An excuse for Piracy.

[fanman]

My Excuse would be "I'm poor and can't afford that at the moment and it is way more fun to get stuff free"
And I haven't heard the new album.

 

[dryg]

Here it takes about a week for something to arrive via the mail, 5 or more hours to drive to the closest gamestop which barley got any pc games and my parents refuse to get a credit card.
But I got good download speeds. Usually pirates all new stuff, exept music becasue I got spotify premium. If its good I buy it to support them etc.
And a with Minecraft, pirated it because I can't pay, showed it to some friends, when they bought it I managed to get one of the to buy it for me. In the end it was 1 pirated copy = 6 sales. Pirating is not a lost sale!

 

[eytrvnbmgkhjiuty]

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[raikounen]

I dont pirate myself, but as far as i know (strictly technicaly speaking)
that pirating is not illeagal but the act of upploading the source of piracy to the internett is.
Just the same as uploading a copyrighted video on a streaming site is illeagal, it is not illeagal to stream it.

 

[Hoplon]

The only things I feel okay dling are TV shows not shown in the UK.

Since I have no other way to see them.

But that is not to say it is right or legal.

 

[bloempje]

I don't know if it has been stated already, but I saw some interesting arguments pro-piracy lately, from some independent dutch study.
one argument states that most of the enternainment products people (illegaly) dowload, come from overseas, in most cases the usa. When people would normally buy those products, they would not have much money left for entertainment products of their own the countries' making, so pirating enables the consumer to give new bands (or independent games, movies...) a chance, who aren't famous enough to be pirated (or just psychologically are given more respect by the consumers). It also makes more money stay in the country, instead of a flow of money to the exporting country, in most cases, that is the USA.
now, for people in the USA this doesn't mean anything ofcourse (except for the 'give rising talent a fair chance' argument), as pirating damages the entertainment industry, meaning jobs might be lost (altough I thing most of those corporations find pirating only a marginal damage to their profit). Now the argument goes that, if people spend less on a, more unproductive branch of industry, .i.e. entertainment industry, people will spend more money on other branches of industry, who can be labled more productive, such as housing, furniture, give more money to charity...Etc. Which means that those jobs who would be lost by pirating, are being nullified by new jobs created by a rising demand in other products.
I thought these arguments pretty strong, any thoughts?

 

[eytrvnbmgkhjiuty]

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[Talshere]

I genuinely dont pirate. I dislike the software and distrust it to much. I've spent a fortune on my baby and I aint risking it on some potentially dodge copy.

I try all music I want to buy on youtube Whole albums are on there the day of release normally.

I dont pirate games, you normally know if your guna like a game LONG before its released, so its more effort than its worth, and tbh, if Im guna be spending 40+ hours playing something, £20-£30 really isnt that bad People pay 12 quid for 20 mins in Laser Quest. Plus I like the online experience on most games and of course that is near impossible these days if you dont a a legit copy.

I do "occasionally" watch films online, but its because cinemas keep films on for a criminally short amount of time something. On the 3rd week after release if I wanted to see Prince Of Persia at a cinema, which I did....VERY MUCH!... I would have had to travel just over 50 miles, because my local cinemas all had it on week day only like, 10:30am showings. I cant fucking make that. And tbh I dont think 3 weeks is an unreasonable time to still be able to expect to see a film at a reasonable time!

I have on a few occasions watched a film online after having seen it in the cinemas, because it was so awesome I needed to see it again before the DvD release.


The big one I do "pirate" is TV series. I object to having to wait A WHOLE BLOODY YEAR to see a season of a show that I KNOW full well is out, just because I live in the UK. If the prats didn't wait so long to port it out to other countries we might not all be so inclined to go searching online for these things -.- But quite often these series are starting the ad campaign running upto the dvd release before we even get episode fucking 1 >.<


As a general rule however, if I merit something worth watching or playing, I merit it worth paying for. If I think some twat is trying to rip me off (CoD4:2 with your £40 PC price tag Im looking at you!) I just dont buy it.

 

[dryg]

Shamelessly quoting myself D;

Here it takes about a week for something to arrive via the mail, 5 or more hours to drive to the closest gamestop which barley got any pc games and my parents refuse to get a credit card.
But I got good download speeds. Usually pirates all new stuff, exept music becasue I got spotify premium. If its good I buy it to support them etc.
And a with Minecraft, pirated it because I can't pay, showed it to some friends, when they bought it I managed to get one of the to buy it for me. In the end it was 1 pirated copy = 6 sales. Pirating is not a lost sale!

 

[DanielSPG]

1. Outside of a game no longer being in production, or downloading a copy after yours is wrecked/has ridiculously restrictive DRM, there are no excuses for piracy. And especially don't try to make ridiculous arguments about "try before you buy" when it comes to music. You youtube that shit and check out the songs on there. If you like, you buy the album. If you don't, well, you obviously don't buy the album. Simple, no?

DANG, we just hit a huge grey area in morality/legality... First off a few things about me and my opinion.

1. I don't so much care if piracy is legal or not. Running a red light is illegal but if I don't see any traffic I'm still crossing the road. I do care about the moral issue at hand.
2. I'm not innocent when it comes to piracy, if I love a movie/album/games I will buy it. Actually most of my money goes in those 2 categories.
3. I'm a starting professional musician and think the internet is a great medium for music distribution. Please pirate my music (if any of it wud be online hehe)

We simply have come to an age where old copyright rules no longer apply. Artists deserve to get paid for what they do, no doubt (i'd be out of a job if not). But with the mass use of internet people expect everything to be available fast and free. The best means to handle this is initiated by artists themselves, offering their albums as digital packaging for "whatever u feel is a good price" (In Rainbows - Radiohead) or in different qualities/price ranges, the lowest quality being free (The Slip - Nine Inch Nails). These methods provoke a sense of morality in people that might trigger them to pay a small fee instead of illegaly downloading it. (I for one didnt pay anything but got the boxed versions of both albums once they became available, cus I'm with the old "it ain't real till u can hold it" gang)

Now getting back to the subject and what surprises me in your statement. U say it's not ok to download an album, but its ok to watch a youtube video of a song to judge the album quality? And what is essentialy the difference? One is "legal" and the other isn't? To me its the exact same thing. Does youtube have the right to remove videos for copyright infringement, well in my opinion, as long as the copyright laws stay as they are, yes definitly. However, I strongly feel these laws are incredibly outdated, and a new system must be made that support the need of artists (income) and meet the expectations of the people (fast an cheap). How? I'm no expert, but I know that a lot of young musicians are thinking about this very question and are coming up with good ideas that all partys can live with it. (for dutch readers: www.downloadprobleemopgelost.nl)

 

[Treefingers]

Ehh. Any excuse for piracy is a bad excuse imo.

And I don't like anything that Linkin Park does.

 

[Sjakie]

- If a game doesn't have a demo and only shows stupid teasers and/or cinematic trailers, i will download it to give it a try. That's basically the 'try before you buy'. If it's good i buy it. If not: ctrl+a de;ete.
- If i cant buy a game/software/music/movie in my country: i will download it since the product doesn't have any copyrights in my country and that makes it legal according to Dutch law (if there is no copyright for my country/region, then it's legal) But since digital distro came that hardly happens anymore.
- In case of copy protection (AC2 anyone) it is legal according to Dutch law to make/have a backup copy for your own use (all stuff you own btw). How you get that copy is unmentioned so it's legal to torrent games that way as long as you own the original!

This is when i 'pirate' stuff. It's good to be Dutch

 

[AndyFromMonday]

How about we use the resources dedicated to combat piracy to combat actual crimes? I find that murder, rape and stealing deserve more attention. Nowadays someone is labeled a criminal for doing something as harmless as pirating a $3 song.

And yes, I did just say stealing. Whilst piracy is technically stealing I can't really look at it as a serious crime. What's worse? A 15 year old kid downloading an album or a man with a mask breaking into grandma's house and stealing her jewelry?

 

[Arehexes]

My reason is because I have like 40+ DS games I don't want to lug all those carts around (I'm ADD-ish with playing games and get tired of what I"m playing in like 6 minutes). So I have a way to keep my games at home safe, but still be able to play them. I don't care if anyone believes that or not, but it makes college life easy without keeping up with all my games in the dorm.

 

[guntotingtomcat]

Prostitution is different. It involves arguments about freedom and integrity etc.
If someone produces a piece of music/film/game, I believe they deserve to be paid for it. Just because the internet makes it easier to steal, doesn't change the fact that you're taking property that doesn't belong to you. If people think that's okay, then they should go ahead but they shouldn't pretend it's anything other than theft.

Also, if everyone in society obeyed the laws, society would be happier which would make obeying the laws right. (Obviously with the exception of laws designed to needlessly harm people eg Nazi's, Iran, North Korea etc)

 

[guntotingtomcat]

Piracy's illegal! If you really support a band/film/game you should spend money on it!!!
And hey, if your not sure you will like it, here's an idea. YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET IT!!!

So is prostitution in the U.S while here in Australia it's legal, something being against the law does not make it wrong. It simply makes it against the law.

Prostitution is different. It involves arguments about freedom and integrity etc.
If someone produces a piece of music/film/game, I believe they deserve to be paid for it. Just because the internet makes it easier to steal, doesn't change the fact that you're taking property that doesn't belong to you. If people think that's okay, then they should go ahead but they shouldn't pretend it's anything other than theft.

Also, if everyone in society obeyed the laws, society would be happier which would make obeying the laws right. (Obviously with the exception of laws designed to needlessly harm people eg Nazi's, Iran, North Korea etc)

 

[DanielSPG]

And yes, I did just say stealing. Whilst piracy is technically stealing I can't really look at it as a serious crime. What's worse? A 15 year old kid downloading an album or a man with a mask breaking into grandma's house and stealing her jewelry?

stealin the jewelry, dont think any'1 is gonna argue that. But while we are on the subject of what is worse?

Downloading an album or sneaking out an album in ur jacket from ur local music store?
Downloading an 100 albums in a year (dont say thats an unrealistic number) or pulling of an insurance fraud worth the same amount of money?

Piracy is not a victimless crime. But as I said in an earlier thread, if the "victims" are reimbursed through other means then pure selling of copy's of albums etc then there would be no victim and no crime... Change the rules!

 

[bam13302]

So today I got into an argument with a friend who labeled me a criminal because I pirate a fair bit of software. I've used up all my usual reasoning on him until so I had to think of something new. It was today that I also downloaded Linkin Park's new album, A Thousand Suns and the only word I can think to describe it is just bad. It's really bad, it has nothing of the Linkin Park of old and even if it wasn't by them it would still be a shitty album. This is what I used in my argument, that if I paid good money for that at a store I would be outraged that I had wasted my hard earned cash. As it is I'm just annoyed that a band I used to quite like has gone so downhill (though that's not new news or anything).

So Escapists, I pose you two questions.
1. What is your excuse for Piracy?
2. What did you think of Linkin Park's new album? It's alright you can say it's bad.

The try it before you buy actually requires you to buy stuff that you did enjoy enough not to delete off your hard drive, and if you do end up buying a copy of everything on your HDD, you will at least have the defense, i downloaded it because i couldn't find my legal copy, give them any proof you have a legal copy, and your good (i know this works with emulators, and i would not be surprised if that worked with other things as well)
1. If i pirate something, it is so i can have access to a piece of software that i already bought but lost
2. Dont really care, dont listen to music much anymore

 

[Talshere]

I find it amusing that musicians at least complain about youtube.

For little know bands it provides HUGE exposure for FREE!

For the big guys its not the albums making the money, and even then, because people want it for their MP3 player, smartphone, stereo etc. they buy the album anyway.

You see some of these artists complaining as they cruise away from a gig millions in the black.

 

[deathandtaxes]

Prostitution is different. It involves arguments about freedom and integrity etc.
If someone produces a piece of music/film/game, I believe they deserve to be paid for it. Just because the internet makes it easier to steal, doesn't change the fact that you're taking property that doesn't belong to you. If people think that's okay, then they should go ahead but they shouldn't pretend it's anything other than theft.

Also, if everyone in society obeyed the laws, society would be happier which rent. It involves arguments about freedom and integrity etc.would make obeying the laws right. (Obviously with the exception of laws designed to needlessly harm people eg Nazi's, Iran, North Korea etc)

So you think that every time you use someone's copyright you should have to pay royalties why is this only true of commercial media or did you forget that every time you quote someone in school assignments you are using someone copyrighted ideas for your own personal gain.

This is simply a double standard that exists in society it is not about the rule of law or about stealing since in both cases you are not depriving someone of physical property it is a question of compensation for ideas.

Which seems only to exist when the ideas are put into a published medium, while we seem free to quote peoples life's work without paying them a cent. Sure we must acknowledge them but I don't see anyone disputing who owns true blood while torrenting it.

Also note all laws are designed to restrict personal freedoms in attempt to create safety and harmony in society something being the law does not make it right, just, good, effective or indeed logical or sane.