Certainly not... but have you ever tried the cool refreshing taste of pepsi cola after a long hard day at work?
I thought it was because he's from Japan and couldn't quite come up with a response that has depth and meaning that a natural english speaker would... translation only goes so far. Anyway, if i could download a car off the Internet for free... I would do so in a heartbeat!
This is true. I've torrented copies of games that have cracks to circumvent DRM a ton of times because the DRM screws over the real consumer so hard. Hackers create workarounds incredibly fast. Yet game companies seem to think it works and keep adding more and more DRM to their games on PC. It Insane. I've also had to torrent a game ,for example ,"Final Fantasy XIV" ;because the DVD wouldn't work in my DVD drive. Apparently it's a dual layer disc that has issues with lots of older/certain types of drives. Etc. In the end, you can't compare stealing a car off a car lot to downlading a copy of software. Piracy is more like a photograph that you take, and make a copy of for someone other than yourself. Or For whatever purpose.
I would surmise that most people could agree that theft and copyright infringement are different but two equally illegal acts. The distinction between people being, some admit and take responsibility for their actions, while others make excuses to justify them and do not.
Seems this thread got a little off base here. Bad_Ad84 s 100% correct, theft is to deprive someone of property. Period. If I steal a car from your driveway the car is no longer there. If I download a copy of a movie I have committed copyright infringement as it stands here in the United States. The movie still exists on the storage device of where I downloaded it from. The movie still exists in celluloid form. So long as I have not gone to a retail store and removed a copy of the movie I have not *stolen* anything. Copyright infringment does deprive the creator (or at least rights owner) to some potential profit. It is a false assumption that I was ever going to pay for the movie in question but that is beside the point. I'm now liable for damages either way but in no way have I committed an act (that in the United States) is regarded as "criminal" only "civil". And absolutely do NOT try to argue with that as the law is the law as stated earlier, you will only come off as an idiot who refuses to acknowledge his own confirmation bias. Though these are definitions as per United States law, I cannot speak for the rest of the world. The reason copyright law exists is essentially to give a content creator a monopoly over their content as such to give them incentive to bother creating the content in the first place. If you knew that the second you made a game/movie/book it was going to sell 10 copies and some asshole was going to sell 5 million at 10% the original price would you bother writing a second book or filming another movie? Probably not. Most pirates (in my experience) in the US pirate for themselves and nobody makes a huge profit off of it directly (arguments can be made to the contrary). I don't see people selling bootleg DVDs and 360 games in California in a brick and mortar location (or even flea markets) but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. They do deserve to be punished in relation to the crime. The whole "try before you buy" when it comes to downloading games is a grey area no matter what generation you speak of. When it comes to old games that are no longer being manufactured for their original console I feel less inclined to give a damn. Obviously Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are profiting off of re-releases and remakes but frankly I'm not sure why I want to buy Crazy Taxi off XBLA when I have the original GD-ROM here with the music intact. Furthermore why buy the busted XBLA version when for $5 you can have the Dreamcast (or PS2) original? Both of those points leads me to the next one: copyright law in the United States is in dire need of reform. Most estimates of what "proper" length for copyright being held on a creation vary but typically the numbers I've seen rarely supercede 30 years and occasionally 50. I don't recall the specifics off hand but for a long time here in the states copyright law wasn't much more than 25-30 years with it progressively getting longer. Then comes the Disney corporation who keeps getting it extended so that now Steamboat Willy is only just ebbing up on becoming Public Domain. With their help this is the current state of copyright law: Effectively that means if I live to be 80 and I created something last week that means it'll become Public Domain in the year 2137 which does me jack shit worth of good but it does potentially ensure a steady stream of revenue for a long lived corporation or my greedy assholes that constitute my "descendants". Take a look at JRR Tolkien, some of his children/grandchild that run the show are complete assholes looking to milk what Tolkien wrote. Look at it a different way. You know Robin Hood? You know Shakespeare? You know Beowulf? Look at how many corporations will adapt and reuse older to VERY old works that are in the Public Domain to make a profit. What is right about that? Why don't we just extend copyright law to be indefinite and allow Shakespears modern day relatives to reap the benefits of their long dead ancestor? Oh right because it stifles creativity. Don't get me wrong, if you make anything and publish it you do deserve to make money off of your product and people shouldn't infringe upon a copyright just because they're cheap or lazy or what have you. But you will not and can not tell me I'm committing theft when the word simply does not apply. Denial of revenue sure., but that first assumes I was going to buy the product in question. If I like it, I'll buy it. If I don't like it then I won't buy it. If I infringed upon a copyright to give it a "test run" and didn't buy it I'm still liable for damages (but not to the tune of $15k per song). If I infringe upon your copyright and then buy it I'd say no harm no foul and now you've gained 1)A customer and B)profit but I'd still be liable for for civil crime that occurred . Here is a graphic care of Wikipedia that gives exact numbers and shows the increases over time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg ....wonder if anyone is going to read any of that beyond the first paragraph and this last sentence.
no, theft is to permanently deprive someone of something. notice the word before deprive. Intention plays its role. The problem is that with digital media you don't deprive anyone of anything, it's just an effortless copy. Copyright law was designed on the notion of protecting original works and that's fine, but to call copyright infringement theft is a far stretch. It would be theft if what was copyrighted was a physical item. The ability to copy transmitted data is legal and has been legal ever since the VCR. Remember the court battles back then? no? open your books kids! PS: I understand the need to enforce copyright for whatever reason, but to accuse people of stealing is bullshit. It's not the same.
This is true, intent does play a role. If I borrow your pen I'm depriving you of your property but I don't intend to keep it. Though if I did that would probably constitute theft. And its great isn't it? How Sony busted their asses to keep recordings legal when it benefited them?
exactly. This type of then-and-now contrast is the sort of argument those too ken to enforce copyright should keep in mind. It's a solid precedent and changing it would only affect consumer rights more than benefit already rich entities.
Am I the only one who thinks this thread would be so much more epic if it were talk like a pirate day? lol Anyways, I agree that piracy is "bad" to some extent; however, like many others have said, there are some grey areas where it is morally acceptable. Heck, I've pirated before, not going to lie, and a lot of the time I actually went out and purchased whatever I bought. How about the games that you want to play that are rare and top dollar? The publisher more than likely not get any money from this, only the person selling the physical copy. I've probably spent over 1,000 USD on my Steam account alone, not to mention the abundance of physical copies of PC games I have (Sometimes Steam is just more convenient than having to waste gas to go to a store, I live in a countryish area) To be completely honest, I only know a handful of people where I live that actually pirate, most people don't use their computers for more than email and Facebook; at least around here (Kentucky). Although, I do have to admit I love GOG (Good Old Games), even though some of their stuff for sale isn't necessarily old, for a digital download, it's usually the best option in my opinion. I even bought AC2 went it was released on PC, despite the draconian DRM; I own the first and Brotherhood as well. Borderlands was a game I did download for example, however I bought it, this was before the DLC came out, and when the DLC came out I immediately bought it, for some reason I love that game. Thanks to YouTube though, I can usually watch some gameplay videos of a game to determine if I want to purchase a title or not, so I don't have to "pirate" if a demo isn't available; but heck, sometimes even a demo doesn't give you a good enough view. Dragon Age II would be a prime example of this, demo ran fine, didn't have too many issues, but the release was awful and it took them forever to patch a lot of issues. I even own a physical copy of the signature edition, some may remember my ranting about Best Buy screwing me over on my preorder and me immediately buying the sig edition from gamestop's website with overnight shipping. Thankfully the guy up at Gamestop is familiar with me enough that he printed out the pre-order item for me, I'm totally OCD about DLC. Hence the reason I went out of my way to get every single DLC for Fable 3, just because I love the Fable series, even though Fable: TLC is the best in my opinion. This was before the PC release was even announced too, and since the PC release doesn't seem to have much of a modding scene developing, it abuses GFW, and I'd have to repurchase the DLC I have on the 360, I didn't bother with the PC release. Not to mention when I got Fable 3, it was way past the time it was out, thankfully a gamestop around here had a copy of the limited edition sealed still, I liked the book-like case it came in. I got off topic, sorry, off to the drunkard thread!
Baby you can drive my car Yes I'm gonna be a star Baby you can drive my car And maybe I'll love you Beep beep beep beep yeah
First of all, I paid for a retail copy. So it's Impossible to pirate the game without a retail-CD key. Of course if you had a brain you might know that but you don't. So. Fuck off you lemming. Why don't you go back to playing the games that everyone thinks are "Good"; and not being a fucking tool and hating something you've never even tried, nor given a chance to succeed without condemning because it's "Cool to be a hater" Or because you are single and narrow minded.etc. The game has had SIGNIFICANT Changes since launch and is a incredibly unique fun and rewarding game to play. It's not some generic MMO in WoW or Everquest,or some random Korean/chinese MMO that is exactly the same as the next game. it's something completely new and it works very well as it is now. Of course you wouldn't know that would you? you're a tool.
I agree with 7Force. I don't see why anyone would want it for free either, and then you mention something like WoW, and I don't see why anyone plays it, yet alone pays monthly for it. Those games are fucking boring. Why are you calling him a tool? It can't just be the fact that he doesn't have the same opinion you do, is it?
