Are you illegal?

[Spec]

Done.

Thanks Zop.


Spec.

[Sarxis]

I was d/ling games quite often up until lately.

Stealing the games was leaving a deficite in my soul. No more.

[Kuciwalker]

I DL'ed GalCiv... but that's because I bought it over the web

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Spec
Ummmmm.....did anyone do that?

Not yet...

But that's a reason I often hear. Saying they think CD's are way too expensive, but then they don't actually bother looking outside the main music store chains, and go download until they drop.

[Spiffor]

I download many things. I usually end up buying the softwares I really like, after more or less extended "demo" periods.

I download anime, and I have no shame not buying it even when it made it to the shelves. The thing had been broadcasted in Japan already, and I just feel I'm watching the non-live version.

I never buy music. Now, it is exceedingly rare that I listen to music at all

[Dr Strangelove]

I only download legitimate demos and freeware. People stick it to me all the time, so I know what it feels like. Just yesterday a woman walked into the clinic, got treated for a "dose" then sneaked past the receptionist without paying.

[chequita guevara]

I used to pirate everything. Now that I have money, I've pretty much stopped stealing new things, but I still have a lot of the stolen programs. Since I have the ability to pay for new stuff, I feel that I should.

[chequita guevara]

The diff, DrS, is that you actually lose something, medicines and time, whereas DLing a copy of somehting costs the makers nothing, unless you were going to buy the program and decided to steal it instead.

[Agathon]

Nope. I don't pirate software at all.

I do download software, in most cases it's freeware or demos and I try quite a bit of shareware (and I end up paying for quite a bit of it).

[JCG]

It's been sort of "half and half" the last few years....

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Paris Hilton:

Originally posted by Azazel
Yeah, I think she's hot, too.

I think she's an anorexic toff that I wish would go away and stop clogging up the pages of FHM, personally

[Cyclotron]

I love my moral high ground. I would not dream of toppling from it by downloading anything illegally. It's just one of the ways I try to avoid hypocrisy.

[Skanky Burns]

I do the same as Uber. Sure, I want to support good games companies, but by the same token I don't want to support bad games companies that happened to have good marketting or whatever. How can you know a game is good without actually playing it?

[St Leo]

I always buy games.

I'd always buy software too if the prices were less ludicrous. Have you seen what the academic version of Photoshop goes for?

I never buy music.

I sometimes buy DVDs, but only after I've downloaded a copy.

I do download books, but only for the purposes of finding passages rather than reading.

[Ming]

How do you know any product is really good before you buy it and try it

Why should software be any different... oh that's right, because you can steal it easier than you can other traditional products... But it doesn't change the fact that it's still theft.

[St Leo]

Uhm, shoplifiting software is rather hard, Ming...

[Ming]

The point is... if people had to go into a store to steal it, they probably wouldn't. Plus, they might actually get caught and have to face the penalities... Instead, they can just download it, and for some reason, they think that makes it OK.

If you want to do it... your decision, but don't try to justify it. It is still theft, and it makes you a thief.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming
How do you know any product is really good before you buy it and try it

That's why more companies should allow people to download limited demos of their products. I've bought quite a few pieces of software from enjoying a good demo.

[MrBaggins]

But it doesn't change the fact that it's still theft

I don't think this actually rises to the level of theft.

After all... nothing is removed or transferred... its actually duplicated.

The arguement is that the duplication reduces theoretical software sales, but thats effectively a schroedinger's cat arguement. You don't know that what has been downloaded would have been sold, unless it wasn't available for download, which you'd never be able to test...

So... its only theft of quanta... which don't *actually* exist in a concrete general relativity way.

/me chuckles

[Ming]

It's theft... pure and simple. You can con yourself into thinking it's ok... but you are a thief.

[MrBaggins]

Theft is actually an archaic term for this discussion...

1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

Nothing is taken... removed...

Its duplicated.

[Ming]

Yeah... justify it all you want... it's still theft. If you were to get caught, you would be punished. So play your silly word games if it makes you feel better

But it makes you a thief... subject to prosecution.

[Mercator]

The software is still property of the owner, copy or not. You're using it without permission, so it's theft.

A fake Rolex could also be seen as a "duplicate" of a real one (so nothing is removed), but that still doesn't make it legal.

Whether you would have bought it if you hadn't downloaded it is moot. You're using the product now, without paying for it.

[St Leo]

Copyrighted data is not property.

[Ming]

Violating Copywrites is a crime

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by St Leo
Copyrighted data is not property.

Could you elaborate?

[Ming]

Main Entry: 1copy·right
Pronunciation: -"rIt
Function: noun
Date: 1735
: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form

[St Leo]

Copyright is a temporary government-granted monopoly on the permission to copy a specific composition. It is given in hopes of fostering further creativity.

It is in no way permanent and it does not equal ownership.

In other words, Mickey Mouse belongs to everyone. However, we are all letting Disney control the distribution for n years in hopes that they create more crap like Mickey Mouse.

Unfortunately, Disney is cheating by bribing the World US Government into continuously prolonging our already generous start-up loan to them.

I am very much against copyright for copyright's sake. Copyright is a tool that's supposed to encourage innovation. Claiming that copyrights longer than the ones mandated in the Berne Convention is ludicrous.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The diff, DrS, is that you actually lose something, medicines and time, whereas DLing a copy of somehting costs the makers nothing, unless you were going to buy the program and decided to steal it instead.

Oh yeah? First of all, people rarely steal medicines from us. It's generally illegal for a doctor to run a pharmacy from his office. Most medicines patients get from me are purchased from a drug store. Sometimes I give out samples, but I can't charge for samples. Of course I give injections for some illnesses, but that constitutes a small minority of my business.
Regarding time-so what? Time isn't property. If my time is property, then so is the time an artist devoted to recording a song, as is the time a programmer devoted to writing a game program, and also the time a production company devoted to making a movie, but you don't see anyone here lamenting taking their time do you?

[Jaguar]

I steal music all the time, but I've never stolen a game.


I have twice downloaded games. However, I had already paid for them once. They were both 10+ years old and I lost their disks.