well, that might be necessary for our own good, but only in balance with our own rights... entitlements, if you will.

It's not even that much of twisted concept, after all, even copyright law acknowledges concepts like the Public Domain, the Fair Use doctrine, and the First Sale Doctrine, that are limiting whether publishers can still ask for payment in the face of some other public interests.

Well, my own sense of entitlemets are larger than what current U.S. copyright law acknowledges, I believe that the current law is skewered against the public's and the individual's fredoms in favor of corporate benefits.

 

[kenu12345]

*sigh* Its one of these thread again. Alright generic reply a go go. Video Games aren't something you NEED thus you are never entitled to them. They are a private product that is sold to you. When you buy a copy of a game you are given the rights to that ONE game. The right to copy said game still rests with either the maker or the publisher. Thats why its wrong because you are going beyond your rights and the creators rights. and blah blah Im done. Like entirely I don't feel like getting trolled about this so bye

 

[rob_simple]

Sort of jumping off the opening post, what's the moral difference between pirating a film or music, and taping it from the tv or radio?

Well again it depends what you personally plan to do with it, once you've taped it. If you just keep it to watch yourself, fair enough, if you want to rationalise it the TV station will have paid a sum for the rights to broadcast it so the publisher still gets their cut, but pirates make copies and then distribute them for profit on a massive scale; making a fortune in the process.

They did try to combat home-taping several times (I remember Sky Box Office used to have a weird thing where if you taped what you were watching the picture got all fucked up; don't know if they still have that feature) but, to be honest I think internet piracy has changed a lot, because now people aren't profiting from piracy in the way they used to, but companies are still losing money so they are still trying to fight it in every instance.

OT: Scale, is what the difference is. This is another example of people only seeing their individual situation and not looking at the bigger picture.

If I loan a game to my friend, then fair enough that is one sale the company loses. If I rip it and put it up online for anyone to download, that is potentially thousands of sales the company loses.

The difference seems painfully obvious to me.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

its called first sales doctrine, when you buy a product you have a right to do virtually anything to it EXCEPT clone its patented parts. You cant pull your washing machine apart to see how LG made it and then clone it and sell it and you cant give them away either, that's piracy. However you can do whatever you want with YOUR washing machine, you can use it yourself, you can have friends come over and use it, you can loan it out to friends, you paid for it and its yours to do as you see fit. The same goes for a game, you bought this copy and you can do anything you like with it

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Gotta admit, ya lost me here. Are you saying that because it's available online it is ok to pirate it? In the example you gave, clearly there is no moral dilemma as you already own the game and were comfy, at least in my eyes its not a moral dilemma. You bought it, go ahead. But if you didn't already have a copy of the game is it the same thing? Sorry if I'm being thick, I haven't slept in a bit.

This post in itself wasn't a pro-piracy argument, the point with my example was simply to demonstrate that piracy is ridiculously easy, that there is not much practical difference between those who have already downloaded a game, and those who didn't do it yet, so you can't really say that pirating a game makes you less likely to buy it.

Compared to your friends not buying a game because they "already have a copy", and you not pirating it "because that would be immoral", you don't have a separate starting point from them.

If you wouldn't have your moral convictions, you would be practically as close to possessing the game as your friends, it's already there a click away. You haven't been paying for your games "because you have not pirated them", you have been paying for them because you chose to ignore the availabilty of pirated copies.

And vice versa, if your friends would feel the slightest bit of moral imulse to reward the publishers, then ignoring that the the copy on their hard drive is already there, wouldn't be much harder than not downloading it and then ignoring that the piratebay exists, and only buy it instead.

You say that it's "naive" to expect that people would buy a game after they have already downloaded it, but if that's true, then expecting people not to download a game in the first place is also naive, after all, the downloading itself is easily done.

Why? why should publishers or developers be entitled to anything after you have bought your copy even if you chose to resell it? Does toyota get a cut if I decide to sell my car? First sales principle

 

[Entitled]

Why? why should publishers or developers be entitled to anything after you have bought your copy even if you chose to resell it? Does toyota get a cut if I decide to sell my car? First sales principle

I think you have misunderstood my post or misquoted the wrong one, because that one didn't say anything about secondhand sales.

But to answer your question...


The First sale doctrine doesn't apply to a Toyota. A Toyota doesn't even need a special a First sale doctrine, because with physical property, as the saying goes, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Who owns what property, is largely defined by who would have possessed it otherwise, outside of the law.

The same doesn't apply to intellectual property, which is not a property law, but a monopolistic market regulation. It consists not of someone possessing a game and stopping others from taking it away, but someone gathering information (knowledge), and having the authority to stop certain other people from reading the same information.

Exactly which people are forbidden from reading or writing down that information and to what extent? That depends on exactly how far the publisher's monopoly is written to extend.

And that's why copyright needs it's special First sale doctrine.

Copyright is not analogous to property. It's not something that first existed and then we wrote laws to protect it, but an entirely separate thing that we created by laws, to provide certain workers an extra economical benefit.

It has no necessary reason to be similar to a sale of objects, especially in aspects when it functions entirely differently from objects. If corporations want to lobby for more monopolies over the public's access to their ideas, they already have all the theoretical justification to do so, just as piracy decriminalization has all the practical justification by claiming that file-sharing bans aren't providing a NECESSARY economical benefit.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

Basically, borrowing tends to mean money was passed off in some situation to purchase the game originally, therefor supporting the ones who made it financially. Even if only a little bit.

Piracy doesn't really have that. Not to mention borrowed games only have one copy, and isn't duplicated en mass.

 

[V8 Ninja]

There isn't any difference in that both scenarios (borrowing and pirating) mean at least one person is playing a game that they did not personally pay for.

True, but you're removing the element of context from this situation. In one scenario, the product has been fully paid for and only one individual can use it at a time. In the other, the product may have been paid for but also is being used by several thousands of people, potentially all at the same time. If you abstract actions from their context, you can make any comparison/argument. For example; killing an individual. Killing that guy who pissed you off one time is vastly different than killing Hitler, but they both fall under the same category of "Murder". Now tell me; which one would be worse? If we were to abstract the situation the result would be that neither would be better than the other. However, context says differently.