Piracy Is Not Theft, Says Minecraft Creator

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dwk

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“Piracy is not theft,” he said. Referencing the most common anti-piracy argument, he said: “If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.”

“There is no such thing as a ‘lost sale’,” he said, debunking another popular myth. “Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?”

“Treat game development as a service,” he says. “Make a game last longer than a week. You can’t pirate an online account.”

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100% agree.
 
lol nice way to try and twist it.

if you did not pay for it and it was not given to you by the developer or someone that did pay for it.then yes it is theft.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol nice way to try and twist it.

if you did not pay for it and it was not given to you by the developer or someone that did pay for it.then yes it is theft.
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:confused: that's a quote from the developer if you missed that part....
 
:( lol does not mean he's right......(just in case you missed that part) what he is saying is that if you want to prevent piracy tie everything into an online account....thus making a digital copy pretty much worthless (cause they are trying to prevent theft...lol u know not paying for the service)....just in case you missed that point as well
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol nice way to try and twist it.

if you did not pay for it and it was not given to you by the developer or someone that did pay for it.then yes it is theft.
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+1

IMO he is most likely pandering to the indie crowd.

Of course he is right you cannot pirate an online account but has EA not already created its online accounts to prevent resale of games? I have a hard time seeing that as the solution but of course a possible avenue for some developers. Regardless, pirating a game means taking the money out of someones pocket. I do not care how you want to twist the words, that is what happens.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol nice way to try and twist it.

if you did not pay for it and it was not given to you by the developer or someone that did pay for it.then yes it is theft.
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The developer quoted in the post you were replying to disagrees with you.

Also,
images

Did I just commit theft against the Louvre?
 
dwk said:
:confused: that's a quote from the developer if you missed that part....
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Coming from a developer who has a pretty rough unfinished product still? Dont get me wrong, I love playing minecraft and do not regret the purchase but it will most likely be the last game I purchase from him.
 
fattypants said:
The developer quoted in the post you were replying to disagrees with you.
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...and as a developer myself I disagree with him. Its pretty easy to say that though when you rake in millions on a few thousand man hours.
 
infect0 said:
...and as a developer myself I disagree with him. Its pretty easy to say that though when you rake in millions on a few thousand man hours.
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So if you make a lot of money, your opinion doesn't count? This opens up a whole new discussion...

Also I'm a developer and I disagree with you, and I don't make a lot of money. Looks like me and Markus got you beat 2-1.
 
Ya know, I dont see how this thread could possibly lead to a constructive discussion :p
 
I dont condone piracy but this mans words are logical and the truth whether you choose to agree with it or not.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
:( lol does not mean he's right......(just in case you missed that part) what he is saying is that if you want to prevent piracy tie everything into an online account....thus making a digital copy pretty much worthless (cause they are trying to prevent theft...lol u know not paying for the service)....just in case you missed that point as well
Click to expand...

nerd-rage.jpg


calm down little fella. Thought you had said I had twisted the words around.
 
fattypants said:
So if you make a lot of money, your opinion doesn't count? This opens up a whole new discussion...
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Way to jump to conclusions, I applaud you. The point was its easy from his perspective to make comments like that. He can call it whatever he wants but he dislikes it just as much as any other developer. Yes its not "theft" in that a physical good was not stolen but even for good games, piracy can eat into the profits and sometimes you start out in the hole with huge development costs.

His argument is that since digital products require 0 resources to copy, there is only a loss to potential revenue. I disagree because one also needs to account for the original development costs not just the cost the replicate the product. I believe his original example (his stance on pirating is old news) was a wheel and to make another wheel it costs money since its a physical good. If you steal the wheel it is theft because its a loss of a good that took money to produce. Well the cost of that wheel is not only in replicating but also the original design.

I disagree with his example and language but in the end he is correct. Eliminate piracy by providing online services that require logins. It does not even matter if you provide any benefit in the so called "service" or not.
 
It's not theft in the traditional sense no because no physical item is taken. Plagiarized is the term that I think should be used because the person is creating an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work. That also means it does not translate directly into lost sales as it would not be a 1 to 1 relationship of pirating to lost sales. The ratio is something that could only be approximated.

It does not help their argument when certain industries like to claim they lost more than the entire world GDP was in a certain year either.

Edit - after reading the wiki article on Plagiarism - perhaps copyright infringement is the truely correct term but I digress, it is still not traditional "theft".
 
dwk said:
nerd-rage.jpg


calm down little fella. Thought you had said I had twisted the words around.
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he did

one side of his mouth he said it was not theft....immediately followed by what you can do to prevent the theft........so yes he twisted it.........it's called double talk ahahhha. if he believed what he said,

we would not have windows or other product activation/other verification tools being used by MS/developers.......after all it isn't theft, right?
 
JayteeBates said:
It's not theft in the traditional sense no because no physical item is taken. Plagiarized is the term that should be used because the person is creating an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work. That also means it does not translate directly into lost sales as it would not be a 1 to 1 relationship of pirating to lost sales. The ratio is something that could only be approximated.

It does not help their argument when certain industries like to claim they lost more than the entire world GDP was in a certain year either.
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What Notch is saying is this.

Pirates suck. I would rather people pay for my game but ultimately its impossible to stop. Therefore I require payment for online services (updates and online play). People can pirate away since they will not get the full enjoyment from a pirated version.

Which is a better approach then a lot of industries that intimidate people into paying settlements or blaming poor game development on piracy. It still stands though that he does not like piracy and since he cannot beat it he is just doing the best he can to make it work.
 
I'm not on the side of game developers. I think that downloading a game and playing it without paying is a crime.

As for what it's called, I can't say that it's theft because the definition of theft is taking someone else's belongings without their permission. Since the original owners do not know if it was taken, can it be keyed as "theft"? Copyright infringement, whether video game piracy or ripping DVD's and sharing them, is a crime, but it's not theft. US law needs a new official label for it because copyright infringement is similar, but still not the same.

However, until developers stop with draconian DRM and shipping shitty games, I can't be on their side because DRM is not a solution. It only pisses off paying customers. Now, when PC games shipped with just a disc check and didn't require games being locked to an online account, just like consoles, I was on the side of the developers. I think they are digging their own grave.

If I can't sell the PC game when I'm done with it to get some of my investment back, then I refuse to buy it. If that means developers think I'm a bad consumer and they don't want my business then I don't want to be their customer.
 
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bigdogchris said:
I'm not on the side of game developers. I think that downloading a game and playing it without paying is a crime.

As for what it's called, I can't say that it's theft because the definition of theft is taking someone else's belongings without their permission. Since the original owners do not know if it was taken, can it be keyed as "theft"? Copyright infringement, whether video game piracy or ripping DVD's and sharing them, is a crime, but it's not theft. US law needs a new official label for it because copyright infringement is similar, but still not the same.

However, until developers stop with draconian DRM and shipping shitty games, I can't be on their side because DRM is not a solution. It only pisses off paying customers. Now, when PC games shipped with just a disc check and didn't require games being locked to an online account, just like consoles, I was on the side of the developers. I think they are digging their own grave.

If I can't sell the PC game when I'm done with it to get some of my investment back, then I refuse to buy it. If that means developers think I'm a bad consumer and they don't want my business then I don't want to be their customer.
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...and this is a perfectly reasonable argument, voting with your wallet. The problem is most people go on to say thats why they pirate which imo is crazy.
 
PrincessFrosty corrected me in another thread when I called it theft, and after doing some research I acknowledge that it is not formally/legally theft. I will continue to think of it as theft informally.
 
Theft gets you a trip to criminal court and possible jail time. Counterfeiting - the act of selling copies - is also prosecuted in criminal court. Piracy will, at worst, get you sued in civil court, but this has happened only twice, and both cases are still in appeals.

Piracy is not theft. Arguing that piracy is theft just shows you are using words without knowing what they mean.
 
dwk said:
“Piracy is not theft,” he said. Referencing the most common anti-piracy argument, he said: “If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.”

“There is no such thing as a ‘lost sale’,” he said, debunking another popular myth. “Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?”
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this statement is quite begging the question. It is fallacious.

However, I am sympathetic to the notion that piracy is NOT theft or stealing.

But I am going to say a few points about the "against" of file sharing, pirating, stealing, or whatever you wish to call it.

Against:
- The thesis that a easily, freely available copy diminishes actual sales of the original item is very plausible. Therefore, it is not ridiculous to say that downloads do influence the loss of sales.
- However, even if downloads do NOT in fact hurt sales, it is still technically illegal. Driving through a stop sign in the middle of a desert at 4AM is still technically illegal.
- We could also argue that it is wrong to download software, while entirely ignoring what the concept of downloading and file sharing is. Imagine a programmer spending hundreds of hours of labor and capital creating a piece of software for the intent of selling his product, only to have it freely available on the Internet. Is this fair? The notion of downloading this software, whether it is "stealing" or "piracy" or "sharing" becomes highly irrelevant at this point.

 
In other news, Notch's own drm login system blows and seems to always be down on the weekends leaving me unable to play on the server that I host on my LAN. Yes it's a beta, thanks for the reminder (I know it's coming).
 
Oh goody, car analogy again. Only tangible things are stolen. Can't steal ideas either right? I mean, you still have it, right?

:rolleyes:
 
evilsofa said:
Theft gets you a trip to criminal court and possible jail time. Counterfeiting - the act of selling copies - is also prosecuted in criminal court. Piracy will, at worst, get you sued in civil court, but this has happened only twice, and both cases are still in appeals.

Piracy is not theft. Arguing that piracy is theft just shows you are using words without knowing what they mean.
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I suspect that this is true legally, but the core of what most people are trying to get at when they argue the piracy issue is not so much a legal one, but a moral or ethical one. You are acquiring something for free, and that is their problem. Legally, the precedents may not be set against it, but that's just litigious bullshit in my eyes.

For me it's a matter of practicality. Containing piracy is virtually impossible. Prosecuting everyone guilty of it is impossible as indeed is identifying everybody responsible for it. For these reasons I just don't really care one way or the other about it until it starts to affect me.
 
Netrat33 said:
Oh goody, car analogy again. Only tangible things are stolen. Can't steal ideas either right? I mean, you still have it, right?

:rolleyes:
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When you're talking about illegal acts, you should talk about them in the context of the law. The law doesn't call it theft because ownership or possession isn't transferred unlawfully.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
lol nice way to try and twist it.

if you did not pay for it and it was not given to you by the developer or someone that did pay for it.then yes it is theft.
Click to expand...

it is not theft, it is copyright infringement, get it right, if it was theft why did the courts not simply categorize it as theft?



infect0 said:
What Notch is saying is this.

Pirates suck. I would rather people pay for my game but ultimately its impossible to stop. Therefore I require payment for online services (updates and online play). People can pirate away since they will not get the full enjoyment from a pirated version.

Which is a better approach then a lot of industries that intimidate people into paying settlements or blaming poor game development on piracy. It still stands though that he does not like piracy and since he cannot beat it he is just doing the best he can to make it work.
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Then the groups just make offline versions with custom installers which then again ends with the pirates getting all downloadable content, all games that have DLC, have "pirated versions" , all it takes is someone to buy the game, get all the content, then create a way to distribute it to those with a pirated copy, and as they do with the original game, bypass any activation checks, it is that simple, how do you think all online games from Valve have hacked copies that can play online, just not on secured servers?
 
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Theft means you steal something from its original owner.

Getting a copy or pirate a software is duplicating of its original item to himself. That is not theft.

Can developer make more money when there is no piracy? not very likely when they just want it free.

Valve and others been saying this all along.. And once again, they are also the most success one out there compare to Epic/CryTek etc who talk shit about piracy like a theft :)
 
Good points, seems the companies that accept there is piracy, just move on and make good games, allow dedicated servers, release SDK's to make the community make the games better and last longer....other companies just have their head so far up their butt's with this "piracy is killing our company" BS they dont bother to make good games and rather take the easy way out and blame someone else for their crap, same as the movie industry.

I am sure many pirates if they could steal a car, bike, a candy bar, they would because most dont have morals or care they are stealing something.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Then the groups just make offline versions with custom installers which then again ends with the pirates getting all downloadable content, all games that have DLC, have "pirated versions" , all it takes is someone to buy the game, get all the content, then create a way to distribute it to those with a pirated copy, and as they do with the original game, bypass any activation checks, it is that simple, how do you think all online games from Valve have hacked copies that can play online, just not on secured servers?
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ofc thats the whole point. In the case of minecraft he offers online play and the convenience of having update patches and not having to wait for a pirated version.
 
Netrat33 said:
Oh goody, car analogy again. Only tangible things are stolen. Can't steal ideas either right? I mean, you still have it, right?

:rolleyes:
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No you can't steal and idea, read up on what it means to 'steal' something. Copyright infringement is still wrong and illegal but it is not 'stealing' anything. It's important to use
words in their correct use.
 
If it IS theft, why is the punishment often much more severe? Copyright infringement, look it up.
 
MrGuvernment said:
it is not theft, it is copyright infringement, get it right, if it was theft why did the courts not simply categorize it as theft?
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try to rationalise it all you want. taking something that is not yours IS theft. Just because a court classifies it as something else does not mean it isn't theft.
 
Skipping ahead here, but no matter your stance it is NOT theft, its piracy, and they are different.

His arguments are valid and bring up a good reason as to why intellectual property should be governed separately, and IMO more relaxed.

Piracy can and does result in lost revenue. However, it is very true that the overwhelming majority of non-licensed distributions would NOT represent a sale were $60 assigned to its value in the case of a game for example. And the "don't copy that floppy" claims of the entire industry just ceasing to release material and rake in vast sums of money has proven year after year for decades now to be nonsense.

Personally, I'm a big fan of services like Steam for distribution with the valuable service being that my games get automatic updates and online play and expansions and so forth and I don't have to worry about lost or scratched disks or security codes.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
taking something that is not yours IS theft. Just because a court classifies it as something else does not mean it isn't theft.
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What you just said was "the legal definition is not the legal definition but is something else". And that makes absolutely no sense.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
try to rationalise it all you want. taking something that is not yours IS theft. Just because a court classifies it as something else does not mean it isn't theft.
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TAKING is not the same as COPYING. I'm not defending copying, but the two words are actually different and not the same :p
 
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