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Focused mostly on game software piracy, but relevant to any digital media... I'm a pretty firm believer that victimless crimes shouldn't be crimes. If a person wants to take money for sex they should be able to. If someone wants to kill themselves they should be able to. Probably the only place I'd draw the line is with a person signing away their rights indefinitely through slavery or some-such. It then becomes interesting to apply the "victimless crime" concept to the downloading of music, movies, games, and other media. For there to be a victim either something needs to be stolen that would have otherwise ended up going to a paying customer, or you're denying the creator the money you would have otherwise willingly spent for the item. The first is irrelevant. Digital media isn't a physical object you carry away. There's not a finite number of copies of the product. A new copy is made every time it's downloaded or copied. There's no limit to the supply. If you "steal" one it doesn't affect someone else's ability to buy their own copy of it. The second is the stickier one: Intent. If a person has absolutely no intent to ever pay money for a song but still downloads it, they're not actually denying the creator anything. The creator wouldn't have gotten anything either way. Thus they're not being victimized by the act; they're not being denied anything they would have otherwise gotten. What do you all think? Does that logic make sense? Am I just a vile Commie? To provide context for this, for those who are curious... My thoughts began lingering on this more and more due to EA's Origin EULA. Simply put, signing that allows EA to monitor all of your hardware and software use--far beyond what is relevant to their own games. I refuse to download it. I refuse to use it. The EULA as it is, I never will. However, I've already downloaded Mass Effect 3 and may well do the same for SimCity5, future Dragon Ages, etc. Personally I don't see this as being ethically wrong since, due to Origin, I'd never pay for them, anyway. EA isn't actually suffering from my actions. There's no victim. Though now that I write this I suppose I could buy packaged copies of the games in the store and just never open them. I might consider doing that, though I honestly hate to even encourage EA's behaviors by giving them money. But that's another topic...
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Rank: Fuckstick
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I honestly try to purchase bands that I love, but we're so strapped for cash that I feel guilty shelling out $12 for a CD. Or even $1.29 for one song. If it is a small band that isn't well known or just starting out we'll buy their stuff, though, just because we hope they'll succeed. For us it's a money issue, not an ethics issue. When I have the money I will buy your products... If I liked them, that is. I've often downloaded a whole CD and said 'Wow. This is shit.' then deleted it from my harddrive. If anything, me not wasting $12 on a shitty CD will make me more likely to try that artist's music again rather than 'The last time I bought your music it was shitty, so I'm never buying anything from you again'. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a 'try it before you buy it' run for all programs, games and music? Give me, say, a week with the whole game. Or give me a month to listen to your CD. If I like it, I'll buy it. If I don't, I won't. But then someone would find a way to crack through that trial program and they would just continue to whine about the piracy... Oh well. In the end, I always think of this when I hear famous, wealthy artists whinning about piracy:  wrote:{pDs} TitaniumPhoenix: We're Mexican. I say we pull a razor outta our titties and cut them!
[CMS]Noobina: omg thats where you keep yours too?! wrote:{pDs} TitaniumPhoenix: You mean that's not you in my titties? THEN WHO IS IT? D:
{pDs} Razor: I don't know but I would imagine if you push them together you would probably hear AFLAC!!! 
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Rank: Taco Technician
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fuck ethics, I want free shit
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TitaniumPhoenix wrote:Wouldn't it be nice if there was a 'try it before you buy it' run for all programs, games and music? Give me, say, a week with the whole game. Or give me a month to listen to your CD. If I like it, I'll buy it. If I don't, I won't. I'll often download games before buying them, especially if I'm new to a larger franchise. To provide an example that demonstrates both parts of my philosophy: I didn't get Mass Effect when it first came out. Just didn't catch my attention. Some time later I pirated it to try it out, thought it was good, then proceeded to buy both Mass Effect 1 and 2 on Steam, with most of their DLC. When I heard Mass Effect 3 required Origin, based on that principle I downloaded it and have it illegally. But since I'd never buy it due to Origin, it's back to the victimless crime thing. So I don't see myself as a cutthroat ARR! pirate that just wants free stuff. I'll gladly give money where it's due. But I won't reward corporations for bullshit tactics, either. P.S. In terms of music, I'm starting to dig Amazon's deal. You can upload 5GB worth of music to their cloud service for free and it'll be accessible to any PC or device that you can get the Amazon player on. And you can download it locally if you want. So it makes for nice centralized, accessible storage, with the ability to buy individual songs or whole albums hanging off it. I won't be putting my entire music library on there and my 1.5TB video library clearly wouldn't fit, but it'll be nice for my favorite albums.
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Scenario: You detail autos for a living. You stand by your bucket and your sponge waiting... It's a slow Sunday afternoon; no customers for some time... I show up and ask you to wash my car. Sweet! You do it; you do your best job possible. When you're done, I refuse to pay, delivering this rationale: Me not paying is a victimless crime. While you washed my car, no other customers came, so I was not blocking your ability to make money from other people. Further, I cost you nothing because you'd already purchased car washing brushes and towels, etc. Whether or not you washed my car you'd already incurred that expense. Plus, the buckets were already filled with soap and water; just being wasted. I further justify my not paying because I really had no intention of paying you at all... You see, I don't believe car detailing is worth the money asked. So, really, there is no damage here. Thanks! VROOM! beep-beep.
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Growf wrote:Scenario: You detail autos for a living. You stand by your bucket and your sponge waiting... It's a slow Sunday afternoon; no customers for some time... I show up and ask you to wash my car. Sweet! You do it; you do your best job possible. When you're done, I refuse to pay, delivering this rationale: Me not paying is a victimless crime. While you washed my car, no other customers came, so I was not blocking your ability to make money from other people. Further, I cost you nothing because you'd already purchased car washing brushes and towels, etc. Whether or not you washed my car you'd already incurred that expense. Plus, the buckets were already filled with soap and water; just being wasted. I further justify my not paying because I really had no intention of paying you at all... You see, I don't believe car detailing is worth the money asked. So, really, there is no damage here. Thanks! VROOM! beep-beep.
Except that you did require the employee to provide a service that took his time and physical effort. Music, movies, video games--the effort to make them has already been expended and downloading their work isn't requiring them to do anything. The comparison doesn't really fit since you're utilizing a service rather than a product. Services will always entail some resource expenditure from the person providing it--even if they otherwise wouldn't have anyone to expend it on. It's funny you should bring up that scenario, though. It reminds me of some thoughts I had while going to the movie theatre this past weekend. The theatre down the street has a tendency to be oddly empty--even for newer films during prime times. I looked around at all the empty seats when the movie was starting and thought to myself: why don't they just let people in for cheap at this point? The theatre's going to show the movie regardless of how many seats are filled, so why not fill them? An audience makes a mess that needs cleaned up, etc., so I wouldn't suggest they let people in for free, but cheaper tickets would give them customers they otherwise wouldn't get. Profit for them.
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Rikaelus wrote:I looked around at all the empty seats when the movie was starting and thought to myself: why don't they just let people in for cheap at this point? The theatre's going to show the movie regardless of how many seats are filled, so why not fill them? An audience makes a mess that needs cleaned up, etc., so I wouldn't suggest they let people in for free, but cheaper tickets would give them customers they otherwise wouldn't get. Profit for them. It's funny, I was thinking the exact same thing when we went to the movies this weekend. We figured we'd treat ourselves and splurge a little... Well after two tickets at $30, we were only two of the five people inside the theater. What the heck?! Why did I have to pay $30 for two tickets when their demend is down but the supply is still available? Oh well. No more movies for us for a long time... wrote:{pDs} TitaniumPhoenix: We're Mexican. I say we pull a razor outta our titties and cut them!
[CMS]Noobina: omg thats where you keep yours too?! wrote:{pDs} TitaniumPhoenix: You mean that's not you in my titties? THEN WHO IS IT? D:
{pDs} Razor: I don't know but I would imagine if you push them together you would probably hear AFLAC!!!
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TitaniumPhoenix wrote:Why did I have to pay $30 for two tickets when their demend is down but the supply is still available?
Oh well. No more movies for us for a long time... You think that's bad... the wife and I get so little time away from the kid, my father keeping him over the weekend was a godsend. We saw Brave on Saturday, Spider-Man on Sunday. Both in 3D. Plus dinner out Saturday night... about $110 weekend. That'll sting the monthly budget... And both movies were pretty empty. They even had Brave in this crazy huge theatre even though it's an older movie and had--at most--10 people in it. Not even a full row's worth of people.
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Meh my stand on this is anyone that tries to rationalize it is just trying to make up an excuse to make themselves feel better and maybe get verification from others If you pirate movies/shit ya know what your doing is wrong so why the fuck are you trying to make some lame ass excuse about why you do it ..don't try and sound deep or political/radical/rebellious/edgy doing it, i personally don't pirate movies or songs, That's mostly because i don't like watching movies at my computer and really don't feel like keeping track of the billion songs i listen to now and then i do watch shit on sites that is not meant to be on , I admit its the same thing and i do it because i refuse to pay for cable or some site $ just for one show .. Only diff is i am not making excuses as to why this song/movie/game isn't worth my money Anyways the argument that it doesn't hurt anyone is a pile of shit , people that make lame excuses for shit like this is the cause for higher prices , DRM and other annoying as shit we shouldn't have to deal with .. but i cant complain about that because i am in that group lol. btw unskippable previews and all the shit before a movie pisses me off, and menu screens that are animated with bullshit for like 30 seconds before the options pop up ..THOSE movies i get burned for me so i can PUSH AND PLAY MY FUCKEN MOVIE it doesn't change the fact that most people think Jews are much like the Ferengi of Star Trek. More interested in acquiring "profits" than anything else. -Erkdog
Shut the fuck up Frostbite, I know what i am doing i been playing TF2 for 8 fucking years i know how to run my damn servers-Erkdog
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Frostbite wrote:If you pirate movies/shit ya know what your doing is wrong Not really. It's legally wrong, of course. But whether or not it's ethically wrong is situational, just like a lot of things. That's the point of the topic; where we draw the line between right and wrong ethically. There are quite a few other laws that ban things outright that I find ethically sound, such as suicide. An example of another scenario that's situational would be prostitution. Whether or not we recognize it as wrong by someone else's standards isn't the same as judging it by our own personal standards.
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it is wrong to pirate shit ethically and legally. Lets use mass effect 3 as an example If you don't agree with what the company is doing or what platform it is on so what, don't play the game its not something you NEED to survive and it is not something that will make your life better having played it...You cant have your cake and eat it too,You cant complain about a company and still play their game Someone put a lot of hours and effort into their game or music and you taking with out paying for it is wrong. just because people make up some excuse about how digital copy's are not taken from a real paying customer don't mean its not right ..its a game/movie/ entertainment item not a life or death situation here . Taking something that is not yours and that you didn't pay for just because you WANT it is ALWAYS WRONG you cant put a spin on that ..Ethically or legally it doesn't change the fact that most people think Jews are much like the Ferengi of Star Trek. More interested in acquiring "profits" than anything else. -Erkdog
Shut the fuck up Frostbite, I know what i am doing i been playing TF2 for 8 fucking years i know how to run my damn servers-Erkdog
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Frostbite wrote:it is wrong to pirate shit ethically and legally. If nobody loses anything, I disagree. Quote:Lets use mass effect 3 as an example
If you don't agree with what the company is doing or what platform it is on so what, don't play the game its not something you NEED to survive and it is not something that will make your life better having played it...You cant have your cake and eat it too,You cant complain about a company and still play their game Actually... you can. I did. I refused to buy Mass Effect 3 because it requires Origin. EA will never have gotten any money from me for it either way because of that, nor will I be buying any game that requires Origin so long as their EULA is as it is now. Thus, nobody is losing anything if I choose to pirate it. I gain, nobody loses. All in all that's a positive exchange. Quote:Someone put a lot of hours and effort into their game or music and you taking with out paying for it is wrong. Why, precisely? Because the law says so? They aren't losing anything if they would never have gained anything; there's no victim. How can there logically be justice in punishing someone who hasn't caused any harm? Pirating a game or a song that I feel is worth buying is wrong. I agree. Because that actually is lost revenue going to the creators. They actually are being harmed in that case. And there are a great many games and songs I've downloaded that I went on to buy. There are some games I've even bought twice when the original became inaccessible, even though I wouldn't have considered it wrong to download an ISO of it. Point of fact, just Sunday night I was looking at a Star Wars game pack on Steam, to see if it had Rebellion. If it did I was going to buy the entire pack--for one game that's 14 years old. And I actually have legal ownership of the game already, but my ancient CD no longer works. With my CD no longer working and it not being available for purchase, I found an ISO for it. Do you consider that morally wrong? I was willing to pay MORE than the game was worth a SECOND time, and couldn't, so I pirated it. But according to your logic what I did was still wrong. Quote:just because people make up some excuse about how digital copy's are not taken from a real paying customer don't mean its not right ..its a game/movie/ entertainment item not a life or death situation here . Taking something that is not yours and that you didn't pay for just because you WANT it is ALWAYS WRONG you cant put a spin on that ..Ethically or legally But you're spinning things yourself and apparently don't realize it. You've said twice now that it's ethically wrong because it's something you don't "need". Does that mean you find it alright to pirate something if you do need? Because if so, you're just coming up with "excuses", yourself. And chances are anything you'll actually "need" would be physical items that you are hurting other people by taking; food, medicine, etc. Even if you "need" it, I'd consider stealing those more legitimate a crime than pirating a copy of something.
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Taking something that does not belong to you is wrong , you cant ever justify that for good or bad , More so because its just and entertainment item that means nothing it doesn't change the fact that most people think Jews are much like the Ferengi of Star Trek. More interested in acquiring "profits" than anything else. -Erkdog
Shut the fuck up Frostbite, I know what i am doing i been playing TF2 for 8 fucking years i know how to run my damn servers-Erkdog
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I'm not a fan of software piracy, though I can see where the majority of people are coming from when they rationalize doing so. I can't see myself taking something that someone (hopefully) poured part of their life into. It just makes me uncomfortable. Another interesting "victimless crime" to consider might be counterfeiting currency. If everyone made their own money and was free to do so, nobody would have any problems. Until everyone's money became as valuable as regular paper that is.  Quote:Razor: As hard as one might try no one will ever be able to pull one over on Super Penguin. Backpack of Win
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As the father of 2 children who work in the music industry (one recording/sound engineer and one musician), I see theft of intellectual copywrited works as -- theft. You steal music and my kids don't get paid for their work. It also decreases the motivation for new works to be created to a large degree and harms the economy as a whole. In an economy that is moving away from manufacturing to a more service based economy, stealing intellectual property decreases total economic activity and blocks innovation and new creations. I get a lot of enjoyment from the fruits of this creativity (video games, movies, books, software, music) and I value it enough to pay the people who produced it for their labours. I support developing ways to allow the creators/artists to directly market and sell their works. That way we cut out the suits and the artists get paid. I'd be interested in hearing from some of you who are working in this part of the economy (might even get Whut to post?) "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like ... victory"
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