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Cost of App Store Piracy Pegged at $450 Million
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Read the article!
Read the article, this part is their calculation. The definition of piracy-rate is how many of the total copies are pirated. So a piracy-rate of 75% means that only 25% are legal copies (510 million) and the rest is pirated.
Read the article, this part is their calculation. The definition of piracy-rate is how many of the total copies are pirated. So a piracy-rate of 75% means that only 25% are legal copies (510 million) and the rest is pirated.
According to you? According to the law? According to the MPAA/RIAA propaganda?
Seriously, piracy is not the same as theft. But this has been said countless times already.
Piracy is indeed the same as theft, as I've proven multiple times by actually providing the legal definition of theft. Anyone who tries to submit that it's not theft (based on some misguided notion that theft requires permanent deprivation of the property, or that theft is not applicable to intellectual property) is simply wrong.
When I bought my iPhone in Thailand I had no choice but to have it jailbroken as there are no carriers who support it. When I picked my phone up it was loaded with eight pages of apps (and loads of music) without me requesting it, most of them paid, many expensive. Probably SOP.
Copying an app, just not that big a deal....
Copyright Infringement has lots of syllables and for most people difficult to pronounce much less spell.
Stealing is easier, that's why you hear it all of the damn time.
I think copying an iPhone app is no more morally wrong than smoking weed. For some people it's in bad taste, but it really hurts no one. I think if you make money on the app, sure, you should penalize people. But if you aren't making money on the app, then I think law enforcement and courts should not waste their time with stuff.
Plus, pirating an appstore app is a pain in the butt. You have to jailbreak it, install the appsync deb file, and lose everything when an update comes out. Plus, you don't get automatic updates for them.
People that are making over $50,000 a year and buying the iPhone aren't the ones pirating your app. These are almost always poor teenagers, or russians. I don't see what the big fuss is, or why we should fine some stupid teenager $250,000 for downloading a $0.99 Pasties app.
But I'm open minded. explain to me how God kills a kitten when you download Tap Tap Revenge from apptrackr.
Copyright Infringement has lots of syllables and for most people difficult to pronounce much less spell.
Stealing is easier, that's why you hear it all of the damn time.I think copying an iPhone app is no more morally wrong than smoking weed. For some people it's in bad taste, but it really hurts no one. I think if you make money on the app, sure, you should penalize people. But if you aren't making money on the app, then I think law enforcement and courts should not waste their time with stuff.
Plus, pirating an appstore app is a pain in the butt. You have to jailbreak it, install the appsync deb file, and lose everything when an update comes out. Plus, you don't get automatic updates for them.
People that are making over $50,000 a year and buying the iPhone aren't the ones pirating your app. These are almost always poor teenagers, or russians. I don't see what the big fuss is, or why we should fine some stupid teenager $250,000 for downloading a $0.99 Pasties app.
But I'm open minded. explain to me how God kills a kitten when you download Tap Tap Revenge from apptrackr.
Copyright Infringement has lots of syllables and for most people difficult to pronounce much less spell.
I think copying an iPhone app is no more morally wrong than smoking weed. For some people it's in bad taste, but it really hurts no one. I think if you make money on the app, sure, you should penalize people. But if you aren't making money on the app, then I think law enforcement and courts should not waste their time with stuff.
Plus, pirating an appstore app is a pain in the butt. You have to jailbreak it, install the appsync deb file, and lose everything when an update comes out. Plus, you don't get automatic updates for them.
People that are making over $50,000 a year and buying the iPhone aren't the ones pirating your app. These are almost always poor teenagers, or russians. I don't see what the big fuss is, or why we should fine some stupid teenager $250,000 for downloading a $0.99 Pasties app.
But I'm open minded. explain to me how God kills a kitten when you download Tap Tap Revenge from apptrackr.
I've addressed only the legal issues, not the moral issues. However I dispute your contention that it "hurts no one." Even non-substititional sales hurt sales of lower-cost alternatives, future ad-based free versions, etc.
If a piece of software has a license attached, YOU HAVE TO AGREE TO IT. Otherwise its a Civil violation.
Correct. You only have to agree to the license if you use the software in a way that you are not otherwise entitled to use it - typically, but not always, this means making any copies or derivative works, including copying into RAM for execution.
But how you're entitled to use it is up to the attached licence and local copyright laws.
Of course. But, for example, copyright law might allow you to make a copy of the software for purposes of its execution (17 USC 107) even if the license agreement says something to the contrary (assuming various underlying facts). Copyright law trumps. Alternatively, you may have some overriding legal agreement (a site license, for example) that trumps the EULA attached to a specific copy.
The point is you don't have to agree with a EULA. You only have to agree with a EULA if you want to do something with your copy that is only permissible because of the EULA (based on contract and copyright law). Typically, nothing useful can be done with a copy of software except based on the rights granted in the EULA, but this is by no means always the case, and much will depend on the exact terms of the EULA, the form of the software and how it was obtained, etc.
Addressing legal issues is boring. Smoking weed is illegal. *yawn*
Please dispute! Here I'll help: Is morally wrong to fine a 12 year old and her single mother $250,000 for downloading an cracked app?
I prefer to leave morality to philosophers and religious leaders.
Back to the law, 17 USC 504 defines statutory damages for copyright infringement. There is no such thing as a "fine" (fines go to the state, damages to the aggrieved party). Damages in copyright may either be actual damages or statutory damages.
If the little girl caused $250,000 of actual damages to someone, then she should have to pay it - why should the copyright holder have to pay for the damages caused to him out of his own pocket?
If the damages are statutory (that is, not the actual damages caused by the illegal copy), they are limited to $30,000, unless the person willfully infringed, in which case it is limited to $150,000. Since you say the damages are $250,000, then it must be actual damages, which means, essentially, that the little girl cost the aggrieved party $250,000, and the law says she should have to pay it. (Because the law says when someone injures you, they need to make you whole. Whether that's the correct moral result or not, I neither know nor care).
That's unfortunate. So if your kid gets busted for $250,000 and thrown in prison for downloading Pasties.ipa, you don't care...
I guess you don't vote either.
strawman. You raise prison for the first time.
In any event, I'd use the law and defend my kid, but if she lost, it would be because she stole many songs and redistributed them for profit (that's the only way to get the penalties to which you refer). If she did that, then it's no different than stealing car radios, and I'd have to live with the fact that i apparently never taught my kid that stealing IP and redistributing it for profit could have serious repercussions.
Since I don't steal, I don't have any reason to vote for change in the existing IP laws.
you obviously have no clue how this works
there is a difference between copyright infringement and stealing.
No there isn't. Go look at the common law definition of theft earlier in this thread.
Oops, that was a lame strawman. Just passionate.
"Since I don't steal." What do you mean by steal? Please elaborate.
BTW, Oxford American College Definition:
Steal - take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it
The keyword here is "take".
Take - dispossess someone of (something); steal or illicitly remove
Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works covered by copyright law, in a way that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.
My objective is to get you to discuss the societal ramifications of copyright law and it's good and bad effects. To me it's a grey area, and I'm always interested in opinions.
As was stated many pages ago in this thread, at common law "theft" is a deprivation or interference with a property right. Under copyright law (17 USC), people have exclusive rights of distribution, copying, performance, and derivative works with regard to their copyrighted material. By copying this material, I am depriving them of their exclusive property right, and thus stealing from them. Just as I am stealing when I refuse to pay the guy who paints my house (no one argues that "he still can paint other houses, so you didn't take anything from him" but everyone argues "the copyright holder can make other copies, so it's not stealing." Intellectually dishonest or inconsistent.)
More specifically, theft is an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another's property which must be accompanied by a mens rea of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use.
When you infringe copyright, you are doing the stuff in bold, and hence stealing.
This falls down exactly the same way as the 'steal a car' analogy. A better analogy would be:
I watched him paint a house, then copied his techniques to paint my own house exactly the same way, thus not requiring his services.*
Your analogy would work, if and only if someone got a developer to make a game/app specifically for them, design it, gave them a quote, then they copied the code and refused to pay. I think everyone would agree that that is stealing and you have cost them money. Completely different to piracy.
*Still not perfect, I know, but better because you don't cost him any more time or money.
First of all, thanks to cmaier for indulging in this discussion.
I think I'm more interested in appropriate penalties for copyright infringement. The damage that these laws have done to people is far worse than damages to any AppStore developer.
In my world, developers should just put anti-piracy code in their apps. The court system should not be involved. Anti-piracy code is working. Look at this forum to see the frustrations that the pirates are having.
Um, no. The point of the analogy was that you can "steal" intangible things, and the analogy doesn't work if the analogy is to intellectual property (since I am explaining that intellectual property, like services, is intangible but can be stolen).
First of all, thanks to cmaier for indulging in this discussion.
I think I'm more interested in appropriate penalties for copyright infringement. The damage that these laws have done to people is far worse than damages to any AppStore developer.
Maybe. Copyright infringement is a tort, and is thus subject to "damages." Tort damages may be compensatory and/or punitive. If compensatory, they are a measure of what was lost by the copyright holder. Punitive, of course, is intended to reflect society's moral outrage and/or dissuade future violations.
The copyright act permits "statutory damages" which are a fixed amount per infraction, regardless of actual damages. The reason for this is primarily that if the actual damages are small (99 cents per song) no victim could ever afford to sue to recover since court cases cost so much. The idea is that stealing is wrong, regardless of the amount, and copyright holders should not have to lie down and take a million dollar loss when a million people each rip him off for a dollar.
That's the theory. As I've mentioned before, I won't get into a morals discussion, but I do think that whether this is the best system or not, it's at least a rational system. Alternatives would be to simply make copyright infringement a crime in all circumstances and let the government spend thousands of dollars to prosecute 99 cent thefts, but that doesn't compensate the victim. Or you could get rid of copyright, but that dissuades people from creative endeavors (more art has been created out of the pursuit of cash than for any other reason). As I've also mentioned, I don't care whether you think there should be a different system - until there is, just admit that copyright infringement is theft, live with the consequences if you get caught, and don't try to moralize your lawbreaking.