| Calmador said: Look ideas aren't the easiest thing to tack.. that's why you have to copyright your ideas as soon as think them up. That's our little system that keeps things in check. That's the best we can do about it and that takes care of all your questions. Took care of your dozens and dozens of problems. Stealing is just plain wrong. |
You're fighting over technicalities. Yes, vlad/Khuutra is right in one aspect: Copying a game is not stealing it. If you took it out of the store without paying then you'd be stealing it. However, copying it is still breaking a law designed to give authors the ability to keep their works under their control and distribute it as they see fit. Violation of copyright is still breaking a law, so it is still wrong.
A thief is someone who takes someone else's property without the person's freely given consent. You can take someone else's intellectual property rights away from them, not have stolen the actual property, and still be considered a thief. So in this regard, Calmador is correct in saying pirates are thieves.
One other technicality: You don't "copyright" an idea. You can only copyright an actual work (like something written, or a work of art). You patent ideas. Patenting is much more expensive ($5000 instead of a $35 cost to register a copyright). Patents prevent someone else from "coming up with their own idea" that just happens to match yours. It's a matter of who gets it patented first, regardless of who came up with the idea first. There is a strict standard for it, one that I think the US Patent and Trademark office has become way too lax on when it comes to software patents, as design patents are granted for obvious things now and they shouldn't be. But that's another thread.
