Current Events > I have never seen a good argument for why "piracy" is immoral.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Tyranthraxus posted...

It does not. It's still stealing.

Note: stealing is not always immoral. Though it usually is in the case of video games.

what was stolen?
it wasn't a sell as you just admitted.

it wasn't an experience, because they didn't play the game

It has to be separated into 2 categories. New and Old. I use video games as an example, since we are on a video game site. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft won't always port their older titles to newer consoles. They have gotten even worse with backwards compatibility of much older content.

Newer stuff I won't pirate. I might wait a few months for the price to drop, but I won't pirate.

Older stuff, say... 20 years ago, I would gladly pirate. Those big companies aren't making money off of them anymore, and most of the stuff they don't give a damn about, like Terranigma which never came out in America.

IIRC TC is still in college. Hes still got a lot of maturing to do clearly.

I'll never understand the attitude of entitlement and selfishness on CE. Landlords are evil, asking for money in exchange for a product is immoral, etc. etc.

You can tell who works for it and who doesn't.

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WingsOfGood posted...

what was stolen?

The game itself.

WingsOfGood posted...

it wasn't a sell as you just admitted.

it wasn't an experience, because they didn't play the game

Doesn't matter. If you took something that didn't belong to you, then you stole. Doesn't matter if it's literally not worth anything. Doesn't matter if it's non functional.

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Guide posted...

This topic is so fucking tired.

The intent of production is often income.
If you do not contribute income, you are reducing projected value.

I won't say this is always immoral, but I can give an example that most would agree is immoral: indie devs. Like, real indie devs, starting from scratch, no starting capital. Paying for dev costs out of pocket, inflicting crunch upon themselves, living on cup ramen, with the intent of making money off of the product they create.

The product has projected value to them. They put real, non-duplicable resources, as in time and effort, into the product.

There is no situation where you can reduce somebody's "projected income" except by not being part of the demographic expected to buy the product. The task of projecting how many sales a game might get is the burden of the creator, not consumers. Someone else laboring unilaterally without your input cannot, under any circumstance, compel you to later compensate them.

I've said in this topic before: refusing to treat IP law as a sacred foundation of society may weaken the feasibility of selling digital commodities, but it is not worth twisting reality to suit the needs of commodity consumption.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

I'll never understand the attitude of entitlement and selfishness on CE. Landlords are evil, asking for money in exchange for a product is immoral, etc. etc.

You can tell who works for it and who doesn't.

actually pretty sure some of the guys I am arguing with dislike landlords whereas I think they have a right to use their property as they see fit

Tyranthraxus posted...

The game itself.

the game was not played.

for example, if you later decide "I want to play that game" and you erased the copy
you will need to buy it

so you cannot argue the game was stolen if they did not play it

Doe posted...

Protip: laws don't determine morality. It is trivially true that piracy is illegal (in the US). That says nothing about whether piracy is somehow "wrong."

Would you download a car?

WingsOfGood posted...

the game was not played.

for example, if you later decide "I want to play that game" and you erased the copy
you will need to buy it

so you cannot argue the game was stolen if they did not play it

Yes I can. Because stealing only requirement is that you take something. You don't have to use it. It does not have to be usable. It does not have to be worth anything. If it doesn't belong to you and you take it without permission, that's stealing.

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Doe posted...

The task of projecting how many sales a game might get is the burden of the creator, not consumers. Someone else laboring unilaterally without your input cannot, under any circumstance, compel you to later compensate them.

Great point.

Infact, we see publishers whine when games are not bought as if they were entitled to people buying them. I am not talking piracy here but they make a game and feel wronged when it is not purchased.

Tyranthraxus posted...

The game itself.

So if they check their inventory, they will find that it is short by 1?
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Not only are you stealing something, you're stealing something that is in no way, shape or form essential

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Machete posted...

So if they check their inventory, they will find that it is short by 1?

No. Stealing does not require the original item to be removed or displaced. Only taken.

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WingsOfGood posted...

I go to the library. Someone downloaded the full game of Cyberpunk.
I play it for 100s of hours.

Did I steal?

If you are aware that the copy of the game was stolen, then you are violating the owner's IP, yes. Call it stealing or piracy of trespassing or whatever you want, the word itself is not what's important.

With that said, a fundamental basis of trade law allows the sharing of goods, such as a piece of media, as long as the shared good cannot be exploited by two different consumers at the same time in two separate instances. For physical goods this is a physical law (I can't use the same hammer in two different countries at the same time), but for intellectual properties it gets more complicated. This is a point of ethical ambiguity to be blunt, but the basis for this as a matter of basic human hospitality extends as far back as humans have existed, so legal systems do not typically try to infringe upon this right. Vis a vis, as long as the purchased media license, such as a movie or video game, cannot be consumed at the same type in two separate instances, it's not a copyright infringement. This is why it's fine to watch a movie with a friend in your living room, but it is not okay to stream a movie to other people over the internet. The legal system, like in most matters where you start looking REALLY closely, then needs to define lots of parameters through years of case laws to work out what the reasonable limit to their "instances" might be.

The rise of legal complexity is often seen as the outcome of ethically-ill-founded laws, but the fact that legal nuance is developed over time does not invalidate the ethical basis of the law. It is the nature of all things to have unseen complexity far beyond what humans can anticipate and record, and it exists for even the most straight-forward seeming laws like Murder or Theft.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Because stealing only requirement is that you take something.

Copying is not taking. this was explained many times and you tried to explain how it was.
Now, since that failed, you just default back to this.

1. They retain the IP. No IP is exchanged during piracy.
2. There is no inventory loss.
3. Games are not a thing that can be exchanged. Even legally buying a game does not give you the game. So copying it cannot do that either.
4. What could be stolen is the experience of the game yet you argue it is ok to lend a legal game to thousands of people to not pay for that experience. You even argue someone experiencing the game from an illegal copy is fine as long as they weren't the one to download it.

WingsOfGood posted...

Copying is not taking

Yes it is. End of story.

Rest of your post is void because it's based on fundamentally false axioms.


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Tyranthraxus posted...

Yes it is. End of story.

Rest of your post is void because it's based on fundamentally false axioms.

Do you own the game when you buy it?

WingsOfGood posted...

Copying is not taking.

"I didn't take the book they'd been working on, your honor, I just broke into their apartment and got on their laptop and downloaded a copy of it."

-guy on trial for stealing

Tyranthraxus posted...

No. Stealing does not require the original item to be removed or displaced. Only taken.

If it's only just taken, then all we need is someone with a very particular set of skills...
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The answer is you don't own games when you buy them.

Therefore you cannot own a game by copying it. Then you did not take the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IlFt2eMUsA

WingsOfGood posted...

Do you own the game when you buy it?

You own a licensed right to your copy of the game for a digital purchase.

You own the entire physical medium for a physical one but not the license.

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tote_all posted...

So... if the ride isn't full, it's okay to sneak in for free in your mind?

No, the owner can always kick you out because land is a quantifiable, physical, limited thing. It has nothing to do with whether you're enjoying the exhibit. You might not even know it's a museum, you just wandered in drunk looking for a bathroom, the owner can still ask you to leave even if you're not taking in the galleries and exhibits.

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WingsOfGood posted...

what was stolen?

Tyranthraxus posted...

You own a licensed right to your copy of the game for a digital purchase.

So you did not steal "the game itself".

WingsOfGood posted...

The answer is you don't own games when you buy them.

Just because you misunderstand what part you own doesn't mean you can't take it.

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WingsOfGood posted...

So you did not steal "the game itself".

yes you did. The item you acquire through a legal transaction is not the same as the one acquired through an illegal download.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Just because you misunderstand what part you own doesn't mean you can't take it.

It is you who misunderstood as you think the game is something that can be taken when it cannot even be taken by purchase.

tote_all posted...

The same mind that things something isn't immoral solely because it is different from theft.

The initial claim by anti-pirates is typically that piracy is wrong because it's theft. The assertion of wrongness comes those opposed to it, not the pro-pirates trying to revel in evil or something.
It's already been refuted that piracy is the theft of an object.
Its now on you to show that piracy is immoral for some other reason.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

The item you acquire through a legal transaction is not the same as the one acquired through an illegal download.

do you misunderstand what the word copy means also?

what is the pirated download a copy of?

Doe posted...

The initial claim by anti-pirates is typically that piracy is wrong because it's theft. The assertion of wrongness comes those opposed to it, not the pro-pirates trying to revel in evil or something.
It's already been refuted that piracy is the theft of an object.
Its now on you to show that piracy is immoral for some other reason.

Piracy is theft but it is not wrong because it is theft. That is an appeal to law fallacy. It is wrong for different reasons. It just also happens to be theft.

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WingsOfGood posted...

what was stolen?
it wasn't a sell as you just admitted.

it wasn't an experience, because they didn't play the game

Again, it's not about the deprivation of profit. It's the violation of the creator's ownership of the property. Someone could make a game, put it on Steam for free, then someone else could download the source code and publish the game but sell it for $5.00 on Steam instead, and it would still be a violation of the ownership of the IP.

The owner of the property has sole discretion as to the exploitation of the intellectual property they create. It doesn't matter what the owner's intent is. If they want it to be free, cost $1,000, be sold for $5 in China but free in Canada, if they want only 1,000 people to be able to buy a copy, whatever the OWNER desires for the property is the legal and ethical parameter by which is can be licensed and consumed.

The creator of the property, ethically, has sole discretion as to its exploitation upon creation. Anything else is a violation of the social contract under which the property was created.

I will say, I do believe it is possible to make an argument about the ethics of communal ownership, but that is a much different discussion and video game piracy would be far from the first of topics that would need to be discussed to make that argument.

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Imagine being an engineer who built a bridge, and then started accusing everyone who used the bridge of stealing because they didn't pay for crossing

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scar the 1 posted...

Imagine being an engineer who built a bridge, and then started accusing everyone who used the bridge of stealing because they didn't pay for crossing

Imagine not knowing that toll bridges exist.

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Pogo_Marimo posted...

someone else could download the source code

That is not the same thing.
A pirated cyberpunk is not the source code that got leaked.

Talking source code is getting to the ACTUAL game that Tyran tries to claim was taken.

Since they don't sell you the source code and this discussion is what they sell, that is a license, you aren't stealing the game normally as you would not be getting the source code.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Imagine not knowing that toll bridges exist.

He does. But if you didn't pay the toll did you steal the bridge?

Tenlaar posted...

You're struggling with the morality of "stealing is bad?"

Better than what we've seen you struggle with.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

Imagine not knowing that toll bridges exist.

Do the toll fees go to the engineers? Are people who sneak past without paying thieves?

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WingsOfGood posted...

That is not the same thing.
A pirated cyberpunk is not the source code that got leaked.

Talking source code is getting to the ACTUAL game that Tyran tries to claim was taken.

Since they don't sell you the source code and this discussion is what they sell, that is a license, you aren't stealing the game normally as you would not be getting the source code.

No the source code is distinct from the game. Stealing the source code and stealing the game are two different acts.

Besides plenty of people do sell the source code.

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scar the 1 posted...

Imagine being an engineer who built a bridge, and then started accusing everyone who used the bridge of stealing because they didn't pay for crossing

What a shit analogy. The engineer designed that bridge knowing it was for public use and was paid under those circumstances.
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voldothegr8 posted...

What a shit analogy. The engineer designed that bridge knowing it was for public use and was paid under those circumstances.

Feel like you're missing the point but ok

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Besides plenty of people do sell the source code.

That would be stealing the game.
What you are confusing is thinking a license = the game.
It doesn't. We don't get sold ownership of our games. You don't own any game.

So serious question, when I was a kid, I recorded all of the X-Men and TMNT cartoons on VHS so I could own them and watch them when I wanted to. They released those seasons for purchase on VHS also. Did I steal them because I didn't buy those seasons and instead recorded it myself? I'm not debating if piracy is theft, I believe it is, but i'm now curious about this scenario because wasn't recording things on VHS basically piracy before the internet?

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MabusIncarnate posted...

So serious question, when I was a kid, I recorded all of the X-Men and TMNT cartoons on VHS so I could own them and watch them when I wanted to. They released those seasons for purchase on VHS also. Did I steal them because I didn't buy those seasons and instead recorded it myself? I'm not debating if piracy is theft, I believe it is, but i'm now curious about this scenario because wasn't recording things on VHS basically piracy before the internet?

That is actually illegal to do fyi and piracy.

WingsOfGood posted...

He does. But if you didn't pay the toll did you steal the bridge?

If ai stole bridges, I would sell them to people on CE and would offer a special deal... buy 1, get as many more as you want at full price.
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is buying used games illegal? after all you're enjoying their work without giving them a single dime

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Why are people still arguing the semantics of being able to steal a non-physical object or not (besides trolling, probably nothing...)

Funding has to come from somewhere, creating games isn't free. And no, it doesn't matter if the "devs get paid beforehand", because that money still has to come from the company, which gets it's money from sales. They key here is that the company is taking a risk/investment by spending money to make the game, in hopes that they will be recuperated. If nobody pays for the experience of playing the game, the company will have to shut down and stop making stuff, or, as mentioned previously, the indie dev heading the project might be finantially ruined themselves.

Basically, the only ways piracy could be seen as moral is if you think that people shouldn't be paid for the effort of making a game, or if they should be paid in another way besides sales.... Obviously, people should be paid for their hard work, and while other ways of paying them as you mentioned might be feasible such as pubic arts funding, that's not the system in place to pay them and you don't organize studios/make laws, so you don't get to decide how creators are funded. Instead of pirating games, make your voice heard and advocate for alternate funding, but don't disrespect the work that went into a game; it doesn't do anything to help.

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WingsOfGood posted...

That is actually illegal to do fyi and piracy.

But every VCR sold had a recording option and you could buy blank tapes everywhere. I thought it was only illegal if you recorded it and sold it, or recorded it and broadcasted it for profit.

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WingsOfGood posted...

That would be stealing the game.
What you are confusing is thinking a license = the game.
It doesn't. We don't get sold ownership of our games. You don't own any game.

When you buy a game you're buying a license that authorizes you to create a copy of the game for your personal use. Ergo you are still taking the game but now you have permission to do it, so you are not stealing.

If you do not buy the license, then you do not have permission, and you are therefore taking the game without permission and thus stealing.

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