Fox, on 23 May 2011 - 05:50 PM, said:
Is there real evidence that indicates a link beetween piracy and stealing?
It's not a question of personal views, but of nomenclature. The dictionary will tell you that piracy is "unauthorized reproduction", and that steal[ing] is "to take [the property of another] without permission or right, especially secretly or by force" or something on that line.
I am sorry, but I think that the comparsion of piracy with stealing don't have much weight as a real argument. Reminds me of a religious dispute with the assumption "atheists are imorals"...
Intellectual Property is still property... especially with something so specific as a song or a game.
As far as the atheists are immoral concept... that is based in the assumption that morals are of theist source exclusively, which is not the case. But piracy and stealing are both crimes, so I believe these two are a reasonably related.
Call it whatever you like and play with the semantics of definition all you want... I don't have time for a lawyer to write my posts really.
When you buy something you pay for an experience... some experiences have physical materials, some do not. Both have cost and effort to create however... and if you can experience what someone created for profit as a business, and you didn't pay for it, it is my point of view that the act is wrong. I see piracy as a manifestation of Self-entitlement.
And again, my view regardless of legal definition is that we have no "right" to experience the hard work of others without compensating them for it, when we know they created it to make money.
I guess the concept of "because it doesn't hurt anyone" is scary to me. Tomorrow it might be "It doesn't hurt anyone to use their land for my hunting because it doesn't hurt them... and they have more than they need. I already get that crap IRL... and no legal support for it. I have to deal with it myself.
I do remember when some software was free to try, and you were asked to pay for it if you used it, or delete it after 30 days or so. Nice concept, but I do notice that business model has died out. Wonder why?
@hank. Yes... sometimes honor systems work well with stuff like that. I love to see that work. It doesn't work for the most part in the US in my opinion though.
I still think if any of us here made something for years of hard work, we would not be too happy to know hundreds of people who didn't pay for the right to play it are doing just that. Especially if we need income for our families and more profit, so we can have less debt, so there is less money used to cover loan interest, so we can afford to put more effort and money into our next thing we make. So the whole "they have enough money" thing doesn't work for me just because it happens to be digital reproduction.
MrBlackCat