No because it’s not taken. It’s literally still there, the master copy of Harry Potter is a happily sitting at the publishers office. In fact there is literally no way for the rights owners to even detect I copied the PDF from a server to my local PC.
No, and nobody’s saying it is ok, it’s just not the same as theft. Just like assault is not the same as battery.
I uhhh… hate to tell you this, but just about every operating system on Earth has a file access log (or at least the events that can be tracked by access software).
That’s like saying because the typeface for the printing of HP is still at the printers, you didn’t steal the book. Just because something can be reproduced at no more marginal cost doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. You value it! If it costs $2 billion to bring a car to market, you don’t get to buy it for the marginal cost.
Pirates almost never get their files from the publisher, they get them from each other. If Joe buys an mp3 of a song and then makes it available on his personal server, anyone who downloads it isn’t interfacing with that song’s artist or publisher in any way, they’re only interfacing with Joe’s computer. Even then Joe still has his mp3, it’s just been copied, hence COPYright. Theft requires taking of the property with the intent to deprive the owner of it. That doesn’t happen here.
Two different things. Downloading the text of the book from a pirate website and either reading it on your Kindle or printing it out is copyright infringement. Taking an actual printed copy of the book off the shelf at Barnes & Noble is theft.
If you buy that car for the marginal cost, or just take the car, you’ve deprived the car company/dealer of that car which they cannot sell to someone else. It’s the equivalent of the printed book.
Copyright infringement would be more like if you got a hold of the digital model of that car and 3D printed one of your own, if such a thing were possible.
And would the rights holders of Harry Potter be magically informed when I make a copy of the PDF from my friends computer over a cable the other side of the world from them ? Should I send JK Rowling a message every time set a bit on my computer?
That’s my whole point right, me updating the values of some bits on my hard drive not only doesn’t deprive them of anything, it does not effect them in the slightest. It doesn’t effect their existence in the slightest way. So it cannot be theft.
Not even in the slightest? If everyone got their copy of Harry Potter that way, then the books wouldn’t make any money. With no money to be made, producing things that can be distributed by copying a file would no longer be profitable and a lot less stuff would be produced. In other words there is a harm. It might be very slight, just a fraction of a cent in some cases depending on the specific work in question, but the harm is still there.
This is like saying one way of killing someone is manslaughter, and the other is murder. They are both killing.
Yes,copyright infringement is covered under different laws than theft. It is still stealing.
So altering the state of your brain by viewing/hearing content doesn’t affect you? Adds no value? I say if you take something that you and others in society value, it is theft. Because it doesn’t have cost to the producer doesn’t mean it has no value.
Yes, no additional cost, but there is a loss to the company and to the individuals who came up with the game and earn their livelihood from the sales. Even is it’s a low loss per unit, it’s a loss.
And, the idea « it’s not theft » ignores the fact that legislative bodies get to define criminal offences. If Congress has said that misappropriation of electronic data is theft, then it’s theft.
Possibly, but how does that make it theft?
How does my brain being affected take value away from the owner of the copyright? How does it effect them in the slightest?
Also the act of “pirating” (aka making an unauthorized copy of) a work does not happen when I watch it, it happens when the file is copied. Are you saying the act of stealing, that’s allegedly inherent in piracy, only occurs when I watch it? What if the people watching it have no idea it’s a pirate copy? Are they still stealing?
This seems silly. I write a book, and it’s available on Kindle. I’m hoping it’s a success and I can pay my bills. A hundred people buy it, then someone pirates it and a thousand people view it for free who were waiting for the pirate (a la games). Now if a non-zero number of them were willing to pay the price, but waiting to see if it got pirated, that’s a real loss.
A related case–a ski lodge I go to had limited/high price internet. Back when torrent was a thing (is it still?) they had a bunch of guys stay a week and download “content” over torrent and got hit for a $15000 fee for the month…
Yep, and why hasnt Congress? because Theft is a local issue, but obviously copyright has to be national, so they call it that. It is still stealing.
As we have explained endlessly- it is because the creator loses out on the money from your not-sale. It costs them- they do not earn as much.
Let’s say you’re a struggling musician with some talent. You put your songs on Distrokid or whatever, and are hoping people will buy them, but you really have no control over that.
Now let’s say one of your songs gets pirated 10000 times. That’s 10000 song fees you didn’t make. Are you going to be cool with that? Or are you going to feel like that guy deprived you of money you’d otherwise have had? Maybe it’s semantics to call that stealing or not, but it’s definitely taking money from you that you’d otherwise have potentially made. It’s no different in that regard than if someone steals 10,000 copies of your CD single and hands them out for free. Either way, it’s money you didn’t make because someone else stole your stuff. Yes, you can continue to sell it, but you’ve also got a limited market, and some chunk of it has been satisfied by free (money you didn’t get) copies now.
And you can’t say that it’s a fact that because they pirated it, that they wouldn’t have paid for it. That doesn’t hold up. Lots of people are a bad combination of crooked and cheap, and will just gladly use the free one, even though it’s stolen.
You keep saying this but never give me an answer. How does copying some bits from one computer to another take away money from a creator? Are there magical IP fairies that will instantly take away money from the creator when the bits move down a wire? If I copy it a million times will the creator instantly go bankrupt?
You would have bought it, but you dont. i.e. the creator loses on on that sale, and thus money.
Geez, we have explained this over and over- piracy is stealing. Dont do it.
Yeah, like I said: People have been stealing digital media for as long as there’s been digital media. Someone upthread was trying to justify it with “But software has DRM on it” as though the whole reason for DRM wasn’t that people will casually steal it without. No one is saying “Hey, let’s spend money licensing this DRM software and potentially make our software lose performance just for fun”.
People steal shit 'cause they want free shit. It ain’t complicated.
Oh so magical IP fairies it is then? Fascinating!
I’m gonna spend all night making unauthorized copies of Art of the Deal. Thanks to those IP fairies stealing money for each copy, Trump will be bankrupt by morning!
No.
Look, say you want to own a Music CD. If you buy it, the creator gets money no?
If you- instead of buying it- pirate it- the creator does NOT get the money, yes?
Thus the creator is out money.
Your ridiculous arguments are starting to get stale.
If you cant understand that, then …
DRM does nothing but punish legitimate buyers of media and anything with restrictive DRM features should be pirated. SecuROM for example was one of the worst since it limited users to only a limited number of lifetime installs, originally as low as only two or three but later updated to five in some cases. As well as constant online validation which causes other gameplay and performance issues and limits your ability to play offline. These are all valid reasons to pirate a game.