After googling for total five minutes. I have decided to simply ask you guys.
I am presently in a country where people know jack shit about copyright laws.
90% of the books present in book stores are pirated. Inferno by Dan Brown on Amazon is something around $15. You have more chances of getting $4 one here. Even the universities photocopy reference books and sell them to student at much cheaper rates.
I hadn't even seen an original Windows operating system before Vista. And that is because the laptop coming here are preloaded with them.
Engineering related software like AutoCAD and MatLab are free. Well you can download them with crack (that what university people told me).
My computer is filled with a healthy collection of porn movies, all from using torrent. Never paid a penny for them.
I have got one GB of music. Basically American songs but some Indian and Anime OSTs. My wallet did not feel any lighter after acquiring them.
And couple of music videos and AMVs (Anime Music Videos) mainly from youtube.
So, tell me about copyright laws. Do you guys also download stuffs like we do. Or pay for every single thing. How are these laws enforced?
And finally, what should I delete and what should I keep? If I am to stay in Deutschland.
For me, personally, copyright doesn't enter into it. I have no problems pirating something, provided I am willing to pay for it if and when the means become available. (For example, pirating games you can't easily buy in the US.) It's when you pirate something that you could easily acquire legally that I believe a line is crossed from piracy to outright theft.
Quote from: "Hijiri Byakuren"For me, personally, copyright doesn't enter into it. I have no problems pirating something, provided I am willing to pay for it if and when the means become available. (For example, pirating games you can't easily buy in the US.) It's when you pirate something that you could easily acquire legally that I believe a line is crossed from piracy to outright theft.
I'm like that, I generally try to buy things I can, but some music and games simply can't be bought, so I convert them.
If I can buy them, I do, If I can't, I don't
In the Netherlands, these rules are only really enforced for companies. That means you won't be able to buy pirated stuff in a shop, nor are you able to advertise it or offer it to people for free if you're a business. There's a few agencies that deal with looking for and fining companies that do use/sell/offer pirated software and the fines are big.
For consumers, its generally a "what you do in your own home" thing, nobody really cares and unless you do something really stupid (like run an ad in the newspaper that you have pirated software or something equally ridiculous) nobody is going to care and nothing will happen.
According to Dutch law (last I hear, anyway) downloading illegal material is tolerated, but uploading is technically illegal and you can be fined/incarcerated if you do really really large amounts of it or if you host websites that support that kind of thing and/or make money off of it.
Now as for myself; I used to download a lot of stuff when I was younger because I didn't have any money and a lot of stuff was almost impossible to get. These days I usually just buy the games on Steam or the company's own webpage if I want them. The only thing I pirate are games that aren't free (as in legally free to download, so you can't get them from any official websites) yet, but also not for sale anywhere. And very rarely games that I'm not sure I'll like but are very expensive. I generally just try those for a few hours and then buy them if I like them.
So, basically there is no enforcement.
No need for me to delete anything. :)
That depends on where you go... it varies from country to country. You mentioned Germany, I'd consider at least asking a few Germans before reaching any conclusions ;)
There's enforcement in the US, my dad's friends had the FBI take all of their computers and telephones when they were caught breaking game codes and pirating them
So, deleting after I get there. or not, depending on the answer.
Think about it as if it was you who developed the software, movies or whatever with the goal of it being how you feed yourself. Your family depends on your earning power and skills you studied hard to develop and then only to learn thieves enter your place of business to steal everything you worked hard all your life for.
Oh well, you should have to work free with no compensation whatever. :-k
Quote from: "CloneKai"So, basically there is no enforcement.
No need for me to delete anything. :)
Well, I wouldn't go that far. While all countries may not have copyright laws, those that do, find them difficult to enforce. But we do read from time to time about some high school girl with a shit load of pirated songs on her iPod that ends up in court. It's rare, but it happens.
Think of it this way. There are laws with proscribed penalties, and rather harsh ones at that, that protect copyrights. You could get nailed for your own personal use. If you are distributing them, you are probably more likely to get nailed.
Whether you want to adhere to the rules is your decision alone. But being prosecuted is outside your control. No one can give you permission to infringe on copyright laws. It's a risk you take. If you are asking how big is the risk, it's bigger if you are apprehended, or so it would probably seem at that point.
I could easily take the stance that you're a thief and not to be trusted or for that matter so is everyone else. So you get away with it until one day police show up at your house and off you go to the iron bar hotel crying about how unfair it is YOU'RE not allowed to break long established law about theft.
You're aware, I presume at that point sympathy will be between shit and syphilis. :roll:
Since, this is my first good chance to escape the religious environment, i was unfortunate to be born in. I suppose i shouldn't take any chances. No point in getting hauled to jail for listening to some music and getting my ass kicked back to the banana republic.
but I really don't want to delete the anime OSTs and AMV. The AMV producer don't make money but the song in video have a cost attach. so legally, can i keep them? I don't know anything about OSTs. Japan and Germany kind of far apart.
what about porn. most of them don't have any sort of disclaimer. So should i delete them?
I will delete all the English songs.
The odds are slim to be arrested, but so are the odds you'll win the lottery unless of course you're the person who wins it.
You know right from wrong and no amount of justification turns wrong into right.
The bottom line is that if you don't mind being a common thief then you don't mind the risks of arrest and the potential penalties.
QuoteThink about it as if it was you who developed the software, movies or whatever with the goal of it being how you feed yourself. Your family depends on your earning power and skills you studied hard to develop and then only to learn thieves enter your place of business to steal everything you worked hard all your life for.
Oh well, you should have to work free with no compensation whatever. :-k
The people who make the content mostly already have their salary, so you're not stealing from them. Unless you're pirating small-scale projects, anyway. Which are usually really cheap, too.
Mostly you're "stealing" money from big business execs. (Whether or not it's stealing is also up for debate, and has been for a long time) :)
It's not exactly a black and white topic. (I realise this concept is complicated for Americans to understand :P)
@CloneKai, honestly I would just empty out the harddisk and start over in your new place of residence, if you don't want to take risks. Also consider picking up a subscription to some online service like Netflix, that'll let you watch most stuff legally and it's not expensive. And porn is technically copyrighted, too. But there's loads of free stuff on the internet.
Quote from: "CloneKai"So, basically there is no enforcement.
No need for me to delete anything. :)
It doesn't give you the right to act like a cunt though.
Ok.
As plu says, I will wipe my hard disk. Its going to be painful. but the consequences, I cannot afford.
Quote from: "Jason78"Quote from: "CloneKai"So, basically there is no enforcement.
No need for me to delete anything. :)
It doesn't give you the right to act like a cunt though.
8-) Sure it does.
I have right to be a jackass, cunt or have my head on a pike. I just have to make it there by putting an effort and of course the consequences of the said action.
Just because there are no consequences to you doesn't make it right.
And just because it isn't right doesn't mean people won't do it :P
I don't just see it as breaking the law, I see it as a reflection of a person's character. I put them in the same boat as people cheating on on a loved one, or stealing food out of the community fridge at work. It just ain't right.
oh my god if I was to go back and pay for everything I've downloaded...
I've been downloading since the 28.8k modem days! I have a little over 300 movies, some of which I own... most of which I don't.
It still goes back to the thieving and lying mindset and it's rampant. Say, for example your car starts making a "funny noise" so you take it to a shop. It's actually just a loose vacuum hose, but suddenly you're hit with a bill for a new engine, transmission, 4 new tires, a new steering wheel and a new fucking windshield and you can't disprove the shop owner claims so either pay for parts never installed and labor never done or lose your car.
Now many here can fix cars. I certainly can so I wouldn't fall for that bullshit, but most people can't. Does that make the shop owner right and just in ripping you off? After all, lots of shop owners do it so it must be justified. No harm, no foul, right?
Quote from: "Plu"The people who make the content mostly already have their salary, so you're not stealing from them.
Bullshit. Their salary is derived from sales of the products produced in the industry. If you're stealing from the industry, you're stealing from them. Period. They might still get their salary today. But if the company as a whole makes 2 billion for the year instead of the 6 billion it should have made for the amount of product produced, you can be sure that some of those salaried content producers are going to become unemployed content producers. What's the average salary for an unemployed content producer these days?
It's like telling the grocery store you should get free T-bone steaks because, well, after all, the cow died long before it got to the grocery.
Quote from: "Johan"Quote from: "Plu"The people who make the content mostly already have their salary, so you're not stealing from them.
Bullshit. Their salary is derived from sales of the products produced in the industry. If you're stealing from the industry, you're stealing from them. Period. They might still get their salary today. But if the company as a whole makes 2 billion for the year instead of the 6 billion it should have made for the amount of product produced, you can be sure that some of those salaried content producers are going to become unemployed content producers. What's the average salary for an unemployed content producer these days?
I don't believe it's quite that black and white. A small percentage of people who pirate would have purchased the product had it not been available...
http://m.ibtimes.com/online-piracy-does ... c-industry (http://m.ibtimes.com/online-piracy-does-not-negatively-affect-digital-music-sales-may-actually-help-music-industry)
Digital music sales are on the rise, streaming services etc. Music that is downloaded gets around to many listeners and increases popularity and ultimately revenue.
If it weren't for online media illegal and legal, I wouldn't know about a ton of music that I currently listen to.
Quote from: "Johan"Quote from: "Plu"The people who make the content mostly already have their salary, so you're not stealing from them.
Bullshit. Their salary is derived from sales of the products produced in the industry. If you're stealing from the industry, you're stealing from them. Period. They might still get their salary today. But if the company as a whole makes 2 billion for the year instead of the 6 billion it should have made for the amount of product produced, you can be sure that some of those salaried content producers are going to become unemployed content producers. What's the average salary for an unemployed content producer these days?
Even with all the piracy going on, the entertainment industry is still running record profits. It's not cutting into the salaries of workers. As Wolf says, it's barely even cutting into sales at all. You also greatly overestimate the amount of piracy happening at all.
If you're painting doom and gloom scenarios of course it's going to look scary, but the fact is that most people aren't assholes, and even most pirates aren't assholes and will pay for stuff if they have money. Those that are true assholes would never spend any money anyway and if they couldn't pirate would either simply not see the content or borrow it from a friend.
I can honestly say that due to internet piracy I now spend
more money on entertainment than I would have without it, because I'd never have become a fan of entertainment, nor a supporter of certain companies, had I not gotten any of their stuff 'for free' when I was young and broke. There are numerous games I've bought
only because I played them when I was a kid and didn't pay for them, and there are companies whose games I buy simply because I know they're good, because I used to pirate their stuff. Those companies can complain that I used to play their stuff for free and they "lost sales" (which is bull because I wouldn't have bought their stuff anyway) or they can be glad I buy their games now that I'm older.
(I get the feeling that you can draw a very distinct age-line through humanity by looking at their views on piracy. The older they are, the more they'll be opposed. Even their arguments will reflect it. By this logic it should be something like old to young -> APA, Johan, Jack, Wolf/Me) I don't know how old Jack is, but I think the rest is pretty close.)
Yeah, us old fuckers are against stealing shit. It's some archaic morality bullshit handed down from GAWD! Gimme a break Plu. You act as if this issue is almost the same as casual sex vs only fucking your lawfully church ordained wife under the covers in the dark for the sole purpose of having children or not and us old people have never dreamt of smacking the old lady's ass just for fun. :shock: :-$
Look, you KNOW when you're swiping stuff. You KNOW pirated software, movies, etc., is in fact theft. It's not AS IF theft has ever become legal or morally ok. It's not AS IF pirated goods and/or services are a matter of survival and your children may starve if you're forced to *gasp* legally pay for them. It's not AS IF theft is a new, revolutionary idea only young people do these days.
Hey, maybe murder ought to be ok. I mean a LOT of people do murder and quite a few get away with it. After all, if you go next door and murder your neighbors, chop them up and stick em in your freezer next to the Marie Callender's it's no sweat off my nutsack. It's not hurting me.
So where do we draw the line?
I'm exaggerating, but so is pretending theft is ok. :-k
And yet, when your generation dies out, pirating will be perfectly acceptable :)
You have all these arguments, and younger people simply don't buy them. You can scream all you want about unfair and stealing and other stuff, but in the end the younger generation simply has different ideas about copyright and ownership. Big corporations likewise can scream all they want; they've been doom and gloom since the rise of the cassete deck (remember that one? don't tell me you never copied songs of the radio when you were younger?) and they're growing bigger and bigger every year.
Everyone copied music into blanks... It's what people did!
If it weren't for copying, many people would never hear some great music out there! People that enjoy these illegal copies then go out and buy their tapes or concert tickets or apparel etc.
Piracy does not end with a loss of money. Piracy ends with people buying more shit that they never would have prior.
I have a ton of bands that I paid to go see that never made it to the radio and they have hence made money off of me because of it. I legally stream music now on spotify but back then that option wasn't available.
And I fucked my wife in the daytime too without the covers on and she didn't get knocked up. :-$
I'm not changing laws, but theft isn't going to suddenly become legal become legal. Copyright law might change and that's ok, but breaking laws because it's financially easy or fun isn't going to make it legal or right.
I don't think anyone wants to argue that it's legal, and whether or not it's "right" is iffy (I've never seen a really solid argument on how it can be theft if there is no resource nor monetary loss on the side of the victim, for example. And in most cases of piracy, this is exactly what is happening. Yet the main argument is still "its theft", which is weird to me.)
What matters is that people pirate, will continue to pirate, and that the public on pirating is still on the side of "yeah, just pirate it". Since what is considered right and wrong is mostly still a matter of public opinion (or did we suddenly start believing in objective morals? :P) I guess it's just a grey area, not a case of "wrong".
If the law needs changing then by all means change it, but copyright and patents exist for very good reasons. I'd prefer they change, but making theft legal ain't happening.
You keep calling it theft, though. But you haven't really convinced anyone that it is. I don't call downloading something I wouldn't have bought otherwise stealing. Nothing is lost on the side of the company I pirate it from.
Wrong..The burden of proof that it's theft isn't on me. Law is pretty clear what constitutes theft. The burden is for you to convince legislators theft isn't theft in this case.
You want it free and I get that. I want a free steak and a big titted waitress to serve it in her knees in the nude. =D> ...err... *on* her knees. :-k
Theft:
QuoteIn common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
Piracy doesn't apply because you don't deprive the rightful owner of the property.
Larceny:
QuoteLarceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking of the personal property of another person.
Piracy might apply... except...
QuoteLarceny is a crime against possession. Furthermore, it has two elements which must be met, the actual taking of the property, even if momentarily (actus reus) and the culpable intent to deprive another of their property (mens rea).
It doesn't meet the second requirement...
Saying "it's theft because the law says so" is nice, but the problem is that even the law isn't very clear on the whole issue. The whole story is very, very complicated, and the fact that you're approaching it as simple-minded as you do is one of the major reasons that it doesn't fly with most people. Normal property laws (like you're trying to apply) simply don't work for it. Trying to apply them it's exactly what made this mess.
There is no common, lawful definition of "theft" that involves "the act of copying something without taking any resources from the company in question."
In fact; digital distribution
should have its own lawbook because it's 100% incompatible with physical theft laws. An idea and a digital object are simply not comparable to a physical object.
Question for you. If someone bought (legally) all the materials to build a Ferrari, and then bought said Ferrari in his own garage, using his own legal tools, would you then call that Ferrari "stolen"? Because that's effectively what copying digital content is. You are just rebuilding something someone else built, using your own (legal) materials. It's just that the proces for copying digitals things is much easier. (At least until 3d printers get a bit better, then we'll get some more interesting questions like these.)
I'm not a legal scholar so I'll stick with my humble, simplistic views.
I'm not gonna call the cops on anyone or anything, but till this is all settled, and someday it probably will I'll error on the side of caution and not steal copyrighted materials not because I'm a prude, but because I have an allergy to iron bars in lieu of doors. If you feel so confident then open a piracy store at the local shopping mall and let us know how that turns out. :-?
Even the "humble, simplistic views" should be able to conclude that it's not exactly following any of the general definitions of "theft" and deserves a term of its own.
And if I lived in a country by the corporations, for the corporations, I'd also be a lot more careful than I am now. But while saying that piracy is illegal is perfectly correct, saying that it's theft is very much iffy at best and saying that it costs companies money is, according to all the research done on the topic, simply a lie.
Meh..the same could be said of property rights as in land. If you own a big empty field me pitching a tent and living on it deprives you of nothing, but law does look at property rights and would very likely evict me. At issue is also intellectual property. A line needs drawn so it's not so murky. I'm pretty sure that if you spend years perfecting a new bit of software that changed how everyone lives and your ability hinges on being able to market it then someone else copies it and distributes it free all around the world with you receiving nothing you're not going to be all that happy.
QuoteIf you own a big empty field me pitching a tent and living on it deprives you of nothing, but law does look at property rights and would very likely evict me.
Which, assuming an empty plot of land that isn't being used for anything, sounds really dumb and up for improvement to me. Just because it's a law doesn't mean it's automatically good and just.
Quote from: "Plu"Even with all the piracy going on, the entertainment industry is still running record profits. It's not cutting into the salaries of workers.
I bet these folks would disagree.
//http://m.aux.tv/news/100455-7-royalty-cheques-that-ll-make-you-lose-your-faith-in-the-music-industry
Quote from: "Plu"Theft:
QuoteIn common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
Piracy doesn't apply because you don't deprive the rightful owner of the property.
Oh for fuck sake. The property is intellectual. The owner of any intellectual property has rights to it. Those rights are generally reserved. If you acquire someone else's intellectual property without access rights being granted, you are committing theft. This really isn't all that hard to understand.
Then we're being purely subjective about the whole thing. I'd love to decide which laws I have to obey and which ones I don't and to a degree we all make those choices every day. People also go to jail and court making choices that they don't agree with. I know I've done just that more than one time. #-o
Quote from: "Johan"Quote from: "Plu"Even with all the piracy going on, the entertainment industry is still running record profits. It's not cutting into the salaries of workers.
I bet these folks would disagree.
//http://m.aux.tv/news/100455-7-royalty-cheques-that-ll-make-you-lose-your-faith-in-the-music-industry
There are two problems here... the first is that this article is about royalty checks from paid services, not piracy. The second is with this piece of the article:
QuoteLast year, David Byrne and Thom Yorke decried the injustices of services like Spotify and Pandora, claiming that they devalued the work of musicians. And they weren't wrong: Cracker / Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery shared the above pic, which displayed that "Low" was streamed more than 1.1 million times on Pandora. The payment? $16.89.
The problems wasn't with piracy, it's with a company that decided to pay less than $20 for a song that was streamed over a million times. That means the problem basically lies with the big corporation that sets the rates. Even youtube pays out considerably more for that.
(Even the article itself says "lose faith in the music industry")
Quote from: "Plu"//http://m.aux.tv/news/100455-7-royalty-cheques-that-ll-make-you-lose-your-faith-in-the-music-industry
There are two problems here... the first is that this article is about royalty checks from paid services, not piracy. The second is with this piece of the article:
QuoteLast year, David Byrne and Thom Yorke decried the injustices of services like Spotify and Pandora, claiming that they devalued the work of musicians. And they weren't wrong: Cracker / Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery shared the above pic, which displayed that "Low" was streamed more than 1.1 million times on Pandora. The payment? $16.89.
The problems wasn't with piracy, it's with a company that decided to pay less than $20 for a song that was streamed over a million times. That means the problem basically lies with the big corporation that sets the rates. Even youtube pays out considerably more for that.
I think you may have understated your case. The article painted an uglier picture of corporate greed than I expected. I suspect the article had a bias. But as with most corporations, it sounds like the music industry will fuck over anyone smaller than themselves to line their pockets at anyone's expense. It's Capitalism in America.
When it comes to justifying piracy laws, the industry will point to poor starving musicians as if they give a rat's ass about the musicians themselves. I've always suspected it's really all about corporate board rooms and executive take home bonuses. The laws are put into place for a reason, and I would suspect the real reason is to protect corporate profit rather than fairness and sharing. All laws justify themselves as fairness issues, but you know as well as anyone else, they are mostly about campaign contributions from wealthy donors.
Still, the laws are real and personal piracy is a risk. Even if you reject the moral arguments, it's a risk.
Oh my, I think I really have understated my case...
This paints an even grimmer picture, where many artists basically earn nothing at all, even when they score a huge hit.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201007 ... 0186.shtml (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml)
You're focusing on a small segment of piracy talking about merely downloading songs when the piracy issues go much deeper with companies completely stealing intellectual property and distributing it as their own using their laws (China) to decimate complete segments of industries. To make it all sound so innocent is understating it in the opposite direction as well.
I was under the impression that this was still about consumer piracy, not business/nation piracy. They're not always comparable.
(That said when it comes to digital technology I'm greatly in favor of the open principle as well. And when it comes to other kinds of research I'm mostly conflicted because patent law can both be a boon to research but a great stifler of progress as well. But I think we'd best save that for a different discussion altogether.)
Expediently inconvenient isn't it? :-k
How do you mean? I've no problems discussion my opions regarding corporate espionage and the like, but this doesn't really seem the place for it. I wasn't aware you were talking about both consumer piracy & corporate piracy to be honest.
Meh..they kind of run together. I get where your at and agree mostly, but it's not a big stretch from swiping a few songs to swiping an operating system and distributing it if the subject is whether piracy is theft or not. I'm downloading songs as I type so I'll remove myself from my ivory tower and mingle with you common folk. :-$
I don't pirate stuff. I write and compose music, and though my efforts haven't brought me money or worldwide fame and adulation yet, I sure wouldn't want people distributing my work for their own profit without tossing in some crumbs to help me out too. That just ain't right, any more than it's right to get a raise at work by claiming your coworker's idea as your own.