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daedalus wrote:I want the last five minutes of my life back.

If I can't read and entire thread then post why I think people are wrong then I won't post at all. it's why I have a low post count...

The point was that moral truths are consistent regardless of how society is doing. I wasn't comparing slavery to downloading a pdf it's just that all this relativism is going to make my head explode.

If you are saying that it is true slavery is wrong, how could it possibly be right in the past. That's not how truth works.

Honestly I think I'm being off topic since I was addressing the relativism not the actual piracy stuff.


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Also as far as animal brains go I've had cow brains a few times, it's cold and creamy!

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:If you steal, you are a boil on the ass of humanity.

And thus we begin this week's performance at Exaggeration Theatre...

I prefer the term "hyperbole."

I skimmed a bunch of rationalizations and moral relativism in this thread, so I didn't miss much while preparing for finals. I did stop to read Kan's posts though.

Pretty much a big +1 to everything he said.

I always eat my cereal out of hyper boles

Kurb wrote:Haha....

I'm sure none of you Holy Rollers have ever d/led a song from Napster back in the day or DL'ed a torrent.

Priceless

Actually I haven't.

Face!

Scott-S6 wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:Why should you be given money simply because you spent time and money making something? The labour theory of value is communist clap-trap.

Why should you get the benefit of something I've made without paying me?

Exactly, predicating value on the effort put into making something or the benefit received from using it is absurd. Value is determined by exchange. The value of something is determined by the matrix of how much I'm willing to give to you to benefit from whatever it is you produce, and how much you demand for someone to benefit from whatever it is you produce.

Now, if you demand $1 for your product and I can get it from somewhere else for free, then guess what, I'm not going to give you $1.

So you may say "Wait, if getting my product from elsewhere for free is wrong, because it's stealing or whatever, shouldn't you pay me $1?"

No, because as mentioned you have no more right to recompense for your labour than I have a right to your labour. Property, as the naive anarchists say, is theft, whether it be yours or mine.

However, if you don't gain sufficient benefit from your labour, chances are you're not going to bother continuing with it. So while I have no right to benefit from your labour and you have no right to benefit from your labour, and it's in both our interests that you continue to produce, then I should give you $1 because your labour is worth more than $1 (else I wouldn't give it to you in return for your labour). There's no morality here, merely prudence.

People who are illiterate in matters of ethics (such as subjectivists and relativists) will tell you that moral rules are subjective or relative because they don't understand the difference between morality and prudence. Prudence, or the advancement of the individual's interest, is purely subjective, although market forces work to make valuation inter-subjective (such as the trading relationship given above), and hence objective (markets have certain properties apart from actors within them).

That's an important thing that people are missing here: Our relationship to GW is an economic transaction. If we want them to continue to produce, we need to support them. We have no moral imperative to purchase their products, merely the interest in them continuing to participate in hobby as a supplier and central authority.

Take the Ultramarines movie. I bought that sight unseen because regardless of however awful it may be, I want market forces to return a positive value for the question of whether a bigger-budgeted movie will turn a profit, and thus be worth producing.

Likewise I bought A Thousand Sons and The First Heretic after reading them on Scribd.com because although they aren't particularly well-written, they are better than the run-of-the-mill Black Library publications. I bought them after reading them because I vote with my dollars.

That's why using Scribd and downloading is not morally wrong. There's no "should" involved here: Stealing is stupid if you want to support your supplier, but let's face it that there's always going to be free-loaders. The proportion of free-loaders is going to be part of the valuations equations by which I decide if I want to give you money for your service, and you need to figure out the equilibrium point at which you maximize your profit.

Eh, I use scribd for almost everything these days. I own a lot of old codexii from ebay, but I refuse to buy an actual codex until my army is fully painted. It's a personal thing, I guess. I don't play any games until the army's done, so why bother buying a codex?

Now....Piracy. Personally, I have absolutely no qualms with it. A lot of stuff i use is pirated (edited for discrepancy)

Anyway, my point is, most people could care less about pirating a book. Yes, games workshop puts a lot of time and effort into all their products and it is 'wrong' of us to just take them...But the large majority of people actually buy the books, so GW's loses are minimal. I'm sure piracy affects them less than you think.

^Be careful the cyber-police could be reading this thread right now!! It's only a matter of time until swift e-justice is served and you are light cycle roadkill

Considering he steals things in real life, I'm not terribly shocked by this revelation.

Monster Rain wrote:Considering he steals things in real life, I'm not terribly shocked by this revelation.

Chill out. It was only once. Never happened before or again

Nurglitch wrote:

Scott-S6 wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:Why should you be given money simply because you spent time and money making something? The labour theory of value is communist clap-trap.

Why should you get the benefit of something I've made without paying me?

Exactly, predicating value on the effort put into making something or the benefit received from using it is absurd. Value is determined by exchange. The value of something is determined by the matrix of how much I'm willing to give to you to benefit from whatever it is you produce, and how much you demand for someone to benefit from whatever it is you produce.

I think you're missing the point - something I've created is my property. Why should you be allowed to derive benefit from it?

If you install a pool in your garden and I use it while you're out - is that okay? You aren't losing anything. But why should I get benefit from something that belongs to you without compensating you for it?

Scott-S6:

I'm not missing your point, because your point is a complement to mine:

The fact that you regard something as your property no more entitles you to benefit from it than I am entitled to benefit from it because I want it.

The notion that producing or owning something gives you some moral claim to that something is bunk.

Which is my point, asking why you should benefit from something that belongs to me without compensating me is not a correctly formulated question. You either will or you won't. A real question is whether it's worth your while that I benefit from it.

So, to take your example, if I install a pool in my garden with insufficient safeguard to prevent other people from using it, they might benefit from its use or they might not. There's no "should". If I don't want other people using my pool, I either need to create sufficient safeguards that it's not worth your time using my pool, or I need to realize that my interest in having a pool is outweighed by my interested in denying my pool to others. If I go against the cost/benefit analysis of the situation, then I'm an idiot for going ahead and building a pool that I don't want other people to use but which I either can't or won't prevent them from using.

Best Thread EVER! Where is my popcorn??

Asimo has already scoffed it from out of his hyper bole.

Isn't the Hyper Bole the mother of all American Football games?

I thought that was Hypo Balls.

I personally enjoy having a copy of a licensed book as the time and effort it takes to create one is not as easy as some people think. As for Scribe, it has been pretty good for viewing a book as an overview before you buy it or commit to a particular army.

Nurglitch wrote:I thought that was Hypo Balls.

I also scoff up hypo balls if you know what I mean

I'm not sure I want to know what that means.

According to google a Hypo Ball is a type of python.

So I guess that makes me a Snake Eater

Jeez i'm glad i never did more than read a book there!
No i have never downloaded codices from scribd.
I have Read them, but i guess according to some of the mouth-foamers thats just as bad as if i did download.
Oh well, i enjoyed seeing the rogue trader stuff i joined too late to purchase. Someday if i'm lucky i will find one on ebay when i have money and add it to my stack of codices.

I await the day GW gets with the times and goes digital. Hell, even BL is doing it!

man, I've read the updates for this thread and I can't bring myself to post a counter argument because a big chunk of this has devolved into dissassembling paragraph fragments, theoretical extreme cases and references to unrelated groups merely because the main subject 'can' be linked to it.

this is for BOTH ends, gah! it's horrendous. but at least it's become more sensible for the moment...

Lotet wrote:man, I've read the updates for this thread and I can't bring myself to post a counter argument because a big chunk of this has devolved into dissassembling paragraph fragments, theoretical extreme cases and references to unrelated groups merely because the main subject 'can' be linked to it.

this is for BOTH ends, gah! it's horrendous. but at least it's become more sensible for the moment...

Welcome to the internet, please keep your head, arms, legs, and personal belogings within the safety of the vehicle. Have a nice ride and enjoy your visit to the wonderful and amazing world wide web!

Nurglitch wrote:So, to take your example, if I install a pool in my garden with insufficient safeguard to prevent other people from using it, they might benefit from its use or they might not. There's no "should". If I don't want other people using my pool, I either need to create sufficient safeguards that it's not worth your time using my pool, or I need to realize that my interest in having a pool is outweighed by my interested in denying my pool to others. If I go against the cost/benefit analysis of the situation, then I'm an idiot for going ahead and building a pool that I don't want other people to use but which I either can't or won't prevent them from using.

And you don't see any problem with the people that are using the other person's property without his permission, just because he hasn't made it hard enough for them?

Nurglitch wrote:The fact that you regard something as your property no more entitles you to benefit from it than I am entitled to benefit from it because I want it.

So, you want something and it's perfectly okay for you to take it? The only thing stopping you is whether or not it's inconvenient?

I need to move to Texas, where you can shoot thieves after dark.

Just thought I'd point out that Scribd (I'm assuming you're referring to scribed when you say "scribe") does have a legit purpose, it's just that some pirated books slip under the radar/company lawyers miss a few. Scribd is meant as a place for aspiring authors to publish/distribute their book, and hopefully receive feedback upon how to improve it.

And MAN, you guys are coming up with some interesting analogies

asimo77 wrote:

Lotet wrote:man, I've read the updates for this thread and I can't bring myself to post a counter argument because a big chunk of this has devolved into dissassembling paragraph fragments, theoretical extreme cases and references to unrelated groups merely because the main subject 'can' be linked to it.

this is for BOTH ends, gah! it's horrendous. but at least it's become more sensible for the moment...

Welcome to the internet, please keep your head, arms, legs, and personal belogings within the safety of the vehicle. Have a nice ride and enjoy your visit to the wonderful and amazing world wide web!

oh, I've seen people pointlessly argue, I do it all the time but the sites I visit don't tend to senselessly throw irrelevant points back and forth for almost and entire thread. it seemed that the only people who were getting replies were the people making insults(and the other sort of people in my last post), I thought this site lost those people early or they calm down but I know that can't happen when they get together and do what they love;

try to psych out thier enemies... or something like that...

then again, my timezone doesn't match up witht he typical wave of posts.

Scott-S6:

That's my point, that there isn't a moral problem with using other people's stuff without permission, merely practical and economic problems. If you're seeing a moral problem here, then, then I'm sorry, but you're just experiencing an illusion.

So yes, morally speaking if I want something, then it's perfectly okay to take it. Practically and economically speaking, it's probably a bad idea to take it.

I mean it's nice that you have this intuition that taking stuff without permission is wrong, because it's fashionable in our culture to ascribe moral value to amoral situations and actions (and probably the way you were brought up), but that intuition is false.

The problem you appear to be experiencing with this concept is that you believe your moral intuitions to be true simply by dint of having them. Hence your incredulity at the notion of someone rejecting moral beliefs that you feel are so right as to be universal, and hence the rejection of them to be evidence of moral turpitude.

But learning about moral illusions is a bit like learning about optical illusions, in that once you understand how vision works, you can identify and disregard optical illusions despite continuing to perceive them.

Cantus wrote:Purely to play devils advocate, since everyone here seems to be pretty much of the same opinion..

Who's to say what is right and wrong? What is morality?
In reality it's just a series of rules that keep societies working and their people in line. It's not WRONG to steal, there is no WRONG- it's just a jerk thing to do because you wouldn't want someone stealing from you. etc etc

A more concrete reason in "favor" of pirating is that it encourages people to get involved in the game that wouldn't otherwise because of the price tag. I have a lot of friends who are huge geeks and really love playing games like 40k, but no one wants to pay 70$ for a rule book. I would argue sales would go up if they decreased their prices too. I can't imagine plastic soldiers cost that much to manufacture and they would have a lot more people buying. I almost never buy straight from GW, I always try to buy second hand if I can.
Of course you can't blame GW for their ridiculous prices, they get away with it, so power to them. However, I feel no guilt about not supporting them by paying their outrageous prices every time I want to get a new unit or codex. I don't have a lot of income- I'm not going to spend the small amount I do have buying overpriced soldiers and books in bulk. (And before someone pounces on me, I do have hard copies of the BRB and multiple codices- they came with the first army I bought.)

But what makes pirating a codex any worse than scratch-building your own leman russ? Why is it worse to pirate a codex than to share a codex with your friend? You're using GW's intellectual property without paying them. You're not taking anything away from anyone other than hypothetical profits. There's no difference, but for some reason pirating is frowned upon.



tl;dr Calling pirating "stealing" is wrong since nothing is taken from the "victim." It just assumes that one would go out and buy the item if they weren't able to pirate it. As I said, I have friends who would play but can't afford it. One of them pirates the books and that's the only reason he started playing..
However, I do acknowledge it's bad for GW's business, but... meh. They do alright and I do support them by buying their miniatures and keeping their product's value up.
As for the morality of pirating, morality is a social concept that I feel no obligation to pretend exists as anything other than "I won't kill you so please don't kill me." Maybe I'm a pariah for my views, but whatever.

Wow, I have to admit that that point about scratch building your own Leman Russ really got me thinking. Really, what is the difference?



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Dracos wrote:@ChrisCP

That's where it breaks down. No problem for personal use inside the house. But don't bring your ripped off stuff to the LGS - they make money selling models. They will get angry when they find out you make your own, and ban you. If I'm with you I might get banned, and I don't want to get banned.

Recast an entire army to use on your home board? No problem.

Why is using a downloaded codex for your home board wrong then?

I'm not sure you read all my posts, at no time did I ever say or imply that there is a problem with using a downloaded codex at home.

Look, downloading something you haven't paid for is wrong, right?

Well I view downloading something you have already paid for as completely fine. I own a copy of X book, having a pdf version for quick reference so I can leave my books with my army instead of misplacing them, ect ect, is just fine.

And that's different. You could, personally, scan in whatever book you want. You paid for the book, you're making, say, a "backup". You own that copy of the book, now if you start distributing your "backup", then yes that's wrong.

Dracos wrote:I'm not sure you read all my posts, at no time did I ever say or imply that there is a problem with using a downloaded codex at home.

I know, I was using it as an example for the people who insist that it is wrong. Yeah I probably should have been more clear