Piracy, Is It Truly Wrong?

Herpaderp

Sure there is. Wal-mart only sells the clean versions. I forgot all about that once when I bought a CD from them several years ago and was like "where are all the obscenities?"

Interesting point. I'm inclined to agree with you, based on principle, but that isn't exactly correct.

If you steal a CD @ Wal-Mart, two parties (at least) are being assaulted financially: both the artist who created the music, and Wal-Mart (the retailer).
When you pirate music, or movies, or w/e, you're taking the retailer out of the equation, so you're hitting the artist (and his/her recording agency) more directly and much harder in the wallet. So, you really shouldn't be surprised that the music industry is so concerned with pirating ... to them, stolen digital files is *much* more harmful than stolen CDs ... The artist basically already got paid before you steal a CD, and the burden is shared by the retailer.

Listen, digital and software piracy is nearly universally recognized as a crime that's harmful to society, by most governments across the globe. Yes, some humans will always push the limits of the law, but those same humans have no room to complain, in my opinion, if they get caught and penalized by law enforcement. The FBI and Interpol both prosecute piracy with much more zeal than you might expect.
Best advice is: don't do it.

*** greatest xD


also to person you quoted

lol you tool

I'll stop doing it when publishers treat us better.

Paying £12.00 for an album with half the songs of the debut album because they've got 'popular' is out of line imo.

When you're young, you have more time than money, and the effort involved in pirating media is worth it.

When you get older, you have more money than time, and paying for media is the only way it's worth it.

I've been called a jew before, but I'm pretty sure if there's ever a chance I can get something for free, I'll take it.

It takes longer, but it's free.

Also it's a pretty big assumption that older people are all financially sound.

It's not free, though. It's only free if your time is less valuable than whatever you stole.

For most people this isn't the case anymore past a certain point in life. For me, it was about 28.

Assuming you're not working from home, you can leave your PC on downloading whilst doing other things. I don't see how age has anything to do with it, if anything it would make me more likely to download because Instead of suffering from slow internet speeds, I'd be out doing something else whilst it downloads.

That means on my internet speed I could technically download a film every 5 hours (lol internet I know).

Instead of dropping £20 on a brand new DVD, I'd much prefer to do that. Same with music albums, new albums take literally minutes to download at very high quality.

I can't articulate myself very well today, but the point I'm trying to make is this:

If I don't have the money to enjoy a media, then I'll download it. It may be bad, and it may be unscrupulous, but at the end of the day If I didn't download with the way our economy is, I doubt I'd ever experience new media with my rent and food costs.

So you were a hellion pirate until 28?

oh hell screw movies I still pirate that stuff

the Big screen has not impressed me in the last few years

Naw, Jaerik had to spend a lot of time mastering the "Hadooken" before 28; no time for pirating.

If you had a decent job you could make that money in an hour and just buy the thing and save 4 hours.

Yes, in your comparison you compare intellectual property with physical property. The unauthorized usage/removal of physical property deprives the owner of something. Actus reus, mens rea; you're not depriving the owner of anything. Intellectual property is intangible and infinite, therefore cannot be considered stolen.


I do agree redistribution for profit is a felony.

Or download it, and put that £20.00 into a vacation fund.

Or invest your 4 hours to make even more money.

your missing the point when he said he would go 2 work make that money and leave his PC on to download it. Your argument is invalid

Because everybody stares at the download bar as it progresses towards completion, and does nothing else what-so-ever.

Or let it download while you work rly

Edit: Beat me to it etc. QQ

Actually, intellectual property can be "stolen", although, perhaps you mean that "steal" is not the most appropriate verb.

Governments recognize that unauthorized possession of non-physical entities that originated from another individual is a crime. That's why identity theft is a crime. We could call it identity rape or identity assault, and perhaps those would be more true-to-meaning ... but for simplicity's sake, we call it theft.

Same thing applies to piracy. The government recognizes the need to protect intellectual property; that's why we have patents and copyrights. We could call pirating "brain assault" or "mind raping" ... again, for simplicity, we term it piracy or theft.

If you want to steal/pirate other people's artwork or intellectual property, go ahead. Just be prepared to pay the consequences if you are caught. It's a crime to do it; and if you don't like that, boo-hoo.

Because some people have paid big fines for pirating media.

Idk if it takes 5 hours to download a movie it would lag your computer, no?

I would be investing it. I'd be remote controlling my PC or setting enough downloads on it so they downloaded whilst I worked.

Not really. You could put it on low or medium and still download whilst working from home. I'd rather download a film and give the £20.00 to charity.

Oh I guess there is a hole in that argument then. I was figuring the download would significantly hamper a computer.

Nah, the only thing it would do is slow down internet speeds (unless you had a PC from the stoneage with windows 2000 or something on it) plus you can set the maximum download speed to keep it an acceptable level.

The chances of getting caught is one in a million and half the people they catch are broke as hell

to a point i agree with this... personally with the wife and kids.. its more viable for me to go to a redbox and get a movie for a dollar and watch it on tv with them, than d/l a movie on my comp. which could be shitty quality, and spend time hooking my computer up to the tv and so forth... its just easier to spend the dollar, plus more convenient you never know what you may want to watch that night....

This isn't a subject of whether or not it is illegal. It's a question of morality, perhaps you should pay more attention.

For instance, when you right-click on a picture of the "Mona Lisa" online, and "Save As" are you stealing that photo? Should you be fined?

For something to be considered a theft, transfer of ownership must occur. The owner has to be deprived of the item (or virtual good).

The way society looks at it. If you lend your item to someone your stealing since that person could have "purchased/rented" the item

The only time I see it as being bad is if im profiting from it. Making CDs of copied games and selling them but this is not the case

The notion of "IP" goes beyond simple file-sharing--it encompasses things like industrial espionage, state secrets, patents, etc. I am sure the Chinese government would like to portray their spies operating in the US in the aerospace and nuclear energy sectors as "copying data for personal distribution", but the US government (and affected businesses) prefer to see it as "theft of trade and technological secrets" no? :p

Certainly in many cases (but obviously not all) nothing physical was removed or taken away and proprietary ownership of the information was never shifted, but the benefit gained from the information in the "copying" process is monumental. The government treats this very much as theft, even though the procedures/operations to do the "copying" might be the same as those used in pirating digital movies.