Online piracy

[Crowley]

That wouldn't be seen as cloning, copying of money, rather movement of an item (in this case money)... I think you should use another example.

A person commits theft if he unlawfully and intentionally
appropriates movable, corporeal property which
(a) belongs to, and is in the possession of, another
(b) belongs to another but is in the perpetrator’s own possession; or
(c) belongs to the perpetrator but is in another’s possession and such
other person has a right to possess it which legally prevails
against the perpetrator’s own right of possession
provided that the intention to appropriate the property includes an
intention permanently to deprive the person entitled to the possession
of the property, of such property

It is a perfect example. You don't physically have the money so in theory it is not stealing.

 

[Kosmik]

I just wish folks would make legal downloads easier and cheaper.

Take the steam sale over Dec/January, blew about $40 but got back nearly 20 games all digital content and at what I considered decent prices. Online distribution works. Especialy if you sell music by track, and not fail-drm's where it stops working.

Also I'm of the opinion that buying content digitaly should mean you have a legal right to a copy of that content. If I buy a mp3 track and years from now that same track is released in a new format, I should either get that for free or have the option of a minimal upgrade charge.

 

[bullzeye.za]

Far as I'm concerned, if I download something ( And I do, a lot ), and it's any good, I go and buy it at a store ( Zaps! ).

If it's crap, I delete it and move on.

In the case of music though, I really cba to go to a store, search for a specific album with 18 songs I detest and one good one, buy it, take it home, rip it to my iPod and then put that back in the car.

Show me a legal online music store where I can buy individual tracks with no DRM and I'll gladly sign up, provided it's a decent price.

Movies I allways watch in Cinema if I think they'll be worthwhile, ( Saw Avatar 3D three times in the IL'Grande at Monte ), and I'll download it as soon as it comes out, and then when the Blu-Ray comes, I'll go and buy it too, just because it's that good.

What it comes down to for me, is entertainment value, I might be stealing from the record labels, but they can't tell me that there is no better way to get the song than to drive a bunch of kilometers, buy 20 songs from them, and only listen to one. Artists can make some really crap music, and put it on a cd and force people to pay for it.

When something truly epic comes along, I'll pay the price, because there was real effort put in to it, but don't expect me to buy something before I know if it's any good. ( Especially game developers churning out buggy games with nothing interesting that I get bored of after 10 minutes, and don't feel like I *have* to play it, because I paid for it, I'd rather pay for it because I play it, and not the other way around. )

 

[JoSorc]

The truth is that all of the piracy advocates, read GaryVdh and his ilk, try to justify a position which they know is morally and legally wrong. Regardless of price, these people will still pirate it's just so much easier to download than it is to drive to the shop and buy. I'd happily bet they don't allow all and sundry into their swimming pools when they're not using them.

 

[Juice]

The truth is that all of the piracy advocates, read GaryVdh and his ilk,

To be fair, I'm not sure that this IS Gary's position. In this thread, at least, he's been arguing a completely different point...

try to justify a position which they know is morally and legally wrong.

... which is the separation of the legal and moral aspects of whether or not piracy is wrong and whether or not piracy is actually theft. There has actually been a lot more intelligent debate on this topic than I've seen in a while, but the anti-piracy camp appears intent to detract from the debate with rabid foam-at-the-mouth ranting.

Regardless of price, these people will still pirate it's just so much easier to download than it is to drive to the shop and buy. I'd happily bet they don't allow all and sundry into their swimming pools when they're not using them.

Which is quite a funny analogy, but flawed. Piracy (read Copyright Infringement for the semantic sticklers out there) is nothing like Tresspassing. And what if I build a pool exactly like yours, does that constitute theft or piracy?

People pirate because they want to. It's interesting that most of the people that I've come across who do pirate feel compelled to justify what they're doing. Who are they trying to convince? Are they trying to quiet the voices of all of the people who oppose the behaviour, or the small internal voices of their own consciences?

It would be an interesting study to find out what really motivates someone to pirate once you cut through the standard excuses. Is it a sense of entitlement? Or is it just that they want it and because they can get it, they do? Or is it bragging rights? You know, that guy who shows up at the LAN with a 14-bay tower case and 10 Terabytes of hard drive space and a toggbag filled with Cd's of everything else that couldn't fit. And yes, there are some people who really believe that everything should be free, but whether they believe it because they will benefit from it, or whether they believe it because they hold the values of socialism dear, who can say?

Juice

 

[JoSorc]

To be fair, I'm not sure that this IS Gary's position. In this thread, at least, he's been arguing a completely different point...



... which is the separation of the legal and moral aspects of whether or not piracy is wrong and whether or not piracy is actually theft. There has actually been a lot more intelligent debate on this topic than I've seen in a while, but the anti-piracy camp appears intent to detract from the debate with rabid foam-at-the-mouth ranting.



Which is quite a funny analogy, but flawed. Piracy (read Copyright Infringement for the semantic sticklers out there) is nothing like Tresspassing. And what if I build a pool exactly like yours, does that constitute theft or piracy?

People pirate because they want to. It's interesting that most of the people that I've come across who do pirate feel compelled to justify what they're doing. Who are they trying to convince? Are they trying to quiet the voices of all of the people who oppose the behaviour, or the small internal voices of their own consciences?

It would be an interesting study to find out what really motivates someone to pirate once you cut through the standard excuses. Is it a sense of entitlement? Or is it just that they want it and because they can get it, they do? Or is it bragging rights? You know, that guy who shows up at the LAN with a 14-bay tower case and 10 Terabytes of hard drive space and a toggbag filled with Cd's of everything else that couldn't fit. And yes, there are some people who really believe that everything should be free, but whether they believe it because they will benefit from it, or whether they believe it because they hold the values of socialism dear, who can say?

Juice

My argument re pool goes to you not losing anything if you weren't going to gain from it anyway which seems a common argument amongst pirates. My position is if you're going to pirate/download go ahead but shut up about it. Don't stand singing on the rooftops shouting about it. It'll spoil it for everyone.

 

[Quest10n]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Juice
Dear Captain Obvious,




Case in point.

I heard a song by an artist called Sia a while ago. I liked it. I wanted to buy it, because that's what I do. Having scoured the internet for a legal distribution that I could put on my iPod for hours, I was eventually forced to give up. US sites like Amazon and iTunes aren't allowed to sell in South Africa. All the SA sites with international content, bar none, offered only DRM-locked content. Long story short: I went onto Sia's MySpace page and recorded the song straight from her music stream to MP3 through a free-ware 3rd party app that ripped it off the sound card. Crude, but effective.


Regards,
Captain Copyright

aka Juice


So Juice what happened to your moral high ground now?
:wtf: You did what you want others not to do, PIRATE Music

 

[Juice]

LOL, thanks for playing. I'd already bought the album off Kalahari.net by then, but I was waiting for it to arrive.

The only thing I pirate is porn. I refuse to support an industry that promotes the exploitation and degradation of women.

Juice

 

[JoSorc]

LOL, thanks for playing. I'd already bought the album off Kalahari.net by then, but I was waiting for it to arrive.

The only thing I pirate is porn. I refuse to support an industry that promotes the exploitation and degradation of women.

Juice

 

[porchrat]

it has been tested
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15046455

it has been tested in another court in another country... i.e. not South Africa. Two different legal systems so unfortunately that doesn't apply.

Sticks and stones my boy, sticks and stones

So if somebody hacks into your bank account and transfers whatever money you have into their account it is not theft? You don't have the physical money so it should be just dandy? (read the same article as porchrat there)

It is theft as you have deprived the other party of something... the money. Especially if you have the intent to deprive them of that money permanently. That money isn't electronic, it is stored in the bank, you could walk to a bank and withdraw it right away if you wanted to. The fact that it isn't in your hand doesn't make it any less real. You have been deprived of that money and that is the key to defining theft, a party needs to be deprived of something that they previously possessed.

We were on the legal definition thing a few posts back. Just because the law doesn't explicitely say that it is theft doesn't mean that it isn't. This may differ from person to person but do you honestly think that downloading music is legal?

I never said it was legal, please don't make assumptions or put words in my mouth it makes you look foolish. Just because it isn't theft doesn't mean it isn't illegal, it means it isn't a crime and the consequences of committing a crime are different to those of committing a non-criminal offence such as failing to pay your rent which, by your logic, would also be theft. Clearly that isn't theft, you have failed to fulfill your end of a written rental agreement.

Illegally copying something is copyright infringement, I want to get this out of the way once and for all because I am tired of you misinterpreting what I say: copyright infringement is still illegal under South African law.

You may want to look up a few of our acts that specifically deal with copyright infringement perhaps it will help to demonstrate how copyright infringement is dealt with separately from theft in our legal system:

COPYRIGHT ACT NO. 98 OF 1978
This act was amended by the Copyright Amendment Acts, 56/1980, 66/1983, 52/1984, 39/1986, 13/1988, 6l/1989 and 125/1992, the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Act, No. 38 of 1997 and the Copyright Amendment Act, No. 9 of 2002

 

[Juice]

It is theft as you have deprived the other party of something... the money. Especially if you have the intent to deprive them of that money permanently. That money isn't electronic, it is stored in the bank, you could walk to a bank and withdraw it right away if you wanted to. The fact that it isn't in your hand doesn't make it any less real. You have been deprived of that money and that is the key to defining theft, a party needs to be deprived of something that they previously possessed.

Heh. Even the big boys can't agree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparison_to_theft

Juice

 

[porchrat]

Heh. Even the big boys can't agree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparison_to_theft

Juice

I don't see much in there that actually says any legal systems recognise copyright infringement as theft. In fact most legal systems (for example in the USA it happened with a man making bootleg records) have cases in which it has been decided that copyright infringement and theft are two different offences. That casuistry is what matters most when you are in court for piracy.

Copyright infringement is often equated with theft, for instance in the title of the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997, but differs in certain respects.

Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft, holding, for instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not (for the purpose of the case) constitute stolen property, and writing:

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 infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over the copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use. While one may colloquially link infringement with some general notion of wrongful appropriation, infringement plainly implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
—Dowling v. United States , 473 U.S. 207, pp. 217–218

The key distinction generally drawn, as indicated above, is that while copyright infringement may (or may not) cause economic loss to the copyright holder, as theft does, it does not appropriate a physical object, nor deprive the copyright holder of the use of the copyright. That information can be replicated without destroying an original is an old observation,[55] and a cornerstone of intellectual property law. In economic terms, information is not a rival good; this has led some to argue that it is very different in character, and that laws for physical property and intellectual property should be very different.[56]

A British Government's report, Digital Britain, characterizes online piracy as a form of theft: "Unlawful downloading or uploading, whether via peer-to-peer sites or other means, is effectively a civil form of theft."

"a civil form of theft"? theft by definition is criminal... if it ain't criminal, it ain't theft.

This is all just semantics anyway in the end whether or not you believe piracy is "right" or "wrong" is up to you.

 

[JoSorc]

I don't see much in there that actually says any legal systems recognise copyright infringement as theft. In fact most legal systems (for example in the USA it happened with a man making bootleg records) have cases in which it has been decided that copyright infringement and theft are two different offences. That casuistry is what matters most when you are in court for piracy.



"a civil form of theft"? theft by definition is criminal... if it ain't criminal, it ain't theft.

This is all just semantics anyway in the end whether or not you believe piracy is "right" or "wrong" is up to you.

BULL*****. The law says it is wrong.

 

[Kalvaer]

Isn't South Africa one of the top in the world for Pirating?

Having just returned from a trip to the UK, I can pretty much understand why to be honest. I took a walk in HMV and my jaw hit the floor. Not only was the selection of DVD's so massive that I wouldn't of been able to go through it in a month, But the prices were actually reasonable. When I sat back and worked out how much it would cost me to download it here in SA, I couldn't see the point as 9 times out of 10 it was cheaper to buy.

So why do South African's Pirate.. Because we get ripped off big time and our selection sucks!

 

[porchrat]

BULL*****. The law says it is wrong.

The legal system doesn't determine what is "wrong" and "right" my friend. Only what is "legal" and "illegal" and I will thank you not to confuse the two. I was speaking from a moral perspective not a legal one with that particular sentence.

However I do agree that the South African legal system does regard copyright infringement as "illegal" if that is what you meant to say... which is why there is a whole act and several amendments to deal with it specifically.

 

[sin_x]

Isn't South Africa one of the top in the world for Pirating?

Having just returned from a trip to the UK, I can pretty much understand why to be honest. I took a walk in HMV and my jaw hit the floor. Not only was the selection of DVD's so massive that I wouldn't of been able to go through it in a month, But the prices were actually reasonable. When I sat back and worked out how much it would cost me to download it here in SA, I couldn't see the point as 9 times out of 10 it was cheaper to buy.

So why do South African's Pirate.. Because we get ripped off big time and our selection sucks!

I don't agree with you. There are still people who download illegal content in the UK, even though their prices are reasonable.

This whole "it's too expensive" excuse is just that, an excuse. If prices dropped, their would simply be another excuse. e.g. "The shops are too far from my house", or "downloading legal content is too slow", or "I don't like the media format the legal stuff is in", etc.

 

[Kalvaer]

You don't have to agree with me.. That's what's great about us humans, we are all allowed our own opinions.

And yes you will still get people who will pirate, as there are in the UK, but there will be much less, and many more would buy it, As is pretty evident in the UK right now.. so my point still stands IMHO

 

[JoSorc]

The legal system doesn't determine what is "wrong" and "right" my friend. Only what is "legal" and "illegal" and I will thank you not to confuse the two. I was speaking from a moral perspective not a legal one with that particular sentence.

:S

So you;re saying things can be illegal but right? Fairymuff. Let's make it that the law says it's illegal. So if you disregard this for whatever personal reason, you are not a law abiding citizen?

 

[porchrat]

:S

So you;re saying things can be illegal but right? Fairymuff. Let's make it that the law says it's illegal. So if you disregard this for whatever personal reason, you are not a law abiding citizen?

That is exactly what I am saying. Remember the laws of Apartheid?...Were those "right"?

If someone opposed those laws (in essence doing something that was "illegal") was what they were doing "wrong" or "right"?

What about all the laws Hitler created to segregate and otherwise oppress Jews?... also "right"?

Just because it is law that does not automatically make something morally justifiable.

 

[JoSorc]

That is exactly what I am saying. Remember the laws of Apartheid?...Were those "right"?

What about all the laws Hitler created to segregate Jews?... also "right"?

Well obviously not morally but they were the law. Let's move to a more current law for e.g. Possession of dagga. Should we really be giving people criminal records and R50/R100 fines for this?