Is Piracy Stealing?

[Chinaux]

Not much else to add to this, do you consider it stealing? Personally I don't think it should be considered stealing but I think it's immoral although it's not a big deal to me but as an artist I could see why it's such a problem for them.
What do you think?

 

[Sehnsucht]

I figure piracy would by definition be an act of theft -- because usually, the owner(s) of the copyrighted material won't be inclined to distribute their stuff without making some profit (and piracy involves the distribution and acquisition of copyrighted material(s) without paying for it, which is theft).

I don't know much about the numbers behind piracy, but I would further imagine that it gets more problematic the more people do it. If 100-150 people pirate your stuff for every several thousand, then financial loss is negligible. If 10,000-15,000 people pirate your stuff, then the loss is a few fold greater. And so it goes. The controversy around piracy is only a thing because many people engage in it and facilitate distribution of this material (through P2P networks and so on).

Clearly, the cause of piracy is twofold: lack of access, and lack of funds. For the former, this includes stuff that isn't otherwise available in your country/region, or that you couldn't acquire it any other way but through piracy. Or, for exclusive services (like a show on a cable network that you don't or can't subscribe to, so it's beyond your access). For the latter, well, if you don't have the money to get stuff, or the stuff would otherwise be too costly for you (think expensive programs), then piracy provides an appealing alternative.

As for ethics, I'm inclined to want to support the people who make stuff I like. I'm just one person, so if I pirate something, the net loss is negligible; the issue is that I'm not the only one who would be pirating. For huge properties and franchises, this may be less of a problem, but it can be an issue for smaller properties, or properties for which their creators don't make much as a rule to begin with.

As such, I have no moral quandary with piracy. It's just a matter of what you prioritize -- that is, whether you care more about getting the thing you want, or whether you want to support that thing's creator. It's a matter of considering the variables and consequences of one's actions.

There's also the illegality of piracy. In the event you get caught, legal repercussions will ensue (the nature of which dependent on your jurisdiction). The likelihood of this happening is fairly low, however, because (IIRC) so many people pirate, and P2P networks and the like are hard to crack down on. So there's also that to think about.

Myself, I try to not pirate if I can. I'll either buy the things I wish to have, or will resort to freeware and other such things. Nowadays, I rip music straight from YouTube, if I want to get a random tune (for albums as a whole that I like, I try to eventually buy a copy, and used ripped songs in the interim to keep me placated).

So in all, I suppose I have an amoral stance toward piracy. I'm not actively for it, in that I'd only use it when there aren't any alternatives, but I'm not outright against it, either.

 

[Thor]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piracy

: an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2
: robbery on the high seas
3
a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
b : the illicit accessing of broadcast signals

Yes, it's theft - you are taking something someone else owns without their permission. [You can search theft/stealing if need be, but I think it's generally accepted that those words mean "to take something that is the property of someone else without their permission."]

I personally do not ever pirate or torrent anything - the closest I have come to piracy would be my dad occasionally borrowing DVDs from the library and burning them to home disks - which is a legal grey area [or was at the time, I haven't kept up with that legal discussion if it has since been resolved - he did this in like 2004 so it has been a while] because he could theoretically just borrow the same DVD over and over again to achieve the same result, and he never distributed what he burned to a disk (that is, it was only for us to watch).

I am also against pirating things, but I don't feel like going into why ("stealing is wrong" + "integrity - even if no one knows" is the basis of it).

 

[Chinaux]

theoretically just borrow the same DVD over and over again to achieve the same result, and he never distributed what he burned to a disk

What makes this any downloading music onto my phone instead of youtubing it? Technically since it's on youtube, downloading is the same thing as listening to it on there, right?

I dunno, this is why I made this thread. Theft and piracy are really vague on terms of if one is the other and vice versa.

 

[Thor]

What makes this any downloading music onto my phone instead of youtubing it? Technically since it's on youtube, downloading is the same thing as listening to it on there, right?

I dunno, this is why I made this thread. Theft and piracy are really vague on terms of if one is the other and vice versa.

Legal grey area as well I think. Unless the law changed in the last 10 years (I didn't look it up).

And there are some things that are not on Youtube but are taken anyway - I think that's more clearly piracy/theft.

For what it's worth, I think copying things off Netflix is also a grey area - you are paying for it, but only for as long as you'd pay for Netflix... hm... though I personally would not copy something off of Netflix, I would be surprised if no one had done so, and I wonder what that should be categorized as...

 

[Claire Diviner]

Lawfully speaking, piracy is theft. I mean, the term "piracy" is derived from "pirate", and what did pirates do? Sailed the seas and pillage every ship they can for goods, including money.

On a moral scale, it varies with the individual. Piracy, if caught in the act, can result in prison time and fines that will require a lifetime to pay off (unless you're rich, but then why pirate things anyway?), so even if someone feels it isn't stealing, the law still defines it as such.

Despite the risks, people constantly do it, and I mean thousands of people in the U.S. How well the law is enforced is beyond me, since there's only so many people they can catch and arrest, and there isn't enough prison space to store every single pirate (never mind the killers, pedophiles, etc.) behind bars. I'm guessing they only look at very "high profile" items being pirated and more importantly, being distributed/sold, whatever said items may be.

Yes, there's music on YouTube, but unless it's uploaded by a verified account that has copyright claims or permissions, the ones who upload them will oftentimes get their videos taken down. In the case of either, however, it wouldn't matter, since whether we listen to music via a verified uploader or some random mook, the result is still the same, and we, the viewer, wouldn't be in any legal trouble, so as Thor stated, there are grey areas to piracy and its rules.

 

[lusterkid]

I won't say I've never done it. However I feel sort of bad for pirating because it's essentially neglecting the fact that people put actual work (maybe not effort) into something and regardless of how good or bad it is, it's still that persons property. It's unfair to them and even the smaller person who maybe just did the editing. That's their income and so even if other people are paying them you should too.

 

[Chinaux]

Sometimes I think of this when people say piracy hurts artists.

I mean it's true, but still.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/103759/not-a-big-deal

 

[Sucumbio]

If your music is popular enough that it's getting pirated i wouldn't complain cause it means you're a rockstar anyway so whatever. Like when lars from Metallica cried like a baby over napster. He was already a millionaire wtf is a few grand. He could wipe his ass with the amount of money he was losing. Besides most artists make their money on stage, album sales are less than 25 percent of total profits.

The only exception to that is online only artists such as myself. I use iTunes cdbaby etc. But i also provide my music for free download. It's not a money making venture. If i ever do perform live then that's where the $ will be made.

 

[Sehnsucht]

The only exception to that is online only artists such as myself. I use iTunes cdbaby etc. But i also provide my music for free download. It's not a money making venture. If i ever do perform live then that's where the $ will be made.

What kind of music do you make, DJ Sucumbro? Got any links? 8)

 

[Sucumbio]

Electronica yo the only way to fly.

Links... Shortly to follow, lost my server but have a... Cloud... Thing now. Just gotta get around to uploading lol

 

[Xivii]

First we need to refine the question being asked here, because the most prominently used definition of 'piracy' is in fact a synonym for 'stealing'. The definition of piracy we are using for this discussion, I would say, is the one that Thor pointed out:

a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright

Furthermore, the question being asked here is not whether piracy is considered stealing as defined by the law. Of course it. What is being asked is whether or not it should be considered stealing in terms of the law. And the answer to that is no. This is the case whether the question is being asked from a moral standpoint, social standpoint, or market standpoint.

There are two basic sides to the moral standpoint:

Those who argue that piracy is immoral make the claim that a person has a right to reap the rewards from their hard work. That is, a person who has taken the time to come up with and implement an idea should have the exclusive capability to sell and authorize distribution of the idea. If a person did not have exclusive rights, they would be at a disadvantage to competitors. A competitor could sell the idea at a lower price than the original creator because the original creator must cover for the costs of producing the work. It of course takes time to create a work, but it often takes financial investment as well. From a moral standpoint, it would be unfair for someone else to make the gains of someone else's labor.

I will deconstruct this moral argument while also arguing the opposite: that claims of intellectual property are actually immoral (or rather unethical) claims.

First of all, this entire viewpoint is unjustified, because ideas are not centralized, tangible objects. They cannot be owned and their origins cannot be allocated to a single human being. While it can be proven that an idea was expressed by one individual before another, it can not be proven that an idea originated in one person before another. Any number of people can think of the same idea exact idea or versions of the same idea at the same time and in different locations and by different means. The concept that a person should be able to reap the rewards from their labor makes sense with tangible objects, not intangible ideas. For example: a farmer who preps his land, plants his seeds, waters his plants, and harvests his crops should have the right to sell and distribute his crops without worrying about someone coming to steal and sell his crops. However, the man the comes up with the idea to prep his land, plant seeds, water, and harvest crops should not have the right to deny others' capability of doing so. If a person is incapable of making a living by selling intangible content, that is their burden; the consequence of choosing an unrealistic business model.

Secondly, all ideas are combinations, modifications, or replications of past ideas. No idea is 100% original. Everything you can possibly think of is the result of past experience. If intellectual property law were to remain true to its foundation, then every single person who has made money off of anything should have to pay royalties to someone(s). Ideas are constantly improved upon and no single person or institution should have the right to them. What we know as farming today did not just suddenly spring into an individuals mind. It is the result of over a dozen millennia's worth of modifications and observations. Intellectual property makes the claim that an individual is entirely responsible for an idea. This is simply not true, and merely the result of human greed. It is unethical, as it denies others' the ability to produce and modify works that are based on ideas they have equal right to use, even when it is a matter of livelihood.

This post is long enough. I'll leave it at this for now and argue the social and market standpoints at a later time. I'd like to note that when I speak of intellectual property, I speak in regards to both copyright law and patent law. There are other forms a law that are generally placed under intellectual property as well (trade mark law, publicity rights, etc), but they do not have the same constitutional or economic basis. I would actually argue that trade mark law is necessary, but I'll get to that in the economic/social well-fair post. Basically, though, attribution law (governing plagiarism) is not the same as copyright and patent law.

Also if anyone hasn't seen this, I'd recommend taking out the time to do so: Everything is a Remix, by Kirby Ferguson. It really puts things in perspective when it comes to copyright and intellectual property.

 

[Sehnsucht]

^^Good points, though I would think that when it comes to entertainment media (which is the crux of the Great Piracy Debate), the physical effort in producing the media may deserve some compensation, even if the intangible ideas themselves don't.

So perhaps piracy is irrelevant when it comes to the idea of a movie, for instance, but may be relevant insofar as the cost of producing that movie are involved (filming, casting, SFX, distribution, etc.). The same might be said for music, for television, for books, and for games, concerning the cost of production, and not the compensation for the intellectual output.

In such a case, it would seem to fall into your distinction between piracy and theft. To "pirate" a movie, for instance, would not be an act of "piracy" (lack of compensation for the idea of the movie's narrative), but an act of theft (lack of compensation for the physical labour cost in the production and distribution of the movie proper).

Would you say that this an accurate embodiment of your above deliberations, @ Xivii ?

 

[BombsOnBombs]

It's stealing if the product is still being monetized. For instance, I wouldn't judge someone for pirating old Gameboy games on their flash card because those game designers aren't being paid royalties on their product anymore since it isn't sold new, but that's kind of the only time I feel that it's okay. Is it still technically theft? Yeah, probably, but it's only hurting resellers at that point and honestly I'm okay with that. They put in a lot less work than the original artist did.

 

[SilentBob]

Piracy is not stealing. Before anyone gets all up in arms about this, allow me to explain.

First of all, what is stealing?

steal
/stēl/
take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

Now to take someone else's property requires you to take something of his, without consent and without the intention of returning it to the owner. Therefore it requires you to take something away from the owner causing him to no longer have access to it. When you pirate something, nothing is stolen. Piracy creates a copy of the data from someone else's possession without destroying the original copy. Let's say you pirate a movie. There isn't a copy being destroyed and there isn't money taken away from the owner's bank account. The only thing arguable in court is the fact that it's a "lost sale". But in the end, what contributes to a "lost sale"? You could be waiting for two years for a movie to released after it's been announced and if the trailers make the movie look like complete crap you might not even see it. That in itself contributes to a "lost sale".

Piracy is copyright infringement. What does it mean? It means you're taking someone's creation (music, movie, video game, comic, book, etc) and creating a copy of it that wasn't approved by it's creator with possibly the intent of distributing it. Does this remind you of anything? In the physical world this is called counterfeiting which is completely different than stealing but is also illegal and has it's own set of laws. The only difference is that you cannot be arrested or fined for creating a counterfeit of something just for yourself, such as a t-shirt, a bag or making a copy of a toy by hand, while the opposite will happen if you pirate data.

Morals and values aside, I've made this post as objective as possible without injecting any personal opinions about it.

 

[Xivii]

^^Good points, though I would think that when it comes to entertainment media (which is the crux of the Great Piracy Debate), the physical effort in producing the media may deserve some compensation, even if the intangible ideas themselves don't.

So perhaps piracy is irrelevant when it comes to the idea of a movie, for instance, but may be relevant insofar as the cost of producing that movie are involved (filming, casting, SFX, distribution, etc.). The same might be said for music, for television, for books, and for games, concerning the cost of production, and not the compensation for the intellectual output.

In such a case, it would seem to fall into your distinction between piracy and theft. To "pirate" a movie, for instance, would not be an act of "piracy" (lack of compensation for the idea of the movie's narrative), but an act of theft (lack of compensation for the physical labour cost in the production and distribution of the movie proper).

Would you say that this an accurate embodiment of your above deliberations, @ Xivii ?

I would argue that when it comes to digital content/content that can potentially be digitized, it is impractical to enforce compensation rights. As SilentBob pointed out, to pirate digital content is to copy, not to steal. DC contains properties that are closer to ideas themselves than to tangible creations.

If you steal a farmer's crops, he is actually losing something. If you copy an artist's song, he does not lose anything tangible. The counter to this would be that when paying for DC, one isn't paying for a product, but rather for a service--as you said, the physical effort. There is a civil contract that is assumed between service providers and customers. One is expected to pay their barber for the haircut they received or their doctor for their treatment. While not paying for the service received isn't technically stealing a physical object from a service provider, one is still exhausting physical labor and depleting physical resources.

There's no doubt that people should be paid for their services, but who dictates the means, source, and amount of payment has always been an issue. Even so, it is fairly practical to enforce payment standards when dealing with non-digital services. Most of the time, the expenses incurred for providing a service to an individual can be accurately calculated. Even situations where there are no legal obligations for a customer to pay for a service (such as tipping a waiter) can be reasonably fixed (including tip in the bill).

DC differs from non-digital services in one basic way: lack of scarcity. Unlike a haircut from a barber or surgery by a surgeon, an artist need only produce their work once to reach an infinite amount of consumers. Once a work is produced, a practically infinite number of copies can be made and be viewed or listened to practically anywhere by anyone. There is no scarcity involved. The laws of supply and demand do not apply to DC. No matter how great the demand, the supply will never deplete.

Enforcing compensation for an artist's labor by everyone who uses their creation is simply not practical. As for whether or not an artist deserves compensation? I would also say no. Don't get me wrong, I feel that people should pay for works of art and entertainment that they value if they can, but I do not feel that they should have to. I do not feel that one would be in the wrong for not doing so, and I do not feel that an artist necessarily deserves payment for a creation. As I said, if an artist fails to profit from their venture, that is their burden. If it is not a feasible means of profit, then that is that. It may be a harsh reality, but it is reality. There is no moral code that states that an artist has the right to make money off of their work.

That being said, I do not believe that even without copyright law, people would fail to support artists. The evidence shows otherwise. There is a great abundance of media today, and studies show that people are willing to pay for things they value if they have the means of doing so. While it is true that people do not pay for all the media they consume, they pay for more media in general than they did before the mainstream internet. In fact, studies have shown that people who pirate media tend to pay for more media than those who do not pirate. This is likely because pirates tend to be larger media consumers overall; so even though they do not pay for all of their content, they spend more on media in general.

 

[Sehnsucht]

Thanks for that. I'm tragically uninformed on matters of economics, and have never considered the theft-copying distinction in any significant depth when it comes to piracy, so the contributions being made in this thread are fairly enlightening.

On the whole, this is all sensible stuff. Even I noted in my first post above that piracy has no moral value; it's all about whether you care about supporting the content creators or not. As you note, most reasonable people are inclined to want to support the things they like however they can, so I agree that we could expect that in the absence of copyright laws, support would continue (I know I would, whenever finances would permit).

I think we're broadly on the same page, then, even if I'm less informed and sourced. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I've always had these broad views on the matter, and yourself and the others above have articulated them in greater clarity. 8)

 

[Chinaux]

I just thought of something.

You're not taking the actual item. You're making a copy of it for yourself, and technically that's not stealing. It's like someone bought something then remade that item x amount of times and gave it away for free.

 

[Sucumbio]

That's what silent bob said ohhbhb icwhutudidthar.

 

[Chinaux]

That's what silent bob said ohhbhb icwhutudidthar.

Oh. Well I guess my post would be the tldr version then. I reread it now that I'm fully awake and I basically repeated what he said haha.

 

[Sucumbio]

It's cool it happens.

I think about this topic often because i use thepiratebay and when i do i think hm should I be paying? Back when it was jusy vinyl records only, if you lost a record, or it was damaged, boo hoo on you, you Had to go and get another copy. Cassettes changed that. Suddenly you could get your friend to dub their copy and voila. Making the replacement vinyl unnecessary though aficionados and purists blah blah want the real deal. And trust me the cassette industry got fought hard bu vinyl but if you can't beat em, join em. That's how you stay in business. So vinyl labels issued cassette versions! Fast forward to today we're still fighting over copyright as in the right to make duplicates. It'll never be okay in some people's eyes but for more and more, like myself, it Is okay copy all you want.

Just don't plagiarize.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Personally, I do see it as a form of theft. Morally, do I care?

♫♪ "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot,
Drink up me hearties, yo ho.
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot,
Drink up me hearties, yo ho." ♪♫ ~ Theme of Pirates of the Caribbean ride, Disneyland

 

[Chinaux]

Personally, I do see it as a form of theft. Morally, do I care?

♫♪ "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot,
Drink up me hearties, yo ho.
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot,
Drink up me hearties, yo ho." ♪♫ ~ Theme of Pirates of the Caribbean ride, Disneyland

I sort of feel the same, but mostly I don't think about it. When I felt guilty as a kid I'd delete my pirated stuff because I was ashamed I did it, but now I'm too lazy to do it.

 

[Sucumbio]

Too lazy to pirate or too lazy to feel guilty and delete it?

I still have software i copied off the,mac in the math lab back in 94. I did not own a legit copy. My first pirated software was a diskette copy of The Bank Street Writer for Apple] [c+ before they invented copy protection. I did buy my own copy bc the pirated one kept failing and my friend ws tired of copying it for me.

If it's music/movies/video games i tend to only pirate copies i already purchased at least once and lost etc. And some things are just daft to buy unless you're a collector like Star Wars ep 4 5 and 6. He's made so many releases does george lucas REALLY expect me to buy 20 versions of the same thing!? Hell no.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Not to mention the movies that aren't worth crap ("Dragonball Evolution" immediately comes to mind). But I'm digressing here.

 

[Chinaux]

Too lazy to pirate or too lazy to feel guilty and delete it?

I still have software i copied off the,mac in the math lab back in 94. I did not own a legit copy. My first pirated software was a diskette copy of The Bank Street Writer for Apple] [c+ before they invented copy protection. I did buy my own copy bc the pirated one kept failing and my friend ws tired of copying it for me.

If it's music/movies/video games i tend to only pirate copies i already purchased at least once and lost etc. And some things are just daft to buy unless you're a collector like Star Wars ep 4 5 and 6. He's made so many releases does george lucas REALLY expect me to buy 20 versions of the same thing!? Hell no.

Sometimes I feel guilty and just delete my pirated stuff.

Nowadays, I'm too lazy/forget about it before I get around to doing it.

 

[Xivii]

Came across some perspectives from seven years ago: http://smashboards.com/threads/downloading-stealing.124312/

Posts of note:

Let me just make one thing clear. Downloading, copying, etc. is never considered "stealing". To steal something implies denying the original owner access to the stolen item. If I steal your car, you no longer have a car to use. I not only have a car that does not belong to me, but you are lacking that car now. In the digital world, software/content is pirated, not stolen. Judges have stated time and time again (mostly to the mentally challenged RIAA) that illegal downloads are a form of copyright infringement, not stealing. Please refrain from referring to piracy as stealing.

I understand the mentality of the situation. By pirating content, we are denying the creators' their right to revenue, so piracy is definitely not a good thing. In today's day and age, those who embrace DRM will fall to those take advantage of the free distribution. It is utterly stupid to attempt to sell a single copy/license of a digital good. Yes, we see it happen today, but it happens with companies who are still mentally trapped in 1992. Take the RIAA, for example. They are so used to selling individual records, tapes, CDs, etc. that they feel it should be the same way on the Internet. Now they just make money by suing everyone in sight because they refuse to embrace the new age.

Watching companies struggle with DRM issues is enough for me to learn my lesson. I like Ubuntu's business model. They give away their Linux distribution for free, so its popularity naturally grows without restraint. Ubuntu sells service. Service is essentially immune to piracy. Sure, there is Ubuntuforums.org for free community support, but Ubuntu knows they offer the best kind of service for serious business situations that require it. If they chose to sell their distribution, it would have been dead on arrival. Microsoft likes annoying its customers with serial keys that deactivate themselves and require the customers to call in and reactivate them even though they paid good money. Microsoft, tragically, is more interested in fighting piracy than keeping customers happy. What if I lose my key? Sorry, Microsoft wants you to pay for it again.

I am not 100% sure what business I will go into with my computer science knowledge, but I guarantee I will never sell digital content directly. Let the non-scarce goods spread like wildfire and promote your scarce goods.

Buzz is correct in asserting that the future of eBussiness is in selling a service, not a product.

The movie industry to starting to understand. The theaters won't lose revenue from online piracy because no matter what, seeing a movie in the theater is a unique experience. The theaters don't sell a product (the movie) they sell the service and the experience.

But movie stores like blockbuster were in a pickle. Piracy WAS seriously cutting into their profits. There were two options:
1) Stop piracy.
2) Change their business model.

Stopping piracy is a losing battle. It is essentially trying to stop hackers, and anyone with some knowledge in the field know that hackers have the advantage. As long as movies are stored in digital format on computers somewhere in the world, they will be stolen.

Instead, they changed the way they do business. Really it's more accurate to say Neflix forced them to do it. But, whatever. They started offering a service. As many movies as you can watch, for a relatively low price. Shipped right to your door. And since the movie quality is better, for most people, it's better than pirating movies.

But even the movie industry isn't the first place for this to happen! The original hackers were around before there were home computers. They were called phreakers. It's a kind of concatenation of phone and freakers. Essentially they hacked phones and telephone systems to get free calls and such.

But obviously, phreaks don't exist today. How did the telephone companies stop the phreakers? They started selling services. When you have a phone contract today, you also get a wide array of services that you can't pirate. Furthermore, phone calls became so cheap to the point where it was pointless to risk jail time to hack them.

The music industry really needs to do some research. Look at the ways that other industries have successfully warded off hackers from taking their revenue. Let me tell you how not to do it: To continue selling CD's as a product.

Piracy is a new kind of crime for most people. Of course we had patents/copyright before the Internet became big, but now those things are super-sensitive issues. It is hard to fear piracy because it is something people can commit from the comfort of their own homes. In their minds, enforcing laws about what we download onto our computers is like enforcing laws against eating a pizza slice starting with the crust. The mindset is nowhere near that of outright stealing an item from retail.

Yes, piracy hurts sales for those whose business models depends on selling digital goods directly and should be punished accordingly. However, somehow, these companies were able to inflate the damages to ridiculous amounts. One person pirates one song that goes for about 99 cents, and the RIAA tries to pin the damages at $10,000. WTF? Sick and wrong. The gross part about it is that the RIAA doesn't have to prove that the damage was actually done (i.e. the file was shared with tons of other people). They are allowed to just assume. For a company who so adamantly equates "piracy" to "stealing", it seems odd they can get away with this whereas in a real theft case, the plaintiff has to prove that the defendant either has the loot or actually committed the theft (caught on camera or whatever). My point is that $10,000 doesn't just teach them a lesson. It literally takes their entire life away. The fee should be $100 per song at most until the RIAA can provide proof of further damage.

As for the main topic, no, downloading is not stealing. Yes, it is copyright infringement. Once I had that cleared up for me a year or two ago, I started hating the MPAA's commercial where they equate downloading movies to stealing cars, purses, etc. Again, I am not supporting piracy in any way, but I am against this form of propaganda. They blow the situation way out of proporation because they still view files as individual units of property. Files can duplicated with no effort. The RIAA/MPAA (and others like them) need to pull their minds out of the gutter and get with the times. The world views the Internet as the holy grail of information. The RIAA/MPAA view the Internet as the criminal superhighway.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Welp, there's no arguing with that.

 

[Chinaux]

Welp, there's no arguing with that.

Agreed. Great find, Zen.

 

[#HBC | Mac]

Came across some perspectives from seven years ago: http://smashboards.com/threads/downloading-stealing.124312/

Posts of note:

man i miss buzz and altf4. tech wizards of a forgotten age

 

[#HBC | Mac]

Furthermore, the question being asked here is not whether piracy is considered stealing as defined by the law. Of course it. What is being asked is whether or not it should be considered stealing in terms of the law.

I want to expand on this, my point may be orthogonal to the topic being discussed and I'm not directly refuting any of the ppl I quote.

I see a lot of people bringing up the law or legal definitions in this thread:

I figure piracy would by definition be an act of theft -- because usually, the owner(s) of the copyrighted material won't be inclined to distribute their stuff without making some profit (and piracy involves the distribution and acquisition of copyrighted material(s) without paying for it, which is theft).

There's also the illegality of piracy. In the event you get caught, legal repercussions will ensue (the nature of which dependent on your jurisdiction).

a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright

I personally do not ever pirate or torrent anything - the closest I have come to piracy would be my dad occasionally borrowing DVDs from the library and burning them to home disks - which is a legal grey area [or was at the time, I haven't kept up with that legal discussion if it has since been resolved

In the physical world this is called counterfeiting which is completely different than stealing but is also illegal and has it's own set of laws. The only difference is that you cannot be arrested or fined for creating a counterfeit of something just for yourself, such as a t-shirt, a bag or making a copy of a toy by hand, while the opposite will happen if you pirate data.

Lawfully speaking, piracy is theft. I mean, the term "piracy" is derived from "pirate", and what did pirates do? Sailed the seas and pillage every ship they can for goods, including money.

I think we should avoid using the law as an argument in debates such as these. It's basically an appeal to authority which is not very valid in a moral debate. Laws aren't inherently moral -- remember it was once legal to lynch people, and it's currently illegal in MA for a women to be on top during during sex.

 

[Thor]

I want to expand on this, my point may be orthogonal to the topic being discussed and I'm not directly refuting any of the ppl I quote.

I see a lot of people bringing up the law or legal definitions in this thread:









I think we should avoid using the law as an argument in debates such as these. It's basically an appeal to authority which is not very valid in a moral debate. Laws aren't inherently moral -- remember it was once legal to lynch people, and it's currently illegal in MA for a women to be on top during during sex.

I don't see a problem with defining what piracy is in order to make the parameters of the debate clearer, which is what I did with the definition.

I do understand your point about how laws and mores [and taboos and folkways] change over time and therefore may not be fully reliable, especially in an ethics debate.

The other half of what you quoted was how I act and relate in relation to the topic - an attempt to show how I act outside these grounds. I tend to follow laws that do not do violence to others, so that likely colors how I view things - that may be a point to contest for others in the thread, so I made my background in relation to this subject clear right away.

 

[SilentBob]

I want to expand on this, my point may be orthogonal to the topic being discussed and I'm not directly refuting any of the ppl I quote.

I see a lot of people bringing up the law or legal definitions in this thread:

I think we should avoid using the law as an argument in debates such as these. It's basically an appeal to authority which is not very valid in a moral debate. Laws aren't inherently moral -- remember it was once legal to lynch people, and it's currently illegal in MA for a women to be on top during during sex.

I'm not actually using the law to prove the point that both are different at their core. I'm comparing piracy to terms that exist for things in the real world to compare digital with physical. Stealing is when you take something away and never give it back. So if you pirate a movie it doesn't take the movie away from a server or a shelf it creates a copy of it. Copyright infringement, the term not the law, is when you take someone else's creation or idea and doing your own version of it or distribute it without the consent of the creator. In the physical world this is called counterfeiting and piracy is the exact same thing except digitally. I'm just using the law to show that piracy shouldn't be treated differently than counterfeiting.

 

[Lichi]

My points on this in short terms:
Is piracy stealing? No.
Is piracy illegal? Yes.
Is piracy immoral? Likely.

 

[Kashology]

I think piracy can be considered a minor form of theft technically. However, morally speaking, what makes stealing so wrong is not only the fact that someone is taking something that doesn't belong to them, but also that they're taking it from someone who can't get it back. When you steal data, there are typically many other copies of it, so it's not something you technically take away from someone.

Even if a thief decides to take something someone has multiple pairs of (e.g. like the same pair of shoes) it's much different than piracy, because data can be duplicated to any amounts and at anytime, the person who owns the rights to that data wouldn't really be missing anything. So, I find it a little laughable that people actually compare the severity of the two.

 

[SilentBob]

When you steal data, there are typically many other copies of it, so it's not something you technically take away from someone.

Except you're not stealing the data. If you were, that would require you to break into someone's infrastructure to steal it. Piracy is you downloading data the original ripper has put online willingly to distribute. In 99.9% of the cases, if not more, this data is taken from a product the original distributor has purchased, has copied the containing data and put it up for download while the other 0.1%, if not less, comes from stolen data that has been leaked such as the most famous example the Wolverine movie leak.

 

[Kashology]

Except you're not stealing the data. If you were, that would require you to break into someone's infrastructure to steal it. Piracy is you downloading data the original ripper has put online willingly to distribute. In 99.9% of the cases, if not more, this data is taken from a product the original distributor has purchased, has copied the containing data and put it up for download while the other 0.1%, if not less, comes from stolen data that has been leaked such as the most famous example the Wolverine movie leak.

Alright, I'm pretty sure we agree with each other already, you're just getting very technical about the semantics here. We're on the same page.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Easy.

Is piracy stealing? No. The act of stealing and the act of copying are quite different. From there, you cannot take anyone to court over "stolen" copies. The recording industry and movie industry sue people for copyright infringement, not stealing.

The inevitable question becomes: is piracy wrong?

 

[Sucumbio]

He lives!

YouTube and my galaxy s5 make it so I don't ever have to buy another cd again. I don't even need to buy an iTunes digital copy.

But if i put the song onto a cd to play in my car stereo, bam did something illegal.

ggs

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

He lives!

YouTube and my galaxy s5 make it so I don't ever have to buy another cd again. I don't even need to buy an iTunes digital copy.

But if i put the song onto a cd to play in my car stereo, bam did something illegal.

ggs