Well that would be constructing your own device. It's not copying completely. I guess it would be like remixes of a song. Those are legal right? Movies can't be legally duplicated but if it's say a parody it would be different slightly? Duplicating a movie for personal use and not for distribution I feel is okay but we can't really enforce that people won't distribute it.

For third party devices, I believe they have to be different enough from the original to avoid any trademark or copyright violations.

For remixes of a song, the artist typically needs permission from the original artist to do the remix.

Movies can be parodied as long as enough is changed so that it isn't exactly like the original (i.e. names, places, situations, etc.).

Thats why its lite, humor can be applied.

Piracy in its self is only ever done for self gain these days. You wont see someone steal food for a whole group of people, usually only for them self or their family. Though I am still on the side of the argument that the object being stolen physically doesn't exist, so how can it be stolen in the first place?

Though, my version of stealing is more valid. Since I cant actually get the thing Im pirating in the first place, how is me getting it for free any different to the profit said company will be receiving? Id buy it if I could believe me, but since I am in the situation that I currently am, piracy is the only way for me to get anything I want.

Because you can't afford it means you get it for free? do you deserve the product? the developers would disagree probably. Should you get anything you want if you can't afford it?

Your not taking anything worth money though because you can't pay for it. It's not wrong since nobody loses really. That how I view it. However if you can afford it but don't buy it that's stealing and hurting the company.

Guys. We've said this about six times already. Please think of a new argument, or just close this thing. I'm tired of reading the same thing over and over again.

SO BASICALLY:

Just because you're poor, it doesn't mean you can take stuff without paying for it.
Just because it's digital, it doesn't mean that aren't stealing something. Owning a product that costs money that you didn't pay for and didn't get as a gift or anything = stealing.

Stop trying to justify it and just admit that you're immoral and going to Hell.

Maybe you can look at it like this:

A company makes a product. They want to allow only x amount of copies to be able to be used at any given time. In order to achieve this, they sell a limited amount of copies, and require that the only way to use their product is to use a copy distributed by the company. If you are using a copy that was not distributed and sold by the company, you are either pirating or participating in the purchasing of pirated items.

Stealing a product would be taking without permission a copy that was originally distributed by the company.

Technically, a game company can create infinite copies of a game. The could send a copy to everyone on the planet if they wanted to.
A game company uses computers to make copies of their game electronically.
Is it then ok for me to make a copy of the game for myself on my computer and distribute it to all of my friends? Does that make it ok for my friends to accept copies of the game?
"But a game isn't anything physical, it's just 1's and 0's"
Piracy is illegal.

Technically, the government has infinite copies of a one hundred dollar bill. They could send a copy to everyone on the planet if they wanted to.
The government uses printing presses to make copies of the one hundred dollar bill.
Is it then ok for me to print money for myself from the my printer and hand it out to every one of my friends? Does that make it ok for my friends to accept the printed money?
"Money doesn't have real value, it's just ink on paper"
Counterfeiting is illegal.


"I should't have to pay for a game I might not like anyways"
You don't sneak into movie theaters to see if I like a movie enough to pay for a ticket.
"I don't have money so the company wouldn't have sold the game to me anyways"
Maybe if you couldn't pirate you would have saved enough money to pay for the game when the price drops by half.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 27 2011, 2:27 am by K_A.

Piracy and counterfeiting are quite different. Counterfeiting involves disception, as when you counterfeit a note you are saying that what you have is a legal note which the government can back using their gold reserves (although you can't actually buy federal reserve gold, but that's a different matter).

Yes, piracy is illegal. Should it be? No.

So what? A company gets to choose how many copies will be distributed.

You only think it should be legal because you're not affected by it.

I never said I deserve it. But as a person, and as such one that is in a society bent on being equal, I am just as deserving to view the product just as much as anyone else.

Yet the rest of us pay for it, so you're just as deserving to pay for it as we do.

Actually the US dollar isn't backed by gold reserves any more. It's backed by nothing.

To add to this, not all economic systems needed to be backed by a gold standard, or any sort of standard for that matter. It's one way of running an economy, but it's not the only way. Most economies run on fiat money.

Exactly, but when someone pirates the game, it loses value in the same way that printing more money = money loses value.

Just because something can't technically be classified as stealing doesn't mean it shouldn't be illegal.

My point was not that counterfeiting is pretending you have something of value. My point was that you are getting free things without actually earning the money for them. Saying that it's not worth enough for you to pay for it with real money isn't an excuse. The argument I'm fighting here is the idea that music and video games are not physical objects with value, but neither is the value of paper money. It has no physical value beyond the paper it's on.

In reality video games are not something with a physical value at all. They are not a commodity, but a service, that you are using without paying for. So maybe you aren't removing a physical object from the creator. It's still wrong, and should still be illegal. It goes along the lines of sneaking into a theme park without paying, watching a football game from outside the fence, riding on a train without paying for a ticket.

It should be illegal because there needs to be a consequence for doing it. All the things being pirated can't just be free in the first place, and on the other hand it isn't "fair"* for some of us to pay and others to get it for free without consequences just because they can't afford it or don't want to pay.


*If someone responds with "Life isn't fair" or some similar bullshit response, I'll delete it. Seriously.

Let me know how you feel about it when your wellbeing depends on your media or software being paid for, lol.

PS: Life isn't fair

Just food for thought...

Is there a moral difference between buying a game with counterfeit money and pirating a game? Both have the same outcome just mildly different means.

Well, if you were to buy a game from a retailer using counterfeit money, the store itself would actually be losing money, where piracy would really only be taking away a potential sale.

(I don't actually know what happens to counterfeit money once the store gets its hands on it - I am assuming that they do not get reimbursed and thus they lose money, but I could be wrong.)

And we're all entitled to employment as well, yet there is a ratio of people that will never get a job in this country because they do not exist.

Believe me, I want a job