18-March-2013: Dealing with games of chance

[V O R K]

edit: come to think of it nevermind, feel free to pm me when you want to debate or discuss said topic.

 

edit2:

 

 

Stealing is the act of depriving someone of their property or money. The act of copying a pattern of 1's and 0's does not delete the original pattern stored on the composer's hard drive (in an example of pirating a song), so I don't see piracy as stealing. There may however still be an argument for why piracy is immoral, because you are potentially not allowing the composer to make a profit by selling a CD to you; but this is not the same as taking money out of his pocket because who's to say I would have bought the CD even if I hadn't pirated it? Since piracy is almost impossible to stop, though, artists and composers need to update their business models instead of advocating for harsher punishments for pirates. See Trent Reznor and others for examples of artists who have kept up with the times.

 

The whole concept of claiming ownership of a pattern of 1's and 0's always seemed strange to me. If I write a computer program to spit out a brute force list of every possible pattern of 1's and 0's of a certain length, do I now owe royalties to every musical artist because the melodies they discovered appear in that list? And am I guilty of stealing if I build an exact duplicate of my neighbor's Ferrari but don't damage or destroy his car?

[V O R K]

And to have a look from the other side: Piracy IS stealing because you are appropriating the creative effort of another without their permission.

 

i'm puzzled but I download, there is no rationalization, i'm a thief and I can live with it.

[essiw]

The whole concept of claiming ownership of a pattern of 1's and 0's always seemed strange to me. If I write a computer program to spit out a brute force list of every possible pattern of 1's and 0's of a certain length, do I now owe royalties to every musical artist because the melodies they discovered appear in that list? And am I guilty of stealing if I build an exact duplicate of my neighbor's Ferrari but don't damage or destroy his car?

Then what is the whole concept of claiming ownership of things made out of atoms? If you make an exact duplicate of a famous painting but don't damage or destroy the original painting you are guilty of "stealing" the painting.

[Urza285]

You can't have freedom without taking some rights away.

 

Ideally this is the case because the gambling was getting out of hand. The reason they didn't include selective emotes for these things is a forethought. Players who are less likely to follow their self-imposed gambling rules and cheat the visitors would simply adjust. One good example of this would be to continue their gambling games on the notion that most people don't follow up on rule change, game updates and amendments. They could easily run their games until someone points them out in the community. In that case it would become something similar to the whole "item trimming" scam. The player running the game, now a scam, could bait players with several smaller bets. The when it comes to the larger bets take their money back plus some by faking the next much larger bet.

[Fire_God]

I neither condone nor advocate gambling and just wish we, as paying customer, had a free choice (as in vote) if it should be disallowed or not.

 

From the recent forum discussion thread on this topic started by Mod Mark, it's clear that the overwhelming majority of you do not want this activity to remain in RuneScape.

 

There was a forum thread. I read parts of it and it was overwhelmingly against it. Not a straight up vote, but a "pilot study" of sorts.

[V O R K]

The whole concept of claiming ownership of a pattern of 1's and 0's always seemed strange to me. If I write a computer program to spit out a brute force list of every possible pattern of 1's and 0's of a certain length, do I now owe royalties to every musical artist because the melodies they discovered appear in that list? And am I guilty of stealing if I build an exact duplicate of my neighbor's Ferrari but don't damage or destroy his car?

Then what is the whole concept of claiming ownership of things made out of atoms? If you make an exact duplicate of a famous painting but don't damage or destroy the original painting you are guilty of "stealing" the painting.

 

Yes if you intend to sell it. Making a copy however isn't illegal.

[Kaida23]

The DMCA would disagree with you on that.

[V O R K]

there is no rationalization, i'm a thief and I can live with it.

[chenw]

 

 

The whole concept of claiming ownership of a pattern of 1's and 0's always seemed strange to me. If I write a computer program to spit out a brute force list of every possible pattern of 1's and 0's of a certain length, do I now owe royalties to every musical artist because the melodies they discovered appear in that list? And am I guilty of stealing if I build an exact duplicate of my neighbor's Ferrari but don't damage or destroy his car?

 

Thats no more different than claiming ownership of anything, since everything in the universe are ultimately made up from Electrons, Protons and Neutrons, just arranged in different ways.

 

When you replicate your Neighbour's Ferrari, you are not stealing her car, you are stealing Ferrari's IP, which is completely different from stealing the car itself.

 

Computer programs being 1's and 0's has no bearing on what Intellectual property is. They either all stand together, or they all fall together. The medium is of absolutely no importance.

[V O R K]

http://topdocumentar....com/on-piracy/

http://derekwebb.tum...more-than-sense

http://www.techdirt....08/154529.shtml

 

As my take on everything, prevent because it won't go away by outlawing.

 

Also Bumra-Stemra forces me to pay an additional fee/bonus on blank DVD's to compensate for illegal downloading. I buy the damn thing and now you charge me too, piss off! :rolleyes: .

[Sangrina]

There may however still be an argument for why piracy is immoral, because you are potentially not allowing the composer to make a profit by selling a CD to you; but this is not the same as taking money out of his pocket because who's to say I would have bought the CD even if I hadn't pirated it?

 

If you steal a CD from a shop, who's to say you would've bought the CD even if you hadn't stolen it?

[Piu]

ITT: Flawed analogies & straw man fallacies.

[chenw]

Basically, his ideology basically is, if one Artist does it for next to nothing, then he treats it as if every other artist is doing the same (let us not get into whether this is for the greater good of the art or the good of his wallet), and that if one copies an exact replica of your neighbour's car, then can it be treated as theft? Or is paying for 1's and 0's justified?

 

I think someone completely missing on the idea of both Intellectual property (either he does not accept such thing is a property, or he has no grasp of the concept), and paying someone of their work in DESIGNING the thing.

[V O R K]

Yes, in my fairytaleworld everything is free! :lol:

[Platinum_Myr]

Basically, his ideology basically is, if one Artist does it for next to nothing, then he treats it as if every other artist is doing the same (let us not get into whether this is for the greater good of the art or the good of his wallet), and that if one copies an exact replica of your neighbour's car, then can it be treated as theft? Or is paying for 1's and 0's justified?

 

I think someone completely missing on the idea of both Intellectual property (either he does not accept such thing is a property, or he has no grasp of the concept), and paying someone of their work in DESIGNING the thing.

 

(I know the quote'd above isn't really disagreeing but this comment was the one that sparked my post)

 

The physics of property makes sense, someone can own it, sell it, buy it, transfer it, steal it (not legal ofcourse), and so forth. These things all reflect properly on the way we treat it in law.

 

Information has varying laws and we lump it into "intellectual" property though this is sort of a misnomer because the various concepts are completely separate things (copyright, trademarks, patent) A person can create, and share information. I don't believe you can steal information, though you can certainly "learn without permission". But that's not the same thing as stealing physically. Interestingly, there is something called Landauer's_principle which discusses thermal entropy regarding computing. It is theoretically possible to compute without wasting energy. If designed properly and the computation is reversible, then no energy is theoretically necessary to perform the calculation. This doesn't necessarily work in practice due to other concerns, but where I'm coming from is simple. To duplicate physical property requires energy in forming the product. Generally speaking the effort involved in creating a new copy of an original physical item is lower, due to not having to design/etc. However, you might consider this design process as information.

 

Copying information is, on the other hand, practically trivial by comparison to generating it. Information functions as a "hard to create the first time, easy to copy, easy to share". This makes the idea of scarcity of goods a complete farce which is what drives prices in an economy. (Supply vs Demand)

 

Humans as a culture has decided that this scarcity is important and we legislate around information to make it artificially scarce (not legal to copy, etc).

 

But what I'm trying to say is that these ideas don't rest in the physics of information (how it works) but simply because someone who created the law, and this person/group probably did it to retain some form of power.

[IridiumBunny]

There may however still be an argument for why piracy is immoral, because you are potentially not allowing the composer to make a profit by selling a CD to you; but this is not the same as taking money out of his pocket because who's to say I would have bought the CD even if I hadn't pirated it?

 

If you steal a CD from a shop, who's to say you would've bought the CD even if you hadn't stolen it?

 

That isn't the same. Stealing a CD costs the producer money (in production costs) and prevents someone else buying the CD, so there is a net loss for the producer. Digitally copying a CD does not cost the producer and does not prevent someone else buying it, so there is no net loss for them *unless you would have otherwise bought the CD yourself*

[SAA]

There may however still be an argument for why piracy is immoral, because you are potentially not allowing the composer to make a profit by selling a CD to you; but this is not the same as taking money out of his pocket because who's to say I would have bought the CD even if I hadn't pirated it?

 

If you steal a CD from a shop, who's to say you would've bought the CD even if you hadn't stolen it?

 

That isn't the same. Stealing a CD costs the producer money (in production costs) and prevents someone else buying the CD, so there is a net loss for the producer. Digitally copying a CD does not cost the producer and does not prevent someone else buying it, so there is no net loss for them *unless you would have otherwise bought the CD yourself*

 

Stealing/pirating music is immoral.

 

Unless the artist specifically mentions they want their work to be released for free, you are taking and enjoying their work without compensating them.

 

Now if you already purchased a song/CD/album and are copying it for your own personal use (such as a backup) and not sharing it with anyone else, that's a different story.

 

--

 

On a side note, here's how I deal with games of chance: I simply don't play them.

[Thus]

The last post on this topic before you posted was made nearly a month before you joined. Are you dense?

[SAA]

The last post on this topic before you posted was made nearly a month before you joined. Are you dense?

 

My honest mistake.

 

I do however appreciate you taking your own time to reply in such a respectful manner.