As long as you did not try to sell the car or do anything else showing intent to permanently deprive, you could not be charged with theft. Instead, there is a separate offence defined in section 12 of the Theft Act - Taking Without Owner's Consent
Why? The example you gave is listed as an offence and people are punished for it. The aspect that may surprise people is that "theft" has a fairly precise legal definition, which is generally a good thing since vague definitions lead to people not being able to understand or comply with the law - and gives courts problems in enforcing them.
Isn't there a similar clause somewhere in America and it's for emergencies, i.e. you're allowed to "steal" someone's Car if you need to drive someone to the hospital or something like that. (You'd give it back of course). Thought i saw it on an episode of QI with regards to "silly" laws.
Can't you do the same with someone's wife in America so long as you leave a note to say she will be returned on xx date?
That's not quite what I meant, my fault for phrasing it badly. What I meant is if the DRM makes you unable to play the game, in my case, GTA IV was literally the third thing I Installed on my computer (to test it out a bit) after Windows and Firefox, and it still had compatability issues, or a case of activation servers going offline. That sort of thing.
That provision is covered (in the UK) by section 12 subsection 6 of the Theft Act 1968: "(6) A person does not commit an offence under this section by anything done in the belief that he has lawful authority to do it or that he would have the owner’s consent if the owner knew of his doing it and the circumstances of it."
I'm not sure where the TS is buying his games. I've yet to pay more than £30 for a new release PC game. Battlefield 3 is £29.91, Rage is £25, Deus Ex 3 is £28. Hardly wallet busting.
RAGE? If it's ever released it will be mediocre to poor I reckon. ID software is a dinosaur unable to keep up with modern game development.
I grew up in an era where NES games cost £45 snes imports up to £100 and Neo Geo games starting from £150 so i feel kinda lucky to be living in a time where £40 seems to be the limit for new games
When I was a kid, my brother had a PC in his room, I had a PC in my room. We played a lot of multiplayer with each other. When it came to getting the bus, going into town and buying a game are we going to go into the shop and buy two copies of the same game?, so we can install seperate copies on our machines???, nope!. What were going to do is buy one copy of the game, crack it immediatly and enjoy. Simple as that. And if anyone can remember the AMIGA, LOL But are we dirty thieves cause we dont happen to have a spare 60 quid to spend when we were kids?, no, I dont think so. Digital piracy is not theft.
The most expensive game I paid for Gran Turismo 5. Totally worth it though. Piracy is bound to happen, while corporations are defintiviely entitled to protect their investments (especially considering how drastically expensive they're getting) perhaps going on a crusade against an entire market isn't the best solutions. In history security tended to work better when you had compliance with both parties, while software is a bit more ambiguous in terms of protection the legitimate purchaser should be burdened the least as they are after all the ones who are purchasing the service. The same goes for any industry, no one is opposed to a company trying to protect their investment, we all are, but when it comes to a state where the legitimate purchasers are treated as criminals (like the music industry) it creates a larger than necessary issue. The problem is a combination of non-intrusive investment protection and an effective means. In other words, it's high time those publishers started listening to their customers regarding what kind DRM should or should be implemented. Of course this is in an ideal world. Honestly, I think a CD-Key and a disc check is enough as it is. Especially since multiplayer games are so popular (which is awesome and a shame) a CD-Key is honestly all anyone really needs to play online with stat tracking and such. As for single player games, well there's a stickler, DVD detection can be cracked, CD-keys require an internet connection (not necessarily possible everywhere, now if we can figure out how to do that.
Agreed. I remeber when I had my Super Nintendo and I had saved pocket money for months and months to afford a single game. Months went by and my parents seeing that I had saved up 30 quid decided to go halves on Streetfighter 2 Turbo. It was £70. Games are cheap nowadays imo and with the indie scene making strides there are games to cater for all budgets on a myriad of platforms. This thread is all about the original poster not wanting to pay the going rate on new releases simple as. Eddie
The problem with your argument is the standard of games has gone down hill since the days of the 90's. For example, Activision are wanting £40 for MW3 when the game has not changed one bit, its the same old UT 2004 engine, same sounds, same scripted levels SSDD (Same Sh!t Different Disk) Whereas back in the days, games that were £40 etc at least were unique and fun to play, they were different! Plus companies like Activision like to charge an additional £15 for extra maps which back in the 90's would have come with the game as standard!
A game is usually an IP (Intellectual Property) owned by an entity. There is such a thing as IP theft, which is why we have patents and copyright laws in most of the developed world. Digitisation of information does not make it free. The 0s and 1s of binary language are of course free - like the letters of our alphabet - but the creation itself (like a book) can be owned and copyrighted. The absence of a demo or quality product is no justification for piracy. These are things we all regret, but you cannot avoid them.
Entirely true, which is a problem that should be tackled by boycotting to put pressure on the devs to improve product quality and provide demos. The issue is that piracy has the same effect (no sale) but consumers get access to the product regardless, which is interpreted by the devs as interest in their product and defies the whole purpose. --- Kind of a thought experiment as a side note though not entirely off-topic: let me illustrate an aspect of piracy which I personally find slightly ambiguous. First off, I still agree that digitisation of a product doesn't immediately infer that it's free for the taking, but that's only clear when you take an exact 1:1 copy of said product. Say you download music--I admit that in one way or another you're still getting access to product through illigitimate means--but what you download is not THE actual product; rather, you have a low-quality approximation of that product (mp3 rip). It's not like you downloaded the actual CD in it's full quality including the booklet and all. So take the Mona Lisa for example; there is only one real copy, but if some random guy paints a copy of it and makes it available for free, why is he not accused of piracy? It's only wrong if he physically steals it, but technically he's as guilty as the guy who ripped a CD and uploads the mp3's. He took a known product and distributed a flawed, lower quality approximate version of it. Think about that.
Not sure that quite works since the value of the Mona Lisa is in the fact that it is the original, and not really in how it looks (otherwise people would just look at it on the net).
