"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."
replyWe've all heard this. But let's not forget that recently, some important representative of Microsoft went and told some important politicians, that buying is stealing.
Yes. She said that buying is stealing. Buying the game and playing multiplayer on your own server is stealing, more specifically.
So if buying is stealing, why not pirate?
The obvious risk is that you don't have nearly as much budget to spend on lawyers if someone does come after you for it. The copyright system tends to disproportionately punish small players and not punish larger ones.
replyHow and why does anyone “come after you” for backing up your own BluRays, though?
replyAssuming you’re not redistributing, of course, which is another thing entirely.
You seem to have missed this part:
reply> digital copies sourced from the high seas
They can't come after us all. We outnumber them. Also we have disk encryption now. Admit to nothing.
replyThe lawyers cost a lot more than what you are going to get back from GP in a copyright lawsuit.
replyThat doesn't seem to have stopped any prosecutions for piracy in the past
replyIt actually did. There weren't that many, they were just high profile news at the time. And most of them either lost or recovered minimal damages. There was no actual $250,000 payment for downloading an MP3. That's why the industry stopped doing it and now only targets distribution sites.
replyThe RIAA/MPA still goes after individuals, but they target them with settlement offers to avoid going to court. 3k and an admission of guilt is a lot less than it would cost to get a lawyer and fight back in court so people do pay them, including completely innocent people since the companies who spam out DMCA notices don't care all that much about accuracy. They've also been going after ISPs and extracting money from them for no reason, but after losing the Cox case, that might not end up being worth it to them.
replyPersonal backup copies are fully legal, RIAA and MPA admit as much on their own websites; this was settled back in the VHS and cassette tape era
replyThe part I was responding to was "with digital copies sourced from the high seas". The premise that they were responding to was if the only domestically available media playing devices required subscriptions. It's not clear why the assumption would be that getting content from arbitrary international online sources would be something that isn't also sanctioned in this scenario. That doesn't mean the entire scenario is likely, but if that's the objection, then why reply to me and not the original comment proposing it?
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