Excuses on the High Seas

[Anton P. Nym]

However, that's a distinction we should keep in mind, shouldn't we? The distinction between a *pirate* and *piracy*?

Unless you can explain why the distinction is meaningful, and not just another way to obfuscate, no.

How exactly does the point that 'the exact same amount of money will flow into the industry' not support the creation of new games? You can't have it both ways, arguing that if there's no money there will be no games because it's the flow of money that creates games, and then when you confront a situation where there's an identical flow of money, claim that there won't be as many games.

That wasn't my question. I asked how piracy could encourage the creation of new games. This point, at best, argues that piracy's effect upon cash flow is a neutral factor neither encouraging nor discouraging the creation of new games... and that's assuming that piracy's erosion of returns is steady over time, a point I'm not willing to concede without supporting evidence.

Your proposal means that the software creators would have to defer returns on their investments for a decade or two.

A decade or two? That's Blizzard and Remedy and 3D Realms and Silicon Knights. Not every game is StarCraft II and Alan Wake and Duke Nukem and Too Human.

Again beside the point. You stated that today's pirates would grow up to be tomorrow's responsible consumers; "grow up" implies that the pirates are before their maturity. If we're talking teens, then "growing up" could easily take ten years to reach the stage of responsible consumer if we include time in post-secondary education.

That has nothing to do with development times.

Development costs are paid when they're incurred, not upon completion of the project. You have to get that money from somewhere, and the usual sources are either loans or a contracted advance payment from a publisher. Both these sources are going to want their money back at some time, and any patience they display will have a price tag. A decade of postponement would be staggering in interest payments or deadline penalties, unless The Money is unduly generous or credulous... and that's assuming you could get it, when the likely result would be a civil suit for breach of contract.

-- Steve

 

[runtheplacered]

I clicked the link hoping to see a well-thought out article and was severely disappointed. I should have known from the title and description. The same tired arguments with the same huge holes in them.

What's the point of preaching to the choir? Try something new with your anti-piracy agenda. Try talking to pirates. Being on the offense from the get-go is not a sure fire way of getting anybody to listen.

 

[Reaces]

I have another reason for downloading, one that isn't on your list.
I download games that have specs on the box higher than my pc specs.
If they run on my computer (I'm looking at you Mass Effect, Red Alert 3) eventhough my computer did not have the specs I go out and buy them. If they don't, its not like I'm using any pirated software.
A new computer is way to expensive for my currently extremely meager budget, and oddly enough most minimum specs seem to be over my computers capabilities eventhough I can run the games on higher than minimum settings (My my, how we lie to our customers Red Alert 3)

-Guy who spends most of his time playing DoTa because his current pc should have been retired 3 years ago.

 

[mcbond]

Absolutely terrific article -- lays out the fallacy behind various piracy rationalizations in a very clear, logical way. I do disagree on one point, however.

I want to see if it actually works before I buy it.

Against this excuse I can offer no counter-argument.

Here's my attempt at a counter-argument: Just don't buy OR pirate the game if you're worried about it. You don't get to make up the rules as you go along. There are only two legal and ethical options: buy it or not. Where else would this line of reasoning possibly work? "Officer, I swear, I didn't steal the car! I was just making sure it's in good shape because the warranty sucks and they refused to let me test drive it. I was on my way back to buy it..."

Right? They made the game, so they get to set the terms of the sale (within legal constraints). You have free will and can make the choice to not accept the terms BY NOT BUYING IT. You don't get to set the price or decide when it gets released, either. If you want control over those things, then make your own game or get a law passed. Complain about it, write your Congressman, boycott the company, but as Doug Llewelyn once said, don't take the law into your own hands. (And his name starts with two, count 'em, TWO "L"s, so you know he ain't messin' around.)

 

[mcbond]

Here's my attempt at a counter argument: Just don't buy OR pirate the game if you're worried about it. You don't get to make up the rules as you go along. There are only two legal and ethical options: buy it or not. Where else would this line of reasoning possibly work?

A bookstore?

I thought I understood where you were going, but you'll have to elaborate. The analogy doesn't seem to hold up.

 

[mcbond]

People pick up books in bookstores and start reading them all the time. No one calls that piracy. I mean, there are book reviews just the same as game reviews. Most books have information on the back of the jacket. Maybe you can even open up the book to read the information printed on the parts of the jacket that fold inside the cover, if it's a hardback. Or even leaf through to see some of the printed review lines near the title page.

However, once you've opened the book to the actual text? How is that different from pirating a game?

And really, pirating a game to see if it'll work on your system? That's no more an infringement on the rights of the author than opening up a book to see if it's in a language you can read. Or I guess more precisely, isn't written for a reading level above yours.

So show me the person who hasn't opened up a book in a bookstore and read some of the text, and I'll show you someone who's not a pirate.

Everyone else? Looks like there are a lot more of us who are pirates than we realized...maybe some of us have a "huge shelf of 100% legit games" but um, how many of us have a shelf of 100% legit books if the same logic by which "I just want to try it out, and if I like the game I pay for it'" is "pretty much...a crock," if that same logic applies to books.

But don't you have a sort of passive permission to leaf through a book in a bookstore? Actually, they downright encourage it, by providing chairs and sofas and overpriced coffee. The bookstore and publishers are hoping you browse through the books, clearly. They don't put the books in sealed boxes and require a code to open the cover...etc. Publishing houses don't spend millions trying to prevent you from leafing through their books. The proper analogy, in my opinion, is downloading a book illegally online. Once you progress to that stage, you have violated the social contract, because you don't have permission to do that. You're making the rules at that point...you're downloading the book or game against the will of the publisher, you possess the book outside the control of the publisher, and, maybe, if you deem it worthy, you'll buy a legal copy. That's not the case with browsing through a bookstore.

 

[mcbond]

Where did you get the idea you have passive permission? What publisher told you that you have permission to open that book without paying for it?

Well, if we're talking hardcover, they promote it mostly in the inner jacket...have to open it to read that, right? They must realize it would be a waste of resources to talk up a book someone has already bought. If they put all those rave reviews in there I'm guessing they're hoping you open the book. Also, the fact that I don't get run out of the store...

All bookstores have always had chairs and sofas and overpriced coffee? People only open books in bookstores with chairs and sofas and overpriced coffee?

What exactly is your point here? Are you arguing that the sofas and chairs are not provided to encourage reading? They just want people to nap, maybe? What do you normally see people holding and looking at in those chairs? Somehow lots of people got the idea, mistakenly, according to you, that they were being encouraged to READ in those chairs. So ridiculous...

Not putting something in a sealed box means the person wants you to enjoy some of it? So when I go into the grocery store, anything that's not in a sealed box, I can nibble on it?

We were comparing books and games, right? Remember how you started this by mentioning a bookstore? My point was that, if a publisher didn't want you to read the book, and was overtly against it, they could very easily shrink wrap the book. Nibbling on a piece of fruit ruins it, so you've effectively consumed it. So, again, your analogy sucks. Flipping through a book, assuming you don't have feces on your hands (which you very well may), doesn't reduce or eliminate the value of it. Test the theory, by god. Go into ten bookstores and read the first chapter of a book in every one, in front of the clerk. Then go into some grocery stores and start munching on carrots and putting them back in the bin, in front of a clerk. You will see why the two activities are not analogous rather quickly, I suspect. And to answer your question more directly, yes, if you see anything in a grocery store that's not wrapped, you can nibble on it. I'd suggest starting with the butcher's earlobe -- send pics!

If you don't include DRM, you haven't asserted copyright?

They assert the copyright in the EULA. They tell you what the terms of the license are in painstaking detail. I've never seen anything in a book that says not to read it in a bookstore, because, well, that would be stupid.

That can all be true, while the first "stage" where you violate the social contract (not sure if you understand what the concept means, as it's not really appropriate here)

You're right, silly me. And silly Merriam/Webster dictionary for defining it as " an actual or hypothetical agreement among the members of an organized society or between a community and its ruler that defines and limits the rights and duties of each". If that were the definition, I could say that the agreement I'm referring to is the buyer/seller agreement, and that would be pretty appropriate here, but Merriam clearly botched it, so I'll concede this point.

 

[mcbond]

I'm going to violate the debater/debatee agreement and put this to bed for the evening. But I will be back...oh, sweet lord, I will be back. And please don't point out that debatee is not a word -- I see the red line, I'm just too tired to care.

 

[coakroach]

"In any case, if you're from a country where major publishers choose not to do business, then you're not part of the "sales lost to pirates" problem that publishers keep wailing about. You're actually part of a completely different problem."

Wait what?
What different problem? Unsatisfied demand?

 

[Odjin]

He's not off.

Browsing through a book doesn't reduce the value => legit

Downloading and testing a game doesn't reduce the value => legit

Where's the deal? After your logic it's legit.

 

[mcbond]

Like when you said the reason you can't nibble on stuff in a grocery store but you can open up and read the text of a book is that the latter doesn't "reduce or eliminate the value of it."

My argument was never about the reduction of value or elimination of value (read the original comment.) It was about doing something you don't have a right to do. Something the owner of the property expressly forbids you to do. It was YOU who said:

Not putting something in a sealed box means the person wants you to enjoy some of it? So when I go into the grocery store, anything that's not in a sealed box, I can nibble on it?

So I was just making the point that the two activities don't equate -- your analogy doesn't work, because taking a bite out of an apple effectively means it can no longer be sold. Reading a few pages in a book does not. Not sure why that's so hard to grasp. It doesn't bolster your point, it just clouds the issue, therefore it was worthy of being pointed out.

The actual issue is that you say reading a few pages of a book in the bookstore is the same, morally speaking, as downloading an illegal, pirated copy of a game in order to see if it works. That's bullshit, for the reasons I've already stated, but also because reading the book doesn't violate anyone's rights and it doesn't violate any law. There is nothing inside a book that says, "don't read this in a bookstore." There is no new, unauthorized copy made. There is no campaign to stop people from reading books in bookstores. Publishers don't complain or in any way even begin to put forth that they'd rather people not do it. A game comes with clear and adamant warnings not to copy the game, and it couldn't be any more clear that it's against the wishes of the game's publisher to copy it or download an ILLEGAL copy of it. There are LAWS against it. What is the law that forbids reading a book in a bookstore? Who enforces it? The National Why The Fuck Do We Exist Agency?

This is how we roll, though--show up with some weak sauce argument that contradicts the principle you set out to defend, and we're gonna point it out.

Your argument was that flipping through a book in a bookstore is no different, in principle, then downloading an illegal copy of a game. That's "weak sauce". You've failed to defend that absurd claim, but it's not entirely your fault, because it's IMPOSSIBLE to defend. All you've done is attempt (somewhat successfully) to cloud the waters, in order to not have to back up your self-serving philosophy.

Tell you what: Link to a publisher complaining about people reading their books in a bookstore. Just. One. Link. That would prove that the two actions in question are morally equivalent -- that they both involve "an actual or hypothetical agreement among the members of an organized society" being violated (that's that social contract thing that you were so "educated" and "sophisticated" about that you didn't have any idea what it meant...)

So basically, it doesn't matter if it reduces or eliminates the value or not. That's not the issue and it wasn't the point of my original comment. You tried to turn it into that, but that's a lame tactic -- so, yeah, take your ball and go home.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Nothing has done more to legitimize piracy than the attempts of people to show why it's wrong.

Only in your own head, Cheeze.

-- Steve