The Morals of Grabbing Free Content From the Web

kbrickley said:
It is only grey because you choose to make it so, it isn't that grey to everyone ;)
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And the fact that there even is a black/white distinction is because someone of power and wealth decided to push forth with laws that change it as such. The whole "you're not allowed to be entertained because you can't afford it" argument is getting old, especially when what you "take" does not displace anything.
 
BroHamBone said:
Even though its free for me now, $30 bucks on top of my Cable bill per premium channel is asking for way to much. Entertainers are over hyped and over paid.

As far as M$ products, I will have my main rig and laptop OS authentic. I have a legit copy of office 2010' but Every thing after that is a different story.

Game Dev's don't deserve money for garbage recreations, but they hype em up and sell millions for the same game with a different number behind it and with a few added guns, sounds, maps. An update for $15-$20 would suffice as well as keep existing players.I'm pretty sure y'all know what game I'm talking about.
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In one of my business classes in college we learned about the "fraud triangle" which shows the three factors that lead to fraud: motive, rationalization, and opportunity. It's interesting to see the same three factors present in your reasoning.

You either don't have the money to afford them or you're cheap (motive), the content is easily available to you (opportunity), and you justify your actions by saying they're overpriced and overpaid.

Simply put, you want the content but you don't want to pay for it.
 
sfsuphysics said:
And the fact that there even is a black/white distinction is because someone of power and wealth decided to push forth with laws that change it as such. The whole "you're not allowed to be entertained because you can't afford it" argument is getting old, especially when what you "take" does not displace anything.
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No one's saying you're not allowed to be entertained. There's a billion of free things you could do to entertain yourself.

Look, I'm not saying I've never downloaded a movie or game but I don't try and delude myself by thinking it's not wrong. It is. Whether it's displacing something or not is irrelevant.
 
Just curious.

How many here would buy an ASUS Intel i7 SSD notebook with fast GPU for $100 from a guy in a parking lot? Yes, it works and nothing is wrong with it, but you pretty much know it's stolen cause the guy doesn't really know what it is or what it's worth.

Is hardware exempt? Or is it just media?
 
Only real gripe i have with people who pirate games, music, ect, to "See if it's any good before i consider buying" is that for every person who DOES go out afterwards and gets a legit copy, most likely 3-4 more people will not bother to buy it since they already have it. (So why pay for it now?)
Or they'll say they pirate it as a protest against high prices, DRM or such and smugly pat themselves on the back for "Sticking it to the man", but mainly want something for nothing or want to make themselves feel good.
A little pirating is inevitable, as mentioned beforehand, and we've all done it once or twice most likely in some form or another.
But no matter what, people will continue to do what they will no matter what's written on here...:eek:
 
Xee said:
Whether it's displacing something or not is irrelevant.
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Morally, yes.

With how the RIAA/MPAA are getting it handled right now? You couldn't be more wrong and ironically enough falls back to morals on the flip side.

People are being handed very large fines in courts right now when caught. I agree w/punishment but when I can go into a store, physically rip off products only to get much less in punishment, something is wrong. I have very realistically displaced something and can get less punishment for it. Grabbing a digital copy displaces nothing except (possibly) funds in the already corrupt industry that makes it, yet some are being indicted on the scale of grand larceny.

Laws and the industry have a good ways to go to define how digital media will be handled in the future, obviously. This country (USA) though has a real problem internally though which supercedes these issues. There are many, many people who are without basics in this country and frankly, from what I can see, I place that blame squarely on the government and large corporations lobbying them. Economics in this country are messed up simply put.
 
sfsuphysics said:
The whole "you're not allowed to be entertained because you can't afford it" argument is getting old
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I never said they couldn't be entertained ... I was a kid before they had cell phones or VCRs (let alone blu ray or DVD) and my first video game console was an Atari 2600 ... my first computer was an Apple II+ ... strangely, I don't recall spending my childhood slumped over waiting for World of Grand Theft Call of Battlefield Diablo Far Halo Craft or whatever the "in" title is :p ... I think everyone deserves to be entertained ... I don't think it is the responsibility of the game developers or movie studios or recording artists to do that for free unless THEY choose to ... I wouldn't work for free and I don't expect them to do it either ;)
 
Krenum said:
If you're living off Ramen Noodles and have a Computer, you might have a priority problem.
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LeninGHOLA said:
If you don't have a computer in 2013, you might have a priority problem.
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CookieFactory said:
If you're not eating ramen for its exquisite taste, you might have a 2013 problem.
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Qinsp said:
Millionaires and Billionaires get caught stealing and go Prison (health clubs from what I read).

They did not have to steal, they just wanted something for nothing.
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This thread is full of win.

Everyone steals. They just make a bigger deal out of piracy, which most people do just because they can.

AT&T just stole $6 more from me every month by hiking up my phone bill. They're pirating my hard earned money x1000000 other customers.

I would like to see companies sell digital goods for much cheaper. Instead of 10000 x $15, why not sell 45000 x $5 ? More money, and bandwidth is cheap.
 
Ashbringer said:
Considering how easily Microsoft was about to vilify their customers with Xbox One, it's easy to say that one would mod an Xbox One to get around this system. A lot of people would have easily became modern day robin hoods.

#1 Majority of people pirate to avoid paying.
#2 Some people pirate cause the product isn't available in their country, or at least for a while.
#3 And some people just can't afford it.
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Hmm... Isn't it majority of people pirate because of service? No jumping through hoops to get what you want, you just click and download. Isn't that why a lot of music piracy went down when stuff like Itunes came out? netflix probably did the same as well, on the movie front. Steam, likewise, on the gaming front.
 
Pirates are underserved customers. Gabe is a smart man.
 
sfsuphysics said:
He may have been talking about other forms of downloading. Although at $60 a pop for games, each game you download makes the console price cheaper per game you own, so it can still be a matter of not affording. You get one game because that's all you can afford, congrats you went back to the days of the NeoGeo and bought a $660 game you can play, you buy 10 games .. well then you got 10 games that cost you $120 a piece to play, you download 10 games... well then you got 10 games that cost you $60 a piece to play.
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Yeah, and I can afford a lot more sports cars if I start stealing them. Anyone who buys an Xbox One then steals a bunch of games and calls it "affordability" should have a 2x4 shoved up their ass as an "affordable marital aid."
 
In my opinion just about all digital goods are waaaay overpriced and over valued. Something that has no physical presence and is often accompaied by DRM and other scammy legalese is worth next to nothing and therefore should be priced accordingly (this also includes DLCs, in game/app purchases, and other virtual crap that comes from the "cloud").
 
dr.kevin said:
Everyone steals.
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No, not everyone.

Besides, of what consequence is it to you what everyone else does? How, and why, would that factor into any of the decisions you might make regarding the morality or immorality of an action?
 
You simply don't need to justify sharing.

There is nothing amoral about sharing. The word piracy is being used today only because the content industry failed at vilifying the word sharing so they came up with a different word. Every time you see an article about "piracy" substitute that word for sharing and you'll see how stupid it all sounds.
 
P.S: The morals of sharing free content from the Web.
 
kbrickley said:
... and the $60 for many games is pretty much unchanged for the last 15 years or so (making it a lower price now than it was then due to inflationary effects) ...
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More new electronics are released at hugely inflated prices, and drop over time. A good example of this is HDTVs and Blu-Ray players. Now they're cheaper then ever. As much as people want to introduce inflation into the argument, it has no reality to what the final price of a game is.

The price of games is based on what companies think you're wiling to pay. The price of that game will drop once they believe you would only buy said game if offered at a lower price. That's why some games are either $60 for a year, and some end up $1 after a month. Inflation has nothing to do with it.

BroHamBone said:
Game Dev's don't deserve money for garbage recreations, but they hype em up and sell millions for the same game with a different number behind it and with a few added guns, sounds, maps. An update for $15-$20 would suffice as well as keep existing players.I'm pretty sure y'all know what game I'm talking about.

I made the mistake and bought into "Warzie", named differently now, and can't pay someone to take it off my hands.
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I bought Tomb Raider 2013 for like $17 and it's a horrible piece of junk. This game got way too much praise and it's shit. No gameplay, what so ever. Seriously, you have QTE moements where you're watching a cut scene but have to hit buttons are the right moment. Who finds this shit fun? No real difficulty. Game likes to take away control all the time. Worst part is they took away her boobs, so at least I'd have something to look at while not playing a game.

I'm forcing myself to finish the game to justify that I bought shit. There needs to be a return policy for games on Steam. Getting sick of buying over hyped lemons. As a pirate I would have just deleted the game and walked away. Cause it's not like I ever invested any money into it.

Before anyone thinks that Tomb Raider games are about Lara Croft boobs, go play the Playstation 1 games from the 90's. Those were the best. I'm so sick of games with QTE in them and pointless objectives.
 
Lorien said:
There is nothing amoral about sharing. The word piracy is being used today only because the content industry failed at vilifying the word sharing so they came up with a different word.
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By substituting the word "sharing" for the word "piracy", you're merely stepping around the negative connotation of that word by supplanting it with a word you feel has a more positive connotation. In a sense, you're doing the same thing the so-called content industry did with the word "piracy", only in reverse: rather than trying to portray the act in a negative way, you're spinning it to come across as positive. You aren't actually changing the situation any.

One could just as easily use the term "unlawfully re-distributing" instead. I suspect, though, that you would find the negative connotation undesirable.
 
If it's not worth the price being charged, don't buy it, you self entitled whiners. You'll survive without it.
 
Sharing:

You bought a movie ticket. You open the emergency exit and let 10 of your friends in.

But in the digital world, you skip the whole "buying a ticket" thing, right?
 
Aluisious said:
If it's not worth the price being charged, don't buy it, you self entitled whiners. You'll survive without it.
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Hence the title of this thread. People don't want to and aren't paying for it, they're "Grabbing Free Content From the Web".
 
Lorien said:
You simply don't need to justify sharing.

There is nothing amoral about sharing. The word piracy is being used today only because the content industry failed at vilifying the word sharing so they came up with a different word. Every time you see an article about "piracy" substitute that word for sharing and you'll see how stupid it all sounds.
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prometheus.png
 
The duo theorized that people are well aware of their moral obligations to abide by the law so therefore, when those people commit crimes, they have to employ techniques in order to overcome their inbuilt desire to do the “right thing”. They do this, Matza and Sykes said, through denial and by justifying their behavior.
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Um, no. I don't have a moral obligation to obey the law just because it's the law. If a law isn't moral, by my standards of moral, I don't feel like I should follow it just because it's the law.

If a law was passed that required you to punch every baby in the face if it passed by you in a stroller I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't feel guilty or a need to justify my my lack of child beating.

Just because it's a law, doesn't make it moral.
 
Ashbringer said:
More new electronics are released at hugely inflated prices, and drop over time. A good example of this is HDTVs and Blu-Ray players. Now they're cheaper then ever. As much as people want to introduce inflation into the argument, it has no reality to what the final price of a game is.

The price of games is based on what companies think you're wiling to pay. The price of that game will drop once they believe you would only buy said game if offered at a lower price. That's why some games are either $60 for a year, and some end up $1 after a month. Inflation has nothing to do with it.
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Electronics benefit from economies of scale and the movement of the manufacturing processes to low cost regions (we wouldn't be getting low priced Blu Ray players if they were manufactured in the US) ;)

As to the price of games that is totally subjective ... I am not a programmer and I cannot write my own software ... If I want a game I have to purchase the fruits and labors of others ... for a game like Diablo 2 which I have probably played for 400-500 hours I got my monies worth and more from that $60 I paid ... for a game like Battlefield or Call of Duty you couldn't give it to me for free (although if you want to pay me $60 I would be happy to play it :D ) ... I always find it interesting that people who have no ability to create the product they are buying are the experts on what the item should cost ;) ... as others have said, if I dislike the price of something I wait for the price to drop or I skip it (I do not need to take the item for free like the self entitled folks who refuse to wait :cool: )
 
Xee said:
In one of my business classes in college we learned about the "fraud triangle" which shows the three factors that lead to fraud: motive, rationalization, and opportunity. It's interesting to see the same three factors present in your reasoning.

You either don't have the money to afford them or you're cheap (motive), the content is easily available to you (opportunity), and you justify your actions by saying they're overpriced and overpaid.

Simply put, you want the content but you don't want to pay for it.
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I pay for the content I want. The other content is free.
 
One person buy a movie, put it on a hard drive, and send it to a friend. That friend do the same and send it to a different friend. Lets call it e Brotherhood of the traveling hard drive. Paying it forward.... Borrowing is stealing so lending a friend a movie he didn't pay for, he is sharing.... Oh wait pirating. That was fun... Lets share, Pirates!
 
Qinsp said:
Sharing:

You bought a movie ticket. You open the emergency exit and let 10 of your friends in.

But in the digital world, you skip the whole "buying a ticket" thing, right?
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In most cases, someone bought it, then shared it. So, I think your logic there is a bit flawed.

wonderfield said:
No, not everyone.

Besides, of what consequence is it to you what everyone else does? How, and why, would that factor into any of the decisions you might make regarding the morality or immorality of an action?
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If it's what everyone else does, moral changes, as morals change with society. It used to be morally okay to own slaves, you know.
 
wonderfield said:
By substituting the word "sharing" for the word "piracy", you're merely stepping around the negative connotation of that word by supplanting it with a word you feel has a more positive connotation. In a sense, you're doing the same thing the so-called content industry did with the word "piracy", only in reverse: rather than trying to portray the act in a negative way, you're spinning it to come across as positive. You aren't actually changing the situation any.

One could just as easily use the term "unlawfully re-distributing" instead. I suspect, though, that you would find the negative connotation undesirable.
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Read that to yourself a few times. It truly sounds utterly asinine but it's the perfect example demonstrating the extent that one has to spin things in order to make the word sharing be something bad.

Piracy did not exist until the content industry paid to have it legislated into existence in the 70s with the Copyright Act because they knew they'd fail at demonizing the word sharing.

The word and concept of sharing existed for millenia before the word piracy was invented.
 
The whole "sharing" argument is a lot more impressive when it is coming from someone that actually owns what is being shared ... if folks want to write their own software (spending thousands or hundreds of thousands of man hours doing it) and then then turn around and "share" it with all the deadbeats who want it for free then that is their choice and I would never oppose that ... however, if the deadbeats who want the results of someone else's labors without compensating them are making the argument then it is a lot less impressive ;) ... besides, we already tried that in the Soviet Union and that model didn't work :p
 
"Sharing" isn't the proper term to use since copies of the item are being made before the "sharing" takes place. I don't consider it stealing either since it's a copy of a copy of a copy....and the original is still present and intact. "Pirating" makes it sound like some villan is plundering the content, which isn't happening either. I'm not sure what to call it but it definitely isn't theft or sharing.
 
Xee said:
No one's saying you're not allowed to be entertained. There's a billion of free things you could do to entertain yourself.

Look, I'm not saying I've never downloaded a movie or game but I don't try and delude myself by thinking it's not wrong. It is. Whether it's displacing something or not is irrelevant.
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See that's kind of my point, what exactly makes it wrong? Because someone says you're not supposed to?

I mean think of movies or tv shows, they are basically free once they hit your tv, yeah you can argue until your blue in the face about ad revenue that channel gets but the cold reality is many people will ignore that, or if you recorded it via dvr fast forward through it. Now in that last case is it wrong that you watched a movie for free without even looking at the ads? Now is it that much of a leap that I download the tv show off whatever site? Same thing for music, I mean maybe I'm dating myself to say I hit record on a cassette tape a few times when songs came on the air, so why is it such a large leap that downloading the same songs that are on the air is so morally wrong? Quality? MP3 isn't exactly lossless compression, ditto for mp4/mkv/avi/mpg whatever. The computer lab at school has program X, yeah they paid for a license of it, but hundreds of students use that program in a given year, I'm 5 minutes from using this program just about anytime I want, but if I have the program on my home computer it's theft?

I recognize there are laws in place that say "this is wrong", but again the whole reason there are those laws is because those people who felt like they could lose money had them put into place.

Article I of the constitution
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
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Key word there is limited, which has been twisted in recent times to mean that extensions are perfectly valid even an infinite number of them.
 
kbrickley said:
The whole "sharing" argument is a lot more impressive when it is coming from someone that actually owns what is being shared ... if folks want to write their own software (spending thousands or hundreds of thousands of man hours doing it) and then then turn around and "share" it with all the deadbeats who want it for free then that is their choice and I would never oppose that ... however, if the deadbeats who want the results of someone else's labors without compensating them are making the argument then it is a lot less impressive ;) ... besides, we already tried that in the Soviet Union and that model didn't work :p
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Eh, you've seen the rationalizations people come up with in this thread:

  1. The content is overpriced
  2. The creator is overpaid
  3. I wouldn't have bought it anyway
  4. It doesn't affect anybody
  5. Everyone else is doing it
  6. I want to be sure I like it
  7. It's too hard to buy legally
 
Krenum said:
If you're living off Ramen Noodles and have a Computer, you might have a priority problem.
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This is a hilarious statement in 2013. Don't have a computer? Good luck finding a job.
 
Serpent said:
If it's what everyone else does, moral changes, as morals change with society. It used to be morally okay to own slaves, you know.
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No, it was deemed acceptable, and only by some. Slaves certainly did not deem it so.

Morality isn't defined by the horde. It's defined by a simple individual recognition of rightness and wrongness.

Lorien said:
Piracy did not exist until the content industry paid to have it legislated into existence in the 70s with the Copyright Act because they knew they'd fail at demonizing the word sharing.
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According to the document I'm looking at (PUBLIC LAW 94-553), the word "piracy" is used approximately zero times. As in nil.

Lorien said:
The word and concept of sharing existed for millenia before the word piracy was invented.
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I was unaware this was in dispute. I'm similarly unaware that this has any relevance whatsoever to the topic: words aren't actions. Actions are actions.
 
McFry said:
But since energy cannot be consumed, only transferred, pirating a movie does not require the movie studio to make another movie to replace the one I watched.
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So after a movie has been made and is on digital format it has no value?

That is stupid. The movie had to be made for you to watch it, therefore you watching it has inherently cost the people who made the movie.

Even if distribution costs 0 moneys the creation did cost something and if the people that created it want people to pay to see their creation then they should be allowed to do that.
 
Quicksilver_ said:
What's wrong with using newspapers to find a job?
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Okay well I'm assuming you are looking for a skilled position, not something you'll find in a newspaper. And in that case, you'll need an email address if you plan to apply, since a large % of those jobs require you to apply online. So you need an internet connection, and an email address.
 
kbrickley said:
The whole "sharing" argument is a lot more impressive when it is coming from someone that actually owns what is being shared ... if folks want to write their own software (spending thousands or hundreds of thousands of man hours doing it) and then then turn around and "share" it with all the deadbeats who want it for free then that is their choice and I would never oppose that ... however, if the deadbeats who want the results of someone else's labors without compensating them are making the argument then it is a lot less impressive ;) ... besides, we already tried that in the Soviet Union and that model didn't work :p
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"Sharing" was not "tried" in the Soviet Union, and their economy worked great. They went from being one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1920s to defeating Germany and beating us to space in 2-3 decades.
 
BryanSTG said:
"Sharing" isn't the proper term to use since copies of the item are being made before the "sharing" takes place. I don't consider it stealing either since it's a copy of a copy of a copy....and the original is still present and intact. "Pirating" makes it sound like some villan is plundering the content, which isn't happening either. I'm not sure what to call it but it definitely isn't theft or sharing.
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It's called copyright infringement.
 
Tudz said:
It's called copyright infringement.
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Its called a lot of things and most of the terms don't suit the alleged crime. What's the difference between using dvr and downloading the same show? Why is it suddenly a crime if someone else does the recording fo me? Your fuzzy logic is the same logic the MPAA/RIAA uses to dupe people into paying for the same content several times at unacceptable prices. Is it still copyright infringement if I buy a cd/dvd/bluray, it gets damaged, and I decide to download it to replace my copy since the RIAA/MPAA certainly won't replace it? The content is often given away/broadcast or paid for by the consumer but as soon as some copyright holder realizes they can resell the content to the same person for the millionth time on a different medium they go on a witch hunt and sue everyone.
 
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