underground gamer is offline for good

[marurun]

You have deprived them of the tangible money that they reasonably expected to make from the product they created.

Except one thing: would you have purchased it if you couldn't download it? If so, then technically, you deprived them of nothing.

Whether or not you would or wouldn't have paid for it is immaterial.

Did you download and use/watch/play/otherwise enjoy the content? To have had that experience you were supposed to pay. Period. If you wouldn't have paid, that still makes a clear-cut case for theft!

Again, theft is clearly defined in the law, and copyright infringement, while illegal, isn't theft. Some people consider in equivalent to theft, either morally, economically, or both, but you cannot be legally charged with theft for copyright infringement. You must be charged with copyright infringement.

From the standpoint of legal terminology, for it to be theft something physical must be taken without permission, depriving the owner of that physical item which was taken. Your argument that something copied deprives the owner of possible income therefore doesn't meet the standard, because nothing physical was taken, and the monetary loss which occurs is potential/hypothetical and not actual. Further, the more important deprivation to the copyright holder is CONTROL over the item copied. Copyright grants an exclusive monopoly on the right to copy, and the only deprivation that can be proven to have occurred is the deprivation of control over one or more copies of the original.

What many people call theft of services is a somewhat similar occurrence. While theft might make for nice shorthand, it is typically fraud or larceny that such violators are charged with.

So, to be clear, legally speaking, copyright infringement is a distinct and separate crime, which has its own legal definitions and punishments. Calling it theft is convenient shorthand that many rely upon in the face of the sometimes complex technical and moral issues raised by copyright issues, but even using theft as shorthand is misleading and reduces copyright to something much simpler than it actually is.

Yes, I'm a librarian and copyright is one of my hot-button issues. For my work and research I have to understand it thoroughly and abide by it, even as I disagree quite strongly with the current length of terms and legal penalties for personal infringement. If anything, my close professional relationship with it has convinced me even further that the current state of copyright in the US and the world at large is overbearing, economically harmful to society and most individuals, and indicative of the broader issue of too much corporate involvement in lawmaking and international trade treaties.

**Yes, I apologize. I suffer from "Someone on the internet is Wrong" syndrome. Once I'm motivated enough I may drag some of these posts out to a totally new thread about copyright, so that we can keep this stuff in one place.

[dogman91]

The real difference is a lot of these companies (I'm assuming) don't really give a shit about preserving games, especially those rare ones you can't find anywhere else online and Underground Gamer basically had everything... nothing lasts forever and once the retail games are all wiped all there will be are digital backups, so I say it's pretty damn awesome it has full no-intro sets and the like whether you're for or against downloading or not. Obviously just thinking about future generations, where I have a feeling the history of gaming will be viewed as a little bit more important 100 years from now or whatever.

and lol the thread does seem to be heading that way in terms of a piracy debate @hobie wan...

[marurun]

Is anyone staying on top of this? It might be nice to copy updates on this back to this thread.

[irixith]

From the standpoint of legal terminology, for it to be theft something physical must be taken without permission, depriving the owner of that physical item which was taken. Your argument that something copied deprives the owner of possible income therefore doesn't meet the standard, because nothing physical was taken, and the monetary loss which occurs is potential/hypothetical and not actual. Further, the more important deprivation to the copyright holder is CONTROL over the item copied. Copyright grants an exclusive monopoly on the right to copy, and the only deprivation that can be proven to have occurred is the deprivation of control over one or more copies of the original.

Oh how I tire of the bolded part. That it's a HYPOTHETICAL loss of income. No it isn't! A game comes out, you download play and enjoy it instead of buying it, that is a REAL, TANGIBLE, loss of income. I make game x. I sell one copy. That person puts it on the internet and 500,000 people download and play it. Maybe only 200,000 people would have actually put down money for it, so here I am, claiming 300,000 hypothetical customers that don't exist -- except they DO, because there they are, playing my game, that they were supposed to buy in order to do so. Perhaps law currently defines that as copyright infringement, but common sense defines it as theft.

Legalese needs to catch up with the rest of the world already. The technicalities that exist between theft and the ancient definitions of copyright are ridiculous. The fact that someone can, with a straight face, pretend as if copyright infringement does not equate to theft, blows my mind. Has internet entitlement really jumped that far over the edge?

[dsheinem]

Has internet entitlement really jumped that far over the edge?

Yes.

[Menegrothx]

Oh how I tire of the bolded part. That it's a HYPOTHETICAL loss of income. No it isn't! A game comes out, you download play and enjoy it instead of buying it, that is a REAL, TANGIBLE, loss of income. I make game x. I sell one copy. That person puts it on the internet and 500,000 people download and play it. Maybe only 200,000 people would have actually put down money for it, so here I am, claiming 300,000 hypothetical customers that don't exist -- except they DO, because there they are, playing my game, that they were supposed to buy in order to do so. Perhaps law currently defines that as copyright infringement, but common sense defines it as theft.

So every time you buy an old game off eBay, you are in fact stealing it? The developers of the game aren't getting any money from used games. What about lending a game to a friend who plays it from start to finish, with out paying the developers anything?

[o.pwuaioc]

Has internet entitlement really jumped that far over the edge?

Yes.

Ah, right, because ancient scribes and medieval monks always paid copyright holders for permission to copy their works.

[dsheinem]

Has internet entitlement really jumped that far over the edge?

Yes.

Ah, right, because ancient scribes and medieval monks always paid copyright holders for permission to copy their works.

You don't think the current generation who grew up with instant access to almost all entertainment ever produced feels more entitled to their media than people did in ancient or medieval times?

[o.pwuaioc]

Yes.

Ah, right, because ancient scribes and medieval monks always paid copyright holders for permission to copy their works.

You don't think the current generation who grew up with instant access to almost all entertainment ever produced feels more entitled to their media than people did in ancient or medieval times?

Absolutely not. Not only was there no copyright on literature, but e.g. in ancient Rome the circus and gladiator games were free. In ancient Greece, the City Dionysia was so important that they subsidized it for poorer citizens.

You would never see that today.

[dsheinem]

You don't think the current generation who grew up with instant access to almost all entertainment ever produced feels more entitled to their media than people did in ancient or medieval times?

Absolutely not. Not only was there no copyright on literature, but e.g. in ancient Rome the circus and gladiator games were free. In ancient Greece, the Dionysia was so important that they subsidized it for poorer citizens.

You would never see that today.

You don't need really copyright when it is cost prohibitive to make and sell copies of someone else's work. The other stuff isn't really an equivalent, as there are plenty of free entertainment options ("live" and recorded) today as well.

I think we're trying to compare too many unlike things...