Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

[Batou667]

Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

Erm... no he didn't. He brought one or two poorly-researched and poorly-articulated opinions to the table (I wouldn't call them arguments, let alone facts). Email this "Destroyer of Pirates" and tell him to register on this forum and take part in one of the regular piracy threads, I don't think he'd be able to discuss his way out of a paper bag.

What a weak non-story. :/

 

[saregos]

How can you look down on us 'apologists' when you're playing stolen games? No amount of rhetoric is going to escape that fact. 'Less profit than we are entitled to' is a more serious concern than "Corporations are evil and I am a revolutionary for stealing from them."
You're not a revolutionary.

Those rioters in London this summer? Taking advantage of the chaos to bag a load of free shit? You're no better than they are. Dirty pirates.

I'm not going to debate the merits of your post. Others have done that quite thoroughly, and with minimal effect.

I'd simply like to point out that, unless you have evidence for your assertion that Sylveria is a "dirty pirate" and has been "playing stolen games" (link it, please) the above statements fall under the technical definition of Libel.

Which... is illegal.

So, to clarify, you just broke the law in your post telling us how much you're

defending the God damned law.

Congratulations.

Clearly you didn't pay much attention to my response to the earlier post. I said I wasn't aiming exactly at the poster I was talking to, it was a response aimed at pirates in general.

Doesn't matter. Still libelous, as the initial post was aimed at a specific person. And if you were really aiming at "pirates in general"...

Escapist provides a wonderful edit button. Also, apologies work wonders. Since the fact remains that you DID libel Sylveria.

And now, you're providing excuses for why your illegal actions should be given a pass. Tell me, is your sense of irony going berserk right now? Because mine is...

 

[Batou667]

To the tedious black-and-white moralisers in this thread: I would like to confess that I pirated music today. In fact, I STOLE a good two-hours worth of current chart music this morning by listening to it, for free, on my radio. I'm also willing to admit that I have several times done the same on the illegal deep-web hacker site "Youtube" where you can search at will for pirated, contraband music, both current and classic.

According to some of the simplistic logic in this thread, I have directly picked the pockets of the likes of Rihanna and... um... whoever else is big at the moment. On a couple of occasions I even left the room when the adverts came on, which, like Adblocking, is completely illegal and immoral.

That's right. I benefitted from a product, that took time and money to produce, and I paid not a penny for it. How do I sleep at night? Well, in a prison cell for the next several months, apparently. Call the police, somebody. I'm resigned to my fate.

 

[Asehujiko]

I love these arguments because no matter how people spin it, "ITS FUCKING WRONG"

And maybe, if the moralist, bold and capslock using crowd actually gave some arguments why US law on the matter is superior then for example Swiss or Dutch law, we wouldn't have the same discussion every day of people "spinning it"(ie, giving valid arguments) vs a bunch of smug, condescending 3rd graders screaming "LALALA I CANT HEAR YOUR ARGUMENTS OVER HOW SUPERIOR I AM".

I don't think that a single pirate has ever been converted

"CD Projekt's DRM-less Witcher 2 being pirated more than it was purchased"

What does that tell you, boys and girls?

It tells us that when faced with a choice between PAYING to have malware installed on your PC, or taking a free copy someone ran through the virus-checker, people will take the one that doesn't have malware.

DRM encourages Piracy.

I'm pretty sure that you read that statement wrong.

If DRM encourages piracy and
The witcher 2 had no DRM ie is DRM less therefore
The witcher 2 should not have been as pirated as DRM heavy titles

The Witcher 2 was heavily pirated which leads us, boys and girls back to the point that while DRM does suck, it is just another in the long long long line of flimsy defences that pirates throw up to justify their receiving a product/service without paying for it.

A self entitled consumer base encourages piracy.

You do realize that the Witcher 2 guy is lying through his teeth about how often his game was pirated if the other article is to be believed?

 

[Stalydan]

Snip

Snip

I only really take issue with dismissing "not a lost sale" and "If they made better games". I'm not going to say that fixing these will bring an end to piracy, but all this I keep hearing about the absurd overpricing some escapist member have to deal with. This coupled with the fact that there ARE a lot of games that, while fun, are NOT worth $60 ("wait until the price drops, then give it a try") certainly contribute. That coupled with postponed regional release dates and outright limited releasing. I had some friends in my last college who pirated and shared a game simply because there was no way to get in America, it was only released in Japan and one of them had a connection.

I feel the same way as you about games that aren't made widely available. Europe is a hard place to get a fair amount of games. To get a game like the original Shin Megami Tensei legally, I'd have to buy a Super Famicom, find a copy of the game, get them shipped to England, buy a number of electrical socket converters (I think), find some way to hook it up to my TV and most importantly: Learn Japanese.

Now I don't know about anyone else here but that's a lot of effort for one game (or two if you count the sequel). So the easier thing to do is emulate a fan translated copy.

And you know what, I enjoyed that game. But here's the problem with that particular series. Atlus doesn't have a European branch or publisher. I have to wait until March to play Catherine. MARCH! Considering how long that game's been out in NA, never mind Japan, that's a long wait. But apart from that, Atlus doesn't even release all their games in Europe. The only Shin Megami Tensei games that we're likely to get are Persona. Persona is great but I'd like Strange Journey or Devil Survivor too.

I honestly think one thing that does encourage piracy is that. Products not being widely available. It's worse for PC when the product is being distributed digitally but not in your country. No, it's not right that the developers "lose a sale" but it's a debatable thing really as the sale was obviously never going to happen if that person couldn't buy it.

 

[davros3000]

Once upon a time there was no law on the high seas, and lo; there was piracy.

As tech improves so will the governments (police and so on) ability to regulate, referee and inhibit behaviour which is either of questionable morality or legality. To continue to the comparison with high seas ne'er do wells; the only parts of the world which still suffer sea based piracy are those with weak or non existent piracy. Even heavily corrupt governments like to control sea access so that they can make money on this.

Internet piracy is the same. Technology will improve and the internet 'ocean' will become smaller as a result.

 

[TheMariner]

Personally, I'm just honestly perplexed how people can honestly say that piracy is not theft. The logic doesn't add up. John Q. Public decides that he'd rather download a game illegaly than buy it. This means that he obtained the game without paying for it. How is that not theft?

EDIT: Very well, so it's not technically defined as theft. But at least we can all agree that it's illegal and wrong, yes?

 

[MercurySteam]

A self-described game lawyer explains why arguments in favor of piracy are bunk.

I know this has already been said a few times, but the more I read this article the more I see that this isn't news. This is just an article heavily injected with venom for pirates with some quotes from a lawyer in it. I'm seeing more personal opinions than what should be in a news article, and while the hate towards pirates is understandable, it just isn't how I like to see my news.

I don't know if anyone agrees or not but I thought I should have this said.

Hmm, those are some pretty solid arguments.

I don't think I can disagree.

Pardon me for saying, but this statement isn't really contributing anything to the discussion.

 

[Sansha]

All of these excuses are self-justification, more arbitrary made-up ideals people use to feel better about themselves for stealing.

Bottom line is they simply do not want to have to pay for stuff. It's stealing, it really is.

 

[Sandytimeman]

Just spit coffee everywhere. Thanks a lot, pal!

By the battle.net system I ment how you have a digital bookshelf and can redownload the game at anytime and don't need to keep silly CD-keys on file.

Also by annoying DRM I was talking mainly about say, Assasin's Creed 2.

Personally I find Steam to be generally a good platform. Origin was in the escapist headlines for having complete tracking and complete hardrive content scanners that would send all that info back to EA. As far as I'm aware Steam doesn't have those kinds of problems.

 

[Asehujiko]

Personally, I'm just honestly perplexed how people can honestly say that piracy is not theft. The logic doesn't add up. John Q. Public decides that he'd rather download a game illegaly than buy it. This means that he obtained the game without paying for it. How is that not theft?

Because it is legally defined as something else, copyright violation. We've been over this at least three times in this very topic alone.

 

[thahat]

"because the hackers can just mask their IP address"

Haven't we started to use the word hacker just a bit to loosely(seeing how pirating doesn't involve any kind of "hacking")? o_o

a hacker to a, well to coin a word, 'old git' is someone who knows to use computers.
in their eyes, most of the escapist comunity is a hacker XD.
to people like us, hackers are more like the people on 4chan who do stuff neo style that a normal person can just not do. break in into peoples computers, put porn on US sites ( lololol ) and such kind of stuff. ( also BAD HACKERS! @ the pron on sesame street site once :/ )

 

[thahat]

hey someone payed attention in law class ( or is just clever, one of both, good going sir or madam! )

if you want to poke him some more: theft can only apply when there has been a TRANSFER of goods(in abstract from, so real stuff and faerydust//ideas). from a person to a person ( legal or real ) copying, is not as per say a transfer. (unless the publisher itsself copies his own game and you then ctl-x it off his harddrive XD )

Thanks! One of my degrees is in law so I'd like to think I have some vague idea of what I'm talking about! And yes, you're absolutely correct in your assertion as well. It's nice to know someone has some sense around here.

Even still, the fact that this whole "piracy = theft" thing gets thrown around with such frequency and conviction by these ignorant people sometimes makes me question my own reasoning.

dont, your right on the money .
but hey i think this discussion will inger on for a long time. and there are these gaming studio's that DONT worry too much about this. cause their games will just get bought anyway.
( im looking at you bethesda, valve, Blizzard. ) i wonder why...
(rhetorical, their games are WORTH the money., no wonder people piret those less in percentages.. )

 

[Denamic]

but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer

NO, it does not. That logic is incredibly erroneous.

game costs $60

5 million pirated copies of the Witcher 2 = $300,000,000 in lost sales.

... how do they not lose money?

By that logic, pirates have stolen several times more money than exists on the planet.

 

[thahat]

Personally, I'm just honestly perplexed how people can honestly say that piracy is not theft. The logic doesn't add up. John Q. Public decides that he'd rather download a game illegaly than buy it. This means that he obtained the game without paying for it. How is that not theft?

verry simply good sir!

basic law class commencing NOW!.
there are things you can touch. these things are called goods.
there are things you CANT touch, but still own. also goods.

to STEAL something a transfer of goods has to take place from one person to the next.
e.g. you have a bucket of water, i take it from you. now you have NO bucket of water, and i do.
this is stealing.

what pirating a game is, is unrightfully copying.
copying, is not disallowed. using someones ideas who has copyright to them to produce something though, is not. by coping, you produce something. you dont own the idea, and do not pay for it. THIS is illigal. so technically PIRACY is not theft, nor even actualy 'piracy' its more 'disregrading copyrights.' like when you *oldfag allert* videotape things off of your tv.
they are equal. since you dont TAKE anything but you produce something with someone elses ideas.

am i clear enough or do you need further explanation?

 

[Sovvolf]

nor even actualy 'piracy' its more 'disregrading copyrights.' like when you *oldfag allert* videotape things off of your tv.
they are equal. since you dont TAKE anything but you produce something with someone elses ideas.

Hey, don't use the old fart alert on video taping things... You'll start to make me feel old .

Though the big problem with that is, well... When you video tape things off TV (which all of us who were around at the time of the VHS did, lets face it) you tend to keep that to yourself, maybe let your mates borrow it and that's about as much as it goes. Its pretty harmless, legally shakey but reasonably harmless. However what many didn't do was tape it, mass produce it and release it to everyone so they didn't have to pay for it.

Aside from the people on the market and up the old video store in the top shops who just copied and sold them (which was as close to the current pirate business we have going though with the lack of the internet as it is today, it was pretty isolated).

That's pretty much what people do now, its buying a game, then releasing it on the web (often) for free. I can't really sit here and defend that. Personally I think they need to refine some laws for this. People can sit here and bark but telling me that they're not going to lose profit from this is mind boggling.

You can say that everyone who pirates is a potential buyer sure but lets face it, there's not going to be many that are going to go out and purchase a product they already have and got for free. You might get a few noble souls sure but I'm doubting your going to have many. Most of its split between people with a false sense of entitlement, the other with people who just don't want to pay, people that think the are revolutionists (though that might be lumped in with the self entitled) and here and there you'll have people who pirate for a demo or to test it out before buying.

But hey, what do I know. I'm just a poor internet shmuck who's dumb enough to pay for video games.