Is online piracy really "theft"?

[Crzwaco]

Oh, I forgot, rented the Kick-Ass DVD way back, watched that piracy announcement where the one family is happy cause they have the good quality legit version and the other family is unhappy 'cause they have a crappy pirate copy, only to watch the movie on a 4:3 format with no pan and scanning. The actors were talking off-screen a lot, sound was rubbish. Found a pirate copy a few days later and the quality was by far better than the legit DVD.
It kept me giggling for some time...

This comes to mind.

[RaFi]

*Clap, clap, clap its funny cause its so true

[Gamy]

I think South Africa currently has a very sensible way of dealing with both home pirating and mass piracy where they distribute/sell things.

Piracy is not theft, it's not black and white (or even grey) which some can't seem to get over. It's different and should be treated as such.

Also about the MPAA stating piracy not being theft, well that's a fact according to their law and they want to keep it that way because if it gets classed as theft finding someone guilty would require much more evidence because it would be criminal and not civil. What things like the MPAA/RIAA want is a mixture between the two, where it's treated as criminal in the sense that the state pays for prosecution, collecting evidence etc but doesn't have such stringent evidence requirements compared with civil. Basically they would like governments to punish/sue the people and hand over the money from them.

[iNNOS4iNT]

That gives grounds to make piracy more legal than it was before.. Unless I read something wrong somewhere.

[Kuga]

I had this argument with Omega Fenix a while back..

http://mygaming.co.za/forum/showthre...s-SOPA-Support

To summarize :

I will not rehash this argument.

If I make something and sell it, you make a copy of what I made and give it away for free therefore affecting my sales you are stealing from me. Just because it doesn't line up with a pre-digital definition of theft doesn't mean that piracy isn't theft.

If you make something what? Physically or digitally?

But nonetheless, lets move on shall we?

Counter rebuttal. What happens when 3D scanning and printing becomes cheaper? It is already here, just not cheap enough for the average Joe.

If you design the next best uber fuel saving motor, and I break into your place and 3D scan and print it for myself, is it considered theft?

Aye was about to say, you are still robbing someone of a potential sale hence denying them the money they would have made. Nor do I see how it creates artificial scarcity, I can go to the Steam store any time of day, any day of the week and buy every single game in their catalogue. Just because I have to pay for it doesn't make it scarce.

No. If someone copyright infringes, they would never have bought it in the first place.

However, there are some circumstances where people actually do buy the game after they have copyright infringed.

I have bought Sins of the Solar Empire after I copyright infringed, because it was so freakin cool.

What people should do rather than trying to fight copyright infringement, is to have demo's and shareware versions.. anyone remember those days?

[Necuno]

Is online piracy really "theft"?

You wouldn’t steal a car! You wouldn’t steal a movie! Piracy is stealing! Piracy is a crime! (But is it really?)

We need a sticky on this. Tired of repeating myself and I'm quite sure there are more who feel the same way. This whole "is it piracy?" debate is just as tiresome as the evolution VS creationism...

[Cronus086]

yeah, no. sorry bud. There are many reasons for piracy, including testing. Some people pirate games to see how it is before they spend money on it. Or some feel the asking price for them game is higher than its value. With that said, if someone decided not to pirate a game definitely doesn't mean he would have bought it. It just means he'll have less games

Makes sense...

[Graal]

Please link that study because I call bullsht.

We've pointed out that a whole series of studies have all suggested that the biggest infringers of content online also tend to be the best customers of content, rather than just "freeloaders" who refuse to pay for content. Critics of these studies brush them off (without any evidence) by simply saying if that were true, then sales of content wouldn't have dropped so much in the music industry (other industries, it should be noted, have not seen such a drop-off). But that's misunderstanding (or misapplying) basic statistics. No one is saying that this means that file sharing automatically leads to more sales. But it does suggest that treating those people as just "freeloaders who just want stuff for free" is absolutely the wrong response. It shows that these people are willing to pay money if they're given a good reason to buy. The problem is that they're not.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...e-hadopi.shtml

Read the rest of the article. Pretty interesting stuff. And it makes sense. The industry loves to paint a picture of pirates as greedy, grubby little men who never buy anything, when it is often not the case.

Makes sense...

It does make sense. Unless you're a moron living in a world where everything has to be either black or white.

[fridgevr]

Cant be seen as theft using arguments above. If my competitor got a tip that i quoted my 400 Desktops to said Government Department and he then quoted lower using said tip is that stealing? Because at the end of the day what some people above are saying they are being denied possible sales because of this? But am i also not being denied my deal which would make me some nice commission?

Piracy in my opinion is a direct result of big companies in entertainment missing the digital boat and then instead of trying to get with the current trends they fight it and try and belittle and criminalize potential life long customers.

I for one if you gave me a sort of steam interface where i can buy movies and series and access them like i do my games at reasonable prices ill be the happiest person on the planet. I own a DVD collection of about 200 DVD's. Last time i actually watched one of them? Maybe 2 years ago. Having everything on HDD's playing through network to my nice TV is 10 times better than screwing around with discs. Big entertainment companies should maybe wake up a bit.

My 2 cents. (Zim cents that is)

[Adoxographist]

You take something without paying for it is stealing.