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Pirating abandoned content?

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iphigenie:
On the original topic I had an interesting case in the last year.
I was looking for 2 japanese films which I had seen at the Leeds film festival in 2002 (or so). I figured by now they would be available somewhere, since they had been quite successful on the independent circuit around the world.

Found out that of course they had not been released in the west - just wasnt available.

But I also found out a semi-pirate site which sold copies.
Now these are people who copy DVDs who are not released in certain territories, create decent quality subtitles, and sell them at reasonable price. They also say that if a work ever gets an official release they stop selling them

A grey area, I was amazed at the dedication of people creating subtitles like that for films. Since rights are sold by territory, it technically doesnt really infringe anyone's distribution contract, although it does of course violate copyright. And it distributes a work where it is not being sold or promoted.

I did buy it, I wanted to see that film again and show it to my friends. But I thought about it for quite a while.

iphigenie:
--soapbox--

Although what bothers me in this thread is all the mention of poor starving students. It's a nice myth but I have yet to meet a starving student. Most students are dressed, clothed, fed, they have help for all the basics. They get rebates on everything, access to an incredible amount of things for nothing. They certainly have a lot of the basics covered, and quite a few luxuries thrown on top. Access to leisure, sports, culture all for free. Access to all sorts of opportunities. They can get books on loan, used, from the library. Most of them get student loans, and if they cant afford textbooks its usually because they choose to spend it on other luxuries to keep up with all the rich kids. They can afford the stuff, they just prefer to buy fancy shoes/music/insert luxury here

I was a poor student, I worked to put myself through university. But I never struggled to eat or get clothed. And I never struggled to get the books for my courses either. Some I bought new, some used, many I read in the library.

Although I totally understand what you mean when you say "these are useful for poor students" - but there are a lot of free resources available to someone wanting to learn, without having to go and steal a particular one. Saying "i'm a poor student" just is no excuse for stealing, not when there is so much available for students.

I'm a poor self learner is a different thing. It is far harder to try to learn without being an official student - suddenly you are expected to pay full whack for everything. You dont get rebates, you dont get access to the university libraries, you dont get access to academic prices, and you dont get access to people to help explain things, or co learners to bounce ideas off.
 
PS: I.T. is terrible for that. Imagine someone trying to get an IT job after he has lost a job he's had 12 years. Keeps hearing he cant qualify for this of that job because he needs C# or Sharepoint or websphere. Figures "I can learn that". Gets told it will cost 10K in licenses so he can learn - and since employers want experience in those products working with alternatives just wont help. Oracle and Sun are ok for letting people play and learn for free, MS and IBM are not.

mikiem:
FWIW I think that from a legal perspective it's a matter of if you will get prosecuted or sued successfully. In this shifting realm there are few guarantees, though you also get the concept of the victim , i.e. who was harmed, how, and how much... Pragmatically it often has little to do with fairness, & much to do with legal resources available & your true cost of litigation.

Totally separate is the moral realm... If we all acted out of the highest moral standards, our world would not have any disparity of income, & in fact perhaps no income as we know it at all. But we're not there yet, obviously, so morals, as most of us practice them anyway, are the closest we can (or are willing to) come towards some ideal. Debating a topic like this is really comparing, exchanging ideas and concepts forming our individual level of compromise. We can and do rationalize our individual stance, but ethics and morals are thought of and taught as absolutes with intentionally very little wiggle room: it *might* be OK to shoot someone in self-defense, but that argument doesn't fly if you broke into their home and took preventative action. :)

Now the original intent of copyright was to promote new things and art and literature; who would devote time that could be spent earning room and board to new pursuits, if an outcome of starvation was an absolute certainty? Since no one was willing to give potentially everyone a blank check to just go off and create something, s/he had a right to charge customers for their labor without fear of someone selling duplicates & thus reducing their income.

If the owner has no intent of deriving [further] income from their work, then according to it's intent and original purpose any copy right has fulfilled it's purpose, & should logically lapse with the owner releasing any holds or claims. Unfortunately that's a bit rare, so we set an arbitrary date when enough's enough & put it into law. Therein lies the problem...

Something can have absolutely zero worth, as in this case an out of print book, which as long as it is kept out of print, has absolutely no monetary value -   -   - *until* someone wants to buy it. Morally, or at least in the spirit Copy Right was intended, the owner should have given up any exclusive rights the moment they decided not to print the book any longer. But let's say they didn't, maybe for legitimate reasons that made another run impossible - maybe out of greed the same way some people will hoard food knowing that it exceeds their needs and much of it will spoil.

If the copy right holder is being greedy, as many assuredly are, do they revoke their rights to be treated equally? In my opinion the popular consensus is no -- without advocating for or against, I'd say it's basically the same argument we have often enough, globally today: when do your actions cause you to forfeit rights?

Which all may be moot anyway if the mortgage problems lead to proposed changes in how we legally & commonly calculate value... If it becomes common practice to value any property on what it's worth, not what it might be worth *if* there was a buyer, then grabbing an out of print book may be the same thing as dumpster diving or picking something out of the trash. If you can in good conscience consider an out of print book worthless, taking it is perfectly moral & ethical, depending of course on what you intend to do with it... You could pick up a bat from the trash and beat your neighbor with it & that's just wrong.  :)

mouser:
iphigenie's points remind me of a very important long term theoretical issue:
even if piracy does not in any way hurt the company whose product is being pirated -- it may end up subtlety damaging the free/open source community, by decreasing the demand and support for free/open source alternatives.

it could even turn out that a certain amount of piracy would be tolerated specifically because it prevents the demand for free/open source alternatives from reaching a critical mass.  that's a scary though.

mikiem:
Take two... much less philosophical - purely pragmatic...

Some people for whatever reason collect, & they will collect & collect until they can't any longer. Not as much going on now-a-days, but it happens. No rhyme, reason, or ethics aside from feeling that since it isn't used, just collected, no harm done.

Many people just cannot afford - period. Morals, ethics, none of that makes much difference - is more a luxury of those who have the good luck to spare the time debating it. They are not themselves harming anyone if they read a pirated book, or run a pirated/cracked version of Windows - they can not buy it - there is no choice. Trying to tell them that they do not deserve even such minimal benefit from technology, when they hardly stole supper off anyone's plate, is both insulting and irrelevant.

Finally, I'm always amused by an argument I find logical to a fault... If a rental service sells used DVDs at 1/2 price, & retailers discount DVDs as they become old, then their value is tied both to the physical media & the age of the content. The same could be said of books, with price reflecting both age and what they're printed on - damaged books commonly go for a fraction of retail list. Downloaded content then, particularly something not just out, should logically have a value much less than the cheapest price for damaged &/or used books and DVDs/CDs.  ;D

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