DRM and Piracy: Discussion

[Ryusen]

Question: what is copying music over to your hard drive entail? If I burn a CD onto my computer, I then have 2 copies of the album, even though I only purchased 1. And what happens if a friend listens to my hard drive copy? He didn't purchase the album, or the rights to listen to it. Is he breaking the law? Where do you draw the line, and how do you enforce it?

I implore you to use common sense whenever applicable. Of course your friend hasn't broken any laws, and I believe (while some would dispute this) neither have you in backing up your files. I'll let lawyers argue about the knitty-gritty. As far as my knowledge goes, if you obtain (not just listen to, but physically obtain) a copy of an artist's copyrighted work without compensating the artist (garage sales and the like are, of course, exceptions), then it's probably illegal.

The idea with "owning" a CD or piece of music is still controversial. Some believe that you simply own the physical disk, and should you lose the disk, you lose your rights to the songs. Others believe that you purchase the songs instead, and you are now free to download those same songs at your whim because you have already bought them. The legality line is incredibly fuzzy, and this topic deserves several more paragraphs than I am able to give it.

Oh, sure. It's theft. I never said it wasn't. I said it wasn't hurting the industry.

I'm not sure we're on the same page. We both agree that downloading music is theft, but can't agree on whether or not the artists are paying the consequences? (Yes, I am more concerned about the artist that makes the music than the company who jacks up the price and sells it to me). If I choose to download an album off TPB, the artist will never see the money that would have gone to them had I purchased it through legal means. The same goes for film makers and game producers. This is directly harming the artist as it deprives them of income.

Unless we're arguing artist vs industry practices, I must be missing something.

[specter]

Sadly, common sense holds little merit in a court of law, which is, coincidentally, where this will be decided in the legal aspects of it all. What constitutes as owning it, indeed? If you can listen to music without owning it, then why own things at all? Just listen to someone else's collection.
Say, I borrow a friends Zune/iPod, and I listen to his music. Right there, nothing wrong, right? And if I steal the Zune/iPod, then that's stealing, because you can't simply make a copy of 'em. Buuuuuut, if copying music to a hard drive is "ok", then what if I decide to be a good friend and back up his music on my hard drive? If you say that it's not ok because he doesn't own my hard drive, then what about the people who rip albums onto computers that aren't theirs (kids at school, employees at a cubical farm)? They don't own the hard drive.
And how is selling a CD at a garage sale exempt? Seems a bit inconsistent.
I would love to use common sense, but that common sense tells me to request/demand solid lines. Sadly, lines are simply that: lines.

Anyways, here's my thought: "Pay for what you love, Bay for what you want"

[Ryusen]

What constitutes as owning it, indeed?

If you's buys it, you's owns it. But as I previously stated, the law gets fuzzy after that, and I'm not able to give you a perfectly strait answer as to what is legal and what is not.

If you can listen to music without owning it, then why own things at all?

You can listen to music without buying it -- it's called piracy, a crime. At least in the realm of downloading, as in this discussion. And "why own things at all?"? I'm not sure I follow you. Are you asking why should we own any material possession, or why should we own music?

And if I steal the Zune/iPod, then that's stealing, because you can't simply make a copy of 'em.

Well, yes, you're stealing both the iPod and the music. It's a different medium, but the same principle as downloading a .torrent file. You now own music for which you have paid nothing, and you have obtained the music by illegal means.

Buuuuuut, if copying music to a hard drive is "ok", then what if I decide to be a good friend and back up his music on my hard drive? If you say that it's not ok because he doesn't own my hard drive, then what about the people who rip albums onto computers that aren't theirs (kids at school, employees at a cubical farm)? They don't own the hard drive.

Correct, they do not own the hard drive. You do. Therefore, you are now in possession of music for which you have not paid. Technically illegal, but I doubt the RIAA will start knocking at your door in faux-mustaches posing as computer repair men.

And how is selling a CD at a garage sale exempt? Seems a bit inconsistent

Because whether or not you own the rights to the songs on a CD, you do own the physical CD. Because it is your personal property, you are free to sell it as you wish. (Behold, the megawall of text!)

[Luca Fox]

It doesn't hurt anyone if you never plan on spending the money in the first place.

[Lithas]

It doesn't hurt anyone if you never plan on spending the money in the first place.

QFT

I only pirate that which I wouldn't buy. If it turns out that I do indeed like it, I'll buy a copy. I have no problem spending money on worth-while things. So really, I'm giving the industry MORE money when I pirate, because it opens new doors for me to purchase.

[Ryusen]

But the availability of torrents will discourage those who may have purchased the CDs legally from actually buying them. You can't say that no one who downloaded a song wouldn't have bought the CD instead.

[Aeolus1212]

Just wanted to put my 2 cents in here. (If 2 cents means wall of friggen text. Sorry bout that)

On the topic of the thread, I would say that DRM is pointless. Pirates will crack the game anyway. No matter what kind of security you make, it WILL be cracked eventually. Thus, it does very, very little to stop piracy. All DRM does is a. take money from the developers, because putting that DRM on their game isn't free and b. punishes customers in various ways. I believe that Stardock, the makers of the Demigod game that was mentioned earlier, have the idea. They do not use DRM on their games for the most part. The first time they did this, btw, Starforce (a leading DRM company) posted a link to torrent the game on their website. [censored]. Didn't effect Stardock at all, though! This is what they think: "Our position has simply been that people are going to pirate a game whether it has draconian copy protection or not and the people who will buy a PC game will buy it and the people who won’t won’t."

It's easy to say that that backfired on them with the Demigod game. Those are some pretty steep numbers, after all. There's more to it than the numbers, though.
1. The game was leaked a few days early thanks to Gamestop being stupid and releasing it right when they got it. So, the pirates had a great head start. Those numbers were reported from launch day.
2. Many people who pre-ordered the game, yet didn't have the game while there were tons already playing and reviews were already going up decided to pirate to get it sooner.
3. Demigod had a rather stupid dialhome feature where even pirated copies automatically connected to the server when the game booted up to check for a patch. This is why so many copies were reported online. No, they weren't actually playing online. They were just booting up their games. This, combined with the fact that Stardock didn't have the server capacity for hundreds of thousands of players (they didn't expect such large numbers on release day. Why would they?) caused the servers to pretty much die, which means the grand majority of people could not get online whatsoever.
4. Even if they had DRM, it would've been cracked. The head of Stardock said that himself. The no DRM policy had nothing to do with the numbers at all.

Overall, though, my view on piracy is thus: It is wrong, but it is not equivalent to the common act of theft. You are not stealing an actual product, and the majority of people who pirate wouldn't have bought it anyway. For the most part, it is harmless. It is also unstoppable, and will ALWAYS exist in some fashion. This does NOT, however, make it ANY less wrong. It may not be as bad as stealing, but it is wrong, and there is no justifying it (well, effectively). The only thing there is to argue about piracy is the degree of HOW wrong it is, not whether it's wrong. And, of course, the semantics and vain attempts to draw a concrete line of what it constitutes. My opinion on those two issues is that there is no concrete line or value. It is a case-by-case basis. Piracy is much akin to obscenity in my opinion. It's impossible to put it in a perfectly outlined box of what it is and what it isn't. In the words of Justice Potter Stewart: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...".

[FlaminPheonix]

RANT TIME

Ok basically

I have a legal copy GTA IV

I'm actually downloading it at the mo cause this is my new vista install and its doing the same as before with the speeds (read on to find out what)

Yet i have also pirated it and only so far played it with the pirated edition because

DUN DUN DUUUUUN

it wouldn't work

first problem :
when downloading it would stop and start like mad and it took 4 im not joking 4 days to download when by my internet even at 1/4 of the speed it should take 8 hours

Pirating took 2 hours something


2nd:
once downloaded from it wouldn't install properly kept throwing out errors when i tried to launch game to

Pirated version worked straight away


3rd:
once finally working from steam it kept crashing after about 15 - 30 mins this was the final straw and what made me pirate it

pirated worked without problems


Moral of the story for buying a game
Pirate it but buy the game to cover your [censored]

[GodsNightmare21]

Wow, I thought you couldn't pirate Steam games? Well, better for me I guess. Now I need to make a choice, buy Red Faction Guerilla for PC, or buy it for 360 and then later pirate it for PC. Thing is, I don't really want to deal with pirating it and my friends who don't have awesome PC's are getting it for 360... I always have to choose between crap like this, it sucks...

[Aeolus1212]

Wow, I thought you couldn't pirate Steam games? Well, better for me I guess. Now I need to make a choice, buy Red Faction Guerilla for PC, or buy it for 360 and then later pirate it for PC. Thing is, I don't really want to deal with pirating it and my friends who don't have awesome PC's are getting it for 360... I always have to choose between crap like this, it sucks...

You CAN pirate steam games, but they won't work online (like most pirated games), and many Steam games are online-centric. Pirating Left 4 Dead, for instance, does absolutely nothing for ya. Plus, they'll perma-ban your account if they ever connect anything to you, which means you permanently lose all the valid purchases you made as well. Thus, make quite sure the pirated copy you get is able to run on its own, without any connection to Steam.

[Luca Fox]

The RIAA doesn't even go after small-time anymore anyways. They only target the big seeders like the Pirate Bay. I don't think I've even ever heard of the MPAA taking someone to court. They probably don't care as long as you aren't downloading brand new movies like that leaked copy of Wolverine Origins.

[Kinuki]

Piracy, in it's nature, is taking what isn't yours, but in my opinion, it isn't stealing.

That's the definition of stealing.

You are not taking anything from anybody, just possibly denying money to the developer/publisher. In many cases, i don't agree with piracy of games. If they put effort into making the best game they possibly can, and are taking the customers' opinions into account, then I usually purchase the game because they deserve the money. If they are a giant, heartless, corporation that only cares about your money *cough* EA *cough*, then, honestly, buying a game from them is a waste.

So it's ok except when it's not ok? That's conveniently arbitrary. The fact is, you are taking a product, or a copy of a product, from someone without compensating them.

But, you're not physically taking anything away from the person (no lessoning of their stock quantity), but simply making a copy. Say I wanted a plasma TV, and I stole it. That would physically reduce the number of plasma TVs they had, reducing the amount of money they would receive from selling said TVs. However, if I wanted to, say, watch Dance Of The Dead, and I downloaded a copy from a friend, or bittorrented it, they wouldn't loose any DVDs, allowing them to still sell it to a good person who wants to buy it. They loose nothing but a prospective customer, and those people are intangible when you think about it.

If you don't buy it, you do without. Just because you want it but are not willing to pay for it does not somehow excuse you to take it. Even a digital copy, not a physical item, has worth under the law. And if you take it without compensation, that's theft.

Also considering the fact that by asking for money for a movie usually looses a few prospective customers, myself included.

Then you're not a customer. If you're not buying something from them, you're not a customer of them. And how is asking for money for a good they produce somehow enough to make you not want to buy it?

Question: what is copying music over to your hard drive entail? If I burn a CD onto my computer, I then have 2 copies of the album, even though I only purchased 1. And what happens if a friend listens to my hard drive copy? He didn't purchase the album, or the rights to listen to it. Is he breaking the law? Where do you draw the line, and how do you enforce it?

You're allowed to digitally back-up all digital media with the caveat that you can't bypass copy protection to do so (a [censored] rule I wish they'd change, because it's stupid -- once I purchase it, it's mine, and I should be able to use it however I wish within the other confines of the law.)

What if you wouldn't have spent the money on it, though? It's really not hurting them if they are never going to receive your money anyways. I mean, we're not talking about TVs here. Playing a game you downloaded on the computer doesn't take a copy out of the hands of some other player.

If you wouldn't have spent the money on it, then you wouldn't have it. It doesn't mean that it's then "ok" for you to take it. I mean, let's be honest: if it's morally acceptable to pirate a game because you never would have bought it otherwise, why the hell would you ever say you were going to otherwise buy anything again? That rationalization creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where it's in your best interest to never want to purchase something, so you never will.

And again, you're not somehow entitled to take it because you might not have otherwise bought it. It doesn't make it any more acceptable or ok. It's just a bad rationalization for bad behaviour. I mean, it's based entirely on an unprovable, intangible, unquantifiable notion that you might not have spent the money to buy it otherwise. But how can you prove that? How can anyone say that, without any possible way to pirate it, you would have never bought the item in question?

And this leaves aside the "DRM" justification, because "Demigod" has absolutely no damn DRM at all. But, of course, instead of supporting the developers who are staunchly opposed to DRM, people pirate their games. Brilliant.

I only pirate that which I wouldn't buy. If it turns out that I do indeed like it, I'll buy a copy.

Again, how can you say it's ok because you wouldn't have bought it? Obviously that's not entirely true because it turns out some things you pirate you actually would've bought because it was good.

I have no problem spending money on worth-while things. So really, I'm giving the industry MORE money when I pirate, because it opens new doors for me to purchase.

I'm sorry, but that's one of the weakest rationalizations I've heard.

[Luca Fox]

Was there ever any question that piracy was wrong?

[Kinuki]

Was there ever any question that piracy was wrong?

With you, not as much, you've been much clearer on your view. But several others here seem to think, from what I gather from their posts, that it's not wrong at all.

[Bobdaninjer]

Sorry if I made it seem like I think piracy is justified. It can, and in many cases, has ruined companies. In fact, I recall hearing that Crytek was most likely not going to make Crysis 2 because Crysis 1 was pirated so much. What I was trying to get across is that I feel less guilty if the company doesn't care about the customers' opinion on the way they make the game.

That's the definition of stealing.

Stealing: to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.

Piracy: the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.

While stealing gives something to you, while the victim loses it, piracy just grants you something, while the victim does not lose something, only is denied of payment.