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Khuutra on 18 April 2010
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Zucas said:
Khuutra said:

Legally speaking, that isn't the case. Theft is defined as the removal of someonne else's goods or services without compensation - you on't actually remove anyone's goods or services, or prevent them from being compensated. That's the difference between pirating and walking out of a restaurant without paying, or going into a movie theater without paying: no one is actually deprived of limited resources without recompense, which is why there's a legal difference.

Copyright infringement in the case of game piracy is more about gaining the advantages of creation without paying for it: the idea is that you don't have the right to experience somethign without paying for it, even if you're not depriving someone else of recompense or that same experience.

Piracy is illegal and wrong, sure, but it's distinct from theft.

Well not anymore.  That would been true before 1997.  It used to be to constitute copyright infringement that there had to be a motive of financial gain.  Aka the scenarios that have been discussed.  But under the No Electronic Theft Act, it amended the the idea to including copyright infringement without financial gain.  Most arguments used to be, is if they don't use it for monetary gain, then the company isn't losing anything.  But apparently that has been reversed to showing that there is a notion that something is being lost, and now there is virtually no legal difference.

Thus under current U.S. law, it is completely illegal to take and/or distribute something whether physical or digital when it is copyrighted, even if it isn't for the use of personal financial gain.  That means, under U.S. law, ALL FORMS of piracy that we know of today is completely illegal. 

Zucas, I'm not sure you're cleear on what I'm arguing. I acknowledged in the first place that piracy is wrong and illegal, but not all illegality is equivalent and one act being illegal does not make it the same as another illegal act.

More, the scene of piracy has changed immensely since 1997 - the provisions under these laws mgiht not even apply to torrenters, sinc distribution of the media happens without expectation of any compensation (including access to more media as a result of distribution) and thre's still a limit as to the absolute value of distributed works. You read that article, you know as well as I do that the law in 1997 was written in reference to bootleggers and people who try to falsely claim copyright.

It represents an oversimplified view on what constitutes piracy (Youtube on the whole is guilty of infringement of copyright here, by sheer virtue of hosting videos of concerts), it doesn't apply to cases wherein ther is no expectation of compensation, and - oh yeah - it still doesn't equate piracy with theft.