The Pirate Bay Trial

**KarlXII** · 04-21-2009, 23:43

So I'm going to steal a car. The Car Industry is a fat animal anyway, what's one car to them? It's not like someone worked to make it or anything

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**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 04-21-2009, 23:52

Just email me a porsche then.

**Lemur** · 04-22-2009, 03:11

Originally Posted by KarlXII

So I'm going to steal a car. The Car Industry is a fat animal anyway, what's one car to them? It's not like someone worked to make it or anything

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Heh, this is a common error. Copyright violation is not exactly like property theft. If I steal your Porsche, you no longer have a Porsche. In the case of file sharers, it's more like you make your Porsche available to me and I make an exact copy. So you are not deprived of your Porsche, but the value of your Porsche is diminished by dilution, and the manufacturer gets stiffed.

So yes, it's theft, but comparisons to property crime are ... inexact.

**a completely inoffensive name** · 04-22-2009, 03:16

Making a copy of a file and saying it is stealing is like saying I am stealing if I were to look at my neighbors car, get enough scrap and build a completely identical car. "Officer, he built an exact copy of my car! Arrest him!"

**Lemur** · 04-22-2009, 03:22

Actually, ACIN, that ain't right either. You're not reverse-engineering something and making it anew. You're cloning it, making an exact copy. It's a new kind of thing, and I'm not sure we have the right words for it. It's clearly a form of theft, but in which no good is diminished and no property is taken. It's ... new.

**a completely inoffensive name** · 04-22-2009, 03:34

Originally Posted by Lemur

Actually, ACIN, that ain't right either. You're not reverse-engineering something and making it anew. You're cloning it, making an exact copy. It's a new kind of thing, and I'm not sure we have the right words for it. It's clearly a form of theft, but in which no good is diminished and no property is taken. It's ... new.

It's the same, is it? The computer looks at the 1's and 0's make its own 1's and 0's in the exact order and puts them together somewhere else. I look at the car parts, I make my own car parts in the exact order and put them together somewhere else.

**||Lz3||** · 04-22-2009, 03:38

And then you share it with the others... so the company that makes the car wont sell as man cars as they planned to, or even worse, it wont sell a single other car, since everyone has a free copy of the car already.

Piracy does damage the game industry, but the fact that recent games are just not worth 70dls... doesnt help to care about them either....

**Lemur** · 04-22-2009, 03:43

Indeed, Lz3, high pricing only spurs piracy. But have some sympathy for the game makers: How do you effectively compete with free? This is an open question, and one which I haven't seen answered comprehensively by anyone.

Suing your customers is bad for business and doesn't really solve the problem. You can make the paid product more convenient and attractive, but you still have to charge money if you want to make a going concern out of it. Some people are always going to opt for "free," no matter how much work and good faith you put into it.

I don't have the answers, and I don't think anybody else does either.