Why DON'T you pirate?

Korgoth · Apr 9, 2009

Aberzanzorax said:
So what do you all think? Agree, disagree, or have other reasons not to illegally download?

Put me down for "it's illegal".

It may not even really be "stealing", and so not inherently immoral (I really don't know... it's actually a fairly complicated question and I won't pretend to have worked it out when I haven't). But it's against the law.

Now, following the law is a moral issue. If a law isn't inherently immoral (citing examples may irritate the mods... but imagine a law that says you have to commit patricide or something) and the law is promulgated by a legitimate authority (i.e. not revolutionaries or warlords, etc.) then we're morally bound to follow it even if it's a stupid law.

It's the old Augustine-Aquinas-MLK thing: an unjust (i.e. inherently immoral) law is not a law. But if something's an actual law then I'm afraid we're just stuck with it (unless there's a legitimate apparatus for getting it changed... in which case by all means).

If the legitimate civil authority says no unauthorized downloading then that's the way it has to be. I use the roads, I am protected by the military and I benefit in all these countless ways from being an American citizen. So in exchange, I have to avoid breaking the (relatively lax!) rules.

I think it's fair.

Najo · Apr 9, 2009

Zimri said:
If you park your car, and I then go to your car and steal it, you can no longer drive your car because I am in posession of it and you are not. There was only one car and now you are deprived of it's use because I have physically taken it from you.

If you park your car, and I go to your car and wave my magic wand over it creating from the ether an exact replica and drive away in the replica leaving your car intact and there for your use you have lost nothing and I have gained a car.

Cameras (digital or otherwise) aren't actually soul stealing devices, nor are mirrors.

Except after you get your "magic wand" car, you are not going to spend money at a car dealer which supports the selling, distribution and manufacturing jobs that brought that car to you in the first place. Downloading steals from all of those people, not the end user. You are getting all of the benefits of owning and using the product without your friend losing their use. Even worse, all of your friends (and the peer to peer strangers sharing your files) are benefiting the same way too.

Very few of them are going to buy the product, thus not supporting the writers, artists, marketers, designers, distributors and retailers that brought you that product you just got for free.

All of those people normally provided a lively hood by your money, do not recieve it, but you recieve the product they worked so hard to bring you.

And that, is theft.

Aus_Snow · Apr 9, 2009

pawsplay said:
I put forth that "communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence" substantially overlaps with "facts, ideas, systems... the way these things are expressed."

Bully for you.

If you honestly believe that creative works are simply 'information'. . . well, apart from that being essentially 'retro future' cutesy doublespeak that might still have clung to a shred of cool in the 80s, or - more often - laughable 'justification' in action. . .

No, never mind. I've been round that roundabout before. I know how it goes. So. . . I'll just bow out again.

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 9, 2009

Aus_Snow said:
Bully for you.

If you honestly believe that creative works are simply 'information'. . . well, apart from that being essentially 'retro future' cutesy doublespeak that might still have clung to a shred of cool in the 80s, or - more often - laughable 'justification' in action. . .

No, never mind. I've been round that roundabout before. I know how it goes. So. . . I'll just bow out again.

Aus_Snow, that's a nice bit of wisdom. I think I'll follow your lead before my blood pressure spikes...

Oldtimer · Apr 9, 2009

Can some of you please lay off the flame bait!

Jeff Wilder said:
and copyright infringement is theft

NO, IT'S NOT! Of all the arguments against piracy and for copyrights, this must be the most stupid one. Simply look it up in the law books. This is a flat out lie.

Jeff Wilder said:
(And in case there are people who don't understand this: The sectors of a hard disk on which an mp3 song resides -- before and/or after it's been pirated -- are not the property. The song is the property.)

No, it's not property - it's a strange thing defined as "Intellectual Property". Intellectual Property is (apart from an oxymoron) nothing like property, in the same way that a hot dog is nothing like a dog. WIPO coined the term to get that connection in the minds of people, but there is no way you can equate IP to property. Most other languages stay away from the word "property" in their naming of IP.

My blood pressure is getting seriously high from all this nonsense. Can we not debate the OP's questions without bending the words "theft" and "property" to fit our opinions?

Sonny · Apr 9, 2009

My reasons for not pirating are because I don't think it's right and doesn't help the hobby I love. That and pdfs will never have new book smell.*

*mmmmm new book smell

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 9, 2009

*sigh*Aus_Snow is clearly wiser than I.

Oldtimer said:
and copyright infringement is theft

Click to expand...

NO, IT'S NOT! Of all the arguments against piracy and for copyrights, this must be the most stupid one. Simply look it up in the law books. This is a flat out lie.

See my earlier quote from Black's Law Dictionary.

No, it's not property - it's a strange thing defined as "Intellectual Property". Intellectual Property is (apart from an oxymoron) nothing like property, in the same way that a hot dog is nothing like a dog. WIPO coined the term to get that connection in the minds of people, but there is no way you can equate IP to property. Most other languages stay away from the word "property" in their naming of IP.

Again, IP rights are defined as a subset of property rights under US law- the owner/creator can sell, gift, withhold or even destroy it freely.

While not commonly used before WIPO, the term "intellectual property" actually arose in the 1800s.

My blood pressure is getting seriously high from all this nonsense.Can we not debate the OP's questions without bending the words "theft" and "property" to fit our opinions?

I'm a Texas attorney, licensed since 1996, working primarily in Entertainment law. IP is what I do.

If you- or anyone else- want to discuss it with me further, you can contact me at my law firm email, ajaubryesq@verizon.net. I may take some time to return your correspondence: my law books are currently in storage while I'm doing a renovation.

Jeff Wilder · Apr 9, 2009

[Copyright infringement is theft.]

Oldtimer said:
NO, IT'S NOT! Of all the arguments against piracy and for copyrights, this must be the most stupid one. Simply look it up in the law books. This is a flat out lie.

You are simply incorrect. Copyright infringement is theft. Period. The fact that there are statutes which modify, reinforce, and/or subsume the common law or statutory prohibitions on "unlawful taking of personal property" does not change the absolute fact that the "unlawful taking of intellectual property" is theft.

No, it's not property - it's a strange thing defined as "Intellectual Property".

Intellectual property is property. The fact that you cannot wrap your brain around the idea that "property" need not be tangible is unfortunate, but irrelevant to the definition of property in the modern era.

I earnestly suggest you educate yourself, because right now you're embarrassing yourself instead.

Zimri · Apr 9, 2009

Najo said:
Very few of them are going to buy the product, thus not supporting the writers, artists, marketers, designers, distributors and retailers that brought you that product you just got for free.

Except that, of course, we can't ever know what effect PDF piracy has on actual print copies being sold.

Amongst my group of peers downloading PDFs of products not yet bought more than 75% of the time leads to the hard copy purchased at the FLGS (so no amazon discount) The other 25% of the time we find the product not to our liking and not of use to us. I seriously can not fathom any group of people who game like we do all sitting around with laptops to read a pdf while gaming rather than passing a book.

So in our circle (and I highly doubt ours is much different than most except that we very rarely buy more than one hardcopy of a book as we prefer to share our books and thus buy more titles) a downloaded PDF leads to MORE sales of hard copies, and supports our FLGS

Black's Law Dictionary said:
Theft is any of the following acts done with the intent to deprive the owner permanently of the possession, use, or benefit of his property

Deprive the owner Permanently of the :

1. Possession: Nope wotc still has possession of exactly as many as they had possession of before. If I uploaded a virus to WOTC that deleted theirs after I made my copy then they would no longer have possession

2. Use: No they can still do everything with it they used to be able to. If I had it redacted, made it non transmissible, or corrupted it so it couldn't be opened then they could claim that they could no longer use it.

3. Benefit: This is the strongest case to be made however to make it you need to show that they were harmed in some manner. The benefit they hope to incur is obviously profit from the sale of the PDFs. So then the questions are : (and I have yet to see good answers for any of these)

A: Would the people that downloaded free illegal PDFs had ever spent the money on the legal ones ?

B: Did the downloads of illegal PDFs negatively impact PDF or Hardcopy sales ?

C: Did the downloads of illegal PDFs positively impact hardcopy sales (yes even I won't try to argue that it would have increased legal PDF sales) ?

D: Did any positive impact to hardcopy sales (either via browsing of a pdf then hard copy purchase, or exposure of the hobby as a whole) outweigh any negative impact ?

E: What has this whole issue and the handling thereof done to community of hobbyists both in regard to how we see ourselves and WOTC and how the outside world views WOTC and the hobby/hobbyists ?

Black's Law Dictionary said:
with the intent to deprive the owner of the benefit of ownership (or possession) permanently.

I doubt anyone could prove that anyone else "intended" for people that desired to buy the PDF to be unable to do so. They can still sell to everyone that prefers to buy from them as they still have possession of all of the property they previously had possession of. Seeing as how your source also state it has to be done "permanently" are you saying you would be okay with PDFs that were unauthorized but self deleted after say 99 years ? They wouldn't be permanent.

Oldtimer · Apr 9, 2009

Dannyalcatraz said:
See my earlier quote from Black's Law Dictionary.

That is only talking about property. I can give so make examples where his definition would break down for intangibles. I'm a scientist and when the model starts to break down, I don't blame reality. I modify the model or create another one for this special case.

Dannyalcatraz said:
Again, IP rights are defined as a subset of property rights under US law- the owner/creator can sell, gift, withhold or even destroy it freely.

I admit my lack of detailed knowledge of US law. It is not, however, the only jurisdiction in the world (as the WotC lawsuits show). In my end of the world Intellectual Property is not a subset of property. (I realized that you said "IP rights" and "property rights", so maybe you do agree that IP is not a subset of property.) It has its own set of laws completely.