[bleak]

No, not the eyepatch and jolly roger piracy. I'm talking about THEFT.

Now I've noticed that some of the people here have vocalized their opinions either for or against piracy, but the majority of that which I've heard was empty posturing and hot-air-blowing. What I'd like to see here is your opinion on piracy, whether or not you think it's okay (as the poll indicates), and why.

Personally, I actively avoid paying for media whenever possible. This started out when I was exposed to the internet, really, and it's born from a combination of a) ease of acquisition, b) lack of excess funding, and c) an innate opposition towards capitalism.

Now, most all of what I steal is music. I attempt to support the bands that I really, really enjoy of course, when I can, but I'm hardly ever in a position where I can do that reliably. I don't really buy games ever, and I'd say about 1% of what I steal is movies, where the other 99% is music.

Another thing that I'm curious about: Is it more or less okay to steal movies, music, or games? What about when you compare it to straight-up shoplifting? Personally, I'm against stealing from the individual, but strangely enough I have no qualms about stealing from the many. (not The Many, I love those guys)

Well, I think I've laid myself pretty bare in this regard. I sure hope I don't come off like a butt by doing so, but eh. Without further ado, vote on the polls and spill! your! GUTS!

[Pavement]

You a cop?

[bleak]

nope, just curious after that axe thread about demonoid and the KoP thread about MAME roms

avast!

[Pavement]

I will take your word for it ok.

I'm a pirate and I download impulsively. My huge backlog is a bit of a problem. I kind of need some degree of scarcity with my entertainment.

[extrabastardformula]

In before some red anarchist says that property equals theft.
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[Nate]

It's not stealing! Abstaining from poll as a result.

That doesn't mean copyright infringement is fine or not fine, but accepting the loaded terms "piracy" and "stealing" ends the debate before it begins. Copyright laws are antiquated and broken, and as long as people accept the current framing of the issue, anyone who says so sounds like a slacker punk who just want to get their music for free, at least to anyone in charge.
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"There are billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping me alive and healthy, and every one is a potential traitor and foe." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

[slipstream]

it's kind of annoying how people just carelessly pirate entire discographies.
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[sawtooth]

nate's got it!
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(  (  

[Hot Stott Bot]

I would say that it is neither wrong nor right, but merely human nature and fact. It is also human nature to try to fit pirating into a moral framework. There are reasons one would consider it wrong, and reasons one would consider it right, though really it is neither... just merely human nature and fact.

[internisus]

well of course it's wrong

it's just not THAT wrong

it depends on how big or small the artists/businesses that will not be receiving your money are

and it depends upon whether you really are just trying something out before possibly buying it

[haze]

we already had this thread

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=8587

[km]

[rabite gets whacked!]

Not theft, and I feel no moral qualms about it. Nate's on the money here.

I'll add that it's hard not to feel like an sniveling idiotic caricature while disagreeing with the ways of the entertainment industry, if that very industry walks around like a hackneyed TV villain, intentionally shooting bystanders just to show you how much it fucking means business, and the government plays the part of the cowed town sheriff regarding the matter. We're all operating in nonsensical territory now, and they're the ones who brought us there.
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[slipstream]

[km]

Hoarding?

I think that word only applies when you actually deprive someone else of something by maintaining exclusive ownership over an abundance of it.


You can't really horde widely distributed binary data.


Also why must this be discouraged?
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[EmX]

The problem here, km, is that slipstream is an idiot.

[slipstream]

Fight me, EmX.
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[EmX]

P2P Kaillera is the best option here. Lemme know if you want help getting it setup.

[Cossix]

I think he means the kind of people that download stuff just to download stuff? I knew a guy in high school that had gigs and gigs and gigs and gigs of music, and he never really listened to like 99% of it. I think he had like five gigs of music that he liked and several hundred of just crap.

He did this with a lot of stuff though. Movies, games, TV shows, the kid was some sort of compulsive internet data collector.

[parker]

[CubaLibre]

I cannot feel moral compunctions about depriving any large corporation of its property.

I feel for the artists, though. Also, I like the jewel cases with the liner notes and everything.

So sometimes I buy CDs and sometimes I download them. Movies though I buy, the format isn't easy enough to download yet and nothing compares to a true theater experience.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[stotelheim]

I'm very curious about what system piracy will make replace the old one. So I'm definitely for it, and will vote for the pirate party in the next election. Out of curiousity, mainly.
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go away extralife

[EmX]

interesting how pirate-friendly the IC-SB continuum has become these past 4 years, eh?

[The Soviet Onion]

It is theft, pure and simple. Intellectual property is equivalent to physical property - the issue of duplication is not relevant. The question is, in which circumstances it is justified theft? My position is close to the majority here, but I believe your blanket condemnations of capitalism are unjust:

I'm eager to support the work of people whose creativity I respect, and not just out of the self-interested motive of providing Pavlovian reinforcement for their behaviour. I've fired not-insignificant sums in the direction of Tarn Adams and Thomas Biskup and I’m extremely glad that they gave me the opportunity to cut out the middleman.

Of course, I’m not stupid – I recognise that middlemen came to exist because they provided something of value that a lone auteur couldn’t. Don’t overlook how important aggregators and distributors have been in the past. It is understandable how people come to choose a more conventional path of making their wares available and they don’t bear the sole blame for how things have turned out.

We don’t live in a utopia of perfect flexibility and the invisible hand can be clumsy when it comes to punishing wrongdoing. Its function requires the actions of informed consumers. When it comes to modern media – games, movies, films – we are in a nasty situation. The real world is grubby and imperfect and the mechanisms of history have placed said middlemen in a perfect position to rest their chubby thumbs on the scales.

I don’t want to fight this battle, but the attitude of the entertainment industry towards its customers is one of open contempt. They behave like conmen – their baubles sometimes hold a tawdry charm, yet are invariably presented in order to provide a distraction whilst they rifle our pockets. Common pride dictates that faced with such charlatanry we should take whatever steps necessary to ensure justice, and theft of their inventory is a good start.

That’s why I support piracy. I’m not a strong man, and when they turn the weight of industry towards piquing my interest, my interest is sometimes piqued. The tireless work of those given to circumventing copy protection measures – and I thank you all sincerely – enables me to satisfy my curiosity in an ethical way. It provides me with a means of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

To the genuinely creative, I’d say I’m sorry for the situations where my distaste for those who are interposed between us overwhelms my desire to provide you with fair recompense for your work. It’s a difficult balance, but c’est le guerre. I look to the gentleman amateurs out there providing a superior product for zilch, and look forward to a day when piracy is no longer necessary.

[Broco]

[CubaLibre]

Legal realism v. Law & economics

FIGHT
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Mr Mustache]

CDs are a crap format.
_________________
The people are like wool to me

[gooktime]

Piracy has actually lead to me buying a fair few things, funnily enough!

[EmX]

[Corinth]

Well said, Broco.

[shnozlak]

[Leau]

I think kids are just spoiled today. Maybe its an american thing. Any arguments about fighting capitilism or that IP law is a flawed system are nonsense. You kids aren't pirating stuff on principle; it's because you want that product. Simple as that. Rationalize it however you want; whatever makes you comfortable. If you need to envision labels and publishers as evil fatcats in suits, in your minds eye then so be it. It all boils down to: "I want this so I should get to have it!" Well no actually, perhaps you shouldn't get anything you might want. Maybe you'll have to go without. It's a foreign concept that many (maybe most) simply can't digest. They can't even begin to fathom it.
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[showka]

[SplashBeats]

logical arguments followed up by "you kids are spoiled"

standard procedure here

[Talbain]

showka, I think that were it a flawed system, it would have failed by now. As far as I'm aware, the companies are still making money and producing bigger, more expensive things for people to go out and spend their money on. Also, if we really took the whole "intellectual property" idea to its logical extreme, no one would ever be able to get anything done, because there's so much out there that's already been done, and 99% of all work is derivative anyway.

Let's put aside moral ramifications and just look at business. Do businesses perhaps lose money as a result of those aside from the purchasers? Certainly, but as Broco previously said, not enough to negatively impact them.

Is it a problematic system? Well yeah, it's got problems. All systems do. As of right now, our response to those problems is mostly one of ambivalence. Aside from the egregious copyright "terms," I pretty much support said ambivalence.
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[Mr. Apol]

if i spent five thousand dollars recording an album in the studio and released it independantly, i'd need to sell at least five hundred cds at ten dollars a piece just to break even.

i buy music, if i have the choice to do so.
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[EmX]

I don't buy things because I'm an asshole.

[Mr. Apol]

also, i may come off sounding pretentious, but vinyl records are really nice to own, and the big cases look gorgeous. there's a real tactile pleasure to putting a record on and placing the needle and shit. it's not something you can replicate with a computer, even if you buy the music legally.
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[Broco]

showka, I appreciate your sense of fairness and your feeling that it's unjust that people are getting a free ride while you're paying. I just think the kind of morality you're applying here is an individual one, one that works best for things like murder and adultery and such. Piracy is an action which only has negative effects in the aggregate -- and in that type of situation, everyday ethics tend to mislead us and create harmful errors.

Economics is a form of ethics which was developed specifically for aggregate behaviors. It can lead to conclusions that are hard to swallow. Among other things, economic policies always create many winners and many losers. In many cases the ratio is lopsided: it is 90% winners and 10% losers. But that is still thousands of losers, and it's natural to sympathize with them and reject the policy to protect them. In addition, there is always a way to apply individual-morality concepts such as fairness and justice to support whichever side we prefer. The Soviet Onion deployed the word "justice" to claim that consumers are abused and they are in their rights to redress the situation through piracy. Then showka deploys the concept of fairness and proper compensation to argue that there shouldn't be piracy at all.

The way this kind of thinking can be twisted to support any position is an indication that it's inapplicable in the first place. There will always be losers and it will always trigger our sense of injustice when seen from the right angle. Just forget about fairness and choose the option that creates the most winners and the least losers.

[slipstream]

[EmX]

Who said I was a libertarian?