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>No. Piracy is just fucking theft, period. No, you don't get to redefine a word because you feel like it. "Piracy" is often wrong, but it is not theft (the own

>No. Piracy is just fucking theft, period. No, you don't get to redefine a word because you feel like it. "Piracy" is often wrong, but it is not theft (the owner is not deprived of the item).

baldfat 11y ago
Piracy is theft, but I suspect that most things downloaded would have never been purchased by the person in the first place. If you take a copy of an item you would have purchased you just took the income.
- sigsergv 11y ago
  No it's not. Theft is absolutely different type of crime.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Read my reply where I start with > Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Digital goods are fundamentally non-excludable and non-rivalrous (sometimes anti-rivalrous, as with software). Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply. At worst it would be free-riding, which has different implications.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    The idea that theft has to include rivalrous good is a strawman. You are just taking the difference between theft you don't like and pirating and then saying that difference is hugely important.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Hey, it isn't me making straw man arguments. It's the SCOTUS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States Face it, you're a fringe view.
      - baldfat 11y ago
        That deals with only one criminal law: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/113/2314 http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/113/2314 The code is: > Whoever transports, transmits, or transfers in interstate or foreign commerce any goods, wares, merchandise, securities or money, of the value of $5,000 or more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud; or ....
  - baldfat 11y ago
    > Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply The semantics of "theft" absolutely do apply Definition of theft: the act or crime of stealing. Definition of steal: to take (something that you are not supposed to have) without asking for permission. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing So the people trying to get through the not stealing it is copying due to a technical definition of theft are wrong. Stealing is having a copy that you didn't get permission to take. My other ethics brain is wondering how NOT taking property but a copy seems to also allow sneaking into a movie theater, concert or sporting event to watch something. You are neither taking anything or even copying you are just watching. Is this also not theft?
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      In which case properly delineating what "asking for permission" is becomes increasingly intractable. I have all sorts of images in my thumbnail cache that my browser has downloaded which nominally I do not have permission to keep, but are unavoidable artifacts of using the web via a graphical browser. Indeed, the lines of what is and is not implicit consent are very blurred. Not to mention that merely not being supposed to have something under a set of terms says nothing of the legitimacy of said terms.
      - oberstein 11y ago
        A lot of companies have provisions in their EULAs to allow for copies stored in RAM or by the browsers, e.g. http://storedvalue.com/en-US/terms-and-conditions http://storedvalue.com/en-US/terms-and-conditions and I believe streaming services are doing that as well since going to the monitor will require making copies and transforms of the data from the network. It's all pretty funny until someone gets sued.
        baldfat 11y ago
        Yes this is the cause of many crazy Internet stories of Instagram or FaceBook now own your photos. Photos on a public web page are implicitly giving you permission to view the photo and the technology need you to have a local copy for viewing. That does not mean you can grab the photos from say National Geographic and re bundle them put them on you website surrounded by adds. They are not giving you permission to do anything but view the pictures.
bweitzman 11y ago
What about theft of services or trade secrets? Are those not kinds of theft?
0x49 11y ago
You are correct, it's not theft. It's counterfeiting, which is worse. If you steal a TV, it can be counted as a loss and the TV manufacturer can still sell TVs with little to no problems. If enough people pirate, it changes the perceived value of a digital good to $0 or near $0 and will eventually put the person out of business. The big businesses can handle it just fine. The small companies are the ones you are hurting. The app store, while not pirating, is a good example of this. Apps are no 99 cents. If you try to make an app more expensive than this, people generally will complain or not buy it at all. Why? Because the perceived value of an app is 99 cents. It's very similar to the principals of currency.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  "Piracy" isn't counterfeit because pirates have no intention of defrauding or deceiving anyone (you're confusing them with bootleggers). Nor is the media they offer in any way a forgery. It's the authentic product, perhaps undergoing augmentation (i.e. to disable copy protection) or some lossy compression when transcoding video or audio. These are not equivalent to forgery.
- ge0rg 11y ago
  > Apps are no 99 cents. Anecdotal evidence here, but I have a successful app on Google Play (which is commonly viewed as a less-willing-to-pay audience) at 5$+, despite the fact that the app is FOSS and you can download the binary from the home page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid....
alive2007 11y ago
People often use this very semantic, very pedantic difference and expand it to make it a difference in practical effect. Piracy and theft have the same practical effect : you're accessing a consumable good without paying the requisite cost, your individual crime may not have a large effect on the ability of the seller to provide for that good, but, on the large scale, if everyone committed your crime, you would severely affect the seller's ability to both 1. provide for him/her/their-self and 2. provide that good to the people. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, piracy is theft.
will_brown 11y ago
I am a lawyer...I know these definitions pretty well, so Ill chime in. Let's take George Bernard's famous quote: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” According to your definition, one could not engage in theft of an idea, because one could never be deprived of an idea like with the taking of an apple. However, let's look at the actual legal definition of theft: The actus reus (act) of theft is usually defined as an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another's property which must be accompanied by a mens rea (mental state/intent) of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use. You limited the definition of theft to only include when one's mental state intends to deprive someone. The actual definition is not limited though, but alternatively includes when the taking was done dishonestly. Therefore, if someone takes something not belonging to them, and does so dishonestly that in fact is theft. Since I foresee the definition of dishonesty being the next issue here, that has been defined in case law, but generally where the person intended to take property they did not have a legal right to take.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  ...and pursuing that line of argument right to the end, "intent to permanently deprive the owner...of that property". Clearly that part means, ideas are exempt from the possibility of theft, under the law?
  - will_brown 11y ago
    >Clearly that part means, ideas are exempt from the possibility of theft, under the law? Lets try again, because while I used "idea" in the Bernard quote to demonstrate how non-physical can be taken without depriving the owner, GP was talking about more than an idea, but a digital good: Act: An unlawful taking (idea or physical good) Intent: 1. Dishonesty; (idea or physical good) OR 2. To permanently deprive (physical good only) You would be right if the intent was only (2) with intent to permanently deprive as the argument, but that is not the case, it is OR (1) taking dishonestly. Lets remove "ideas" and put it into perspective with a "good", for clarity. I steal your car and chop it up and sell for parts (a unlawful taking with intent to permanently deprive = theft); alternatively, I steal your car at night, go joyriding and return it in the morning before you even know (unlawful taking without intent to permanently deprive...would you say that is not theft? If so you would be wrong even though I never intended to permanently deprive, because it is an unlawful taking and my intent was dishonest = theft)
tzs 11y ago
Terms such as "theft" and "steal" and similar words have meanings in English beyond the literal violation of a law. Some examples of stealing as correctly used in English: • Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart. • An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show. • An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula. • When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen". • A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.

>No. Piracy is just fucking theft, period. No, you don't get to redefine a word because you feel like it. "Piracy" is often wrong, but it is not theft (the owner is not deprived of the item).

baldfat 11y ago

Piracy is theft, but I suspect that most things downloaded would have never been purchased by the person in the first place. If you take a copy of an item you would have purchased you just took the income.

sigsergv 11y ago
No it's not. Theft is absolutely different type of crime.
- baldfat 11y ago
  Read my reply where I start with > Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Digital goods are fundamentally non-excludable and non-rivalrous (sometimes anti-rivalrous, as with software). Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply. At worst it would be free-riding, which has different implications.
- rhino369 11y ago
  The idea that theft has to include rivalrous good is a strawman. You are just taking the difference between theft you don't like and pirating and then saying that difference is hugely important.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Hey, it isn't me making straw man arguments. It's the SCOTUS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States Face it, you're a fringe view.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      That deals with only one criminal law: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/113/2314 http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/113/2314 The code is: > Whoever transports, transmits, or transfers in interstate or foreign commerce any goods, wares, merchandise, securities or money, of the value of $5,000 or more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud; or ....
- baldfat 11y ago
  > Thus the semantics of "theft" do not apply The semantics of "theft" absolutely do apply Definition of theft: the act or crime of stealing. Definition of steal: to take (something that you are not supposed to have) without asking for permission. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealing So the people trying to get through the not stealing it is copying due to a technical definition of theft are wrong. Stealing is having a copy that you didn't get permission to take. My other ethics brain is wondering how NOT taking property but a copy seems to also allow sneaking into a movie theater, concert or sporting event to watch something. You are neither taking anything or even copying you are just watching. Is this also not theft?
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    In which case properly delineating what "asking for permission" is becomes increasingly intractable. I have all sorts of images in my thumbnail cache that my browser has downloaded which nominally I do not have permission to keep, but are unavoidable artifacts of using the web via a graphical browser. Indeed, the lines of what is and is not implicit consent are very blurred. Not to mention that merely not being supposed to have something under a set of terms says nothing of the legitimacy of said terms.
    - oberstein 11y ago
      A lot of companies have provisions in their EULAs to allow for copies stored in RAM or by the browsers, e.g. http://storedvalue.com/en-US/terms-and-conditions http://storedvalue.com/en-US/terms-and-conditions and I believe streaming services are doing that as well since going to the monitor will require making copies and transforms of the data from the network. It's all pretty funny until someone gets sued.
      - baldfat 11y ago
        Yes this is the cause of many crazy Internet stories of Instagram or FaceBook now own your photos. Photos on a public web page are implicitly giving you permission to view the photo and the technology need you to have a local copy for viewing. That does not mean you can grab the photos from say National Geographic and re bundle them put them on you website surrounded by adds. They are not giving you permission to do anything but view the pictures.

bweitzman 11y ago

What about theft of services or trade secrets? Are those not kinds of theft?

0x49 11y ago

You are correct, it's not theft. It's counterfeiting, which is worse. If you steal a TV, it can be counted as a loss and the TV manufacturer can still sell TVs with little to no problems. If enough people pirate, it changes the perceived value of a digital good to $0 or near $0 and will eventually put the person out of business. The big businesses can handle it just fine. The small companies are the ones you are hurting. The app store, while not pirating, is a good example of this. Apps are no 99 cents. If you try to make an app more expensive than this, people generally will complain or not buy it at all. Why? Because the perceived value of an app is 99 cents. It's very similar to the principals of currency.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
"Piracy" isn't counterfeit because pirates have no intention of defrauding or deceiving anyone (you're confusing them with bootleggers). Nor is the media they offer in any way a forgery. It's the authentic product, perhaps undergoing augmentation (i.e. to disable copy protection) or some lossy compression when transcoding video or audio. These are not equivalent to forgery.
ge0rg 11y ago
> Apps are no 99 cents. Anecdotal evidence here, but I have a successful app on Google Play (which is commonly viewed as a less-willing-to-pay audience) at 5$+, despite the fact that the app is FOSS and you can download the binary from the home page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid....

alive2007 11y ago

People often use this very semantic, very pedantic difference and expand it to make it a difference in practical effect. Piracy and theft have the same practical effect : you're accessing a consumable good without paying the requisite cost, your individual crime may not have a large effect on the ability of the seller to provide for that good, but, on the large scale, if everyone committed your crime, you would severely affect the seller's ability to both 1. provide for him/her/their-self and 2. provide that good to the people. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, piracy is theft.

will_brown 11y ago

I am a lawyer...I know these definitions pretty well, so Ill chime in. Let's take George Bernard's famous quote: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” According to your definition, one could not engage in theft of an idea, because one could never be deprived of an idea like with the taking of an apple. However, let's look at the actual legal definition of theft: The actus reus (act) of theft is usually defined as an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another's property which must be accompanied by a mens rea (mental state/intent) of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use. You limited the definition of theft to only include when one's mental state intends to deprive someone. The actual definition is not limited though, but alternatively includes when the taking was done dishonestly. Therefore, if someone takes something not belonging to them, and does so dishonestly that in fact is theft. Since I foresee the definition of dishonesty being the next issue here, that has been defined in case law, but generally where the person intended to take property they did not have a legal right to take.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
...and pursuing that line of argument right to the end, "intent to permanently deprive the owner...of that property". Clearly that part means, ideas are exempt from the possibility of theft, under the law?
- will_brown 11y ago
  >Clearly that part means, ideas are exempt from the possibility of theft, under the law? Lets try again, because while I used "idea" in the Bernard quote to demonstrate how non-physical can be taken without depriving the owner, GP was talking about more than an idea, but a digital good: Act: An unlawful taking (idea or physical good) Intent: 1. Dishonesty; (idea or physical good) OR 2. To permanently deprive (physical good only) You would be right if the intent was only (2) with intent to permanently deprive as the argument, but that is not the case, it is OR (1) taking dishonestly. Lets remove "ideas" and put it into perspective with a "good", for clarity. I steal your car and chop it up and sell for parts (a unlawful taking with intent to permanently deprive = theft); alternatively, I steal your car at night, go joyriding and return it in the morning before you even know (unlawful taking without intent to permanently deprive...would you say that is not theft? If so you would be wrong even though I never intended to permanently deprive, because it is an unlawful taking and my intent was dishonest = theft)

tzs 11y ago

Terms such as "theft" and "steal" and similar words have meanings in English beyond the literal violation of a law. Some examples of stealing as correctly used in English: • Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart. • An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show. • An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula. • When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen". • A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.