Aussie pirate fined $1.5 million for uploading NSMB Wii

Bah they weren't doing too good with trying to keep up with worldwide releases in the first place, except with Pokemon. Maybe more tragic Excitebots-like stories from now on :(

damn...

Actually things have seemed to pick up lately which is nice, but with things like this going on it looks like we may go back to the way things were. Darn dirty pirates, just buy the damn thing.

Ouch at the 1.5 million fine though. Still, that'll learn him.

Serves him right.
We get screwed over all the time with release dates in Australia, and then we get one of the best Wii games to date before the rest of the world and he STILL put it on the net for free download.

Anyone that downloaded this game for free is also at fault and should hang their heads in shame. You've ruined it for everyone else.
If you don't feel you should have to pay for a game like NSMBW, then you don't deserve to own it.

Serves him right. Piracy is filthy business.

Wait, so they're push our release dates back or something? Oh yes that's a good way to discourage piracy. That won't result in people importing (not piracy) or, more likely, downloading (piracy) games. Of course not nooooo

Although at least Nintendo tracked down the guy responsible instead of suing an ISP or something. I'd hate to be that guy though. 1.5 million dollars. Ouch. Not to mention the hate he's probably gonna get from the Australian gaming community if this does result in us getting later launches.

Looks like the mainstream media's gotten a hold of this news. Daily Telegraph has a photo of the guy (along with the wrong game pictured lolol)


http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ent...rom=public_rss

Australian release dates are a mess as it is. I don't see this changing anything in the slightest.

^ lol, he uploaded the game, not downloaded it. and that is completely the wrong game.

Wait, so they're threatening to screw our release dates even more just because someone in Australia did exactly what people also do in every other country? Why don't they push release dates back in the US and Japan? I'm sure people pirate games there, but there's no threat of them losing early releases. Stupid.

Now if only Nintendo can scope out all the uploaders from other countries (especially the Netherlands), who get away with uploading the large bulk of NTSC-U and NTSC-J releases each and every week.

EDIT: Yeah, basically what Graeme said.

FUUUUUUU.... Why should this affect release dates?

Stupid piece of shit

It's going to take a lot of plundering to get enough loot to pay off that hefty sum they should have just made him walk the plank.


And so on.

1.5million for a single person for a single game is insane. 200k max

Nintendo are fucking idorts.

Oh gotta love how mainstream media gets everything so wrong when it comes to games.

And the guy looks like a total tool to be honest. Kinda reminds me of someone I know who also does really stupid things, actually. xD

A-N's server is melting, meeeelltttiiiiiingggggggg

At least they made an example of him by fining him a stupidly massive amount to try & deter others doing the same.
You play with fire you eventually get burnt.

Yeah, I know. I couldn't get on for 20 minutes

Fucken pirates.

Scum. Look at him. I'm glad I don't see people like that in the shops.

Hey is it just me or does that guy look familiar? I think I've seen him before at one of the Nintendo tours in Brisbane

If i were him, i would sell everything I have.... hide the money and say "I live in a tree and eat off the fruits it grows".

This is a very surprising revelation on the Nintendo front, but the results of such action may be a mixed bag. Nintendo is well within their rights to protect their intellectual property through the courts, regardless of the phenomenal success the game has seen at retail around the globe. Of course, whilst such a significant fine* will certainly discourage some people from the piracy scene, such an approach does nothing to address other factors at the heart of piracy and may even damage Nintendo Australia's local performance.

Even if James Burt had not have uploaded the game himself, someone else in the world would have done it anyway; singling out Australians with delayed releases of future titles will encourage grey importing or, ironically, more piracy. Furthermore, with the bug ridden firmware on the Wii making Homebrew Installation a snap, this makes piracy on the console only a few steps away, with directed efforts at combatting the issue being largely ineffective. Let's not forget that piracy itself is a matter of ethics as much as it is the law; a look at the music and movie industries shows that significant piracy represents significant shortfalls with the current retail system, with a "try before you buy" mentality being one of the stronger arguments on this matter.

Ultimately, Nintendo Australia have pursued the most logical choice on this matter, and the justice system has rightfully sided with them in the protection of copyright material, with all Australian gamers paying the price in the process.


*It should be noted that the fine was reached by an out-of-court settlement, and not necessarily the value in damages Nintendo Australia was initially seeking.

** Also note this from GBATemp:
"We would like to remind all members it is generally not a good idea to post images of you with an early release, a receipt with your details and store name on it, and then brag about uploading the game. If you want to play a game, then buy it and do not share it."

In that case, Mr. Burt was simply asking for trouble.

Because Nintendo are the law, amirite?

It was the judge who decided the penalty, I do believe, and there is a high chance it will be severly cut on an appeal. Nintendo have every right to protect their own property and copyright.

Well that is quite odd that Nintendo actually took action. The fine will at least deter a percentage of pirates but not a lot.

LOL

Seems that the picture has been fixed on the daily telegraph site....

So someone pointed it out, or they heard us laughing about it. The white border looks odd with the red case though.

How unfortunate, now for those who legally purchase the game (such as myself) will have to suffer. It's quite unfair on him though, I mean the game would have been uploaded eventually.

Yeah, but he was stupid enough to do it. It's not a question of wether someone would do it anyway, it's the fact he did, was caught and is getting punished. As Freek mentioned earlier, if you play with fire you're gonna get burnt.

THIS ONLY HAPPENS IN AUSTRALIA, LETS SCREW THEM OVER AGAIN

Major ownage. It is nice to see someone go after the source of the problem for once.

PFFFFFT! Not only is it the wrong game, it's not even the official cover for Super Mario Galaxy XD

If he's not jailed for it, he can go round touring as "the guy who got 1.6mil fine for pirating NSMB Wii"
he could eventually pay off his debt in 5 years easy from money he gets from endorment deals and such.
lolz.

Nintendo Australia are going to put that $1.5 million towards more Wii Fit adverts... yay.

Thing is, there wouldn't be a huge loss of revenue since games sell jack squat over here.

Yes, but thats beside the point. Doesn't matter where in the world he uploads it, everyone will have access to it!

I think everyone is missing one important point. He should have been fined $1.5 million for the horrendous neck beard he is sporting.

Seems it got fixed even more.

Haha, I love how they're not even bothering to get rid of all the existing files every time they fix something up in the picture.

Is there even any point to uploading games? Seems to me he was just asking for trouble for no reason..

Better a pirate than a ninja.

EDIT: Oops like 20 posts were made while I was away, still leaving this here anyway.

I'm sorry but that is just bullshit. Almost every game in the history of forever gets uploaded. Most of which come out first in either Japan or the US (depending on which language version). Yet despite almost every game ever being uploaded day one it continues on as normal. Howeveer Australia gets one game first, it gets uploaded just the same as would happen in any other region and what happens? Australia gets punished with delayed releases.

As for the guy, they haven't just taught him a lesson, they've potentially destroyed his life. The sum of $1.5m will easily exceed everything he has, so he will lose everything and then have to declare bankruptcy which in turn is pretty much life ruining. Its a brutal thing to do just to make a point.

Before you run off and say its fair anyway, consider what you've done that might be illegal, then imagine being slapped with a $100,000 fine for it. Since pretty much nobody is clean of the law, I'd be cautious crying out for punishment.

Thankyou! Exactly. I can't believe so many people are saying "he deserved it".

Compare this to the fines for "real" crimes like assault. You'd have to greatly injure someone causing permanent disability to get fined anywhere near that much for assault. The guys who assaulted and tormented that 19y/o in the restaurant which led to her suicide recently only got fined $300,000 or so collectively (as I recall about $200,000 or so of that was directed at the business itself). And that was a record amount.

But no, some 24y/o guy uploads a video game which caused no demonstrable loss of sales, a huge company who wouldn't even blink at spending $1.5mil ruins his life for it and "he deserved it"? Bullshit.

Bull. The game got more downloads than any other game in 2009.

Only rampant pirates would sympathise with this guy. Makes it easy to see who Nintendo should go after next.

Yes but it also sold through the roof, and there's no way you can actually show that most people who downloaded it would have bought it otherwise. I know I wouldn't have. Pirating isn't actually stealing, it's copying. If you could instantly physically copy a car and drive the copy away, you wouldn't have stolen the car. The only reason people say it's equivalent to stealing is because there are potential lost sales. (Gus has explained this more articulately that I can, but people never seem to get it.)

Oh please. I am a rampant pirate and I make no apologies for it. That doesn't mean that only rampant pirates would sympathise with him, that's a ridiculous claim. Anyone with half a brain can see that a young mans life being ruined for sharing a video game is horrible.

I guess i'm the only one seeing this NOT as a "Screw you guys, we're delaying everything now in spite. For months." thing, but instead as a "Good job guys, we finally got a decent release date for something and one of you has to be a tool and ruin it for everyone" thing?

Edit...

You're kidding aren't you?
You obtained a retailable good without paying for it, even if you weren't going to buy it anyways, you're still pretty much stealing it.

And how the fact it sold well justifies the belief that pirating it if you weren't going to buy it originally makes pirating it okay at all is beyond me.

Though I guess i'm just being a hypocrite, being that I feel pirating of games that aren't available in shops any more or weren't sold in my area of the world are sort of acceptable.

Well it's kind of like when the year level above you in high school all smoke and drink at school camp, so camp is cancelled for you...you'll blame the year above you, but ultimately it was the school's decision to punish you for something someone else did. (Often it's punishing the majority for the acts of the minority)

Precisely. As Graeme and others said before, leaking games isn't some uniquely Australian phenomenon, so I'm not sure what sort of practical benefit they expect to gain by fiddling with dates here. And if there isn't a practical benefit, all that's left (that I see, at least) is a spiteful teach-them-a-lesson thing. A few teachers did it to my classes back in school - "none of you are leaving until Johnny cleans up his equipment" sort of thing. It's a smokescreen tactic designed to make people attack each other and ignore the one who is actually wielding the power. And beyond that it's simply unfair. Most people then were sensible enough to see that, as I think most here probably are, but not all.

Tell that to the police.

The police don't create laws, they uphold them. I'll be "telling it" to the government when I preference the Pirate Party quite high in the next election.

The police can fine me for ridiculing religion in Victoria, but that doesn't mean that the corresponding laws make sense or are appropriate, and I'll complain about them all I like. To steal something you have to take it. Piracy doesn't actually take or remove anything directly. Even stealing intellectual property requires you to claim it as your own in order to steal it (as far as I know). This guy didn't even try to gain anything from uploading NSMB.

There's a difference between an appropriate punishment and ruining someone's life.

"Someone else would have done it" is the most idiotic defense of this guys actions. It's still wrong, and he got caught. The fact that someone else would have done it is completely irrelevant, and doesn't somehow lessen the crime.

As for the definition of stealing: piracy involves having a copy of a game without paying for the privelage of doing so. It is stealing, there is no other word in the english language to describe what happens. A game is not the physical disc or the box it comes in - it is the experience of playing the damn thing. So if you do so without paying the entry fee, you're stealing. Stealing is defined in the actions of the theif as much, if not more so than the effect it has on anyone else.

And hey, even if you want to weasel with the definition of stealing, it hardly changes the fact that piracy is wrong.

You could similarly argue that riding a tram without paying isn't stealing: the tram is still available to everyone else, the conductor still gets paid, and the electrical costs are the same. But it's not the right thing to do.

Uh, how about 'piracy'?

It is as you say - the fact that it's not stealing doesn't say anything about whether or not it's the right thing to so - so why does it matter if they're not the same thing? Murder and fraud aren't stealing either, and that's ok, right?

It's wrong in the eyes of the law. That doesn't really mean much in terms of it being morally wrong.

Yes there is, it's called piracy, or "copying digital information without permission" if you like. Again, stealing is different, I suggest you look up the definition.

So what if I let my friend borrow my copy after I'm done with it? He gets the experience of playing it for free, and Nintendo may lose a "potential sale". Should we be charged "per experience"? Think about all the lost "potential sales" from people playing games at their friends houses. You know what, lets fine them each a million dollars.

Come on, you guys know its wrong, you're trying to play down how bad anyone's opinion that differ from yours. Just because it isn't the standard definition of stealing doesn't stop it from being stealing. Just because it technically is copying digital information without permission doesn't make it any more legal.

And if you let your friend borrow your game, he eventually has to give it back, unlike a download, which is yours to do with what you please.

Plus there's clearly a difference between loaning a friend a game and giving thousands upon thousands of people a copy to keep for good.

Are you actually arguing it's morally right? This guy bought the game, ripped it, and shared it for millions of people to download. This isn't even morally grey, what he did was wrong.

It all comes down to the definition of property:
To say piracy is not stealing requires arguing that the game is not the property of nintendo, or that "taking" doesn't apply because it is a copy.

But even if piracy isn't stealing, so many people justify piracy by "it's not stealing". It'd be like saying piracy is OK because "it's not blackmail", or "it's not regicide".

If I buy a copy and let a friend play it, one person gets the experience for free, but lending out games also requires me NOT to have my own copy at the same time, while piracy means thousands of people are playing the same copy simultaneously. There's a distinct difference, and my argument was more about trying to give value to the experience of playing a game, not to just the disc and box. We pay $100 for the entertainment the game provides.

Of course I'm not saying that anyone who lets a friend play their game should be fined a million dollars. There's a gigantic difference between that and piracy.

Sounds like the guy got caught because he's an idiot, and I have no problem with idiots suffering. Good stuff.

Of course I'm not arguing it was morally right. Although I will say that the whole idea of morals is shrouded in shades of grey. I'm just saying – just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's immoral as you've seemed to imply.

"Taking" doesn't apply. You're not removing anything from Nintendo. If you go and take a photo of the Mona Lisa you're not taking the painting, you're producing a digital replica of it. I'm not trying to justify piracy by saying "it's not stealing". You're putting words in my mouth. I'm just saying it's not stealing by any definition of the word, so you can't act like it's the same as stealing something like a car. Your only potential effect on the "victim" is indirect.

I'm referring to piracy in general when I make the "lending" analogy, not specifically mass online distribution. (Remember, as soon as you copy copyrighted digital information, it's piracy.) I'm not saying that lending a friend a game and "distributing a game amongst thousands of people" are the same thing, I'm just trying to show that the "you're paying for the experience" thing is bogus.

Whether or not I keep a game that I've borrowed from a friend, I'm getting "the experience" and Nintendo may well be losing a sale. Many times my friends and I have decided we'll buy 2 games we both want, then swap them so we don't have to buy 2 games each. I've often decided not to buy games because my friends have them, and I can just borrow them when I please. By your definition of what you're buying when you purchase a game, lending is pretty similar to piracy, in both what the perpetrator gains and what the copyright holder loses.

I just keep hearing "piracy is wrong, it's wrong, WRONG!"...yet you struggle to define what piracy actually is. It's hardly black and white.

lending a game to a friend or two is hardly comparable to essentially providing thousands of people with a free copy of a game.

the defenition of piracy is pretty much copyright infringment, the violation of a copyright owners "exclusive rights" , poking through australian copyright law quickly, (so there are probably some gaping holes in what im writing, heres the site i looked at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/c...act/ca1968133/) the rights include

"to reproduce the work in a material form"
" to communicate the work to the public;"

you can see the difference (unless you consider your friend "the public" )


also , do i think 1.6 mil is excessive, yes. do i feel sorry for him, no.

Again, I didn't say it was. I'm comparing it to piracy at a base level for the purposes of attacking Plufim's "you pay for the experience" thing.

At what point does my friend become the public? When I show 2 friends? 3? 4? I'd say anyone who isn't the copyright holder is considered the public.

Piracy usually involves copyright infringement, but piracy and "copyright infringement" aren't the same thing.

By the way Rose Lappin worded it on the news report in this whole situation that was just on, I was right in my thinking. She wasn't saying pirating = Later releases, she was more saying pirating = We may not be able to get early releases like this anymore/as often.

by this definiton watching a dvd with someone is illegal or doing split screen multiplayer with anyone who hasnt explicitly bought it. i read it as communitcating it to the greater public and making it freely available, but i could be wrong

your probably right here, but they are pretty similar, wikipedias (lolwikipedia) definition

For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is also commonly referred to as piracy

basically its just a specific type, i like to use "copyright infringement" personally. i think nintendo went after the pirate for "copyright infringement" not "theft" or "piracy"

Much cleaner.

Fighting over definitions.. honestly, guys.

All the fanboyish comments amuse me. Reminds me of why I still come here.

I'm a girl though.

But the effect will be interesting to watch.

Am I the only one who thinks that fine is ridiculous and completely over-the-top considering the crime?

And it sounds to me like the Nintendo Australia spokesperson was spouting uninformed rubbish. It's plain dumb to suggest Australia would be punished for this - any fool can see that. I also think Rose Lappin sounded like a wanker in her comments.

I was surprised to read this and thought it was a joke at first. I agree, it's a hefty price to pay for uploading a game considering it's done very frequently and is ubiquitous throughout. It's as if he's getting the blame for all the hundreds; dare I say tens of thousands of other's committing the same infringement.

The only punishment Australia as a whole should suffer for this "delay" nonsense is by having the retailer franchise responsible for selling the copy of the game refused any stock for the first few weeks, for breaking embargo. Anything else would be just plain silly.

I sorta feel bad for the guy, but... well, it's a good thing at the end of the day he was caught out. But $1.6 million... phew.

I can't remember who said it (their post may have been deleted as a result of the cleaning that's gone on here), but I also interpreted the delays in this story as; "This act will hurt Australia's chances of receiving future exclusive releases".

It's funny how this story has come about. I seem to recall at the last tour there was a gentleman who walked straight up to one of the Nintendo reps and said "I've just bought this R4 for my son. Can you tell me where I can download the games for it?". Granted, he hadn't yet pirated any games, but he was in possession of a flashcart and had the full intention of doing so.

Also this blog makes for an interesting read on the matter.

Hmm, the piracy topic sure does get people buzzing.

As people have said, Nintendo further delaying games due to circumstances like this would be quite a poor choice. However, I doubt Nintendo will. As bigsim said, it just wouldn't make sense to do so.

In terms of Lappin's comments, they do have a shred of truth in them to an extent, albeit over-reacting a bit perhaps. For example, I'm slightly skeptical in her claims that piracy in general has become a larger problem than in the past. If she is just talking Nintendo consoles, then that would be slightly easier to believe since the Wii has definitely been easier to hack and pirate on than the Gamecube. Still, it feels like she's desperately trying to justify the outlandish compensation.

Finally, in terms of the actual individual himself, I believe the fine is absolutely ludicrous. Sure, morally speaking what he did would be considered by the majority as not the right thing to do. However, compared to far more serious crimes, $1.6 million is nothing more than grotesque. He will be severely affected by this to the point of it ruining his life.

He deserved to be punished to the extent that it would deter others and the individual from repeating this behaviour. However, many of you in this thread seem to believe he deserved to be ruined for life. I reckon that is far too harsh for the crime he committed. I'm happy that Nintendo was able to take action against a source of piracy instead of targeting every single person that downloads a copy. A choice that I believe is far more efficient, but they definitely are being very cruel with the fine.

Also, I'd like to delve a bit on the argument that "piracy is not stealing".

First off, as has been said before in this thread and previous ones, the word piracy is not a synonym of stealing. They in fact, do not mean the exact thing. If you claim they do, you may not know the definitions of each word well enough. However, what is interesting about these two words (or more appropriately, actions) is that they are somewhat related. In what way are these two related? Well, I believe piracy is a form of stealing, and I will endeavour to explain why I believe this is so.

Let's first define what these actions involve.

Stealing is the action of taking something that doesn't belong to you without consent from the owner.

Fair explanation? And we can all easily think of the example of someone walking into a shop, taking something off a shelf and walking out without parting cash or getting permission from the owner of the shop.

Okay, now let’s try and define what piracy involves.

Piracy is the action of duplicating and distributing and/or downloading and using intellectual property, such as a game, without consent.

Is this a fair explanation as well? Cool, and we can use the article as an example of this.

Now, when you read both explanations of these behaviours, they don't really seem that similar at face value apart from both not involving consent from the owner. However, think about it a bit. What is really the actual similarities between these two?

Well, both involve you doing something that you haven't been given permission to do. They both involve you not making an equivalent exchange with the owner, and they both involve you attaining something, either by physically taking something or making a (digital) copy of something.

Now, the following seems to be the underlining argument used in "piracy is not stealing". The key points made are that making a copy of something doesn't actually take it away from anyone, and that there is arguably no direct cost to the owner since nothing physical has to be replaced.

However, I'd argue that the owner has in fact lost something, since they have not received anything for their effort and work.

I think the most important aspect of this argument, is whether you consider stealing to only be involving a physical piece of work or property. Why should doing the exact same action on something that doesn't physically exist in the general sense of physical be any different?

The answer is... there is no difference. Software, media, a physical object. They all "physically" exist to an extent and we are able to interact with them to varying extents.

If you break down these two actions and look at what each truly means and involves, piracy boils down to the exact same result as stealing.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to cover. I just thought it would be interesting to analyse the argument in depth.

/yes, this took me ages... sorry about the wall of text. :S

It's quite eye-opening on a personal level that despite knowing full well that the sentence Mr. Burt received was an out-of-court settlement, I never made the complete connection to the motivation behind such an approach. This serves as an important reminder for all of us to always pursue all the facts and critically analyse the forms of information we receive, especially before solidifying an opinion.

Now don't I feel stupid...

Just one nit-picky point – piracy doesn't always involve distributing. I also think you could get rid of "using", since it's probably correct to call it piracy from the moment you copy/download the information.

These all just seem like a different ways of putting the "potential sale" argument. Which I'm happy to acknowledge, but I don't accept that it's the same as taking a physical copy. When you take a physical copy of something, the artist/agent/publisher has payed for production, shipping, etc. They've payed for each copy of their game beforehand, and then they've sold it to a distributor (I making an assumption about the details here, but you'll have to accept it roughly for the sake of the argument). When you steal a physical copy of a game, you're stealing straight out of the distributor's pocket (or the artist's pocket, if they're getting a commission for each sale, again, I'm not exactly sure how it works). They have one less copy of the game to sell.

Now, if you had a portable cloning machine, and you walked into EB Games and cloned NSMB, the distributor would still have the same amount of games to sell. They've lost nothing directly. This would be the physical equivalent of piracy.

So let's say you've either physically cloned or digitally duplicated a game. Would you have bought the game if you hadn't been able to acquire it illegally? Maybe. Maybe not. It'd be stupid to say that all, or most people wouldn't have bought the game anyway, but I think people overestimate by saying that all, or even most pirated games would have been bought otherwise. The truth is nobody really knows either way. Our only source of reference for this is by looking at the statistics of increases in piracy vs sales of media, and making an educated guess based on those figures. I don't know about games, but in terms of music, online sales have gone up a lot over the past few years. So have ticket sales for gigs. Basically the artists are actually getting more money and the record companies less. So the knee jerk "OMG THE ARTIST HAS LOST A POTENTIAL SALE WTFBBQ" reaction isn't really backed up (in all cases anyway).

You also have to think about other ways potential sales are lost. Again, swapping/lending games/movies/music isn't the same as piracy, but often the result (the loss of a potential sale) is exactly the same. You wouldn't call these stealing, because nothing has been acquired permanently and illegally by the person. That doesn't change the fact that the artist is losing a potential sale due to people sharing their media around.

If you want to make a balanced assessment, you have to consider the pros of piracy as well. Exposure is the main one. If you pirate a game and it's good, you'll talk about it and spread the love. Word of mouth is invaluable in the retail world. Look at Wolverine: Origins. The version without post-production was leaked and downloaded by thousands of people before the movie came out. What happened to ticket sales? They skyrocketed.

This is a bit more abstract, but another plus is getting people to buy hardware they wouldn't have bought otherwise. I would have sold my wii ages ago if homebrew hadn't been so successful. Which would mean I wouldn't have bought 2 motion plus', the wii fit board, the mario kart wheels, etc. I wouldn't have bought 2 DS consoles if the R4 didn't exist. I also wouldn't have bought such a good computer if I wasn't able to get my grubby pirate hands on so many games.

I'm not saying piracy is right, legally or morally, I'm just saying it's not a black and white issue, and it certainly shouldn't be used as a justification to ruin someone's life.

Losing something is when you have something and then you don't have it anymore. Not getting paid is just...not getting paid. It may still be a crime on the part of the person not paying you, but it isn't theft, it's something else. You have to do one of two things to make this work for you: allow the opportunity to be paid to be declared legal property (thus opening up all sorts of problems like making setting up a shop in competition to someone else stealing) or just redefine the concept of loss entirely (in which case why bother arguing at all, you may as well just make a "piracy = theft, so there" statement and be done with it).

I understand you're trying to link the two crimes because they have common elements, but I think (if you are set on such categorisation at all) it would be better, rather than saying "piracy is a form of theft" to say "piracy and theft are both forms of <something else>" - but I don't see why you'd even do that. If you want to broaden what things can be legally "taken", you could say fraud is theft because it often results in financial loss, assault is theft because it results in the loss of physical fitness, murder is theft because it is the taking of a life without permission; hell, letting your parking meter run out of cash is both not paying the state and denying a parking space to someone else. All you're doing, wherever along that path you stop, is gradually equating "stealing" with "crime", which doesn't seem very helpful.

http://kotaku.com/5468379/somethings...-aussie-pirate

I had to say something seemed off about all this, but I think this article's author might have a decent guess at what is really going on here. I would not at all be surprised if this was a big scare campaign.