A Chinese FE8 hack---the Crystal of Wisdom

As a Chinese hack despise him!

I think he’s pretty much asking why us Western community hackers take so much pride in copyrighting our stuff.

It’s like saying “Oh, it’s there so why can’t I use it?” which I’ve seen in pretty much every “You stole my work who gave you permission” scenarios started by our community.

I think the last part is supposed to be an analogy that’s basically asking “Why do we making such a big deal out of this?”

No wonder why we don’t have a good over-31 stat display. Our stuff isn’t open-sourced like theirs.

I don’t quite understand that myself. If you make something, doesn’t it make you proud to see people think it’s good enough that they want to use it as well?

It’s a courtesy to ask before you use, unless it’s part of a public resource collection. I don’t think there’s really a problem with that mindset, but there’s not much we can do about it when they don’t speak our language. The author seems quite rude, regardless.

Public resources are the only real “solution” to art theft; if people have enough to work with available to them, they won’t really need to steal things that aren’t specifically marked “free to use.” It isn’t a perfect answer, by any means, but it would certainly help.

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nice car i’ll just take it
nice shirt i’ll just take it
nice meal i’ll just take it
nice x i’ll just take it

seeing something wrong yet

it’s literally just ask; it’s no wonder that many of the people who’ve had their work stolen rarely ever post things in the public eye anymore

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Oh boy it’s /that/ discussion again.

The difference being that if I take your car, you no longer have a car. If I ‘take’ your sprite, you still have it. I’ve merely made a copy, of which unlimited copies can be made.

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It’s not about the specific thing, it’s about how the concept of ownership applies. Artists own the works by retaining authority over their usage. When they post them publicly, that is an exercise of their ownership, not a license for anyone to come along and violate the artist’s wishes just because “oh well it’s on the internet now it belongs to EVERYONE!”

[quote]
Oh boy it’s /that/ discussion again.
[/quote]I’m sorry, did I start up something for once? Whoops.

[quote]
The difference being that if I take your car, you no longer have a car. If I ‘take’ your sprite, you still have it. I’ve merely made a copy, of which unlimited copies can be made.
[/quote]I think a general mindset is that if it’s not “right-click copy paste”, don’t take it. Stuff like that can’t be easily replaced when taken. If it’s all digital, it’s very easy to duplicate it effortlessly. I get the feeling that they do it under the impression that it won’t hurt the original creator’s feelings.

copy-paste was a mistake

it’s the idea that it’s exactly the same
and who said taking my car meant never coming back, you can bring it back and I still will report you for grand theft auto

stop being so specific, why do you think I included

No. It’s not. That’s a fallacy. It’s always been a fallacy.

If I take your car and then return it any x amount of time later, you’ve been deprived for that amount of time from driving your car.

Short of moving a file off your hard drive and putting it onto mine, copying a sprite is not theft. You still have your sprite. You are not deprived of it.

That’s the fallacy, you implied ‘copying’ = ‘theft’. If you had said me scanning your car and poofing an exact copy into existence and driving off with it, then it’s no longer a fallacy.

No no no, I remember that I banned his account permanently in a tieba before. It is him who can do nothing except biting others like that.

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It’s “only piracy” until it gets republished. Then it becomes theft, yo. This ain’t that hard to wrap the brain around.

Which is why ROM Hackers publish in patches to circumvent because we’re really only distributing changelogs to things that people pirate for themselves. Things in that changelog can still be stolen from other sources, like mugshots, animations, etc.

It’s not theft. It can’t be called theft. There’s a very specific reason I argue this point every time it comes up. It’s the same reason we don’t just have ‘murder’, we have different shades of murder in the eyes of the law. If I kill a million people, I’m not a murderer, I’m genocidal. If I accidentally discharge a firearm, I’m criminally negligent or some other offshoot.

If you keep calling it theft, you’re calling it the wrong thing. I don’t mind people who want to protect their property, and I don’t mind if artists want people to ask before using things (And then subsequently NOT use the things if denied), that’s fine. What I will not accept is calling a fish a dog just because that’s what we’ve always done.

I mean, if Intelligent Systems suddenly up and sued the community for ‘stealing’ their roms to hack them, I know the community’s tone would change really fast. People would suddenly be saying “Well, I mean, it’s not exactly stealing…”

Furthermore, by calling it theft, you dilute the meaning of the word theft, just like calling WWII mass murderers plain old ‘murderers’ diminishes the level of atrocities they committed. Call it piracy, or call it unauthorized distribution, because that’s what it is.

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Man, I hate when I agree with klok.

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It’s kind of like diplomatic immunity. THIS IS WHY WE DON’T POST ROMS!

On a scale of “something random on the internet” to “robbing the federal reserve,” yeah, maybe it’s not as big of a deal. But, I think your little infograph definition of “theft” narrowly bases the distinction on what happens to the original item. Yes, that’s one way to define it, but it’s not the only way. There are different shades of theft. When someone downloads a pirated movie and keeps the copy saved on their personal computer, that’s piracy. When that same person uses the downloaded file to burn DVDs and distribute unauthorized copies of the original work, it becomes theft. That’s exactly what happens every time someone publishes a patch with stolen art - they are distributing unauthorized copies, and that makes it “theft.”

Actually, in the case of DVD’s, unless it’s being sold by the downloader for cash, it’s still piracy. There needs to be a term for piracy distributors though, like the difference between different levels of killings.

Murder
Mass-murder
Homicide
Genocide
Etc

So if I download a movie, that’s piracy. However, if I download a movie and burn 50 copies for friends of mine, it’s… what? I guess mass-piracy? But I digress.

The difference… once again… is if you rob the Federal Reserve, the money is gone. ‘Something random on the internet’ is still there… but the Federal Reserve notes are actually physically gone.

I would argue that “piracy distribution” falls into the category of “theft.” Maybe we’ll call it “petty theft,” if you want that sort of gradient.

Petty theft is closer. I think there needs to be a better term, but it’s closer.

Why the hell are you two arguing over pointless semantics?
Like, literally nothing will come out of this “piracy vs. theft” debate.
It doesn’t matter whether it falls under a certain definition because it’s still wrong.

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Hello xiaolala