I'd love to read your source on that statement because I'm guessing it comes (indirectly) from those pirates you mention - once again just self-justification for their illegal activities.
Being Sued by Atari/Davenport !
- Thread starter lakitu
- Start date
I'd love to read your source on that statement because I'm guessing it comes (indirectly) from those pirates you mention - once again just self-justification for their illegal activities.
Soldato
Out of interest is that based on general expenditure, or that if a specific game is pirated then sales are also unaffected?
Cos it's not much relief to the individual studio if people pirate their game and buy other games with the money they may otherwise have spent.
Besides though, as I'm sure you know, copyright damages in the UK aren't necessarily based on whether the studios lose money, but based on the individual devaluation of the copyright - if you download or share a copyrighted file, you are devaluing the copyright to nil and so are liable for the 'full value'. So unless people intend to argue that, because of people buying things anyway, the copyright has no value, there is still a liability for damages, particularly with aggravated damages on top for flagrancy of infringement.
I can't say I have any sympathy whatsoever for people getting caught (with the exception of n00bs and router-sharing etc) - it's akin to people moaning about being caught speeding...there's a pretty simple remedy to avoid getting caught..
I said: "Perhaps all but the most dedicated pirates will start thinking twice before ripping off someone elses hard work."
I said: "In any case I'm sure your firm/you would take a dim view of people ripping off your IP and would be taking action in milliseconds."
Hang on, one moment you are suggesting you can justify IP infringement because "it helps the economy and increases sales", or "has negligible effect". Then when asked over if IP infringement were to affect you directly it's wrong and OK to enforce protection of IP through the courts.
Unfortunately the use of the word "piracy" and the "stick it to the rip off mega corps" culture around some types of IP infringement mean it gets seen it as just meaningless £s and ripping off some huge faceless company. It's usually justified with a "I wouldn't have bought it anyway". The bottom line is it's dishonestly ripping off someone else's work. If people don't understand that is fundamentally wrong then nothing I or others here is going to change their point of view.
Now if you're arguing that dishonestly ripping off someone else's work is wrong, be it Law based IP or computer code / music / video, and the current laws don't easily allow IP owners to seek enforcement in certain situations, and that talented law professionals should be trying to update the law in a sensible way then I'm all ears.
(wtg on the mega long sentence).
I said: "In any case I'm sure your firm/you would take a dim view of people ripping off your IP and would be taking action in milliseconds."
Hang on, one moment you are suggesting you can justify IP infringement because "it helps the economy and increases sales", or "has negligible effect". Then when asked over if IP infringement were to affect you directly it's wrong and OK to enforce protection of IP through the courts.
Unfortunately the use of the word "piracy" and the "stick it to the rip off mega corps" culture around some types of IP infringement mean it gets seen it as just meaningless £s and ripping off some huge faceless company. It's usually justified with a "I wouldn't have bought it anyway". The bottom line is it's dishonestly ripping off someone else's work. If people don't understand that is fundamentally wrong then nothing I or others here is going to change their point of view.
Now if you're arguing that dishonestly ripping off someone else's work is wrong, be it Law based IP or computer code / music / video, and the current laws don't easily allow IP owners to seek enforcement in certain situations, and that talented law professionals should be trying to update the law in a sensible way then I'm all ears.
(wtg on the mega long sentence).
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This....I can't say I have any sympathy whatsoever for people getting caught (with the exception of n00bs and router-sharing etc) - it's akin to people moaning about being caught speeding...there's a pretty simple remedy to avoid getting caught..
Man of Honour
I heard on the radio this morning a woman was fine £16k for uploading "Dream Pinball 3d" and a further 100 people are also being fined by the company. If your download a game then fine, some games don't have demos and it's understandable as it's very hard to return a pc game at shops these days but downloading then uploading it? Na...
Soldato
Uploading could be classed as when you upload during downloading from a torrent?
Indeed, I think you would find many users of bit torrent would be surprised to find out they were actually uploading anything before they themselves had finished downloading. A lot of pc illiterate people would have no conception of a song or file being split into dozens of tiny pieces which can be shared without needing the entire file.
Caporegime
Do you think this will start happening to porn torrents too?
Man of Honour
Rapidshare is where it's at
Do you think this will start happening to porn torrents too?
http://gizmodo.com/5032780/porn-studios-form-their-own-mpaa-to-sue-file-sharers
Soldato
Probably the best study is actually a canadian one that dealt with CDs. It discounted all profits via digital, concerts etc so it is comparable to the games market. It found that, IIRC, for every 1 CD unlawfully downloaded a month there was a net gain in CD sales of 0.44 CDs annually.
True, but it also works in reverse - maybe next time the person will pirate the other studios game and buy theirs. Averaging out over an entire industry is, I think, fair.Cos it's not much relief to the individual studio if people pirate their game and buy other games with the money they may otherwise have spent.
My claim is that there is no actual loss when you look at the industry as a whole. This is my argument for changes to copyright law. My argument in court, however, would simply be s28A and claiming I hadn't a clue who downloaded the file.
Usenet?...there's a pretty simple remedy to avoid getting caught..
Caporegime
Funny how people who get up in arms about music or games piracy don't seem to do so over movies or porn, hehe
I didn't say it's wrong in the 'morally wrong' sense of the word. I simply said that I have no problem using the full strength of the law to recover damages in cases where they have occured. I don't think I SHOULD have the ability to recover damages in many of those cases, but if the law allows for it...
I'm suggesting, to be clear, that the gain to society of having more open access to content, through intellectual and cultural growth, combined with the demonstratable financial growth to the content industrys in doing so, combined with the previous large growth of copyright law throwing the balance of interests out of whack, mean that copyright law should be reined in quite a bit. I'm not saying existing copyright owners shouldn't excersise their rights, simply that they shouldn't have those rights (to the level they now do) in the first place.
Indeed there have been some notable cases in America due to 'innocent infringers' where they had a folder on their computer shared, but because they were pc illiterate had no idea that they were allowing their files to be uploaded. In America, where they mostly have statutory damages, this is taken in to account and statutory damages drop to $200 per infringement, but even this is huge. Imagine, for example you download one album - that's 15 infringements!
EDIT: I'd also question this notion of ripping off people's work that some users are throwing around. You only, IMHO, rip someones work off when you actually sell an infringing copy. Otherwise you create all sorts of odd situations. If I let my friend borrow a DVD of mine that I purchased legally is that ripping off the artists - because they're not getting paid a second time when I do that. If I trade in a game and the shop then sells it back on the artists is not gettting paid a second time yet two people have now enjoyed it. There are established systems in place amongst society for items to be shared and transffered that nobody objects to. It's near impossible to transfer a file online without keeping the original yourself yet, from a moral perspective, if I lend my friend a CD or I send them a copy via email have I really done anything different?
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Why, thank you. 7/10 for observation.
Associate
yeah its on the page before.
Soldato
Ok, that's interesting, because surely when looking at the actual impact of copyright infringement, the impact on the 'industry' is pretty unimportant - it's not much use to the individual knowing that someone else got paid instead of them for their efforts and hoping that someone might return the favour in the future. I doubt that the bills will be put off because a person is 'due' a payment at some point in the future..
Despite whatever impact there might be industry-wise, surely when it comes down to the rights and wrongs of copyright the individual, the actual copyright-holder's rights should be paramount?
I suppose one way could be a 'copyright tax' where in exchange for giving up particular rights relating to copyright enforcement, a tax is levied on the sale of all copyrighted goods and distributed to those in the creative business, but that opens a whole new can of worms..