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When you "take" a CD from a store, someone else cannot buy that CD legitimately. When you "take" a copy of an app from a developer, the developer still has the app they can sell licenses to others with. You are not really understanding the differences between piracy and stealing.

I understand the differences perfectly well. You don't seem to understand the definition of the word "steal". It is not limited to physical property.
 
Stealing is theft of property without consent. If someone writes a program for whatever platform, is that not intellectual property that they created? If you pirate an app, is that not stealing intellectual property? I think so. Guilty! Give them the chair! :D
 
Piracy is WRONG. I don't care if you call it stealing or copyright infringement or whatever, it is plain WRONG.

Whilst piracy might be plain WRONG it is not illegal. It's naughty, but not illegal.

It's WRONG to download CDs or DVDs to your computer in the UK. Millions do it though because it's not illegal. It hurts no one.

I won't buy MP3s of albums I already own - tough luck if I have to transfer the media across - technically piracy.
 
When you "take" a CD from a store, someone else cannot buy that CD legitimately. When you "take" a copy of an app from a developer, the developer still has the app they can sell licenses to others with. You are not really understanding the differences between piracy and stealing.

The difference is only semantic. You stole my rights, not my physical property. Before you pirated, I had the right to not let you have a copy, and you stole that right from me.

And it's a distinction without a difference. Piracy is no different than you taking my car for a joyride and bringing it back - I still have the car, but I've been violated. It's also no different than you breaking naked into my house and playing with my PS3. I still have my house and my stuff, but you have violated my rights and stolen my freedom to exclude you from touching my stuff.
 
Whilst piracy might be plain WRONG it is not illegal. It's naughty, but not illegal.

It's WRONG to download CDs or DVDs to your computer in the UK. Millions do it though because it's not illegal. It hurts no one.

I won't buy MP3s of albums I already own - tough luck if I have to transfer the media across - technically piracy.

It most certainly is illegal. In the U.S. it is a violation of the DMCA to circumvent copy protections, and a violation of 17 USC to make copies and derivative works without permission from the copyright holder. In Europe there are similar laws.
 
I'm all for trying it before I buy, and the free lite versions don't cut it. If I like it I buy it, same with music. I think it would be better to some how freely "rent" out the full app to try it instead of lite versions.

THIS is exactly why I'm not anti-filesharing. I still believe that MOST downloaders think like this, especially based on our sales numbers.
 
I understand the differences perfectly well. You don't seem to understand the definition of the word "steal". It is not limited to physical property.

Stealing is theft of property. If someone writes a program for whatever platform, is that not intellectual property? If you pirate an app, is that not stealing intellectual property? I think so.

Then I challenge both of you with MW's definition of "theft."

1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

Copying an app (pirating) without consent does not deprive the owner (developer) of said app. Therefore, an app cannot be "stolen" by your short-sighted definition because there is no "theft" involved, QED. Thanks for playing.
 
No, we're having an ethical discussion. Some people just have no morals.

Is that supposed to make them feel bad or good?

Yes, thievery has always been a tricky grey area. Thankfully it was decided long ago that taking something that isn't yours is wrong.

Decided by whom and with what authority? My morality is might makes right. If I can copy your property and get away with it, then my conscience is clear for clearly I have the might to do so. Welcome to the real world. Save your preaching people who care.

As I said before, "the backbends..." :rolleyes:

Yeah always makes me laugh when people try to make backends to defend some kind of ethical standard that they use to manipulate others. Go take a philosophy class or read some Socrates and then come talk to me about what you think justice or right and wrong are about.
 
Then I challenge both of you with MW's definition of "theft."



Copying an app (pirating) without consent does not deprive the owner (developer) of said app. Therefore, an app cannot be "stolen" by your short-sighted definition because there is no "theft" involved, QED. Thanks for playing.

It says "property," not "physical copy." You have deprived the copyright owner of his intellectual property right of exclusion. You thus have stolen from the copyright owner. Intellectual property is a set of rights, not a set of objects.
 
And it's a distinction without a difference. Piracy is no different than you taking my car for a joyride and bringing it back - I still have the car, but I've been violated.

No, because in doing that "violation" you have devalued the car considerably, because assuming you are American, you wouldn't know how to drive my manual car anyway :)
 
Decided by whom and with what authority? My morality is might makes right. If I can copy your property and get away with it, then my conscience is clear for clearly I have the might to do so. Welcome to the real world. Save your preaching people who care.

You know, if you stop stealing software, when you die you get to go up into a city in the sky and eat all the cake you want.
 
Stealing is theft of property without consent. If someone writes a program for whatever platform, is that not intellectual property that they created? If you pirate an app, is that not stealing intellectual property? I think so.

But the concept of intellectual property is a joke that many reject. You will need to do more to defend that idea for that is precisely the issue that you are all presuming in your own favor. Please try to convince me about the right to patent genes for example.
 
Some people just wont pay attention.

Copying is not theft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVaJN0f0VQ

Copying can be COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Stealing, and Theft requires that I actually take something from you. When pirating software, movies, or music - nothing is actually taken.

However, pirating IS unethical, and CAN be considered COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

Now, the only REAL costs of pirating can be what people have mentioned related to things like bandwidth costs, or service related costs.

You cannot count lost "potential" revenue as theft. If I was going to go to a movie but got stuck in traffic and didn't get there - did the traffic steal from the movie companies? No. If I was going to download a game and a friend said don't bother because it sucks - did my friend steal from the game developers? No.

Stealing and Theft are bad.
Copyright Infringement is illegal but not always bad, and much more of a "grey area" in many ways.

Intellectual property is a new concept that never really existed until the 1900s. We are still working out the kinks. You can't really own ideas - if that is the case then Avatar is a blatant rip-off of Pocohantas and should be shut down...

The real answer is that if you make a product good enough and sell it at a price that it is worth - people will buy it. Focus on that...

I have a jailbroken iPhone because I use TMobile. I have never installed or even searched for a pirated app. I have bought about 50 apps that I use frequently on my jailbroken iPhone.

My reasons for jailbreaking:

1. To use a carrier other than AT&T
2. To enable picture messaging (MMS) on my 1st gen iPhone
3. To use SBSettings to make it easier for me to change settings like brightness or turn on or off WiFi/Bluetooth.

Thats it.

But copying is not theft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVaJN0f0VQ


This has got to be one of the most uninformed posts in MR history. Intellectual Property is NOT "a new concept that never existed until the 1900s." The concept of copyrights and patents is in the U.S. Constitution which was ratified in 1789. In case you aren't good with math that is over a century before the 1900s. (See Art. I., Sec 8, Cl. 8). The first U.S. Copyright Act was signed into law July 17, 1879 by George Washington.

Intellectual Property IS property. Taking it without authorization IS a U.S. civil and criminal offense (See U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 5). The REAL cost of pirating is that it acts as a deterrent to creating it, and adding to the library of ideas which is why the Founders saw fit to include the concept of Intellectual Property in the U.S. Constitution.
 
So, which agency do YOU work for? BSA perhaps?

This is BOTH an ethical discussion AND a legal one, as far as I can determine. On one hand, we've got people explaining and arguing about the current LAW on "copyright violation", and on the other, we've got the whole moral/ethical thing being hashed out.

Your definitions of "steal" in the URL you linked include all sorts of "colloquial" uses of the word. (EG. Yes, you can "steal a base" in baseball, without physically removing the plate from the ground. By the same token, you can "steal" someone's ideas or paragraphs of text they wrote - but in REALITY, we have other, more accurate terms for those actions, like plagiarism!)

The whole reason we make the distinction about "stealing software" (or music, or movies, or ??) being inaccurate is because it's used as an easy way to try to win people over to one side of the argument. By and large, people fully understand the concept of stealing things. They dislike it when people take their stuff away, and then they're forced to do without it or buy it all over again. But that's NOT the issue here. My friend could copy my word processing program without mine disappearing off my drive or becoming non-functional. (As Thomas Jefferson once said about copyright: "If I light your candle with the flame of mine, it diminishes neither.")

The ONLY issue here is that authors of these works feel they're entitled to forcing each and every person who obtains a copy of the digital data to pay them whatever their asking price may be, and to be legally subject to whatever restrictions on the program's use they can dream up. (I once bought a street map program for Windows called "Street Atlas USA", for example, and was shocked to find, in the fine print of the owners' manual, that the software publisher put a legal limitation in it saying I was ONLY allowed to use the product with THEIR brand of GPS system!)

As someone who once wrote and sold some software myself (and did the same with some music), I have *no* problem with the concept that only SOME people who obtain my works will pay for them. I realize that many of the copies that "leak out" will result in a form of advertising for what I'm selling. Others may be going to people who couldn't afford my asking price at that point in time, but who may just pay me in the future for something else I put out there, when their financial situation changes.

Ultimately, it's a case of "diminishing returns" anyway. If I put ONE thing out there and sit back for years, excepting to keep raking in money from it? Guess what! Sales keep on dropping as time passes. To maximize profits, I'm FAR better off getting off my butt and releasing NEW works regularly. Nothing new can be "pirated" until at least somebody pays for the first one, even in a worst-case scenario.... In the real-world, there's usually an initial surge of sales of something new, followed by a relative trickle for a long time after that. Better to go for those "surges" than to cry to government to "guarantee my income" with the force of law.


WTF? No it doesn't. Ideas are "stolen" all the time. http://www.google.com/search?q=defi...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a


No, we're having an ethical discussion. Some people just have no morals.

Yes, thievery has always been a tricky grey area. Thankfully it was decided long ago that taking something that isn't yours is wrong.


As I said before, "the backbends..." :rolleyes:
 
Then I challenge both of you with MW's definition of "theft."

Copying an app (pirating) without consent does not deprive the owner (developer) of said app. Therefore, an app cannot be "stolen" by your short-sighted definition because there is no "theft" involved, QED. Thanks for playing.

My definition of "steal" came from MW as well. Words have multiple definitions. Did you ignore (b) from your example?
 
It most certainly is illegal. In the U.S. it is a violation of the DMCA to circumvent copy protections, and a violation of 17 USC to make copies and derivative works without permission from the copyright holder. In Europe there are similar laws.

Great, but some laws need to be re-evaluated and possibly rejected. What is the basis for these laws? Let's scrutinize them not on the basis of historical precedence but on the basis of philosophical merit before we start throwing the appeals to them around shall we?
 
It says "property," not "physical copy." You have deprived the copyright owner of his intellectual property right of exclusion. You thus have stolen from the copyright owner. Intellectual property is a set of rights, not a set of objects.

Unless you're reselling the app you haven't deprived the copyright owner of anything other than this phantom revenue the anti-pirating establishment wants to believe would exist if pirating was somehow eliminated altogether.

Also, intellectual property law vs. common criminal burglary are two totally different things, which seems to be the source of most (edit: all?) of the misunderstanding here.
 
These piracy debates are even more entertaining than the Mac/Windows arguments.

Everyone on both sides is so stubborn, yet to vocal. I'd love just one for someone to reverse their position based on something someone else says.

Rape, sodomy, car theft, politics - you'd think we're in the PRSI forum!
 
No, it doesn't. Try reading it again.

It doesn't matter how many times I read it, I will come to the same conclusion.

Do you need insurance against piracy like you do theft? No.
Will me randomly downloading something right now cause the price to go up next year to accommodate that "loss"? No.

People seem to think that me saying piracy is not theft is the same as saying piracy is an acceptable social practice. That has never been the point I've been arguing. Too many peoples minds are dominated by their emotional response that the logical side can't be heard.
 
sdfg

all that data is wrong and i'll tell you why.

I downloaded fieldrunners 20 times, and as me there are many people.
So just with me apple lost 2'99$€ not 60. (and later i bought this app)

--------------------------------------

I think Apple needs to work with carriers to offer unlocking without a jailbreak and also start banning IMEI's of jailbroken phones found to be running pirated apps.

I dont pay 600/700$€ to be banned, and you? and what could we think about apple after this.....

BTW look this video i did... without Jailbreak i couldnt use my 3g again... but now i can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr4Zl9m_GOA

and what about Bluetooth, can you transfer files? LOL, i can...

JAILBREAK FTW!!!
-------------------------------------------------------------
THE THING IS..... **** apple (sorry) but if they dont create the perfect file.... we could edit it always. So that is not our problem ;)
 
Unless you're reselling the app you haven't deprived the copyright owner of anything other than this phantom revenue the anti-pirating establishment wants to believe would exist if pirating was somehow eliminated altogether.

You are depriving the copyright owner of their rights and devaluing their product.
 
But the concept of intellectual property is a joke that many reject. You will need to do more to defend that idea for that is precisely the issue that you are all presuming in your own favor. Please try to convince me about the right to patent genes for example.

Rejecting IP, rejecting Tim Duncan on a fast break, rejecting anything....blah blah blah. The bottom line is that you (not you specifically) are not paying for something that has a sale price. If you are not paying for something that has a sales price, what would you call that?
 
im glad i contributed to this.. im not gonna by an app and have it end up sucking, which many do. and i eventually become bored with most so i haz saved monies.. but i would say that most of the time i just wouldnt have boughten that app if i couldnt have gotten it for free.. and i assume most people are like this. so either way apple wasnt gonna get money.. the only app i have ever bought was on accident too.
 
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