General Question

antimatter's avatar

Who thinks movie piracy should be legalise to an extent?

Asked by antimatter (4424points) March 22nd, 2009

I own about 150 origonal dvd’s and after an incident my idiot cousin destroyed two of my beloved movies. I downloaded one click and now if some one wants to borrow a movie I cut a copy. Until last week some fool from the local dvd shop phoned me and told me that he will report me to the cops for piracy. My idiot cousin told him about my software to pirate movies.

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12 Answers

btko's avatar

Maybe you should get a new cousin while your at it. As for the question, you are within your right to make copies of your DVD’s for backup purposes, but not sharing.

marinelife's avatar

It is not legal, because it is stealing. Why do you think it is OK to do it? btko has the right of it.

antimatter's avatar

Good idea btko, I think I should frame her for piracy and than she will be out of my life for a few years.

marinelife's avatar

Frame her? She wasn’t the one doing illegal stuff. You were.

antimatter's avatar

Marina how can it be stealing if I own the origonal DVD’s and I am not selling it, I simply do it to pretect my investments.

marinelife's avatar

It is stealing, because the person you give it to would otherwise have to pay to acquire a copy.

antimatter's avatar

Good point I will let her or simply the next person whipe out my remaining 148 movies. I think I still have a good idea to back up my movies. How am I going to replace Bladerunner and Aliens?

DrBill's avatar

It is legal to backup for YOUR own use, just stop lending them. That will also stop others from “wiping out” your remaining movies.

ninjacolin's avatar

First of all.. things that are considered illegal are not necessarily things that are bad for society. For the record. Slavery was once “legal” that didn’t make it right back then. In some states i think Oral sex is still illegal, isn’t it? And that doesn’t make oral sex wrong.

“Piracy” is a stupid term. You CANNOT steal a digital file. You can only copy one.

If all pirates ever did was run up beside another ship, copy the style of the other ship, magically create their own wealth and riches just like the “victim”-ship had and then went on their merry way without harming or removing anything from the other ship then it could be considered a relevant metaphor.

“Software Piracy” is not “piracy”... it is only Emulation.

Your computer, Your transistors, Your 1s and 0s.. configuring themselves to mimic my computer’s transistor configuration. There is no stealing. It is merely emulation.

dynamicduo's avatar

What you are doing is actually a bit illegal. Just because you are not explicitly profiting doesn’t mean you are not commiting copyright infringement. The issue is that your friends end up with a full copy of the DVD and do not need to ever return it, whereas with lending there is still only the one copy in existence.

I’m a big advocate for filesharing in general, but you’re doing it a bad way. Simply put, you are taking all the risk for no benefit. Why are you even lending DVDs to your cousin if they’ve proven to be a klutz that breaks your stuff?

You are making yourself out to be the victim here, but you’re missing out on this obvious point: you are not obliged to lend your DVDs at all. You are enabling people destroying your property! You can’t do this and then cry that it was broken. Dude, you brought it on yourself.

What you are doing now is actually serious copyright infringement, and I would advise you to stop doing it if you don’t want to get charged with piracy. You are entitled to make a backup copy for yourself and NOT to lend out to others. By giving them out, you are committing actual piracy.

@ninjacolin – as I said, I’m a big fan of filesharing, and where I live (Canada) it’s actually a bit legal. I end up buying more media by torrenting movies and TV. But there is a huge difference between downloading a TV show and burning a full copy of a DVD.

ninjacolin's avatar

no.. there really isn’t. either way, you’re just copying. consider the artwork on a dvd case. If I take a picture and post it on facebook of the artwork no one comes after me for it. Why would it be any different for the same SORT of digital media on the disc itself? The DVD burner/recorder functions virtually just like a camera taking a snap shot of the data without removing the data.

ninjacolin's avatar

It’s sheepish to give in to this.
It’s not piracy.

By the way, YES it is currently illegal.. but I’m saying NO it shouldn’t be because it’s quite silly when you put your mind to it.

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