so is sneaking into a movie theft? This whole issue is messed up. Piracy is theft!

man, can you read the picture, it says piracy is only making a copy!

Only an idiot wouldn’t think that piracy is not theft.

Sure, piracy is not theft of the actual binary since you are getting a copy of it but it certainly is a theft of profit the binary could have earned. So it just depends on how you look at it.

Piracy is NOT theft. Piracy is copyright infringement according to US laws.

The software, music, and movie industries want people to equate piracy with theft. They need to understand that piracy is never going to go away.

All the reports on how piracy costs the industry billions of dollars are baloney. The vast majority (99%+) of pirated warez are by people who would NOT pay for the movie, music, software anyways. I’ve downloaded terabytes of junk (stuff I’d never buy anyways) just for kicks.

My son is very talented artistically and I’ve installed a pirated version of Photoshop on his desktop. There’s no way in hell I’m going to purchase Photoshop (major $$$) just so he can play around. BUT.. Who knows.. he may get into it and this could be a future career path. He could start a graphic design firm at which point he would use a legit paid for copy of CS5 or whatever..

Piracy has helped tons of artist and people get more exposure to people that wouldn’t normally pay to listen or watch their stuff… haha… think of it as free marketing… haha

Of course it’s theft - while you may not as easily equate it with hard goods theft, it’s most certainly IP theft.

Karif, whether or not you’re downloading junk or goods you’d have purchased had you not been able to steal them online, it’s still illegal. The pricing on goods, be it application software, games, or film, are all derived from the actual COST to produce that. The reason some software, and even textbooks, end up expensive is because the lower volume of sales requires that the price be higher than other goods - it’s just basic economics.

Let me repeat.. Piracy is NOT theft; it is copyright infringement.

To your point, currently theft and copyright infringement are both illegal.

The pricing on goods is another issue and I content that the price is an issue of supply/demand and may have little or nothing to do with the actual cost of production.

To the pictures credit, it says piracy is piracy and not theft. If it was theft, they it why even make up a new word? Obviously there is a difference between piracy and theft.

It all depends on how you are looking at it i guess. Some people can’t afford 300 bucks for an operating system or the same amount for an office package. I guess it just depends if you are using it for personal use or selling it to make a buck.

Short answer - Yes.

Semantics aside, the intent is the same - To obtain something meant for sale without paying for it.

Folks always attempt to dismiss piracy as not theft, but it is. They know it is… they just don’t feel like fessing up to it. That is mostly because it is theft of the intangible. Steal a watch or a ring or a car and folks think differently of that because it is a solid, an object that is hard to dismiss mentally or physically. But pirated software or entertainment items are intangible. Folks think less of something they can’t hold in their hands.

At the same time piracy raises several real questions about rights. Who is the true rights holder? What are your rights as a consumer in regard to what you do with your purchased items? At what point is something “yours to do with as you please” and at what point does it still belong to someone else? Digital rights issues have been a plague since day one BUT they have also been very clear since day one… folks just like to cloud over the issue with hems and haws to justify their own criminal activities.

Of the issue of software my company feels the pain of illegal pirates every day. We as a stand up brick and mortar company have to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of software licenses to use the programs we run. We are constantly under the gun of all these watchdog groups roaming the business world just waiting to pounce on small businesses for pirated software infractions. As such, my company is out thousands and thousands of dollars of profit a year due to all these licenses we must maintain just to keep the Fed off our back. Now think of all the little mom and pop joints and the freelancers who are running illegal pirate versions of the software we use who are bidding against us on certain jobs. Not only do they undercut us, but they keep almost all of their fee as profit since they have no software license overhead like we do. Now think of all the Chinese, Indian and other foreign companies that do what we do (computer graphics) all running bootleg software and competing with us on top of the line jobs… it’s getting to the point that “playing fair” means my company is operating with a chain around it’s neck.

But the other side of the fence is not that glamorous, as if the pirate cops raid your company or office they go over everything with a fine toothed comb and they look for the weirdest stuff. If they find anything… ANYTHING… that they think you don’t have the correct “rights” or “licenses” to, you are screwed. Thousands and thousands in fines screwed. I have seen competitors in my field shut down and bankrupted because of this crap.

Piracy is theft. People are getting confused because piracy has a life outside of theft, but in reality, if you drew a Venn Diagram, theft is entirely a subset of Piracy.

If you want to get picky about it, they are not the same since Piracy has more than theft alone by definition, but theft is wholly a subset of piracy.

Let’s just call Piracy Theft2…

This reminds me of an argument I had when I was in middle school?

Me and a peer I knew had an agruement that piracy=theft. The peer would say they are too different things because it involves something that isn’t tangable.

However, if one looks up the old defination of piracy, it says that it is a robbery committed at sea. The word has expanded to robbery taking place on planes and on intellectual property.

Basically, anything that involves taking something is stealing, so stealing=piracy.

As for the adorable image above that states the difference between the two, it is incorrect. Piracy is not copyin a program, but rather getting it illegally, much like making fake money. For example,let say that I bought a bootleg copy of hello kitty online or whatever. Like producin phony cash, a bootleg application is not original, though one has full access to the program like the original.

Piracy is NOT theft. Piracy is copyright infringement according to US laws.

The software, music, and movie industries want people to equate piracy with theft. They need to understand that piracy is never going to go away.

All the reports on how piracy costs the industry billions of dollars are baloney. The vast majority (99%+) of pirated warez are by people who would NOT pay for the movie, music, software anyways. I’ve downloaded terabytes of junk (stuff I’d never buy anyways) just for kicks.

My son is very talented artistically and I’ve installed a pirated version of Photoshop on his desktop. There’s no way in hell I’m going to purchase Photoshop (major $$$) just so he can play around. BUT.. Who knows.. he may get into it and this could be a future career path. He could start a graphic design firm at which point he would use a legit paid for copy of CS5 or whatever..

__________________________________________

Whoever posted that is a typical example of the justification mindset. A thief can call his activities anything to justify his actions but his actions are still theft.

It has also been my experience that people who do not work in a “creative” realm don’t fully grasp the concept that your “idea” is what you sell. If people rip off your “idea” constantly “for free” then you make no money and there is no incentive to make more great ideas. All this piracy comes home to roost somewhere, and in the case of software piracy it comes home to roost on ME.

My company has to pay thousands of dollars for software because the company that makes it feels they have to charge that much to make their profit thanks to ass hats like that guy who steal the software “just because they don’t want to pay for it”… guess what jackass, I HAVE TO PAY FOR YOUR THEFT. If your anklebiter whats to use Photoshop BUY IT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Perhaps that will be an incentive for him to actually learn to use it and grow up to become a beneficial member of the professional artistic community rather than teaching him to steal is justified if you don’t really mean to pay for something anyway.

I don’t really want to pay for a Lotus Elise so I guess that means I can go rip one off then, because I didn’t intend to pay for it anyway. Which then means everyone else who buys an Elise just got handed a higher price tag because so many assholes are stealing Elises.

Js is angry…

This issue pisses me off to no end. Production software piracy indirectly and directly costs me money. All these little punks who “warez” Photoshop and Maya, Max, Cadd, you name it… they all drive my costs up. I know it’s two faced to say it but I could care less if people download Bananarama and The Cure as bands make all their money touring and from the record labels contracts, it’s the record labels that are losing money on illegal music downloads not the actual artists. Yes it is still wrong but it doesn’t really affect me… But software “warez” jackasses burn me up. If you can’t afford the software then perhaps you don’t deserve to be using the software. All these companies have done so much to allow for testing and students to have access to their software yet these tools still steal the full seats right and left, all under the umbrella of “I’m not really using it so who does it hurt?”

Wow.. so now we’re equating pirating software with grand theft auto? Do you know how asinine that sounds?

If I could churn out exact copies of a Ferrari for free, you can bet your pink panties I would!

Please explain to me how my pirating of Adobe Photoshop is hurting anyone. There is no way in hell that I would EVER buy it. Adobe has lose $0 because of me.

BTW: What software company do you work for? I think I might be interested in checking their products out. ;)

Piracy is NOT theft. What is being discussed here is clearly copyright infringment (not robbery committed at sea).

Heck, look it up in Wikipedia if you don’t believe me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

Piracy’s bad mmmmkay? and so’s theft. and no one’s going to argue with you that at the end you and your company are paying for other people’s piracy. but this isn’t a discussion about ethics or what makes you mad. it’s about a technicality. you can’t technically pirate a lotus elise, so piracy cannot equate to theft. piracy is its own evil animal, and it is limited to digital ip. pirating software or music or whatever doesn’t mean a thief took it, rather a hacker modified it. it’s analogous but certainly not the same.

If everyone pirated everything any intellicutual company would go belly up or wouldnt exist at all because there would be no money in it all. So you might not be stealing anything truly physical, but you are taking money out of someone’s pocket, for you are taking something that was meant to be paid for but getting it for free instead.

I have to just serenity now all this away, because there is nothing I can say or do that will stem this crap. And it’s only getting worse. Kids today are being raised in this environment. Parents who pirate have kids who pirate. And the piracy is so widespread and entrenched at this point that you can’t stop them all…

All the while since I am a legitimate businessman I have to pay and pay and pay under threat of raid, because they know who I am and they know where I’m at. At any time the watchdog groups or the Fed could kick in my office door and demand I prove every piece of software we run is legit and legal… but that is only a fantasy for little mister “warez” so they can steal and steal and mouth off to their heart’s content because the theft of an idea or an intangible item can be easily excused away.

Everyone would be as angry as me if they were forced to “play by the rules” while other people laughed in their face and continued to steal and steal, safe behind their small time anonymous internet cloaks. For those of us standing in the sun these folks will always be hated. They cost me money and none of their excuses matter when my bottom line is hit.

I think that if you are a warez pirate, it’s best to keep it on the down low. If you boast about the terabytes of stuff you download and deny that you are doing anything illegal, then you’re just fooling yourself.

Making copies of intellectual property without permission of the owner is copyright infringement, and it is illegal. Having said that, we do illegal things all day, like speeding on the freeway or smoking weed in our homes. Thus, if you are a pirate, speeder, or midnight toker, it’s best to do your activities without getting caught. So stop boasting about how many terabytes of illegal warez you have downloaded. It’s illegal, it is stealing, it is wrong. And you can keep doing it until you get caught.

But just keep in mind, if you do get caught, you’re gonna pay the price. That’s your choice to do what you do, we’re free to choose to do the right thing or the wrong thing in this country. Best of luck to you pirates.

I am wonderin that even if let’s agree that theft and piracy are different, does it really matter? I mean, at the end of it all, you are getting something you should have bought and the store or company is losing money either way.

I mean, some ppl make it out that because piracy and theft are different, it makes it okay or not as bad to bootleg a software.

you can call it whatever you want it to be. Hell, we can call pirating “honey flowering” or something equally nice and it won’t make pirating any worse.

Recently, many products can be purchased digitally, which means that more and more things will only be obtained on the net. Some software companies believe that online distrubution is the goin to replace buyin dvds and if that is true, I am sure the whole pirating is not theft will change since a lot of companies will lose money. At the end of the day, someone is goin to lose money for someone gettin it on piratebay for free. That to me sounds like stealing, which as I am not mistaken, stealin=theft.

2 karif,

Dlin copies of adobe without payin may not appear them because they are a huge company or passed off the cost by makin it cost more to someone who only uses legal copies of it, but pirating copies of a program made by a very small company can hurt a lot.

There are a few companies that are tiny and only make software one can get on the net for a price. If I were to pirate their product that cost less than 20 bucks so I can play it for a day, I would not do it.

I mean, telltale’s sam and max episodes are 8 dollars a piece and the company is very tiny and are not makin much dinero. I am not goin to get their products off of a torrent site just so I can have fun for 5 hours.

I love their products and since they are tryin to make ends meet, I would rather pay a small fee just to enjoy their games.

This issue upsets me because it hurts me financially. I can only imagine how hurt the intellectual property holders are from piracy. I am hurt because the rights holders raise the cost to cover their development, which I as a law abiding businessman must pay.

In the end the whole thing comes down to law and several people’s misunderstanding of the law. As a businessman I am forced to be half lawyer and I know from experience that everything under the law is connected, especially in court. Intellectual property infringement IS theft as when you take, copy or in any way carry or hold something without approval, that is theft. You are violating the rights of someone who owns something.

So I guess the question for the pirates then is one of which negative connotative description do they prefer? Thief or Rights Violator? Of course they prefer “Rights Violator” because no one screams STOP, Rights Violator!.. they scream STOP THIEF! But call it what you will pirates are breaking the law and causing grief to others. There is no such thing as a victimless crime and someone is always hurting from piracy.

Edit: to expound upon the whole “rights” issue, that is the core of our societal law… “rights”. Our laws are a basis of rights that you as a citizen and as a human being posses in which no man has the legal authority to suspend without proper cause. The legal concept of “theft” is based in the core activity of the denial of a person his right to be secure in his property. As an extension, intellectual rights are also held true just as property rights are… and to deny someone his right to be secure in his holding of an intellectual property is by theme of law to take from him. To deny him his right to his property and all that comes with and from it.

The area in which folks “debate” the piracy issue is in the nature of the act rather than the ramifications of the act. The nature of the act is to “copy”, but the ramifications are the same… the right of the person to be secure in their property has been violated.

This reminds me of the adage, “Everyone hates advertising, until they have something to sell.”

Same with graffiti. It’s great to young kids until their home gets tagged.

Everyone who loves or is ok with piracy, feels that way until they have their own product that gets pirated.

But that is the “trick” with most piracy, the folks pirating stuff almost never produce anything that someone else would pirate. Most “pirates” that I know do not “produce”, they instead “consume”… and when you are never on the production end of a commodity you never learn respect for commodities.

Then again most “pirates” these days tend to be kids and children, folks who have yet to learn the value of a dollar or a hard day’s work. Thus they don’t really value a lot of stuff and they think nothing of it’s theft. When I was a kid the most commonly stolen item was candy and comic books. Today the most commonly stolen items are MP3’s and videos. The difference is those of us who grew up pinching comics and gum either got caught and learned our lesson or we grew up and outgrew comics and gum. Today’s kids will never outgrow the internet and I fear they will never outgrow digital theft. When you never get caught you act with impunity and just get more brazen, to the point you don’t even bat an eye when you pirate thousand dollar production software like Maya or Max. Then when someone calls you on it you dance around the issue claiming that it isn’t real theft it’s simply “intellectual rights violations”.

Well it’s all “it’s not theft it’s copyright infringement” until someone nabs your ass and you are standing tall before a judge. Then you’ll quickly see how such mundane words as “copyright infringement” and “theft” both equate to heavy fines or perhaps jail. What they actually charge you with is almost inconsequential at that point… handcuffs feel the same no matter what they call your crime.

True. The internet is a new kind of beast where software companies are pushin for online distrubution to ironically, deal with illegal downloads.

I find it ironic since it would probably prevent theft in the short run because eventually someone would make some sort of patch to go around the protection.

However, piracy DOES hurt companies. A lot of videogame companies do not like makin software for the PC because of theft. For instance, Capcom blames the lack of sales for Devil May cry 4 on the PC on pirates. Because of this, Capcom opted to sell games like Bionic Commando Rearmed for the PC more than the versions on xboxlive and psn. EA no longer produce Maddan or any sports games on the PC because of piracy.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/04/peter-moore-explains-ea-sports-pc-snub/

I always refer to piracy as theft because it all comes down to takin something that you did not pay for w/o permission.

I am wonderin why some ppl felt that piracy isn’t theft despite that the term “piracy” was initially used for robbery at sea? Personally, l think the suits or whatever just wanted to refer to piracy with a fancy name and some ppl just mistake it as something other than stealing.

I mean no matter what piracy is called, at the end of the day, somebody is modifiying a program or hackin into a website to make something accessable for free.

Let’s play some logic games….

apple=fruit
banana=fruit

apple does not equal banana even though they are both fruits.

stealing=violation of a law
piracy=violation of a law

stealing does not equal piracy, even though both violate a law… just not the same law (theft of property vs. copyright violation).

Trying to equate the two will literally take an act of congress to change our laws.

There can be no question as to whether or not it is wrong (it violates a law), but wrong does not equal the same.

Under this logic,

stealing = murder = securities fraud

All wrong since they all violate laws… just different laws, which does not make them the same.