Analyst sees big upside in next-gen Xbox Marketplace

gurgi said:
Well, buying, finishing, and returning a game for a full (or partial) refund isn't keeping the game either, but it is still stealing.

And what about lending your copy of a game to a friend so he can finish it?
By this argument, lending books and music are immoral. Buy a book, read it, and give it to a library. Hell, that makes libraries dens of sin, letting people read all those books for nothing! And what about all the quotes on these forums? One story today from the Nikkei Business journal. If we want to read it, surely we ought to buy the journal?! And radio too is evil incarnate, enabling us to listen to music without buying it.

I would say that if people lending/passing on games to friends was looked down upon by the publishers, they wouldn't be okay with places like Blockbuster renting them. And neither would DVD/video rentals exist. Sharing can have a positive effect, as if someone borrows a game or film they like, chances increase of them bying it for themselves. Music sharing has shown this (not that I condone it though). Music publishers say sharing of mp3's costs them lots, but sales haven't gone down as a result of this new technology. I've even read sales have gone up (though don't know where) as people buy music after hearing it and liking it, same as they do off the radio.
 
I was actually wondering about the books market today. I'm reading Angels and Demons, before that i read The Da Vinci Code. I bought neither, they were both lent by 2 friends of mine. And i thought how on earth do authors make money. Surely many copies get sold, but many people just borrow books from friends.

It's the same for any other copyrighted material, very tricky situation which has been debated to death so i'm not sure i wanna go there again.
 
I guess it depends what you are paying for:

are you paying for the content? The physical copy of the game? The experience? Depending on which it is, I don't see why it's necessarely stealing if you play a game and then pass it on to a close friend (or even borrow it). After all, it's the consumers copy of the game - he bought it, and it should be in his right to decide if he wants to play the the game, pass it on or simply destroy it for whatever reasons. Unless anyone can show that there are laws that prohibit such a thing, it's NOT stealing.

Buying something and then copying only to sell the original to someone else while keeping the copy is of course prohibited by laws. I think last year, it even became illegal in Europe to make a (backup) copy of an original medium you own.
 
You agree to a EULA when you open the package. So you are bound by contract.

As far as books are concerned, it may be more of a moral decision, than a legal one.
 
gurgi said:
As far as books are concerned, it may be more of a moral decision, than a legal one.
Moral?

If you buy a shovel, is lending it to your neighbour stealing?
If you buy a ball for your kid, is letting other kids play with the same ball stealing?
If you buy a painting, is letting your neighbour look at it stealing?
If you buy a "monopoly" board game, is playing it with your neighbour stealing?
If you buy a computer game, is lending it to your neighbour stealing?
If you buy a car, is lending it to your neighbour stealing?

If you buy a XXX, is lending it to your neighbour stealing?
NO!!

You've let the propaganda of publishers of copyrighted material get to you.
Look at the list above. Think. Propaganda is a powerful thing, nobody is immune.
 
gurgi said:
You agree to a EULA when you open the package. So you are bound by contract.
Not necessarily. EULA's are in a state of legal limbo depending on what country your in. There's quite a lot nonsense in them too, such as 'you agree not to hold us liable' which, certainly in the UK, contravenes statutory rights. That is, if what they provided HAS done something wrong, you could potentially sue regardless of saying you agree not to.

There's no cut and dry answers at the moment.
As far as books are concerned, it may be more of a moral decision, than a legal one.
Why are books different to films or games? Someone's worked at creating something, some people pay to enjoy that, some people don't but still get to enjoy it because they borrow it.
 
I certainly would feel like a mooch if I borrowed my neighbor's shovel every time I needed to do some digging. I wonder why that is? Im just going to lol at your lil propaganda fit. What a silly attempt to invalidate an opinion. But whatever, keep up the good fight. Down with the establishment ect..., ect.... ;)

I singled out books because they don't have a EULA.
 
gurgi said:
I certainly would feel like a mooch if I borrowed my neighbor's shovel every time I needed to do some digging. I wonder why that is? Im just going to lol at your lil propaganda fit. What a silly attempt to invalidate an opinion. But whatever, keep up the good fight. Down with the establishment ect..., ect.... ;)

I singled out books because they don't have a EULA.
You spoke about morality.
I pointed out that in identical situations pertaining to anything other than that which has been the subject of focussed propaganda by industry groups, the idea of letting someone else use something you own is perfectly normal.

I hate to bring age out into a discussion as a factor, but I'm old enough to have seen how this propaganda has been driven by different industry groups (from the spread of Xerox machines and forward), and how it has been quite effective.

(If you wanted to take it a step further, you could say that sharing resources is a cornerstone of societal building just as much as ownership is, probably more. Historically it has therefore been generally encouraged, and the ones who do share their resources are typically regarded as "good guys". Copyright holding publishers have been remarkably effective at changing this view, enough so that what would once have been regarded as absurd - not letting someone read an interesting book - can actually be considered.)
 
Ahem. If you OWN something (like a book or a painting) you can use it, loan it, or sell it as you please. It's yours. You need permission to legally make copies if it is copyrighted, just as you need permission to legally build a device that uses a patented technology. But the object itself is YOURS. There is NO moral ambiguity about loaning it, selling it, or giving it away.

If you purchase an object under a licensing agreement, you don't OWN it, you have LICENSED it. Therefore, all legal usage is determined by the license agreement (as affected by applicable law). The object is NOT yours -- you have merely paid for limited rights to use it. Loaning it, or even using it for yourself in ways excluded by the license, may well be illegal. The OWNERS can take it away from you if you violate the license.

Finally, violating licence agreements, like violating copyrights, is illegal and (usually) immoral, too. But calling it PIRACY is propoganda and a mis-use of the word. A pirate deprives the owner of a physical object. Violating intellectual property rights doesn't deprive the owner of the object. It deprives the owner of the ability to sell it ONLY if the "pirate" sells it to someone who would actually have bought it at the owner's terms. This is usually not the case! Say that someone is selling software at $1000 each and estimates that "pirates" sold 1000 copies. If they say that they therefore lost $1M of sales, they are lying, because if the "pirates" didn't exist, they wouldn't have made 1000 more sales at $1000 each. Their loss is probably about what the "pirates" sold the objects for, since "pirates" (like any other business people) try to sell at the highest prices their customers will pay. Their loss might be $0, and it has been proven that "piracy" sometimes results in legitimate sales that otherwise wouldn't have taken place. (Not that that makes it right -- it's theirs, and they have the right to set the sales terms that they want.)

So, to summarize: "ownership" includes the right to use, loan, and resell; "licensed use" can have practically any limits on allowed use, and intellectual property "piracy" is wrong, but using the emotioanlly loaded term "piracy" to describe intellectual property violations is misleading at best, and is frequently used to justify responses that are way out of proportion to the actual offense. (E.g. the parking lot attendant selling "pirated" CDs who was arrested by a set of gun-weilding toughs from the RIAA, who were dressed as if they were a police SWAT team.)

Enjoy, Aranfell

PS: I am not a lawyer -- I'm talking about how ordinary people have always used the terms "ownership" and "piracy", before certain business groups decided to change the meaning of the latter to suit their purposes.
 
PS: There is also no LEGAL ambiguity about loaning out an object that one OWNS. I am free to loan out my books and a painting that I purchased -- I just can't copy them except as allowed by "fair use" law (which is under serious attack). Regarding DVDs, I'm no longer sure whetere I own them outright or whether I implicitly signed a license by opening them... a great solution from the industry's point of view.

Also, "piracy", as a specific kind of theft, has always been understood to include violence or threat of violence. That's another reason why my "skeptic filter" pops up whenever anyone talks about how they've been hurt by "piracy". Gun-weilding toughs grabbed the CDs? No wait, those guys worked for the RIAA...

Enjoy, Aranfell

PS: Again, I am *not* justifying "piracy". I'm saying let the terminology -- and the punishments -- fit the crime.
 
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