Pirates

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Amphigoree

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I just want your thoughts on this.

All my life, I have been involved in piracy, and that it is something serious,hit me just now, when I read this thread about music infringement…

I have never confessed it, because it never actually occurred to me that it was something to confess because it just seemed normal.

Some programs on my computer are pirated, I watch movies that I copied from my friends,the video games I play, even some things I paid for are pirated

( when I was a kid, i bought this pc game and installed it to my computer, and then I couldn’t play the international part and then i said why can’t I? I paid for it, and my brother laughed at me and told me it was a pirated disc.)

If you go around my place, people sell pirated dvd’s,cd’s, some even offer to hack your game consoles (psp, ps3’s,etc)plus these people set up their stalls out in the open, on sidewalks, and even in malls. Nobody bothers, almost everyone buys from these stores. Even the music on people’s phones, you can be sure they never paid for it.

Even textbooks in school, my professor gave us this e-book in chemistry so we didn’t have to buy one because we were only going to use it for one semester. And some textbooks aren’t available in the stores.

So basically, piracy is like part of our daily lives. In school, a classmates would say “hey got a new movie i can copy” or “can I have a copy of your e-book in this subject”

That piracy is a sin and that it was something I am guilty of, crossed my mind years ago, but then I thought “Why pay for something I’d never really pay for even if I had the money, example there’s this movie I’d never watch in the theater and never buy a dvd of it, and then comes this free copy on the internet and I watch it. There’s really no loss to the maker because I would never have paid for it, ever.”

So I never seriously thought about it again until now and it bothers me.
So I want your opinions or reactions.

Anyway, thanks for reading my post and God bless. 🙂
 
I live in India where piracy is the way of life. I do not partake of this practice, similarly to how I do not partake of idolatry, even though it is a way of life. Remember this saying of Jesus: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
 
Now that you are aware that piracy is a sin, do your best to avoid it in the future. Just say no when someone asks you to copy a movie or game and do not watch or buy something that you know is pirated.
 
In addition to what the previous poster stated, you should also thank the Holy Spirit for awakening your conscience on this issue. From now on, each time you are tempted by this sin, recognize that if you resist it, you will grow in virtue.
 
You can also think about the loss of business to the producers, actors, writers, etc that were involved and are not getting their fair share due to all the piracy. :sad_yes:
 
It is worth pointing out that this is an international board, although many posters are in the US and speaking English, and the OP and replier are in Asia. Asia has a much different culture in regard to intellectual property, and the laws are different there. If you were in China then it may not be a sin to copy things, due to the lack of laws forbidding it.

We all would do well to abide by the just laws imposed by our nation, whatever they may be. For me, the Church’s silence in the arena of Intellectual Property laws means assent, and we are not allowed to disobey laws which the Church supports. To the OP, it is good that you are developing your conscience in regards to copyright law. I commend you on trying to find a better way. Good luck, you are in my prayers.
 
a few points if I may be so bold.

basic church teaching goes like this…for a sin to be a sin you must know it is wrong…

God judges the heart. not the act per say. now you know its wrong, but you face a new problem. what material has copy write and what does not. some say this is easy if you didn’t pay for it its not yours.

its not that simple it never was. copy write is ambiguous much of the time. some things you are perfectly in the write to watch online. sites like alluc are famous for this. And a further ambiguity whos fault is it if material that is under copy write finds its way on alluc and you watch it. again you did not know it was illegal therefore no sin.

-----------that being said if you are downloading huge amounts of mps and they are brand new a reasonable person would suspect that they are pirated. to some degree you can avoid piracy, but you will never avoid it entirely. Unless you unplug from the net. don’t get insane worried about it. At the same time avoid what you reasonably can expect to know is wrong. you should not have 5000 songs from the latest artists and 200 movies that came out this year if you did not pay for them. but who is to say how many youtube videos are under copy write. so may get removed for infringement. I have watched some come back later and see the disclaimer about how it was taken down as piracy. I could not be reasonably expected to know that.
 
Right. I will no longer be involved in such activites. 😃
I guess what’s normal isn’t always right.
I’ll also make sure that what I do get from the internet doesn’t violate any copyrights.

Yes, I will have to go to confession this week. Would this sin be considered as theft?
Thank you very much for your reactions.
God bless!
 
I always hesitate to use the term theft in the description of piracy because theft is the taking of material goods which deprives another person of those goods. Piracy is the illicit duplication of goods that aren’t so material, and they do deprive others, but of intangible benefits such as profit from a sale that didn’t happen. So while broadly speaking, piracy falls under the Seventh Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, and the Tenth, “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Goods”, in confession I would accuse myself of (software) piracy rather than theft to be precise about the term.
 
Elizium23 said:
I always hesitate to use the term theft in the description of piracy because theft is the taking of material goods which deprives another person of those goods. Piracy is the illicit duplication of goods that aren’t so material, and they do deprive others, but of intangible benefits such as profit from a sale that didn’t happen. So while broadly speaking, piracy falls under the Seventh Commandment “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, and the Tenth, “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Goods”, in confession I would accuse myself of (software) piracy rather than theft to be precise about the term.
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Yes, there’s no reason not to be precise about it.

I know other posters from the Phillipines have mentioned how piracy is so widespread there that even the stores sell pirated stuff and it’s near impossible to find something that is not pirated. Definitely talk this all out with your priest.
 
Joe_5859 said:
Yes, there’s no reason not to be precise about it.

I know other posters from the Phillipines have mentioned how piracy is so widespread there that even the stores sell pirated stuff and it’s near impossible to find something that is not pirated. Definitely talk this all out with your priest.
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Devil Advocate
No I would have to agree with the other poster. Theft involves an actual loss not a perceived loss. I could be wrong be theft implies that the owner is out of pocket in some way and that is not the case with piracy. the owner has lost nothing. He has a perceived loss of money he believes he should have been given.

The way this is legally handled is completely immoral. Often a random person gets fined for every song (for instance) on his computer weather he has the CD or not. I know my brother studied this for 5 years in computer college. He is a computer nerd. the kind you want when something goes really wrong. He told me the laws are simply indefensible.
 
Perhaps the laws are indefensible.
But if everyone only watched/listened to pirated material, why would anyone bother to produce it? they wouldn’t get paid for it, or be able to make a living.
It’s clearly a sin and we should try to avoid it, avoid sites that have pirated material. If we accidentally watch something on youtube that we later learn is illegal, I would not get too excited. But I’m with InJesusItrust: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” And also: " Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities…"
 
Viki63 said:
Perhaps the laws are indefensible.
But if everyone only watched/listened to pirated material, why would anyone bother to produce it? they wouldn’t get paid for it, or be able to make a living.
It’s clearly a sin and we should try to avoid it, avoid sites that have pirated material. If we accidentally watch something on youtube that we later learn is illegal, I would not get too excited. But I’m with InJesusItrust: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” And also: " Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities…"
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I have to agree with most of what you said. I just think you said a mouthful when you say “avoid sites that have pirated material” because its ambiguous. unless the site is called the pirate ship or something obvious. Are there sites like this?
 
I think one has to be prudent in whatever they download. The other day I was looking for free books on UML, and many sites claimed to offer free books, but when I looked up the title I realized that they were pirated and left.
 
InJesusItrust said:
I think one has to be prudent in whatever they download. The other day I was looking for free books on UML, and many sites claimed to offer free books, but when I looked up the title I realized that they were pirated and left.
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how did you know he did not have rights to give it to you?
 
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