Piracy is theft

ProDarwin said:

Mr_Asa said:

Duke said:

You are entitled to make backups of properties you already legally own.  Not once owned.  If you have sold or lost or given away the property, then you have lost your right to it. 

I haven't heard this, can you give any legal precedent or references to it?

I'm not getting into this argument, but this sounded interesting to me so I'd just like more knowledge about it.

Actually, in many cases you aren't legally allowed to backup stuff you own.  Getting around DRM is illegal, period.

Thus the idea that you may as well pirate because you will be breaking the law no matter what.

Is it immoral to download something you already have a physical copy of? DRM imposes the idea that you do not own a copy of the product, you own the physical item.  A lot of people got pissed off when the music they "bought" turned out to legally be able to get deleted from their device by the DR holder.  Imagine buying a CD and then one day discovering that it is blank.

Duke said:

red_stapler said:

Using an adblocker is also theft.

Correct.

Incorrect.  Ads make revenue when you click on them.  It is no different from shutting your eyes during a commercial or reading a book during a bus ride so you don't see any billboards.  If you send something to me, once it leaves your control it is no longer up to you what happens to it.  You can't tell me to read a letter you write me.
Someone else making a flawed business model that doesn't work when I ignore it isn't my problem

If having an active ad blocker means I can't read your website then I exit your website.  

It gets compounded when ads have malware attached.  It is now my responsibility to protect my system and my information.

berkeley.  I said I wasn't going to participate in this damn thread.

In reply to Mndsm :

No, morals that rely on consenting adults or that only affect a single party are completely subjective.

Morals that involve two parties - one of them unwilling or unable to consent - are not subjective. Party A shall not take from Party B without their consent.

And just not knowing Party B's identity does not relieve you from obtaining their consent.

Duke said:

Thou shalt not steal.

Moral enough for you?

So, because I don't subscribe to that belief system, I am now morally allowed to steal?

ProDarwin said:

Mr_Asa said:

Duke said:

You are entitled to make backups of properties you already legally own.  Not once owned.  If you have sold or lost or given away the property, then you have lost your right to it. 

I haven't heard this, can you give any legal precedent or references to it?

I'm not getting into this argument, but this sounded interesting to me so I'd just like more knowledge about it.

Actually, in many cases you aren't legally allowed to backup stuff you own.  Getting around DRM is illegal, period.

Sorry, I was looking for an actual legal precedent?  Something from copyright law that's been upheld by a court of law?  Anything along those lines, really.

Mr_Asa said:

Duke said:

red_stapler said:

Using an adblocker is also theft.

Correct.

Incorrect.  Ads make revenue when you click on them.  It is no different from shutting your eyes during a commercial or reading a book during a bus ride so you don't see any billboards.  If you send something to me, once it leaves your control it is no longer up to you what happens to it.  You can't tell me to read a letter you write me.
Someone else making a flawed business model that doesn't work when I ignore it isn't my problem

If having an active ad blocker means I can't read your website then I exit your website.  

It gets compounded when ads have malware attached.  It is now my responsibility to protect my system and my information.

My understanding is that some ads also make revenue based on how often they are seen (click through or not), and by blocking them you are denying the content creator some revenue.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Slippery said:

And here I was looking to buy these things and now and I am confused on whether I should call them first and ask whether they were provided with written permission from Mazda to manufacture and sell them. 

Dorman sells reproductions of parts.  They buy new parts to copy from, too!

The interesting thing, tying this together, is that some manufacturers (Chrysler) deliberately put strange bends and stuff in things like A/C lines and copyright/patent the design, specifically to prevent the aftermarket from duplicating them...

I'd like to point out that the part for sale here is one that was designed to be functionally identical to the one that Mazda no longer offers. It's our own design, produced out of a different material using a different manufacturing technique and has some slightly different dimensions :) It's not a knockoff any more than a replacement exhaust system is a knockoff.

ProDarwin said:

Mr_Asa said:

Duke said:

red_stapler said:

Using an adblocker is also theft.

Correct.

Incorrect.  Ads make revenue when you click on them.  It is no different from shutting your eyes during a commercial or reading a book during a bus ride so you don't see any billboards.  If you send something to me, once it leaves your control it is no longer up to you what happens to it.  You can't tell me to read a letter you write me.
Someone else making a flawed business model that doesn't work when I ignore it isn't my problem

If having an active ad blocker means I can't read your website then I exit your website.  

It gets compounded when ads have malware attached.  It is now my responsibility to protect my system and my information.

My understanding is that some ads also make revenue based on how often they are seen (click through or not), and by blocking them you are denying the content creator some revenue.

Some, yeah.  Again though, the existence of ad blockers is known by the companies selling this "ad space" so they're participating in a flawed business model.  The rest stands

This discussion is exactly why I buy CDs instead of digital downloads :D 

Mr_Asa said:

Sorry, I was looking for an actual legal precedent?  Something from copyright law that's been upheld by a court of law?  Anything along those lines, really.

This is one of the better articles on the subject:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/its-still-illegal-to-rip-dvd-and-blu-ray-discs-for-personal-use/

It links to this response from the Librarian of Congress https://copyright.gov/1201/2015/fedreg-publicinspectionFR.pdf

Mr_Asa said:

Duke said:

Thou shalt not steal.

Moral enough for you?

So, because I don't subscribe to that belief system, I am now morally allowed to steal?

See my posts above in response to similar issues.

Some morals are dependent upon the belief system. Some are not.

ProDarwin said:

Mr_Asa said:

Sorry, I was looking for an actual legal precedent?  Something from copyright law that's been upheld by a court of law?  Anything along those lines, really.

This is one of the better articles on the subject:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/its-still-illegal-to-rip-dvd-and-blu-ray-discs-for-personal-use/

It links to this response from the Librarian of Congress https://copyright.gov/1201/2015/fedreg-publicinspectionFR.pdf

Interesting.  If I'm reading it correctly, the article seems to echo a lot of what's said in here on both sides.  It seems digital backups and such is a mish-mash of positions being taken by legal entities, and relies almost solely on the encryption being in place.

Duke said:

Mr_Asa said:

Duke said:

Thou shalt not steal.

Moral enough for you?

So, because I don't subscribe to that belief system, I am now morally allowed to steal?

See my posts above in response to similar issues.

Some morals are dependent upon the belief system. Some are not.

No, I saw them.  I don't really agree with the position.  Mainly because in your A vs B scenario, B has no way of knowing that something has been "taken" from them.

In reply to Duke :

You're laboring under the assumption that my moral compass relies on caring about the other parties intent. That's the thing with morals. They don't have to agree with anything. 

I'm not saying I'm about stealing- I'm not. But since we're stuck on the moral compass of the Bible at the moment, let's put it like this. 

Let's say you're a tribe of indigenous people that have never seen the white man before. You have no concept of Christianity, you have no idea about any commandments, and your way has been your way for thousands of years. You might find that it's immoral for them to say....wander around with their dinger out. Theyve been doing it for thousands of years to no effect of anyone any other time until you see it. Your morality on public dinger showing is of little consequence to them. In THIS particular instance there's two wildly different moral choices and a million different perspectives on the matter. There is virtually no arguable definitive answer to any of it. 

Ultimately, there are several different sets of rules in life. Morals, which vary greatly from person to person, the law which is the generally agreed upon set of rules that we've all decided (or, the vast majority of us have, I doubt gay people wanted that to be illegal, but it was at one point) are correct. There is a lot of overlapping, (murder, generally a bad plan, as an example) but it's not hard and fast and all of it is subject to interpretation by individuals and groups. People that choose to break the law generally understand the consequences of their actions and accept them as it is, and that is their moral imperitive. In an ideal situation moral choices would NOT inconvenience another being, but we choose to eat steak and I didn't bother to ask the cow if it was cool.....

Trying to Google to learn what the actual result of anti-piracy actions was on sales of various media, I discovered that the music used in the famous "Piracy. It's a crime." advertisement... was stolen: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.htm

In reply to Beer Baron :

No hypocrisy like big uber corporation hypocrisy.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Duke said:

Mndsm said:

Soulja boy was effectively the inventor of modern distribution as we know it. Back in the days of Napster, limewire, etc- he was a struggling artist with a decent song. He couldn't get distro. So he actively assisted people in pirating his own material, going so far as to re label it to other songs so people would download slayer and get Soulja boy.

Piracy as a whole has a long and storied history, and it's not all bad. Let's say I hear a bootleg of a greatful dead song I know has NEVER been released, but has been played live. I can listen to a E36 M3ty (or excellent) bootleg all I want, or I can go experience it live. 

But the difference is that Soulja Boy gave away his own material.  The users of P2P pirating sites didn't make that decision for him; he made it himself.  It's his content to do with as he pleases.  No problem at all.

And the Dead traditionally had a "bootlegger's box" where people were free to record their shows.  Again, their material, they're giving it away, at least in that format.

 

If he was on a label, he probably didn't own his own music.

Now that I'm home....  I'd like to know where this was sampled from.  (From the Kleptones' "Night at the Hip-Hopera" album)

No one is changing anyone's mind in this thread.

I'd still download out of circulation games and not feel bad about it at all.

Also if I had to copy something or break copyright to keep something working because a company was trying to force obsolescence of a product on me I wouldn't feel bad about it at all. I think forced obsolescence is as morally questionable as piracy

In reply to Mr_Asa :

It's irrelevant if B knows or not. The theft has still happened. It doesn't magically not exist until it is discovered.

And while I am here with a YouTube window in front of me.

This is a fascinating take on how copyright law as it sits is completely unsuited to the modern media landscape.

What is interesting is that this "most important six second drum loop" not only has had several musical genres take off from it, but there are companies that have taken the loop, or even just the individual beats from that loop, and copyrighted them for themselves when selling drumbeat compilations for mixers.

It's long but worth the listen.  Or watch, too, I suppose.

In reply to Mndsm :

Except that each individual human has innate rights by simple virtue of having been born human.  Those include the right not to have violence initiated against you and the right to own property (your own self and the product of your labor).

So your hypothetical concept of morality violates a fundamental, innate human right. But now we're really getting existential and away from the topic.

Beer Baron said:

Trying to Google to learn what the actual result of anti-piracy actions was on sales of various media, I discovered that the music used in the famous "Piracy. It's a crime." advertisement... was stolen: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.htm

That's hilarious. I hope whoever owned the music rights sued their pants off.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I've watched that before. It's fascinating. 

In reply to Mndsm :

The natives having their dingers out may or may not offend my delicate sensibilities, but it's not a moral issue I have any right to impose on them, because they don't require my consent to dress in any way they please. Far from being a moral issue, it's an aesthetic problem on my part, and I have to decide if whatever I'm doing there is worth having to see a lot of local peen.

It becomes a moral issue only if they try to use those dingers to violate my person, which does require my consent to be moral, because it violates my innate human rights unless I agree to it.

In reply to Duke :

See, that's where the innate human right and the existential thing start getting way beyond the scope of your original statement. I would argue that innate human right is yet another moral construct perpetuated by man. No other species on this earth, including a not insignificant portion of humans themselves do not share this belief. Those same naked tribesman would have no quarrel with holing my skull with an arrow for .... whatever. 

But.... different discussion.