Are you illegal?

[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.