Topic: When is it okay to "steal"?

[TJ Spyke]

When does the copyright on games expire?

I can't speak for other countries, but in the US it is the same as anything else that can be copyrighted (music, movies, TV shows, etc.). The standard now is 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation, whichever is shorter. That means that Super Mario Bros., for example, will not be in the public domain in the US until 2081. In Japan, it's 70 years. So it will be in the public domain in Japan in 2055.


If Disney has its way though, that may not happen. Disney was the main company behind the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which increased the copyright period from 75 years to 95 years.

[Caliban]

everything I do is available on my website.

Can I have a link, please?

[Ian Sane]

Stealing is acceptable in a case of a life or death.  That's the old "stealing bread to feed your starving family" example.  I also consider it acceptable to steal back something that someone already stole from you.  I occasionally meet people who tell me that if someone stole something of mine and I broke into his house and took it back, that I'm "no better than he is" which I think is stupid.  You're not stealing in that case because it's YOUR property.  Are policer officers confiscating stolen goods and returning them to their owners stealing?

But you're not going to win me over on piracy.  Now I think that videogame companies are full of **** when they list their annual "losses" due to piracy and make the assumption that everyone who pirated their game would have bought it.  I also think that copying files is certainly not as serious as stealing a physical item.  The law can nail guys for widely distributing pirated materail and certainly should charge them for selling it but just a few copied files should be a slap on the wrist and the forced deletion of the files.

If you own a copy of the game I don't think it's wrong to pirate a copy.  Let's say you own a SNES game but your SNES breaks so you play emulated copies of the games you already legalled obtained on your PC.  That's not stealing.  That's nothing.  You already bought the games.

And on that note if Mother 3 is not available in English then I would say the right thing to do is to buy a copy of the Japanese game and then play the English hacked ROM.  Then you have not stolen the game but just obtained an English language version of the game you paid for.

[Stogi]

When is it ok?

When a monkey does it for you.

[ThePerm]

In reality if anyone had the power to make goods appear out of thin air, than you would be a douchebag not to let people do it. Thats the difference between reality and virtual reality. Copyright among software is a virtual reality. Not in the typical sense, but in the we can make stuff appear out of thin air and charge for it.. Certain countries tax on virtual money(WOW, second life), which is essentially taxing real money for monopoly money. The reason for this is some gullible person will buy fake money for real money. Real paper money is itself a virtual money as are the chips in a casino, originally meant to represent gold or silver, now only representing the flow of credit.

The only thing that keeps you from walking into a Wal-mart and taking a tv is something that is essentially not real. Its just an intangible construct of society. The only things people need to survive are food, water, and shelter.


Hopefully, fusion reactors will be successful and not destroy the earth, in which case, you could essentially build something out of thin air.

[Chozo Ghost]

If someone borrows 20 dollars and then never repays it, but then one day you find a 20 dollar bill laying on their table.... I guess it would probably be okay to steal it under that circumstance, but it might not even be stealing considering how its the repayment of a debt.