I used to shoplift like a little bitch when I was 14 / 15. We'd literally walk into a shop, take what we wanted, and walk out. No one suspected a thing. Mostly food n shit. But my mates took it further and were stealing computer games and dvds towards the end of it. We all grew out of it, and it's fun looking back at what little shitebags we all were.

Isn't this exactly what shoplifting is? and I really bet people suspected you. Every store owner hates teenagers that are shopping. Working at an Italian Deli/Grocery, I know this to be a fact. And owners hate black teens especially.

I really think that moving this to Lite Discussion is only going to hurt it.

I hate everyone equally, but especially everyone.

Why's that?

Both is illegal but they don't have the same implications.
a) Stealing from a shop costs the shop owner money, not the company that produced the product.
b) Piracy doesn't hurt anyone if you never had bought the game anyway.
c) Piracy is quite common compared to shoplifting and thus usually accepted, except by a minority.

People shoplift all the time... it's a big thing. It almost became a fad in my school.

Well if one defines piracy as stealing and one does not, than one is going to have a drastically different conclusion to their argument. I hoped this would go without saying.
I don't really understand what you are arguing against? The company sells a program for X dollars. You get the program and use it for free. Therefore, the company loses that potential X dollar value they should have gotten from you had you paid for the program instead of pirating it. I will try to reason by analogy. Say someone makes a sandwich and charges me 10 bucks for it. That someone gets the ten bucks, and, in exchange, I get the sandwich. Now let's say someone makes a sandwich and I eat it and give them nothing. They get nothing and I get a sandwich. Now, simply substitute the word 'sandwich' with the word 'computer program'. This is why I'm equating it with stealing.
Ah I see, so you are talking about the pirates who are pirating because they can't afford the product anyway. Well I just refer back to my sandwich argument. Is the guy who made the sandwich going to be OK with the fact I took it because I could never buy it anyway? Or is he going to be pissed that he made a sandwich and got nothing in return?
Ok, so there are X amount of pirates who can afford it, but pirate it anyway. Then there are another X amount of pirates who can't afford it. First I would argue this, those that you say can't afford it, really, can they not afford it? They obviously have a computer, an internet connection, how many of those pirates who say they can't afford it actually, really can't afford it. If all those pirates simply were unable to pirate, I bet a lot would find the money somewhere. And this doesn't change the fact that I can still equate it with theft. Use my sandwich analogy, or any other situation minus piracy. When people can't afford something, does that make it OK for them to get it for free? Food, plane tickets, petrol, rent? If we are using Kant's Categorical Imperative for pirating, it just simply doesn't hold up for all these things. That is why you should not do it.


Since you consider 'straw man' to be 'big words', I'm guessing it's the latter...

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 22 2011, 1:42 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: this is LD, no huge, pointless pics please

Somehow seemed relevant.

Define stealing? Taking something without permission.
Define piracy? Taking something without permission, where permission is given by purchasing a license.

PIRACY. IT’S A CRIME.


Now, now, don't make the "hasty generalization" fallacy.

I think the original post of this topic is flawed, in that it assumes that pirates need self-justification. A number of responses have basically said, "No, there is no justification." However, that doesn't stop them from what they do. So, the topic tries to steer towards "Why do you pirate?," but it returns to the argument of "That's bad" or "That's immoral," which is just bringing us back to what has already been answered.

I'd just like to point out that's a bad analogy. Sandwiches are finite and cost money to produce per unit; copies of computer programs are infinite and it does not technically cost anything to copy it. Not to mention that, as already stated before, copying does not equal stealing. Instead of eating the sandwich and giving you nothing, if I copy the recipe for your sandwich and make it myself, technically you do not lose anything since I wouldn't have paid for it in the first place.



Allow me to correct you on that:

I'm arguing against whatever flaws I see in the arguments present.
When I use GIMP instead of buying Photoshop, is Adobe losing "potential X dollar value" because of it? It is no less true than in your case, as the state of the value "pirating exists" in a hypothetical universe does not affect whether or not I will purchase Photoshop. If I am Adobe's only customer, and we look at a world in which pirating is possible, and pirating is not possible, Adobe's income is no different in either case as I would buy Photoshop in neither case - therefore, it cannot be accurately said that my pirating Photoshop is costing Adobe by my not purchasing it, as the only variable difference between the universe you are suggesting and the real universe does not effect how much money Adobe gets from me.
(Heh, just realized something funny: it could be argued that pirating is bad because it takes the free, open-source alternatives' audiences away, resulting in poorer quality free alternatives.)
I'm inclined to believe that his loss is smaller than my gain.
I'm not seeing it. Given a hypothetical world where food, plane tickets, petrol and rent share the "intangible, infinite resource" trait of software, if I am selling these goods, I do not see how it negatively effects me to give them out to people who will not otherwise possess them.
And I've already responded to this. In my own case, my current financial situation is different from when I originally acquired my PC (which was, even then, at a discount). I literally do not have money, personally, the same being the case for several people I know. Others' funds being already entirely allocated, and the only "find[ing] money somewhere" they could do is to draw it out of safety reserves (a highly irresponsible thing to do) or delay things like moving, which would inevitably happen and only delay.
Given that in a pirating-free world, libraries, free alternatives and every other free resource would be significantly lowering the value of commercial products, I am confident that, in the cases with which I am familiar, little of our spending habits would change.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 21 2011, 9:23 pm by EzDay281.

Vegetables are infinite in the sense that you can grow them and plant the seeds they produce.
Piracy is finite in the sense that we don't have unlimited storage.

I see the point you're trying to make, but it's not very strong. You can sneak onto a boat fairy or a train instead of legitimately buying a ticket, and that's stealing a ride. You can do this an infinite amount of times, too. Therefore, I believe your correction isn't correcting anything.

As a cashier of 3 years at a mall: I noticed a ton of people, body language is easy as hell to read, and kids who walk directly to the candy aisle and then back out are borderline braindead. Ditto middle aged/young women who are too self-conscious to pay for condoms but spend 5 minutes picking their brand out. I just didn't give a shit and it wasn't worth my time to deal with you.


This analogy is terrible. Let's say someone makes a sandwich and sells it for $10. Then, I talk to the customer who bought the sandwich and get an exact copy of that sandwich for free. The creator of the original sandwich has done no extra work. Now you're getting to why many people think piracy is okay: you're welcome.

But the boat itself does not have infinite space. Therefore, each space costs something. It costs the company hosting the boat ride extra money if you decide to sneak on board, since they have to deal with your increased weight adding onto the boat, needing more fuel, etc. In other words, "stealing a ride" has a direct impact on the company's money. While you can argue that the difference made by one person is negligible, on the scale of piracy where a large percentage of the population takes part, it has a noticeable effect.

Computer software, on the other hand, has none of these limitations. When a copy of a program is downloaded, technically it has no direct effect on the company that produced the program in the first place. It's reasonable to assume that if people can get something for free without repercussions, they will, so pirating a program does not have an effect on the company, since the person doing it would not have paid for it.
In addition, I'd like to add:
This is why I view piracy as "okay". It costs the company nothing if someone decides to make a copy of a program.

I will admit, Roy, you are correct that as far as piracy goes, storage space is limited. However, storage space is constantly expanding at a rapid pace, so the impact of storage space is practically none. You can still, in theory, make unlimited copies of a program; it just takes time to get more space.

Well, that's all I have to contribute to the discussion, so I'll quietly go back to lurking now.

It doesn't, much (support costs and etc. factor in). But not everyone who pirates would not otherwise own a copy.

Someone say something original.

That would be the "specific subset of pirating" I've made several explicit references to and stated Oh_Man's arguments indeed do apply to.

Is this an argument for or against piracy? The same thing could be applied to how pirating games "has a direct impact on the company's money."

My point was more going towards "If you sneak onto the boat rather than pay a ticket, the company loses that money; if you pirate a game instead of buying a license for it, the company loses that money."

Well, this is where the argument comes in. Many people who pirate software are people who want the software and would most likely buy it if there wasn't a free alternative. This potential sale is lost, and with the number of pirates, this number becomes significant. I would argue that this does have a direct impact on the company that produced the program. Sure, some people would not buy the software anyway, but for those who really wanted it, they would most certainly have paid for it.

And in recent news, the original creator of the sandwich cannot sell more sandwiches because someone else is giving away free copies of the sandwich. He's broke. Once everyone gets tired of the exact same sandwich, sure, he can make a new one and make one sale before he loses business entirely again. Keep in mind that creating these particular sandwiches takes a very long time and costs a lot of money.

So... How does this not hurt the company?

Correct. In theory, unlimited copies can be made. In practice, they cannot. Since the speed that storage space is increasing is never going to hit an infinite state, we can assume this theory will never be realized (sorry, logical fallacy). I just wanted to point out that when you used infinite and finite, they were used relatively.

Noooooooooooooooooo I thought your arguments were well thought-out and you made me think of things that I didn't realize when first posting. Feel free to continue contributing.

Something original. There has been good content here, you just need to take the time to sift through others' thoughts.

I don't see why people say that the company loses money. How could they lose money if they didn't even get the money in the first place?

Also... About the stolen sandwich recipe: When someone is alone making a certain product in the whole world, that person is free to make it cost as much as he wants, as long as someone is willing to pay for it. Now, when more people start to join, that's when prices start to compete with each other. (That happens all the time.)

Let's say someone prepares food that you would usually find in a restaurant, the neighbor asks for the recipe does that make it illegal? (That happens all the time.)

Logical approach:

Sales earn money
Losing potential sales means losing potential money
Pirating loses potential sales
Therefore, pirating loses potential money

Companies put money into games because they expect a certain return on their investment. If some of those sales never occur for a certain reason, that reason is causing the company to lose money.

I think you're trying to take the word "lose" from a literal approach to make a point. How can you lose a game when you were never winning? How can you lose the Olympics when you were never in first place? You never had those things beforehand, so you couldn't possibly lose them. You need to realize that the word applies to things of chance as well. If there is a chance that something will happen, and then it doesn't happen, it is lost. I hope I explained this clearly.

We're not talking about sharing recipes (which would be like sharing source code, I guess). We're talking about the finished product. If you wanted a sandwich, and you had the choice between buying a $10 sandwich or getting the same sandwich for free, which would you choose? The person trying to sell the sandwich doesn't get your money because of this alternative. The person trying to sell the sandwich loses the sale to the one giving them away for free, and therefore loses the money that would have come from that sale.

It's a flawed analogy anyway, because you can't duplicate sandwiches at no cost, and since anyone can make the sandwich, it isn't uniquely sold from the original maker. Games, on the other hand, while they can be resold, the first sale is always from the original company. The problem of piracy is much too detached from the analogy, in my opinion.

@Roy: I'm flattered, but don't get mistaken; I really don't have much more to contribute. I gave my opinion, and...yeah.

Despite that, however:

It seems to me that we differ in opinions on what people would or would not do when given the same set of options. You believe that there are people who would go out and buy it if they could; I believe that, given the choice, people will always go for the "free" option. This also ties in with whether or not it's practical to compare a world with piracy to one without, which is really just speculation (to me).
Since there's no way to conclusively prove which one of us is right, may I suggest we agree to disagree on this point?

Do correct me if I'm misinterpreting this, but it seems to goes back to the question of "would people buy it or not given the choice?". For the purposes of this analogy, I agree with you in that the scenario you outlined would indeed hurt the company; however, in reality, piracy comes with limitations. An example is that many pirated games have limited or no multiplayer options due to requirements of, say, a unique CD-Key (cough blizzard cough), which vastly lowers the impact of said piracy. There's other possible restrictions too, such as lack of program updates, possible instability/incompatibility, etc, etc. Because of this, I would argue that the impact of piracy for many kinds of software is negligible, since the companies have an advantage over the pirates.

Going back to the sandwich analogy(which is starting to get rather complex), what if the original seller of the sandwich has a special advantage that no copy has? Such as, a unique taste that nobody else can identify the source of and thus cannot reproduce. In this case, the original seller is not nearly as heavily impacted by the copies made, and he retains an advantage that allows him to still sell his sandwiches. Yes, some people will still take the copies of the sandwiches over the originals, but it's arguable that this would help the seller, not harm it, by giving its customers a taste of what's to be offered by "the real thing".

But I suppose that is pushing it a little bit too far for reality, since in reality, it doesn't work that way.

You did bring up a good point though, that piracy causes a seller to lose at least some of its hold on a market, and thus lose money. I look forward to your response.