JohnQP wrote on Apr 16, 2017, 12:55:
You know, it occurs that I haven't even delved into the issue that software is generally licensed, not bought. I.e., the people who PAY for the software don't even own it, so possession doesn't even transfer in legitimate software transactions.

Illegal licensing, lol.

Makes well over a third of the posts to a single thread, and then discovers an aspect of the subject he's yet to touch upon.

The gift that keeps on giving.

You know, it occurs that I haven't even delved into the issue that software is generally licensed, not bought. I.e., the people who PAY for the software don't even own it, so possession doesn't even transfer in legitimate software transactions.

Illegal licensing, lol.

Magic 8 ball sez...you still haven't picked a better (or even equal) alternative choice because you don't have one.

Maybe you should actually read the posts in this thread then. Just because you've decided to ignore everyone in this thread and talk at us doesn't mean we weren't trying to explain it.

You don't get to pick which one of the 40 definitions applies to a verb just because you like the example they gave.

Pick a better one, and make your case for it. Oh, wait, you can't, or you would have.

You don't get to pick which one of the 40 definitions applies to a verb just because you like the example they gave.

Take, as in... you took someone else's stuff. It wasn't yours, and you made it yours. You can sidestep and dodge this all you want, but you are still wrong. Being digital is irrelevant. Your inability to comprehend digital ownership doesn't preclude its existence.

I give up. Keep stealing software. I hope you go to jail and spend your whole time explaining to your new boyfriend how it wasn't "really stealing". As in, he stole your anal virginity and even though it wasn't a physical thing... you won't have it anymore.

Abstract, it's too fucking much for you.

Do you live in Asia or Latin America?

You skipped my question, and turnabout is fair play, so...

Also, I like that you're creating a very specific situation, one that's very rare relative to people like you, who are just cheap gamers.

Broke people are rare? Asians who currently work in CG who taught themselves by piracy are rare?

It's not about the frequency of any given scenario. It's about working out the definitions using test cases. Copyright infringement fails the "theft test."

JohnQP wrote on Apr 14, 2017, 17:05:
Software piracy is rife in Asia, Latin America, etc. Does that mean that those places are less moral?

Bob and Joe are Bangladeshis without pots to piss in, and both have good potential to be CG artists. Bob pirates Max, learns the software, gets a CG job, eventually starts his own studio, and buys 10 seats of Max. Joe decides to take the moral high road, and goes into the family business.

Which guy was of most benefit to Autodesk? Which guy's decision actually "caused" Autodesk hypothetical "lost revenue" (hint: it's Joe)?

Do you live in Asia or Latin America?

Also, I like that you're creating a very specific situation, one that's very rare relative to people like you, who are just cheap gamers.

Heh. I did a CTRL-F in the Wikipedia article on Copyright Infringement, here's the first hit:

Estimates of the actual economic impact of copyright infringement vary widely and depend on many factors. Nevertheless, copyright holders, industry representatives, and legislators have long characterized copyright infringement as piracy or theft – language which some U.S. courts now regard as pejorative or otherwise contentious.[1][2][3]

Here's the second:

The terms piracy and theft are often associated with copyright infringement.[4][5] The original meaning of piracy is "robbery or illegal violence at sea",[6] but the term has been in use for centuries as a synonym for acts of copyright infringement.[7][8] Theft, meanwhile, emphasizes the potential commercial harm of infringement to copyright holders. However, copyright is a type of intellectual property, an area of law distinct from that which covers robbery or theft, offenses related only to tangible property. Not all copyright infringement results in commercial loss, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that infringement does not easily equate with theft.[1]

Aaand the third:

Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as theft. In copyright law, infringement does not refer to theft of physical objects that take away the owner's possession, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization.[11] Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the United States Supreme Court held in Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. Instead,

"interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: '[...] an infringer of the copyright.'"

The court said that in the case of copyright infringement, the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law – certain exclusive rights – is invaded, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.[1]

Also, technically speaking: what if Tom downloads the software and installs it on Bill's computer, and then Bill uses the software. It was Tom who did all the actual piracy, and has agreed to the EULA, which is presumably now being violated; what crime is Bill guilty of?

Stealing (from OED): Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

The verb take has 42 listed meanings here:
Take

The first relevant one:

4 get into one's hands, take physically; "Take a cookie!"; "Can you take this bag, please" [syn: get hold of]

That's the meaning in use in the definition you quote (there seem to be no more relevant definition among the 42). It does not apply to digital things that are copied.

"Return" is also obviously meaningless in this context. Two of the key words in your definition are meaningless in the relevant context, so the definition falls apart.

Which is why they don't prosecute copyright violators with larceny, theft, etc.

Sorry, but you are the only one playing armchair psychologist here, and failing at it miserably. You're built an entire straw house in this thread. Stop it.

You shouldn't throw around terms you don't understand. E.g., straw man is a debate/logic term, while armchair psychologist is a term to describe a fairly broad, more abstract behavioral pattern.

we are never going to accept this whack-ass definition of what you are doing to escape liability for your actions.

There's that straw man thing again; do look it up, it might help keep you from using them.

So keep calling whatever you wish to call it. It's still illegal, and you will still be prosecuted the same way regardless of how you label it.

Right; not for theft, or larceny, or...

Software piracy is rife in Asia, Latin America, etc. Does that mean that those places are less moral?

Bob and Joe are Bangladeshis without pots to piss in, and both have good potential to be CG artists. Bob pirates Max, learns the software, gets a CG job, eventually starts his own studio, and buys 10 seats of Max. Joe decides to take the moral high road, and goes into the family business.

Which guy was of most benefit to Autodesk? Which guy's decision actually "caused" Autodesk hypothetical "lost revenue" (hint: it's Joe)?

JohnQP wrote on Apr 14, 2017, 12:48:
On second thought, that was a bit harsh and narrow-minded; it could have been poor reading comprehension (brought on by stupidity, inattention, etc.); lying isn't the only explanation, just the most plausible.

P.S., there's an awful lot of dishonesty in this thread, in the form of adding straw man arguments. E.g., I say "downloaded," someone comes back with "you used torrent client, so uploading is mandatory, bla bla bla." One, that's bullshit, as anyone who's used a torrent client knows, you can download without uploading. Two, that's bullshit, because it's not the question I asked. The question I asked was theoretical, so to dodge, you go straw man.

Straw men, ad hominem arguments, these are the signs that your position is weak.

I mean, you keep defending you taking the benefit of someone else's hard work without compensating them, by all means keep making yourself out as a victim due in this thread.

Those words mean something other than what is going on.

No, they mean something that you don't seem to understand.

Stealing (from OED): Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.

So how are you acquiring someone else's intellectual property without stealing it? Do you have another straw man semantic argument for that? or have you just literally never looked up the definition of the words that you are droning on about?

Sorry, but you are the only one playing armchair psychologist here, and failing at it miserably. You're built an entire straw house in this thread. Stop it.

It is theft in every way that has already been explained to you. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, or how many times you call it "propaganda" (do you even understand what that word means?), or how many circles you try to talk us in. There are dozens of court cases that show exactly how this is handled in a courtroom. It is theft and you are just flat out wrong. Theft covers many crimes that do not involve tangible goods.

You are free to argue about it with a judge, but we are never going to accept this whack-ass definition of what you are doing to escape liability for your actions. You are hung up on semantics and it makes your position not just weak, but inapplicable to reality.

Is this the first time you've attempted to form an opinion on piracy? You seem quite new to the game and quite uninformed about all of the legal precedents in place already.

So keep calling whatever you wish to call it. It's still illegal, and you will still be prosecuted the same way regardless of how you label it.

This comment was edited on Apr 14, 2017, 13:48.

On second thought, that was a bit harsh and narrow-minded; it could have been poor reading comprehension (brought on by stupidity, inattention, etc.); lying isn't the only explanation, just the most plausible.

P.S., there's an awful lot of dishonesty in this thread, in the form of adding straw man arguments. E.g., I say "downloaded," someone comes back with "you used torrent client, so uploading is mandatory, bla bla bla." One, that's bullshit, as anyone who's used a torrent client knows, you can download without uploading. Two, that's bullshit, because it's not the question I asked. The question I asked was theoretical, so to dodge, you go straw man.

Straw men, ad hominem arguments, these are the signs that your position is weak.

Yeah, I'd feel pretty comfortable limiting the people who want to see people prosecuted or punished for downloading a game they never even installed to the shyster set. I'm funny that way.

But I asked because I wanted to know if others agreed. A simple "no" would have sufficed, but lying and saying I called anyone a shyster is great if it floats your boat.

JohnQP wrote on Apr 14, 2017, 08:10:
P.P.S., Beamer reminded me of something. What about when you pirate a game, then never even install it? Is that a loss for the studio, too? Is that something anyone this side of a publisher's shyster would like to see someone locked up or fined for?

I adore that you're throwing out terms like "shyster" in your attempt to feel like you're the moral one in this situation.

These days, you're probably using torrents, which means that when you download, you're helping others upload. And you're helping continue to normalize piracy, so that people out there are happy saying "it's the publisher's fault we're not paying someone for their labor."

Which is what you're doing - not paying someone for 2+ years of their life. Don't ever, ever think about it in any terms other than that.

And yeah, some devs are ok with piracy. Typically, almost exclusively, this is small devs who don't have a marketing budget so they figure this helps word of mouth. But for AAA devs, who have multimillion dollar marketing budgets to create that, it's literally not paying them for two years of their life.

But hey, keep calling people shysters.

Your obsession with the word theft is merely your obsession with deflecting your own illegal actions.

There's a lot of armchair psychology in this thread. I didn't go back through and check - is it all coming from you? In any case, it's irrelevant to the discussion (see ad hominem attack or argumentum ad hominem). I could talk about people's need to submit to authority, spout corporate propaganda, and cling to the law, or simply advocate for their own (or allied) financial interests under cloak of moral authority, but that would be armchair psychology (even professional psychology is largely horseshit, so amateur psychology is really pushing it) and argumentum ad hominem, so I won't.

Instead I'll just stick to my "obsession" that got me into this discussion: it isn't theft. That is pretty much the entirety of the argument I wanted to make. I think most people here are smart enough to understand that this is not saying what it's not saying (e.g., it's not saying "it's not illegal", it's not saying "it's not a crime," it's not saying "not being theft means it being okay," it's not saying "it's always okay," it's not saying "it's okay for me to do it," etc.).

It's saying what it's saying: it isn't theft. Because it's not. It isn't theft, and it isn't stealing. Those words mean something other than what is going on. What is going on is...some...other...thing. The stubborn insistence that it is theft seems to be propaganda: people hear "theft" and tend to think "definitely bad," while people hear "copyright violation" and tend to think, "?" It's not my fault "copyright violation" is both much more accurate, and much less recognized as inherently bad. ZFG, really. That's between MPAA/RIAA/Game Publishers and society.

It's as if I said "rape is not theft," and someone waltzed in saying that in saying so, I was justifying rape. It's a silly argument. Saying an axe murderer didn't use a knife is not aiding and abetting. It's being honest.

In closing: copyright violation still isn't theft, or stealing.

P.S., watering down theft and stealing to include copyright violation is still just pissing on people who have actually had things stolen, and going easy on real thieves. Stealing and theft always involve real loss. The same cannot be said for copyright violation (sometimes it involves a real loss, and sometimes it does not, so by definition, it is not theft or stealing).

Every time someone accuses someone who says "CV is not theft" with trying to make copyright violation more palatable, the logical response is that the accuser is trying to make theft more palatable.

If you call copyright violation "theft," you should be consistent and call the rebels in the Star Wars movies "terrorists."

I've also met a ton of pirates that say they'll buy a game if they like it, but nearly all will conveniently forget to buy some, claim they didn't like a game after finishing it (or putting over 100 hours into it), or pirate a game when it's $60 then buy it 2 years later for $5 in a Steam sale.

All of which is morally and ethically shitty. Objectively so.

Agreed. But none of that is inherent to piracy. I can think of many examples of a thing having a bad outcome, without the latter being inherent to the former. E.g., getting money is great. Getting a 10ton pallet of money dropped on your head isn't. And yes, I understand the idea of a thing being bad in the aggregate, but people aren't aggregates, they're individuals, as are their choices (the point being that piracy may be "mostly bad" in the aggregate, but not all or inherently bad; sort of like lockpicks or alcohol).

P.P.S., Beamer reminded me of something. What about when you pirate a game, then never even install it? Is that a loss for the studio, too? Is that something anyone this side of a publisher's shyster would like to see someone locked up or fined for?

Having worked for a developer, I can say that people definitely discussed piracy in deflating terms, in that it deflated them to see how many people pirated their work.

I've also met a ton of pirates that say they'll buy a game if they like it, but nearly all will conveniently forget to buy some, claim they didn't like a game after finishing it (or putting over 100 hours into it), or pirate a game when it's $60 then buy it 2 years later for $5 in a Steam sale.

All of which is morally and ethically shitty. Objectively so.

I don't think anyone gives a rats ass about how you've justified your lack of morals or ethics.

I'll put it this way; I will not steal from my friends. I'll copy their games without a moment's thought. If I could copy their ferraris, I'd do that too.

Your friends purchased the game and it is illegal for them to physically or digitally reproduce it to give it to you. Full stop.
When you then install the illegally made copy you are committing a second illegal act. Full stop.

You have now both committed illegal acts.

Your obsession with the word theft is merely your obsession with deflecting your own illegal actions. You can't argue that "it isn't theft" just because you don't care that you stole something. Copyright violation is a type of larceny, as are burglary, robbery, and embezzlement.

Maybe this will help your misguided ideals. You aren't actually "stealing" the software that you downloaded, the person that made the illegal copy of it did that. What you are doing is indirectly stealing the money that you should have paid to the content creator to install it on your own computer. You can label that as whatever type of theft fits your definition, but it is still theft. They would have had money in their possession had you acquired their product the proper way, and you stole it from them instead. So take that pin and stick it in your "original copy isn't missing" argument. It simply doesn't work the way you are trying to twist it, tangibility is irrelevant.

Morally... Ethically... you have neither if you think appropriating things that other people create as your own is OK.

This comment was edited on Apr 13, 2017, 13:40.