Be Excellent To Each Other

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/31678



Kind of like an Itunes bill? Why, that would be kind of illegal, kind of like stealing the music in the first place.

It's not stealing, and never will be however many times people incorrectly call it such.

What is it then?

If it was not a digital download it would be stealing... wouldn't it?

It is stealing, downloading with out permission.

I can see the RIAA point, they just go about it the wrong way.

It is not stealing. Stealing is taking away property. Downloading something does not take away the original. Downloading something is not stealing. This isn't a philosophical argument; it's a plain, irrefutable fact.

it is perspective, in the digital era we live in, digital theft is still theft, hence stealing.

the theft can be copying without permission, the stealling of ideas.... it does not have to be property or media anymore.

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services - theft is stealing

People can use the word all you like, for it to be theft you have to deprive someone of something. It's not theft morally or legally to download an album, neither would it be if you used your laptop to rip a copy in HMV then put it back on the shelf.

An article on US law would seem to be somewhat irrelevant here. Piracy is not even a criminal activity in the UK, merely a civil matter.

To expand on aceace's point, whether I download this album right here on this newsgroup I've picked at random, no-one except me will ever know a difference. As pointed out, in all the examples on the theft of services page there IS actually a physical good being stolen, be it gas or food in the utility and Restaurant examples.

So you are saying it is no illegal to download or copy something you 'should' have paid for.

You know you should pay for it but choose not to... so how ever you want to dress it up you are 'stealing'. But if it makes you feel better by not beliving that.. carry on.

You know it's not stealing or theft but you choose not to accept that... so how ever you want to dress it up you are "wrong". But if it makes you feel better to insist on using the wrong terms... carry on.

Meanwhile I'm going out to steal by driving at 30 in a 20 limit. You didn't read either of our posts at all did you?

If I downloaded that random album, who has been deprived of what? I wouldn't have bought it, right now I've no idea what it even is.

Hell, I download the Star Mazda championship races, these are not shown in the UK on any channel by anyone, am I stealing them?

I can comprehend what you two are implying..... but can you really say there is a difference between removing a cd with the material on with out paying or downloading the digitial material with out paying for it.

It is not paying for it , so it is either 'theft', 'stealing' or copyright infringement. There is not really a difference. It is moraly wrong by not paying what you should pay for.... By using a service or data with no intention of paying for it.

so does stealing have to a physical item any more?

Yes I did read your posts but I disagree with you.. is that not allowed any more?

And the driving anallogy what are you on about. Yes you can break different laws.

But to obtain goods or a service, either phsyical or didgital. Is not paying for it.
The correct driving analogy would be using a toll road with ot paying for it. you are supposted to, but did not. Has someting been physically stolen? No. but you did not pay for it so it is depriving the owner of the Toll road his money, so Theft....

Or is that not correct?

As far as the law is concerned, downloading copyrighted music (or other media) is NOT theft.

Ergo, it isn't theft.

Yes, a pretty obvious and fundamental one. I go into HMV, I steal their last copy. I download a copy from the pirate bay.

You go into HMV, you can't buy it, they've lost money. You go to a website to download a legal copy, you still can.



Yes, something has been, wear and tear on the road, you've deprived someone of something in that example. You've directly cost them the maintenance costs represented by one car journey. You've also, by your presence made the service busier and made the experience a small amount worse for everyone else using the road (especially if it's already busy). None of these are the case in downloading a copy.

If you could silently make a perfect copy of the road and drive on that instead it would be an analogy. Plus you're making the dangerous RIAA assumption that every download == a lost sale, which is bunk.

No, you're completely wrong. If I managed to download an album from Dudley's computer - wiping it from his machine in the process - then that'd be stealing as he wouldn't have it anymore.

It's all nitpicking pedantry, but copyright infringement is not stealing.

Anyway, yes, the Music And Film Industries of America are a bunch of cunts, we already knew that.

This sort of debate used to fascinate me when I did Music at college.
No stock is going missing but a copy has been made so 'mechanical copyrights' apply. As it's already been said it's not theft, it's copyright infringement.

Anyhoo, here's some words I've pinched from someone who knows his stuff; http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/10/25/but-if-they-steal-it/ He's responding to an email from a recording artist who was angry about a previous blog post about piracy and if you've got the time and inclination the whole article is worth reading.

Both the wear and tear and the maintenance costs attributable to, say, one car in your example would be totally negligible, as would the effect of one extra car 'making the service busier. So basically, all these supposed great differences between the physical example of taking a service without paying for it and the virtual example of downloading and copying music or software without paying are, in fact, negligible and can be totally ignored for the purposes of argument.

No, by far and away the biggest 'disbenefit' to the operator of the toll road in this example would be the actual loss of earnings/revenue directly arising from said road user not paying, just as it is with copying music. The cost of physical media like an actual CD and jewel case is a few pence, as compared to say £10 for the retail sales price of an album.

And of course, what would happen if vast numbers of people/cars didn't pay? The loss of revenue would be so great that it could well force the road operator out of business in a matter of days or weeks, notwithstanding the road not needing any major maintenance for another 10 years or whatever.

So then, Kovacs' original analogy still holds up pretty well.

Whether or not downloading music or software without paying is actual theft or merely copyright infringement, the direct loss of sales revenue arising from such actions is wholly irrefutable and therefore damaging to the rightful owners of said music or software. End of.

From a moral perspective, getting stuff for free by illicit means and without rewarding those who have created the work is hardly something to be proud of? That's not to say I've never taped the Top 40 or burned the odd CD of course, so I'm not claiming to be better than anyone else here - but nor I am trying to justify what I did as being perfectly OK or even commendable on some level, either.



But at least some tangible sales are lost. Whether this is 100%, 50%, 5% or even 1% it doesn't matter; there is an actual , real loss that causes direct harm to the legitimate copyright owner through actual, very real loss of earnings.

In Russia, copyight infringes on you

Did I do that right?

No, because it is outrageous in the first place for someone to be able to insist that such a large piece of land is 'theirs' and charge you a toll to go over it. That land never used to belong to anyone, so surely the first person to claim it as their own is a thief to the rest of us? He probably took it with force as well, so if you want to start bringing 'morals' into this, property itself is something regularly used to behave in an immoral manner towards others.

But yes, as others have pointed out, it is not theft because there is no law which says it is theft, any more than me hugging my friends would be rape until the law says otherwise.

And let's be honest here - most people are more than happy to pirate. My parents, both in their mid-seventies, have begun ripping DVDs and posting them to all their friends. Piracy is normal, the majority do it and surely in a democratic country this should mean that we are voting with our torrent clients?

I've credits on things which are in the marketplace at the moment. I've no problem at all with them being pirated. I see it as inevitable and hold no grudge aganst anyone who does so. I prefer them to pay, as I prefer to pay - for anything I really like.

We've all got a certain amount of disposable income, all of mine goes on copyrighted this or that - books, games, music, DVD. I buy a lot. Probably >£200 a month on such things. And thereafter, I try everything else that catches my eye. It only makes me more likely to buy from that artist in the future.

Here's the thing, Kovacs - you don't like copying something, so don't do it. Others don't necessarily share your moral framework on this, even those being copied from. Secondly, you'll never stop it. Thirdly, arguing against a current law is not likely to get you much agreement. Fourthly, this argument happens over and over and over and nothing ever changes - what's the point?


Here's some quotes for you:

Trent Reznor: "Music is free now" (days before making a million out of lettng pepole choose whether to pay)
EA Bloke "Downloaded games are not equivalent to a sale lost" (Post-Spore honesty there)
Miles Jacobsen "We have no choice but to protect our investment" (Protect it by taking my £30 and not letting me play your game while my friends click away on their pirated versions)

...do you see where this is all going?

Yes, have a lollipop!*











*That's not a lollipop...

Care to back that up, it is at best unproven that piracy costs sales. You're not allowed to use FAST, the RIAA or any related body here. You are allowed to point out that the 2 most piratable formats (the PC and DS) sell more units than any other.



No they can't, because they exist. You've somehow decided they're negligible without at all acknowledging scarce resource vs unlimited supply, which is the point.

On most games there's more pirated copies in existence than real ones. I think a doubling of traffic and wear on most roads would be noticeable but except in the unproven case of cost sales, the number of downloaded copies has zero effect on the people buying physical ones. They're buying the same product.

I don't think it's outrageous that a bunch of investors decide to legitimately buy land, obtain planning permissions through public enquiry process and build a road, then offer people a straight choice as to whether they want to use their investment for a reasonable fee. They have to recoup their investment one way or another; this is how our entire consumer system works.

(As to whether or not any such toll charges are reasonable or not and/or whether such roads should be built in the first place etc. is another argument entirely).

Er, am I "allowed" to point out that pure common sense dictates that, if people are able to get stuff for free then at least some of them will do so in lieu of actually buying the said product or service?

I am quite prepared to accept that there are undoubtedly many cases of "casual" downloads where the user would not have actually bought the CD or whatever. I have no idea what this proportion would be, but it certainly wouldn't be 100%.

As for easily piratable formats being successful in spite of their being piratable, I don't think this automatically means that piracy hasn't harmed the sales or profits of the companies concerned. They might well have been even more successful if everyone paid for their games, even though this could have reduced the total number of users to just the "legitimate" ones.

Bottom line? If piracy didn't harm the interests and profits of the legitimate owners of intellectual property, they wouldn't be kicking up such a big stink about it. I've no doubt that they, as multi-billion pound industries with huge resources and some very clever people on their books have done their market research on the subject and act in the way they do for good reason. And I seriously doubt that this is due to pure spite or vindictiveness on their part.



Intellectual property 'exists' as well. It's an abstract concept certainly, but not too difficult to understand I'd have thought?

This constant need to reduce everything to a physical level (i.e. 'real things') is both unneccessary and misguided.

What? How is it legitimate? Because they say so? Because the majority say so, just like the majority pirate?

Read my post again. THE LAND NEVER USED TO BELONG TO ANYONE. For it to be owned at all, there had to come a point where someone deprived someone else of it. You see, Marx was right - property is theft in the first place. What makes us not communists is they we don't have a problem with that. But if you subscribe to the idea of property, you admit that it all boils down in the first place to someone using force, depriving others and defending that acquisition. And if you are admitting that, you are legitimising the actions of those who 'take' these days from others, even if they take nothing concrete at all.

It is in man's nature to behave like this and there's nothing you can do about it, few agree with you indeed, if not in word.

OK, so let's look at these legitimate (again, by whose standards? Calling something legitimate does not legitimise it) copyright holders and what they say... in fact let's take the biggest two...

Trent Reznor - well, we know what happened there don't we - gave everyone full choice. Made a mint.

Lars Ulrich - Pissed and moaned, had to make an allbum like the ones he did twenty years ago before anyone would buy his records again. Then said he was confortable with people pirating it. Then pissed and moaned at a journalist who copied it because the paid for version was a casualty of the loudness war. He's got more money than he could ever count and seems to change his mind firly regular, like. So yes, I'd say he is kicking up a stink for all the wrong reasons.

I've worked in the past for/with many of music's larger bodies, Sony for instance, Capital Radio Group and so on - and if you think that the 'very clever people on their books' are in this for any reason other than to justify their own salaries, you are missing something. They are mainly thick bastards, this is why there's only five music companies these days compared to the twenty or so at the beginning of the nineties.

Look for example at these godforsaken DRM things - they DO NOT STOP PIRACY. So why are they on games/CDs? Because these 'very clever people' you are basing your argument on are looking at Starforce's 'market research' and handing over thousands of quids a game for the use of what is metaphorically speaking no better than a whipped cream chastity belt.

No-one has ever market reserched me on this matter - have they you?

Music is like a beautiful butterfly. One that transforms itself infinitely over time. Except it can't because the music industry has taken a nail gun to it, and pinned it to the wall.

Music is essentially plagiarism and 'copyright infringement'. Its entire body is made up of those things. That's the truth that the music industry chooses to ignore. Rare innovation is immediately taken up by everyone, who improve it and it goes round again.


DRM is like vagina dentata. It causes people who try to use something the correct way incredible pain, while those who use the backdoor are unaffected.

That's a POTW contender right there.

Cavy put it in a better way....

Wether it is on 'physical' media or not... it has be used with out paying... or can't you lot understand that?

So either a crimial or cival law has been broken, hasn't it?

Hmm, sorry to cop out here but I need to dash off for a bit... (yeah I know, shit excuse etc.). I will come back to this though.

I will say that I think you're reading far too much into my post(s), though. I'm hardly defending someone coming along and claiming common ownership land as theirs, for their own money-making ends, and then forcing other people to pay for using this land in whatever capacity etc.? Anyway, more on that later perhaps.

As far as someone writing a song and making an album though, don't they legitimately own their work as intellectual property? I really don't see how anyone could have a problem with that, or how their offering this for sale to others is depriving anyone, or forcing anyone to do anything?

Perhaps I am missing something here?

so why download something you don't want? If you want it buy it... no?

It's fairly obvious that it isn't theft by the definition of the law.

Is it moral? No. It isn't moral to create a monopoly that prevents musicians from disseminating their work and earning a living comparable to other professional vocations. Sure, it isn't a problem for the multi-millionaires but for 99% of other recording artists it does virtual make them 'slaves' to the record companies. For those businesses to now bemoan about 'morales' and 'theft' is beyond irony.

If I don't download new music I don't hear it. Which means I don't buy. Ergo if I can't download music CD sales will diminish. I find purchasing CDs immoral. I'd rather buy a ticket to the bands gig and not go, at least I know they are getting more than 10 pence from it.

You can want something without thinking that it's worth the sale price. Have you never thought that you couldn't afford something, then bought it cheaper when it was in a sale?

The relevant point is that they would have ever downloaded the track if it wasn't free. Indeed, the argument goes that more people buy legitimate downloads or physical CDs after having downloaded free tracks - so 'illegal' downloads increase sales. I don't know enough about the data to know which is true.

I bolded the bit.... because it is part of my argurmnt, you still bought, not stole it.

You aren't. And I'm not depriving them by having an mp3 of their song. No-one can't buy the song because of me and I know whether I ever had an intent to purchase, let alone the money to purchase, said mp3. But I might play it to someone who does go out and buy it. As happens quite a lot. Regina Spektor has done very well out of me giving away her mp3s, for a start. I can think of a couple of hundred quid in sales I've generated for her.

The author probably didn't get anything for it in the £5 sale though, did they?

Hilarious non-understanding of how management brains work ahoy!

Never mind the fact that all this "intellectual property" you*'ve been arguing about doesn't exist in any legal capacity either.

Copyright infringement will not be theft until the legal definition is changed. Simple and easy, and why there are long-standing other sets of law covering it. Knowing it's not theft, I buy stuff anyway. I don't on the whole buy much more or less now I'm in a fairly well-paying job than I did as an debt-laden student who did copy stuff, though.

* In the collective, not you personally, Cavey.

If you want to give your material for free then that is ok..

The argument I could not afford it so I illgally downloaded, is a weak argument.
You would not dream of shoplifting because you could not afford it would you.

Just beacuse it is digital, and there is no physical loss, does not make it right does it?

But neither does it make it theft, a point which you are so bluntly refusing to acknowledge in the face of the facts I don't know why anyone else is bothering to try and have this argument with you.

People don't know if they want something until they download it though. Analogy: Why pay to travel down a road if you don't know what is at the end?

MP3 is like sex before marriage. You might like to 'splash out' before 'sampling the goods' but you run the risk of ending up with something really annoying to listen to which isn't compatible with all your lovely electronic devices. And you can't share it with your friends, either.

Mp3 is also like sex outside of wedlock for another reason - 'everyone' is doing it, very few will ever hand over cash for it.

This is not a valid comparison, as has already been pointed out to you several times in this thread.

MAN FUCK THE RIAA

//edit: !!!

What facts.....?

Technically it might be copyright infringement.. That I understand.

Illiagal downloading is still using something that you should have paid for... Why is not theft?

Does theft have to physical now we are in a digital era?

Is to remove someting without permission theft, even if it is just copy?
Or do you class theft as you have to remove an original?

I'm not allowing you to steal my time and anger by dragging me any further into this, which I am saving for something worthwhile. That and the others have already countered every one of your mis-statements anyway.

Phew, that's alright, then! I might as well give mine away for free - after all, I do it with loads of other people's music!



Yes, I would. Stop making assumptions about my morals. I take what I want and I pay what I decide is fair. Always have, never will stop. And as mentioned above stealing something physical is different, if ony because there are different laws governing it. I'm happy with my contribution to the games and music industries in monetary and labour terms. As such I'll have my fill, and sleep well at night believing that I've made a fair exchange. Anyone has a right to disagree with me and my actions the same as I've a right to disagree with you. And when I'm found walking out of HMV with a Boyzone CD down my pants, I'll take the caution (i.e. no real punishment at all, for not very much of a crime at all) I get with good grace.



Yes, yes it does. Unless you don't think so. But there's no absolute in this, unless you are convinced everyone who disagrees with your feelings is wrong.

No, not technically. Legally.


Because the law says it isn't.


To be theft, you have to deprive someone of something they already have. Downloading a single illegally does not deprive the artist of your money because they didn't already have it.

It's. Not. Theft.

And what about all those people who bought stuff BECAUSE they played a pirated copy first that they otherwise wouldn't have tried or even heard of the product. It's several musical acts for me for a start. Do they cancel it out? "Common sense" is not evidence.



Then why are more games sold for the easiest to pirate formats? There's a pretty good correlation. The DS and PC sell massively more game units yet anyone can pirate those. The PSP requires modification of the machine, the PS3 is as far as I know completely impossible to pirate on yet the game sales of both are in the toilet.

It seems slightly wrong but there's a correlation between easy to pirate and "More game sales". That's actual evidence.



Ah, the Companies know what's best arguement. Not terribly convincing. They may well believe it does. There's no independant evidence to support them whatsoever.



Er.. no it doesn't, not in the same way, there's an infinate supply of it. Me copying a CD affects no-one in ANY way UNLESS I would otherwise have bought it. Stealing a physical good ALWAYS does.



Theft has to deprive someone of something.