Copyright of Abandonware

General Discussions
#21

It’s a blurry line and there’s a good case either way.

If stealing, as some courts have suggested, requires depriving the owner of something then there’s no digital theft. If stealing, like our mother told us, is taking something without paying for it, then copying files is theft.

If you steal from the store, clearly that’s theft. You deprived the owner of something. Just like stealing cattle back in the day, or stealing some gold. Right?
No, not so clear. What did you steal? A game? What did you deprive the owner of?
If I steal a cow, I have a cow and the owner doesn’t have that cow. If I steal gold, I have gold and the owner doesn’t
If I steal a game from a store, I have a game. The owner still has the game, and the ability to sell more copies. What I deprived them of is a DVD and case.

In this day and age, the value of something is often not much in the physical object. It’s not so clear cut as photocopying a book vs stealing a sheep.
This goes for physical theft just as much as copyright infringement => the line is not so clear.

So in my view, nevermind the lawyers go back to what mum said. Don’t take things without paying for them :wink:

#22

True in theory, but I was referring to is that it feels not so much different from stealing from the author’s pov (that’s why I put ‘stealing’ between quotes). For the record I never claimed that piracy == stealing.

In reality the profitability of for example music has been steadily going down for the last 10 years; music is hardly sold anymore and music labels are dropping like flies.
One can argue that it’s perhaps the result of the inability of the music industry to stay in sync with the digital world, but that doesn’t mean that illegal copies aren’t having a very real negative effect on the market (i.e. the artists means of income).

[quote]If I steal a game from a store, I have a game. The owner still has the game, and the ability to sell more copies. What I deprived them of is a DVD and case.
[/quote]
That would be true if you steal an illegal copy.
However when you buy a game in the store, you’re not only buying the physical media but (more importantly) also the legal rights to the contents for personal use.
So you deprive them of more than just the DVD and case.

#23

I am just annoyed that this is classed as the same crime as someone downloading mp3’s for free. Sometimes even perfect reproduction can be an incredibly creative process of trying reverse engineer and re-architect an old design.
I have a friend that spent many many hours disassembling and rewriting the Curse of the Azure Bonds in C#. The amount of work he put into reverse engineering and perfectly recreating that game was unbelievable. To have someone say he ‘stole’ the content is abhorrent.

#24

Reverse engineered code isn’t copyrighted. The graphics and sound are.

Cas :slight_smile:

#25

[quote=“erikd,post:22,topic:35533”]
You take more than the DVD and case, but you don’t deprive the owner of any legal rights - unless the stolen copy equates to a lost sale. At that point, the argument has converged with the argument over copying files. In both physical theft of software and in file copying, the valuable thing is gained by the taker but not lost by the owner. On this basis you can compare file copying to theft.

Likewise with more creative copyright infringement. If you remake something perfectly, then you have put a lot of work in. But so has the copyright owner. They designed it, did the graphics, wrote the scripts, whatever. However much work you put in, they still did much of the important stuff (by remaking instead of designing your own, you made the judgement that their contribution was very large). Yet, you have assumed the right to distribute it. Clearly, the right to distribute your own work is given not taken - even if it’s mixed up with somebody else’s. The word forgery would be used elsewhere.

#26

[quote]The word forgery would be used elsewhere.
[/quote]
Funny you should say that, I was just thinking that copyright infringement has some similarities to money counterfeiting. Even though you don’t actually steal money, and even though it might take a lot of craftsmanship and even creativity to do it right, everybody seems to understand that it devalues money and is therefore hurtful. With art it’s not all that different imho: it has a value (certainly to the authors) and copyright infringement does devalue it. Maybe a copy does not directly equate a lost sale, but it does cost the author money albeit indirectly.

#27

[quote=“erikd,post:22,topic:35533”]
Actually, the artists typically make the majority of their money from touring and concerts - the record company gets practically all music sale proceeds. So the artists themselves don’t suffer much from illegal music distribution.

But, if there are no record companies to fund/advertise up and coming artists, that potentially makes it more difficult for them to become popular enough to sell tickets at concerts. Then again, if there were no record companies people would still be finding music, just in other ways.

I think you could argue either way - in the end it is a changing world and companies do have to adapt, regardless of whether this is negative or positive.

#28

I think you have it backwards.

It has kind of became that way the last years because music sales became so abysmal, but it wasn’t always like that. Music sales were big business, also for artists.
The real money for artists was always in authoring rights, the money that writers and composers and such earn from sold copies, airplay and other reproductions of their work. Record companies would typically fund record productions, promotions and would take most of the money earned from sold copies until they break even, and then the artists start making money from it (unless they had a bad deal). Concerts were like promotion and sometimes they didn’t even break even. For example in the late 80s Prince’s huge LoveSexy tour almost bankrupted him, even though it consistently sold out.
Now that the market for sold copies is in such a bad state, hardly any money from that goes to the artists anymore, so what’s left is mostly airplay.