Why piracy isnt theft

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MrD

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by MrD »

@Fedorarefugee: It seems some people here are denying poverty. Meritocracy doesn't work when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Those that are lucky enough in the Game of Life ought to feel some pity for those whose life sucks. I'm sure you'd kick homeless kids, spit on minimum wage workers and other assorted holier-than-thou actions. Frankly, there are many of us this side of the pond who think it's a disgrace that 40 million of our 'friends' had no medical cover and might as well be left to die at the side of the road after an accident. I see your government is finally trying to do something about that. But then I guess you have no pity for those people either and would vote against reforms. In the meantime, continue with your slow genocide of the working class.

I'm not saying it's perfectly legal to fileshare, but many people turn a blind eye to it believing no one is losing out, with that section of society unable to pay for the data in the first place. One day they may get out of their trap and start paying. Till then, well it's a lot more than you think. Maybe you wish to lock them up for their 'crimes'? maybe that'll work, when jails have satellite tv, games consoles, etc, but then you have to pay for their stay. If you go down into the psychology of what happens, you'll understand the alternatives are far worse. I'm not a socialist at all, I have lived in poor socialist countries though. I bet if you heard individual stories maybe you'd shift your rigid position. What is a poor family supposed to do for their kids? When they have no money and can't provide anything for them? Let them grow up bullied and not becoming useful members of society? Feel free to be angry with those who have money and choose to download data, but attack the poor without working to help them out and you don't deserve any respect yourself. We live in a world of shades of grey, get used to it.
deleted

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by deleted »

MrD wrote:Those that are lucky enough in the Game of Life ought to feel some pity for those whose life sucks
Therein lies the rub. There is no such thing as "luck." As Darrel Royal so eloquently put it, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
I was not born with a sliver spoon in my mouth. (tho I do not live in a 3rd world and we did have running water, etc) but I made choices (like studying hard, and working 2 jobs in college, and assuming and paying a student loan, along with choosing a career path) that allow me to make things better for my families' life. Is it all me? No. I give thanks to the One who's in control. (and a little bit of delayed gratification.) I still can't get the taste of Top Ramen noodles http://www.nissinfoods.com/topramen/out of my mouth, 20 years after college.
-Hinto
randomizer

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by randomizer »

I'm not sure how being a poor family with kids means you need to infringe copyright. Chances are you can legally acquire free software alternatives instead.
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Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by Biker »

MrD wrote:I'm not saying it's perfectly legal to fileshare, but many people turn a blind eye to it believing no one is losing out, with that section of society unable to pay for the data in the first place. One day they may get out of their trap and start paying. Till then, well it's a lot more than you think. Maybe you wish to lock them up for their 'crimes'? maybe that'll work, when jails have satellite tv, games consoles, etc, but then you have to pay for their stay. If you go down into the psychology of what happens, you'll understand the alternatives are far worse. I'm not a socialist at all, I have lived in poor socialist countries though. I bet if you heard individual stories maybe you'd shift your rigid position. What is a poor family supposed to do for their kids? When they have no money and can't provide anything for them? Let them grow up bullied and not becoming useful members of society? Feel free to be angry with those who have money and choose to download data, but attack the poor without working to help them out and you don't deserve any respect yourself. We live in a world of shades of grey, get used to it.
What a load of absolute rubbish. If someone is too poor to afford software, perhaps they shouldn't be paying money for an Internet connection and put the funds where it's needed most? Like feeding your family and applying it towards an education to get out of the rut? You seem to think that being poor gives someone the right to appear as if they aren't by stealing. As I stated earlier, keep thinking that. It's still theft, and should still be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Linux User #384279
FedoraRefugee

Post by FedoraRefugee »

MrD wrote:@Fedorarefugee: It seems some people here are denying poverty. Meritocracy doesn't work when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Those that are lucky enough in the Game of Life ought to feel some pity for those whose life sucks. I'm sure you'd kick homeless kids, spit on minimum wage workers and other assorted holier-than-thou actions. Frankly, there are many of us this side of the pond who think it's a disgrace that 40 million of our 'friends' had no medical cover and might as well be left to die at the side of the road after an accident. I see your government is finally trying to do something about that. But then I guess you have no pity for those people either and would vote against reforms. In the meantime, continue with your slow genocide of the working class.

I'm not saying it's perfectly legal to fileshare, but many people turn a blind eye to it believing no one is losing out, with that section of society unable to pay for the data in the first place. One day they may get out of their trap and start paying. Till then, well it's a lot more than you think. Maybe you wish to lock them up for their 'crimes'? maybe that'll work, when jails have satellite tv, games consoles, etc, but then you have to pay for their stay. If you go down into the psychology of what happens, you'll understand the alternatives are far worse. I'm not a socialist at all, I have lived in poor socialist countries though. I bet if you heard individual stories maybe you'd shift your rigid position. What is a poor family supposed to do for their kids? When they have no money and can't provide anything for them? Let them grow up bullied and not becoming useful members of society? Feel free to be angry with those who have money and choose to download data, but attack the poor without working to help them out and you don't deserve any respect yourself. We live in a world of shades of grey, get used to it.
Who is denying poverty? In my country this is a stupid, old liberal game. If you think illegal immigrants should be deported you are racist. If you do not like Obama you are racist. If you are a capitalist you are greedy. Listen, I am a Christian and I am SURE I have done MORE for the poor, homeless, and 3rd world people in my life than you ever will! I give upwards of 25% of what we earn to charity, can you say the same? That is on top of government taxes in which at least some goes to government entitlements to help those less fortunate. What have YOU done to help your fellow man? What's that? You don't make enough to help others, you are having a hard enough time trying to support yourself? I understand! Really, I do! So why don't you stop and think what would happen if some of us did not make good money, earn a comfortable enough living that we can afford to give substantial amounts of money away! Who the hell do you think pays the taxes YOU are living on? It is a joke in my country, we call it Obama money. Listen closely to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19v5Kjmc8FI

That is YOU! :( You should be ashamed of yourself!

No one has EVER been left on the side of the road to die! In fact, the UK has a bigger problem with this than we ever did! EVERYONE, including illegals, can walk into ANY ER and get attention regardless of money. This is a fact, it has always been so. The taxpayer ends up paying the bill. What our government just passed really had nothing to do with health care, it was merely a power grab, just like everything else they have done. Is our health care system perfect? Hell no! Is it just brimming with corruption? Yep! It seriously needs fixed. The bill that was passed does nothing to fix the initial problems. If anything it is going to drive the cost of health care up even higher making a much larger percentage of people dependent on the government. Duh! That was the WHOLE objective in the first place! The more people reliant on the government the more people that will keep the government in power. THAT is ALL it is about.

Slow genocide of the working class? I AM the working class!!! You need to quit listening to whatever BS you are listening to and wake up and look around you!

What would I do with the poor? I am glad you asked! I would allow them a means of support BUT I would make it limited so they could not get too comfortable with it. I would not give them government support that was much more than they could earn at a minimum wage job. That would ensure they went out and got a minimum wage job, or two, or even three, instead of sitting on the porch drinking beer, traded for with food stamps, all day, or stealing digital media for their DVD players or ipods. I would gladly pay people who have been unemployed, but they have a time limit to get a new job and they have to show that they have been looking. This system is ALREADY in place! I would simply ENFORCE it! I never said we do not need a social safety net. But we need to make sure that net provides the bare minimum on which to survive. We have government housing in this country, anyone who has a job at McDonalds can afford an apartment, your rent is subsidized by the government, you pay what you can. There is no excuse to be homeless. I do not know what planet YOU are living on, but I do know what is going on in my country. Like Hinto, I pulled myself up from the street. I moved out of my parents house at 17. I had to live in a 2 bedroom apartment with 4 roommates. I worked 3 fast food jobs to get by. I took out student loans (which ANYONE can get) and went to school. I got a carpenter job on a construction site and worked my way up through drywall, painter, and some electrical. I got married and had kids and we lived in a dump with an old 19 inch color TV with an antenna and 3 snowy channels. We sat on milk crates and ate Ramen noodles too. We saved, we used our money intelligently. I put my wife through college, she became a nurse. First an LPN, then an RN, and now an MSN! I worked hard all day and delivered pizzas at night. I saved up and opened my own aluminum installation business. My first year was rough, I worked with a buddy and we were never sure of our next paycheck. But I stuck it out, I fought going under countless times. I worked on the side, did what I had to do. And my business grew. As I made money I did not hoard it, I reinvested it put it to work. I grew my business, made other investments. But the top 10% ALWAYS went to God! Even if the weekly pay was in the double digits I managed to take 10% of the top, before anything else. I did not do much more for charity in those days, I needed everything I made to live on. But I was ALWAYS PROUD to pay my taxes! I never cheated and worked under the table like many/most of my peers. I claimed everything i earned. That is my duty as a citizen of this country, no matter how foolish the government spends it. God blessed me and I succeeded. Even today, when the construction sector is down, I still work. I had to cut corners, lay a team off...You want to talk about one of the hardest things to do...But my business survives. My investments thrive. I could retire right now, at 52. But then I could not use my excess to do God's work! I am currently going to school for my Masters of Divinity, I know that in a few years I will retire and devote the rest of my life to the God who has blessed me in this life. I do not know if I will preach in a small country church here, or maybe end up in China or Mexico on the missions field. God will open those doors when I get there, He always has in the past. It does not matter, this life is short and I will go where He wants me.

So you did not know the first thing about me, but I forgive you your stupid assumptions. You are deluded with your propaganda and you honestly feel that people with money are oppressing you. The sad part is the people with money are actually supporting you and keeping your economy going. Life is not equal or fair, no one can promise you this. Any government that promises equality is lying. Life is what YOU make it. You can sit on your ass crying or you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try it again. All you do is try and pull everyone else down to your level. But I refuse to go back down. I have been there and I worked my way out. I will lend you a hand and try and help you up too but if you try and drag me down I will stomp on you! I earned my money and it is up to me who I give it to or if I keep it. Not you, not Obama, not anyone else. The American people will not stand for this crap. We elected the idiot in and we have to wait for him to finish his term, but he is gone! He is already gone! It does not work in my country.
Last edited by FedoraRefugee on Thu May 27, 2010 10:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by Biker »

Keep those vein popping rants up and you'll die of a stroke before you hit 53! :mrgreen:
Linux User #384279
FedoraRefugee

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by FedoraRefugee »

Naw, I am cool! I write passionately, but I do not take any of this personal. :D
deleted

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by deleted »

@FedoraRefugee
Keep voting down there;)
-H
FedoraRefugee

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by FedoraRefugee »

eiver wrote:Another interesting thought is that currently majority of media and software is pirated (Lets say its 90% - feel free to find exact numbers). If suddenly all piracy went away everything could cost 10 times less, while authors and developers would still get the same amount of money. :P
Thank you for making that point. It was argued against me in another thread when I stated that piracy caused the cost to rise.

Contrary to leftist belief, the free market operates on known, tried, and true principles. They can be corrupted and diverted, but if left to its own device the principle is simple and sound.

Most retailers understand that there is a balance between profit and demand. That balance is most often just a little more than production cost. They can raise the price of a product but then fewer people will be enticed to buy it. They could lower the price but unless they can meet and exceed production cost they will not make a profit and will eventually be forced out of business. But the cheaper a good is the more people that will buy it. Retailers generally prefer to stabilize a price so that profit is guaranteed while keeping the price as low as possible to maximize demand. Keeping prices stable create an expectation and feeling of stability that further enhances demand. Piracy cuts into this.

Piracy creates less demand and forces prices higher to meet production costs. Would lowering the price at this point create more demand and possibly allow the retailer to break even or maybe even see a profit again? Yes, it does work. That is why restaurants can allow kids to eat free. The promotion brings in more business and profits than the free meals eat into. But this is not always guaranteed and in the case of piracy the retailer cannot risk not meeting production costs, including their own overhead.

So what eiver writes is correct if not influenced by any outside stimuli. If you cut out the piracy the price of the good would go down but the retailer would probably not realize any further profit. The price of the good is the variable, not the profit of the retailer. Excess demand will usually drive down the price by allowing production costs and overhead to be more easily met. If the company tries to inflate the price at this point it will only reduce demand again.

It has been my experience that corporations are not "greedy" per say, but they are out to make money. They will not artificially inflate a price at the risk of hurting demand. They realize that the cheaper they can sell the more money they will ultimately make. This allows them to streamline production and lower overhead even more and thus produce more and sell more.

Money is not to be hoarded, it is to be put to work. There is not a limited amount of wealth, only so much pie. Money makes money and wealth is unlimited.
Last edited by FedoraRefugee on Thu May 27, 2010 1:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
deleted

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by deleted »

FedoraRefugee wrote:Money is not to be hoarded, it is to be put to work. There is not a limited amount of wealth, only so much pie. Money makes money and wealth is unlimited.
I like this article:

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles ... reneur.htm
FedoraRefugee

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by FedoraRefugee »

The first paragraph alone says it all!
Let's start off with a brief discussion of the sources of income. That's important because some of the rhetoric one hears gives the impression that income is somehow distributed - there's a dealer of dollars. Thus, one might think that the reason some people have more income than others is that the dollar dealer is a racist, a sexist, or a multi-nationalist who deals out dollars unfairly. Or, alternatively, the reason that some people are richer than others is because they got to the pile of money first and took an unfair share. In either case, justice requires that government take the ill-gotten gains of the few and restore them to their rightful owners - in other word redistribute the income. While no one actually describes the sources of income this way, the logic of some arguments about the sources of income implies such a vision.
Man, I really do think that some folks think this way! You just cannot argue against irrational thinking like that...
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Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by eiver »

@FedoraRefugee I hope you will try to avoid arguments ad hominem, because it is really pointless to count how much money each of us devotes to charity, etc.

I also think that the discussion about liberal vs social model is a bit pointless too.

In the old days, when people disliked a rich minority getting even richer, they would start a bloody revolution and simply slaugter them. Today anyone can pirate software if they feel prices are too high. I am not arguing for or against piracy, I merely trying to investigate the mechanism.

There is this old joke:
- Why a dog licks its balls?
- Because it can.

Its the same with piracy I guess.


I have heard about an interesting prediction: Because no one can stop piracy and also Internet gets faster and cheaper each year - ultimately anything you can download will be completely free except the price for the access itself, which will be a small % added to your taxes. How about that?
deleted

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by deleted »

eiver wrote:which will be a small % added to your taxes. How about that?
I've never seen a small % added to taxes.
There's also a saying "Character is what you do in the dark". Well, on the net, there is no darkness. Folks forget the super highway is a two-way street. Sure you can make it harder for people to know what you're doing, but it's not impossible. Would you like to be "outed" as a thief? Probably not. But you would be. BTW... the question(s) has never been answered... How much do you have to make in order for it to be "ok" to able to steal? How much do you have to make in order for it be "ok" to steal from?
-Hinto
FedoraRefugee

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by FedoraRefugee »

eiver wrote:@FedoraRefugee I hope you will try to avoid arguments ad hominem, because it is really pointless to count how much money each of us devotes to charity, etc.

I also think that the discussion about liberal vs social model is a bit pointless too...
I do not feel that I attacked anyone. I was asking a valid question and I also gave Mr.D an out. It was relevant because in his last post he wanted to make me out as a villain who preys upon the weak and downtrodden. He claims I am denying poverty, was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, have no pity for those less fortunate than me. I kick homeless kids, spit on minimum wage workers and do other assorted holier-than-thou actions. I am also committing slow genocide on the working class, whatever the heck that is supposed to mean. But you want me to quit the ad-hominem attack? :lol:

Do you want to know a little secret? I do not much care whether you feel discussions about the liberal vs. social model is pointless or not. :wink: I go where the conversation takes me. I do not recall agreeing to you moderating this conversation? As far as I am aware, as long as I do not break any of the rules of this forum I am allowed to say whatever I wish? If the conversation makes you uncomfortable then you are welcome to drop out. Otherwise I look forward to anything you have to say.
randomizer

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by randomizer »

eiver wrote:There is this old joke:
- Why a dog licks its balls?
- Because it can.
And that is precisely the issue here. Although piracy advocates will give you a number of reasons for what they do:

1) Sticking it to the Man
2) Prices are too high
3) Media companies are heavy-handed and corrupt
4) It's not a lost sale
5) The list goes on...

The real, universal reason why people pirate is because they can. Why pay for what you can get free?
deleted

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by deleted »

randomizer wrote: And that is precisely the issue here. Although piracy advocates will give you a number of reasons for what they do:

1) Sticking it to the Man
2) Prices are too high
3) Media companies are heavy-handed and corrupt
4) It's not a lost sale
5) The list goes on...

The real, universal reason why people pirate is because they can. Why pay for what you can get free?
The problem is, it's not free. Do you work for free? probably not. At the end of the day, you can't live off warm fuzzy feelings. If you don't work, and you collect some kind of gov't "benefit" then you are living off someone else work. ...also (see my previous question) When does someone (or company) make enough to steal from? and when do you make less enough to start stealing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain% ... free_lunch
-Hinto
randomizer

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by randomizer »

hinto wrote:The problem is, it's not free.
It is to the person downloading it and that is all that matters to them. If I want to get Photoshop I can either pay nothing or I can pay a few hundred to several thousand dollars. The former option is free. Nobody lost or gained any money from it, so it is not theft and it is not charitable or a sale either. The problem is that copyright was still infringed. Of course, that doesn't stop people getting things for free. Music, movies, software... you name it, it's available for free (gratis, of course, and not legally).

Living off free (legally gratis or libre) software is still living off someone else's work. Does that mean I'm stealing their time as well? Of course not. But in this case I'm not infringing copyright, which I would be if the software was not licensed freely.
FedoraRefugee

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by FedoraRefugee »

randomizer wrote:
hinto wrote:The problem is, it's not free.
It is to the person downloading it and that is all that matters to them. If I want to get Photoshop I can either pay nothing or I can pay a few hundred to several thousand dollars. The former option is free. Nobody lost or gained any money from it, so it is not theft and it is not charitable or a sale either. The problem is that copyright was still infringed. Of course, that doesn't stop people getting things for free. Music, movies, software... you name it, it's available for free (gratis, of course, and not legally).

Living off free (legally gratis or libre) software is still living off someone else's work. Does that mean I'm stealing their time as well? Of course not. But in this case I'm not infringing copyright, which I would be if the software was not licensed freely.
:?: :?
deleted

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by deleted »

randomizer wrote: Living off free (legally gratis or libre) software is still living off someone else's work. Does that mean I'm stealing their time as well? Of course not.
Actually it is. People get paid by their employer because they (the people) give up time in order to make the employer money (make the company profitable). The employer pays them according to how much their (the employee's) time is worth.
-H
mick55

Re: Why piracy isnt theft

Post by mick55 »

Biker wrote:Keep those vein popping rants up and you'll die of a stroke before you hit 53! :mrgreen:
:P :shock: :mrgreen: :lol:
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