I've downloaded copyrighted stuff before. Not very much, mind you, but that's largely because I'm not very computer savvy and lazy.
My most recent offense was downloading the song "You're the Best!" by Joe "Bean" Esposito off someone's fan website. You may recall this from the cult hit "The Karate Kid" (my #2 favorite movie of all time). This song was an essential component of a mix-tape I was composing (dare I say the tape could not exist without it)-- those who are familiar with "Bean"'s work surely can understand the one-of-a-kind nature of the piece. I looked for it on iTunes (where I get most of my music) but, alas, it was not to be. Admittedly, I could have shelled out $11.98 for the Karate Kid soundtrack, but that seemed rather ridiculous.
I also owned an "evaluation" copy of WinZip for probably eight years (I did shell out $50 for their self-extractor program, so I figured that's pretty fair.. how hard could that have been to write?) Shareware has to put the pressure on before I'll pony up. On a related note, future versions of BYOND will lock up after 30 days unless you pay us $50. Capitalism, baby!
Oh yeah, I had forgotten why I posted. I was thinking about how they (not sure who exactly) have cracked down on music piracy a lot in the last five years, effectively ending the reign of "virtual rioting" that came about via Napster and other file-sharing networks. But then I was on YouTube the other day and noticed that pretty much every popular or semi-popular song from the last thirty years is available not only in music form, but in full 80s MTV video glory! I almost shat my pants when I was able to find multiple videos for the powerful rock-ballad "Goodbye" by Night Ranger (the #2 song from a one-hit-wonder!)
At this point it gets a little tricky. If you can go on one of these video or music sharing sites and play something over and over, isn't it just like owning it? I suppose if you could figure out a way to record it to your computer (at least the audio part), then you would own it. But then, is taping a song off the radio morally or ethically wrong? Does anyone here remember what a tape is? | |
If it costs too much, I'll steal it.
Note: I'm not saying if it costs lots I'll steal it- if it costs more than it should do (usually we're talking a lot more) then I'll steal it. Me and Jt have talked about this in the past- for example, if software costs literally (literally) 10 times as much as it should, I won't pay. Mike H said: Wrong. You deprived them of the opportunity to mark it down to get the sale. Wrong. Sometimes companies put massive mark-up on it because they own a monopoly in the market and they know that certain people are forced to buy it (schools, legitimate businesses etc.)- which isn't fair. Examples are things like Macromedia Flash (which is something like 700 USD), Windows Vista (which is around 200-250 GBP!). Look to the episode of Scrubs where Dr. Cox hates (but eventually sexes) the pharmaceutical sales rep- the company is trying to flog their super-drug to the hospital but they know that because sick people are so desperate for it, they've gone and put a massive amount of mark-up on it. I bet no matter how many people buy their software legit, they'd never reduce the price. I mean flash has been round for years and it still costs the good part of a thousand USD... I also do what Deadron does- 'steal' old software that was made by an ancient company. Protip: if it doesn't belong to anybody, it's not stealing. :p Kunark said: I still wouldn't pirate it but I feel no remorse for these companies. Don't worry, I'm pirating for two. :P Tom said: I suppose if you could figure out a way to record it to your computer (at least the audio part) There are loads of programs that let you download stuff off youtube. Hell, anyone could write your own program pretty easily in flash that could do it; I'm pretty sure there're libraries for it. Essentially youtube IS one big file sharing site, and I've noticed a lot of songs I've bookmarked have suddenly disappeared, taken down by some company. I just have to search and find a new one and it's usually there. When you consider that youtube gets more hits than a lot of TV channels but they don't pay one ounce of royalty to the artists who record the songs that get all those hits (and youtube uses advertising, so it's making money out of other people's hard work), you have to wonder why google ever bought the ownership rights of youtube. I mean if anyone tried to sue they'd have to pay up billions in royalty, surely? Though maybe that's more of an argument for against royalties... it's a silly system that lets people live off their laurels for doing nothing. | |
Personally, I'm sitting a little between 'too expensive' and 'not available'. There are some companies that I will absolutely refuse to support, but I would still like a particular product from - Microsoft is one of them. I fully intend to never pay for a Microsoft OS, but, unfortunately, it's pretty much necessary if I want to get full use out of significant quantities of software that I legally own.
Then again, I am running Windows 98SE on my Windows partition, so I'm not exactly stealing much from them, am I? :P In general, however, it's unavailability. I have several roms of old SNES games sitting on my computer because I haven't been able to find a way to purchase them. In many cases, it's entirely impossible to get the games in PAL-land, because they were NTSC only. At worst, the game was only ever released in Japan, and I'm not depriving myself of Chrono Trigger or Bahamut Lagoon when I'm not hurting anyone by downloading it. I absolutely refuse to pirate from indie game developers, though. I paid for Defcon and Mount&Blade, because they were priced reasonably and they were awesome games, and pirating them would significantly hurt the developer. | |
Spooky - I was trying to copy and paste something Mike said and my "copy" button was greyed-out... has Mike H DRM'd his own text? He copyrighted his own post?
@ Jp- I never steal from indie game developers either. They're one of us and we look out for our indie-brothers. :p | |
Just watch Christian Rock Hard, the South Park episode. Then you'll all realize how horrible downloading is!
| |
Elation wrote:
Mike H said: No, right. Sometimes companies put massive mark-up on it because they own a monopoly in the market and they know that certain people are forced to buy it (schools, legitimate businesses etc.)- which isn't fair. Examples are things like Macromedia Flash (which is something like 700 USD), Windows Vista (which is around 200-250 GBP!). Sorry, but nobody's forced to buy anything. Somebody, somewhere always makes a decision on whether or not to buy something like software. If it's a school or business, there's some administrator or manager who had the final say. If it costs too much, people won't buy it. The creator will lose money as sales are too slow, and must decide whether to adjust the price down to encourage more sales. The trick is always in finding the sweet spot where it's cheap enough that many people will buy it, but expensive enough that the seller makes money. That's how the free market works. People who pirate and rationalize their immoral behavior because "it costs too much" have robbed the creator of the opportunity to work within the free market. In a free market, the price is whatever the market will bear (unless the seller is stupid and sets it too high or low). Look to the episode of Scrubs where Dr. Cox hates (but eventually sexes) the pharmaceutical sales rep- the company is trying to flog their super-drug to the hospital but they know that because sick people are so desperate for it, they've gone and put a massive amount of mark-up on it. There's certainly a difference between a pharmaceutical company charging enough for a drug to recoup the $1 billion or so that it costs to develop and test a drug for approval to bring it to market, and profiteering off the sick. But this is a completely separate issue. I bet no matter how many people buy their software legit, they'd never reduce the price. I mean flash has been round for years and it still costs the good part of a thousand USD... If they lose money on the project due to poor sales, you can bet that one thing they'll consider changing is the price. Since the price hasn't changed, it's pretty clear that the market will bear it. You may not think it's worth that, but thousands of customers do. And regardless of what anyone thinks of the pricing offered, it's never right to obtain copyrighted material without the creator's consent. Period. I also do what Deadron does- 'steal' old software that was made by an ancient company. Protip: if it doesn't belong to anybody, it's not stealing. :p That's fine, but I wish there were a clear and concise law spelling out when an old work is considered abandoned. Then there'd be no grey area. You know, let those legislators do something useful for once! | |
Tom wrote:
If you can go on one of these video or music sharing sites and play something over and over, isn't it just like owning it? Almost, but if the copyright holder has consented to that method of distribution but not to allowing actual downloaded copies, then I'd say it's immoral to download or "own". And hey, if there's no practical difference, who cares? But then, is taping a song off the radio morally or ethically wrong? Does anyone here remember what a tape is? I think radio is a bit of a special case, because it comes with the expectation that some people will record it. Same as TV, since the advent of the VCR and the concept of "time shifting" which has held up in court. In the case of radio and analog TV, the quality is also inferior to any version sold directly, so there's still an incentive to purchase the real deal. With DVR becoming more popular, this battle is starting to brew in the TV arena. If a DVR allows you to save a perfect digital copy of a TV show, and you're somehow able to get a bit-for-bit copy of that onto a computer or other long-term storage device, have you committed copyright infringement? The content creators/distributors would say yes, because they want more money. The consumer might argue no, because they already paid for the TV service and/or advertising. Though if they TiVoed it, they presumably skipped the commercials! Is it only morally right to permanently save a TiVoed show if you sit and watch all the commercials?? It all gets very tricky. I don't know all the answers myself. Our elected officials ought to be earning their big bucks by sorting this all out into fair and simple terms. But nah, they'll just make it more complicated and sell rights, real or manufactured, to the highest bidders. Personally, I'd be happy with a DVR service that let me archive my favorite shows to my computer for $1 or $2 an episode. Seems fair enough. If I just want to watch it a few times and delete, it's free. If I want it forever and ever and ever, a buck or two is more than reasonable. Will that ever happen? Who knows. Probably not. | |
Chokoreto: BYOND = DNOYB = DUDE, NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS
| |
Sorry, but nobody's forced to buy anything. Somebody, somewhere always makes a decision on whether or not to buy something like software. If it's a school or business, there's some administrator or manager who had the final say. If it costs too much, people won't buy it. The creator will lose money as sales are too slow, and must decide whether to adjust the price down to encourage more sales. The trick is always in finding the sweet spot where it's cheap enough that many people will buy it, but expensive enough that the seller makes money. That's how the free market works. Free market stuff doesn't always work. In the case of a monopoly, sellers can gouge away quite happily, using a ridiculous price for a product and yet still being able to sell it. For example, Windows. There's absolutely no way that Windows Vista is worth the price it's being sold at - just because people will buy it at that doesn't make it worth that much. Elly's flash example is similar - flash is essentially a necessary component of modern-day IT, and Macromedia has a monopoly, so they can gouge away quite happily. | |
Mike H wrote:
With DVR becoming more popular, this battle is starting to brew in the TV arena. If a DVR allows you to save a perfect digital copy of a TV show, and you're somehow able to get a bit-for-bit copy of that onto a computer or other long-term storage device, have you committed copyright infringement? The content creators/distributors would say yes, because they want more money. The consumer might argue no, because they already paid for the TV service and/or advertising. Though if they TiVoed it, they presumably skipped the commercials! Is it only morally right to permanently save a TiVoed show if you sit and watch all the commercials?? "If we don't watch the commercials, it's like we're stealing TV!" --Homer J. Simpson Believe it or not, I'm with Homer here. I think that if you're getting implicit privilege to watch an advertising-supported network, you should have to keep the commercials intact in a given copy of the show unless you paid a premium for the right to strip them out. The whole idea that you wouldn't be able to fast forward through the commercials is plainly ridiculous, of course. | |
"If we don't watch the commercials, it's like we're stealing TV!" --Homer J. Simpson
This is off-topic but: In England we have to pay for our TV-viewing. The BBC channels don't have adverts (aside from ads for their own shows) but in turn we have to pay. It's about 130 quid (approx. 250 USD) per year for a colour TV license, or 44 quid (approx. 80 USD) for a black and white TV license*. Personally I think it's a much better system. Adverts are mind-rottingly horrid in a way that words cannot describe. Mind you, the reason I can't use words to describe it is largely due to the TV brain-rottage in the first place. If I ever have to sit through another orgasmic (and not in a good way) shampoo advert where girls rub their hair and scream "yes! yes!" I am going to have to stop watching TV with my parents. :( *heh, we're so quaint | |
Tom wrote:
I also owned an "evaluation" copy of WinZip for probably eight years... Winzip's a special case, because they're less like shareware and more like a library where you check out a book, and every time you open it you get one of those pop-out pictures with "Don't forget to return meeeee!" spelled out, then you turn the next page and it folds back in and you never hear from it again unless you reopen the front cover. Reminds me of an online interview a Worms Armageddon fansite owner held with a guy who programmed a shareware trainer for the offline mode. The creator didn't want his work completely wasted, so he thought that a one-time, optional $5 fee would be reasonable. He said of the thousands and thousands of downloads he had (not to mention any mirrors on other sites), exactly 5 people ever registered it. | |
People who pirate and rationalize their immoral behavior because "it costs too much" have robbed the creator of the opportunity to work within the free market. In a free market, the price is whatever the market will bear (unless the seller is stupid and sets it too high or low). Like Jp said, when companies monopolize an industry that is selling something very important to every day life, they gouge the crap out of it's customers and get away with it. And the high prices, at a certain point are high not because of the piracy, but because of all the people paying for it because they have little choice. There is no reason windows XP should still be $100 a pop, though they aren't the worst company. | |
Sarm wrote:
He said of the thousands and thousands of downloads he had (not to mention any mirrors on other sites), exactly 5 people ever registered it. It's been proven that crippling a product in some fashion increases the number of purchases, even if it pisses off the elitist few who hate crippleware. Double-edged sword and all. I can't remember the link, but Foomer posted it ages ago, somewhere or another. | |
Kunark wrote:
Like Jp said, when companies monopolize an industry that is selling something very important to every day life, they gouge the crap out of it's customers and get away with it. And the high prices, at a certain point are high not because of the piracy, but because of all the people paying for it because they have little choice. I disagree. The prices are set because people are willing to pay them. If they weren't willing to pay, they wouldn't buy it, We're not talking about basic necessities like food and water. Computers are luxury items -- and quite flexible ones at that. There's almost always an alternative in the computer world. There is no reason windows XP should still be $100 a pop, though they aren't the worst company. Sure there is. I think it's worth a heck of a lot more than that. Something like 40 million lines of code, incredible complexity, great stability, more features than you can possibly count. Mainstream games that might get played for a few weeks or months before tossed aside cost $50 or more. An operating system that is the core of the computing experience and makes everything else work isn't even worth twice that? Regarding the monopoly argument with respect to Windows, just look at Vista. It's pretty clear that most people are choosing not to upgrade. Home users will typically get it when they upgrade their hardware, and most large businesses aren't planning to go to Vista for years. Microsoft is trying everything it can to get people to buy, but the market is choosing not to -- and that's because nobody needs to. Seems to me that this is exactly how it's supposed to work. | |
No doubt, piracy is unethical. Is it immoral? That's not so easy to say. I don't think it is so black and white as saying "piracy == theft", because theft implies the loss of property. If you steal my car, I don't have a car, and that sucks! If you copy my software, I still have it, so no big deal to me. Maybe it's a big deal to the software developer, and certainly so if everyone is doing it. It's like voting; you could say that not voting doesn't matter but if everyone thinks this way the whole system falls apart.
But there are lots of cases from everyday life where we are doing unethical things that we don't even consider to be wrong (or immoral). For example, I'm in California, and I buy something from Amazon.com, located in Washington. Sweet, no sales tax! But I'm actually ethically obliged to pay what's called a use tax to California. Not doing so is depriving my state of money. I don't believe I've ever done this, and I am perfectly ok with it. What if I copy software, use it for a while, and uninstall it. Clearly that is wrong. But is it equally wrong to borrow a book, read it, and then return it? In practice, it's the same thing. The line is blurred when the commodity is information. | |
Mike H wrote:
The consumer might argue no, because they already paid for the TV service and/or advertising. Though if they TiVoed it, they presumably skipped the commercials! Is it only morally right to permanently save a TiVoed show if you sit and watch all the commercials?? On a similar note, if I watch all the commercials and miss the last five minutes of the show, is it alright to download a digital copy of the show and watch it on demand later? I have theoretically paid for the entire show, so I should be able to see the entire show. At the same time though I wouldn't expect that sort of treatment at the cinema. If I tape it I can watch it all I want, but why would I waste time/tape when I can simply download a copy someone else recorded? My ISP profits the same way through selling me the bandwidth that the video store profits from selling me the tape. Personally, I'd be happy with a DVR service that let me archive my favorite shows to my computer for $1 or $2 an episode. Seems fair enough. If I just want to watch it a few times and delete, it's free. If I want it forever and ever and ever, a buck or two is more than reasonable. Will that ever happen? Who knows. Probably not. And then you end up at the start of the original conversation. You buy the show and they fill it with unreasonable DRM stuff. As for the prices being so high while the programs are necessary in the industry look at any of the other industries. Do you think the machinery systems used to create cars should be free when you're setting up a manufacturing plant? Is a bar being gouged by the chair company because they have to pay for stools? At the end of the day setting up a company with professional tools in the IT industry can be incredibly cheap. You can do it from home, usually with all your existing hardware, all you need is a website and a couple of relatively cheap tools. A lot of people don't even get a bank loan to start their IT businesses. As far as being able to learn to use them cheaply, where do you normally get access to professional level tools to learn with without committing to something like an apprenticeship? An amateur electrician doesn't get their tools any cheaper because they're just playing with them to learn. | |
DarkView wrote:
As for the prices being so high while the programs are necessary in the industry look at any of the other industries. Do you think the machinery systems used to create cars should be free when you're setting up a manufacturing plant? Is a bar being gouged by the chair company because they have to pay for stools? That's not quite accurate: DRM would tell the bar that they're not allowed to use the stools anywhere else -- for instance, say the bar wanted to become a nightclub. DRM would say "nuh uh, no way, can't do that, you paid for stools to be used in a bar only". [edit]Er, wait, I missed your point entirely, didn't I. You weren't talking about DRM any more. ;-) | |
Well, that's when reasonable laws about abandoned copyrighted works falling into the public domain should come into play. If reasonable term limits were set, with simple criteria for determining whether something is eligible for expiration, I'd have no complaints. To me, it's not about swinging the pendulum so it's easier to get stuff for free, but about having a simple and fair system that everyone understands. If we're all playing by these rules, then there is no moral problem with copying a creator's work that has fallen into public hands through the system.
Unfortunately, lawmakers get richer by rewarding corporations who have deep pockets by extending their old copyrights ad infinitum.
Yep.