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Piracy Is Not Theft !

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Well that sure was informational. Well at least I know I wasn't stealing things!

Thanks for this. I see the content industry working to confuse these two issues, and even more disturbing, I see Internet posters frequently echoing back their propaganda. High time for some clarification.

Piracy is NOT theft. The distinction IS important.

"Theft" is a a clearly-defined matter of criminal law. It is also a reasonably well-accepted moral issue (though we all understand that circumstances may vary).

"Piracy" is a poorly-defined term at best. But it is generally taken to mean "copyright infringement" by way of personal copying. Copyright is traditionally a matter of civil law -- it's a contract issue, NOT a crime as such (pre-DMCA!), and certainly NOT something that's easily translated into moral absolutes.

The content industry wants to conflate these terms because they want "piracy" to look like a clear moral issue. When in fact, it's a murky economic problem, defined chiefly in terms of profit.

I highly disagree with this. I am a writer and as a writer I am a very firm believer against piracy. Piracy is a theft!
If a person is going to work hard, devoting their time and engergy into writing something then it deserves to be protected. When you pirate, you are using something that they have done for your own use, without devoting any of your brain cells, your time, or your money. You are stealing their glory, their reward for writing.
Look at it like this.
You and another person decide to run an onehundred mile marathon.
On the day of the race, you are the only one to be at the starting point, but hey what the heck, you came this far, might as well run.
So you do, and you finish out at first.
On the way to accept your trophy, you find that the other runner has gotten their first. He apparently hasn't run at all, but yet he is recieving the price, for YOUR work.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call stealing and, ladies and gentlemen, piracy IS stealing.

You're confusing piracy with plagiarism.

Hahaha. You're a writer? Learn the difference between piracy and plagiarism before you make a stupid comment!

Allow me, sir or madam!
1. You're referring to plagiarism, not piracy. There's a reason why we have different terms for different acts.
2. A one hundred mile footrace is not a marathon. A marathon is, by definition, 42.195 kilometers or about 26.2 miles.
3. In piracy, you receive a trophy while the other person receives an image of a trophy burned onto a cd and labeled with a sharpie. Your scenario is an example of theft, not piracy.
4. I am also a writer and as a writer I am very firmly a believer that piracy is "way awesome, dude".

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why education is important. Call your Senator today!

Piracy IS NOT stealing, Why do you think they call it 'FILE SHARING'. Hey if I go and buy a movie from say like Walmart, I go home and rip it and convert it to DivX and upload it as a Torrent to say like PirateBay for someone to download. How can you sit there and say that's stealing when I put it out there for anybody who's interested in downloading it. File Sharing, that's what it is called and that's what I'm doing...File Sharing.

That example that you gave has nothing to do with Piracy, it has something to do with theft. There is a difference, let me correct your example that you gave. Your trophy that you won is still there waiting for you to pick up, what you saw is someone walking away from the trophy table with a replica (Copy) of your trophy and you still get the real trophy.

Besides if you don't want anybody having what you work so hard on making or writing, don't upload it. If you yourself don't upload anything to the internet anyway then you don't have anything to worry about as far as anybody 'STEALING' from you now don't you.

You're using some very specious reasoning. You're sharing the file - you're absolutely right: that isn't stealing. However, when someone else downloads your movie without paying for it, unlike you, they are using the product offered by the producers of the movie without paying for it. And, I'm sorry, but that's the textbook definition of theft. Furthermore, by uploading the movie, you're complicit in that act of theft, as it wouldn't have been possible without your involvement.
You might make the contention that, since you've paid for it already, the producers have already been paid for your "file sharing". That's wrong. That logic might apply to, say, a fruit-stand; you buy an apple, and then give it to a friend. Your friend has no obligation to go and pay the fruit vendor. What you need to remember is that we're talking about intellectual property here. By nature, it can be passed on in a way that other products cannot. If it is passed on without paying the producers, it remains theft. And, I'll reiterate this point one more time, if you're complicit in the passing on of that material, you're complicit in theft.
Also, the fact that you suggest that producers of intellectual material simply shouldn't upload stuff is ludicrous. You're in the digital age... the answer to the problem of internet piracy/theft (whatever you may want to call it) is to ensure that we have a strict moral and legal code forbidding these acts of theft.

If I go buy a car or even if I don't buy or have the original car, I can make a copy of it and give it to whoever I want and its perfectly legal as long as I give it away for free. Same with any other man made product. Its not stealing because the owner still has the original. Now copying a car would be a lot of work but thats only because no one has made an easy way to do it. Not too long back it use to be really hard to copy and share files but someone came along and said "Hey thats a nice thing these people are doing, sharing and stuff, I think I'll make a way that makes it easier for them to do that", enter The Pirate Bay, Napster, Limewire, AnyDVD.

FILE SHARING IS NOT STEALING, PERIOD.
and I use the term file sharing and not piracy because piracy is a term that the industry attached to file sharing to make it sound wrong but piracy has nothing to do with file sharing

to steal = to take (the property of another or others) without permission.
*note* someone buys a product so it becomes their property, we take that persons property with their permission. If someone gives you a car you don't ask all the previous owners for their permission to take the car, do you?

original definition of piracy = an act of robbery esp. on the high seas.
robbery = *refer to definition of steal above.

to share = To allow someone to use or enjoy something that one possesses
see note above.

"...using the product offered by the producers of the movie without paying for it. And, I'm sorry, but that's the textbook definition of theft."

Actually, no, it isn't. It's just using crap that doesn't belong to you. Likewise, if at a given morning you found someone swimming in your pool, you wouldn't say "someone stole my pool".

You might believe that piracy would ONLY hurt some writer or whatever, sure its copyright and all that, but most of the people who pirate wouldn't buy the software in the first place. So your writing or whatever might get picked up by a few groups and stop there. Done. No more cash, at least not for a long time till it gets popular, like after you die, gee that's useful. Piracy circulates your product around communities that otherwise wouldn't even bother with paid stuff when a free similar product is available for them to get instead. Here's the running story again in my words: You run, some guy records you, you get a trophy, he gets a trophy for the video. That's piracy, so what happens then? People watch the video, then pass it around, maybe some guy likes the person in the video, you get a contract and even more trophies. Happy day.

Piracy=theft makes lots of sense for people who's minds don't appear able to function beyond a binary level. I guess today's lesson was money=good and sharing=bad? Funny, when I was in primary school several decades ago they tought us sharing=good and money=the-root-of-all-evil. Of course, we didn't have the "benefit" of things like DRM and the RIAA to teach us right from wrong. :S

Piracy=cheating (as in sharing somebody else's work) I could live with, but stealing the term "theft"? That's just being greedy.

I'm really sad seeing that people in 2010 are still thinking this way. You are nothing but corrupt. And im talkin for piracy itself, i'm talking about the roots of it. 3000 years on a planet called earth, and STILL human beings are thinking for themselves, are still worried about making money for their own profit. This is sick, this is corrupt, and it can't be any other way, since money is ruling our lives. You are 5years old and get a piece of paper and a bunch of painting pens and draw a painting. And in your mind there is not a single braincell thinking: "oh i can sell this and make a lot of money". You are happy doing what ur inspired to do and freely share it with the community, which in our case are the human beings.
Ur stuck in your nation/religion (or i dunno what) cell, thinkin about yourself and yourself only. How DARE you call urself a writer when all ur thinking is selling your book. You aint no writter, ur just a salesman. And for that you should be ashamed.
I know you have heard this "crap" many times, and no i aint no communist trying to convience you for a f*cking vote, i dont want to make any money out of this, i don't want to rule this word. So open your mind to the idea of humankind being together and working for themselvs as a grp. Your writing a book is helping me to become better by reading it, so yes im happy if you write a book, and u should feel the same.

Either we like it or not, we are grown in a society that isnt ethical, we KNOW that there are people dying around the globe and still, we are thinking of how we can make more money. This is not the right way and im sure u are human enough to still feel this. I might be too young or too positive about life, u may call me crazy but the idea of african babys dying every day cause they cant be feed, while others have billions and prefer to spend them on buying a spaceship or some multinational coorp, is something im not capable of understanding.

I am rly tired of hearing: this is how the world is like, either you like it or not. I am happy to see around me (cant tell if it my illusion or not to be honnest) that ppl are begining to understand that, and want to take the next step.
Going from Licence Agreements to so called piracy, going from microsoft's paid windows to linux free distributions, it seems to me that ppl are begining to understand the NEED of human coorporation, begining through technology.

I dont want to take this any further, cause i dont know if ppl are rdy to hear what i have to say, still these first steps are important, since they will widely make ppl deny facts that are presented as token.

Sry for my bad english and thx for your time reading this post
Some 22year old human

You are only 22 but think 100% right.
Real talents, artists, poets, writers don't create with money in mind. It antagonistic.
Money can be by-product, but not the goal.
It's difficult to swim against the mainstream, isn't it?
We are forgetting that art, sports are leisures, and as such, the terms "professional" artists, footballers are oxymorons.
The anonymous writer you replied to is a moron, and too coward to write under his name, which is a bit strange. Let's see what he's been writting ;-).
Cheers
Alex

PS Intellectual Property is Intellectual Monopoly which goes against the free market world we are meant to live in...

I PERSONALLY PIRATED WINDOWS 3.0 AND 3.1 ON MANY COMPUTERS. When 95 came out, they all bought it. There were 2 ways of protecting it in those days and Bill did not use any of them. Free access brings people to evaluate ... and in time, ... they buy it. PIRACY IS THE GREATEST MEANS TO PROPAGATE SOME THING. I use it ... I like it ... I buy it. People are so afraid of losing money that the protection against piracy is their own downfall.
HEY BILL GATES READ THIS: piracy enables your software to be on many computers of people who can not buy it ... TODAY ... their situation can change tomorrow ... and they will buy. The witch hunt has to end. PIRACY FREES IT TO EVERY ONE ... people are honest ... and one day, they will buy it. Your fortune is not at risk ... for the moment; ... but free software coming out ... is your enemy.

Your forgetting a crucial fact. Most people pirate something so that they DON'T have to pay for it. If I pirated a working version of windows, why should I pay for it? You've only explained the purpose of DEMO SOFTWARE. Piracy is still wrong. It may not be stealing, but it's wrong. As a matter of fact, PIRACY IS NOT CONSIDERED THEFT. Piracy is a COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT which is still punishable by law.

To record and album takes about 150 studio hours and at about $100 per hour that comes to $15,000 some albums take less time some take more and some studios are cheaper and others more expensive, but these estimates are about the average time and cost to make a good album (this dose not include the cost of distribution or advertising be it physical or digital). This means to break even on this album I would need to sell 1500 copies at $10 each, now if 100 people buy this album and one of those hundred put it on the internet to be shared and then 5000 people download that song then I have only made $1000 despite thousands of people enjoying my music. Weather or not people would be willing to buy a second album from me or not, is irrelevant because i am now broke,have sold all my instruments and am living with my mother to cove the $14,000 difference. I am also no longer writing music because my two minimum wage jobs (if I'm lucky enough to find two jobs) take up most of my time.

If you think that mercantile way, it's that you're not an artist.

I pirated Call of Duty Modern Warfare when it first came out (so the producers lost £30 there) and then recommended it to 5 friends who play consoles, who wouldn't have bought it without my recommendation. The producers made anything up to £250 (shops do take a fee etc, but you get the idea). I myself then bought it, because pirated versions don't go online. I see piracy as an extended demo when it comes to games. Another example: I pirated Windows 7 Ultimate, recommended it to two friends who were building new computers, and they both bought it. Microsoft makes something like £300. Otherwise said two friends would have stuck to XP (easier to pirate). My entire music collection is pirated, but I buy albums I enjoy for my car, as the car CD player doesn't play copies. If I couldn't pirate albums, I wouldn't buy them (in case I didn't like the band) and would miss out. The bands I do pirate, then come to like, I go and see at live events. They lose £10 because I pirate an album, and make £50 from my concert ticket. Besides, for the average Joe, buying a legit copy of something is generally the easier option. Piracy may be hurting some industries, but it will never kill one. The Kindle, however, will most likely kill bookshops...

I think we will all burn in hell for our sins :s

; -)

War!

Devvie

~~~ notemail@facebook.com ~~~

Cuisvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore persevare
——
All spelling mistakes are my own and may only be distributed under the GNU General Public License! – (© 95-1 by Coredump; 2-012 by DevNullius)

ALL OF YOU SHUT UP AND AGREE

piracy is not direct theft of the target asset it is unintentional theft of what some would consider labor wages and royaltys it is infringement of the copyright protecting material that others worked hard to make

effort on work must be protected almost entirly because everyone riots and bitches if they feel wronged by someone else

if everyone knew how to share and still make profit at the proper status qou there would not be an issue with what we call piracy anyway

piracy unintentionally causes second hand damage to the creator or author of a peice of property simply cause those who pirate dont pay and in doing so encourage others to pirate as well

its not true direct and intentional theft your all right

but its also a crime via the 2nd hand damage otherwise just civil suit

plz research your own pasts of all those times a student or sibling took something that was yours without asking think on that and then youll understand what is the big fuckin deal about piracy

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