But it DOES mean you aren't stealing it.

The cable example isn't the greatest of examples, as the cable company owns the actual physical cable, and rents it to you; anyone accessing it without paying that rent is accessing a physical object without permission.

How? How does taking something without someone's permission mean you aren't stealing it?


Some definitions I found for "steal" (although the last one sounds closer to plagiarism). Notice how they use the word "property," which can be applied to things you create independently, like a company creates a game.

The cable example is a great example, as game company owns the actual physical game, and they give you a license for it; anyone accessing it without paying for the license is accessing it without permission.

By the way, electronic data is technically still physical.

I made a handy flowchart to determine if something is stealing:



Of course, by "get permission" I mean permission from the proper entity. You can't say "I gave myself permission to take this man's wallet, so it isn't stealing."

Rofl Roy. - All piracy arguments have now been destroyed!


Though I don't know how many people are saying piracy ISN"T stealing, perhaps only the delusional ones. The next step is, if piracy is stealing, is it a certain, 'ok' type of stealing? Or a less morally reprehensible type of stealing? I think that is what they are trying to justify.

I haven't REMOVED anything. I don't deprive them of something they wouldn't get anyway. Once a game is released, it's publicly available property; if it is kept private it is private property. While EULA's try and state that you merely own a license of the game, and not the game itself, the truth of the matter is that when you have a copy of that game, whether through piracy or purchase, you own those files and that data and it is now yours, stored on your hard drive, in your bits and bites.

I understand that some money spent on video games goes back to the people producing the game; this is again not proof of theft.
And they can be expressed in ink as well; if someone happened to glance at a piece of paper with information about a potential gold mine in Aftica and used that to their advantage, did they steal anything?
Games, music, etc. are not generally kept private. They are released into mass media, and from then on stop being one person's property. It's debateable even when one person makes, say, a melody, whether or not they can own that melody anyway. How can someone OWN an assortment of notes that anyone else could also emulate on their own without prior knowledge of the melody?
Piracy is a name given by the media, who are influenced by laws; the question is whether the laws are correct in calling piracy theft. I should note that even if the laws are WRONG, this doesn't make it OK to disobey that law. (Or does it...another subject though). I still won't pirate games or music, as if I find a game that looks promising enough to be worth my time, I'll pay for it to give back to the devs.

Not sure if I'm phrasing everything above correctly; try and think whether or not the laws are correct in condemning piracy, instead of accepting what has been told to you by the media and the government, and then shoving it down people's throats.

Perhaps the government and media are just right for once?
Even if piracy shouldn't technically be classified as stealing by your standards, I still think it's wrong.

What would happen if pirating were suddenly ok?
I'm sure we would see an increase in pirating, but we would also see an increase in game security i.e. having to be connected to the game server to play single player campaigns.
Every time someone takes advantage of the system, someone has to make new rules and tighten security over and over and over and over until we don't have any rights anymore. Maybe if people just stopped there wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

I think the golden rule has great applications here.
If you want people to pirate the game you made, go ahead and pirate theirs.

Money. The more I still have at the end of the day, the happier I am.
If I could steal a car I want without any risk, say a porsche, I'd do it. You don't go out and steal because you don't have the money, you go out and steal because the risks are low enough for it to be worth it.

Though I really only pirate games I have on my emulator (NES, SNES and N64) and a few other game I don't feel like buying (Empire Earth, Heroes of might and magic, Halo : CE).

And what if I don't want to play dumb miniclip games? What if Ultimate DooM is the game I want to play? Or Hexen? Or Age of Empire? I pirate it.

And because you have no moral compass or have the ability to ignore it

What has morals ever done for me?!

morals are typically converted into laws "laws represent the current moral standings of a society" (palmer) - and laws are what keeps us out of anarchy

IMO today's society doesn't have much of a moral standing. It's more like "Well all these people around me don't have morals, so why should I?"

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2011, 10:50 pm by DevliN. Reason: Deleted quoted post.

Much like if you rent a car, sure, on PAPER it says you're renting it, but the truth is, you have that car, and it is now stored in your garage.

Would you say if I hacked into the dealership's database and deleted the entry on the rental, that I now own the car without stealing it?
Yes. That's called stealing intelligence.
So I can chop down trees in a national park because it's not private and not one person's property?
This sometimes happens, but with "innocent until proven guilty," the second creator can be exonerated if no evidence that they've heard or seen the melody prior to writing it is provided.
I'm trying to reason with your arguments, but I see flaws in them that prevent me from accepting them. I have the same problems with religions, including Atheism.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2011, 10:52 pm by DevliN. Reason: Deleted quoted post.

Well no, actually, that's what trademark, registration, and copyright laws are for. Just because something become widely known doesn't make it public property.

No, because that so-called 'public' property is the government's property.

Those are among the laws I'm saying are probably wrong. Except for trademarks, because if one were to use a trademark as your own when it isn't, then it's clearly deception; that's more cut and dried than copyrights and patents though.
No, because in that case you have signed a contract saying you'll give the car back after a period of time, whereas when you buy a game you then own that copy of the game and it cannot legally be taken from your possession.
I can still not stretch my mind around how one can steal something without removing that something from the person's possession.

What's the difference? Or rather, why would that matter?

Air is true public property; land owned by a government is not. It matters because cutting down other people's trees is illegal ;0 not to mention wrong.

You're not buying the game. You're buying a license. I'm tired of reiterating this. You don't get the source code, you get the compiled product. Also, if I digitally alter a database to say a shipment of a car should arrive to my house prepaid, would I be stealing? Absolutely. If I did this to many cars and gave them out to other people for free and they knew what I was doing? We're all technically stealing.

If I hack myself 5,000 shares in Microsoft and then sell those shares, am I stealing? If I alter data in a database from my bank to change my balance to $1 million and then withdraw that money, am I stealing? If I hack my loan information to say I owe less, am I stealing? If I hack a digital copy of a game so I don't have to buy it, am I stealing? The answer to all of this is yes. Now change me hacking to having someone else hack it and give me the finished result. We are both guilty of stealing.

It's really not a difficult concept. Refer to my flowchart. If they went through some length to prevent you from seeing some data and you found a way to see it, you're 1) acquiring the data, and 2) taking it without permission. Of course, this particular situation is much more hazy with the Freedom of Information Act.

No, you're not buying a license. You get the compiled game, with all the data required to play the game. You can edit this data however you want, in the same way that if you buy a car you can modify the engine, and if you buy a console you can hack it as much as you want.

If you digitally alter a database stored on someone else's server, then yes, you're stealing.

If someone buys a game, and then edits it, and makes a copy and gives it to someone else for free, they are not stealing; nor is the person receiving the game.

way to add crazy dimension, but is that not an rare scenario?

Slight variation would reopen it as a method of stealing

That is actually an interesting prospect. There is no real analogy to making a copy of something to compare to digital objects. If we ever have the technology to duplicate furniture, the furniture stores would be out of business, and the only way to keep them alive is to make laws against the duplication of that material.

However, the editing is classified as illegal unless the company provides an OGL.



I realized where this discussion went wrong, though; we are no longer directly discussing piracy, but rather the legitimacy of Intellectual property.