Pirating - it's kind of like marijuana possession

Judgement call. It would have to be GBs for an extended period of time with many users. You don't give an EXACT number or people doing it will stay under what that number is to circumvent being a criminal. You don't give away the golden goose=) Don't want to be a thief. Don't STEAL. It would be like the cops announcing if you only steal 1 car/month we won't prosecute you. Many people will purposely steal 1 car, because they know they can get away with it.

I gave general examples above. You don't need an exact number. Do you tell your children exactly how far they can push before you punish them? No. You make judgement calls based on the situation.

Selling pirated material would be the first line, certainly.

 

Referring to the bolded, you can legally make a back up copy for personal use, per US copyright laws. It is allowing others to have it which is illegal. When you purchase a DVD or CD, you are purchasing the right of use or the license to use, if you will. This entitles you to make backup copies for your own personal use. It does not give you the right to distribution.

I have backup off all my CD's, DVD's and blue rays digitally. I am in process of placing all my movies on a portal hard drive.

 

it's not as easy as it sounds

I need to rip them as an mkv and then convert them to mp4 and shrink them to a reasonable size. The issue is the copyright protection on the blu rays and dvd's and we're not supposed to be able to bypass it

 

Of course you are stealing. You are taking the profits that the creator would earn from selling a legitimate copy of their work.

 

so a first offense would be permissable but if you download a second song you get charged?

 

I'd be careful. I had a bunch of files on an external hard drive that went bust. That actually don't have a tremendous life expectancy and a very prone to being "corrupted".

Assuming that "you" would have bought a copy at the retail price otherwise. If that is not the case, then you would not be stealing, because if you didn't pirate it they wouldn't be any richer for it. Do you see the problem with this approach to calling it stealing?

 

its not the selling its the sharing which circumnavigates the property laws. some people will share 1,000's of copies of an album, taking money off an artist.

 

if you can steal a copy and it is legal then there would be no need to "purchase" a copy to begin with.

 

This isn't about me, I was speaking in hypotheticals. I didn't say that piracy is ok - heck I might tell you that I think burning the flag isn't ok, but that doesn't mean that I believe that people should be prosecuted for it. What a person thinks is "ok" and what they think should be illegal, what should be prosecuted, and what punishment is appropriate: those are all different things. Yeah, I think that the punishment for pirating should be in the amount of the market value of the product at the time that it was pirated and no more - I don't know how that means that I think it's "ok".

And yeah, a child stealing a $0.25 pack of gum isn't okay - but do I think that child should end up in court, potentially paying tens of thousands of dollars in fines? No.

 

Interesting point of view. If I open up a restaurant across the street from an existing restaurant would you consider me to be stealing from the existing restaurant?

 

if you steal their food and sell it then yes, thats illegal.

 

I don't. I'm just copying them. I take nothing away from them. But am I stealing from them because I'm stealing their revenue?

 

youre not actually copying them are you. if you were copying them you would be a tribute band but youre not, youre actually taking the items of food off their plates and running away to your own restaurant and selling it, thats robbery.

 

Not according to the hypothetical I am proposing. Here it is again: There is an existing restaurant. I copy their idea and open a restaurant across the street. Some of their customers come to my restaurant now instead of going to theirs, thus they lose profits. Am I stealing?

 

but youre not copying them are you. you have stolen their steaks from their grills.

 

I have no idea what you are talking about. I have laid out the hypothetical. If you can't understand it, that's you're problem.

 

Sure, but that's why I have them. I don't care if they have an issue because I still have the original. I can always restore using the original hard copy of the CD/DVD/Blu-ray. I copy then to prevent wear and tear on the originals.

 

The sharers of knowledge and culture certainly make it difficult for the copyright industry to use monopoly privileges in order subsist off the creative and productive work of others. As to whether the profits earned by creators is affected, do you have proof of that?

 

You seem to be going out of your way to rationalize theft.

 

Profits? How can I take a profit from some game, movie or audiobook? I wouldn't buy them anyway.

 

I have a much better analogy for you. It has nothing to do with marijuana. It has to do with wiretapping.

Our Supreme Morons have ruled that anything in the air is fair game, and there is no expectation of privacy when transmitting information to third parties.

Well... I fail to see the major difference between the airwaves and the internet. (Heck, sometimes they're even the same thing).

So why doesn't the same logic apply to the internet? It is after all public, just like the airwaves are, and anything that hits it (the internet) can be sucked up by anyone and everyone, just like a radio signal.

Why should there be any expectation of privacy on the internet, and not on the airwaves?

 

Lol…So why would you want to own one?
Stop trying to rationalize stealing.

 

You're missing the point. It's not my fault if someone fails to adequately protect their intellectual property. If they post it on the internet there's no telling what I might do to it after I get it, that's a given. It's their job to protect their property, not mine. Otherwise it becomes like finding a dollar bill in the street, you're just going to spend it on the first thing that takes your fancy. The music industry really blew it, they still haven't latched on to the new world. You can use an internet connection to authorize a file to a specific device, that technology exists and I use it every day. Microsoft's browser will play anything you feed it, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to control it. The corporations just don't want to spend security money because it's a black hole and there's no direct revenue in it.

 

I wasn't talking about organized crime, but I'm well aware of that point.
Business spend a LOT of money on creating a product, not just wages for the people, and costing of the resources.. but also advertising. They expect to make an estimated return for the product otherwise it would never be made. Obviously if everyone pirated the product, they would go out of business.

Now I never said it gets smaller - I just said it's taking money away. The money is not being directed to the company.

 

No, the rationalization you gave as to why it's the same as identity theft is flawed and I've simply pointed that out.