Numerous arguments/people making such claims as I described in the quote to which you were responding.

@Vrael:
Chairs and programs are different in more ways than you just described.
Whether or not this excludes piracy from "stealing", I don't care - it really doesn't effect anything but the terminology in an argument - but it's the pattern that makes a series of bits significant. It doesn't matter who writes a series of words identical to the script of Star Wars: Episode IV, the rights to that pattern of words belongs to Lucas Arts. If someone were to design a chair that by sheer, unimaginably absurd chance happens to share an identical atomic pattern as the chair a different carpenter made, then yes, because it's a different set of atoms, the new carpenter owns the new chair.
The only difference between an atom (or a few million) and a macroscopic chunk of material is that ownership over the former is physically unrealistic to enforce.

You know that is not really comparable at all.

Also, I pirate. I buy the games I like, I really do try to. I know that's not a good justification, but that's just how I work I guess. I have no moral backing to this; I know it's wrong and simply don't care.

A more accurate comparison would be if you knew/found someone who could steal the chair and then give it to you, but otherwise, I don't see how the comparison can't be made.

Staff please delete

im retarded

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2011, 8:08 pm by Vrael.

I have now seen SEN change from atheistic pirates, to god-fearing anti-piracy advocates.

2012 is coming.

Jumping in a few pages late - I've seen this discussion a thousand times, every single time somebody brings up the idea that "Oh, companies are pumping out shit - filled with DRM, DLC, bugs, glitches, etc. and think that shipping a shitty product is an excuse for them to pirate a game". This idea is... delusional. You pirate the game because quite frankly, you are too cheap or don't care - justifying it in a way that makes you feel better just makes you look stupid, in my opinion. If you're unhappy with a product, that is a reason to not buy the product, not to avoid paying for it.

Also, I can't care to look back through the entire thread, but regarding the few posts before this one... when stealing a physical object from a company (for example, a candy bar), that company loses that physical product, and can no longer sell it. They lose that physical product and they lose money. When pirating media/games/etc., you are essentially making a digital copy of the media, at no expense to the creators of the content passed the money they might have gained if you were to buy the product in the first place. Also, it's arguable that pirates pirate things that there was a chance they'd never buy in the first place. I've pirated Adobe's creative suite in the past, but they honestly lost no money, because there was not a chance I was dropping a few hundred dollars on software I was really more curious about than actually interested in using (I ended up using Photoshop for about 20 minutes before I got bored and removed it from my computer.)

To pretend that piracy (and specifically, ones own piracy) doesn't hurt companies, is foolish though. You say "Oh, no, there's no way I'd buy anything I pirate", but just look at things like Starcraft 2 - when there is no option but to buy, often times, you do.

Staff please delete

im retarded

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2011, 8:08 pm by Vrael.

I'm not necessarily supporting anti-piracy; I just like playing devil's advocate. The topic is asking for justifying something that, in the case of most people that partake in it, is not easily justifiable. I would consider myself an agnostic pirate, mind you.

Quickly go back and read the sandwich argument (ctrl+f sandwich) that carried on through a couple pages. It's a good read and pretty much covers the discussion on your points.

For clarification, do you mean for these two sentences to go together? Because it seems they are arguing points on opposite sides of the spectrum.

Pirating for a cause sounds like a brilliant idea, like how Anonymous fights for internet freedom. Too bad there will always be a Lulzsec equivalent.

I have a roommate who won a free copy of SC2. He sold it and pirated a copy of it. He regrets selling the legitimate copy, but he doesn't want to buy the game because it would give him an excuse to invest a lot of time into playing it (he used to play WoW and doesn't want to get back into a similar cycle). Make of that what you will.

I really was responding to your earlier posts about a chair and comparing "transferring a chair" and transferring data. One is making a recreation of one, the other is blatantly taking the physical product.

They don't argue on opposite sides of the spectrum. I'm arguing against people who get sucked into the idea that they wouldn't buy anything that they pirate anyway - so it's not like they're really hurting companies. The truth is though, when they can't actually pirate certain things, such as Starcraft 2, they do actually pay for these products. People say they wouldn't pay for anything, and that's either because they're too poor to do so, or piracy has already given them a warped idea of the value of software/media.

Some would say such attitudes are part of growing up. I would say 'growing up' is just realizing morality is not about the things you truly believe in, but the things others perceive you do, and what you have to do to control this.

People are silly.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2011, 3:17 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

The difficulty in all this is not whether you can justify piracy, or even whether it damages the devs. No, the question is, Is piracy theft? Currently it's illegal in many countries, but that doesn't mean it should be. And more than that, it boils down to Is it possible to steal intellectual property, or things which are immaterial?

If the phrase "you stole my idea" means anything to you, then yes.

How can one steal an idea? And let's keep in mind that all ideas stand on the shoulders of ideas before them. Halo 'stole' the idea of the FPS from iD Software (I think they were the first anyway) who stole the idea of a computer game from the pong guys who stole the idea of a computer program from charles babbage who stole the idea of ... Well you get the idea.

Of course it's possible to steal intellectual property - it's what pirates do every time they pirate. I don't know how anybody couldn't see piracy as purely theft. They're taking the work and time of another creator, without authorization. They're taking information that they'd otherwise have to pay for, and doing so without paying. People can lie to themselves as much as they want, argue semantics, whatever. It's so blatantly theft.

Well of course it should be illegal. If it wasn't, the game developers wouldn't get any money at all.

...but they wouldn't lose any, unless absolutely nobody bought the game. >:O

Taking something without permission is stealing.
Taking someones idea without permission is stealing.

It's not the taking something that's the problem. The problem lies within the not having permission.

Yeah, my mistake. I read the first part as saying that piracy hurts companies, and the second to say it doesn't, when they both are actually arguing the former.

Ignoring the fact that you can pirate SC2 (and have access to the campaign, multi-player through LAN, etc.), I agree with this argument. This point has already been argued and discussed quite thoroughly.

Your original post reads differently to me, as it already claims that piracy is theft and asks for justification.

For the most part, yes. If there's money to be made and you can take an idea from someone else, you're basically taking their money. I'm not phrasing this correctly, see below.

Creating a search engine isn't stealing an existing search engine's idea, but replicating the exact algorithm a specific search engine uses is (I believe a good example of this type of thing is the early history of Facebook). Games work the same way: League of Legends wasn't stealing from MOBA games, but if they ripped the model, spells and stats of Pudge, they would be stealing from DotA (well, Blizzard for the Abomination model).

Staff please delete

im retarded

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2011, 8:09 pm by Vrael.

"1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property" from merriam-webster.
When one pirates, one is not removing property from another's possession. If one were to cut and paste rather than copy and paste (as it were), then it would be stealing, again this assumes that data can be a person's property.
Pirates do not steal time and work.

If you go to a friend's house and read a book which he possesses, you are taking that information without paying. Is it stealing? No. So one does not in fact have to pay for all information.

People would still buy games, pirates will still buy games, regardless of legality. And you still haven't shown how it's theft; instead you're saying that because the devs don't get money, it's wrong.


My apologies; my understanding of the subject has changed since the original post.
But you aren't taking their money, nor are you removing the idea from their possession.
Again, you aren't removing the algorithms or models from the original producer.

How can you "take" an idea? How can you remove an idea from someone's possession? What if two people come up with the same idea separately? Does one steal from the other? What about people who take an idea and improve on it a little and sell it as their own (see every FPS in existence)? Is that stealing?

I crossed out the first part because it wasn't conveying the correct message. You seemed to interpret my following statement the same way as the previous, which does me no good. Just because you aren't completely removing something out of someone's possession when you take it doesn't mean you aren't taking it.

Take, for example, stealing someone's cable. You're taking something from them, but you can do it in a manner that doesn't cost them another dime, or take anything away from them. That's still taking something that isn't yours without permission. Just because they still have cable doesn't mean you aren't taking it.

Take, take, take, take, steal, take, just because x doesn't mean you aren't taking it. Sorry for the very repetitive writing; this is what happens when I'm sleep deprived.