• m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Sorry Ubisoft, I’m not buying some of your almost decade-old game that still has Denuvo.

    If you don’t put your old games that made the bulk of their money a long time ago on GOG, I won’t buy it.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Old-fashioned high seas pirating may have been stealing, but the modern copyright infringement form has never been stealing.

    A key aspect of stealing is that you’re depriving the owner of some kind of property. While you have that property, they don’t, and they can’t use it. Copyright infringement doesn’t deprive the owner of anything. The only thing they lose is the government-granted monopoly over the right to distribute that “idea”. If copyright infringement is like an old fashioned crime, it’s like trespassing. The government granted someone the right to control who has access to some land, and a trespasser violates that law.

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money they feel entitled to every time [Party B] appreciates & consumes A’s media. If hundreds & thousands of B’s are appreciating & consuming A’s media, the financial losses begin to add up after A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion & resources into it, only to not get paid for all that effort.

      How would you feel if you worked your ass off at work then didn’t get paid because your employer felt invisible & untraceable and felt like they could get away with not paying you?

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money

        No, the media producers aren’t deprived of money, they’re deprived of control. They often do use that control to make money.

        If hundreds & thousands of B’s are appreciating & consuming A’s media, the financial losses begin to add up

        There are no losses. There may be missed opportunities to make sales, but that isn’t the same thing as losses.

        A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion

        Sure, “passion”. I’m sure that a lot of people pirate things passionately too.

        As for how I’d feel? I’d probably feel bad if I depended on the current crooked copyright system to make money and then I wasn’t making as much money as I hoped. But, that doesn’t make the current crooked copyright system right. Similarly, if I were a manor lord in the middle ages and depended on peasants to work my land and the peasants ran away, I’d feel like I was being cheated. That doesn’t mean that that was a good system either.

        • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Interesting how you quoted “work, effort, training, time, and passion,” while you conveniently disregarded the “work, effort, training and time” that media producers invest. You think they don’t deserve to earn money for their work & effort & training & time?

          Do you feel that YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?

          I know you think you already answered that question, but you really didn’t. So I’ll ask you again:

          Do you feel like YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Do you feel like YOU deserve to get paid for your work & effort & training & time?

            No, I deserve to be paid what people have agreed to pay me. The work and effort and so-on is irrelevant.

            • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Understandable. So what if people don’t agree to pay you but want your product anyway? That’s what we’re dealing with here.

                • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  We’re talking about people pirating movies and video games and music. That’s the product. And it applies to anything. If I want something, I need to pay for it. That’s how the world works.

      • mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        How would I feel if I produced a lot of value and my employer gave me only part of it while keeping the rest for themselves because they can get away with it?

        Like 99% of people

        • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          Hire your own people and make your own shit. You are now an indie game dev.

          If everybody is pirating your shit, it’s not making any value and nobody who worked on it gets anything at all. And anyone who IS paying I guess is just a sucker? Not the real heroes carrying your mooching ass to every game you want to play?

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Now wait a damn minute.

      So what? A company pays devs, story writers, testers, etc etc to build a game over the course of months or years, and then they release copy 1 which pirate cracker 1 promptly buys.

      You, every nitwit in this thread, and everyone else then take a “ToTalLy FreE” copy (“it’s not stealing” so who cares?!) because obv developer is not out anything. And then? What?

      Who recoops the game cost? How is it determined whether or not to make a sequel if some angel donor covers total cost? It makes no fucking sense.

      Sure, Ubisoft sucks, no complaint. But just because it’s digital doesn’t mean this brain rot is universally true. It’s like some perverse form of libertarianism: I don’t want to pay any taxes or tolls or whatever, but I wanna use all your shit. Every pirate here laughs and says “I got mine” but you’re a bunch of moochers who try to convince yourselves you’re in the right instead of thanking those of us actually buying the content.

      I’ve sailed the seas in my day, but I never got it in my head it was a totally cool and reasonable victimless action. You can say “I couldn’t have afforded it anyway”, but that argument isnt universal and it doesn’t make everyone entitled to a free lunch.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Your line of reasoning is exactly the same as if a company – for the sake of argument, let’s say Ubisoft for absolutely no particular reason whatsoever – made a shitty product that no one actually wanted to buy, and therefore only sold six copies.

        Who “recoups” the cost then? Nobody. That’s called the inherent risk of operating a business.

        It’s also why indie developers in this day and age typically wind up considerably more successful for both themselves and their employees, because they don’t need to outlay the enormous bloated expenditures of the AAA studios and publishers, nor go to such extreme lengths to desperately rake in enough revenue to break even.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          Or, what if a government granted a monopoly on sidewalks within the city to SideWalking Inc. SideWalking spent all kinds of money setting up turnstiles all over the busiest sidewalks equipped with NFC readers, then ran an ad campaign telling people where to buy their sidewalk authorization cards, etc. And then they realized that people were just hopping over the turnstiles! Who recoups the cost to put up all the turnstiles and install all the NFC readers?

        • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          If they make a shitty title, the company is forced to eat it. After multiples of those, they go out of business because they can’t pay devs.

          The counter argument is what? That game sucks so I deserve a copy? There is no reason to freeload off of either one. Sure sail the seas if you have to, but claiming you’re in the right to do so no matter what is pants on head stupid.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    lol as if ubisoft games are worth pirating. I pay for my internet connection and I’d rather use it on something that isn’t slop

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        there’s a small rebel group inside ubi who escaped the rituals where the rest sold their souls to Satan. they made things like rayman and the prince metroidvania… I don’t think of them though when i think ubi tbh.

  • Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Why does Steam does the same thing but nobody cares? Steam also takes 30% of the price just because. Ubisoft has 100x more employees but always gets hate.

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Sure, but Steam sells the licenses and holds them for you in your account, so it does not quite answer the question. To me they still have all the same issues other platforms that deal in licensing have. Steam just has better PR and is not overtly a dick the way others have been.

        • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          And to get ahead of a new law they passed in California, they’re already putting it on the screen before check out that you’re buying a license to the game, not the game itself. Of course, I think just like Prop65, it will be too broad. Prop65 is the law that says that anything with even a trace amount of carcinogens has to have a warning that announces the presence of carcinogens.

  • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It never was, only a corrupt judge can reach that conclusion. Stealing is subtracting an item from one person and adding it to another person, if there are two copies of the item then it’s not stealing.

    • Johanno@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      What?! Forging money isn’t stealing?

      Man and I always thought that it is the same as piracy

      • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Money is not an object, it’s a concept. Also when you forge money you devalue the whole currency therefore subtracting it from everyone. You could argue that pirating a game devalues it, but then I ask you is the game that you paid for any worse because Joe Schmoe made a copy?

        • Katana314@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Is the dollar any “worse” because someone copied it?

          Or, is its scarcity and trade valuation reduced because someone copied

          Try living in a third world country that prints hundreds of its own Trillion Dollar bills every week, and see what you think of it.

            • Katana314@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              If someone forged 80 quintillion dollars, it would remove the usefulness of $1 from everyone else. (and that is in fact the economic fear that’s generated through excess inflation, something that has happened in many countries)

          • pyre@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            that has nothing to do with games. the value of a game comes from enjoying it, not from trading it away. it can be scarce or abundant. wouldn’t change a thing. the analogy doesn’t work.

            • Katana314@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              If you’re the guy that developed a game, you only get so much enjoyment from playing it - and most of your enjoyment from selling 1,000 copies of it to feed your crippling addiction to novelty PEZ dispensers (and paying rent).

              On that note, if an indie developer tries to popularize his niche “aardvark slapping game” by selling it for 10 cents a copy, he might quickly flood the entire limited base of consumers that wants to simulate slapping aardvarks, and only makes $100 in the process. By destroying his game’s scarcity, even though he discovered an eager niche, he can no longer sell copies at his original price of $5 each - enough to pay rent for the much. That’s how scarcity of a game can be valuable.

              • pyre@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                You’re talking about a product. I’m talking about art. You’re arguing that free games have no value. I’m arguing that they do and price has no bearing on the value of an art piece.

    • RidderSport@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      It can already not be stealing since that requires the stolen object to be in fact a physical (and a moveable one at that) object. Stealing non-physical property does constitute a crime, but it’s not stealing.

      Note: this is very specific to your country of origin and may not be true for your country or the applicable law in the case of international crime

  • Alk@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I fully agree with the general message, but this particular anecdote doesn’t really make sense to me and can easily be waved off by anyone who disagrees with it.

    If buying isn’t owning, that means it’s renting or borrowing.

    If you pirate it, they get no money and therefore cannot rent it out to you. You cannot just steal a movie from the movie rental store or a car from a car rental place. That’s stealing.

    Sure, it’s infinitely reproducible but that’s not what this meme says. That’s an unrelated argument for piracy. It draws a direct connection between the 2 relationships of buying + owning and pirating + stealing. However, one has nothing to do with the other.

    When someone owns something, they are allowed to rent it out. It’s always been that way and that’s valid.

    The real argument should be “if there was no intention to buy in the first place, then piracy isn’t stealing” or something like that.

    Let me rephrase. I agree that piracy isn’t stealing, but the fact that buying isn’t owning does NOT prove that at all, nor does it have anything to do with it. It’s a reason people pirate, sure, but it in no way proves that piracy isn’t stealing.

    Am I completely missing the point or is this analogy completely nonsensical? Quite literally, what someone does with something they own is their business and they get to decide what they let people do with rented content, from a legal standpoint. It’s DRM free content is so important because online platforms are allowed to remove content from you for any reason.

    On a side note, I condone piracy and nobody should ever give money to large media corporations. But if we use stupid arguments like this it makes us easier to dismiss.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That phrase means “if you will make an enemy out of me and won’t let me buy the kind of ownership I want, I’ll take it and ignore paying you”.

      But notice that the full explanation is longer? That phrase captures perfectly well the antagonizing perspective, and nobody goes around making sure they pay fairly the people that treat them as enemies. It also fails to capture any other bit of the logic, but it’s ok, the logic is simple and automatic once the antagonism is explicitated.

      • Alk@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I can see that, that’s a good point. However, it’s so easy to misconstrue that phrase into an objective statement of “the relationship between buying and owning directly creates the relationship between piracy and stealing” and the average person, lawmaker, etc can easily get confused when the “ones who own all the content” try to disprove that statement even though it’s not the statement we’re trying to make.

        What is literally said in the meme is incorrect, even if it means something completely different. We need to say what we mean, not make a catchy analogy that’s technically incorrect and easily used against us.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Yeah, I can agree with that. And somebody will eventually find some way to use that mismatch against people.

          But the correct language doesn’t have an impact, and we don’t decide what gets popular anyway. I don’t like that phrase either (I think it’s too conservative), but it’s here to stay.

          • Alk@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            From all of these replies, I’m getting the feeling that people generally don’t understand that the phrase is objectively incorrect, whether or not they agree with its sentiment (which they all do, at least around here). So I am questioning the overall effectiveness of sharing it. But like you said, I think it’s here to stay specifically because everyone seems to agree with the sentiment behind it so much, without considering it objectively.

            We’re getting to a bigger picture here which I can’t even speculate on, but at least I learned something about this particular narrative. I just hope this meme doesn’t do too much harm when people get into debates with others that disagree.

            • marcos@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Also, by the way, technically you can quote any predicate as a consequence of a false one.

              I don’t know if the people that made this phrase knew that, but it’s technically correct :)

            • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              You are getting bogged down in the details. The phrase is a slogan for the sentiment behind it. Sometimes it is more effective to capture the vibe behind something with an eight word phrase instead of writing an essay properly explaining it. We’re discussing a meme not a legal document.

              Your argument sounds like someone saying that you should never use “All cops are bastards” because it is an absolute statement and it is statistically likely that there could be at least one cop somewhere in the world that isn’t a bastard and hasn’t yet been drummed out or given up and quit. Sure, a more accurate phrase is: “The overwhelming majority of police officers are bastards and even the very few among them that are actively making an effort to be beneficial to society are still propping up and participating in an oppressive and highly problematic system” but you can’t exactly print that on a coffee mug, can you?

              • Alk@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                That’s because it’s the same argument. Both sayings are stupid, not because of the message behind them but because of their uselessness in actual conversation with anyone who might disagree. It’s just circlejerking at that point, only shareable and discussable with people who already agree or know what it really is supposed to mean.

                Do you know what someone who disagrees hears when I say ACAB? They hear me calling millions of people I’ve never met a mean name. It doesn’t matter what I want it to mean. Even if I explain to them what it is supposed to mean (the conversation probably wouldn’t even get that far), the fact stands that I called millions of people I’ve never met a mean name. And that’s all anyone needs to dismiss my argument.

                The whole point of these phrases is to spread the message to people who either don’t care or disagree. And they are NOT effective at that very specific thing. These phrases are fine at letting people who already agree pat each other on the back though. These phrases push away the target audience.

                • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  I don’t disagree with anything you said but I wanted to point out that you are on lemmy.world, which is about 80% circle jerk, thats why its so common to see it here. The local posts in my instance are a lot less reactionary, once I turn on all is when I start seeing mob mentality type stuff.

      • ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        “You disrespect me when you use the word BUY when you mean RENT, I’ll show you the same disrespect by denying you any monetary gain that you normally get from ghosting your customers”

        Sometimes I wish I could have the skills to hack these websites - change every “Buy” to “Rent”, add a " Why am I seeing this?" and then explain that the transaction is for “Digital key revocable at any time by (insert scummy corporate here)”.
        Then I’ll happily laugh and watch their profits drop , while they try to publish a statement defending their position.

    • metaStatic@kbin.earth
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      2 months ago

      basically if you get to be a scumbag so do I

      2 wrongs don’t make a right, this phrase just points out how piracy is a service issue

      • Alk@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I agree that it’s a good reason to pirate, but the meme/phrase is ostensibly trying to use the definition of owning to change the definition of stealing.

        It doesn’t prove anything, it just gives a good reason why people are pirating, when it looks like it’s trying to prove some logical relationship of the concepts.

        • metaStatic@kbin.earth
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          2 months ago

          if my property can be taken without fair compensation so can theirs.

          pretty cut and dry logical relationship.

          • Alk@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I think we’re talking about two different things here.

            I agree that they have shitty predatory business practices. However, you did not sign an EULA saying that you could take their property. So even if they do take the things you bought from them away, you would be out of luck. The thing that needs to change is not allowing that to be classified as “buying”.

            What I’m talking about is “if buying isn’t owning” having anything to do with “then piracy isn’t stealing”. Buying not being owning is a great reason to pirate. Still doesn’t make piracy any more legal.

            • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I mean, digital piracy isn’t stealing regardless of the premise that buying ≠ owning.

              Stealing is taking another’s property without the intent to return it. Making a digital copy is not taking any property, it’s creating a reproduction of it. The only place left to argue that piracy is stealing would be to say that you’re stealing the company’s theoretical revenue… but that revenue was never tangible property, being that it’s your money up until the moment you give it to them. Piracy is, and only is, copyright infringement.

              • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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                2 months ago

                Why are you entitled to any video game you want for free?

                I’d argue stealing is also taking something for free that you would normally have to pay for.

                Aren’t you essentially arguing all digital property is worthless because its made of nothing?

                You know thats not true though, there is worth or else you wouldnt want to steal it.

                • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  2 months ago

                  Why are you entitled to any video game you want for free?

                  Nobody here has claimed that, don’t put words in their mouths.

                  I’d argue stealing is also taking something for free that you would normally have to pay for.

                  Thats cool. You’re wrong, though.

                  Aren’t you essentially arguing all digital property is worthless because its made of nothing?

                  Nope, they’re pointing out that it’s infinitely reproducible and thus making a copy doesn’t deprive someone of their copy.

            • metaStatic@kbin.earth
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              2 months ago

              I see where you’re coming from now and totally agree.

              Whenever a concept is distilled to a catch phrase it always loses something.

              • Alk@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Yeah that’s true. I have no creative bone in my body so I can’t even offer an alternative to the catch phrase I am calling out, unfortunately haha

    • sh__@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I know what you mean and I agree. It’s always seemed to not really make logical sense when I hear it. It isn’t quite right. Like you, I also agree with the actually message behind it though.

    • demuxen@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s about them missrepresenting the transaction. If you go to the store and rent a movie then it’s an agreement that it’s temporary. If you buy it then they can’t take it back, what they are doing is fraud and complaining that we don’t want to deal with them.

      • Alk@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I agree with everything you said, however that has nothing to do with piracy. It’s a shitty thing they’re doing that we should be mad at, but it in no way sets the definition of piracy, which is what they’re going to try to defend against in any argument.

        What we should demand is that they properly define buying, owning, and renting so that we own our products. Piracy is piracy no matter what the definition of owning is. Only the reasons change. One reason is that they treat buying as renting, but it does not change the definition of piracy, no matter what we think the definition is.

        • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          I agree with you here, piracy isn’t theft for reasons unrelated to buying and owning. The reason lies with the infinite reproducibility of the product. While I may agree with the sentiment behind the post, it’s not technically a sound argument.

          • Katana314@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            But this is an even more easily defeated argument. It’s suggesting that anything that can be copy-pasted through File Explorer should never have a monetary compensation for its existence. Given the immense hours devoted to making video games, most people would inherently disagree with that. I think the only people who’d lend any credence to the idea would be cheapskates wanting free entertainment.

              • Katana314@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                And, fun fact, in order for GPL software to operate commercially, they sell “licenses” - yes, foregoing the antipirating software, but still pursuing people with lawyers.

                And guess what Oracle has to spend so much time doing?…Because, as it turns out, even businesses are cheapskates.

            • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              It doesn’t mean that at all. What it means is that it isn’t theft. It’s software piracy. When you’re finished downloading your software, everyone who had a copy of that software still has it. So you haven’t stolen anything. You haven’t taken resources from anyone. You aren’t depriving someone else of this object and using it yourself instead. You’ve simply made a copy of an infinitely copiable medium. Sure you did so without paying for it, that’s why piracy is a crime. But it isn’t theft. You haven’t taken anything away from anyone. In fact you’ve done the opposite, and increased the total amount of ordered data in the world, but I won’t try to spin that as something chivalrous for this argument, that’s a different discussion.

              Point is, say what you want about piracy and its dubious legality, it factually is not theft.

              • Katana314@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                This is like saying that pointing a loaded gun at a puppy isn’t technically murder or assault. You’re still admitting it’s a harmful and illegal act, and are fussing over the terminology used.

                It’s also ignoring how labels and word usage shift for the sake of modern convenience. Words like “insane”, “sick”, generally weren’t used positively in history. If I said a game “technically doesn’t have loot boxes” you’d be pretty upset if you found it still had paid randomized loot, even if they were not technically contained in a six-sided “box”. You’re being overly specific about the words when much of the world agrees you’re taking something you’re not entitled to.

                The difference between what you call theft and copyright infringement doesn’t have effective benefit to the seller, especially since even in physical retail, the supply of an item is often largely irrelevant for a store’s financials. As such, I am okay with referring to both as the same thing, even if you’d currently find dictionaries that separate them.

          • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Okay, I can copy anyone’s painting, or art, or make a model of their sculpture and make copies. What does the infinite reproducibility have to do with anything?

            Why should both the original creator and I be allowed to sell those pieces?

            • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              Jumping the gun a little there, aren’t you? Nobody said anything about selling the pirated content. With art that’s considered forgery, and that’s a different crime.

              If you steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, the Mona Lisa is then gone. Nobody else gets to have it or see it. That’s theft. If I pirate your software, you won’t even know I’ve done it, and any person with a copy of that software keeps it, including you. That’s piracy. You see the difference?

              • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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                2 months ago

                Okay I’ll take your example. I replace the Mona Lisa with an exact copy and steal the original. Stealing or not?

                Apparently the argument is that as long as a copy is left behind, it’s not theft, right?

                • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  Well, not exactly; you’re comparing apples and oranges because the original Mona Lisa has value inherent to it being the original, which the copy does not retain. But say you show up and exact copy the Mona Lisa and then take your copy home, that’s not only not theft, it’s perfectly legal. People take photographs of it all the time.

                  In software there’s no difference between a master copy and the one you’ve downloaded, there is no additional value inherent to being the “original file” so this comparison doesn’t really work.

    • derbolle@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      my opinion: it’s not stealing in the Classic sense because if you copy something you don’t take it away from its owner. it might be against the law because intellectual property is a concept.

      • Alk@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Right, I agree with that, but “because if you copy something, you don’t take it away from its owner” is a valid reason, and completely unrelated to the fact that buying isn’t owning. Even if buying WAS owning in all situations, your comment would still be true. That’s my point, the analogy in the meme is useless, and arguments like yours should be the main talking point.

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        What’s the aversion to calling it stealing. It feels like stealing any other thing. You would steal games for the same reasons you might steal a physical good.

        Do we just want a separate word that means digital theft?

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Because it’s not—by definition—stealing?

          Theft is the taking of another person’s personal property with the intent of depriving that person of the use of their property. Also referred to as larceny.

          Source

          Digital piracy is:

          • Copying, not taking.
          • Not affecting personal property.
          • Not depriving the creator of their property.
          • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Why does everyone keep adding that qualifier to stealing like it makes any sense? So if I steal something from someones vacation home and return it before they visit, its not stealing either right? Thats residential piracy is it?

            How about I love a painting so much but I’m an asshole and I think artists don’t deserve to be paid for art, so I sneak in while he’s sleeping, with a replica in tow, and swap out his real painting for the identical fake. Thats not stealing either?

            I don’t know what changed over the years really, it was stealing in the 90s and stealing in the 00s, and then some people figured if they just said it wasnt stealing enough it would stick?

            You can argue the prices aren’t appropriate but its hard to argue you should get all your games for free just because, oh well nothings lost. I even pirate games but I’m not afraid to call it stealing.

            • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              So if I steal something from someones vacation home and return it before they visit, its not stealing either right? Thats residential piracy is it?

              It’s still theft. You intended to and successfully managed to deprive someone of their property, albeit temporarily. You would also still end up in front of a court for trespassing and breaking and entering.

              How about I love a painting so much but I’m an asshole and I think artists don’t deserve to be paid for art, so I sneak in while he’s sleeping, with a replica in tow, and swap out his real painting for the identical fake.

              Still theft, but with copyright infringement on top. You have deprived the artist of his property—his physical copy of the painting.

              I don’t know what changed over the years really, it was stealing in the 90s and stealing in the 00s, and then some people figured if they just said it wasnt stealing enough it would stick?

              People unquestionably accepting falsehoods is what changed. Have you noticed that when pirates do get caught and taken to civil or criminal court, it’s for copyright infringement, computer fraud and abuse, wire fraud, or something else tangential to theft but not actually theft? It’s because digital piracy is legally not “theft”.

              its hard to argue you should get all your games for free just because, oh well nothings lost.

              I am not making that argument.

              I even pirate games but I’m not afraid to call it stealing.

              I don’t, and I still wouldn’t call your digital piracy stealing. In English-speaking countries, at least, the law considers it to be copyright infringement.

              In the same vain, I wouldn’t call randomly sucker-punching someone “assault”: it’s battery.

    • argh_another_username@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      I find interesting that I remember buying a game in Brazil in 1995 (the 11th hour, sequel to The 7th Guest) and in the receipt it was written “license to use”. So, even back then we were already told that it was a permission, not ownership.

      • Alk@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Exactly. This has always been a problem to some extent, but back then no company ever revoked that license or even cared what people did with it unless they sold pirated copies. So it wasn’t a problem for us either.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I have 2TB of music and 7TB of videos but I rarely pirate a game.

    Almost never, sometimes I’m extremely interested in something but want to try it out first. Games are such time sinks that if I can’t shell out $20, then I have bigger problems and probably shouldn’t be playing it.

    That said, I get a lot of content isn’t available in some countries and piracy is the only way some people can experience something, so, different strokes.

    • micka190@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Not to be that guy who defends Ubisoft (God knows I haven’t bought one of their games in ages), but that quote from the CEO is taken way out of context.

      He was directly asked what would need to happen for game streaming to take off, and he responded with “players would need to get used to no longer owning their games”, which is pretty much true as far as answers to that question go.

    • Alk@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Oops, replied to the wrong comment chain here. Continue your wrath, it is righteous.

      I mean, I agree, but what does that have to do with the relationship between buying + owning and piracy + stealing? Ubisoft being shitty is a great reason to pirate, but it does not change the definition of piracy.