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Piracy


Cyber Rat
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That sounds a lot more reasonable than past efforts. At least the way it's described in that article it doesn't sound like it's an attempt to criminalize the consumers (at least not as much as previous actions), which imo is a good thing.

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Yeah, it seems to me that anonmyity of the internet will be gone soon if only because all you have to do is make the ISPs be the police. The problem is the ISPs have a vested interest in not being police since their customers don't want to be policed. It's not perfect but really, would a little accountability for people on the internet be a bad thing? I know we're going to do down the net neutrality route but unless people here are legitimate anarchists you should be able to agree that some level of policing on the internet is a good thing.

 

Oh I guess ISPs do have a dog in the fight as they'd like to have an excuse to kick BW hogging pirates off their network.

Edited by Yantelope V2
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The problem with the policing is that it's not so much a police as a private security force working for big media and political interests. There's also the issue of jurisdiction. It's not the world wide web for nothing.

 

Also those "bandwidth hogging pirates" tend to be their highest paying customers. Not like Cindy browsing Facebook is going to splash out for their high tier network. That's why ISPs tend to be somewhat protective, or at least fight back against laws that'd have them turn in their most profitable customers.

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Yeah, I think that's pretty weak analogy and more being an ass trying to justify the fact that you steal.

 

It's not stealing!

 

Pirating software is more like sneaking people into a drive-in. You're getting something for nothing that other people paid for.

 

That's actually a decent analogy, except it's an infinitely huge drive in, so you don't even prevent anyone else from seeing it by taking up space.

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Semantics, though. You're getting something that you shouldn't have for free. You're cheating everyone else who pays for it.

 

Fine, let's not call it theft. Fine, let's not call it stealing. It's still wrong and unfair to everyone else.

 

For the record (not that anyone cares!), I do agree that it is stealing. Unless we can find a more appropriate word for it. The argument that "since it's digital, there is nothing lost therefore its not stealing/theft" doesn't hold IMO. When the term was coined, the idea of digital goods probably didn't exist. Now that it has, IMO we need to re-evaluate how that term applies to it. (No one here probably made this argument - but this is the recurring reason I see whenever online people justify that it's not stealing)

 

Plus, you know, the way you legally get digital goods is the same as getting it illegally, the only difference is you're not paying. So really I think it's some sort of stealing.

 

EDIT: And that word is, as MasterDex pointed out, is probably Piracy.

Edited by elev3n
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I just want to make it clear that saying it's not stealing is not the same as saying it's okay. Piracy is wrong, but that doesn't make it stealing.

 

You're cheating everyone else who pays for it.

 

How does someone pirating a game or movie or whatever hurt the people who bought it? Yes, you're cheating the creator/publisher/whomever, but how are you cheating the other consumers?

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The legal definition of Theft is the dishonest appropriation of the property of another with the intent to permanently deprive. "Stealing" isn't a legal term.

 

 

It's not theft. It is stealing. Theft requires that a person be permanently deprived of their property. Stealing is just appropriating or taking property wrongfully.

 

Steal:

1 [with object] take (another person’s property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it: thieves stole her bicycle (as adjective stolen) stolen goods

 

Yet the Cambridge definition is "to take something without the permission or knowledge of the owner and keep it". Again, no requirement to deprive. Just to take and keep. Piracy is stealing the crime you will be charged with is Copyright Infringement, not Theft. But, as noted above, it's all semantics.

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I just want to make it clear that saying it's not stealing is not the same as saying it's okay. Piracy is wrong, but that doesn't make it stealing.

 

You're cheating everyone else who pays for it.

 

How does someone pirating a game or movie or whatever hurt the people who bought it? Yes, you're cheating the creator/publisher/whomever, but how are you cheating the other consumers?

 

Really hard to argue that, because you're going to be looking for a very specific thing that shows I cheated others when I pirate. I'm going to throw something in the mix here, let's say there is competition involved. There's this "tool set" on the internet that can help you get the job done more efficiently. If I can't afford it and I don't get it, and you can't afford it and you pirate, then you cheated. Whatever opportunity would come to you because of the sole reason that you won that contest is an opportunity you stole from me, or at least you've stole my ability to compete with you on fair grounds. You may not have cheated on me when you pirated that software, but as a direct result, you cheated me out of getting that opportunity.

 

(Not calling you a pirate! Don't really know if you do or not so excuse the pronouns.)

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Arguably, using that toolset period would be cheating in this case. It's subjective. It comes down to what one person considers cheating.

 

I wanted to put that in my post. But decided against it, since it's against my argument. I should have mentioned it but I agree with this entirely.

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@elev3n: that's like saying that buying a GPS is cheating other consumers because I could use it to cheat in a wilderness navigation competition.

 

Piracy is not wrong in all cases. We've been over this way too many times.

 

Piracy of a product that is otherwise officially & legally available to you is wrong. Piracy of a product that is legally available but you would not buy anyway is wrong, but it's wrong like lying to your boss about being sick so you can go to a football game is wrong (i.e. only in an academic, doesn't-really-matter kind of way).

Edited by TheMightyEthan
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