Again, you are wrong. It is Theft. uneducated people are fooled by the whole "no thing of value" because they do not understand how video game are made. They believe that as long as there is no physical copy you have not stole anything.

Go ahead, go to a consultant about your home. have them sit there and talk to you about things for a few hours then get up and leave. You haven't taken anything so its not theft right? No. It's theft. Just like pirating is. And no, I have never pirated anything, and never would I am not a scumbag. I work in the games industry, I am a high-end Engineer, so I don't really deal with the same sort of losses programmers feel over piracy, but I still feel it.

There is no data because we hide behind the internet. That's fine. 

"I'm not uneducated... I'm just someone who knows the definition of the word theft." 

No, you're not. You're someone who decided that theft can only be related to a physical thing of value and decided to run with it. Your lack of education means you cannot tie the connections between what creates that value. For instance, if I steal a piece of plastic, well, it's not really of much value. What makes that plastic have value is what a consumer will pay for it. NOT the piece of plastic its self. If no one buys it, it has no value. Also, a piece of plastic to say, a toy maker creates its value when they put their time and hard work into making it something useful. Just like game developers put long long hours and incredibly hard work into making your games possible. You haven't stolen anything directly from them, you're right, I mean, they have lost nothing. But you've stolen their time. You've stolen the product of their hard work. You've taken it without paying. Their hard work is what makes the game valuable. not the game itself.  That is how the world works. WORK = PRODUCT = VALUE. It doesn't matter what form it takes in the world. It's theft. End of discussion. The children on the internet who pretend to know what they are talking about have warped the minds of the generations below them and we have a serious, serious issue. 

Downloading a video game without paying for it should have exactly the same reprocusions as taking something of equal value from a store. Download 20-30 games, you should have jail time. You are a criminal. 

As long as there is no physical copy you HAVEN'T stolen anything.

Also, i never said people who commit copyright infringement aren't criminals.

Your actual argument actually disproves your theory.  If you refuse to pay a consultant you ARE NOT arrested for theft.  They take it up with you in court for not rendering payment.  Which is the crime.  Not theft...

It's also a crime that to my knowledge has no jail time... it's treated like a debt and there is no debtors prisons in the US.

Additionally you should be careful with the personal insults they're against forum rules.

Every time this is brought up, there's a argument on what the definition of "copyright infringement" is.

Yeah... it's bothersome.  It's easier to argue and insult people though that admit that there isn't any good data out yet purely for politcal reasons.

Personally i'd rather stay on topic.

@BW_JP: Umm... Obviously you miss the point in question. It didn't defend piracy, it just called the studies made as bullshit.

Look, the real issue is in politics, organisations that interest in intellectual property are lobbying the politics that have interest in controlling information and what people are allowed to say. Then both of these shout out loud "OMG PIRACY, we must control the piracy and prevent people from accidentally downloading stuff illegally". Internet provides a cheap way to do this.

Another point is the mindless accusation of every illegal download being a lost sale. If a guy makes 30k a year and pirates stuff worth for 40k, IP holders lost 40k in sales. Right?

You're right that piracy harm one IP holder more than the other, but in the content business the real issue is the content not being something that people see worth paying for.

Really? theres no theft? So games have a value of 1$ and 30c? because thats the value of an in store copy of a game. whats of value is the data. You're wrong. deal with it. 

I used that as an example to deal with time being of value. I dont care what name you want to put on it, you're a criminal. This isnt the same, you are stealing. Piracy is theft and little minds cannot get their heads around it.

Its enraging to see someone who appears to be over 20 years old making such stupid claims. I'll take a ban for it, I really don't care.  

I never once said that it was 1:1. i said it was not.

I'm out of the thread though, I dont want to argue this with people who have no idea of what it's like to actually be in an industry where this is an issue.

People who assault people and people who steal are both criminals as well.

They are not committing the same crime.

Additionally, now the stiffing an expert isn't theft though?  That appears to be what you are saying?

Even though the stiffing of an expert is much more like copyright infringment... then copyright infringment is theft.

These aren't what I'm calling it.  These are what the Criminal Justice System calls it.

They are not the same.  This can be eaisly seen by the fact that the punishments for downloading a 60 dollar game is different from the punishment you would receive for stealing a 60 dollar game.

I am in no way condoning piracy, i am simply congizant of the fact that both the Criminal's actions and how the Victim was inconvienced is how a crime is defined.

thats liek saying if i made a school project and someone copied it andhand it in first then thats not theft tahts copyright infringment right and i fail in my project becasue of taht. pff pirates

It's good to see that they see that the piracy loss estimates being fed to them are a load of crap; I once read that, by the RIAA's estimates on piracy losses, one month's worth of piracy losses exceeds the GDP of France ($150,000 loss per act of piracy, 2,370 torrents in a month, assuming 5 MB/song, equalling 76.3 million acts of music copyright infringement). Unfortunately, I get the sense that there are a lot of vested interests with a lot of money who will do their best to make sure this report never reaches the hands of policy makers...