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Forums - Gaming - Theft is a very forced metaphor for software piracy

Xoj on 14 August 2009
Onyxmeth said:
gergroy said:
I don't agree at all, theft is a very proper metaphor and is correctly used.

If you offer a service to people, say you walk their dogs. You would expect to get paid for that service right? What happens when somebody doesn't pay, is that stealing? They stole that time and effort you put forward to walking their dog.

So, if somebody is walking hundreds of dogs, but only half the people pay, the dog walker still gets paid, but not as much as he earned.

Piracy is theft. You can say "oh, but they weren't going to pay for their dogs to get walked anyway." Well thats fine, they shouldn't have their dogs walked then. It's not fair to the other people that paid to have their dogs walked and it most certainly is not fair to the dog walker himself.

The article is talking about the legal term of theft, not the slang term you're using to describe it as. For your information, your ridiculous analogy isn't theft either.

I can't remember who, but someone mentioned in the other piracy thread about murder. There's a phrase "stealing a life" which is how you are using the terms stealing and theft. However, you don't get tried in court for theft when you murder someone, and that is the difference between something legally being theft and people just using the word stealing to describe whenever something is either literally or metaphorically taken from someone.

that doesn't forbids RIAA crazy settlement and fines they are setting to users.

if piracy it's really stealing what the poor people are getting fines thats go way over murder.

if someone steals a cd get just a few  hundreds fine?

 

it's crazy, and seriously they just use to get money.

 

 



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Katilian on 14 August 2009
Slimebeast said:

Piracy is not an adequate word for it because the traditional act of piracy is a horrible crime, more like armed robbery than theft.

Theft is a good word because that's what stealing a service essentially is. "copyright infringment" is not a lay-man's term and doesn't describe the moral wrongness of the act.

Let's say there's an amusement park, animal zoo or a castle that is a museum. Now, sometimes people can go trhough the open gates of these kind of facilities, but they're still supposed to pay (unless entrance to the facility indeed is free, but this is not up to the visitor to decide!). Same with lots of city buses, you can walk right onto them from the backdoor without paying. But if you get caught by a controller, you get punished and no one protests against that. Same with tax-evasion etc.

Now, what could all these morally wrong acts when people go in for free be described as? I think clearly they're forms of thievery.

Is piracy morally wrong? Except for on internet forums, I personally don't know anyone who is genuinely bothered by casual piracy. Most people have pirated something at some stage, and in my experience, most people under 30 use infringing media on a regular basis.

Given morals are based on social norms, why exactly is piracy immoral?



Alterego-X on 14 August 2009



Hephaestos on 14 August 2009
Katilian said:
Slimebeast said:

Piracy is not an adequate word for it because the traditional act of piracy is a horrible crime, more like armed robbery than theft.

Theft is a good word because that's what stealing a service essentially is. "copyright infringment" is not a lay-man's term and doesn't describe the moral wrongness of the act.

Let's say there's an amusement park, animal zoo or a castle that is a museum. Now, sometimes people can go trhough the open gates of these kind of facilities, but they're still supposed to pay (unless entrance to the facility indeed is free, but this is not up to the visitor to decide!). Same with lots of city buses, you can walk right onto them from the backdoor without paying. But if you get caught by a controller, you get punished and no one protests against that. Same with tax-evasion etc.

Now, what could all these morally wrong acts when people go in for free be described as? I think clearly they're forms of thievery.

Is piracy morally wrong? Except for on internet forums, I personally don't know anyone who is genuinely bothered by casual piracy. Most people have pirated something at some stage, and in my experience, most people under 30 use infringing media on a regular basis.

Given morals are based on social norms, why exactly is piracy immoral?

morals are not biased on social norms...law is based on social norm. and this is why there are pirate political parties appearing in europe, because the law and the direction lawmakers are expanding it are not adequate to the social norm.

 

Morally though.... artists have had to perform in order to be paid for millenias... nowadays they just need to sit an relax as the money flows... how is that moral?

For movies, there is the issue of the larger investment... but that would not be an issue if the expected revenues were lower. Why are movies expensive to make? because people say it's bring a ton of money so they want their cut. I recall articles about T2 when it was the first movie to reach 100M budget... that was hudge.... now, it's meh! As far as I know actors and cinema workers had plenty of revenues even in the 80ies to feel content, and that was the prime time of VCRs and movie recording. Same for music, cassettes never were a problem.



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Katilian on 14 August 2009
Hephaestos said:

morals are not biased on social norms...law is based on social norm. and this is why there are pirate political parties appearing in europe, because the law and the direction lawmakers are expanding it are not adequate to the social norm.

Morals are definitely based on social norms. To borrow from wiki:

"Morals are arbitrarily created and subjectively defined by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience."

While many laws may be based on social norms, there are plenty (as you've said) which aren't. For example, many laws that govern big business obviously can't have been introduced because of social norms, because those situations aren't applicable to the public at large. If they were based on what big business was considering normal, then they wouldn't exist at all.



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Slimebeast on 14 August 2009
Katilian said:
Slimebeast said:

Piracy is not an adequate word for it because the traditional act of piracy is a horrible crime, more like armed robbery than theft.

Theft is a good word because that's what stealing a service essentially is. "copyright infringment" is not a lay-man's term and doesn't describe the moral wrongness of the act.

Let's say there's an amusement park, animal zoo or a castle that is a museum. Now, sometimes people can go trhough the open gates of these kind of facilities, but they're still supposed to pay (unless entrance to the facility indeed is free, but this is not up to the visitor to decide!). Same with lots of city buses, you can walk right onto them from the backdoor without paying. But if you get caught by a controller, you get punished and no one protests against that. Same with tax-evasion etc.

Now, what could all these morally wrong acts when people go in for free be described as? I think clearly they're forms of thievery.

Is piracy morally wrong? Except for on internet forums, I personally don't know anyone who is genuinely bothered by casual piracy. Most people have pirated something at some stage, and in my experience, most people under 30 use infringing media on a regular basis.

Given morals are based on social norms, why exactly is piracy immoral?


I already told you. Just like going to the Zoo for free without paying, riding the bus for free, parking your car for free, refusing to play your taxes - the act of copying software without paying is also a form of theft. And thievery is morally wrong, else it wouldnt be called thievery. Popular opinion can't overthrow that moral fact just because the common people gained a majority and think it's convenient to enjoy the work of hard working artists without paying their share. I pirate too, everyone I ever met pirate as well. I sometime park my car without paying and try to get away with it etc. But yet I think it's wrong.



Katilian on 14 August 2009
Slimebeast said:

I already told you. Just like going to the Zoo for free without paying, riding the bus for free, parking your car for free, refusing to play your taxes - the act of copying software without paying is also a form of theft. And thievery is morally wrong, else it wouldnt be called thievery. Popular opinion can't overthrow that moral fact just because the common people gained a majority and think it's convenient to enjoy the work of hard working artists without paying their share. I pirate too, everyone I ever met pirate as well. I sometime park my car without paying and try to get away with it etc. But yet I think it's wrong.

Morals aren't facts (hence the phrase "subjectively defined"). If they were, there wouldn't be any questions about morality. If they are facts, why are things like honour killings, abortions, womens rights, religion, stem cell research and gay marriage (just to name a few) topics of debate?

And what about morals that don't directly affect anyone else? In certain societies, a majority of people consider flag burning to be immoral, yet if the majority decided that flag burning wasn't bad, is it still immoral? The morality of burning a flag isn't inherent, so how is the morality of burning a flag good or bad without a society's opinion?



Slimebeast on 14 August 2009
Katilian said:
Slimebeast said:

I already told you. Just like going to the Zoo for free without paying, riding the bus for free, parking your car for free, refusing to play your taxes - the act of copying software without paying is also a form of theft. And thievery is morally wrong, else it wouldnt be called thievery. Popular opinion can't overthrow that moral fact just because the common people gained a majority and think it's convenient to enjoy the work of hard working artists without paying their share. I pirate too, everyone I ever met pirate as well. I sometime park my car without paying and try to get away with it etc. But yet I think it's wrong.

Morals aren't facts (hence the phrase "subjectively defined"). If they were, there wouldn't be any questions about morality. If they are facts, why are things like honour killings, abortions, womens rights, religion, stem cell research and gay marriage (just to name a few) topics of debate?

And what about morals that don't directly affect anyone else? In certain societies, a majority of people consider flag burning to be immoral, yet if the majority decided that flag burning wasn't bad, is it still immoral? The morality of burning a flag isn't inherent, so how is the morality of burning a flag good or bad without a society's opinion?


Obviously it's implied that there are some morals that are practically universal. Theft is one of them. Murder is another. You don't have to believe they are absolute morals (but even some atheists believe in absolute morals - side note) - it's just not practical to debate them, because for example condemnation of theft is universal.

So if I can demonstrate that piracy is in essence the same as theft of a service - again, just like going to the zoo, bus etc without paying, and just like tax evasion - then I've shown it's immoral by universal standards.



Katilian on 14 August 2009
Slimebeast said:

Obviously it's implied that there are some morals that are practically universal. Theft is one of them. Murder is another. You don't have to believe they are absolute morals (but even some atheists believe in absolute morals - side note) - it's just not practical to debate them, because for example condemnation of theft is universal.

So if I can demonstrate that piracy is in essence the same as theft of a service - again, just like going to the zoo, bus etc without paying, and just like tax evasion - then I've shown it's immoral by universal standards.

Lets take this to the extreme. If tomorrow everyone on earth decided that murder was 100% ok, explain to me how murder is still immoral? Who is going to say it is wrong? What implies that murder is inherently wrong?

Edit: Also, even if piracy = theft of service, why can't piracy be moral when other forms of theft of service are immoral? Killing someone for fun and killing someone in self defence are both forms of murder, yet there are people that consider murdering for self defence to be ok.



Alterego-X on 14 August 2009

I think piracy is not immoral, but the current copyright law is immoral.