Piracy/ Intelectual Property

[marksoc]

If downloading content was "stealing" you would have a point. I find amusing that many people do not understand the difference between stealing something and illegally downloading content

The way to do business is what Louis C.K. did with his last special. He said that you could do whatever you wanted with the file containing his show, even you could torrent it, but if you felt like it was good content you should give him 5 bucks through PayPal. Lo and behold, the payments reached 1 million USD in something like twelve days, but half a million in the very first days, covering all costs and wages for the production company, theater, etc.

 

[fifs2]

Wanted to start this thread , not sure it hasnt been discussed before.
What are your thoughts on the rampant theft of intelectual property and the culture of software piracy here in argentina ?
I hear many excuses from the locals, none of witch i can moraly justify.

A friend of a friend, ahem, cough cough, started their business 9 yrs ago with purely pirated sw which gave them an easy inroad to business with less investment. The IT manager for this company had a sister who worked in the ant-piracy dept of the local police..who knew such a thing existed but it was good protection!
Over the years this company went fully legal, which is just as well as last year 3 MS represented auditors landed on their offices and did a full audit, no warning, nada and presented a bill for 1.5million USD....it was all a scam and with presentation of all licenses etc all was calmed ..but hairy stuff nowadays to run a business with pirated sw as any angry employee or other will turn you in at some point!

 

[jp]

I find amusing that many people do not understand the difference between stealing something and illegally downloading content

Evidently you don't understand either.

 

[marksoc]

Ufff, stealing: taking your property, making it unavailable for you to use. Example: a car, a purse, money.

Illegal downloading content: preventing you from potential earnings from consumption of content. Is potential because nobody can prove that the guy downloading would have purchased a copy of "Alvin and the chipmunks" if he/she had not seen it illegally. In this case the person downloading a perfect digital copy is not preventing the owner from the use of the stuff/content. The last sentence is more relevant.

Both are illegal, of course, but the later is not accepted as a crime everywhere and by everybody. As I said in the example of Louis C.K, you can torrent the file containing his last show and then send him a payment via PayPal without any trouble. I believe that piracy in fact benefits Hollywood with more exposure that transform into more ticket sales. In fact, I think that the studios leak some movies in purpose.

 

[jp]

Loads of people give their work away for free. There's amazing open source software, tons of free music, free films, free books - plenty of them are high quality, and plenty of the authors just ask for donations. But the fact that some people give their work away for free doesn't entitle you to steal whatever you want. Louis CK has enough of a reputation and following to be able to rely on his fans to support him. Radiohead gave their album away for free, and made a fortune in donations. But not everyone can rely on that type of support. The model doesn't work for everyone.

Musimundo is full of perfect digital copies of films and music, which according to your logic are only worth a few centavos - the cost of the plastic casing and each blank CD & DVD. Would you steal from there? Be interesting to see you argue that case in court. "It wasn't stealing, as they're just perfect digital copies which have no real value beyond the cost of the blank media they use, plus I had no intention of ever paying for them anyway".

Take whatever you want, just don't kid yourself that its not stealing, and don't bitch when others steal from you.

 

[jago25_98]

Argentina, no rules baby!

The moral discussion regards intellectual property is becoming very tiresome.

The issues covers everything from 3D object design, trademarks, patents, everything!

I believe that enforcing intellectual property is impossible. The costs of doing so across the board outweigh the benefits. I believe, as with drug liberalisation, that the only way to address the issue is to level the playing field and liberalise the whole system. .. but this has to be done globally. That is, you can't stop the tide of change so you have no choice but to go with it.

When I say costs I'm talking about the stuff the average person does not see but intuitively knows. When we buy a pirated DVD the author loses out but quite obviously the buyer gains. If this stifles creativity... tough!

I'm sorry but this has been a lesson of open source software - holding property on something is not modern these days... you have to give without any guarantee of getting anything back... and this is a very hard lesson to learn. It's life like various religions always said but now it's slapping us in the face.


Otherwise we open ourselves up to things like companies who see a charity making free software, then they patent it, take the technology and sue. This has happened and it's a drop in the ocean of various examples.
In the same way, while it's bad to break a contract by defaulting on debts, if you have to pimp out your daughter to avoid paying forever you shouldn't feel morally obliged to pay them back.

Interesting times.

 

[Fabe]

ok drop ur car off at my place , Now its mine . See how unjust that sounds ? Im all for open source software. But some people dont write code to have it taken by anyone. Some folks write code to sell the product , and just taking it is stealing imo

 

[elclandestino]

If he drops his car at your place and it becomes yours, he gets deprived of it. If I copy Windows (mind you, a Linux and MacOS user as of the last 16 years), the IP owners don't get deprived of it. It just might reduce their sales and revenue, but even that is highly questionable

Piracy could do damage to small independent software developers that develop low priced solutions

Adobe, Microsoft, etc. are doing well

Moral discussion on piracy is indeed tiresome

 

[elclandestino]

Stealing is depriving someone of something