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YouTube Takes on iTunes Store With Streaming Movie Rentals
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Felt bad for your poor connection speed... with my 100Mb/s connection I am ready to party! Yay!
You can do whatever you want. Some movies I stream because I don't care (Do I really need to see some rom/com in High Def?) - but others I would prefer to own.
It's not about screen size really - it's about bandwidth. Many streaming services offer 720 or 1080 - but they are delivered at MUCH lower bandwidths (compressed) than one would get via Blu-Ray. For obvious reasons. Which is why the whole "High Def" tag is a misnomer to far too many consumers. They've been fed a line of crap that they're seeing High Def on their TVs when in reality - they're only getting a fraction of the potential their tv is actually capable of.
Nice rationalization, but wrong. Theft does not require the item to be physically removed:
Theft ("steal"):
Oxford Concise:
1. Take (something) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it
2. Give or take surreptitiously or without permission
American Heritage:
1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission
New Oxford American Dictionary (Mac OSX):
1. Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it
Mirriam-Webster:
1: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
None requires that the property be physical; in fact, three don't even require that the stolen item be property.
As a matter of law one is not charged with theft since taking IP doesn't meet the legal definition, but that does not change the definition in vulgar language and vulgar society. Pirating music, movies, software, etc. is theft—every major dictionary supports this.
Take:
Oxford Concise:
3. Accept or receive
4. Acquire or assume
New Oxford American Dictionary (OS X):
1. <further division --WC> Gain or acquire (possession or ownership of something)
American Heritage:
1. To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice
10. To accept and place under one's care or keeping
Mirriam-Webster:
6: to transfer into one's own keeping
11 a: to obtain by deriving from a source
12: to receive or accept whether willingly or reluctantly
So, to use the AH, that gives us:
To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice (the property of another) without right or permission
That sentence is using definitions of both "take" (red) and "steal" (blue; with "take" replaced by its definition) When Bob pirates software, movies, music et cetera he makes a copy of someone else's property. Since Bob is without right or permission to have said copy he has gotten that property into his possession through skill or artifice (and maybe force).
Piracy is stealing, no matter one tries to justify or rationalize.
Yeah, tell that one to Apple too. I'm thinking you've yet to rent something in HD on an Apple TV. A 45 minute episode of Glee.... 45 minutes until it said I could play it, but that turned into an hour. Apple neglects to tell people their "instant" play in HD only applies to internet connection 6mbs and higher (I have 6, at the bottom of the recommendation) and yet Netflix in HD is instant... go figure??
Personally, the $3.99 rentals are a bit of a joke. That's what cable on-demand is and Apple for new movies (even some old movies). Unless I'm really just too lazy to drive to the Red Box or Netflix something, forget it. They need to stop letting the studios brow beat them. When Block Buster was still around or Hollywood Video, their rentals were cheaper than $3.99 for a new release. And they had to buy physical copies of media to rent out!
(what happened to the edit button?)
PS. Standard def on the Apple TV is instant... The Apple support pages are lit up with a ton of ticked off people.
PS. Standard def on the Apple TV is instant... The Apple support pages are lit up with a ton of ticked off people.
By and large I think the definition of "theft" to people depends a lot on whether they think they can arrested for taking something that they haven't paid for. It just isn't considered the same when it's digital and done from the comfort of your own home. It doesn't help matters that it is so easy to do and the temptation is all the greater. It further doesn't help that attempts to stop piracy often just inconveniences the legitimate user. Honestly, I'm tempted to pirate a movie just to get some value from having to sit through all those "don't pirate movies" commercials at the start of DVDs that I can't skip and which I bet does not appear at the start of the pirated versions. And don't even get me started on Windows Genuine Advantage...
Frankly, I'm all for having people arrested and fined/horse-whipped for digital piracy - what makes them think they are entitled to this stuff for free when everyone else has to pay?
Haven't had a real issue with titles, maybe it'll come up someday. But I think you are missing something. You're paying what, $8+tax for streaming. For $11 more you'd get about 4 disc rentals per week. I'll let you compare that to $4 each.
This would be about distribution rights, though, not invention. Movie/TV distribution rights are insane, and differ in each country. That is due to the studios that own the movies.
Right. That's what I was whining about. You guys not sharing.
What I mean is that iTunes has worldwide scope. Many of these other competing services do not. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, these competing services don't exist. They can't call themselves a true "competitor" until they get their act together and actually give me the option to, you know, use the competing service.
Amazon MP3, for example, aren't available in Canada, therefore I continue to use iTunes. I have no say in the matter. Apple wins by default.
YouTube video rentals aren't available in Canada, therefore I continue to use iTunes. Apple wins.
No, as you admitted yourself, the legal definition of theft and stealing does not include IP infringement. It may be wrong, it may be illegal, but it certainly isn't stealing or theft.
Yes, it is. Do you think that the OED, American Heritage, and (as bad as it is) Mirriam-Webster are all wrong and that Black's is the utmost authority for vulgar use of words?
If you're right that it isn't stealing then why does the venerable OED define it as such? What part of Take (something) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it doesn't apply to taking someone's IP without their consent?
There was a time when a man could not legally rape his wife. No matter how forced and non-consentual the act was, no matter how brutal it may have been, no matter that if exactly the same thing was done to someone who was not the spouse of the offender it would be rape, under the laws of many jurisdictions it simply wasn't. Yet the general term of "rape" was still more than justifiedsince that's exactly what the act was.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the legal definition is the only definition.
So this is what Google is doing to make up for their loss? Might as well download the videos illegally than rent them from Youtube instead of iTunes.
Do you want to use the legal definition when referring to it as a crime, or do you want to just break out your rhyming dictionary and dig for extended metaphors in some sort of pedantic online soliloquy?
One definition of "rape" is to carry away by force. So if I picked you up at a bar, carried you around the block, and then put you back down on your bar stool, would you tell everyone in the bar that I raped you?
There is a reason that if I did that I wouldn't be charged with rape. I may be charged with assault, maybe even kidnapping, perhaps public drunkenness, but it wouldn't be rape.
Your position is so weak that you have to start off with childish arguments?! Or is it that you pirate digital products and get defensive to the point of ridiculousness whenever people rightly call you a thief?
That definition, if given at all, is listed as archaic (in most dictionaries, anyway). The meaning to which you refer is from late 14c. and as a noun from early 15c.; "rape" in it's current sense is from late 15c. and has supplanted the original meaning.
You probably think you've beaten me in my own game, but the difference is that I used current meanings that people would use every day in normal speech while you had to use a definition that hasn't been in favour for over 500 years. We teach our children that taking something that doesn't belong to them is called stealing; likewise we teach them that rape is forcing sex on someone; we teach this because they are the vulgar meanings in current use. We don't teach them that "rape" is the act of abducting something since it hasn't meant that in centuries.
The funny thing is (to me at least) that "rape" was originally a legal term meaning seize, carry off by force, abduct. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still on the books in the UK
More to the point though, what you've said there is no different than what you said in your previous post and my response is no different either: the fact that it doesn't meet the legal definition in no way changes the fact that it meets the definition of the common language. If "rape" still meant to carry away . . . and was (potentially) used in common speech then that's exactly what your example would be.
Stealing is taking something that doesn't belong to you. Three-year-olds know this, why don't you?
Your position is so weak that you have to start off with childish arguments?! Or is it that you pirate digital products and get defensive to the point of ridiculousness whenever people rightly call you a thief?
That definition, if given at all, is listed as archaic (in most dictionaries, anyway). The meaning to which you refer is from late 14c. and as a noun from early 15c.; "rape" in it's current sense is from late 15c. and has supplanted the original meaning.
You probably think you've beaten me in my own game, but the difference is that I used current meanings that people would use every day in normal speech while you had to use a definition that hasn't been in favour for over 500 years. We teach our children that taking something that doesn't belong to them is called stealing; likewise we teach them that rape is forcing sex on someone; we teach this because they are the vulgar meanings in current use. We don't teach them that "rape" is the act of abducting something since it hasn't meant that in centuries.
The funny thing is (to me at least) that "rape" was originally a legal term meaning seize, carry off by force, abduct. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still on the books in the UK
More to the point though, what you've said there is no different than what you said in your previous post and my response is no different either: the fact that it doesn't meet the legal definition in no way changes the fact that it meets the definition of the common language. If "rape" still meant to carry away . . . and was (potentially) used in common speech then that's exactly what your example would be.
Stealing is taking something that doesn't belong to you. Three-year-olds know this, why don't you?
You basically proved my point, and we agree: Stealing is taking something that doesn't belong to you.
Copyright infringement is COPYING something that doesn't belong to you. Nothing is taken, because nothing is missing.
This is why it's a different crime and shouldn't be called "theft".
To take does not require a physical movement of the item; I already posted this but since you seem to have missed it I'll post again:
Take:
Oxford Concise:
3. Accept or receive
4. Acquire or assume
New Oxford American Dictionary (OS X):
1. <further division --WC> Gain or acquire (possession or ownership of something)
American Heritage:
1. To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice
10. To accept and place under one's care or keeping
Merriam-Webster:
6: to transfer into one's own keeping
11 a: to obtain by deriving from a source
12: to receive or accept whether willingly or reluctantly
So, to use the AH, that gives us:
To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice (the property of another) without right or permission
That sentence is using definitions of both "take" (red) and "steal" (blue; with "take" replaced by its definition) When Bob pirates software, movies, music et cetera he makes a copy of someone else's property. Since Bob is without right or permission to have said copy he has gotten that property into his possession through skill or artifice (and maybe force).
Your efforts to rationalize your, or other's, thievery are just thatrationalizations.