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Major Copyright Judgement

Yoink said:
Yeah, in what bizarro world could anyone possibly construe illegally taking possession of property that does not belong to you as "theft"?
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More rank equivocation between intellectual and physical property. This entire thread is filled with equivocation and false analogies.
 
Gate2501 said:
More rank equivocation between intellectual and physical property. This entire thread is filled with equivocation and false analogies.
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Is it really your contention that it is impossible to steal intellectual property? So if you hear a sentence like "the schematics for the new Apple iPed were stolen yesterday in an extraordinarily bold case of industrial espionage" you would find that sentence impossible to understand? Or you would assume that not only had the plans been copied but that every single copy that Apple owned had been rounded up and destroyed?

Or, rather, do you in fact fully understand that normal colloquial usage of the word "stolen" and recognize that we talk about purely intellectual property being "stolen" all the time? Or would that just be a touch too much honesty to ask for?

Oh and P.S.: when someone has just quoted the OED's definition of a word, it might not be a good idea to come back at them with Wikipedia. That's not the slap down you seem to think. Let me explain this a little more for you: it is true that some colloquial expressions may be technically incorrect. That does not mean that colloquial "means" technically incorrect. Some colloquial expressions may be salacious. That does not mean that colloquial means "salacious." Some colloquial expressions may be amusing, that doesn't mean that colloquial "means" amusing. Beginning to catch on?

And re: fetishization: once again it is you who is fetishizing the physical. I am the one saying that the physicality of the stolen property is unimportant.
 
Yoink said:
Or, rather, do you in fact fully understand that normal colloquial usage of the word "stolen" and recognize that we talk about purely intellectual property being "stolen" all the time? Or would that just be a touch too much honesty to ask for?
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Did you miss earlier on in the thread, where I said I don't really care if you call if "theft" if you admit that your usage is colloquial???

Oh and P.S.: when someone has just quoted the OED's definition of a word, it might not be a good idea to come back at them with Wikipedia. That's not the slap down you seem to think. Let me explain this a little more for you: it is true that some colloquial expressions may be technically incorrect. That does not mean that colloquial "means" technically incorrect. Some colloquial expressions may be salacious. That does not mean that colloquial means "salacious." Some colloquial expressions may be amusing, that doesn't mean that colloquial "means" amusing. Beginning to catch on?
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I didn't just say that it means "technically incorrect", you cherry picked those words out of a full sentence which was a perfectly fine definition for 'colloquial', OED obviously has a different one. MWD has one that is worded differently as well.

I said:
Colloquial just means a usage that is technically incorrect, but may be recognized because it is commonly used in this incorrect manner.
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I stand by it. Perhaps it would have gone over better with you if I said "formally incorrect"?
 
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Gate2501 said:
Did you miss earlier on in the thread, where I said I don't really care if you call if "theft" if you admit that your usage is colloquial???



I didn't just say that it means "technically incorrect", you cherry picked those words out of a full sentence which was a perfectly fine definition for 'colloquial', OED obviously has a different one. MWD has one that is worded differently as well.

I said:


I stand by it. Perhaps it would have gone over better with you if I said "formally incorrect"?
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Sigh. No. "Colloquial" contains no implications of "incorrectness" whatsoever. There are colloquial usages that are "incorrect" in specific technical contexts, yes, but that does not mean that describing a usage as "colloquial" implies incorrectness in any way, anymore than it implies salaciousness or rudeness or whatever else. The "colloquial" meaning of "telephone" is the same as the "technical" meaning. The "colloquial" meaning of "postcard" is the same as any other meaning. The vast majority of words in the dictionary are being given their "colloquial" meanings. Some small subset of those words have "technical" meanings which vary from their "colloquial" ones. All "colloquial" means is "ordinary usage."

Stealing intellectual property is "theft" by any "ordinary usage" of the word.

ETA: in trying to hide behind the fact that there is a specific technical context where "theft" is not the appropriate word to apply to copyright infringement you're effectively like someone saying that I can't say that somebody caused me an injury because it's "technically" a "tort."
 
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lionking said:
After about three pages of semantics, we now get duelling dictionaries. :rolleyes:
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Yes, apologies, this is degenerating to a new even more silly level.

I always find it very hard to pry myself away from these copyright infringement != theft arguments. I really enjoy them. /shrug
 
Apology not necessary.

Another interesting case:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/15m-for-illegal-copy-20100209-npr7.html

A QUEENSLAND man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its new games to the internet before its release, the gaming giant says.
James Burt, 24, of Sinnamon Park in Queensland, will pay Nintendo $1.5 million after an out-of-court settlement was struck to compensate the company for the loss of sales revenue.
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Apart from the stunning revelation that a 24 year old has $1.5 million laying around, these sorts of show prosecutions will become more common I think.
 
lionking said:
Apology not necessary.

Another interesting case:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/15m-for-illegal-copy-20100209-npr7.html



Apart from the stunning revelation that a 24 year old has $1.5 million laying around, these sorts of show prosecutions will become more common I think.
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Wow, I hadn't even heard of this. Apparently the game was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Super_Mario_Bros._Wii

I had heard that they were going to start going after the initial uploaders/crackers of these files, but I had no clue that they were sophisticated enough to prove that he was the one behind it and get warrants for his home and all of his electronic devices/email/social networking accounts.
 
quixotecoyote said:
I do wish the damages with these things would reflect reality.
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I'm skeptical that Nintendo will ever get, or indeed, even seeks to get, the $1.5 mill. I think the settlement went along the lines "Look kid, plead guilty, we'll come up with a figure and you can pay us in the event you become a gazillionaire". I simply can't see how a fine that large will ever be paid.
 
lionking said:
I'm skeptical that Nintendo will ever get, or indeed, even seeks to get, the $1.5 mill. I think the settlement went along the lines "Look kid, plead guilty, we'll come up with a figure and you can pay us in the event you become a gazillionaire". I simply can't see how a fine that large will ever be paid.
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I just don't see how he could have caused Nintendo $1.5 million in damages, nor have I seen a good argument for statutory damages that let the courts pretend he did.
 
Yoink said:
If you can get all the music you want for free it is simply self-evident that your motivation to buy music is correspondingly diminished.
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This is self-evident only to those of limited imagination. Over the last three years I have downloaded perhaps 50 CDs worth of music, but I have bought about 300 CDs. In the three years before that, when I didn't download, I bought considerably fewer CDs; the other 300 CDs in my collection have been collected since the 90s. Similarly, I have bought more movie DVDs (7) in these last three years than I even owned before I started downloading, as I'm not very interested in movies. Thus, in both cases my motivation to buy CDs and DVDs has actually increased enormously since I started downloading things.

(The exception is anime, where I prefer fansubs, as commercial releases are often americanized, which is a feature I, as a non-American, can live without. Fansubs, on the whole, are more faithful to the original. If you want me to buy commercial anime, stop substituting American food, music, TV shows, celebrities, and so on for the Japanese originals.)

Naturally, several of my friends do the opposite, and download things without ever even thinking of buying them if they like it. However, my friends would split almost equally between those who buy things they have downloaded if they like it, and those who don't. Thus, in my experience your correlation is either nonsense, or at least not general enough to be self-evident.
 
Gate2501 said:
Consoles have killed PC gaming because they are a much more convenient platform for most folks, imo. Consoles obviously make it more difficult to pirate games, but I wouldn't say this is the primary reason for their having such fantastic sales numbers. How many people out there do you think own a gaming PC capable of playing new releases, vs. those who own consoles?

There are a lot of other factors at work here outside of piracy.
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Actually I think piracy is a major factor in consoles taking command of sales, but I think the previously given explanation is backwards.

Developers have intentionally put more of their effort into consoles because they know it's less viable to crack console games. In the same way developers have put more effort into multiplayer - the singleplayer mode of many new games is pathetic.

They're learning.

Consoles ensure that copying games is more difficult. Multiplayer focus ensures the benefits of a cracked game are very limited. End result? Developers are able to reduce levels of piracy and maximise profit.

That's the real reason the PC market is dying.
 
gumboot said:
Actually I think piracy is a major factor in consoles taking command of sales

Developers have intentionally put more of their effort into consoles because they know it's less viable to crack console games. In the same way developers have put more effort into multiplayer
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I agree kind of. The games market is migrating away from one base (PC) to other bases (consoles) in the same way that it moved from the NES to the SNES, from the ZX Spectrum to the Atari ST, from the ST to the Amiga, from the Amiga to the PC, for much the same reasons, technology is evolving, and the way that developers sell their games to consumers is evolving. Previously at other stages people threw their metaphorical arms in the air and said "the games market is dying, look at these sales figures" they were all wrong too.

It's not piracy that's driving this evolution, though piracy is a factor, it's technology. Pirates have adapted to the new technology much faster, whatever you think about piracy the fact remains that anyone can log into PirateBay or use Google to find torrents of nearly any recently commercially released game, music CD, movie, eBook what have you and grab a copy for free with almost zero risk of prosecution.

Most people are more than happy to steal stuff if they think they can get away with it, and if they don't think it hurts anyoone really. Whether it's pilfering stationary supplies from your office, pulling a sickie at work after a night out on the town, fiddling your expenses claim to get a free lunch, or a few extra fuel miles, or someone to clean your personal moat at the taxpayers expense, as a serious crime illegal downloading is on a par with stuff like that. That doesn't make it right of course, no matter what situation you are in.

The music/film/game industry is adapting to the new market, we have stuff like spotify, netflix, iTunes, Steam, games like WOW adopting a subscription model as an alternative to off the shelf sales.

This generation of games consoles does more than help defeat piracy for developers. It provides every user with a standard interface, most of them are based around PC architecture inside, which makes developing games easy, and all you have to do to play the game is insert the disc.


How bad Piracy is for games/music etc comes down to one equation really.

How many sales does a distributer lose because of illegal piracy?
How many sales does a distributor gain because of illegal piracy?

Is the loss bigger than the gain?

I'd argue that it about evens itself out else developers/distriutors would be a lot more proactive in pursuing and prosecuting downloaders.
 
Ambrosia said:
all you have to do to play the game is insert the disc.
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I think this statement right here is key to why we see a large movement from PC to Console gaming.

Additionally, the consumer does not have to upgrade his/her console on a regular (yearly) basis to keep up with the latest games as a PC gamer must so there's, ultimately, less work and money involved in playing the latest console releases.


ETA: This, btw, has nothing to do with piracy of PC games. This has to do with the demographic of the target market. There will always be the PC gamers who are constantly upgrading their computers and are willing to pay the full retail price of the latest release.





So, here's the real question to the Anti-everybody-who's-not-agreeing-110%-with-them-which-means-everyone-else-is-a-no-good-dirty-pirate crowd:

If piracy is as rampant and important an issue as you're making it out to be...what do you plan to do to the millions of Americans that are guilty of pirating?

Lock them all away for theft (I know, it's not really theft - it's fraud, but whatever...and really, we don't have prison overcrowding already)?
Increase the intrusiveness of DRM (thereby decreasing sales for reasons previously stated in this thread)?
Attempt to convert the entire world to your moral view on the issue (you do realize that many pirates don't feel there's anything immoral about what they do - we know you disagree, but that's the way it is)
 
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Yoink said:
Try looking the world "colloquial" up. I must say it's no surprise to me that people stupid enough to be able to justify blatant theft to themselves with these transparently false arguments are also too stupid to understand a four-syllable word. Hint: it doesn't mean "idiosyncratic," or "invented," or "arbitrary."

As for the pathetic argument that you "gave" them the right so you can "take it away": A) if you can individually and arbitrarily remove it, it's not a "right," is it? B) the whole point of a social action like conferring a right is that it cannot be arbitrarily and individually abrogated. You "gave" women and black people the right to vote; that doesn't mean you can go to a polling booth and tell individual black people that their vote is no good.

Just because you don't think copyright laws get the balance of rights and obligations quite right does not give you the right to arbitrarily re-write them--any more than you have a right to commit any other felony because you happen to personally think the laws are ill-conceived.
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Wow - straight in with the ad hominem.

If the arguments were so transparently false, you would have no problem deconstructing them, and refuting them. All you have done, however, is insult.

I know what colloquial means. You're apparently incapable of noticing that I am using it in a context that mocks you.

As for copyright protection being granted by me (and you, as members of the the general public), those rights can surely be subtracted from, just as they have consistently been added to (Sonny Bono extensions, and so forth).

I'm not sure where your "just because" argument springs from - I made no such implication, and any inference is your own.
 
Yoink said:
So you would feel o.k. stealing books from a bookshop, so long as you left enough money behind to cover the actual losses?
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That's called, colloquially, buying something.

[Edit] Just so that you don't miss it - Yes, I am mocking you. And yes, I do realise that it's not actually buying something.

But then again, the analogy is poor.
 
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