Ayepecks Posted April 21, 2009 Author Share Posted April 21, 2009 The legal definition of theft (at least in the UK) is obtaining another persons property with the intention of depriving them of the use of that property. Such definitions are further defined with terms such as TANGIBLE. Information or ideas are not TANGIBLE in the legal sense and can therefore not be stolen in the legal sense. Why do you think people are sued for copyright infringement and not charged with theft? Because it is not theft. Copyright infringement is not theft either. You seem to be confusing moral opinion with legal fact. If you shoplift an item from a store, you have deprived that store of something that they paid for, something that it will cost them more money to replace. They are out of pocket in REAL terms. If someone walks into a store and buys a game, they have deprived the store of nothing, the store got what they expected to get for that item (likewise upwards through the distribution chain). If you then take it home and make a copy of that item and put it on the internet then you have infringed copyright, but you have stolen nothing and no one is out of pocket. If you download the item that person made available, you have not commited copyright infringement unless you start sending data to others and you have not deprived the store of the original sale (and not all file distribution methods require you to upload data either). There may be a feeble argument as to wether anyone else in the distribution chain, namely publisher/developer is out of pocket as a result of you downloading it but then we enter into the realms of fiction and hypotheticals. You "hypotheticaly" stole something because you "possilbly" would have bought the item you downloaded, so "maybe" you have deprived someone of income. "Maybe" depriving someone of income is a far cry from actually stealing something tangible. There is no property to replace, and as such there is no loss except an imaginary loss in a fictional scenario where you hypotheticaly stole something that did not physically exist to be stolen. Legal definition of theft: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Theft But, again, different in different countries. So maybe you're correct... but... You're really just lying when you say you haven't committed copyright infringement by downloading a game illegally. That is blatantly incorrect in almost anywhere you go except maybe a third-world country. I'm not even sure what to say here because what you just said is contrary to the very definition of copyright infringement. While lost sales are sometimes a factor, they are not required. Again, that's just a blatant fabrication of the truth. Stop trying to imply piracy is OK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
O.G Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 (edited) Well except I'm not lying. I have never seen a single case of anyone being prosecuted for downloading let alone successfully prosecuted, anywhere in the world. I have however seen a fair few people sued for distributing or making availble, i.e. uploading becuase that does infact constitute copyright infringement. Theft is a criminal offence in most countries yet copyright infringement is a civil offence and requires that the agrieved party instigate proceedings in order to recouperate some abitrary ammount of money. If it was theft then you'd go to jail. I do not need to justify illegally downloading a game because as it stands the law does that for me. Untill that changes your moral high horse is in all reality a shetland pony. In order to define what constitutes theft you must define what constitutes "property". I assume the reason that there has been no such legal action is becuase those who feel they have been stolen from would be unable to prove that anything was actually stolen from them. The thing they have "had stolen" is still in their possesion and what they have actually lost is nothing more than a copy, a copy that was never theirs. In order for there to be theft you would need to break into their offices/servers and take from them any trace of the thing so they no longer were in posession of it, now that would actually be theft, and it would actually be criminal and you would actually end up behind bars for it (probably). Otherwise this is a moot point. Edited April 21, 2009 by O.G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BinaryFragger Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 It just so happens that most people (including myself) pirate games because they can't afford it. People who can't afford it and don't want to pirate simply don't play the game. Since most pirated games can't play online, as long as no one knows about it, it's like the pirated copy never existed to anyone apart from the downloader. It's not taking from profit. If anything it's costing the seeders their precious bandwidth >.> Yet you have enough money for a quad core system. :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CentralDogma Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 If the program has an EULA, as far as I know, if you decline the terms, you have the legal right in the UK to return it, whether you've opened the case, seen the cd key or whatever (it should state in the EULA something along the lines of "If you do not agree to these terms you should return the product to your place of purchase for a full refund").I believe the law states this clause is a legal requirement if you can't see the EULA before you buy the product. I'm not 100% certain though. In the US it is common practice for stores to not accept opened software for return. EULAs are therefore largly ignored by the courts over here. Whether you like it or not, it *is* stealing - you're stealing bandwidth and other server resources (when playing online). Those cost Stardock money to maintain, and anybody who has pirated the game is stealing those resources (using the definition of stealing as taking without paying for).Yes, there is a fine line between stealing and copyright infringement, however, both are illegal. Well except I'm not lying. I have never seen a single case of anyone being prosecuted for downloading let alone successfully prosecuted, anywhere in the world. I have however seen a fair few people sued for distributing or making availble, i.e. uploading becuase that does infact constitute copyright infringement. Theft is a criminal offence in most countries yet copyright infringement is a civil offence and requires that the agrieved party instigate proceedings in order to recouperate some abitrary ammount of money. If it was theft then you'd go to jail. I do not need to justify illegally downloading a game because as it stands the law does that for me. Untill that changes your moral high horse is in all reality a shetland pony. :yes: This is true, there is no law against downloading. Courts would also have a pretty hard time charging you with knowing something was copyrighted (innocent infringement defense) if you had only downloaded it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Island Dog Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 It just so happens that most people (including myself) pirate games because they can't afford it. That's a pretty lame excuse. I can list a number of things I don't have, but I don't go out and steal them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Island Dog Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 It just so happens that most people (including myself) pirate games because they can't afford it. That's a pretty lame excuse. I can list a number of things I don't have, but I don't go out and steal them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Island Dog Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 Sorry, no idea what happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minimoose Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 Pretty sure a girl's parents were fined because she downloaded 3000 songs or something... Unless she was sued for seeding them (therefore making them available to others), but I'm pretty sure it was just the downloading part. I think it would be pretty hard to hold up a court case by saying you didn't know downloading music with torrents/whatever was illegal. The thing is, it's easier for them to go after the people who make the stuff available rather than the millions of downloaders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayepecks Posted April 21, 2009 Author Share Posted April 21, 2009 Well except I'm not lying. I have never seen a single case of anyone being prosecuted for downloading let alone successfully prosecuted, anywhere in the world. I have however seen a fair few people sued for distributing or making availble, i.e. uploading becuase that does infact constitute copyright infringement. Theft is a criminal offence in most countries yet copyright infringement is a civil offence and requires that the agrieved party instigate proceedings in order to recouperate some abitrary ammount of money. If it was theft then you'd go to jail. I do not need to justify illegally downloading a game because as it stands the law does that for me. Untill that changes your moral high horse is in all reality a shetland pony.In order to define what constitutes theft you must define what constitutes "property". I assume the reason that there has been no such legal action is becuase those who feel they have been stolen from would be unable to prove that anything was actually stolen from them. The thing they have "had stolen" is still in their possesion and what they have actually lost is nothing more than a copy, a copy that was never theirs. In order for there to be theft you would need to break into their offices/servers and take from them any trace of the thing so they no longer were in posession of it, now that would actually be theft, and it would actually be criminal and you would actually end up behind bars for it (probably). Otherwise this is a moot point. You have to be joking. You've never seen a single case of anyone being prosecuted for anyone downloading copyrighted material, let alone successfully persecuted... anywhere in the world? I'm not sure you understand what copyright infringement is, so I'll give you a while to review it before I respond again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement Here's a key point from that text: "Sharing copied music is legal in many countries, such as Canada (downloading only),[8][9] and parts of Europe, provided that the songs are not sold." REPRODUCING a work is still COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. So, yes, you are lying. And, again, we're not referring to copyright infringement. I already said you may be right on theft depending on where you live. That's not where I said you were lying. The law DOES NOT protect you from pirating a game. You yourself just said it was illegal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoJo Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 What annoys me is people trying to equate copyright infringement to stealing, if you pirate something you dont walk into a game shop and take it off the shelves, you just download the bits. Thats not stealing. Aren't you the guy who has 100s of "review copy" 360 games? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayepecks Posted April 21, 2009 Author Share Posted April 21, 2009 BTW, O.G., you may want to do a quick Google search before you say the law protects you from downloading software: http://www.google.com/search?q=is+download...lient=firefox-a I'm just linking to Google because almost any link is going to say the same thing. And I'm sorry you think if I'm on some sort of moral "high horse." But the truth of the matter is I'm not. I'm on the same footing as you. You know it's illegal, yet you continue to do it. The fact that you know means you're on an even level with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoJo Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 The legal definition of theft (at least in the UK) is obtaining another persons property with the intention of depriving them of the use of that property. Such definitions are further defined with terms such as TANGIBLE. Information or ideas are not TANGIBLE in the legal sense and can therefore not be stolen in the legal sense. Why do you think people are sued for copyright infringement and not charged with theft? Because it is not theft. Copyright infringement is not theft either. You seem to be confusing moral opinion with legal fact. If you shoplift an item from a store, you have deprived that store of something that they paid for, something that it will cost them more money to replace. They are out of pocket in REAL terms. If someone walks into a store and buys a game, they have deprived the store of nothing, the store got what they expected to get for that item (likewise upwards through the distribution chain). If you then take it home and make a copy of that item and put it on the internet then you have infringed copyright, but you have stolen nothing and no one is out of pocket. If you download the item that person made available, you have not commited copyright infringement unless you start sending data to others and you have not deprived the store of the original sale (and not all file distribution methods require you to upload data either). There may be a feeble argument as to wether anyone else in the distribution chain, namely publisher/developer is out of pocket as a result of you downloading it but then we enter into the realms of fiction and hypotheticals. You "hypotheticaly" stole something because you "possilbly" would have bought the item you downloaded, so "maybe" you have deprived someone of income. "Maybe" depriving someone of income is a far cry from actually stealing something tangible. There is no property to replace, and as such there is no loss except an imaginary loss in a fictional scenario where you hypotheticaly stole something that did not physically exist to be stolen. Spoken like a true internet lawyer. Come back when you've read the case histories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
O.G Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 (edited) Show me a single case of ANYONE being charged with theft for downloading. Show me a single case of ANYONE being successfully sued for downloading. Considering virtually every case of copyright infringement brought before a court used evidence to show that the party they were seeking damages from had SENT THEM data, and that was their sole shred of evidence for copyright infringement, downloading is legaly irrelevent. I've seen plenty of case histories, and they all prove that no one has been sued or charged for DOWNLOADING (and the majority of cases are just thrown out, period). In fact, in some countries downloading copyright protected material is perfectly legal, uploading it however is not. I believe in Germany for example individuals are allotted a certain ammount of copyrighted material they can download before the actually break the law (3000 mp3 for example). So yeah I have no personal issue with downloading copyrighted stuff, even if it may "technically" be unlawfull because well the law is an ass, and has shown it doesn't give a monkey's if I download. Am I thief? No. Does it annoy developers? Yes. Do I care? Not in the least. Edited April 22, 2009 by O.G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayepecks Posted April 22, 2009 Author Share Posted April 22, 2009 ...how about the RIAA's cases? And, please, get off the theft thing. Now you're just beating a dead horse, because we already stopped that conversation long ago, as I already told you. Downloading data and having data sent to you is the EXACT. SAME. THING. If you're downloading something it's being sent to you from some outside source, be it another user, a server, etc. "The law is an ass." Wonderful. I hope you go into a job someday where people get your work illegally, without paying for it when they should be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
O.G Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 ...how about the RIAA's cases? And, please, get off the theft thing. Now you're just beating a dead horse, because we already stopped that conversation long ago, as I already told you."The law is an ass." Wonderful. ...how about the RIAA's cases? And, please, get off the theft thing. Now you're just beating a dead horse, because we already stopped that conversation long ago, as I already told you. I hope you go into a job someday where people get your work illegally, without paying for it when they should be. What about the RIAA? You know how many people they have attempted to threaten into out of court settlements? Hundreds of thousands possibly millions. You know how many people they have attempted to sue? Tens of thousands. You know how many cases they have actually won? I could probably count them with one hand. They can barely even prove a case of infrngement when you have been shown to be distributing so do you think they would stand a hope in hell of getting any judgement for proving someone downloading? Don't make me laugh. As for your last statement, If I were to enter such a market knowing full well that I may lose a significant part of my revenue to piracy, then I would need to be a complete idiot, but then I could always try what some of you do and just whine about it and hope it fixes itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CentralDogma Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 Spoken like a true internet lawyer.Come back when you've read the case histories. Show me a law on the books that makes downloading copyrighted material illegal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayepecks Posted April 22, 2009 Author Share Posted April 22, 2009 What about the RIAA? You know how many people they have attempted to threaten into out of court settlements? Hundreds of thousands possibly millions. You know how many people they have attempted to sue? Tens of thousands. You know how many cases they have actually won? I could probably count them with one hand. They can barely even prove a case of infrngement when you have been shown to be distributing so do you think they would stand a hope in hell of getting any judgement for proving someone downloading? Don't make me laugh. As for your last statement, If I were to enter such a market knowing full well that I may lose a significant part of my revenue to piracy, then I would need to be a complete idiot, but then I could always try what some of you do and just whine about it and hope it fixes itself. So you told me before that there has never been one case tried, let alone one case won, and now you freely admit you've lied yet again? Every company knows that some of their merchadise is going to be stolen or the system is going to be abused in some way. Be it retail outlets, the fast food industry, whatever. So don't give me some line of you'd be an idiot to go into such an industry, because every industry is like that. You're an absolute joke. You think it's your right to download things illegally because there is some way to do it. You're no different than any other criminal out there, despite what you tell yourself, and you know it. You know it's illegal as you've stated before, but you continue to do it. @ CentralDogma: Is that a joke? This topic has already linked to the resources you'd need to find those laws. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Island Dog Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 If you have to keep making excuses and try to find 'loopholes' to make what you are doing not seem illegal, then that's a whole new issue right there. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CentralDogma Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 If you have to keep making excuses and try to find 'loopholes' to make what you are doing not seem illegal, then that's a whole new issue right there. ;) It's not a loophole when there's no law against it. It's simply legal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayepecks Posted April 23, 2009 Author Share Posted April 23, 2009 ...please tell me you're joking. It's illegal to download copyright software in almost every country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abysal Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Yeah multilayer is 10x better then single player. I played several great online pantheon matches yesterday. I also installed it on my laptop and my main box, and was able to play a LAN multilayer match with my bro , was pretty fun too except my laptop runs it pretty bad on a 6800 ultra go :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hammond Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Aren't you the guy who has 100s of "review copy" 360 games? I dont even own an Xbox 360 let alone copied games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanManIt Posted April 26, 2009 Share Posted April 26, 2009 Yes it is illegal. Is there any real argument to it not being illegal? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sethos Posted April 26, 2009 Share Posted April 26, 2009 Aren't you the guy who has 100s of "review copy" 360 games? That was former member "Popisdead" who had a lot of 'advance review copies' :laugh: ... And a TorrentLeech account with some high numbers, wonder why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Audioboxer Subscriber² Posted April 26, 2009 Subscriber² Share Posted April 26, 2009 Why?Consoles are even easier to pirate they dont have copyprotections so you dont have to wait for cracks for games and you can play them online without the need for a retail CDKEY. At least for the Wii and 360. Except you can have your 360 banned, try getting your PC banned. And there's always potential for these closed platforms to fight piracy by plugging holes with firmware you need to upgrade to. On the Wii there ain't much to even bother upgrading your firmware for, but on the PS3/360 if you were restricted to not being able to upgrade firmware you wouldn't be able to go online any more and miss cool features. Then there's the fact the PS3 that isn't even hacked right now. Much easier on the PC, and far less risk. Console releases are constantly outselling the PC counterpart by far and large - At time that to do with other things also, like **** ports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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