Todays ethical discussion: Would d/l-ing popoulus be Pirating? - by Keeper Hellzon
Keeper Hellzon on 30/3/2001 at 07:12
Well, would it? I´m talking about the original here, which would hardly be available anywhere anyway.
Inline Image:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/ubb/smile.gifAnd if you don't hate me for this, do you know where I might actually get it?
Cheers!
Hellzon, nerd <s>pirate</s> aquirerer of goods.
BlueNinja on 30/3/2001 at 07:38
Er ... what is popoulus?
I'm assuming that it's a computer game, but I don't recognize the name at all.
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In the mirrors of the many judgements, my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. And on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, shall go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless. Corwin of Amber
Agent Monkeysee on 30/3/2001 at 08:32
This one's a little fuzzy 'cuz the company isn't even trying to make money off it anymore and it's no longer commercially available. But at the same time, the game isn't in the public domain. I'd say it's still piracy but whoever owns the rights to it probably would not go to the trouble of persecuting people who do pirate it, and frankly I wouldn't consider it stealing from the company in the financial sense because, again, they are no longer making money off Populous anyway.
<font size=1>[damn typos]
[This message has been edited by Agent Monkeysee (edited March 30, 2001).]
Garboshnik on 30/3/2001 at 11:48
Good luck running on your computer, populous2 ran about 2,000,000,000 times too fast to play on a 120mhz.
henke on 30/3/2001 at 11:53
Huh? People actualy get like... thrown in jail for using warez? Heh, not here in Finland. Well, of course if a company use pirate-copies of a program in their work. But private persons? Home-computer owners? If they were to do that over here, they'd have to throw pretty much every home-computer owners ass in tha can'. Cos' everybody has SOME warez.
And don't give me any shit 'bout "you bloody pirate!". Just think about it like this, it's no more serious here than using drugs or owning a gun in America.
Para?noid on 30/3/2001 at 11:57
<h1>THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH DOWNLOADING GAMES THAT ARE NOT BEING USED TO MAKE ANY PROFIT ANYMORE. THEY ARE CALLED ABANDONWARE, AND ARE NOT ILLEGAL PURELY BECAUSE OF THIS FACT.
NOBODY MAKES MONEY OFF THEM! SO WHATS THE PROBLEM!!!
(
http://www.theunderdogs.org) www.theunderdogs.org - A good site for abandonware, they will have populous I'm sure.
Vigil on 30/3/2001 at 12:24
Noid, disregarding for the moment the moral question of whether reproducing intellectual property without permission becomes ok if noone's still actively trying to make money off it, abandonware is still illegal. Against the law. It did not become legal merely because the ethics behind it became open to question.
Given the fact that I do not legally own 95% of the stuff on my hard drive, I really couldn't give a shit one way or the other. But I also don't have much patience for arguments that hold that not only is it not a breach of ethics, it's also perfectly legal.
Ishy on 30/3/2001 at 13:11
Ishy puts on his Down With The Suit-and-Tie Elitist Oligarchy! T-shirt and I want to be like Wyclef hat.
There is a great and disturbing tendency in educational institutions to confuse children about the difference between ethicality and legality. Whether this is deliberate or not, many children are consciously or subconsciously instilled with the notion that breaking the law is inherently "evil". Perhaps more disturbingly, this encourages the rationalisation that not breaking the law is always the "good" course of action. This is a dangerous way of thought that is very conducive to the erosion of civil liberties.
Law is not ethicality. Law is not supposed to be ethicality; it is merely a tool which the ruling class uses to control society (even in a perfect non-parliamentary democracy, where the entire population is part of the ruling class). It is true that it is usually most ethical and indeed practical to obey the law, for many reasons. But, there are times in any society where the ethicality of an individual and the laws of the society will be in conflict.
In conclusion:
• It is almost certainly illegal to pirate Populous, even now.
• Anyone at the publisher or developer who cares about you pirating Populous now leads a very sad life indeed.
• The judge will laugh them out of court. (Does not apply in the US, of course, where the case is decided by comparing Lawyers' fees.)
• It may or may not be ethical to pirate Populous, depending on your own beliefs.
• Anyone who declares it is unethical is taking their ethicality far too seriously and is a prime candidate for euthanasia.
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"My computer- it, uh.." - Keanu Reeves
[This message has been edited by Ishy (edited March 30, 2001).]
Gingerbread Man on 30/3/2001 at 13:18
Well said, Ishy.
Law is not Morality, though morality has found itself codified into law on occasion.
Many things are immoral without being illegal.
Many things are illegal without being immoral (or even non-normative).
There's a good deal of correspondence between the two sets, but even then there's a lot of wriggling room for both sides of the debate to get some good shots in.
