Moral Issue (Yes, I have morality)

Suppose I buy a game. Then, I somehow stupidly lose the discs. Would it be unethical to download a pirated version of it?

I'm saying, 'Morally' not 'Legally'.

Thanks in advance =o

^Same. Did it today. But the question remains, is it morally right?

No. To be a moral person is to follow the law and pirating is against the law. Morally, it's not right. Just because you're irresponsible and lose the disc to a game doesn't mean you break the law just to have it. The moral person would own up to their mistake and either try and find the discs or go buy another copy, not break the law because laziness/irresponsibility.

It's a moral gray area, you own a copy so you're not stealing it. It is technically against the law, but laws in and of themselves are not always aligned with morality. In this case you bought it already and then lost the means to play it, but it doesn't change that you did buy it.

theft is always a sin according to the old testament

And according to Aquinas, law is a subset of morality. "law is an order of reason for the common good by one who has the care of the community, and promulgated"
Laws that have nothing to do with morality like tyrannical laws are considered a perversion of law.
Thievery is not for the common good and is entirely based on self-interest and the profit from others.

Piracy, although a lesser crime, still constitutes as an immoral act

Unlike traditional theft though electronic piracy doesn't actually steal from anyone, it's a digital copy therefore you're not taking it from someone and if you've already paid for the object then you're not even stealing the IP as you already contributed what you owed to play it.

CaptainSpanish wrote:theft is always a sin according to the old testament

And according to Aquinas, law is a subset of morality. "law is an order of reason for the common good by one who has the care of the community, and promulgated"
Laws that have nothing to do with morality like tyrannical laws are considered a perversion of law.
Thievery is not for the common good and is entirely based on self-interest and the profit from others.

Piracy, although a lesser crime, still constitutes as an immoral act

unfortunately for you, electronic piracy is neither piracy nor theft, it is copyright infringement. also, Aquinas, as well as many of his counterparts of his time and afterwards, base their philosophical theories on perfect working civilizations. Their theories are not appliable on entirety, nor are to be followed logically, in an imperfect society with imperfect written laws. To wich i object to the way they word the laws untangled from morality as tyrannical laws or pervertive laws, when in fact they are most of the time just flawed and abusable, not imposingly tyrannical. Morality also is only ultimately appliable in the pragmatic level, not the conceptual one.

oh and Atlas, depends on what moral code you follow. in a general, culture we live in one, you didnt do anything immoral.

Dray The Fingerless wrote:oh and Atlas, depends on what moral code you follow. in a general, culture we live in one, you didnt do anything immoral.

I like to think that I paid for a copy of this game, thus I deserve to possess it. And since the means in which i re-acquired didnt hurt anyones interests, im fine.

Someone may argue that in this manner i encourage piracy. Not sure though.

Atlas wrote:

Dray The Fingerless wrote:oh and Atlas, depends on what moral code you follow. in a general, culture we live in one, you didnt do anything immoral.

I like to think that I paid for a copy of this game, thus I deserve to possess it. And since the means in which i re-acquired didnt hurt anyones interests, im fine.

Someone may argue that in this manner i encourage piracy. Not sure though.

It's a good logic, and most people subscribe to this morality. Hell I'd bet you could ask any game developer(and I mean the people that actually MADE the game not the ones that own their IPs and produce it) and they'd say "You bought it, so I have no problem with you." Now the producers of the games EA, Activision, yeah they'll tell you to buy it again, but I'm pretty sure everyone already knows they sold their souls long ago for a yacht powered on crushed dreams.

you have acquired a lifetime right to use a copy of said game. this is a major problem with the electronics age, in that there are goods wich are not physically owned. when you used to own a book, you owned an official copy of the book. you could of hand copied it to another book, but it wasnt the book you bought. nowadays, with digital trade, physical copies are non viable. instead you bought the right to play that game for as long as you want. but not the right to distribute it. downloading from a torrent site JKA is akin to installing JKA from steam, deleting local content, and then redownloading the whole thing. hell i bought a physical copy of skyrim and installed it and its in my steam library now. i could burn the cd in my fireplace and redownload it on steam, wich is the exact same thing you did in technical terms.

lol pirating and morality in the same sentence

soran wrote:lol pirating and morality in the same sentence

stufoo noob

soran wrote:lol pirating and morality in the same sentence

lol soran using words, what an oxymoron.

well...considering i talk ALOT, which involves me saying alot of words, its not exactly an oxymoron.

soran wrote:well...considering i talk ALOT, which involves me saying alot of words, its not exactly an oxymoron.

He meant words that actually made sense. So yeah, it IS an oxymoron.

Atlas wrote:

soran wrote:well...considering i talk ALOT, which involves me saying alot of words, its not exactly an oxymoron.

He meant words that actually made sense. So yeah, it IS an oxymoron.

shush attention whore

soran wrote:shush attention whore

Cat got ur tongue?


<3