Regardless, copyright infringement is still a crime whether you call it theft or not. It is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and/or up to a $250,000 fine. Ultimately, it still causes loss in one form or another for the copyright holder. Strange how some people have a hard time grasping that concept.
[quote]I am clear on what you are saying: Are you claiming that there is nothing wrong with Copyright infringement ?
[/quote]
I think it’s pretty obvious that he isn’t.
It does not remove any money from the copyright holder, but in some cases it can result in the copyright holder getting less income.
However, THIS IN ITSELF IS NOT A CRIME! Never has been and hopefully never will be.
If it was a crime to cause someone to get less income, it’d be a crime to tell your friends some random movie sucks donkey ass as well, as that potentially cases the movie maker to make less money.
(loss of potential income != loss of money. there’s a HUUGE difference.)
RIAA, MPAA and their assorted goons are trying the best to blur the lines here, and sadly it seems to be working.
Disclaimer: I’m not against copyrights. I’m for them! I just find the current trend of equating piracy with THEFT (a MUCH worse crime, imnsho) very scary.
Yeah, terminology such as “piracy” (= rapists and murderers) and “intellectual property” (= something you can lose) encourages a weird view on the distribution of software.
But piracy is not a simple problem - right now it’s actually easier (not only cheaper) for me to grab software on mininova than go get it in the store. Hopefully, more and more projects will be able to charge the customer for the service they provide (such as WoW or battle.net) rather than the actual software.
You’re missing the point: copyright infringement is a crime. If you are copying and distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the author, then you are infringing on the copyright. The legitmacy of terms like ‘theft’ and ‘piracy’ in debates like this is an issue of semantics. The only thing that really matters is the legal terminology. While piracy is not legally theft, it is morally equivalent – that’s why people use the terms interchangeably in casual discussions.
And I reached that conclusion on my own without the help of the RIAA 
[quote=“aldacron,post:45,topic:28074”]
bzzt!
There’s a huge difference between taking a physical item from someone and making a copy of something someone doesn’t want you to copy, legally, morally, and by definition. It’s just simply not the same thing at all!
Just because both are illegal and “wrong”, doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Arson and fraud are illegal and “wrong” as well, but you don’t see people running around on messageboards, shouting “fraud is arson! and I’m not just saying that because the Anti-fraud Agency of America said so!”
Well, piracy is theft in my eyes. If someone is copying my game and distributing it without my consent, they are stealing something from me. I understand that nothing is being physically taken, but I still see it as stealing because pirates are copying it without paying for it. I’m not the only one who feels that way. Your arson and fraud example is cute, but it’s one of those off-the-wall examples that has no bearing on the discussion at hand. I think we can all agree that arson and fraud are two vastly different crimes. Whether you agree with it or not, a number people see piracy and theft to be closely enough related as to be no different.
[quote]While piracy is not legally theft, it is morally equivalent
[/quote]
So if you sell a game, you would be just as unhappy if a particular person happened to make one illegal copy of it as you would be if someone stole your wallet? Maybe the price of your product is slightly higher than the cash content of your wallet. Blimey. Those pirates should be locked up. They are the WORST.
[quote=“aldacron,post:47,topic:28074”]
This is exactly the problem.
As a wise man once said, and I’m afraid I’m paraphrasing a bit as I don’t remember the exact quote: “truth is not a democracy, you can’t VOTE on the sex of a rabbit”.
If people were to say “pirates are as bad as thieves”, I wouldn’t argue about it. I can accept that. But saying “pirates are thieves” is just wrong.
Copyright infringement, regardless of what it is in your eyes, simply is NOT the same thing as theft.
If you painted a picture, and theft and piracy really were the same thing as you claim, then having someone take a photograph of it and hang a print up on his wall would be just as bad as if he took the painting from you.
Making the copy is not the problem. Making it available for distribution – that’s the problem. I don’t mind that Joe Hardcore Pirate copies my game and plays it for free because he’s an anti-copyright hippie, or because he thinks games are ‘cultural information’ and should be free, or even because he’s a scumbag and just doesn’t want to pay for anything. Well, I do mind, but there’s nothing I can do about it. What hurts me and every other indie out there when Joe Hardcore Pirate puts his free copy of the game up on an ftp server somewhere. It’s going to fall into the hands people who may have bought the game had it not been available for free.
Right now, we can still make a living even with the piracy going on. But piracy isn’t diminishing, is it? If anything, it’s growing. As long as people can get away with it, why should they pay? Ten years from now, will it still be possible to put out a commercial downloadable game and not be in direct competition with pirates distributing your game en masse for free?
Okay, pirates are as bad as thieves.
[quote]Copyright infringement, regardless of what it is in your eyes, simply is NOT the same thing as theft.
If you painted a picture, and theft and piracy really were the same thing as you claim, then having someone take a photograph of it and hang a print up on his wall would be just as bad as if he took the painting from you.
[/quote]
Another irrelevant analogy. A picture of a painting is not a replication of a painting.
I think what the issue boils down to is that the digital world and the physical world are two very different places. It is currently not possible (with our current understanding of the universe) to duplicate a physical item atom for atom on a whim. By contrast, digital data cannot be ‘removed’, aka stolen. You can copy data from one medium to another and then delete the original, but you can’t physically steal it. That’s why any real world analogy fails.
Just as I think the patent system needs to be overhauled to reflect the state of our times (i.e. software patents need to be reconsidered and handled differently from traditional patents, if at all), I also think we need to redefine certain terminology for the digital world. It’s happening anyway. Just as you can ‘surf’ the web now, ‘theft’ and ‘stealing’ are being associated with digital piracy. Language does evolve that way. Whether or not the legal system does remains to be seen.
[quote=“aldacron,post:51,topic:28074”]
So videotaping a movie in a movie theater and putting the video on the internet isn’t the same thing as copying a dvd, in your opinion? The first is copyright infringement, and the second is theft? Somehow?
[quote=“Markus_Persson,post:52,topic:28074”]
imo it isn’t exactly the same, in that recording stuff is basically an analog copy and copying a DVD is a digital copy.
Taking a picture of a painting isn’t copying the picture, rather making a poster of it :).
However I do agree with Markus. There is a great deal of difference between stealing and copyright infringement. You can say that you morally equate the two, but the court still handles it as two different things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States:
I realize the analogies are flawed, by the way… it’s difficult to point out the difference between theft and piracy without examples, and as aldacron says, you can’t really “steal” software.
Anyway, I realize I’m coming off as a bit of a jerk here, so I’ll just drop it now. 
no, i think you just put it right!
by the way, i never understood, why it’s copyright infringement to copy a game or dvd from a friend, while copying a music cd from a friend is fair use (at least here in germany), but only if it is not copyprotected. there should be more fair use rights when it comes to private copying, even over filesharing networks. p2p networks are basicly the radiostations of today and you put your favourite songs on tape. the only problem are the copyright laws of yesterday, that limit the cultural benefits of today’s technology to everyone.
Shall we get started on “stealing” satellite signals? ;D
So why does no one object to using the term ‘piracy’ to refer to the copying of copyrighted materials?
The definitions #2 and #3 have been part of English verancular for some time now, whereas once only the first definition applied. Was there a point where people argued that copying digital data is not piracy because it’s not something that usually occurs on the high seas? If copying digitial data cannot be viewed as theft, then why is it associated with a word which traditionally is a form of robbery (a word which is further a form of theft)?
My whole point in this discussion, since it seems I haven’t made it clear, is that it doesn’t matter what the legal definition of theft is. People will often use existing vocabulary to apply to new situations. To me, software piracy invokes the same emotions as theft, so it is only natural to say “software pirates are theives”. I understand clearly that this is not the case in any court of law, nor by any stretch of legal terminology. But this is not a court of law, I am not a lawyer, and I don’t need to adhere to the legal definitions of the vocabulary I use in casual conversation. When I say that software piracy is theft, it is meant to express my state of mind. Saying “software piracy is copyright infringement” does not express the same emotion. That’s one of the reasons the usage of vocabulary words grow to encompass new situations and dictionaries expand from version to version - we can’t express ourselves as clearly with words we make up, words people don’t know, or words that do not effectively convey our meaning.
Any arguments against the casual usage of ‘theft’ to refer to software piracy are just pedantic. In casual conversation, it just doesn’t matter. I could say ‘software pirates are bastards’, and someone could argue, correctly I’m sure, that the vast majority of software pirates actually were not born out of wedlock.
When people say “piracy is theft”, they don’t just mean that as a clever casual analogy, they either intentionally try to blur the lines, or seriously consider the two to be the same, and try to convince others of the same thing.
You know this, I know this.
Quick example:
In your latest post, you falsely claim to only use it as a casual analogy:
[quote=“aldacron,post:57,topic:28074”]
However, a few posts down:
[quote=""]
I disagree (strongly) with that later statement of yours, yet somehow this turned into me not liking casual analogies?
Most people didn’t used to care, “not my problem” - and those who did care wanted to be cool. Having a “pirate” radio station was so much cooler than having an “unoffiicial” one.
I think the bigger problem here is that the majority of people are finally waking up and smelling the roses.
With the surge of ipods and mp3 players, “ordinary” people have come face to face with the reality that copyright (and most of IP law) is a load of crap, based upon core ideas and original laws that often nowadays are either so nonsensical most people would laugh at them (go look at the origins of patents, for instance) or largely inapplicable in a democratic service-driven capitalist society (most of the western world).
Feel free to ignore most of that :), but the one bit I care about is that last phrase - it’s the core problem that most people have with patents, for instance: it really isn’t possible to morally defend the concept of a patent, of “owning” an idea, in a modern world driven by invention. The patent comes from a time when almost no-one invented anything, and the number of patents was tiny - it simply doesn’t work on an industrial scale.
Likewise, the majority of people these days have major issues with the concept of copyright, it’s just that they’re only gradually discovering the issues and arguments and counter-arguments that until recently were the preserve of lawyers, corporations, and artists who’d been ripped off.
IMHO, copyright is due for reform in the not-too-distant future. In the 21st century where not only does it cost nothing to make a copy but the original also costs almost nothing beyond the original invention/inspiration to produce (compared to inventing e.g. machinery in the industrial age, which required lots of labour, hand-drawings, and manual prototyping), the idea of copyright WILL change. You own the original, but I doubt you will continue to have as much rights over the copies as you do now (and, lets note, even the original copyright doens’t let you, the author, “own” the copies: you merely have some special rights over them, they remain someone else’s property - and you get some rights taken away from you, e.g. you have to allow copyright libraries free copies, etc).
Not that I’m making any guesses on what copyright will morph into, mind you. But laws change all the time as society changes, and copyright is no different.
Sure, some people may actually be ignorant enough of the law, or may actually believe it to be true. But blanket statements like that never are true. I understand the difference and I’m sure there are many others who do as well.
[quote]
In your latest post, you falsely claim to only use it as a casual analogy:
[quote=“aldacron,post:57,topic:28074”]
However, a few posts down:
There’s nothing false about my claim. Both statements are the same. They both reflect that, to me, piracy is theft. The latter says “piracy is theft in my eyes”. I added the “my eyes” bit to it to make it clear that it is my opinion, a reflection of how I feel about the matter. Even had I not added the ‘my eyes’, my intent still would not have changed.
I’m not attacking you or accusing you of anything. I’m trying to point out that we are viewing this discussion from two different perspectives. You are talking from the position that copyright infringement is literally not theft. This is true and I do not dispute it. I am talking from the position that copyright infringement figuratively is theft. This is true only to those who believe it to be.