Piracy and Theft.

@Alice conclusion: piracy is a cancer for any business.
Example was awesome though.

I’m not for piracy, but $30-$50 to go watch a movie doesn’t end well either.

Love the example 😎

@C0D4 true, and if movie sucked it hurts more

@Alice I don't have anything to say now. damn another impressive example.

For all German-speaking folks:
That's why I hate the word "Raubkopie".

@filthyranter Naja Raubkopie ist das eine aber in dem Beispiel wurde ja das über Thema "Piraterie" genommen... Oder verstehe ich selber denn rant falsch?

This is a bad analogy with houses. House designs are common.

Piracy "is" theft. It's theft of time and money spent developing an idea, marketing, retailing, etc.

@Alice I was typing in the rain. I have no clue how houses got in there o_o

I think it was supposed to be "those"

Illegally downloading copyrighted material isn't theft or piracy. Piracy requires theft and subsequent direct resale of the stolen physical goods.

What's happening is copyright infringement.

@Alice Aren't you describing healthy competition within the free market?

You guys might be suprised, but many game devs are ok with piracy, because it popularises the game further, and increases the profits down the line. Specially in single player + multiplayer games where they provide the servers.

The thing is, there is a fundamental difference between real goods and software: You will ever need money to copy a real good, but copying software is free. So everything you have to spend for a software product at its current state is a fixed price, no matter how many copies of them you sell.
So you have at least to sell so many copies that you get your money that you put in back, plus a compensation for risk and time. Everything above that is pure win.
So, what does that mean?
The price of real goods can be calculated by looking at how many customers are willing to pay for it at which price. Maximise price * sells and you have the most efficient business. As soon as you get competition, the price will fall until it hits the production costs (including minimum needed time compensation for the producer).
Why don't we have this price drop in the software industry? Or for films? Or anything other "copyrighted"? Oh, we do! It's called piracy.

Piracy is giving all people who don't want to pay the set price these products for the production costs.
But why aren't all these companies bancrupt then if all can be get for free?
For multiple reasons: First, people who are willing to pay the full price will pay it. Second, the official product mostly includes more than the software: Maintanence, easy updates, online services, a nice chair in a cinema, the smell of a real book's the paper...
Piracy allows the rest of the people, who don't want to or cannot spend the full price, to get the copyrighted products and have fun with it, with no damage for the authors, because with no piracy, they wouldn't have bought the thing either.
If you want to stop piracy, start a "pay what you can" model, or make it cheaper with the product's age, or do something similar.

And for those who will still disagree, only a single last question: How can it be that a patented product like cars, computers, the television or similar innovative technologies are only worth protecting for twenty-five years but copyrighted material like "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler for eighty damn years after his death?
There's something wrong.

That was a long rant in a comment. But I had to get that off my chest.

Oh, and I didn't included the previous arguments, because they were already said and my comment was long enough.

@SupZee Ja, aber das Bild erklärt, warum das Wort "Raubkopie" ein Widerspruch in sich ist. Entweder du raubst es oder du kopierst es (illegalerweise!).

Piracy is theft. Plain and simple.

@Benedikt probably because patents are to protect categories of product and copyright is to protect specific works.

@Kulijana And then you start to wonder why single player games aren't popular anymore... right, because almost impossible to crack stuff that needs a connection to official servers to run properly.

I never condemn piracy but fuck EA.

@git-gud
Im not sure about that, any games in particular you think of? Usually they crack em just fine

@filthyranter wenn man so streng damit umgeht kann man auch sagen wenn man c&p macht das es Raub ist weil es von jemand anderes das "Geistige Eigentum" ist... Heutzutage ist alles was wir machen so gesehen Raub sei es irgendwelche Zitate äußern wo wir nicht mit äußern von wem dieses ist, Code benutzen oder irgendwelche Samples bei Musik Produktion, Design etc..

Leider kann man gegen Piraterie nichts machen da es sie weiterhin geben wird, man kann sie nicht stoppen weil die eine Seite der Gesellschaft das nicht einsieht tausende von Euros für eine Software auszugeben (in manchen Fällen einfach testen ob sie zu einem passt(da nimmt man die höchst mögliche Version der Software um es ausgibig für seinen Einsatz zu testen, da bringen die Demos etc nix)). Aber gelangt man an den Punkt wo man durch die "geklaute" Software ein finanzielles Einkommen hat, ist das meiner Meinung nach erst dann Betrug... Alles andere was davor gemacht wird ist ja privat und niemand weiß bescheid ;)

@SSDD

Sort of. It _requires_ theft. Theft of physical goods, often taken with violent force. The second component to qualify the act as piracy is to then directly sell those physical goods in an illicit fashion.

@Benedikt for a second there I smelt Tableau

@Kulijana particularly, i've heard that the division used to be uncrackable, cause you had to play on ubisoft servers (even singleplayer) which are closed-source. i figure there's no way to run the server yourself, and there's no way to login to the official ones without proper authentication

@bahua no it doesn’t.

There’s no selling involved in the downloading of tv shows from bittorrent, but it’s piracy and theft.

@SSDD

No, it's copyright infringement. Calling it anything else is a dishonest appeal to emotion on behalf of corporate entities that don't need our help.

@bahua that’s the way you see it.

In a former life I was a professional musician in a rock band, signed to a major label. When my songs were on someone’s machine, being listened to and enjoyed, and they hadn’t paid for them, that’s theft.

When that career plummeted and we were dropped from our label, it was because thousands of people were stealing my songs. My IP.

For the record getting out of the music industry was the best thing that ever happened, but the above still stands.

@SSDD

That's the way the law and I see it, yes.

@bahua the law?!

Omg you’re one of them. I’m out.

In my opinion, there's a huge difference between just downloading something you need, and turning a profit. Government usually doesn't care about people making money, as long as they get their cut.

@Alice And when I would have never bought it? Than that's not the case.

@Alice Correct, but not for the price on the market.
What if I would never buy it, but having it for free is okay? So there would never be a possibility to make a profit with me.

@Alice Ah, this argument again. The answer is yes. I would say them the same I said to you.
But there are three reasons why I would never go to there and burn CDs with my laptop (four if you count in that I don't have a laptop and using my desktop pc would be... very interesting to handle).
1. There's a difference between an online source and a local shop: The shop offers different services, namely a physical disk, people you can talk to, the physical room everything is stored in and you can look around etc. You don't only pay for the files themselfes.
2. If I tried that, and really had access to the discs and not only the boxing, the shop could use their householder's right and ban me, preventing me from finishing it.
3. Going into a shop and copy the CD's does cost me something: The costs for traveling, the time, the effort and the risk. This price is too high for a thing I don't want to pay for.

So, I answered your question, would you now answer mine?

what a stupid argument

DVDs: "You wouldn't download a house"

Hell yeah I would bitch