Lawyer Destroys Arguments for Game Piracy

[LilithSlave]

No. Eight thousand other individuals own that game without having paid a single penny for it.

They don't "own" it, they pirated it. They have the data required to be able to partake in the media. Something that oftentimes results in interest and purchase. Said people likely didn't have an interest in buying to begin with and may have barely had the interest to play. But playing gives people a chance to enjoy and therefor the desire to purchase they wouldn't have previously had. Seeing statistics and studies in the past, and just natural logic of circumstances and motivation I have reason to believe that while piracy causes more people to play without buying, it causes more people to play and buy in general. Leading to, while more "illegitimate" plays, also causes more purchases.

For someone claiming to have rebuttals to my statements, you haven't done much of that so much as downtalking and belittling people, and just basically saying "you're wrong". There isn't so much as a coherent argument in your entire post.

doesn't hold water.

Telling people what to do and what's right and wrong to do doesn't hold water as an argument of what's right and wrong and just and unjust. If you want the claim that people should rent instead of pirate to try things out to hold weight as more than just your opinion, then you should try to substantial why exactly it should be done, the difference between it and pirating.

Saying "it's wrong because it's illegal" doesn't hold water.
Saying "it's wrong because too bad, you don't have a right to play games you haven't bought" doesn't hold water.
Saying "it's wrong because your arguments don't hold water" doesn't hold water.

To show that it's wrong, you need to be able to provide real consequence and a workable ethical explanation on permission and how it can relate to digital information, and how copyright laws as they are in particular are fair and can be justified. Not just call violation of said copyright laws unjustified.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

I can understand the complaints regarding piracy. It absolutely sucks that developers and publishers lose out on sales and all, but I have a couple qualms with this, mostly because he isn't looking through a consumer perspective of things. There are a couple reasons why piracy is prevalent:

1. We don't want to put up with bullshit. We have absolutely no patience for DRM and less so for publishers who have a narrow and close-minded view of PC gaming as a whole. Denying them of a sale seems like a reasonable thing to do when said publisher implements a mechanism that sets out to punish people who purchased the game and inadvertently REWARDS those who pirate the game. It all comes down to the message said publisher conveys, and if the publisher is saying "Fuck you, we don't want your money.", they shouldn't ***** when they're refused a sale in favor of a better functioning pirated copy.

Same applies to those who force a spyware client to run a game (Battlefield 3) and the same applies to those that frequently and traditionally screw consumers over because they live in different territories of the globe (Nintendo and Xenoblade Chronicles). Publisher refuses our money? Okay! Don't come crying and blithely whining "HURF A DURF, PIRACY ARE BAD BECAUSE WE IS LOSING LEGITAMITE SALES. HURRRR DURRRRR"

2. Piracy is a good testing mechanism for PC gamers. We pirate the game, if it runs, HEY GREAT! We can buy the game and enjoy a legitimate copy to enjoy. I mean come on, Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 are on that list, those are, if anything, heavy duty games that require a really good computer.

3. Piracy helps to justify a purchase. Yes, I know there is a thing called demos, but not a lot of games have them. I'll be the first to admit that I pirated Minecraft, but after playing the pirated copy, I set out to purchase it, knowing that the purchase I made was worth it having played it before and knowing what I was getting myself into. Plus, games are 50+ dollars these days. How do I know whether or not the game I'll be getting is either A: Good, B: Shit, or C: A console/PC port depending on the platform of choice?

i have na answer for three
their called reviews, find someone whose opinion you trust and voila. Couple that with common sense and a little poke around and money spent effectively.

Common sense and money spent effectively, yes. I'll look through LP's on YouTube and play demos if they're available, but reviews? Not really. I usually trust the opinions of my friends who've played the game I want to buy and the User Review board here, but I rarely, if ever, trust professional reviews. The Escapist is an exception, but IGN, GameSpot, and GameTrailers are a few of the sites that I avoid like the plague, as both have a history of over-exaggerating the good and bad and the latter has a history of bias against anything Nintendo or Sony.

And don't, for the love of God, don't mention Metascores and User Reviews on Metacritic.

You trust the escapist on reviews? Don't you remember the whole DA2 thing? "A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be". Seriously? But then again, that was written by the same guy who wrote this ridiculously sensationalist piece of crap.

I'll give Tito credit: He's got serious balls to write what he wrote in the first place, and besides, most reviews are just subjective opinion to begin, and criticizing him for that is absolutely unfair, and the banal cries of "HERP DILLY DE DERP, BIOWARE DUN PAID ESCAPIST EA R DEVIL DURR DURR HURR" are just as fucking stupid as well. If you're seriously begrudging him over that, then that's just childish. Give him credit for stating his opinion in spite of all the rage and ire the game practically emitted.

 

[___________________]

Give the consumer a free demo...just a little sample of the product to get them started. Get them hooked on it. Then, if they want more make them pay for the real good stuff.

I never liked drug dealers. But I like mislabelled people such as "pirates" and whatnot though.

 

[Ad-Man-Gamer]

I will openly admit that I have pirated games and software. You see, I tried legally buying games before on another download service, Real Arcade. All games that you buy off of the dam thing could only be downloaded for one year. If you got a new computer, or reinstalled windows you lost your games if the year was up. In order to get the games back that were still in the year for download, you had to dread through your emails hoping you still had the receipts in your inbox.

When my motherboard broke, I had to reinstall everything again, because it thought the new MB was a new computer, and as a result my favourite game"AirXonix" was lost. I called reel and explained what happened and they just said that there is nothing they could do... And that was the point I said fuck this shit.

So I pirated it. After that point I started to see more bullshit that I didn't think about before, like the hole Please insert the CD crap, as well as locking the program to your PC nonsense. All this stuff made me feel that i didn't own my games. it maid me feel that my games in one way or another were being held by the publishers just out of my reach. It just became more practical to go on the pirate bay and download a torrent for a cracked game that would just run out of the box. If I lost the key or disk, there is no company that could say FUCK YOU and tell you to buy another copy. Basically, I lost my trust in the gaming and software industry, and could not give two shits if they were not making money.

But I eventually stopped. As a note, it wasn't out of guilt.
(I actually found it quite amusing how company's complained about losing money, then revealed that they had a 9 figure profit).
It was the fact that I found steam. FINALLY! A company that understood the hardship of software ownership, and actually tackled the problem. They offer as many down loads of my games as I like, and the license is linked to my account rather than my PC.

I was right at home. I felt like I owned my games, and that the customer was coming first. From that point i have not pirated a game and I now feel that Pirating is more of a hassle then going on the steam store and buying the game. I was also getting tired of all the spyware slugging down my computer, and frankly it was a hassle trying to find working keygens, cracks and what not.

In the end of the day Its all about service! As Gabe Newell said. If you can only buy a game from a store for 40£ and their only open Mon-Sat 9:00am-5:00pm, and the pirates are open 24/7 and offering it for free. witch is offering the better service?

 

[Chairman Miaow]

I can understand the complaints regarding piracy. It absolutely sucks that developers and publishers lose out on sales and all, but I have a couple qualms with this, mostly because he isn't looking through a consumer perspective of things. There are a couple reasons why piracy is prevalent:

1. We don't want to put up with bullshit. We have absolutely no patience for DRM and less so for publishers who have a narrow and close-minded view of PC gaming as a whole. Denying them of a sale seems like a reasonable thing to do when said publisher implements a mechanism that sets out to punish people who purchased the game and inadvertently REWARDS those who pirate the game. It all comes down to the message said publisher conveys, and if the publisher is saying "Fuck you, we don't want your money.", they shouldn't ***** when they're refused a sale in favor of a better functioning pirated copy.

Same applies to those who force a spyware client to run a game (Battlefield 3) and the same applies to those that frequently and traditionally screw consumers over because they live in different territories of the globe (Nintendo and Xenoblade Chronicles). Publisher refuses our money? Okay! Don't come crying and blithely whining "HURF A DURF, PIRACY ARE BAD BECAUSE WE IS LOSING LEGITAMITE SALES. HURRRR DURRRRR"

2. Piracy is a good testing mechanism for PC gamers. We pirate the game, if it runs, HEY GREAT! We can buy the game and enjoy a legitimate copy to enjoy. I mean come on, Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 are on that list, those are, if anything, heavy duty games that require a really good computer.

3. Piracy helps to justify a purchase. Yes, I know there is a thing called demos, but not a lot of games have them. I'll be the first to admit that I pirated Minecraft, but after playing the pirated copy, I set out to purchase it, knowing that the purchase I made was worth it having played it before and knowing what I was getting myself into. Plus, games are 50+ dollars these days. How do I know whether or not the game I'll be getting is either A: Good, B: Shit, or C: A console/PC port depending on the platform of choice?

i have na answer for three
their called reviews, find someone whose opinion you trust and voila. Couple that with common sense and a little poke around and money spent effectively.

Common sense and money spent effectively, yes. I'll look through LP's on YouTube and play demos if they're available, but reviews? Not really. I usually trust the opinions of my friends who've played the game I want to buy and the User Review board here, but I rarely, if ever, trust professional reviews. The Escapist is an exception, but IGN, GameSpot, and GameTrailers are a few of the sites that I avoid like the plague, as both have a history of over-exaggerating the good and bad and the latter has a history of bias against anything Nintendo or Sony.

And don't, for the love of God, don't mention Metascores and User Reviews on Metacritic.

You trust the escapist on reviews? Don't you remember the whole DA2 thing? "A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be". Seriously? But then again, that was written by the same guy who wrote this ridiculously sensationalist piece of crap.

I'll give Tito credit: He's got serious balls to write what he wrote in the first place, and besides, most reviews are just subjective opinion to begin, and criticizing him for that is absolutely unfair, and the banal cries of "HERP DILLY DE DERP, BIOWARE DUN PAID ESCAPIST EA R DEVIL DURR DURR HURR" are just as fucking stupid as well. If you're seriously begrudging him over that, then that's just childish. Give him credit for stating his opinion in spite of all the rage and ire the game practically emitted.

I have no problem with somebody liking a game, saying what they like about a game, or whatever. What I have a problem with is saying it is the pinnacle of role playing games. Saying "I really enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it, fine, but to say that it IS something that good and say it that definitively I just don't think is on. And the thing about them paying the Escapist was ridiculous, yes.

 

[Lyri]

They don't "own" it, they pirated it. They have the data required to be able to partake in the media. Something that oftentimes results in interest and purchase. Said people likely didn't have an interest in buying to begin with and may have barely had the interest to play. But playing gives people a chance to enjoy and therefor the desire to purchase they wouldn't have previously had. Seeing statistics and studies in the past, and just natural logic of circumstances and motivation I have reason to believe that while piracy causes more people to play without buying, it causes more people to play and buy in general. Leading to, while more "illegitimate" plays, also causes more purchases.

For someone claiming to have rebuttals to my statements, you haven't done much of that so much as downtalking and belittling people, and just basically saying "you're wrong". There isn't so much as a coherent argument in your entire post.

Your statements are completely illogical and simply involves you putting your head in the sand to avoid the obvious implications of your actions.
They don't "own" it, they pirated it.
This gem right here is your opening statement twisting original intent to suit your own, if you have a copy of a game in your possession which is not free and you did not pay for it then you should not have it.
Regardless of "ownership", also if you don't own it then why do you possess it? That just admits to theft in the first place.

How does it hold as justification that only digital media is something you can take and try before buying?
Unless there is a free demo then you have no right to do so, it's almost like breaking into someone's house just to watch their television and eat their food.
You didn't intend to buy any of it but now you might because you like what you see.

As I said prior, after you download your chosen game when do you buy it?
Are you going to go straight out and buy it at full price or will you go and purchase it during a sale or find a used copy?
You purchased it after all right? Your download is now justified because you bought a copy of a game you already had the full experience of, even if you didn't pay full price.

There are demos all over, not for every title but they are definitely out there. If you're pirating on consoles, you're able to rent a title before purchase or even just borrow it from a friend.
Piracy is not a try before you buy system.

Telling people what to do and what's right and wrong to do doesn't hold water as an argument of what's right and wrong and just and unjust. If you want the claim that people should rent instead of pirate to try things out to hold weight as more than just your opinion, then you should try to substantial why exactly it should be done, the difference between it and pirating.

Saying "it's wrong because it's illegal" doesn't hold water.
Saying "it's wrong because too bad, you don't have a right to play games you haven't bought" doesn't hold water.
Saying "it's wrong because your arguments don't hold water" doesn't hold water.

To show that it's wrong, you need to be able to provide real consequence and a workable ethical explanation on permission and how it can relate to digital information, and how copyright laws as they are in particular are fair and can be justified. Not just call violation of said copyright laws unjustified.

Reiterating but you have your head buried in the sand pretty deep.

Whether you like it or not, the act of piracy as it stands is illegal it's that simple. Do I have to explain action and consequences about illegal activities to the so called "Last Bastion of Intelligence on the internet"?

You can't just pick and choose to ignore a law because you have access to content so easily, yes some people do download to try and then buy however a lot of people don't.
Those who have strong moral fibre don't get a free pass here, you're still committing the same crime but you're going and paying for it after.

Defences like this are reasons why SOPA is looming overhead yet again, people are trying to protect their own investments against the faceless masses of internet users.
"But it's on the internet and free" is the exact reason that got us into this mess, now we're trying to battle it.
As a person who uses free media readily available online and doesn't download anything, thanks.

 

[mooncalf]

I'm glad that the anti-piracy message seems to be gaining in the kind of punter support I believe it deserves. While the complaints of the industry along with it's clumsy attempts at a technical silver bullet have often seemed at once hollow and repugnant to me, there are I think enough good reasons everyday people can appreciate for paying admission to the ride.

If you don't have the money or the confidence in the product, do without, or else you're just giving in to your inner cow, stupidly grazing on whatever you can get at.

 

[LilithSlave]

the act of piracy as it stands is illegal it's that simple.

Yeah, so? Why are you saying this? Nobody in this thread has said that piracy isn't illegal(well, it is some places). In many places it's certainly illegal, and not only has nobody stated otherwise, many of us have gone out of the way to state the fact we are aware of this.

Yes, it's illegal, so what? Illegal, does not, mean wrong. I'll have to state that as many times as I have to. Legal is not right. Illegal is not wrong. Many laws in history are unjustified such as anti-miscegenation law. Arguing that something is wrong because it is illegal is an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

You can't just pick and choose to ignore a law because you have access to content so easily

People can disobey and disagree with laws.

How does it hold as justification that only digital media is something you can take and try before buying?

Because it is the only media that can be done so with. It is information. Information cannot truly be stolen. The biggest argument for scarcity of information is privacy, not hard work. Or if such information violates morals to create, such as child pornography. In which it is illegal to distribute not because hard work that deserves compensation went into it, but because harming a human being goes into making it and violating sexual privacy of the person violated.

Otherwise, information has no reason to be forced into scarcity because it does nothing to benefit hard work of creators. It is a useless limit for both creators and consumers. Unless the intention is to have less people enjoy something. And if a person puts their information out there, it's not their right to say who gets to enjoy it or who doesn't. For instance, Varg's music is already on the web, he has no say in which races and nationalities listen to it, though it's doubtless he would be uncomfortable with Africans listening to his music.

It is nothing like breaking into someone's house. The only information sharing that borders such a thing is having personal information stolen like sexually violating footage. But copyright material like video games is not violating, heck, even pirated porn is not. Piracy merely destroys scarcity. It is not that people who have not paid only deserve to partake in information, it is that information creators do not have the right to scarcity. Once you let information out there, it has the right to be spread.

It is not like breaking into someone's house, it is not like stealing a car. It might be a slight inconvenience for some people, but not one that is morally important. It will be a great inconvenience to many people if it ever becomes possible to copy a car, and with the future of 3D printing, it surely will be. But it is not stealing to copy a car. It is not immoral, or unethical, and it is the job of the auto-motive's industry to adapt to such an industry where people can't be stopped from copying automobiles. Will it be illegal? Probably, if certain people get their way. Is it immoral? Of course not.

 

[ResonanceSD]

snip

People will pirate anything, including something that has the potential to cost one cent, if it means they don't have to pay for it.


Edit, and the fact that you're equating illegal activity to a market mechanism illustrates the problem the industry has with pirates. Pirates don't know how money works.

On the contrary, they do. They understand that they're underserved customers that the industry is ignoring to try to extrapolate massive amounts of money from them for inferior service.

But you don't have to take my word for it. If you can sit here and argue against Gabe Newell [http://www.gamefront.com/gabe-newell-piracy-is-a-non-issue/] and explain how he's made Russia his second largest market in Europe with copyright, then I'm all ears.

Hah, none of what you've said actually excuses piracy.

Ah, so you're trolling. No one is trying to excuse piracy. It's basically inevitable when companies decide to instill false barriers to content or provide inferior service.

I'm not trolling. Just trying to point out the erroneous logic which calls piracy a market mechanism which is what you are attempting. It isn't part of the market because it is illegal appropriation of content. Pirates are not natural competitors to the industry, regardless of what the extra credits people say.

 

[ResonanceSD]

the act of piracy as it stands is illegal it's that simple.

Yeah, so? Why are you saying this? Nobody in this thread has said that piracy isn't illegal(well, it is some places). In many places it's certainly illegal, and not only has nobody stated otherwise, many of us have gone out of the way to state the fact we are aware of this.

Yes, it's illegal, so what? Illegal, does not, mean wrong. I'll have to state that as many times as I have to. Legal is not right. Illegal is not wrong. Many laws in history are unjustified such as anti-miscegenation law. Arguing that something is wrong because it is illegal is an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

You can't just pick and choose to ignore a law because you have access to content so easily

People can disobey and disagree with laws.

How does it hold as justification that only digital media is something you can take and try before buying?

Because it is the only media that can be done so with. It is information. Information cannot truly be stolen. The biggest argument for scarcity of information is privacy, not hard work. Or if such information violates morals to create, such as child pornography. In which it is illegal to distribute not because hard work that deserves compensation went into it, but because harming a human being goes into making it and violating sexual privacy of the person violated.

Otherwise, information has no reason to be forced into scarcity because it does nothing to benefit hard work of creators. It is a useless limit for both creators and consumers. Unless the intention is to have less people enjoy something. And if a person puts their information out there, it's not their right to say who gets to enjoy it or who doesn't. For instance, Varg's music is already on the web, he has no say in which races and nationalities listen to it, though it's doubtless he would be uncomfortable with Africans listening to his music.

It is nothing like breaking into someone's house. The only information sharing that borders such a thing is having personal information stolen like sexually violating footage. But copyright material like video games is not violatingy, heck, even pirated porn is not. Piracy merely destroys scarcity. It is not that people who have not paid only deserve to partake in information, it is that information creators do not have the right to scarcity. Once you let information out there, it has the right to be spread.

It is not like breaking into someone's house, it is not like stealing a car. It might be a slight inconvenience for some people, but not one that is morally important. It will be a great inconvenience to many people if it ever becomes possible to copy a car, and with the future of 3D printing, it surely will be. But it is not stealing to copy a car. It is not immoral, or unethical, and it is the job of the auto-motive's industry to adapt to such an industry where people can't be stopped from copying automobiles. Will it be illegal? Probably, if certain people get their way. Is it immoral? Of course not.

Moralise and rationalise about the rights of data all you like. Content creators have the entitlement and right to get paid for what they produce. It is intellectual property, not information, which is why you refer to it as such. Calling it what it actually is completely shuts down your already bogus argument.

 

[Mahha]

Well obviously we needed a Captain Obvious character to explain that theft of intellectual property is still theft.

Yes, yes we did.

You know I used to pirate games a lot. Mainly out of convenience and the fact that most game aren't worth the ridiculous amount of money they want for it. But I did (and I still do) buy games I liked, to support the developers, yadda yadda yadda. I'm not trying to justify what I did. I stole games plain and simple. I stole fucking Daikatana and I stole the new Duke. And you know what? I'm glad I didn't open my wallet for that crap and fuck morality right up the bum, when people get away by selling half made bullshit for 40? they deserve a high piracy rate and they deserve to go down the pipe.

 

[z121231211]

I don't get what's with people needing to pirate games. If you don't want to hand over $60 for a game, just don't play it. If the producer didn't put it at an affordable price, he didn't want you to play it and also if they didn't give you a demo or free trial, he didn't even want you to try the game out before you bought it. Respond to this by not even giving their game attention or at the very least emailing a complaint.

And if you still absolutely need to play their game, whether you can afford it or not, you're addicted, get help.

 

[Lyri]

Yeah, so? Why are you saying this? Nobody in this thread has said that piracy isn't illegal(well, it is some places). In many places it's certainly illegal, and not only has nobody stated otherwise, many of us have gone out of the way to state the fact we are aware of this.

Yes, it's illegal, so what? Illegal, does not, mean wrong. I'll have to state that as many times as I have to. Legal is not right. Illegal is not wrong. Many laws in history are unjustified such as anti-miscegenation law. Arguing that something is wrong because it is illegal is an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

Straight in with the moral stand point, I'm finding it hard to take anything seriously.

People can disobey and disagree with laws.

Of course you can but the former will have repercussions whilst the latter doesn't.

Because it is the only media that can be done so with. It is information. Information cannot truly be stolen. The biggest argument for scarcity of information is privacy, not hard work. Or if such information violates morals to create, such as child pornography. In which it is illegal to distribute not because hard work that deserves compensation went into it, but because harming a human being goes into making it and violating sexual privacy of the person violated.

Otherwise, information has no reason to be forced into scarcity because it does nothing to benefit hard work of creators. It is a useless limit for both creators and consumers. Unless the intention is to have less people enjoy something. And if a person puts their information out there, it's not their right to say who gets to enjoy it or who doesn't. For instance, Varg's music is already on the web, he has no say in which races and nationalities listen to it, though it's doubtless he would be uncomfortable with Africans listening to his music.

It is nothing like breaking into someone's house. The only information sharing that borders such a thing is having personal information stolen like sexually violating footage. But copyright material like video games is not violating, heck, even pirated porn is not. Piracy merely destroys scarcity. It is not that people who have not paid only deserve to partake in information, it is that information creators do not have the right to scarcity. Once you let information out there, it has the right to be spread.

It is not like breaking into someone's house, it is not like stealing a car. It might be a slight inconvenience for some people, but not one that is morally important. It will be a great inconvenience to many people if it ever becomes possible to copy a car, and with the future of 3D printing, it surely will be. But it is not stealing to copy a car. It is not immoral, or unethical, and it is the job of the auto-motive's industry to adapt to such an industry where people can't be stopped from copying automobiles. Will it be illegal? Probably, if certain people get their way. Is it immoral? Of course not.

Read that bold text, see it?
Horseshit.

Your argument basically comes down to "because I can with digital media", which as you so eloquently said prior

People can disobey and disagree with laws.

You have said that it's the only one that you can take freely, which as we know is completely false.
You can take anything you want if you take that attitude, hell why not steal a car? Possession is 9/10ths of the law correct?

You're willing to break the law that's super easy to do but not follow through and start stealing books of information because it too has a right to be spread, I am surprised!.

Yet again you're side stepping the comparison just so you can suit your own argument.

The only information sharing that borders such a thing is having personal information stolen like sexually violating footage. But copyright material like video games is not violating, heck, even pirated porn is not. Piracy merely destroys scarcity. It is not that people who have not paid only deserve to partake in information, it is that information creators do not have the right to scarcity. Once you let information out there, it has the right to be spread.

People do not have a right to video games, they are a luxury item that isn't a necessity. There is nothing necessary about video games and the need for them to be scarce or distributed en masse is a straw man in your argument.
A video game is not information, it's a product that someone has made and any creator unless otherwise saying so has a right to protect his intellectual property from being taken.

If you want Information for free, go and print off every wikipedia page and put it into a book or pirate Encarta 95 and continue to pretend you're on a noble crusade of information to everyone.

 

[LilithSlave]

It is intellectual property, not information

Wait, what?

I don't even know where to start tearing that statement apart it makes so little sense.

I think you should attempt to clarify what you mean. Because that statement as it stands is downright silly.

Being "intellectual property" doesn't make something not information. And to be honest, the very concept of "intellectual property" is quite silly.

You're willing to break the law that's super easy to do but not follow through and start stealing books of information because it too has a right to be spread, I am surprised!.

What do you mean "you"? I don't pirate, I merely and rightly morally agree with it.

Stealing books would be stealing materials, not copying information. Stealing books happens to not only be illegal, but unethical, unlike piracy, or copying books.

You have said that it's the only one that you can take freely, which as we know is completely false.
You can take anything you want if you take that attitude, hell why not steal a car? Possession is 9/10ths of the law correct?

Not "take" freely, reproduce freely. Copying a car and 3D printing a car is radically different from taking it off a dealership's lot. Copying information and stealing a physical object like a car are two obviously, radically different things.

People do not have a right to video games, they are a luxury item that isn't a necessity.

Sure they do, they're information, like anything else.

Being luxurious doesn't have anything to do with whether people have the right to copy them.

Information however not as a necessary to survival as food, is still better off being as far-spread and available as possible.

A video game is not information

Yes, it is, it is data. It is 0s and 1s.

it's a product that someone has made and any creator unless otherwise saying so has a right to protect his intellectual property from being taken.

Oh, does someone have the right to their intellectual property not being copied and spread? Why?

Does a person even have a right to "intellectual property". Can information even reasonably be considered property? It seems silly to me to consider information property.

 

[Lyri]

Not "take" freely, reproduce freely.

Where do you stand on printing your own money?

A video game is not information

Yes, it is, it is data. It is 0s and 1s.

You're taking the "right to information" so far out of context it's unreal.

Also

The terms data, information and knowledge are frequently used for overlapping concepts. The main difference is in the level of abstraction being considered. Data is the lowest level of abstraction, information is the next level, and finally, knowledge is the highest level among all three.[citation needed] Data on its own carries no meaning. For data to become information, it must be interpreted and take on a meaning

Source = Data [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data]

 

[LilithSlave]

Money isn't a piece of data, it is a government certificate. I would support copying those paper documents just fine as long as they were not intended for purchasing flow back into the economy. I'm a little uncomfortable with paper currency to begin with though.

Gold, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. While I don't think people have the right to copy paper money for use, I'm not sure whether governments should be issuing paper money anymore when there could be better alternatives.

And Gold is no such document that can be frauded. Gold would quickly lose value because of such a thing, but Gold is also a useful material and Gold is largely only valuable because it is rare to begin with. Were it possible to copy your own Gold cheaply, I would support such action morally. And pretty much any other "precious material". I don't support the use of copied of money because it is a bit different from copied information. Or something like a car for that matter. Paper money is a government contract of sorts. So copying and using it would be like impersonation for a check.

For things such as gold though I would support mass copying. Of course, unlike novels, gold would lose a lot of interest if copied a lot.

And forgive me, the meaning of "information" here in many of these cases has largely been "data" on the sliding scale of abstraction. By the way, note how that's a wikipedia article lacking citations. While I do agree that there is some nuance and "information" is used in different ways than data to mean something useful or the like, there is a lot of overlapping, and "information" certainly does not mean something like "educational information" in all contexts. It is certainly true that we use terms like "information" to mean things such as "informed in relevant and useful materials", but that is not always the case. And there's quite a variance of how "informative" or useful something can be for varying situations. The wikipedia entry for "information" also has 0s and 1s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information

Information in its most restricted technical sense is an ordered sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message. Information can be recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. This concept has numerous other meanings in different contexts. [1] Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, representation, and especially entropy.

It's certainly not a gross misusage of the term "information" to use it to describe digital data.

We're getting quite into the semantics argument here, which really shows how main points are ignored in favor of more emotional arguments. But it is certainly not ridiculous to refer to something like a video game as information. I would certainly require a better source than an unsourced wikipedia article about information being more specific in meaning than data, to believe that I have used the term "information" wrongly.

Furthermore, nothing on either of these articles implies that video games are not information. What qualities described of information anywhere that it can be contrasted to mere data do video games lack?

 

[Harlief]

The notion that piracy does not equate to lost sales is just as erroneous. "Piracy might result in an eventual purchase of a game, but in the meantime it means a financial loss for the developer," Purewal said. "Sadly developers are not gamer banks, willing to effectively loan gamers money until we decide we like them enough to pay them."

I would be curious to see how many pirates who would normally purchase a game they've tried would still purchase games if they hadn't tried them first. The problem with all the pro and anti-piracy arguments is that there's a lot of people just saying things and making up figures on both sides but very little genuine investigation going on.

 

[Lyri]

Money isn't a piece of data, it is a government certificate. I would support copying those paper documents just fine as long as they were not intended for purchasing flow back into the economy. I'm a little uncomfortable with paper currency to begin with though.

Gold, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. While I don't think people have the right to copy paper money for use, I'm not sure whether governments should be issuing paper money anymore when there could be better alternatives.

And Gold is no such document that can be frauded. Gold would quickly lose value because of such a thing, but Gold is also a useful material and Gold is largely only valuable because it is rare to begin with. Were it possible to copy your own Gold cheaply, I would support such action morally. And pretty much any other "precious material". I don't support the use of copied of money because it is a bit different from copied information. Or something like a car for that matter. Paper money is a government contract of sorts. So copying and using it would be like impersonation for a check.

For things such as gold though I would support mass copying. Of course, unlike novels, gold would lose a lot of interest if copied a lot.

So you're happy to devalue something so the populus can have it?
What a wonderfully bleak world you live in, where nothing is sacred. Certainly an eye opening stance on your part.

And forgive me, the meaning of "information" here in many of these cases has largely been "data" on the sliding scale of abstraction. By the way, note how that's a wikipedia article lacking citations. While I do agree that there is some nuance and "information" is used in different ways than data to mean something useful or the like, there is a lot of overlapping, and "information" certainly does not mean something like "educational information" in all contexts. It is certainly true that we use terms like "information" to mean things such as "informed in relevant and useful materials", but that is not always the case. And there's quite a variance of how "informative" or useful something can be for varying situations. The wikipedia entry for "information" also has 0s and 1s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information

Information in its most restricted technical sense is an ordered sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message. Information can be recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. This concept has numerous other meanings in different contexts. [1] Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, representation, and especially entropy.

It's certainly not a gross misusage of the term "information" to use it to describe digital data.

It's not digital data though or didn't you read that last snippet?

For data to become information, it must be interpreted and take on a meaning

The 1 & 0's have a meaning of their own, they actually make something. Data on it's own means absolutely nothing, I'm tempted to snapshot a page of statistics and wipe off the title but I really can't be bothered.
All it would take to not make it a page full of numbers is it's heading and you're suddenly aware of what the numbers mean, information.

Intellectually property however isn't information, not in that sense. It's something somebody has made from their own thoughts or from the collective thoughts of others.
What right do you have to that?
They have created something from nothing and put it out into the world, they demand a fee for the use and this is acceptable. It's how things have been for a long time now, but the modern day pirate believes he can ignore this because they base their facts on their own subjective opinion.

You're only able to use the excuse that "It's information" because the Internet has enabled it for you.
The prevalence of the Internet in everyone's household and the ability to upload files too it has caused anything digital to be considered some form of information, because of erroneous facts such as "A file is data, data is information".

Back when you had to sit at a tape deck and hit record and play at the same time so you could record from one tape to the other, we didn't call it "liberation of information" we called it copying, everyone knew you weren't supposed to do it but they did anyway and people were honest about their intent.
They just wanted a free copy of something because they had the means to do so, which never made it right.
This problem is only exacerbated by the presence of the Internet, which is what people are trying to protect against.
Creation isn't free and if anyone ever said "Ok, no more copyright laws have at it" then we'd be in a bad way.
I'd love to see more Open Source products but we won't because people don't have the capacity to continue to create without the funding to go further, especially if it was an open market and so many competitors having the ability to take your work and expand upon it.

 

[LilithSlave]

I free copy for themselves. While on the internet people want the liberation to share information they bought to others. You can't "liberate information" in any age where there isn't a widespread information network such as the internet. The best you could do is make many copies and distribute them which was at a cost to you. Which is why people only did so to their family members. Because passing them out to strangers would be a big personal cost of hardware. Today, people want to share something they have. Those downloads come from somewhere, uploaders.

And Open Source is a growing thing. Heck, the amount of freeware is growing all the time.

The ability to spread information for free is not some irrelevant nuance to the same issue. It changes the matter and the morality of it entirely. And when you put something out into the world, you cannot expect scarcity and you do not deserve to enforce scarcity. You cannot steal information, especially if that information is not to the personal detriment of an individual(and even then, personally detrimental information technically has the right to be free, such as the "My Tram Experience" lady. And I'd have more sympathy to that kind of information being kept private than copyrighted video games). Just because you created information, does not mean you have all rights over it and it's distribution and that you deserve it. People can copy and have a right to copy information you created of any kind unless said information is immoral. You don't have the right to say someone has the right to listen to a song just because you created it. You don't get the right for personal approval. We talk of "pirate entitlement", but does Varg Vikernes have the personal right to stop anyone of black descent from listening to Burzum music? Creators simply aren't entitled to intellectual property and individual rights over every single person that gets to listen to their media they put out there, and legally stop them from spreading it. Once it's out there, it's out there. If Varg didn't want black people listening to his music, which he surely doesn't, he shouldn't have allowed it to surface on the internet.

So you're happy to devalue something so the populus can have it?

Only depriving things of a "value" that is incredibly worthless.

Worth is only worth anything as far as it can spread and influence. Not just money, but opinion, time, any attention and importance it can be given.

Something has instantly become far more value by being free and unrestricted to be enjoyed. Being scarce only deprives something.

There are some rare games that have gone for thousands upon thousands of dollars because they are so rare, no online digital rom of them distributed. And while that cartridge may have a kind of huge "value" because of it's scarcity. It's as worthless as worthless can get if it can only be enjoyed by 5 or so people because it was never uploaded to the internet for all to enjoy. It may be "worth" several thousand, but it it's never spread beyond that, it's essentially worthless in all the ways that matter.