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ct2k7

macrumors G3
Aug 29, 2008
8,361
3,434
London
I believe one might attempt to apply the Ghosh test for dishonesty here.

This is theft, basically:

"A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"

Research and study shows that most people who pirate then go on to purchase the damned thing.
 

snberk103

macrumors 603
Oct 22, 2007
5,503
91
An Island in the Salish Sea
I believe one might attempt to apply the Ghosh test for dishonesty here.

This is theft, basically:

"A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"

Research and study shows that most people who pirate then go on to purchase the damned thing.

You might want to go back and read the thread... We've already covered this. And you are right... piracy is not theft .... nor is is pilfering, robbing, burglary, heisting, etc etc.... however, piracy is still stealing.

We've also just recent covered the "pirates buy more" studies in the last couple of pages. And those arguments are also unconvincing, imo...
 

0dev

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Dec 22, 2009
3,947
24
127.0.0.1
But one of the studies you cite says that only 10% of the respondents are pirating music. So, "lots" means less than 1 in 10 because some of those pirates are not buying music. And yes, it may just be a correlation because to show causality you either need to set up a controlled experiment with a random selection of people, or you need to do a lot of different polls across many different groups of music downloaders to try and filter out the coincidences.

And another study says pirates are 100% more likely to pay for a subscription service. Again I point to Spotify for a real life example.

If you I have a digital that I expect to paid for by people to use that file, then by not paying to use that digital file you have stolen the money I should have received. I find this a very clear concept. I should have been paid - I was not paid. Therefore the pirate has stolen my income.

The one pirate download = one lost sale fallacy is just that; a fallacy.
 

snberk103

macrumors 603
Oct 22, 2007
5,503
91
An Island in the Salish Sea
And another study says pirates are 100% more likely to pay for a subscription service. Again I point to Spotify for a real life example.
....
The one pirate download = one lost sale fallacy is just that; a fallacy.
You're confusing "correlation" for "cause and effect", again. Pirates want a lot of music. Therefore they get their music via multiple paid and unpaid channels. It think this leads to two conclusions a) If there was a magic dongle that make pirating impossible, the people who currently pirate would still buy about the same amount of music. Recall that pirates account for only 1 in 10 people. And, b) conversely if everybody were allowed to download all the music they wanted for free, well who would buy music? Why would anyone buy music if the there were two buttons "Download for Free" and "Pay Now"?


Regarding pirate download/lost sale fallacy. Show some evidence it's a fallacy, or some logic showing it's fallacy. Here's my logic. Two parts.

A) In a capitalist society, if I have something/some service to sell I offer it for a price. The consumer can accept my terms (negotiated perhaps) and pay me for it. Or not. If they take my "thing" or "service" without paying the agreed price, then they are stealing. It doesn't matter whether they are taking virtual copy without paying.... my offer stipulated that I get paid some sum of money or other tangible benefit. If I don't receive the money (or benefit) then I have been stolen from. Whether someone "steals" something is defined by the transaction, not by how much the seller has been victimized.

B) The only people who I can declare, with certainty, would not have paid me for my content are those people who have no interest in my content. The act of downloading my content automatically, and irrefutably proves, that this person has some interest in my content. And everyone who has at least a little interest in my content is a potential paying customer. Each potential paying customer then weighs the benefits of my content to the cost of acquiring of the content (in this case of pirate, the "cost" includes the trouble of finding the content in an alternative location, and the risk of getting into trouble). The easier it becomes to pirate, both from technological hurdles and personal ethics, the less money a pirate is willing to spend to acquire the content. That is - the seller loses 'paid' customers, but gains customers who are downloading for free.... i.e. pirates as customers.
 

0dev

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Dec 22, 2009
3,947
24
127.0.0.1
You're confusing "correlation" for "cause and effect", again. Pirates want a lot of music. Therefore they get their music via multiple paid and unpaid channels. It think this leads to two conclusions a) If there was a magic dongle that make pirating impossible, the people who currently pirate would still buy about the same amount of music. Recall that pirates account for only 1 in 10 people. And, b) conversely if everybody were allowed to download all the music they wanted for free, well who would buy music? Why would anyone buy music if the there were two buttons "Download for Free" and "Pay Now"?

I'd just like to point out that you yourself have just told me that people who pirate would buy the same amount of music they do anyway if they couldn't, which shows that the one pirate download = one lost sale fallacy is just that. But I'll expand on that in a minute.

The success of Spotify - which isn't a theory or a study but a real world fact - shows that subscription services work. I know people who pirate a lot of music but have Spotify Premium because they find that it's much easier to pay a small amount every month and stream high quality music legally on their phone than it is to hunt for and download torrents, check they're legit, then send them to all their devices. Makes sense, right?

So, as I've said many times, all the creative industries need to do to beat 90% of piracy is offer an attractive legal online music service. Simple.

As a side note, I already mentioned earlier in the thread that I support independent artists, and these are people who will give out free copies of their music just to make themselves known, but I will pay anyway to support them. And though not everyone has that ethic, I'm sure many aside from me do.

I also think people would have to pay for music in order to keep the music coming, so they'd do it for that reason, too.

Regarding pirate download/lost sale fallacy. Show some evidence it's a fallacy, or some logic showing it's fallacy. Here's my logic. Two parts.

A) In a capitalist society, if I have something/some service to sell I offer it for a price. The consumer can accept my terms (negotiated perhaps) and pay me for it. Or not. If they take my "thing" or "service" without paying the agreed price, then they are stealing. It doesn't matter whether they are taking virtual copy without paying.... my offer stipulated that I get paid some sum of money or other tangible benefit. If I don't receive the money (or benefit) then I have been stolen from. Whether someone "steals" something is defined by the transaction, not by how much the seller has been victimized.

B) The only people who I can declare, with certainty, would not have paid me for my content are those people who have no interest in my content. The act of downloading my content automatically, and irrefutably proves, that this person has some interest in my content. And everyone who has at least a little interest in my content is a potential paying customer. Each potential paying customer then weighs the benefits of my content to the cost of acquiring of the content (in this case of pirate, the "cost" includes the trouble of finding the content in an alternative location, and the risk of getting into trouble). The easier it becomes to pirate, both from technological hurdles and personal ethics, the less money a pirate is willing to spend to acquire the content. That is - the seller loses 'paid' customers, but gains customers who are downloading for free.... i.e. pirates as customers.

Let me set up a scenario for you. Say you walked into a shop and everything was free. The shelves were full of various different forms of media and you could take as much as you could carry.

Logic says that, given this opportunity, you are a lot more likely to experiment trying new bands, artists, movies, games, or whatever it is, if you're not risking spending your money on something you might not like. After all, if you download something for free and you don't like it, you've not really lost anything, whereas if you pay for a bunch of media and you don't like it, you've wasted your hard earned cash.

Of course, if it turns out you do really like a band, you would then check out some of their other work, and you're likely to buy it to support that band so they can keep making music.

So, that is the logic. You're a lot more likely to try things you'd never have paid for if you can get them for free, and if you do like them, you're likely to support them. This is what the studies back up, and this is also a reason Spotify works so well - it's great for free and legal music discovery.
 

snberk103

macrumors 603
Oct 22, 2007
5,503
91
An Island in the Salish Sea
I'd just like to point out that you yourself have just told me that people who pirate would buy the same amount of music they do anyway if they couldn't, which shows that the one pirate download = one lost sale fallacy is just that. But I'll expand on that in a minute.
Yes. A study you linked indicated that people who pirate would likely buy about the same amount of music. However, if they are pirating my content because it's easy, then they are spending their money elsewhere. I don't think the solution is to make everything easier to pirate - because then you lose customers who are currently paying.
The success of Spotify - which isn't a theory or a study but a real world fact - shows that subscription services work. I know people who pirate a lot of music but have Spotify Premium because they find that it's much easier to pay a small amount every month and stream high quality music legally on their phone than it is to hunt for and download torrents, check they're legit, then send them to all their devices. Makes sense, right?
Not sure of your point. Spotify is not pirating, since the music is there with permission, nor are people getting anything for free since they are either paying a monthly fee or having ads streamed into their content. I listen to lots of 'free; music. Some of it is commercial free, even. If by 'free' we forget that I'm either listening to ads or paying taxes to support the CBC and it's radio services. In the case of Spotify, commercial radio, and public radio - the artist (or their label) has given permission to have their content distributed. Mostly the get paid for this, but not necessarily. But they have given permission.
So, as I've said many times, all the creative industries need to do to beat 90% of piracy is offer an attractive legal online music service. Simple.
It may (or may not) make a good business case. But we are not debating what the best business case is for the music industry. We are debating whether pirating someone's IP (like music) is stealing or not.

In the case of Spotify it's interesting to note that several artists are now withdrawing because Spotify can't pay them enough to make it worth their while.
As a side note, I already mentioned earlier in the thread that I support independent artists, and these are people who will give out free copies of their music just to make themselves known, but I will pay anyway to support them. And though not everyone has that ethic, I'm sure many aside from me do.
Good for you... so do I. We have an artist on the island who was selling his CD in the local stores for whatever you wanted to pay for it. And my wife was in a store in Vancouver that had two prices, one about half of the other. When you got to the cash you simply told them whether you were feeling rich or poor that day. However, in all of these cases - including the musicians who choose to put out their material for free, or on a trial basis - they were giving permission to do certain things with the content. A pirate does not have permission.
....
Let me set up a scenario for you. Say you walked into a shop and everything was free. The shelves were full of various different forms of media and you could take as much as you could carry.
...
That is a business decision, and a business model - and has nothing to do with piracy... which is taking a copy of something for which you do not have permission.

I agree that there may be business reasons to make some content available for free. However, using that content is not piracy nor is it stealing. If, for whatever reason, the creator of the content wants to get paid for the use of that content, then using that content without paying is stealing and is piracy.
 

ct2k7

macrumors G3
Aug 29, 2008
8,361
3,434
London
Are you going to expand on this, Mr Webster?

Of course.

Definition:

Steal

(i)take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and with the intention to deprive the originator of said item or object.

Unfortunately, this is the same for theft, legally.

I think we can all agree that we are not depriving the music record labels of an audio file, but - we do not have the correct license to listen to it.

Edit, just seen this article:http://www.neowin.net/news/uk-legalizing-private-copying-of-cds-and-dvds

It's surprising to see that most people didn't know that even though they purchased a CD, they did not have the rights, permissions or license to copy to digital medium, such as iTunes->iPod.
 

snberk103

macrumors 603
Oct 22, 2007
5,503
91
An Island in the Salish Sea
Of course.

Definition:

Steal

(i)take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and with the intention to deprive the originator of said item or object.

Unfortunately, this is the same for theft, legally.

I think we can all agree that we are not depriving the music record labels of an audio file, but - we do not have the correct license to listen to it.

Edit, just seen this article:http://www.neowin.net/news/uk-legalizing-private-copying-of-cds-and-dvds

It's surprising to see that most people didn't know that even though they purchased a CD, they did not have the rights, permissions or license to copy to digital medium, such as iTunes->iPod.

There are all sorts of references to "stealing" not involving the physical property. For example, on http://www.dictionary.com....
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

.....

... to appropriate (ideas, etc) without acknowledgment, as in plagiarism

Seeing where you are from, I checked further and the OED online has a definition that refers to stealing ideas - not property.

And while we are at, and this is directed at everyone who uses the dictionary to prove that "Theft/Stealing is not Piracy"... you should look up the definition of "Piracy" because we are not talking about ships here, and the taking of treasure or cargo therefrom..... :)


Update: @ct2k7 Different countries have different fair use laws. Here in Canada we are allowed to make a copy, for personal use and/or back up of music or movies that we have paid for. Also, you will see if you read through the thread, that I am no angel and that I would support someone making a copy of something that they have paid for for their own personal use (not to give to anyone else) regardless of the local laws.
 
Last edited:

OllyW

Moderator
Staff member
Oct 11, 2005
17,196
6,799
The Black Country, England
UK Government drops website blocking

Plans to block websites that host copyright infringing material are to be dumped by the government.

Business secretary Vince Cable announced the change following a review of the policy by telecoms regulator Ofcom.

Website blocking was one of the key provision contained in the Digital Economy Act.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14372698
 
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