this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Frankly this catch phrase never made any sense to me, from a logical point of view.
It assumes that:
If buying = owning then pirating* = stealing, because you own it without buying.
And if buying =/= owning then pirating =/= stealing, because you can't own it otherwise.
But the justification in the second statement is completely irrelevant to the first statement. You still own it without buying. It's still stealing.
UNLESS - we examine what "stealing" is. This is where the arguments about being in a digital space vs. a physical space comes in. Where the question is raised: Is making an exact copy really "stealing"? Or, consider what is being "stolen"? The original item? The idea? We need to think about this more.
But it's here the argument should be made and here the debate should be. That's where "pirates" have a chance of winning. Let's get rid of this flawed, easily repeatable, but fundamentally incorrect catch phrase and come up with a better one already. One that makes sense.
*(Nevermind that most of you technically aren't even pirating, you're just downloading the fruits of someone else that pirated.)
I was locked out of my EA account for half a week due to a bug on their end. I downloaded a game I own(lease?) so I could play over the weekend.
Is this pirating?
I think you would technically be since what you agreed to by accepting the EULA is that you would have the game on your EA account and would rely on their services to play it, you don't legally have the right to play the game if it's fine into your possession another way.
And they fit sure have provisions about downtime and access issues in the EULA.
The digital area is something I haven't looked much into so I can't really comment on that but I know regarding physical media the relevant US laws only really make exceptions for things you've done yourself. Just because you own a physical copy of Pokemon Yellow doesn't mean you're allowed to download a copy of it from off the Internet. You're allowed to make and use a backup from a physical cart you own. This is why emulators can't (legally) include ROMs, ISOs, BIOS files, encryption keys, etc. as those are the copyrighted materials that you'll need to make a copy of yourself to legally use emulators.
To my knowledge (not a lawyer and this is not legal advice) what you did is indeed piracy because you downloaded it. If you had cracked it yourself you probably would have broken some licenses and whatnot that you had agreed to with EA, but I don't believe that would have been piracy.
Either way EA is very much unlikely to do much anything about it as for the most part the industry only cares about the sources of pirated materials. They generally only ever go after people distributing pirated materials so they'll (legally) attack torrent sites, ROM sites, and other such distributers. The most you're likely to ever get personally is a strongly worded letter (possibly a C&D) to your ISP from some AAA video game company if they notice you seeding a torrent for their game as then you're being a distributer of pirated materials.
Outside of that I've never heard of them coming after anyone for having the entire collection of GBA titles on their thumb drive or emulating Halo having never owned an Xbox or playing the latest Sim City without always online functionality. I'm not saying it can't or won't happen, but you'd make headlines if it did.
Yeah. I'm sure it's not entirely legal. I don't think anyone would want to bring a lawsuit because it could set a precedent.
I think the problem is that theft is the wrong crime to compare to. Piracy is more akin to toll skipping.
I don’t think the phrase supposed to be a logically consistent justification, but rather a way to voice their discontent with/encourage opposition to the increasing degree of control that corporations exert over products you supposedly “bought” from them.
It hasn’t been possible to take full ownership over purchased media since the dawn of copyright law—buying a book doesn’t mean you can run it through a photocopier and sell it at the nearest flea market, after all. Even so, it wasn’t until the advent of software licenses that this rhetoric became popular, as you literally cannot “own” a piece of media that is only available through licensing. Licenses are also largely unregulated: while you were always bound by relevant laws, you are now also bound by the terms of the license, in which the licensor often reserves the right which often reserves the right to change the terms or terminate the license as they see fit. As if relentless regulatory capture was not enough, corporations have engineered a world in which you are effectively at their mercy, and a lot of people are understandably upset by this. So, if these people are deprived of any legal means of owning the media they wish to own, they resort to piracy. Of course this isn’t “justified” in the traditional sense, as stealing something that isn’t for sale is still stealing, and authors/publishers/etc. are not obligated to sell their works, but to them it doesn’t matter, as the underlying social contract of media creation and distribution has been violated.
What field uses
=/=to mean!=?!= isn't universal, i've mostly seen it used in programming.
Otherwise ≠ is the symbol we use in maths and generally the more common one.
=/= is just the worst rendition of ≠ for people that don't know how to write it or are too lazy to go find it.
Yeah =/= is honestly a little confusing. I know
!=isn't universal though, gotta start making sure to use≠insteadYou're definite not wrong, I actually went to use "!=" first. But then thought if someone wasn't familiar with programming they might not get it, so I went with the "=/=" hoping it would make sense to more people. Forgot that we're on lemmy and the audience here would generally understand lol. Didn't know ≠ existed though, will probably use that from now on. Nice!
Have you heard of our Lord and Saviour, APL?
It's a shorthand way of writing ≠ digitally without needing to know the alt code or where it is in your mobile devices keyboard
Yeah in programming we just use
!=:!: NOT=: EQUALIt is not a composite expression but a single expression made up from 2 letters. And this is not a widespread notation.
I like this! Would I be able to bother you to post this to https://lemmy.ca/c/actual_discussion
I feel it would be a really worthwhile topic to dig into and you've articulated it well!
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
This isn't the point being made, and I think why you think it's illogical
Theft requires you deprive someone of an item, not that you get something without buying it. If your definition of theft were accurate then getting a free game would be piracy, which is silly
Theft of a persons property without intent to return. Legally piracy and theft are different, not just semantically. There's no discussion to be had about what stealing is as it's not what's happening