Clearly an “idea” still exists for the person from whom the idea is stolen! Your additional condition that an object must be involved and this object must no longer be in the original owner’s possession is NOT part of the generally accepted definition of stealing.
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I’d argue you can’t steal ideas by exactly the same logic as I previously offered. You’re begging the question because asserting that ideas can be stolen is effectively the same idea as the conclusion you’re trying to prove.
Note, I’m not debating whether piracy is moral or not. I only note that weighing its ‘harm’ or ‘value’ is not a black and white issue.
That’s just rubbish, frankly. Plenty of people debate whether “steal”, “theft”, “piracy” are appropriate terms for illegal copying. Simply asserting that it’s not so won’t make you correct. If you haven’t seen people debate exactly this issue then you’ve not followed much of the debate on the net.
Even I take issue with the conflation of copyright infringment with theft.
Copyright infringement = you copy my data without my permission. Ie. a pirate.
Theft = you take my server with all the source code on it without my permission and don’t have any intention of giving it back. Legal definition here in the UK, more or less.
End result is surprisingly similar though - the original creator of the data doesn’t make any money. This is never good for creators.
I know many people who pirate stuff. I don’t judge them for it, but will give them shit if they make BS excuses for themselves. Every single one of them could afford most if not all the products they illegally download. If it wasn’t so easy and culturally acceptable they most certainly would have bought at least some of them. I have zero doubt. Newly released top-end (performance requirements) games are quickly put up and downloaded like wildfire. Apparently these folks have enough money to buy high-end computers, GPUs and have pretty fast internet connections…so it seems a pretty reasonable guess that some of them could have bought at least some of products they are getting illegally. I doubt that most pirates that think that they wouldn’t have bought item X if they hadn’t downloaded it can really know that for certain. How could they? And even if that’s true and their using P2P, they are help others whom might have and further enforcing the notion that: “Hey, it’s OK!”.
Worldwide bandwidth requirements of illegal downloads excluding porn is around 24% of all internet traffic. Thank you for chewing-up bandwidth from me (and everyone) who is attempting to doing something legal…like make a living.
I totally agree with you, that’s why I took the time to respond.
Again, I completely agree with you. Where we differ is that I think that “illegal copying” perfectly describe illegal copying in a clear, non ambiguous manner. My issue with equating illegal copying with theft I mentioned earlier. “Pirate” is equally a bad term - pirates kill people and take their property from them. People who copy software don’t do that.
“Copying” does not imply consent and “Illegal Copying” explicitly does not. Call it “illegal copying” and all the issues you’ve mentioned disappear without ambiguity.
Use the right words: it isn’t stealing… it’s illegal copying.
See? I can do that too. Is that a valid argument now? Or only when you do it?
Alllllllright, sure. I don’t recall arguing otherwise. I’d prefer if you respond to me that you refer to what I actually said rather than construct strawmen to knock over.
If there is also some good done by piracy then I think that does ‘change a thing’ - it means that the harm caused by illegal copying might be overstated. If piracy was actually a net economic win (I’m not saying that it is) then surely, that would ‘change a thing’? Ergo, you need to take the whole picture into account, you can’t just pick the negative consequences and say that’s the whole picture.
Bottom line: if you think that “pirates” are all evil immoral swine, then you think that the majority of your customers are evil immoral swine (surveys of net denizens consistently show that more than half of all users own up to having illegally copied content). You can go around thinking all your customers are evil swine who exist solely to rip you off, or you can adjust to the reality of the situation, drop all the moralistic vitriol and deal with the situation as it is. I think the piece that Cas wrote on his blog about his “copy protection” was a good example of this: it’s laid back, it’s realistic and it doesn’t tell potential customers that he thinks they’re all thieves. The alternative is to piss off your customers (even if they ARE immoral evil swine!)
I say live in the world that actually exists rather than insisting people obey the rules of your ideal world.
Yeah, and this is the difficulty. This is the way the world is - how do you ‘live in the real world’ and continue to make money in it? I think we all struggle with that.
Well, we find other ingenious ways around the problem, whilst trying to stick with something we know and love.
For example - we’re ditching single player gaming* and moving to online play only**. No more piracy. Problem solved.
Cas
Sort of… still might have one more single player game in the works thanks to our involvement with the Humble Bundle making it possible
** Sort of… still allowing full offline play. Hard to explain at this stage
I don’t see the point. Stealing vs illegal copying. What’ the difference? Both terms are fine with me. I stop by an orchard and “steal” 30 bucks worth of apples. There’s about zero chance the owner of the apples would know about the loss. I “illegally copy” some 30 buck video game…the same, the owner doesn’t know he/she/they got screwed. In both cases I’m deriving some utility from something that doesn’t belong to me. In both cases I’m a dick and if I were to actually do either of these things I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. I’d use the word stealing because again, there’s no meaningful difference between real and virtual products. “Illegal copying” seems like a weasel expression to me, but I don’t have any strong objection to it.
Not really responding to anyone here. Just commenting on the nonsense of vocal pirates. Stop being sissies and just admit to being a dick. What’s the big deal?
Even if that were true: Where’s the entitlement here?
I would never use the word “evil” (recall previously mentioned over and misuse of words). Immoral? Subjective and I have no opinion. Recall I keep saying I don’t really care about piracy the act.
You can’t be responding to me here. I not asking people to obey rules…just not to make excuses (usually pathetic) for their illegal acts. Nor for others to make excuses for them.
When stealing apples, the owner can not sell them anymore. (exclusion)
When copying, the software does not vanish.
Stealing an apple that would be sold or eaten by the owner is a direct loss.
Copying a software by someone is only then a realized loss, when this consumer would have
bought the software otherwise.
Steal an apple, potential to sell that apple to that person is zero.
Copy some software, potential to sell that software to that person is considerably diminished. Most likely approaching zero. I’ve heard the bullshit and anecdotes before about how pirates go and buy the games they’ve copied 6 months down the line but if that were the case there wouldn’t be all these studios going bust. It’s plain bullshit and backed by figures. A tiny proportion of people pay for software after piracy.
Now here’s something you can’t do with an apple:
Upload a cracked apple to a torrent site. Potential to sell that apple to 100,000 people is now approaching zero. Oh dear.
Ah. But maybe those apples were ripe and would have fallen from the tree before being harvested. Maybe this, maybe that. The point being that it’s very unlikely that my stolen apples would have any measurable effect on the farmer’s income, the number is simply too small (assume I’m the only thief). Comparison with real goods is always problematic.
But virtual products are real. They cost very real time and effort in creation. The fact making as many copies as one wants adds no additional cost is totally irrelevant.
Businesses go bust all the time. New businesses are created, and of those, the majority fails within 3-5 years too. Don’t think these failing businesses were all poor - they may have skilled employers and employees, delivered great products, etc. There is more to a business than creating a good product or service. It’s a matter of demand, marketing, being better (according to the customer) than the competion.
Game studios are just that, businesses, and just have to accept the fact that you can go bust despite hard work.
Just as Markus said… give the customers an incentive to buy, instead of trying to force them to pay up for your product. Surely it’s a simplistic view, but ‘goodwill’ may very well be the factor that makes you better than the competion, according to the customer.
Illegal software copy is economically more complex than stealing physical goods.
There are 2 sides to be analysed from the software distributors (creators) point of view:
1 - Copied software might lower the amount of numbers sold, since a potential user
does not see a need to buy it anymore
2 - Copied Software can increase the distribution “market share” of the software a lot
compared to software that is harder to copy.
Thus gaining more publicity and acceptence.
Thus getting more people to know about this (and followup) products.
Just don’t think it will change much. Game studios will still go out of business at the same rate.
Here’s a simple reason why - if that wasn’t the case:
[x] game studios would be deemed a solid financial success
[x] a massive influx would happen, creating new game studios
[x] game studios fight over the same players (and their budgets)
[x] they start competing on pricing
[x] game studios go bust… awww
I think game developers suffer from unrealistic expectations and an easy scapegoat: if your sales are low, it’s too easy to blame piracy. Other companies have nothing to blame but the market or their own decisions.
New styles of DRM seem to have pretty much killed piracy and hence the debate, e.g. Diablo 3 has made a bucket load of money (fastest selling PC game to date and also one of the best selling). Having partial game logic on Blizzard servers has made it almost impossible to pirate. Sure it was an unpopular move but don’t think Blizzard care after seeing how successful it has been in dealing with piracy.
