You might feel that’s the case but common sense tells us that game publishers aren’t saying “Hey, let’s pay licensing fees for this DRM just to punish our legitimate buyers, hooray!”
It’s a direct result of the fact that people will widespread pirate software. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t but people don’t pirate because of DRM, DRM exists because of pirates. It’s not a chicken or egg scenario: we’ve been in the pre-DRM stage already and people pirated the shit out of everything.
That’s the point. They aren’t. The assumption here is that the product would have been purchased if it were not pirated. But this is not the case. That’s why those statistics about how much money is lost to piracy are lies.
I don’t pirate anymore, but, when I did, it was to try things out on my system. No longer pirating has not resulted in me purchasing any of these things.
What is going on is using someone’s work without their permission. That’s why people call it copyright infringement. I’m making an unauthorized copy for my own use. It’s more akin to going to the library and photocopying a book.
Does that make it moral? I err on the side of no, hence why I stopped doing it. But it is different from the concept of stealing. Stealing requires deprivation of something from the owner. Pirating doesn’t.
Heck, I’m not even the biggest fan of “pirating” at the term. Because piracy used to mean selling copies. The pirate is the person who sells bootlegs.
My opinion is that, if the product is not available, then piracy is not something I care about. And I agree that toll roads shouldn’t exist, because there is a basic freedom of movement for all. Tax the wealthy. That’s why we let them exist: they make money so that they can contribute back to society.
It’s a result in the sense that they choose to do it because of the concept of piracy. It is not, however, a natural result of piracy, because people do in fact pay for software that can be pirated, and always have. It’s not like these companies weren’t profitable before DRM solutions. Or that people stop paying once the software is cracked and widely available.
And it is 100% true that DRM encourages piracy, on two fronts. It provides a challenge to crackers, and, if it is at all detrimental to the experience, it increases demand for cracked versions.
Generally speaking, all the big companies that actually use the worst DRM would still be profitable. DRM at this point is about the believe that it helps them squeeze out more profit than it is about making sure people are compensated properly. It’s basic enshittification. It’s considered worth it if some customers get a bad experience.
There is the argument that there would be some increase in sales if not for piracy. But it’s not 1-to-1 like it is in theft. So the actual goal should be some level of balance–enough to mitigate any losses due to piracy, but not enough to inconvenience legitimate users.
And, again, I say this as someone who does not pirate.
That may not be what developers and publishers intend, but it is the always the result.
You’re right, people will pirate the shit out of anything regardless of DRM, which typically only slows down the time a little before the game is inevitably cracked. Companies like CD Projekt Red know this very well, which is why they have a successful and popular no-DRM policy on both their games and GOG. Because why make their products worse and give people who would have bought the game legitimately more reasons to pirate it in the first place?
At least the industry seems to have somewhat moved away from restrictive DRM due to consumer backlash and lawsuits, and rightfully so.
TIL making a mixtape, as was popular in the 80s, is theft.
It’s a semantics argument folks, period! For the most part, no one is in disagreement regarding the facts. But the “tastes great” side says that anything of value taken without the owner’s permission should be called theft. The “less filling” side says, no, an illegal procurement that does not deplete an inventory cannot be called theft.
Who cares what it’s called colloquially? If Congress passed a law tomorrow saying all copyright legislation details remain the same, except that the law will now consider this theft, what has changed? Nothing.
Where the line is crossed, IMO, is when some say they’re entitled to pirate (a subset of the “it can’t be called theft!” cohort). But that’s a different argument altogether.
One last thing: The example I’ve often seen regarding “theft of services” is the small business owner who dumps his trash in a neighbor’s dumpster, a dumpster (and service) provided by a third-party vendor. That seems analogous to me. And any argument along the lines of, “Oh, not at all, because the abuser is creating wear and tear on the dumpster” is grasping at straws. That’s a trivial effect and not at all the reason for the laws.
They aren’t but they could be. You’re the one that made “But nobody even knows I took a copy” an issue.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that if you buy a game, then circumvent the DRM stuff because it’s onerous that you’ve actually done anything wrong. In that case, you bought the game.
It’s the idea that because the DRM is onerous that you’re somehow entitled to steal the game and not pay for it that’s absurd and frankly unethical and crooked.
Historically software did NOT have DRM until piracy became a huge deal. And the invasiveness of the DRM scaled pretty much with the level of piracy.
I mean, nowadays there really isn’t much, because you’re downloading the install files and registering/validating on a publisher’s site in order to play the game. But in say… 1998? There were all sorts of ways they tried to prevent people from buying one game and giving copies to all their buddies.
It’s a result in that they do it because 40+ years of consumer software sales have shown us that people WILL steal it. If no one stole software, they wouldn’t pay licensing fees and developer costs on DRM because why would they?
I don’t pirate software because the hassle of finding a crack and worrying about malware and all that, even if relatively minimal in real terms, isn’t worth it to me. Plus you only need once to really ruin your day. I’ve pirated other media because it’s easy and risk-free. I did it because it was free and easy, just like everyone else stealing it does.
I was thinking about just that this weekend. I was travelling for the Canadian long weekend to an event on the other side of Toronto from where I live. I used the 407 toll road to bypass downtown Toronto. And the tolls on this road are not cheap. They’re actually quite ridiculous. But I think it’s worth it. There was almost no traffic, and I was able to maintain my speed the whole time.
My friend who was also going to this event took the non-toll 401 highway. Traffic added about 3 hours to his drive. That’s a pretty non-trivial difference. If you just can’t afford the money for the 407, it ends up costing you in time wasted.
I felt a bit bad about this, but not bad enough to take the 401 home.
As the IP fairies take away his money, or are there magical byte wizards that steal the money?
I keep asking for the mechanism that causes the creator to lose money when bits move from one computer to another, you keep refusing to give one.
Copying files is not theft. You can keep saying it is but it doesn’t make it so
The only disagreement I have here is the semantics tend to drive the perception. Everyone knows deep down that theft is wrong, even if it’s something small like a single candy from a bin of bulk candy. The smallness or difficult to see-ness, doesn’t suddenly make it a truly victimless crime, because you can point to a thing that someone owned and now they don’t have that thing anymore.
You can’t really justify the taking of a thing that someone has legal ownership of, just because they’re being kind of dicks about it.
Copyright violation is a fundamentally different sort of taking, because the IP owner isn’t complaining about something they owned that they no longer have possession of, they’re complaining about not getting something they were hoping to get (money), that they never had legal ownership of at any time.
Using the same word for both intends to equate the two types of taking, specifically in order to tap into the “theft is wrong” feelings that people have.
Copyright violations aren’t wrong for the same reason that physical theft is wrong. I very much believe that our Constitution got it dead right. Copyright should exist “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. If IP owners are using these rights to restrict the Progress of Science and useful Arts because we make more money that way, they can go fuck themselves. I’m not required to bow down to their God Given right to own their creation for their entire lives + 70 years + whatever extra time Congress can be bought out to give them.
Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, or get out of the way while others do it.
Stealing is taking possession of something you didn’t have the right to take possession of. If I download a copy of John Wick 17 then I now possess a copy of John Wick 17 which I didn’t acquire through legal means. I don’t see how that equates to anything other than stealing it even if the movie studio still has their copy.
In the case of software, it’s an amusing cycle: Software comes out, people steal it. Developers add ways to try to stop stealing, people say “Pfft, now it has copy protection and I don’t like that so I’m entitled to steal it!” Sure, dudes.
Sure, except if I stream it I don’t even really possess the whole thing at any one time, or possess it after I watch it, but it still violates copyright.
I could be sitting next to someone who legally owns a copy and watch it (with their permission) on their PC with them, I can also watch it on their PC if they’re not present, all legal. If instead of displaying it on their PC screen for me to watch, they transmit it to my home TV, or my phone screen while the PC and TV, or phone, are both on my WiFi, that’s also legal. It’s just screen mirroring.
If they transmit it to my phone or TV or PC remotely via the internet, we’re all thieves, because that’s piracy, even if we’re all in the room together.
Eh, I’d still say you’re possessing it while streaming it (and I have indeed streamed things under the proverbial counter). I can fast forward, pause, rewind, etc all the things just as if it was on a DVD.
I’m intentionally brushing off the rest of it since I don’t think the minutia of “Am I pirating if I walk next to someone playing a bootleg Taylor Swift MIDI?” is actually a worthwhile tangent regarding someone saying they deserve a free copy of Diablo 4 because they don’t like the DRM scheme.
If you really want to equate copyright infringement with theft/stealing, then what you’re stealing isn’t the work, but access to the work. You’re abrogating the copyright holder’s ability to decide who gets to access their work. It’s more akin to trespassing. A trespasser isn’t stealing someone’s land, they’re abrogating the landowner’s right to keep people off their land. They might be stealing use of the land, or access to the land, but they’re not stealing the land itself. Does that help?
Helps someone self-rationalize, maybe. I don’t think it helps make it justifiable.
Close enough for me. I get that others disagree with the semantics, and again, I say, whatever you’d like, who cares? A society that doesn’t protect IP is a seriously flawed one, if it can even function at all. If using the term “theft” helps strengthen the force field, all to the good IMO. It’s a reasonable colloquial description, even if an attorney would argue it’s a different area of law.
And, again, “theft of services” is a term of art used in multiple jurisdictions, and includes things like dropping a couple of Hefty bags of your business’s trash in a neighbor business’s dumpster, a receptacle provided and serviced by a third-party vendor. Nobody’s inventory is depleted.
But right there in the name of the law is “theft.” If they had used a different name, with all the same restrictions and penalties? What’s the difference, and why would anybody care?
I think it would be better to talk about it in terms of unauthorized using rather than unauthorized possessing.
Both of the OP’s examples—toll roads and video games—as well as others, like downloading music, or sneaking into a movie or concert or amusement park without buying a ticket, or sharing a password to a streaming service in a way that you’re not legally entitled to, all involve using something that people are supposed to pay to use, but without paying. And the use doesn’t use it up; it doesn’t deplete the supply available for other people.
So, what if one person, who is poor enough that they are unable or unwilling to pay to use the whatever-it-is, uses it for free? It looks like the benefit (to the user) outweighs the harm (to everyone else).
But if lots of people do so, the harm becomes more obvious. In some cases, a lot more people using something causes problems: traffic congestion and increased wear on the toll road, longer lines at the amusement park, a heavier load on the servers… You also have resentment from paying users against free riders. And of course the lost income to the providers of the service from those who really could have paid.