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Is bootlegging really so bad?
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[Andy Field] “. Gary, you are a professional photographer…you’re OK with people pirating your work and not getting paid?”
No.
Is it a fact of life and there’s nothing I can really do about it?
Yes. And you know what else? If you are dead set against piracy and decry it at every opportunity, it’s not going to save your own output from not being pirated one iota. It strikes me that people seem to have this idea in the back of their heads, “Hey as long as I’m deadset against piracy, the copyright gods will bless me.” Doesn’t work like that.
Let me ask you something: there are two names on this thread who had admitted to software piracy. What should their punishment be?
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whatever the law says it should be…there are fines…..I create films, videos, radio programs for a living….if someone pirates that work, they aren’t just making a copy….they are stealing someone’s hard work and not paying for it…..that is theft, plain and simple — the folks who’ve admitted to it know its wrong and in depending on the circumstance illegal (the rationalization “I was using it to learn on and never did any paid for work or created something of value with it”….may fall into fair use….the lawyers will have to weigh in on that) But I simply don’t understand creative professionals justifying this.
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852 -
[Andy Field] “But I simply don’t understand creative professionals justifying this.”
Because unless you want “creative professionals” to only stem from people with money, then you have to understand that sometimes it’s a way for people who cannot otherwise afford it or have an opportunity to work with the software, to obtain it and learn on it for longer than 30 days.
I would say that there are plenty who can say, “Yes, my first experience with X software was a pirated version, which I have now used for X number of years that I’ve been a paying customer.”
I simply see nothing morally or ethnically wrong with that at all.
And, BTW, as I pointed out before, simply being a hardliner against copyright infringement is not going to stop a single person from infringing on my work. I’ve come to terms with it, because otherwise it’s something I can’t do anything about other than worry. Why waste my time worrying about something I am powerless to prevent?
[Andy Field] “(the rationalization “I was using it to learn on and never did any paid for work or created something of value with it”….may fall into fair use….the lawyers will have to weigh in on that)”
Yeah, it doesn’t fall into that.
Someone cracking Adobe Creative Cloud is committing copyright infringement since they are primarily doing it to use software they aren’t paying for, but if their crack saves your ass when your legitimate copy fails authentication for some reason, does that make it so bad?
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Or they could keep a hack of the current version just in case something happens to the cloud thats not a cloud.
Richard
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A position/argument on a downstream effect of piracy where actual physical loss can/could/might be found:
Tax able profits mitigated against the value of pirated product.Company has a product that is successful in sales and also very heavily pirated. They are able to argue the level of piracy as a measurable $ amount and are allowed to mitigate their tax bill as a % of that amount as a loss.
The society that would have benefited from that tax amount now have less $’s.
The tin foil hat wearing members of teh internets have even proposed this as a reason why a company might allow/encourage piracy to improve their taxable situation.
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[Gav Bott] “Company has a product that is successful in sales and also very heavily pirated. They are able to argue the level of piracy as a measurable $ amount and are allowed to mitigate their tax bill as a % of that amount as a loss.”
You would have to be able to prove that, without the ability to pirate said product, that the end result would be a sale and not simply a pass on purchase of said product.
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I think the question could be simplified to:
If someone does something you think is immoral, does that give you some kind of “permission” to also do immoral things? If you see, or believe, someone is stealing, does that excuse you from guilt for stealing something yourself?
I’m not convinced that trying to re-frame or re-define “stealing” as “harmless copying” has any moral weight. And more to the point, neither are the courts.
Two wrongs still don’t add up to a right. And I think this holds true whether you are an atheist or not.
The only defense I can think of is if the “wrong” serves some greater good. Piracy on the excuse that the victims can afford the parasitism doesn’t strike me as all that noble an argument. -
[Mark Suszko] “Two wrongs still don’t add up to a right. And I think this holds true whether you are an atheist or not.
The only defense I can think of is if the “wrong” serves some greater good. Piracy on the excuse that the victims can afford the parasitism doesn’t strike me as all that noble an argument.”Bingo.
I don’t know why religion/religious text was even brought in to this conversation.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t know why religion/religious text was even brought in to this conversation.”
The reason it was brought in was because of the black and white way it was labled as theft, when the implications are much greyer. We can talk in moral certainties all we want.
However, the friend who had given me the discs had bought them. He considered those discs he had purchased as his. As far as he was concerned (and I am not saying he was right), terms of service agreements were just legal petty fogging — mind you this was over a decade ago and thinking has shifted a lot since those times. He had paid good money for those discs and as far as he was concerned if he wanted to give copies to a friend, it was his right.
Now, I didn’t even really consider the morality of it all. I just thought, “cool here is some software I can’t afford right now to play with.” So maybe it was a theft. I’m not sure. Neither he or I financially benefited from it. The ones who benefited were the software makers, because I purchased copies as soon as I could afford. I am not saying what I did was morally justified. I am just saying it was a common practice (and I suspect it still is)and asking, questions of lofty morality aside, how harmful a practice it really is. I think the only difference between me and many others (including many on this board) is I just fessed up to it.
Intellectual property is a tricky thing. If you make a mix cd of your favorite music and give it to your girl friend, does that make you and her a thief? You are definitely not authorized to do so. Are you robbing the artist of royalties due them.
It is not so black and white. I am not saying what I did was right or wrong. It was just a pretty common practice back then. Are all those folks who made tapes or CDs from albums thieves? Or those that taped movies off of HBO? If so, there are a lot of thieves in this ole world.
It is easy to pass moral judgement. And feel free to do so.
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What you are describing is much different than what I would consider bootlegging software.
Bootlegging implies reselling illegal copies, and a totally different scenario that what you just subscribed, at least in my definition of bootlegging, but perhaps not the definition provided by a EULA or law.
I can walk around the corner and buy DVDs of movies that are still in the theaters. That is bootlegging to me.
Letting my buddy borrow a purchased DVD to watch and use is not what I would call bootlegging.
I am not trying to pass judgment on you, Clint. I enjoy the issues you bring up. Perhaps I should have asked for more clarity in your definition of bootlegging.
I also did not call you a thief, and if I did, I’d be a thief, too.
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