Author Topic: Piracy Thread!  (Read 11960 times)

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Offline RavynousHunter

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #30 on: November 21, 2013, 04:41:25 pm »
Everytime i pirate somethung and piss off a moralfag.

I get an erection.

Deimos wins the thread.

I pirate, but do so quite rarely and don't do it for any "moral" or "entitlement" reasons.  I just do it; I know there's no justification, and I don't really care.  I'm not "owed" it, I just want it, and if I can get it...well, bully for me, then.
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Offline The Illusive Man

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #31 on: November 21, 2013, 04:49:45 pm »
Short answer: yes. You have to provide the claim that restricting what I can do with your media is morally acceptable. Most of us don't get paychecks for work we've done decades ago (thanks to our ludicrously long copyright duration), so I have trouble sympathizing with your plight.

ID saw this coming decades ago when they released the source code for Doom, heck even the source code for Doom3 BFG Edition. They were smart enough to realize that their dedicated consumer base will improve and create new content for both engines. Such efforts would keep both games relevant even after development stopped. More importantly, people would still buy both even after development stopped.
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Offline RavynousHunter

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #32 on: November 21, 2013, 05:42:36 pm »
Short answer: yes. You have to provide the claim that restricting what I can do with your media is morally acceptable. Most of us don't get paychecks for work we've done decades ago (thanks to our ludicrously long copyright duration), so I have trouble sympathizing with your plight.

ID saw this coming decades ago when they released the source code for Doom, heck even the source code for Doom3 BFG Edition. They were smart enough to realize that their dedicated consumer base will improve and create new content for both engines. Such efforts would keep both games relevant even after development stopped. More importantly, people would still buy both even after development stopped.

Plus, if you take a look at things like Counter Strike, you can see that they can be quite fertile recruiting grounds for young developers.
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Offline JohnE

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #33 on: November 21, 2013, 05:57:07 pm »
I am an artist and writer who earns a small but growing portion of his income from art and writing, which is made possible by intellectual property and copyright law.

Direct question for Ironchew: Is it morally acceptable/should it be legal, in your view, for someone to take copies of my art and writing without my permission?

Short answer: yes.
Short reply: fuck you.

Essentially you're saying that the time, effort, thought, and yes, money, I put towards my creative endeavours is worthless. That I have no right to expect compensation for things I create that other people use.

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You have to provide the claim that restricting what I can do with your media is morally acceptable.
Because people have a right to be compensated for the fruits of their labor that other people use.

Or if you prefer, because people have a right to make and enter contracts. If I make a piece of art, or software, or whatever, available to download with a contract describing what you are and are not allowed to do with that software. When you take possession of the software, you are implicitly agreeing to abide by the contract. If you don't like the terms of the contract, you're free to not download the software.

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Most of us don't get paychecks for work we've done decades ago (thanks to our ludicrously long copyright duration), so I have trouble sympathizing with your plight.
First of all, I didn't say anything about the age of the art and writing, so that's irrelevant. Most of the work I'm making money from was produced in the past 2 years.

Second, you have trouble sympathizing with the fact that having put decades of practice and training, and thousands of dollars into developing skills that I thought I would be able to make a living with only to have some entitled, self richeous ass like yourself come along and say I have no right to expect any compensation for my work might upset me? I have no words to describe how narrowly self-centered that is.

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Is it morally acceptable/should it be legal, in your view, for the electronic media devices I use to have spyware installed on them that I cannot remove so that copyright holders can remotely control access to my copies of their work? Is it still moral when this spyware inevitably interferes with other non-copyright-infringement things I want to do with those devices?
No, and I never said it was, but you're using a tu quoque fallacy. Their immoral or illegal actions to try to stop your immoral or illegal actions doesn't make you actions any less immoral or illegal.

Offline The Illusive Man

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #34 on: November 21, 2013, 06:05:44 pm »
The argument between Ironchew and JohnE is pointless because it is possible to sell content without DRM or other BS bundled in.
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Offline JohnE

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #35 on: November 21, 2013, 06:15:39 pm »
How does that make it pointless? We both agree that DRM crap has gone way overboard, but that doesn't negate copyright law.

Offline chitoryu12

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #36 on: November 21, 2013, 06:18:09 pm »
Well, there's no real simple answer to this kind of thing. Like a lot of stuff in life, there's far too many "what ifs" to simply create a single, easy solution that applies to everything.

When it comes to works that have a physical medium, like video games and movies, the question of how much profit is lost depends on how many copies are made. If a game is no longer being produced and all copies have been sold to their distributors, how much money is the creator actually receiving from their work? Game developers make a grand total of zero dollars off of used game sales; once every copy has been sold to its first owner, that money is it. Many old games (a category that includes even 7th generation games, as we're almost 10 years past the release of the Xbox 360) are no longer being made new, and thus no money is going to the developer despite these games still existing and being played.

Digital distribution is a whole 'nother ballgame, as it's essentially a never-ending "print run". The developers that get harmed the most by piracy are indie developers who sell their software exclusively online, as their market dries up massively if everyone can easily get themselves a free copy. The only way to counter loss of sales to piracy is to either make the game impossible to crack (which can't be done, no matter how hard the biggest security companies try) or increase the price of the game to make more money from each individual sale. And because increasing the price too much past what the market will willingly pay will cause a loss in sales as well, small-time developers who exclusively distribute online need to be very careful about how they charge people.

Regardless, Ironchew is an idiotic baby. Whether or not piracy is inherently less harmful than strapping rocket launchers to your car doesn't matter, and nobody cares about that kind of bullshit; if the doge had any sense, he'd realize exactly what kind of logical fallacy he was committing while pretending to be logical. I'll wait for him to figure it out.

Moreover, shifting the focus to spyware and secretly installing counter-piracy software on computers is a red herring that has nothing to do with the debate at hand: is it actually defensible to pirate games, software, and films in such a way that it denies profit of any kind to the creator? Whether or not DRM is morally defensible doesn't make piracy morally defensible any more than you can claim that it's okay to punch babies because the NSA spies on us: other people doing bad or morally gray things doesn't make what you do any better.

Yes, I do pirate games. But I do so in ways that do not deny money to the creator: either I've already paid for a copy and I need to get a new one for whatever reason, the game is out of print or the developer simply doesn't exist and thus I'm not denying them a paycheck, or I'm only demoing the game on my system and do not plan on keeping it and will actually willingly purchase the game if it runs and I want to permanently have it around to play. It's difficult to say "moral piracy" with a straight face, but I try to be careful about not stepping on artists. And I absolutely do NOT try to deny indie developers their money, as God knows my individual sale counts more for them than it does for Bethesda Softworks.
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Offline Ghoti

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #37 on: November 21, 2013, 06:18:19 pm »
*roasts marshmallows* The issue of piracy is an interesting and complex one, so I believe the best course of action is to scream at each other until the problem magically solves itself. </sarcasm>
The way I see it, it's like smoking, drinking, and other "bad" things: if you don't like it, don't do it. Understand that pirating/not pirating does not automatically mean someone is more or less moral than someone who makes another choice.
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Offline chitoryu12

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #38 on: November 21, 2013, 06:21:05 pm »
On a related note, I think that the harmful, counterproductive reaction companies have had to piracy (trying to stop it through DRM and restricting legal users, for example) are less indicative of the negative effects of piracy (i.e. "The companies wouldn't have to be so mean and morally questionable if those pirates would stop pirating!) and more indicative of the inability of the ones in charge to sit down and weigh the consequences of their actions, instead choosing to simply target everyone who COULD become a "bad guy" and hope that it works.
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Offline Ironchew

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #39 on: November 21, 2013, 06:28:28 pm »
How does that make it pointless? We both agree that DRM crap has gone way overboard, but that doesn't negate copyright law.

The ultimate goal of copyright law is to benefit the public, not to ensure income for content owners. The latter is only an incentive meant to further increase creativity for the public domain. I approach copyright mainly from the perspective of a programmer, and my gripes with how it applies to other media is mainly limited to its ridiculously long duration that I can't see having any benefit to the public domain at all. It may be legal, but it can be unjust at the same time.

Or if you prefer, because people have a right to make and enter contracts. If I make a piece of art, or software, or whatever, available to download with a contract describing what you are and are not allowed to do with that software. When you take possession of the software, you are implicitly agreeing to abide by the contract. If you don't like the terms of the contract, you're free to not download the software.

Speaking from some experience here with programming; that does not communicate the whole picture. I have to be able to see and easily understand the license before downloading something to either know what I'm getting myself into or know why I don't want to download it. Even then, license terms are not a blank cheque and you don't get to impose unreasonable terms for simply using the software. Even the GNU GPL only makes restrictions on the terms of redistribution, which copyright normally does not allow at all.

If the license terms are only contained in a clickthrough EULA that is in no way obvious until I have already bought the software (and very likely do not have first-sale rights on), I have entered the contract under duress and I am under no obligation to follow the license terms contained therein.
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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #40 on: November 21, 2013, 06:33:19 pm »
The way I see it, it's like smoking, drinking, and other "bad" things: if you don't like it, don't do it. Understand that pirating/not pirating does not automatically mean someone is more or less moral than someone who makes another choice.
Well, no, actually. Drinking and smoking for the most part only harms you. Piracy, on the other hand, is harmful to other people's livelihoods. To suggest that it's not inherently immoral is asinine.

Offline Ironchew

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #41 on: November 21, 2013, 06:44:35 pm »
The way I see it, it's like smoking, drinking, and other "bad" things: if you don't like it, don't do it. Understand that pirating/not pirating does not automatically mean someone is more or less moral than someone who makes another choice.
Well, no, actually. Drinking and smoking for the most part only harms you. Piracy, on the other hand, is harmful to other people's livelihoods. To suggest that it's not inherently immoral is asinine.

Making blanket statements like that is asinine and in no way furthers understanding about the role copyright should play in society.
Consumption is not a politically combative act — refraining from consumption even less so.

Offline JohnE

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #42 on: November 21, 2013, 06:49:46 pm »
The way I see it, it's like smoking, drinking, and other "bad" things: if you don't like it, don't do it. Understand that pirating/not pirating does not automatically mean someone is more or less moral than someone who makes another choice.
I'm sorry, but yes it does. Maybe not if you do in such a way as to try not to deny the creators sales, as several folks have outlined. But yeah.

* * *

Ichy: Copyright law exists for BOTH reasons, to protect the rights (and incomes) of the creators AND to provide a means for material to enter the public domain. And yes, the laws have gone too far over to one side, but that doesn't mean we should swing the pendulum so far the other way that content creators have no rights.

As you said, copyright protections for content creators are supposed to encourage and facilitate that content being created. What you're proposing is to take away that incentive. And you don't think that would have a negative impact on the production of said content?

One other thing. There is a tendency in these debates for the pro-pirates to focus their richeous anger at faceless, nebulous, big businesses, and present themselves as champions of the little guy. But copyright protections go both ways. Case in point: My uncle-in-law is an artist of some repute. A big name clothing maker stuck one of his designs on a tshirt and started selling it, without his knowledge (at first, he found out about it). Without copyright laws, or with dramatically stripped down laws, he would have had no recourse, nor does he have the resouces to compete with them in the clothing marketplace. As much as big businesses fight for stronger copyright, going without would in many ways, hurt independent artists and small businesses much worse.

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #43 on: November 21, 2013, 06:51:35 pm »
The way I see it, it's like smoking, drinking, and other "bad" things: if you don't like it, don't do it. Understand that pirating/not pirating does not automatically mean someone is more or less moral than someone who makes another choice.
Well, no, actually. Drinking and smoking for the most part only harms you. Piracy, on the other hand, is harmful to other people's livelihoods. To suggest that it's not inherently immoral is asinine.
Making blanket statements like that is asinine and in no way furthers understanding about the role copyright should play in society.
I can't be arsed trying to explain this to you yet again, as it's proven to be about as useful as yelling at a brick wall. Just re-read JohnE's posts and see if that gets anywhere close to penetrating your entitlement/hero complex. We all know it wont, but hey, no harm in trying, right?

Offline Ironchew

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Re: Piracy Thread!
« Reply #44 on: November 21, 2013, 06:56:30 pm »
Ichy: Copyright law exists for BOTH reasons, to protect the rights (and incomes) of the creators AND to provide a means for material to enter the public domain. And yes, the laws have gone too far over to one side, but that doesn't mean we should swing the pendulum so far the other way that content creators have no rights.

As you said, copyright protections for content creators are supposed to encourage and facilitate that content being created. What you're proposing is to take away that incentive. And you don't think that would have a negative impact on the production of said content?

I didn't say all incentive should be taken away from content creators. What I said was that copyright duration should be scaled back down to limits reasonable for the medium in question (I claimed 10 years for video games was fair). Specifically in regards to software, I believe the government should only grant copyright protection if the developer hands over the source code to the Library of Congress. That way the software and its source, when they enter the public domain, can be more useful on newer platforms.
Consumption is not a politically combative act — refraining from consumption even less so.