this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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If paying full price and obtaining a digital copy isn't ownership, then taking that digital copy without paying can't be stealing can it?
I legit wonder what would happen if this argument is used ( in a professional way by a professional lawyer ) in a court of law. Like, could this legit be argued to be the same?
I don't see it going well but I'd love to see it happen. "One rule for ye, another for me" and all that
Ye, same haha
NAL but technically speaking Ubisoft would lose because they would be unable to prove that they were deprived of anything or anything was appropriated from them with their current stance. Realistically they would just pivot and find some other nonsense to try, like claiming a theft of their computer server’s processing power everytime a pirated game accessed their lobby or some other nonsense that would barely fly, but fly none the less.
What if the game was purely offline? Also, how can a pirated game access online lobbies? The last time I pirated a game was because Epic had a BL3 exclusive. And I couldn't matchmake.
I wonder who would have to prove what. Ubi, that they missed profit (because you'd want to buy the game and didn't) or the player (who'd argue he wouldn't ever buy it anyway).
Well the moving party has to prove their allegations, aka Ubisoft moving to sue you means they have to prove everything they say. Since their stated public position is that they are sole owner at all times irregardless of circumstances, they would be legally barred (estoppel) from arguing that any one could hurt their possessory interest (rights and share of ownership). They essentially would have to shift the argument over, similar to a theft of service argument (not paying a train fare is a crime but you didn’t steal a train or turnstile). The question then becomes what service does ubisoft provide? Online servers that do content distribution seem to be the only thing. If you got it on the high seas you never hit their network, so all I see left with my hypothetical napkin math is all that random network traffic ubisoft games seem to always have (even offline).
Thanks, interesting, I am almost tempted to taunt Ubi that I pirated their game and try to get sued lmao.
Bravo.
There’s a number of cracked games now with online play enabled, you just need to make a burner Steam (etc) account to use it so your main one with purchases doesn’t get nuked if they catch on.
Piracy is never stealing.
Piracy by definition is stealing.
No. It is not. If you’d like a crime to compare it to, forgery would be more accurate.
Forgery usually involves submitting what you faked to some other entity in order to do something. Maybe if you illegally copied and sold that music. Regardless the penalties are similar anyway.
Piracy can often invovle legally obtained items or even bypassing item bans.
You pirate a movie by taking a real copy and sharing it with others over the internet by making more copies or by making it copyable.
Stealing a movie would be taking the real copy without paying for it.
You could both steal and pirate the movie, but in the context of modern media, the source material is usually obtained legally.
That's why most torrents usually have the source in the title to show what it was taken from (DVD, BluRay, WEBRiP, WEB-DL, etc).
Piracy by definition is sharing
Incorrect. Last I checked, theft is depriving the original owner of their product or service. When it comes down to it, piracy is essentially making an illegal copy, meaning the original is still there.
I’m not sure how you drew this conclusion, since most people I know consider paying full price to obtain a digital copy to be extremely close to ownership.
I liked Telltale’s Law and Order series. They can’t sell it anymore, but I can still download my digital copy because I bought it full price.
The whole argument in the article is about monthly subscription rentals.
When a contract ending almost caused Sony to remove all Discovery content from users last year, including digital copies of things people had paid full price for, the cracks between buying a digital license and actually owning something that can't be taken away became more visible to a chunk of people. It's something, but it's not ownership, and it can be taken away based on agreements you may have no way of gaining insight into.
Audible is open about it. Well, if you dig through the fine print. Easy enough to rip copies but I'd say most people only realise they need to when they loose access. Maybe not, but $30 for an audiobook seems like pretty shity value if you're only renting it untill you cancel your subscription.
E: I might be misinformed/ outdated.