After being indicted in 2020, Gary Bowser's trial is finally over, and he has been sentenced to 3+ years in prison. Bowser was facing eleven felony charges as the public face of Team Xexuter, estimated by the U.S. government to have cost the videogame industry between $65 million and $150 million by facilitating piracy. Bowser pled guilty to charges of trafficking in circumvention devices and conspiracy to circumvent technological measures in November, agreeing to pay $4.5 million in fines, but was also ordered to pay another $10 million to Nintendo in a civil case.
"This is not a victimless crime. The leaders of this multimillion-dollar scheme are responsible for diverting money from creative professionals who have worked hard to provide unique products and experiences,” said Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Robert Hammer. Another Special Agent in Charge, Donald M. Voiret, is quoted saying "he also wasted the efforts of legitimate companies as they attempted to build protections for their products.”
Last week, the prosecution announced they were seeking a five-year sentence, while the defense only wanted nineteen months. Bowser has been detained since October 2020 as he was not able to secure pretrial release, so, assuming he serves his full 3+ year sentence, he will have actually been detained for closer to four and a half years.
Meh, he knew what he was doing and what the risks were. He had years to knock it off and they would have left him alone. He also sold games, straight up. Anyone who thinks he just sold SXOS doesn't know what they're talking about. I bought SXOS, used it, enjoyed it but this guy fucked around and found out. Nothing more, nothing less.
And yet it's still the most thorough study that we have, even according to that article you link. Also, a few paragraphs after the one that points out the margin of error:
"Displacement rates for games have been little analysed in previous literature, but it is interesting that a study of Bastard et al. (2012) also indicate significant positive effects, suggesting that games have succeeded in turning illegal online transactions to their advantage by hooking up gamers and offering more levels / bonuses that are available only after paying."
I had a bit of a skim through the study for a few hours these last few days (at least until the initial interest faded and I got way too bored lol), and here are some things I noticed:
"In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect."
"For games, the estimated effect of illegal online transactions on sales is positive – implying that illegal consumption leads to increased legal consumption. This positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by the industry being successful in converting illegal users to paying users. Tactics used by the industry include, for example, offering gameplay with extra bonuses or extra levels if consumers pay."
Don't feel like copying a bunch of different tables for 1 spoiler, so go check it out if you want. The gist of it is that between 2009 and 2013 (the years they studied for this specific bit), physical game sales have generally gone down, but digital sales went up. Doesn't really say much about piracy in itself, but from all the whining from Nintendo and others, you'd think that digital sales would be stagnated or even going down because of piracy.
Section titled "Survey based results – Games", so basically the second half of the page. Basically, it mentions how previous studies concluded that game piracy isn't as harmful as it is for music, since games often find ways to make legal purchases worth it. They don't mention this, but I'm guessing they mean stuff like the ability to play multiplayer or, in the case of consoles, availability of stuff like updates/DLCs (sometimes games will be dumped, but updates/DLCs won't)
Sections "6.3 Use of creative content" and "6.4 Proportion of illegal downloaders / streamers".
These compare the percentage of people that used legal services, and how many of those also pirated stuff.
Do note, it doesn't make the distinction between people that just pirated, or that pirated but later bought the thing. In the case of gaming, I think it'd even be interesting to know how many pirated then bought a game, and how many pirated but didn't buy because they didn't like the game (so they'd end up not buying it if demos existed, or if they tried a friend's copy, etc).
Image
Shows the percent of people that got games through various means. Note again, it doesn't indicate how many are "repeated" between different options - as in, it's possible that a portion of the respondents pirated certain games, but also bought others.
"Most games played in the EU are free games and legal streams (including online consoles), on average close to 4 each in a year, followed closely by 3.4 games bought on a CD or other physical carrier. Slightly fewer games are played after a legal downloads, illegal downloads or streams or on a chipped console. On average people play only one cloud games such as one from Gaikai, Onlive or games directly from the server of the games developer in a year." Image
Again, grain of salt and all that, but still, the amount of pirated stuff doesn't seem as large as companies want people to think.
Explains the system they used to reduce the chance of pirates replying untruthfully about their pirating. Like mentioned in earlier bits of the study, it resulted in a higher rate of piracy reports compared to other studies.
They do say it's not 100% guaranteed that none of the respondents lied, but it's still positive enough to believe they have a decent amount of truthful responses.
"(...)for books and games these percentages [of illegal online users] are between 14 and 18 per cent for illegal downloads, streams and gamers playing on a chipped console."
"The high self-reported piracy rates in this study compared to previous literature indicate that untruthful replies to illegal behaviour are no more a problem in this study than in previous studies. To test the truthfulness of replies one must make assumptions about who would deny piracy. A hypothesis about cognitive dissonance and moral attitudes does not give conclusive results. However, assuming that people speak the truth about their knowledge of piracy terms, and that true pirates are more familiar with piracy terms than true legal buyers, the discrepancy in knowledge of piracy terms of 20 percent point between self-confessed pirates and self-reporting legal buyers indicates that one must assume strong ignorance of piracy terms among true legal buyers to claim that the sample of self-reporting legal buyers is contaminated with denying pirates. A further comparison of knowledge of non-piracy related internet savvy terms indicates that both legal buyers and pirates respond truthfully about their knowledge of piracy terms, unless denying pirates also lie about their knowledge of non-piracy related internet terms. Under these neutrally formulated assumptions, the proportions of self-confessed pirates and self-reporting legal buyers knowing piracy and non-piracy related internet savvy terms imply that the latter group is not contaminated with denying pirates, and hence that all respondents speak the truth about their behaviour."
Sort of a summary of the stuff from pg 110-113
"For games, illegal downloads and streams were grouped together and a separate question was asked about the number of games played on chipped consoles. For games, the OLS estimates suggest that every 100 games played illegally induce an extra 28 to 41 legal transactions of games. However, since many people use both legal and illegal channels, these OLS estimates may still be biased due to the endogeneity problem discussed above despite controlling for e.g. interest in creative content and the use of internet to search information on creative content(...)"
Note we don't know how many of those pirated copies were actually played to the end of the game and which were from people that just tried out the game for a few hours then stopped playing because they weren't interested enough (so they likely would have not bought the games anyway if there were demos, or other non-piracy ways to try them out before purchase).
Still, even with margins of error and all other grains of salt, I think we can't deny that certain cases of piracy do help sell SOME legit copies.
"For games the reason for the positive effects may be that players may get hooked to a game and access a game legally to play the game with all bonuses, at higher levels or whatever makes playing the game legally more interesting."
This is similar to the bit on page 84.
"Despite the large uncertainty of the estimates, the most likely effects are:
• Games: out of every 100 online copyright infringements, 24 induce an extra legal transaction."
And that's that, I didn't read much more past page 150 (from the first spoiler).
I'm not saying piracy is completely harmless. I'll even admit that I thought it was less of an issue because I hadn't given this study any actual look, so I was going off results of previous, less accurate ones.
Either way, my point is that piracy also isn't as cataclysmic as companies make it out to be. This study isn't perfect, but it's the best attempt so far that's been done to figure this out.
Besides, the fact that it took so long for it to go public still makes me lean towards the chance that the big companies are BSing a bit about their "losses because of piracy", but that's just my opinion
And two or so years later, Angry Birds kicked off the "trend" of In-App Purchases. They even ended up removing the base game's price tag because they realised they'd get more money that way.
And like I mentioned earlier, if devs KNOW that piracy is so easy on Android but still keep making games without any sort of attempt at stopping it (either have an online check when you first install the game, or some other form of making sure the game was bought other than just having the apk), then it's on them.
Also, pretty sure devs also found out that mobile ports of games they originally released for console/pc got less attention because the controls are often ass compared to how they were originally meant to be played (controller or KB+Mouse) because not many people will lug around those accessories to play on a phone, and touchscreen controls are often way clumsier.
If they want to take it up with Google so they make Android more piracy resistant, I'm all for it. Google has more than enough money to try to improve Android, if only they stop focusing on other dumb crap.
Can you quote the post where I said that instead of pulling it out of your sore ass? Because if you're right, then I have a weird way of wanting indie devs to go bankrupt. Like, real weird.
And that's not even close to showing my full 415 game Steam library, which is probably not even that impressive compared to other people.
I hope you know how easy it is to turn that into a "if they don't care about me being unable to pay for their game, why should I care about their feelings if I pirate?"
It's idiots like you that make others pirate out of spite.
Good points there. This is reliable and scientific examination of the question related to piracy and sales. There is currently no direct correlation between the amount of piracy and the loss of sales.
When taking this into consideration, one wonders what the motives are for the U.S's legal system to crack down so hard on Team E. and other hackers. The bottom line is that these laws are meant to bully citizens into complying with unreasonable requests to avoid tampering with the very same technology we pay with our own money for.
The fact of the matter is that much of the corporate legislation currently created in the U.S. favour big corporations. This is not by chance but by design. Indeed, ever since the decision of Citizen united vs FCC. took place, corporations now have the legal recognition as "people" and just like people they have a right to create laws. So Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, or company X , have gotten busy and put their multi-billion dollars to good us to influence the laws of this country. The end results is that the actual citizens end up loosing in the name of copyright infrigement. The only way to change this is to have a massive reform of the legal system where corporate lobbying is rendered illegal and where companies are no long considered as legal citizens.
My advice: we absolutely should continue to hack our device as I do not see any ethical issues related to this. If, there was a direct correlation between piracy and sales loss, than I can accept that there would be ethical considerations standing against piracy. However, given the empirical evidence in this study, the ethical dimensions are at best, debatable and certainly don't merit the kind of legal consequences as this case shows.
If, there was a direct correlation between piracy and sales loss, than I can accept that there would be ethical considerations standing against piracy. However, given the empirical evidence in this study, the ethical dimensions are at best, debatable and certainly don't merit the kind of legal consequences as this case shows.
Not just a correlation, piracy causes sales loss. Not a 1:1 loss, but picking up a gun and shooting someone doesn't have a 1:1 correlation to the victim dying either. Pirate or don't, that isn't my concern but arguing that it doesn't affect sales is gas lighting the software companies.
"The companies that wanted to sell something bad for your health did studies and conveniently got inconclusive results on whether or not the thing they wanted to sell was bad for your health"
Come on now lmao, why would this study defend piracy instead of supporting the companies that are trying to push more ways to make people buy games instead of getting them for free?
Unless deep down they're pirates and managed to scam 360,000€ from the European Commission and troll gaming companies by concluding "yeah, there's not enough proof either way, but in some cases piracy might lead to a few extra purchases" lol
Unless deep down they're pirates and managed to scam 360,000€ from the European Commission and troll gaming companies by concluding "yeah, there's not enough proof either way, but in some cases piracy might lead to a few extra purchases" lol
You're here trying to persuade everyone there is no moral problem with piracy for free, why couldn't someone do the same thing for money?
It wouldn't even just be because they are pirates that they may want to spin the results a certain way, they may be thinking about their next research assignment. It wouldn't look so good if they turned round and said that what they did was pointless because their methods don't produce useful results.
The tobacco industries best efforts to find a link between smoking and cancer failed to find a link.
Not just a correlation, piracy causes sales loss. Not a 1:1 loss, but picking up a gun and shooting someone doesn't have a 1:1 correlation to the victim dying either. Pirate or don't, that isn't my concern but arguing that it doesn't affect sales is gas lighting the software companies.
@smf: I am not going to get into the logistics of the value of peer-reviewed reports. However, given the kind of report we are discussing, it is clear that no direct correlation is present between piracy and sales.
To equate the case of the the tabocco industry with its subsequent investigation of the ill effects of tabocco is not appropriate. As Arilys mentioned, the tabocco industry themselves investigated the correlation between tabocco and physcial illness (cancer, emphasema). They did find direct correlations but buried the results and claimed that they could find none. The legal strategy was to delay due process to the maximum extent so they can rake in millions.
In this case of this research report, there is no such conflict of interest or bias. Just because it may seem like something is related to another thing (in this case piracy to sales) does not mean it is related at all. The fact that they found no correlation is a huge sign that they may actually not be related at all. However, this does not mean that we will never find a correlation in the future. When it comes to the laws though, they act as if there is a significant correlation and have created extreme laws that severely punish those who sell piracy devices or circumvent anti-piracy measures. Their case rests of the claim that they made this multi-million dollar corporations lose millions when in fact there is no evidence of the sort to support this. What this amounts to is a guilty without sufficient proof verdict that the accused injured the sales of the company... (Keep in mind though I have yet to read the details of the evidence for the prosecution so there might be some evidence I am not aware off. So take this with a grain of salt.) This should send shivers down all our spines as consumers and citizens. It sets a precedent that corporation need not really prove direct injury to prosecute. Even worse, It shows that the laws side with them.
Not just a correlation, piracy causes sales loss. Not a 1:1 loss, but picking up a gun and shooting someone doesn't have a 1:1 correlation to the victim dying either. Pirate or don't, that isn't my concern but arguing that it doesn't affect sales is gas lighting the software companies.
Also as a specific comment to this particular statement. You cannot make this claim, in fact the research shows the exact opposite. that is, the peer-reviewed research clearly cannot find scientific proof that "piracy causes sales loss" and we therefore should not create laws that pretend that this is a proven fact.
Your reference to shooting someone and probability of them dying is a strange one. This is more a question of probability not scientific correlation. If you meant to refer to the subject of gun control in general. I am not intimately familiar with the specific statistics in regards to this. However, it would be interesting to see if there are any evidence to suggest that the easy access to gun has a direct or mediated correlation with violence and shootings. I personally believe they do but have no evidence to support this and am therefore biased.
Also as a specific comment to this particular statement. You cannot make this claim, in fact the research shows the exact opposite. that is, the peer-reviewed research clearly cannot find scientific proof that "piracy causes sales loss" and we therefore should not create laws that pretend that this is a proven fact.
"does not necessarily meant that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect (p.7-8)."
Most laws are based on potential harm. You can't prove that drink driving will cause someone to have an accident either. Yet everyone is judged on the basis that they were happy to kill someone in an accident if they drive drunk.
If you sell a product that is designed to allow piracy then you are going to be judged as if you are happy with that too.
How do you think it would be possible to prove what the sales figures for a game would be with and without piracy? It seems impossible to tell.
The lengthy document also mentions that the figures for sales of games are not publicly available outside of nation sector organisations or sector watchers, citing our sister site MCV’s reporting of chart data on a weekly basis. So while the studies of games are in the report, they are generally inconclusive due to the lack of information on overall sales as opposed to physical sales of games which have declined along with other disc-based media.
"does not necessarily meant that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect (p.7-8)."
Most laws are based on potential harm. You can't prove that drink driving will cause someone to have an accident either. Yet everyone is judged on the basis that they were happy to kill someone in an accident if they drive drunk.
If you sell a product that is designed to allow piracy then you are going to be judged as if you are happy with that too.
How do you think it would be possible to prove what the sales figures for a game would be with and without piracy? It seems impossible to tell.
The lengthy document also mentions that the figures for sales of games are not publicly available outside of nation sector organisations or sector watchers, citing our sister site MCV’s reporting of chart data on a weekly basis. So while the studies of games are in the report, they are generally inconclusive due to the lack of information on overall sales as opposed to physical sales of games which have declined along with other disc-based media.
@smf, really excellent points. I think we might be on the same page when it comes to understanding the reach of the research. My issue lies with the fact that we cannot find sufficient statistical analysis to prove that there is an effect, but act as if we know it does effect sales. In the case of drunk driving, the information and statistics are very much accessible, and there is a trend that we can establish between drinking and the probability of having an accident. There are thresholds in the statistics that have been met to suggest that, with good authority, alcohol consumption and driving combined is a dangerous combination. We then collectively decided that this should not be allowed for the safety of our society and citizens and rightly so. Debates have been had in parliament and with the citizenry and the law came into place. I do not think it is possible to have a 1:1 correlation with any topic of minimum complexity nor do I think this should be a requirement for laws to happen.
With this case, I am not so sure that these rules are done for the safety of society and citizens. In fact, I know that these copyright laws are absolutely for the protection of multi-national and national corporations and are about securing financial gains through lobbying and other means such as private donations to politicians and law makers. I wonder if some to these rules have been sufficiently debated by citizens before becoming law, especially given the current powers that corporations now have. That alone should make us take pause before supporting them as it puts into question the motives behind them.
Furthermore, The 3 year sentence and $10 Million dollar penalty for a citizen seems too punitive to me for something that does not meet the rigours of statistical analysis to prove that wrong doing has been done to the company. My point is that we should not go this far unless we have more evidence; that is, we should err on the side of caution. (edit: after re-reading, I have to also note that I do not know about the evidence the prosecution has forwarded. If their evidence showed, beyond reasonable doubt that the sales of the device hurt Nintendo's sales then my argument falls and the sentence is juste)...This principle is very similar to the "not guilty until proven" principle we hold so dearly. Keep in mind that I am just talking about the sales of the devices to circumvent the Switch's anti-piracy software. I do not condone any sales of material that is wholly owned by Nintendo or other companies (i.e. videogames, etc.). that being said, claiming that one line of code that someone may have plagiarized from some company is grounds for imprisonment seems also unreasonable too.
With this case, I am not so sure that these rules are done for the safety of society and citizens. In fact, I know that these copyright laws are absolutely for the protection of multi-national and national corporations and are about securing financial gains through lobbying and other means such as private donations to politicians and law makers.
that being said, claiming that one line of code that someone may have plagiarized from some company is grounds for imprisonment seems also unreasonable too.
That isn't why he is in prison, nobody is claiming that it's reasonable to imprison someone for plagiarizing one line of code.
DMCA is 20 years old, it's been debated continuously since then. Gary had plenty of warning & he located to another country to avoid the law. It is a lot of money and a long time in prison, he should blame his lawyer.
In terms ofthe "one-line of code" this was said in reference to other cases not this particular one. it was in reference to my previous statement that I agree that it is illegal to sell code wholly owned by a corporation.
In regards to the statement of who owns corporations. Of course shareholders are citizens. However, to state that multi-national corporations are owned by citizens and to suggest that this is equivalent to having all citizens in the U.S. is to wilfully spin things for the sake of argument alone. Please have a look at Citizen united vs FCC to see why this line of thinking is very dangerous for democracy. I am certainly not going to spend time arguing whether shareholders and CEO at multi-million dollar corporations accurately reflect the will of the citizenry. if this is true, then why spend so much money on lobbying for legislation and influencing law.
Either you are now trolling me or there is no point in arguing further about this since we are definitely not on the same page when it comes to defining what a corporation is and the current role it plays in society.
I am certainly not going to spend time arguing whether shareholders and CEO at multi-million dollar corporations accurately reflect the will of the citizenry. if this is true, then why spend so much money on lobbying for legislation and influencing law.
Laws aren't about the will of the citizenry. People are contradictory and often quite awful. Laws often protect minorities from the majority.
They lobby to get what they want, it doesn't mean that what they are lobbying for is bad. Politicians wouldn't otherwise pass laws that help the poor, if everyone stopped lobbying
You seem to be arguing poor people deserve to be treated better than rich people.
I'm not saying there are no moral problems. Morals are not the same for everyone, you do you, I'll do me.
I personally have no issue with pirating because I use it basically as game demos: if I do like a game enough, I'll buy it if I can find it on sale at a price that I feel is worth it (I refuse to pay 60€ for a game); if I don't like the game enough then I'll just stop playing the pirated version.
And since a whole bunch of games I own I only bought because I tried out the pirated version, I feel no guilt about doing it.
Some people might be fine with that, others will call me dumb for paying for stuff I can get for free, and the rest might call me a dirty thief despite paying for the games I enjoy anyway. Okay sure, whatever helps them sleep at night lmao
The whole thing about my posts isn't to say "piracy good because I like doing it". It's to try to make people more skeptical when Nintendo/EA/whatever come out and cry about how they "lost" X million dollars to piracy.
Sure, piracy causes losses in sales to an extent, but how can they be so sure of those numbers when every study so far has been inconclusive?
(Given, if it's an indie dev it's different since they're, you know, small teams that work for years on one game instead of a giant company working on several games at once)
It wouldn't even just be because they are pirates that they may want to spin the results a certain way, they may be thinking about their next research assignment. It wouldn't look so good if they turned round and said that what they did was pointless because their methods don't produce useful results.
Let's go the other way on that: if they're lying in order to make their results look good, they could have tilted the results to lean more towards the "it's inconclusive but it seems that it does affect sales in all fields". It would be just as vague of a result but would probably net them some more money from others that want similar "useful results".
After all, a study like this one might discourage companies from requesting future ones in fear that piracy is proven negligible to their profits (the European Commission did delay the release of the full study for about 4 years after publishing only cherry-picked parts).
On the other hand, they'd probably request more studies if they saw that they were close to getting their coveted "piracy is uber bad for sales, we must crack down on it harder ASAP" conclusions.
The lengthy document also mentions that the figures for sales of games are not publicly available outside of nation sector organisations or sector watchers, citing our sister site MCV’s reporting of chart data on a weekly basis. So while the studies of games are in the report, they are generally inconclusive due to the lack of information on overall sales as opposed to physical sales of games which have declined along with other disc-based media.
If big companies are so eager to prove that piracy is indeed as bad as they claim, you'd think they'd be willing to share data that would make the studies more accurate, no? Or are they worried it'll backfire on them?
Sorry if I'm sounding increasingly obnoxious, but a lot of the stuff you get to support your arguments just makes me more skeptical of the big companies lol
I'm not saying there are no moral problems. Morals are not the same for everyone, you do you, I'll do me.
I personally have no issue with pirating because I use it basically as game demos: if I do like a game enough, I'll buy it if I can find it on sale at a price that I feel is worth it (I refuse to pay 60€ for a game); if I don't like the game enough then I'll just stop playing the pirated version.
And since a whole bunch of games I own I only bought because I tried out the pirated version, I feel no guilt about doing it.
Some people might be fine with that, others will call me dumb for paying for stuff I can get for free, and the rest might call me a dirty thief despite paying for the games I enjoy anyway. Okay sure, whatever helps them sleep at night lmao
The whole thing about my posts isn't to say "piracy good because I like doing it". It's to try to make people more skeptical when Nintendo/EA/whatever come out and cry about how they "lost" X million dollars to piracy.
Sure, piracy causes losses in sales to an extent, but how can they be so sure of those numbers when every study so far has been inconclusive?
(Given, if it's an indie dev it's different since they're, you know, small teams that work for years on one game instead of a giant company working on several games at once)
Let's go the other way on that: if they're lying in order to make their results look good, they could have tilted the results to lean more towards the "it's inconclusive but it seems that it does affect sales in all fields". It would be just as vague of a result but would probably net them some more money from others that want similar "useful results".
After all, a study like this one might discourage companies from requesting future ones in fear that piracy is proven negligible to their profits (the European Commission did delay the release of the full study for about 4 years after publishing only cherry-picked parts).
On the other hand, they'd probably request more studies if they saw that they were close to getting their coveted "piracy is uber bad for sales, we must crack down on it harder ASAP" conclusions.
Also:
If big companies are so eager to prove that piracy is indeed as bad as they claim, you'd think they'd be willing to share data that would make the studies more accurate, no? Or are they worried it'll backfire on them?
Sorry if I'm sounding increasingly obnoxious, but a lot of the stuff you get to support your arguments just makes me more skeptical of the big companies lol
Arylis, you see the light my friend. I don't think smf is thinking through his arguments more profoundly. The comparison to drunk driving hinted at this. In this the data is accessible. In the case of piracy it isn't. To create punitive laws for something that has not met the threshold for statistically significant data should give us pause.
I also did not know that this report was delayed more than 4 years. That is interesting indeed. This does invite further skepticism. Your point is also great when you mention about the lack of more research on this topic. If there is one thing clear, companies like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have extensive data on us. Why has there not been further research into piracy and loss of sales using this data? if it is so damaging to these corporations, they would have investigated this much further as it hurts their profit margins.
I think the irony is that we are having a discussion about this issue on a site that brings the hacking community together and yet we still have defenders of a law that seems biased towards these mega corporations and are antithetical to hacking a system we own to run our own code.
Laws aren't about the will of the citizenry. People are contradictory and often quite awful. Laws often protect minorities from the majority.
They lobby to get what they want, it doesn't mean that what they are lobbying for is bad. Politicians wouldn't otherwise pass laws that help the poor, if everyone stopped lobbying
You seem to be arguing poor people deserve to be treated better than rich people.
by the will of the citizenry, I am not claiming that each citizen has a vote. This is not about direct representation. However, in a democracy a fundamental principles is that the citizens have a right to vote. This is fundamental because it gives them a say on who rules them and the kinds of laws in place to maintain society and its norms. However you define "votes" or "citizenry" be it direct or indirect representation, the bottom line is that this group of citizens have a say on the laws and norms in place through fair debate. This is fundamental to all democracies.
your argument that the will of the citizenry is often contradictory is dangerously dismissive of the very foundations of what makes a democracy. From a legal standpoint, it also has no grounds in support of your argument that these laws are just and fair either...
ok, I am done... on that note, it is a beautiful day out there for the winter season. Democracies are thankfully still standing too, which I am very glad for. =)
Tell that to all the white people who thought keeping black people slaves was fine.
Democracy is not a perfect system, it's just less bad than all the other systems. It's been grafted on to a population that are mostly interested in tribalism, so will only think what they've been whipped up to think.
If 51% of people wanted murder to be legalized, then your democracy wouldn't just roll over and let it happen.
Anyway, back to the topic on hand. I don't see how it's in the peoples interest to allow copyright theft, in the same way it's not in the peoples interest to allow theft from stores. You used language to dehumanize the victims of copyright theft & that can be used to dehumanize the victims of all kind of theft.
If you want communism or marxism, so that big companies don't just benefit the few then you should come out and say that rather than say it should be fine to steal from them.
Tell that to all the white people who thought keeping black people slaves was fine.
Democracy is not a perfect system, it's just less bad than all the other systems. It's been grafted on to a population that are mostly interested in tribalism, so will only think what they've been whipped up to think.
If 51% of people wanted murder to be legalized, then your democracy wouldn't just roll over and let it happen.
Anyway, back to the topic on hand. I don't see how it's in the peoples interest to allow copyright theft, in the same way it's not in the peoples interest to allow theft from stores. You used language to dehumanize the victims of copyright theft & that can be used to dehumanize the victims of all kind of theft.
If you want communism or marxism, so that big companies don't just benefit the few then you should come out and say that rather than say it should be fine to steal from them.
@smf, once again, I am seeing signs of someone that is not fully informed on what they are talking about. Please read Hobbs's leviathan, some of Detoqueville's works and other people who have looked at the issue of the "tyranny of the people." This topic has been well-threaded. Nobody has made the claim that democracy is perfect. I certainly have not. I agree, democracy it is the best system we have, but it is not perfect.
I don't see why we have to argue about the importance of free, rational debate in democracies either. The pre-civil rights laws or Jim Crow laws were the result of the lack of a fair debate in democracies. It was a result of gross violations of the spirit of democracy and the spirit of the law. Your example about slavery in the U.S.A demonstrates the exact opposite of your argument. Debates are essential for fair laws to take place and this is doubly true in democracies. Come to think of it, all your examples show the apposite for your position...
Getting back to the point of piracy. I will repeat, the laws surrounding piracy and the sale of these devices that were used against Team E and Bowser, specifically, are the result of a law that has not been fairly debated using arguments based on science. That is the issue.
Your stance, as you made clear, is that who cares if it is a fair debate about a law that is used to incarcerate people, and who cares if there is no conclusive evidence to back it up. People are fickle and they do not know what they want. Thus, lets leave it to corporations to decide. My claim is that we should care, as we live in a democracy, and these laws are clearly biased towards the protection of corporations which subverts the very foundation of the purpose of laws in a democracy. That is it in a nutshell
Also the well-known trope that any questioning of the government's laws is a sign of communism, once again, makes me question how informed you really are on this subject. The two have nothing to do with each other. stop using logical fallacies like this. I wonder if you really are serious with your false equivalencies. The fact that you are on gbatemp suggests that you have some interest in hacking devices to run codes and circumventing anti-piracy measures. I don't understand why you support laws that destroy these abilities... Are we just arguing for the sake of arguing here?
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