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408 Comments
- OfNumbers, on 09/13/2008, -37/+260Buried for being a ***** reworking of an identical comic that hit frontpage. Buried with HATE for you being the poster of the identical comic in question. Buried with added enthusiasm for you having stolen this content from other users here.
http://digg.com/comedy/Theft_vs_Piracy_vs_File_Sha ...
http://digg.com/tech_news/Theft_vs_Piracy_vs_File_ ...
http://digg.com/comedy/I_m_a_pirate_not_a_theif - pilot3033, on 09/13/2008, -119/+293Theft is the act of taking without permission. What you do with what you've taken afterwards does not negate the fact that you've taken something without permission, a crime in most of the world.
I hate those ***** at the MP and RIAA as much as anyone else, they don't get "it," and continuously FAIL, hard. But don't try to justify stealing because there was no reselling. You still took the dam thing in the first place.
Sharing is inviting a few people to enjoy the product you've purchased, Stealing is theft of a product and then mass distribution of said product. You need permission to distribute en mass. - CoreyTamas, on 09/13/2008, -39/+162Stealing: The creator of something gets zilch for their hard work.
File sharing/copyright infringement/piracy: The creator of something gets zilch for their hard work.
Legal, illegal... moral, immoral... I don't care. I just know that when someone makes something you want to have, you should give a little back. The only arguments I've heard to the contrary all end with the same result: The creator of something gets zilch for their hard work. And that's not right. - inactive, on 09/13/2008, -3/+101Hey guys, you can't get upset and accuse the poster of stealing this from another user. The poster is clearly "sharing" it.
- deltaz, on 09/13/2008, -11/+96If I could directly pay the artist's their $2 they get from royalties for their album, I would. But at $20-30 (AU) an album, buying music would send me broke.
The same goes for movies. - rowjimmy, on 09/13/2008, -2/+70somebody didn't read the picture, either here or on reddit. if you did, you'd know it isn't stealing, it is copying the original and giving it away for free.
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -56/+124Theft involves loss, what is lost from a copy?
Nothing.
Thus, file sharing is not theft.
If copying something is theft, then prepare to witness a crime:
COPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPYCOPY ©
"Lock him up boys! And throw away the key!" - johnroth, on 09/13/2008, -14/+63Oh I get it. I'm not a PIRATE I'm a FILE SHARER.
No, I'm still a pirate. - c010rb1indusa, on 09/13/2008, -11/+58Not really, most of the music people pirate they wouldn't of bought in the first place. Same with photoshop, know why Adobe doesn't give two ***** that Photoshop is the most pirated program on the Net? It's because it's a bunch of pimply high school kids who are pirating it not people who actually use the program for their profession. What the pirating does is allow those nerds to get good at it, and more familiar with the product that will lead to their or their companies decision to buy it over Aperture etc.
Pirating doesn't help the record companies but it helps the band...ask the pop-punk/emo genre what piracy has done for their tour sales. - alexray0, on 09/13/2008, -5/+40DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE! YOU ARE A PIRATE!
YARR HARR, FIDDLE DEE DEE, BEING A PIRATE IS ALRIGHT TO BE!
DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE! YOU ARE A PIRATE! - Digglet69, on 09/13/2008, -8/+39Seriously i dont use reddit
- sgtbutterscotch, on 09/13/2008, -20/+50Potential revenue is lost from a copy.
Yes there is no thing that is concretely being lost, but that doesn't automatically make it ok. - SpeedSteamBoat, on 09/13/2008, -9/+38@BootsElectric: The term "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. The concept that you somehow own ideas is as laughable as the notion one might be able to own love or the wind. These are abstract concepts that do not conform to the traditional principles of ownership. You can not hold it. You can not see it. Therefore it can not be "yours." All ideas are inherently by their nature public domain. That reality will not be changed regardless of how many times you lie to yourself and others by repeating the montra "Intellectual Property is property."
@mblejer: What you meant to say is "That was before a time when ideas were being exploited as a commodity that can be limited in supply and as such sold." The truth is that the internet has freed us from the chains of mass producers of ideas for profit. Their business model is a fossil, and it's entirely in your interest. It's a tragedy that you fight change that directly benefits you, frees you from tyranny, due to some warped notion of morality that's been drilled into your head.
Rejoice. Ideas are once a again free for all, and they can spread faster, to more people than anytime in human history. It's a truly historic movement, and you're missing out.
@TVarmy: There is absolutely no way to quantify "loss of sale." There is no way to know what someone may or may not do. Someone with a huge music library may not have even listened to much music had it not been freely and widely available. They may have never have come to appreciate music much at all. Or the exact opposite may be true. All you can do is speculate, and thus such a claim is entirely moot when debating value. If some loss was incurred it would be easy to prove since all you would have to do is point to what is missing. If the best you've got is "We could probably have made more money, I think." then no real loss was incurred, and most people are going to have a downright rotten time trying to feel sorry for you. - samard2002, on 09/13/2008, -3/+31Wow. You guys are arguing about STEALING links and you don't see the irony in this? He got the comic from someone else? So what! Clearly the author does not care about intellectual property, right? Right?
You people are unbelievable. You can justify taking work for free that people spend years of their life creating, but you cry foul when someone takes credit for YOUR LINKS?
Top notch. - inactive, on 09/13/2008, -2/+24Unless you're a ninja.
- aadsfasdf, on 09/13/2008, -22/+43Jesus ***** Christ can we get over arguing semantics, you are using someone else's intellectual property without their permission. This is the same digg that harps on Carlos Mencia for stealing jokes, right? Defending piracy, whatever semantics ***** you try to stand behind, makes you a ***** douche.
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -11/+31I for one am utterly shocked that there are this many pro-draconian copyright law supporters on Digg. I am starting to think the RIAA and MPAA pay you guys to spout off *****.
Seriously...it's disheartening. - vortz83, on 09/13/2008, -1/+18So basically you steal what you can't afford.
- fifiBASTARD, on 09/13/2008, -3/+19hear hear....
- reed311, on 09/13/2008, -4/+19This is such a poor example. It's like saying I haven't stolen anything if I sneak into a theme park or a movie theater without paying. Yeah, I didn't take any physical goods; but I did willingly steal a service.
- ileftfark, on 09/13/2008, -4/+18Therein lies the challenge. If a company can prove that revenue was lost because of a file that was shared, I have no problems with them legitimately taking issue with that. But from experience, there is a majority of stuff people have accumulated because it was free- there's no way they would have bought it.
While that doesn't make it 'right', the 'potential revenue' argument is a pretty tough sell in many, if not most cases. - CoreyTamas, on 09/13/2008, -6/+20All I'm saying is that if you want something, you should pay for it. Material, digital, whatever... an artist has rent to pay, too, and he/she can't pay it with free advertising.
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -2/+14Buried for every reason in the dropdown menu.
- IADTatami, on 09/13/2008, -4/+16It's more like fraud than it is like theft... and distinct enough from fraud that they invented a term to describe the act: Copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement isn't theft, burglary or larceny- not in the literal sense, nor in the legal sense.
...though thanks to the draconian laws being passed in the United States and vigorously pushed abroad, we might wish that copyright infringement were legally regarded as theft- the penalties for stealing are much less ruinous. - lifeisahighway, on 09/13/2008, -0/+12Yar har fiddle dee dee.
- anizzle, on 09/13/2008, -2/+14I've got a little Captain in me....Ahh, who am I kidding, I'm on digg on a Friday night. :(
- rowjimmy, on 09/13/2008, -15/+26outdated, material models of intellectual property rights simply wont work in a digital age. adapt or die out, it's up the the recording/movie industry to recognize the paradigm shift in progress.
- Aleman360, on 09/13/2008, -1/+12So you don't think the other people in the chain do any work? I'm sure the artists are doing all the marketing, distribution, scheduling, PR, financial management, etc. themselves.
- dysfunction, on 09/13/2008, -5/+16If you want to make money from your work, publicity is helpful only as a means to the end of selling it. Sure, getting free publicity from people sharing your work helps- so long as most people are still obtaining it the legal way. If everyone is giving you 'free publicity' by torrenting your stuff rather than buying it, it doesn't matter how much publicity you now have- you won't make a dime.
- rowjimmy, on 09/13/2008, -8/+19well, what if one guy buys a dvd, and shares it with a few friends. who each share it with a few friends. who each share it with a few friends. ad infinitum. most file-sharing on the internet follows this form (even with bit-torrent, you are never grabbing it from more than a few people, and seeding it to a few people)
- Murdats, on 09/13/2008, -6/+16@mblejer
but you have always been able to make copies of other peoples work and give it away, and that was still not theft then as much as it isnt now. - samard2002, on 09/13/2008, -1/+10HAHAHAAHAHA! Stop stealing? I thought all these ideas were free! I guess that logic only applies to other people's work!
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -0/+9I always wonder if people would still feel they same way they do about file sharing if the situation were changed to a real world model. Suppose I invent a machine that can create a perfect copy of a Big Mac. Instead of selling them, I give anyone who wants one a free Big Mac. Hell, I can give them as many free Big Macs as they want. Would it be illegal? Would McDonald's be able to sue me, not for stealing anything from them physically, I haven't taken anything from them, except the idea that maybe some of the people I gave a free Big Mac to would have gone and bought one. What if some of those people had no money, and the only reason they took one is because they were free? Would you feel the same if file sharing was of physical objects?
- Murdats, on 09/13/2008, -6/+15@dysfunction
yet 10 years of widespread piracy still have not caused music to be wiped out as we know it, still has not causes artists to go homeless and starving and the RIAA has still not died off.
so this claim that piracy will cause all that, when will that happen? or is that you making an obviously bad assumption. - GliliumHkY, on 09/13/2008, -1/+10He copied. He didn't steal.
- Pottersquash, on 09/13/2008, -5/+13You know the real thing about Pirates? They didn't make ***** claims that they weren't doing anything wrong. Pirates were smug, the were fighters they were cool. Just take your illegal intellectual property and be proud, don't try to act as if your not a thief. Be a pirate, dare them to come get you
- Nosferotu, on 09/13/2008, -3/+11Like scoot said, what's lost from copy is the profits they would have made. However, that's assuming I would have bought whatever I am copying, which 99% of the time, I wouldn't.
I pirate, and I DO have a moral standard, because if I actually think something is worth my money, I'll buy it to support the artist/game/whatever. But I don't have a lot of money, and so my standard is higher than maybe a lot of people's would be. As such, if I wasn't pirating, I wouldn't have most of the games/music I have. So I don't feel bad about it - they are truly losing absolutely nothing by me pirating the stuff I do. - JAMMR, on 09/13/2008, -0/+8Buried for inaccuracy. A true pirate would have a peg leg. This pirate either has none or 2 which, either way you look at it, is still fail.
- fifiBASTARD, on 09/13/2008, -7/+14wow, there appears to be lotsa RIAA loving bastards on DIGG tonight, sheesh, what's with all the thumbs down on the pro file sharing philosophy, eh?
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -3/+10Piracy is NOT the circumvention of the free market, the market just needs to be more creative in finding ways to make money off of creative content, the old ways are dying, adapt or die.
- whatthefu, on 09/13/2008, -1/+8irony
- frostcrow, on 09/13/2008, -3/+10Now if only you knew the difference between "take" and "copy".
- dysfunction, on 09/13/2008, -11/+18So because you can't pay dairy farmers their percentage of the profit without the gorcery store's overhead, you steal milk off the shelves? Sure, it's outrageous that the middlemen get the kind of cuts they do, but do you refuse to pay them only with music and movies?
- thecosmicpope, on 09/13/2008, -5/+12Nobody (with common sense...) is denying that you should pay for it. People just get hacked off at being labelled thieves when they aren't.
- CoreyTamas, on 09/13/2008, -4/+11No, Bob042, but... when you download a song that's copyrighted and for sale, you get something and the artist gets nothing. And the artist is supposed to be ok with that.
Same old story. - CoreyTamas, on 09/13/2008, -5/+12I think that's fair.
The RIAA is a terrible, greedy, unprincipled organization with more power than it deserves and is built on an antiquated, unjust, oppressive business model that is far more punishing to artists than piracy is.
Just because I think people should pay artists a fair fee for downloaded work doesn't mean I'm any fan of the RIAA. Piracy hurts artists trying to make a living, but the RIAA destroys them. - dysfunction, on 09/13/2008, -0/+6Aleman: did you mean to reply to me or deltaz?
- dysfunction, on 09/13/2008, -1/+7If the artist says it's ok to share their work, that's one thing. If an artist specifically states they don't want their work pirated, in what way are they 'giving things away'?
- Acglaphotis, on 09/13/2008, -2/+8scoot2006: Speculation. The idea that someone willing to pirate something is likely to buy it if not allowed to pirate is silly. I can't begin to count how many people I know that have listened to some single mp3's and downloaded the whole album, but when required to buy it, they see it as "not worthy" or "waste of money". I wouldn't buy anything I pirate, how can someone charge me for profits lost? If I wouldn't have bought it anyway.
- scojac, on 09/13/2008, -1/+7If it doesn't cost you anything to reproduce the Big Mac, you have just successfully ended world hunger.
In a less significant fashion, file sharing balances the odds a bit - the ownership of intellectual property is more equal amongst the population as copies are made, with little to no cost to anyone.
Greedy ***** will continue to vilify this practice, however. -
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