[SylarMorgan]

I believe that one should be able to do anything they want, as long as it doesn't harm another person.
Drugs? OK
Abandoned road stoplight running? OK

It gets a bit trickier with things like assault, as Aronnax brought up. Without knowing the individual cases, I would say that if you prevented more damage than you caused, it was the morally just (and should be the legal thing to do, in a perfect world) decision.

As for pirating movies, I have a somewhat different approach. I believe that all information should be free. Movies, TV, software, books, everything that is digital should be free for anyone. The reason? It doesn't cost anybody actual, material damage. I would never shoplift a movie, but might torrent a good flick. Some might say that downloading movies illegally deprives the creators of possible revenue. Counterpoint: I disagree. I still go to movies at the theater, or rent a movie if I'm viewing it with others. I believe that if you take the number of pirates for a particular movie, subtract those that watched in on Pay-per-view or regular TV, subtract those that buy the movie later, those that already own it, and those that would otherwise not buy the movie, you are left with very few people.

This branch of my ethical code also passes the Golden Rule test. If I were to make a program or game, I would not put any DRM on it. Certainly, I would sell it, but I would not try and restrict access to those that didn't buy it. I would definitely accept donations, and I am sure that (if it is actually good) I would make a good chunk of "lost" money back.

Of course this will probably look like greed or a joke to some of you. That's because everyone has a different set of ethical codes. If actual law were this honest and simple (clearly it couldn't be this simple, but you know what I mean) then lawyers could focus on what is truly right and wrong, as opposed to the common perception of lying, dishonest work that people think of now.

[Warrior]

	Originally Posted by SylarMorgan To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I would never shoplift a movie, . . . .

Why not? You had just said all information should be free.

[SylarMorgan]

	Originally Posted by Warrior To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Why not? You had just said all information should be free.

Manufacturing a DVD, case, all of that takes money. I would not steal actual, material objects. That would violate my ethical code. Digital information, zeroes and ones, they cost nothing to copy.

[Synamon]

	Originally Posted by SylarMorgan To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Manufacturing a DVD, case, all of that takes money. I would not steal actual, material objects. That would violate my ethical code. Digital information, zeroes and ones, they cost nothing to copy.

Creating and recording music, movies, software, etc. costs orders of magnitude more than the freaking DVD case. What about that cost?

[Warrior]

	Originally Posted by SylarMorgan To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Manufacturing a DVD, case, all of that takes money. I would not steal actual, material objects. That would violate my ethical code. Digital information, zeroes and ones, they cost nothing to copy.

It costs to put the information "out there". It costs to store it. It costs to have a connection to the internet so you can access it. Seems more like you are just ignoring those costs so you can do something you like.

[SylarMorgan]

	Originally Posted by Warrior To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It costs to put the information "out there". It costs to store it. It costs to have a connection to the internet so you can access it. Seems more like you are just ignoring those costs so you can do something you like.

I addressed that in my earlier point.

	Counterpoint: I disagree. I still go to movies at the theater, or rent a movie if I'm viewing it with others. I believe that if you take the number of pirates for a particular movie, subtract those that watched in on Pay-per-view or regular TV, subtract those that buy the movie later, those that already own it, and those that would otherwise not buy the movie, you are left with very few people.

[Synamon]

	Originally Posted by SylarMorgan To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I addressed that in my earlier point.

	I believe that if you take the number of pirates for a particular movie, subtract those that watched in on Pay-per-view or regular TV, subtract those that buy the movie later, those that already own it, and those that would otherwise not buy the movie, you are left with very few people.

Ok then, prove it.

Clearly the owners of the intellectual property disagree with you, or they wouldn't be trying to prevent the piracy.

[SylarMorgan]

Those statistics are inherently hard to prove. To avoid legal persecution, pirates must remain anonymous. My only guide in these matters is an inside view into the culture of 'pirates'. I know many people who buy torrent games before they are released, and buy them afterwards. I know several who only torrent games because of the overly restrictive DRM.

One interesting example is when 2D Boy, an independent game developer, released World Of Goo, a game, on a "Pay What You Want" basis. Data on this experiment is
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
. Admittedly, this is for a small game, but 2D Boy embraced the supposed "pirates" and prospered.

As for those trying to shut down piracy, the major contenders, by far, are the RIAA, ISPs, and legal action because of lobbyists. The fact that they have not succeeded sends a message. Yes, ideally, the fact that piracy is so prevalent should have no effect on the law. But realism should be taken into account as well. I will not be so bold as to dramatically say "DRM has failed!!", but something new needs to be taken into account.

[Scatterbrane]

	Originally Posted by Synamon
	Creating and recording music, movies, software, etc. costs orders of magnitude more than the freaking DVD case. What about that cost?

Putting funds into a project does not in itself give you a legally guaranteed right to profit off of it, at least not in a free market economy. The means are protected, not the results. If one wishes to argue against the results of piracy, then one may also wish to argue against fair use clauses as they reduce the means of control of copying and thus possibly profit.

It is only due to right granted by law that we are expected not to copy protected works without permission. If the effects of someone making an unlawful copy do not on average or in the specific case produce an impoverishment of the copyright owner's income through resulting action or inaction, then I am hard pressed to find an argument against doing so other than sheer law-abidingness as a virtue.

[Synamon]

	Originally Posted by SylarMorgan To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	One interesting example is when 2D Boy, an independent game developer, released World Of Goo, a game, on a "Pay What You Want" basis. Data on this experiment is To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. . Admittedly, this is for a small game, but 2D Boy embraced the supposed "pirates" and prospered.

Most people donated a dollar or less with a large chunk giving 1 cent and the average payment was $2. There was nothing there about what they would have marketed it for or how many units they would have sold, but based on the comments it seems the game would have sold for $10 or $20, so how can you conclude that they prospered? The gimmick was great advertising, but as an ongoing proposition it doesn't appear to be viable or they would be using that for their pricing platform now.

	Originally Posted by Scatterbrane To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It is only due to right granted by law that we are expected not to copy protected works without permission. If the effects of him making an unlawful copy do not on average or in the specific case produce an impoverishment of the copyright owner's income through resulting action or inaction, then I am hard pressed to find an argument against doing so other than sheer law-abidingness as a virtue.

Take that to the extreme, if everyone pirated everything there would be zero incentive to create any intellectual property. Then there would be nothing to pirate. Problem solved.

[Scatterbrane]

The logical extreme of everyone only pirating and not making any attempt at buying cultural works or access to such is that there would be little to no profit from selling information as such. Much art exists with little or no profit from media sales, which is the section of profit from cultural works that is most indicated as being harmed by piracy.

While I wholly endorse artists receiving compensation and incentive for creating further works, I'm not sure where the idea comes from that cultural works need be created for profit.

---------- Post added 02-08-2010 at 08:12 AM ----------

I just noticed that I am largely writing from the perspective of copyright, not the other branches of intellectual property as is the topic of the thread.

[Aronnax]

The works that are most harmed by piracy are creations that have a high development cost, like movies or software. The return needs to be high just for the work to break even, erode it enough and it's no longer is worth the investment capital.

[Scatterbrane]

This lumping together of subjects under "intellectual property" seems unwieldy, I for one have different views on each subject under that header and the changes I would like to see in one subject I'm not so sure would be conducive to prosperity in the others.

E.g. while I would like to see copyright law reduced to a mere skeleton of what it currently represents, I do not hold that view regarding patent or trademark law.

[Zombicide]

Another thing, SylarMorgan. If I'm pirating a movie or watching it online, it's because I wasn't going to spend money on it anyway at the time, if I want the official hard copy or whatever good marketing ploy, I will have to pay for that and I do. At least with the bootlegging, the production company will manage to keep my interest. I love giving money to help artists (movie makers) money so that they'll keep up the good work.

As far as programs go, there are plenty of free alternatives to whatever overly priced software that a company demands that they make more money off of, they should be thankful for my being given a reason to keep at least an interest in their shit when I wasn't going to buy it when I couldn't anyway and with all the alternatives there were to their product at my disposal, the bootlegging of their stuff should be considered promotional. If they really want money they should set their ass up a donate button like FireFox et cetera. The state sure as hell shouldn't be coming to knock on anyone's door to threaten them with physical violence for simply copying information / not actually stealing. Unless I become greedy / corrupt, I sure as hell wouldn't expect the state to come to my aid in strong arming the citizenry even if they can only pick out a few to make examples of in some twisted hope of scaring up some more cash.

Instead of complaining for unwarranted compensation for what in many cases they weren't losing because people weren't going to buy their product anyway, they'd better find a way to market their own shit themselves instead of depending upon the state / Mafia to make them only more money, much of which that they probably weren't going to make anyway, because the state's days are numbered.

Look at Avatar, it's made over a billion dollars because they made a product people would actually spend their money on, any extra cash the company thinks they'd get is irrelevant compared to what they are guaranteed to gross if they know what they're doing like when the market has such difficult to emulate venues as movie theatres. If by some chance their operating capital (or whatever it's called) becomes an issue in making bigger, better art, they'd better just scale that shit the fuck down or rally investors, the free market will handle it and producers are there to find any ways to make money.

[Kisai]

Works that, for the sake of a hypothetical discussion, in an alternate universe I might have pirated, for the sake of giving examples:

Miracleman/Marvelman - the 80's seminal Alan Moore comic book, because the copyright laws have been in court for the past 20 years and it is impossible to purchase a coveted copy.

Berserk - 33 volumes. I paid money for the first 6 volumes, but I don't feel like paying $400+ dollars and donated space in my studio apt. for all of it.

A buncha abandonware where the companies don't exist anymore.

'Freeware' Dr. Who reconstructions where the makers would send you, for the cost of a VHS tape and shipping to the UK, a copy of their not-for-profit video. You've got to be nuts not to prefer a torrent than to that rigamarole.

[TigerL]

For the OP, I disagree with your initial premise that people would buy something that they could get for free, especially in regards to people who intentionally pirate materials.
I go to the library to check out books/ CDs/ DVDs and don't buy many of these items because I can get them for free and even with this, I feel a bit guilty about it.

I know people who have written programs, music, patented products, etc. and it takes effort/ time/ creativity/ money. I see this falling under the general moral rule of don't steal and your reasoning seems an awkward way to rationalize what you are doing. Sure you may offer your own programs for free, but how about if someone came into your house and stole your computer, rationalizing that they would not mind someone stealing their computer?

If you want to go ahead with your business plan of offering your creations for free, be my guest. To each his/her own. Just don't steal from others.

[Zombicide]

	Originally Posted by TigerL To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	but how about if someone came into your house and stole your computer, rationalizing that they would not mind someone stealing their computer?

That would be literal theft, not a duplication of the OP's computer. And although it was only a side note saying "also passes" as far as the golden rule goes, the overall principle is more that the potential thief knows that they wouldn't want their property taken from them rather than it's about a particular item.

[Scatterbrane]

Copying is quite simply not stealing. This bears repeating as these claims seems to be brought up a lot.

If I give you advice, will you not approach it as your own idea sharing as fit? If I recite you a personal poem, may you not write it in your diary? You presumably have moral issues with stealing physical possessions, but would you truly object to copies of physical objects made at your own cost? Is information any different?

[kepstein8888]

To me, the bottom line is that there is no such thing as "intellectual property." All music, movie ideas, software, books, etc. are derived. None of it occurs in a vacuum, and it is impossible to trace to its origins.

Microsoft and Led Zeppelin may be good at what they do, but ultimately they have profited from and tried to monopolize what others have done. When you pay for a Microsoft product, you are paying their marketing costs and the legal cost of keeping their prices high, not the cost of research, development, and innovation, which have all come mostly from elsewhere, such as the open source community and small-time software developers.

The fact that open source software continues to thrive, people still go to movie theaters and concerts, and plenty of artists and musicians continue to do what they love because they love it proves that all of the panic over the demise of "intellectual property" is greed-driven rubbish.

Who says you must get rich from your hobbies? And who says the best music, books, or software must have a big company behind them to be any good? Music, art, and literature were around long before people were making big bucks off of them, and will not go away if McMegaMedia Enterprises goes out of business because a bunch of 12-year-olds keep downloading their crap "illegally."

[Thinker]

You are getting the delivery mechanism of a product (digital media) mixed up with the product (a movie/music/game).

Just because it is delivered digitally does not detract from the fact that the product (a movie for example) may have cost many hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. The investors need a return on their investment. They have every right to spend as much money as they can legally pursuing people with selective moral bias.

I can't understand that if you turn something into 0's and 1's ( essentially in order to make distribution more efficient) a group of society take advantage of this by stealing the file on the basis that it is easy to do. The value of the file is the specific order of 0's and 1's.
No other file will have that specific order.

It is no different to stealing a paper file which contains an important patent.
The paper file is just the container and delivery mechanism for the information.

It is called selective morals.

[rusty]

	Originally Posted by kepstein8888 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Who says you must get rich from your hobbies?

Who says that people have an inherent right to possess something? If I say "you can only play this game, if you pay for a license" then that's just the way it is.

If I make a game, it is not a product. The way I see it, it is a service. As a software developer, I provide the end customer with a service that they must first pay for. So basically, I wouldn't prosecute somebody on charges of theft if they had downloaded a copy of the game without paying me for it.

If I could prove it, I would prosecute them for fraud and obtaining services under false pretenses. You say it's not real, because it's just a series of polarized bits on your hard disk? Fine, you'll get no argument from me from that. But you still owe me for the time I invested in providing a service to you.

Or we could go the other route, and charge for playing games like subscriptions to WOW. You need to connect to a server to play the game, and you pay two bucks for every hour that you play. For a game that only lasts about ten hours, then you pay only 20 bucks. It's just like an arcade game. You pay the money up front and away you go.

Seems fair, right? And trying to circumvent THAT system in any way, is fraud in the most major way. In fact, I'm betting that if you live in the U.S. I could easily make a Federal case along the lines of Wire Fraud.

The software industry needs to stop thinking like the idiots in the music and film industry, with intrusive client side DRM to keep a broken payment process. Stop getting consumers to pay only once...get them to pay lots of times, that way, it forces us to make good entertainment because nobody will want to keep paying to play a crappy game.

[zibber]

I think property in general is fictional, but "data" isn't even a palpable object.

I am against all forms of "copy right".

(Mind you, though: if someone uses another's creation to profit, this is detestable. I think there is a hugely significant distinction between personal/profitless data use and this kind of thing.)

[Melchizedek]

Originally Posted by Zombicide To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

As far as programs go, there are plenty of free alternatives to whatever overly priced software that a company demands that they make more money off of, they should be thankful for my being given a reason to keep at least an interest in their shit when I wasn't going to buy it when I couldn't anyway and with all the alternatives there were to their product at my disposal, the bootlegging of their stuff should be considered promotional. If they really want money they should set their ass up a donate button like FireFox et cetera. The state sure as hell shouldn't be coming to knock on anyone's door to threaten them with physical violence for simply copying information / not actually stealing.

Oh, that is good. That is rich. I've got to be honest. I always find the sophistry and self-righteousness of some pirates hilarious. 'They should be thankful. I'm doing them a favor.'

All the pirating proponents in this thread are basing their case on semantics. It doesn't matter that you're not taking a physical copy. You're still taking someone else's creation when they don't want you to have it. It doesn't matter if they're motivated by greed. It doesn't matter if they wouldn't have made money off of you anyway. All that matters is that you've violated the right and prerogative of the creator because you want to.

I'll give an alternate example just to show why this is wrong. Let's say I wrote a song for my fiance. It's tender and passionate, but it's also personal and private. It's something special for me and my fiance only. But somehow you manage to get your hands on a copy of this song, and you put it on the internet. It becomes one of the greatest hits of modern music, an anthem for a generation or something. But I hate it. I hate what the song has become, and that my private thoughts and feelings have been put out in the open like that. Did you wrong me?

All your arguments still apply. You're still "promoting" me. You weren't going to buy it anyway, since I was never going to release it. Yet it seems a lot more jerkish when you're no longer able to demonize the person you're wronging, doesn't it?

[SelfMadeBum]

If I could afford to purchase all the software/music/movies etc. I needed/wanted, then I would. I disagree with the notion that there's any difference between physical production of a product and its digital form. The expenses to create the product in the first place still exist and the fact is, as a pirate you are benefiting from a product/service you haven't paid for without the manufacturer/creator's consent.

This is stealing.

I reluctantly pirate with this knowledge. I won't hide behind semantic bullshit.

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by Melchizedek To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	All the pirating proponents in this thread are basing their case on semantics. It doesn't matter that you're not taking a physical copy. You're still taking someone else's creation when they don't want you to have it.

Taking? By simply reproducing pattern? You can't take an abstract.