ThePirateBay.org + 10,000 Legal disputes

Limewater · Post by **Limewater** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 7:43 pm

SavageLych wrote:Sense when is stealing an idea illegal?

Since about 1662.

Seaniccus · Post by **Seaniccus** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:39 pm

Warning! I'm about to express an unpopular opinion

SavageLych wrote:They arn't losing any money at all when you pirate somthing, its simply income they don't make. </endrant>

So it's okay if your boss stiffs you at the end of the week and doesent pay you for the 40+ hours you worked, right? I mean it's not like you LOST any money, you were just denied payment for your work.

If you are going to pirate, be honest with yourself. You ARE stealing, you just arent lowering company X's inventory. Regardless, you are still obtaining licensed content that you have no legal right to without compensating the creator/owner of said content. To argue that it's "less wrong" you need to acknoledge that it is still wrong, and yes - like it or not, people do get hurt by it and it DOES effect income.

The very fact that the culture exists is damaging to the reverse of what is argued. It is argued that it's "Ok" to pirate various things because it doesent "hurt" any individual because the big companies make so much money, it's "not a big deal."
Forgetting everything that's wrong with that ideology, thinking that way creates a culture among internet users that it's okay to download anything they happen to find on bittorrent. This culture spawns cases where it actually DOES hurt people.
I work at a small comic shop in my town. Every now and then artists and writers come for signings and public apperences. The topic of downaloding comics via bittorrent came up, and one writer told us a story.
Until a few months earlier, he had never even heard of bittorrent - but then his son showed him the content of a torrent he downloaded - it contained everything that he had ever done. His entire career in one convenient folder, found in one location. He told us it might not matter to some people, but he can see a difference in his monthly income with the difference in individual sales of the books he works on. EVERY SALE MATTERS to him, and he was dissapointed to think of how many people might have bought his comic if it wasen't already avalible.

Hearing this story changed my opinion about file sharing. I don't know if it hurts the big company, but it did hurt this guy.
You can do what you want, I have no control over any of you - but please don't argue that it's a victimless crime, because it's not. The victims just aren't who you might think, and i'm not going to be responsible for perpetuating a culture that hurts people who don't deserve it.

I've actually since been making the effort to buy every game i downloaded, or album, or whatever. My mp3 player contains ONLY songs I own the license to, in CD or Record format. I don't have any roms on my computer anymore, and unless I dump them from the cartridges myself, I may never again. If I do download in the future, you can be sure that I'll have the phsyical game somewhere, even if it's considered "abandonware."

I'm pretty serious about all this, unfortunetly. I used to get so much free stuff. It was neat.

Was.

gamemasterAS · Post by **gamemasterAS** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:02 pm

I know pirating is kinda bad and I do kinda view it as stealing. I have mixed feelings. But after a couple hundred movies you just cant go back.

Gamerdude · Post by **Gamerdude** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:12 pm

Uh. first off, it is called an IP blocker for a reason. Second, I thought this was legal in Switzerland? What is wrong with talking a few free copies of windows, it isn't like Bill Gates needs any more money. I personally am not involved in any illegal practices and do not intend to. I am neither endorsing this site or suggesting anyone to use it, if they can sock a $250,000 fine on you for copying a $20 dollar movie, who knows what it is for a $300 OS.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:15 pm

Seaniccus wrote:Monster post.

I agree with you. As soon as I get a decent source of income, I'm going to go out and buy the CDs of the stuff I've downloaded (or at least the stuff I like) and then its deletion for the downloaded files. Even when I do have the money, I will still download an album before buying it, so that I can FULLY preview it, not the 30 seconds most online stores give you. No reason for me to pay $10 if it turns out I really don't like the CD.
I disagree with you on ROMs, though. If they're older than last gen (PS2), I'm fine with downloading them. Its not like the people that wrote it are gonna go hungry from it, since they wouldn't be making a cent anyways from me buying a used game.

Gamerdude · Post by **Gamerdude** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:22 pm

http://www.emuparadise.org
It is legal to the best of my knowledge. They only deal with the stuff you can't buy any more (like N64, etc.) so...

Valium · Post by **Valium** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:27 pm

Gamerdude wrote: It is legal to the best of my knowledge. They only deal with the stuff you can't buy any more (like N64, etc.) so...

Downloading roms will never be legal.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:32 pm

Valium wrote:
Gamerdude wrote: It is legal to the best of my knowledge. They only deal with the stuff you can't buy any more (like N64, etc.) so...
Downloading roms will never be legal.

It will be when the copyrights run out or they're made public domain like Doom and Half-Life.

Valium · Post by **Valium** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:55 pm

vskid wrote:
Valium wrote:
Gamerdude wrote: It is legal to the best of my knowledge. They only deal with the stuff you can't buy any more (like N64, etc.) so...
Downloading roms will never be legal.
It will be when the copyrights run out or they're made public domain like Doom and Half-Life.

And the chances of all this happening to all roms would be?

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:04 pm

Valium wrote:
vskid wrote:
Valium wrote:
Gamerdude wrote: It is legal to the best of my knowledge. They only deal with the stuff you can't buy any more (like N64, etc.) so...
Downloading roms will never be legal.
It will be when the copyrights run out or they're made public domain like Doom and Half-Life.
And the chances of all this happening to all roms would be?

I never said it would happen to all roms, I was just saying that "never" was incorrect, as there are roms that are legal.

Post by **bicostp** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:20 pm

Valium wrote:Downloading roms will never be legal.

Correction: Commercial roms the developers still have a tight grip on are not legal. Commercial roms released to the public domain by their authors (like Robby Roto) and homebrew are legal.

Doom is legal because id software released the engine under the GPL a while back. Same deal with Quake 3, which became OpenArena.

I'm not sure about games whose publishers and developers ahve long since gone out of business... Are they public domain? Freeware? Orphanware? I don't know.

benol · Post by **benol** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:23 pm

bicostp wrote:
Valium wrote:Downloading roms will never be legal.
Correction: Commercial roms the developers still have a tight grip on are not legal. Commercial roms released to the public domain by their authors (like Robby Roto) and homebrew are legal.

Doom is legal because id software released the engine under the GPL a while back. Same deal with Quake 3, which became OpenArena.

I'm not sure about games whose publishers and developers ahve long since gone out of business... Are they public domain? Freeware? Orphanware? I don't know.

Probably orphanware.

Seaniccus · Post by **Seaniccus** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:51 pm

vskid wrote: I will still download an album before buying it, so that I can FULLY preview it, not the 30 seconds most online stores give you. No reason for me to pay $10 if it turns out I really don't like the CD.
I disagree with you on ROMs, though. If they're older than last gen (PS2), I'm fine with downloading them. Its not like the people that wrote it are gonna go hungry from it, since they wouldn't be making a cent anyways from me buying a used game.

I sort-of agree with you on music. It's really hard to decide unless you can hear a few of the songs. Ussually I only buy music of artists I know already, but if i'm venturing new, i'll at leaest go on youtube and find a "music video" made with some anime thing, ignore the video, decide if I like it. But yeah, I get where you are coming from.

Roms are a hard point. It used to be easier to just say "nobody is makign money," but now nintendo sells them on the wii, so whatever. I respect their ownership of the copywrite.

I do hold at least ONE major exception to the rule, and it's MOTHER/Earthbound Zero. I own the Famicom Mother Cart, and my Japanese sucks - So as far as i'm concerned i'm plenty entitled to the Earthbound Zero rom.

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:04 pm

Okay, to start this off, I do recognize that piracy is stealing, there's no way around it. Now next, I hate to sound like some sort of whacked anarchist when I make this point, but try to bear with me. Let's say you're an average end-user who doesn't have much technical logic at all. Now taking that into consideration, let's see how much the corporate world can milk you for...

Let's say you go to the store and buy your favorite movie; I dunno, let's go with The Fugitive, I could really care less.

Cha-ching #1. You get home, and you want to put that movie on your iPod; but wait! You can't copy that disk over to your PC, it's got copy protection. But you bought it, right? You own the file legally, you should be able to put it wherever you want to. WRONG! You want it on your portable media player, go buy it again. Oh, and if you get it in an incompatible format, go out and buy some software to convert it on over. It goes on and on, a terribly vicious cycle. In some cases, the same goes for music, though it's not as extreme. I'm aware that this does, by no means, justify piracy, but it is pretty goddamn ridiculous, no?

CTFan

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:06 pm

Seaniccus wrote:I sort-of agree with you on music. It's really hard to decide unless you can hear a few of the songs. Ussually I only buy music of artists I know already, but if i'm venturing new, i'll at leaest go on youtube and find a "music video" made with some anime thing, ignore the video, decide if I like it. But yeah, I get where you are coming from.
Roms are a hard point. It used to be easier to just say "nobody is makign money," but now nintendo sells them on the wii, so whatever. I respect their ownership of the copywrite.
I do hold at least ONE major exception to the rule, and it's MOTHER/Earthbound Zero. I own the Famicom Mother Cart, and my Japanese sucks - So as far as i'm concerned i'm plenty entitled to the Earthbound Zero rom.

Unfortunately, the best song on a CD is usually the only one you can find a music video of, so you aren't much better off than the 30 second clips. If you want to find new music similar to what you already like, Pandora is a good, legal way to listen to music, with about as much control as you could expect from a legal service of that type. Good quality, too.
Re-releases of the exact same, 20 year old game are a load of crap. The least they could do is add online multiplayer to them, unlike 90% of their current games that could greatly benefit from it. Microsoft does it on Xbox Live Arcade, and it works for them.
The way I see it (and the way it should be if it isn't), is that if you own a hard copy of the game, you are entitled to use a software copy of the same game, too.