Neuroscientists Discover Why Internet Pirates Don’t Feel Guilty

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Scientists in Australia think they know why internet pirates don't feel guilty about illegally downloading content from the internet. Apparently test subjects were more likely to steal non-tangible items, regardless the cost of the item or risk of getting caught.

Entertainment industry groups often equate illegal downloading to theft, an act that many people would feel guilty about carrying out. However, millions of downloaders simply do not feel any guilt when they transfer infringing content to their machines, so why is that? Scientists in Australia think they've found the answer.
 
yeah the answer is never the truth though... that I have no problem paying for content (look at my steam account if you need proof) but I'm not going to pay for cable when all I want is one or two networks.... just like I'm not going to pay $50 for a movie (tickets/popcorn/drinks) only to have some random fucktards talking or screwing around in front or behind me.

The movies that come out almost instantly as an option to buy/stream online for a few bucks? bet your ass I buy those.

Same thing with games -- lots of big franchises have turned gradually into the buy our demo for $60 and if you cough up another $30 we will let you play the whole thing.
 
Even beyond the lack of a physical presence - it's not theft in a traditional sense. When you steal someone's car or book or whatever - you have it and they don't. With copyright infringement, people aren't taking something away from anyone. It's a different paradigm from traditional "theft."
 
Domingo said:
Even beyond the lack of a physical presence - it's not theft in a traditional sense. When you steal someone's car or book or whatever - you have it and they don't. With copyright infringement, people aren't taking something away from anyone. It's a different paradigm from traditional "theft."
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Exactly, this study was pointless from the start.
 
collegeboy69us said:
yeah the answer is never the truth though... that I have no problem paying for content (look at my steam account if you need proof) but I'm not going to pay for cable when all I want is one or two networks.... just like I'm not going to pay $50 for a movie (tickets/popcorn/drinks) only to have some random fucktards talking or screwing around in front or behind me.

The movies that come out almost instantly as an option to buy/stream online for a few bucks? bet your ass I buy those.

Same thing with games -- lots of big franchises have turned gradually into the buy our demo for $60 and if you cough up another $30 we will let you play the whole thing.
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Yeah, so steal a candy bar, take a bite -- because that's all you want, you don't want to pay for the whole thing -- then put it back.

Or you don't like coconut so you steal a Mounds bar, because it's crap anyway so it's alright.
 
A lot of people back in the 1990s or early 2000s who downloaded pirated material didn't even know they were doing something illegal. Intellectual Property is a concept that pretty much goes against the grain of human/primate morality on an instinctive level because it's an artificial concept that we weren't primed to respect.

Conversely, what we have been primed to do is share information and solutions in order to survive, and also to attempt to learn more about things that others are trying to hide or obscure, because they could very well be plotting to kill you or take something from you.

So, if anything, we're primed to feel that we have a right to share stories and information about how to defeat DRM, while also being incredibly suspicious of those who try to obscure or lock down information or ideas that might be crucial to survival... perhaps trying to make themselves the only source of a critical tool for survival so as to profit unfairly.

It's why copyright enforcement triggers such negative reactions among the general public, and most people feel like there's nothing wrong with piracy. Some people have learned to equate it to physical theft, but that's very much a learned behavior and a conscious choice made after thinking about the situation. And it's not one that everyone would make after thinking about it.

While you can certainly intimidate people with draconian prison sentences and fines, people will tend to feel that they're being punished for an arbitrary reason. As if, say, Sony could put you in jail for buying products from Microsoft or vice-versa. That's how irrational and absurd the concept of IP seems to a lot of people, and they'll fight tooth and nail against those kind of laws even if they're implemented.
 
athenian200 said:
A lot of people back in the 1990s or early 2000s who downloaded pirated material didn't even know they were doing something illegal. Intellectual Property is a concept that pretty much goes against the grain of human/primate morality on an instinctive level because it's an artificial concept that we weren't primed to respect.

Conversely, what we have been primed to do is share information and solutions in order to survive, and also to attempt to learn more about things that others are trying to hide or obscure, because they could very well be plotting to kill you or take something from you.

So, if anything, we're primed to feel that we have a right to share stories and information about how to defeat DRM, while also being incredibly suspicious of those who try to obscure or lock down information or ideas that might be crucial to survival... perhaps trying to make themselves the only source of a critical tool for survival so as to profit unfairly.

It's why copyright enforcement triggers such negative reactions among the general public, and most people feel like there's nothing wrong with piracy. Some people have learned to equate it to physical theft, but that's very much a learned behavior and a conscious choice made after thinking about the situation. And it's not one that everyone would make after thinking about it.

While you can certainly intimidate people with draconian prison sentences and fines, people will tend to feel that they're being punished for an arbitrary reason. As if, say, Sony could put you in jail for buying products from Microsoft or vice-versa. That's how irrational and absurd the concept of IP seems to a lot of people, and they'll fight tooth and nail against those kind of laws even if they're implemented.
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You've spent a lot of time thinking about this is a very deep way. Do you have any true evidence of the veracity of your claim?
 
NExUS1g said:
You've spent a lot of time thinking about this is a very deep way. Do you have any true evidence of the veracity of your claim?
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I don't know nothing about no evidence. But let's ask ourselves a different question.
Why is it that Comcast advertises their super awesome DOWNLOAD speeds?
They are trying to appeal to pirates.
They could have said stream speeds or gaming speed, but no, download speeds....and you have to be naive to think they mean day one patches.
 
NExUS1g said:
That's the rationalization that allows these subjects to seem sociopathic. In a way, they are, but in another way they aren't. The loss is just outside of their monkeysphere, so it doesn't affect them.
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Or.... it's not. Because there is no loss.
viscountalpha said:
It took hours and hours and cost someone else to make those one and zeros. Sure it can be copied but it's still theft.
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But it's not theft cuz it's copying.
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
I don't know nothing about no evidence. But let's ask ourselves a different question.
Why is it that Comcast advertises their super awesome DOWNLOAD speeds?
They are trying to appeal to pirates.
They could have said stream speeds or gaming speed, but no, download speeds....and you have to be naive to think they mean day one patches.
Click to expand...

I think that's a bit of a stretch.
 
pothb said:
Or.... it's not. Because there is no loss.

But it's not theft cuz it's copying.
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If you take something that you didn't pay for it's theft. Say you have private documents on your computer, and I copy them without permission. Is it still theft?
 
no, it'd be copyright infringement.

AND I'd be able to sue you for about 10000x I would if it was theft!
 
pothb said:
Or.... it's not. Because there is no loss.
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I personally think it's a simple matter of it being harder to come up with excuses that one feels are honestly valid to steal material items than it is to come up with excuses one feels are valid to steal intangible items.
 
collegeboy69us said:
I'm not going to pay for cable when all I want is one or two networks.... just like I'm not going to pay $50 for a movie (tickets/popcorn/drinks) only to have some random fucktards talking or screwing around in front or behind me.
Click to expand...

This times 10. The cable companies with this near monopoly continue to raise prices and ream their long term customers.

Every year my cable bill goes up at 3x the inflation rate, yet there is less and less worth watching. I'm stuck because I can't receive anything with an antenna, and the wife/kids won't be happy with just streaming. I'd love to drop ESPN (most expensive channel) as we never watch sports, but the only way to not pay for ESPN is go with a package that also drops most the other channel they watch.

Since cable now scrambles all the channels, and they dropped the old analog signal, the older TV's we had that got occasional use are now useless. I'm not going to pay monthly cable box fees for an old TV that might be used once a month.

After 20 years I'm getting ready to drop the cable TV service and switch to satellite. Would save me $25/month, and I wouldn't have to worry about more price increases for the next 2-3 years.
 
pothb said:
Or it's harder to say it's stealing, because it's not.
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If you go into a hotel and sleep in a room that was unrented all night, it's not a theft of service? Last I checked it was, and I don't think it's something even pirates would find it easy to justify.
 
Domingo said:
Even beyond the lack of a physical presence - it's not theft in a traditional sense. When you steal someone's car or book or whatever - you have it and they don't. With copyright infringement, people aren't taking something away from anyone. It's a different paradigm from traditional "theft."
Click to expand...

I disagree. Here is the problem I have with the researchers work in this study;

What the researchers found was that when imagining stealing an item, participants showed much more activation in the lateral orbital frontal cortex of their brains. Among other things, this part of the brain is associated with feelings of moral sensitivity and it was much more active when test subjects were thinking about stealing physical items than it was for intangible items such as digital files.
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They attribute this increased activity to moral sensitivity associated with the act of stealing. The problem I see, and the mistake I think they are making is associating these measurements with the act of stealing as opposed to the aspects of being caught stealing. Feeling of morality are intrinsically tied to the societal impact of being branded a thief not to mention the punishments levied by that society.

I think that activity is being improperly tied to the act of stealing versus the result should one be caught. And if someone really believes they are not going to be caught, then they just are not going to worry about it, and the meter won't be ticking up at all.
 
NExUS1g said:
You've spent a lot of time thinking about this is a very deep way. Do you have any true evidence of the veracity of your claim?
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I've read quite a bit about psychology, but I haven't actually put together any evidence. At this point, it's just a hypothesis based on what I've observed. I'm not willing to say that it's absolutely true or verified. I was mostly saying that the results of the study in the OP don't surprise me because they correspond quite well with my own observations and things I've read in the past.

That is a much higher standard of evidence than I was expecting to have reach. I'm sure I could find some studies or statistics that support my views, but it would take me a few hours. I haven't looked into it for several years and thus don't have the proper research bookmarked.
 
NExUS1g said:
Yeah, so steal a candy bar, take a bite -- because that's all you want, you don't want to pay for the whole thing -- then put it back.

Or you don't like coconut so you steal a Mounds bar, because it's crap anyway so it's alright.
Click to expand...

In Italy a judge ruled that it's ok for poor people steal food if they are hungry.

Based on that, why should it be illegal for people who can't afford a DVD player to pirate a movie?
 
Australian Neuroscientists seem to be pretty bored these days, it appears.
 
viscountalpha said:
Oh wow, such a clever retort. You are so clueless! It is sad and pathetic. It's ok. You get an ignore because you are so very ignorant of clear, reasonable facts.
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Like yourself who can't grasp the concept of copy and theft.
 
athenian200 said:
I've read quite a bit about psychology, but I haven't actually put together any evidence. At this point, it's just a hypothesis based on what I've observed. I'm not willing to say that it's absolutely true or verified. I was mostly saying that the results of the study in the OP don't surprise me because they correspond quite well with my own observations and things I've read in the past.

That is a much higher standard of evidence than I was expecting to have reach. I'm sure I could find some studies or statistics that support my views, but it would take me a few hours. I haven't looked into it for several years and thus don't have the proper research bookmarked.
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it. What you put here is pretty much what I was curious about -- where you got this wealth of knowledge. You seem knowledgeable enough to give your word weight within the scope of a forum debate, without the need of putting you to task.
 
I would say another factor is the management of companies that produce content that people pirate often act like criminals themselves.
 
Some people are about to get banned for name calling. Consider this your warning.
 
NExUS1g said:
Don't worry about it. What you put here is pretty much what I was curious about -- where you got this wealth of knowledge. You seem knowledgeable enough to give your word weight within the scope of a forum debate, without the need of putting you to task.
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Ah, thanks.

I should probably clarify that I'm not trying to advocate piracy. I just think that we should bear in mind that Intellectual Property is not part of universal morality, or something you could find in just about every world religion like say, killing or stealing. It's more like an attempt at creating a cultural taboo. Like various things, ranging from cannibalism, drug abuse, homosexuality, to marital infidelity. The problem with IP is that it's not a historical taboo with a long cultural history behind it.

IP isn't something that's immediately obvious. You have to make a moral argument for it or against it, and then understand and accept the reasoning that has led legislators to decide that it's wrong for our society and culture, even if it's more acceptable in other places or among other peoples (like the Chinese, they have even less respect than Americans or Western Europeans do for IP because respect for artists and authors is not part of their culture in any form).

Another data point worth looking at, I believe, would be the fact that people aren't often willing to pay as much for a digital copy of something as they are for a physical copy (although there are definitely exceptions to this, it's a very common attitude). They balk at it and will generally only pay a fraction of what they would for a physical copy with something they can hold... even if the physical copy is essentially useless and has to be activated online anyway. People don't like paying for something they can't hold in their hand, for the same reason they don't feel guilty about taking something they can't hold in their hand. They literally perceive it to have less value because it's not tangible. This may be one thing that will slow down digital distribution... because even when the technology is ready for it, our social norms, sense of value, and moral attitudes might not be. This doesn't affect MMO games like WoW, because that's perceived as a service rather than a product. Also, people tend not to think of $10 over of the course of 12 months as $120. So it's a lot easier to get people to pay this way. It's not smart on their part as they're actually getting a worse value because no matter how long they pay, they stop getting access to the game the moment they stop. But they don't perceive it as a worse deal.
 
athenian200 said:
Ah, thanks.

I should probably clarify that I'm not trying to advocate piracy. I just think that we should bear in mind that Intellectual Property is not part of universal morality, or something you could find in just about every world religion like say, killing or stealing. It's more like an attempt at creating a cultural taboo. Like various things, ranging from cannibalism, drug abuse, homosexuality, to marital infidelity. The problem with IP is that it's not a historical taboo with a long cultural history behind it.

IP isn't something that's immediately obvious. You have to make a moral argument for it or against it, and then understand and accept the reasoning that has led legislators to decide that it's wrong for our society and culture, even if it's more acceptable in other places or among other peoples (like the Chinese, they have even less respect than Americans or Western Europeans do for IP because respect for artists and authors is not part of their culture in any form).

Another data point worth looking at, I believe, would be the fact that people aren't often willing to pay as much for a digital copy of something as they are for a physical copy (although there are definitely exceptions to this, it's a very common attitude). They balk at it and will generally only pay a fraction of what they would for a physical copy with something they can hold... even if the physical copy is essentially useless and has to be activated online anyway. People don't like paying for something they can't hold in their hand, for the same reason they don't feel guilty about taking something they can't hold in their hand. They literally perceive it to have less value because it's not tangible. This may be one thing that will slow down digital distribution... because even when the technology is ready for it, our social norms, sense of value, and moral attitudes might not be. This doesn't affect MMO games like WoW, because that's perceived as a service rather than a product. Also, people tend not to think of $10 over of the course of 12 months as $120. So it's a lot easier to get people to pay this way. It's not smart on their part as they're actually getting a worse value because no matter how long they pay, they stop getting access to the game the moment they stop. But they don't perceive it as a worse deal.
Click to expand...

This is really fascinating to me, and really provides me with a different point of view. Thanks for being an awesome part of this community.
 
Let's turn the mirror around. Are we not also getting ripped off? Movie companies not allowing us to make a legal backup copy of our movie anymore. Copy protection is against the law in itself. Copy Protection.
 
nutzo said:
In Italy a judge ruled that it's ok for poor people steal food if they are hungry.

Based on that, why should it be illegal for people who can't afford a DVD player to pirate a movie?
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Because there is a difference between a need and a luxury. A movie will not feed, clothe, or provide shelter, those basic needs required to live. A movie just doesn't rate.
 
Nukester said:
Let's turn the mirror around. Are we not also getting ripped off? Movie companies not allowing us to make a legal backup copy of our movie anymore. Copy protection is against the law in itself. Copy Protection.
Click to expand...

Frequently when I buy my movies, I get a Blue Ray, DVD, and access to a digital copy which is stored and accessible via a cloud service from my mobile or computer devices wherever I might reasonably be. I don't need to make a copy, they provide several in multiple formats which I think is quit fair.
 
lcpiper said:
Frequently when I buy my movies, I get a Blue Ray, DVD, and access to a digital copy which is stored and accessible via a cloud service from my mobile or computer devices wherever I might reasonably be. I don't need to make a copy, they provide several in multiple formats which I think is quit fair.
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When they do this, it's fair but still breaks the law. You are entitled to make an archival copy of your movie.
 
NExUS1g said:
If you go into a hotel and sleep in a room that was unrented all night, it's not a theft of service? Last I checked it was, and I don't think it's something even pirates would find it easy to justify.
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Uh, that is definitely not theft. It would breaking and entering, trespassing. Wow, you guys can really stretch this stuff, huh??
NExUS1g said:
Copyright infringement is passing off a work as your own, not just taking it.
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Tell media companies that.

Actually, government too.
 
Nukester said:
Let's turn the mirror around. Are we not also getting ripped off? Movie companies not allowing us to make a legal backup copy of our movie anymore. Copy protection is against the law in itself. Copy Protection.
Click to expand...

This honestly sounds like misinterpretations of the law. I've never heard anyone claim that copy protection is against the law. Making a backup of your data was never ruled legal -- it just generally wasn't disallowed.
 
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