Thread: torrents are destroying the world

How about this - they don't lose exclusive distribution *rights*, but they lost exclusive distribution, which their *rights* to enable them to get back through legal remediation.

Yes! I was trying to figure out what word to substitute instead of "rights" so as to fit your analogy, but it turns out the solution is to drop the word entirely.

EDIT:
Then again, it still sounds a little awkward, but never mind, it would be pointless to continue trying to find something that describes the situation even better.

So while a 14 year old that downlaods a copy of Adobe Photoshop may nto buy it today, they will be more familair with it so when they are 24 and making the purchasing decision for their company, they are more likely to select the software they are familiar with.

The problem is that you cant be sure he'll buy it in the future, he could just download it too (He's done it before with no problems, so why waste his money now?). That's how the "affected morality" bit comes into play. Most people don't just download one thing from Adobe, they keep downloading because mediums like torrents make it so easy.

I realize you said, "for their company". In that case it makes sense, but more software is bought for residential use than for company use (especially games and music).

Here's something interesting. I looked up "stealing" on dictionary.com. It has a few definitions, here are the two most important:

sto·len, steal·ing, noun
–verb
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

The first one is different from piracy, but the second.... not so much. To appropriate (take for yourself) one's ideas, credit, words, ect. That means someone's software too. According to this, copyright infringement or piracy IS stealing

Originally Posted by Trennto

Here's something interesting. I looked up "stealing" on dictionary.com. It has a few definitions, here are the two most important:

sto·len, steal·ing, noun
–verb
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

The first one is different from piracy, but the second.... not so much. To appropriate (take for yourself) one's ideas, credit, words, ect. That means someone's software too. According to this, copyright infringement or piracy IS stealing

The second one is a new definition, and not appropriate for use when discussing the legal/moral definition of an act. The act of takign ideas without credit is Plagiarism, not stealing. So in this case callign it stealign is incorrect, or at least an oversimplification.

Originally Posted by abachler

The second one is a new definition, and not appropriate for use when discussing the legal/moral definition of an act. The act of takign ideas without credit is Plagiarism, not stealing. So in this case callign it stealign is incorrect, or at least an oversimplification.

Your need proof if you want to call the dictionary a liar

Originally Posted by Trennto

Here's something interesting. I looked up "stealing" on dictionary.com. It has a few definitions, here are the two most important:

sto·len, steal·ing, noun
–verb
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

The first one is different from piracy, but the second.... not so much. To appropriate (take for yourself) one's ideas, credit, words, ect. That means someone's software too. According to this, copyright infringement or piracy IS stealing

This is using laymans terms - I doubt this came from a legal-terms dictionary, correct?

--
Mats

Your need proof if you want to call the dictionary a liar

abachler is not saying that the dictionary is giving false information with that definition, but that that definition is new and thus inappropriate.

I am not sure how new is that definition, but I can say that that definition is colloquial. In other words, when you accuse someone who plagiarised your work as guilty of stealing your work, you do not (formally) mean that that person is guilty of a crime that involves theft, but that the plagiarism is akin to theft. If this is what you meant when you stated that "pirating is theft, that's all", then that is acceptable, in my opinion. In the same way, some people say that eating "meat is murder", even though it is not murder in the legal sense.

>>Although - it is an interesting aspect to consider.

I believe the key reasoning here is that the copyright holder may wish to distribute his property on the internet. If we assume that downloading copyrighted material was infringement then people who legally obtained something through the Web could be prosecuted. That ignores rights the holder could waive if they offered such a service -- "we grant you permission ... and waive any legal standing to a claim." But such a waiver would have to be granted implicitly anyhow.

I'm not sure if it's a valid parallel but consider loaning anything to a friend -- a book. Despite the fact that you bought the book, your friend attained it from you without violating copyright. This is different from your friend starting his own distribution service after obtaining the book, violating publisher copyright because new copies of the book were created in some format.

I think this is how the American law is looking at digital piracy but IANAL (yet). Individuals who upload digital content become unliscensed distributors.

I asked my law student friend, and while he's not authoritative by any means, he agrees with me that a pure downloader cannot be prosecuted under Austrian law.

Things could change if software became recognized as a physical object. Instead of buying the rights to use a certain piece of software, I would be buying a copy of a certain piece of software, much like I buy a copy of a Siemens washing machine. The act of downloading illegal software could then more easily charged, not just the act of making it available.

Of the top of my head I can't see a problem with such a legal description of software. But certainly there must be something, or it would have been done earlier.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Things could change if software became recognized as a physical object. Instead of buying the rights to use a certain piece of software, I would be buying a copy of a certain piece of software, much like I buy a copy of a Siemens washing machine. The act of downloading illegal software could then more easily charged, not just the act of making it available.

Of the top of my head I can't see a problem with such a legal description of software. But certainly there must be something, or it would have been done earlier.

Under U.S. Law a legal owner of a software can LEGALLY make archival copies of said software for backup purposes. The legal owner of said software may then possess both the original and archival copies legally. I can legally use EITHER the original or the archival copy with full legal rights to either. Therefor, if I purchase a movie, and I rip an ISO of that movie, and then I convert the ISO to an AVI, I can legally use the AVI, the ISO or the DVD. I cannot however give a copy of that AVI to a friend.

There are also technical restrictions in that a physical copy of the software must, in fact, be copied into electronic form in order to serve its purpose, whatever that may be. The legal owner of said software is free to use it in any manner they see fit, including but not limited to uses which were unforseen by the original developer. I am perfectly within my rights to use the binary code from my Windows Vista DVD as a source of pseudo-random noise, for example, while running a program on said operating system.

As for teh copyrigth/patent issue. You cannot patent software in the U.S. You can patent a process, but not the actual implimentation of that process. Everythign else is covered under copyright. If MS had patented windows 95, it would now be in the public domain, as patents run out after 7 years. However if MS owned the patent on windows, WINE would be illegal patent infringment. So basically a patent covers the concept of an invention and gives you much more control over it, btu for a shorter time. Copyright only covers the specific implimentation of a concept, not the concept itself, but last much much longer (life of the author + 99 years).

So if i patent the Pet Rock™, noone else can make a rock for the purpose fo being a pet regardless of the materials it is made from.
If I copyright the Pet Rock™, noone else can make a Pet Rock™ that looks like mine, but they are free to make a Pet Stone™ or Pet Boulder™

Originally Posted by abachler

Under U.S. Law a legal owner of a software can LEGALLY make archival copies of said software for backup purposes. The legal owner of said software may then possess both the original and archival copies legally. I can legally use EITHER the original or the archival copy with full legal rights to either. Therefor, if I purchase a movie, and I rip an ISO of that movie, and then I convert the ISO to an AVI, I can legally use the AVI, the ISO or the DVD. I cannot however give a copy of that AVI to a friend.

Although in US, there's the Digital Millennium Something law that prohibits you from cracking the copyright protection on certain DVDs, which is necessary to create a backup.
In all, that would make it illegal to make any kinds of backup on those DVDs, no?

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Under current copyright laws, it has been always my understanding that only those who purchased the software (and consequently agreed to the copyright agreement) are answerable to it in a way that may involve prosecutions.

Not in any legislation I know. You don't ever agree to any "copyright agreement". Copyright is an inherent right of the creator, and violators can be prosecuted even if they violated the right without intent (in Austria, at least), which is pretty rare for laws.
There is no legal difference between a legally and an illegally acquired copy when it comes to the rights you have under copyright.

Originally Posted by laserlight

I have my doubts. Lawrence Rosen claims that: "Because of these partly tangible and partly intangible aspects of computer software, it is possible to have different owners own (1) a tangible copy of software purchased at a computer store or downloaded from a website, and (2) the intellectual property embodied in that software" (Open Source Licensing, Rosen, 2005). Applied to books, this means that when you buy a book, you buy the real and tangible medium of the text, but still do not have ownership of the intellectual property of the text itself.

When you buy a book, you buy the paper (the real and tangible medium), as well as this particular copy of the text (intangible). You don't buy the intellectual property of the text, which is always the creator's and cannot be transferred.
Whereas now, when you buy software, you own the CD/DVD/whatever (unless it's distributed online), but you don't actually own the copy of the software on the medium, which is why the software company can require you to agree to the EULA before using the software.
Of course, this is my interpretation under Austrian law, and other countries may differ in details.

It is not in contrast to usage rights granted under an EULA (though usage rights beyond public performance and display are actually covered by patent law, not copyright law).

Patent law and copyright law have very little to do with each other. Patent law covers inventions - ideas, basically - whereas copyright covers concrete works - text of a story, the storyline itself, the characters, software source code. There are no circumstances where a single thing can be covered by both copyright and a patent, although a copyrighted work may make use of patented ideas.

My reasoning is that you are allowed to use the medium of the book in any way you wish, but you still cannot use the book, as in the text, in any way you wish. For example, if you have a copy of some software on a CD, you can draw a smiley face on the CD and hang it on your wall if you wanted to.

The difference is this: the typical EULA forbids me to reverse-engineer software in order to extract ideas from it (which cannot be copyrighted). It can do this because I don't own the copy of the software I have.
Nothing can prevent me from "reverse-engineering" a book to extract the ideas behind it. Of course, the analogy is strained, but basically, if a science fiction author comes up with a wonderful way of resolving time travel paradoxes, nothing stops me from using that same way in my own book - it's an idea, not a work. More importantly for the analogy, if the author found some magic way of imprinting the story in our brains without making us realize how the time travel resolution works, then an EULA along the software lines would forbid us to actually read the text. But since I actually own my copy of the text, nothing can make me sign the EULA, so I can read the text all I like.

I could also shuffle the pages of the book and create my own weird work - as long as I don't distribute it. But the typical EULA forbids me to do a similar thing for software. (Whatever a similar thing would be. Hooking into the app in unplanned places to create more powerful plugins? Rearranging elements of the app's GUI in ways not directly supported by application configuration?)