Piracy, simply put.

[Exocet]

let me put it even simpler-er: pirates are lazy freeloaders and publishers are greedy scum-bags.

done!

So, according to you, a pirate that buys more games than someone who doesn't pirate ever, but still pirates a game every month or so is a lazy freeloaders?

There is no way to see this as a black or white topic, it can only be seen as a case by case topic.

Yes. Yes they are. Especially if they buy tons of games and STILL pirate, they are greedy freeloaders, they could manage with the "tons" of games they already bought, right?

Sigh....

Ask yourself this,if you were in the game industry, would you like someone to buy say, 50 games and pirating one, or someone buying only one game,ever?
Ask yourself also what is best for the industry.

This only obvious answer is that this pirate in question is better for you and the industry.
So what if he pirated that one time? He still gave 50 times more to the industry than the non-greedy freeloader.

But what is this I hear coming? "Exocet you smartass, you took an extreme exemple!" Yes, yes I did, the real question is where the boundary on what is ok? Oviously never buying anything is being a greedy prick, but what about half and half? A third and two thirds?

If I were in the industry, I'd sure as hell pick the guy who pirates one in ten games, but buys a lot of games to compensate, rather than the one who buys a game a year.

Perhaps your righteous, stick-up-the-ass view of things isn't really suited for reality.

 

[Odoylerules360]

Oh, you still assume that the content creators are the ones holding the copyright, how quaint.

As if that little distinction really matters. They sold it, the new owners should be treated with the same as if they had created it.

I like how those two sentences show that you have no understanding of the issue.

You could go read this, to understand the opposition's point of view:
http://www.nosafeharbor.com/

Or you could disregard that, because everything is so much simpler when good things are good and bad things are bad.


DISCLAIMER: I IN NO WAY SUPPORT PIRACY. FILE-SHARERS ARE BAD, MEAN, EVIL, HORRIBLE PEOPLE WHO OUGHT TO HAVE UNPLEASANT THINGS DONE TO THEM BECAUSE OF HOW BAD THEY ARE.

 

[MasochisticAvenger]

finally someone reasonable I for the most part think most pirates are self entitled tw*ts but I agree with you which is why every developer should have a donate button on the page, like my friend who pirated assassins creed 2, brotherhood, and revelation made sure to buy amount of ubisoft games new(or off steam) up to the amount each game was worth, I almost don't even consider that piracy I think that is more akin to jailbreaking an Iphone, I also would have no problem with piracy if it was something the ARTIST(not publishing company or MPAA) says it is ok to pirate for what ever reason, I am too lazy to pull up examples but it has happened, I think Elvis Costello said something along those lines with a new box set that was coming out.

*facepalm*

As far as excuses for piracy goes, that's pretty weak... if not a little amusing. Doing the right thing sometimes does not redeem you when you do something wrong. The fact of the matter is your friend pirated the Assassin Creed games; he has still robbed Ubisoft of money. I'm assuming the games he buys legitimately are games he actually wants, otherwise he would just have bought the Assassin Creed games in the first place. I really don't see how anything could think buying some games justifies piracy...

As for the artist saying it is okay to pirate. If the current license holder releases a verifiable statement allowing their product to be downloaded for free, it is not piracy. Piracy is making a copy of someone's work without their consent. If consent is given, it's perfectly legal. As I said, it would have to come from the person who currently had the rights to the work in question.

 

[Estocavio]

"Piracy, simply put"

Oh I see, this debate has been raging for over a decade, but FINALLY someone has broken it all down for us, simple style.

let me put it even simpler-er: pirates are lazy freeloaders and publishers are greedy scum-bags.

done!

That, Good Sir, made My Day.

 

[Estocavio]

Has anyone said yet that you really don't need any of these luxuries and can live without them until you can afford them?

So what you can't play a new game, big whoop they never last longer then a few hours anymore.

Oh no you didn't see that new movie, probably sucked anyway.

Seriously, if you can't afford to get a game/movie and you must pirate it...MAYBE you should get a fucking job instead of trying to get it illegally? "Oh my budget is tight" Uhm, work?

That's assuming every pirate does it because of tight purse strings. Plenty of people pirate because of a cheapskate attitude as gamers. Sometimes, I even agree with them. Not everything warrants a full sixty bucks, not every budget game is even deserving of my thirty bucks. I've stopped pirating years ago, but that doesn't mean I've stopped being choosy. Games just aren't trashy airport paperbacks you toss away after a single reading; they're products made to be consumed several times, ideally. I'd rather make sure my investment will have sufficient returns in terms of enjoyment, first.

I'm making enough money to pretty much afford anything I want, within reason, and my job is fun enough that I don't see myself quitting anytime soon. If I still bothered with Torrents and dodgy sources for cracks, I'd be bothering with them because some titles interest me, but not enough to splurge on them. Comfortable or not, I sure as Heck ain't rich.

As is, though, I prefer to bite the bullet and purchase whatever doesn't come with a demo. Walking the straight-and-narrow is fairly limiting and sometimes leads to nasty surprises, whereas pirates don't cry over shit games - they just delete the game's .ISO file, uninstall it and forget they even played it.

I certainly wish I could do that with Audiosurf, for instance. But nope - it's in my Steam library, forever greyed out and reminding me that I once was hyped as all Hell for this thing.

Don't even try to pull that demo crap. Thats the biggest load of BS out there, if you want to try it, rent it.

That demo BS is complete shit. A demo gives you a teaser of things not always in the game, not the whole fucking game you'll never uninstall.

Plus, one is completely capable of, oh, I dont know. Watching Video Reviews, reading Text Reviews, chatting to folks who own the Game, and Previews, and Trailers, and whatnot. Plus, it takes *less* time than getting a pretend Demo that happens to not be a Demo.

 

[ElPatron]

An interesting arguement. I propose to you a test of that logic. Go to a movie theatre to see a film. However, do not purchase a ticket, instead, sneak in without paying. If you are not discovered, repeat as necessary until you are caught, and when the authorities arrive, use that same logic to escape punishment.

Showing films on a theatre does cost money, so you are in fact "stealing" from them.

And taking a seat. You're denying someone else the privilege of sitting on the exact same seat. Even if nobody wants to sit there.

Pirates are criminals. There's no way of getting around that. Whatever your reason, you're breaking the law, and while we all know rebellion is psychologically gratifying to these kinds of people.

So basically what you are saying is that you're a criminal? If you want to see a "criminal", check your mirror.

At least I admit I committed several infractions. Copyright laws are a complete joke, and I never cared.

I still lent CDs and VHS tapes years ago, I still lend my CDs and DVDs to others. Honestly I haven't bothered to check how the copyright laws have changed, but I did everything that there is on the back of the cover.

Apparently, if you listened to music in you car loud enough, you were making a "public display" of the content.

yadda yadda it's a crime, they do the same things I did but I used different methods so they should be punished and I shall walk free

...Publishers make money, so people against piracy are wrong? Obviously I'm missing something here.

Publishers make money. The ones who try to fight piracy with DRM and whining are losing to other publishers. It proves *them* wrong.

Yes, there are some people and companies that have stated that they don't mind piracy, but taking their word for everyone in the business is, again, just grabbing for excuses to make someone feel better about their actions.

Let me tell you a story.

I bought a Nine Inch Nails CD.

Later I found out that Trent Reznor was in disagreement with his label, and ditched it to form his own records label.

Basically I threw money at a big corporation, and the artist got the shaft.

I don't care if they say that they agree with piracy. I haven't played new games in a long time. But Trent Reznor specifically said that he didn't care about those albums, people could steal from "him" because the content was not generating income.

Ever had your work, ideas or art stolen? Let me tell you, it feels like crap, and hearing people trying to justify their blatant theft of your efforts instead of just ponying up to their own actions is even more frustrating.

Ideas? Ideas get stolen all the time. I could twist this whole argument and say that publishers steal from everyone else so you can steal them yourself, but I won't.

I'm not the "artist" kind of person, but I had my original content "stolen" because of... COPYRIGHT LAWS!

And it was available for free.

Most importantly, if what serial pirates are doing is justifiable, then why are there so many unprovoked rants about people trying to tell strangers about why they think piracy is OK in their personal situation?
Chances are, what they're doing is illegal in their country, end of story.

Same thing with marijuana. Even if legalized people still have to defend themselves because of the stigma around it's consumption.

If you're doing something that isn't so morally unacceptable, like downloading a ROM of a game you've bought three times already including remakes

I paid a lot of money for the same albums over an over because of Sony.

Guess what, I might not pirate their CD's, but I am sure as hell not buying the same songs in a different format!

Going, "Oh, I'm not at fault for taking a luxury that I did not purchase!!!" is rediculous. TF2 is FREE now. NetHack has always been free. There are sooo many RPGs out there that are now free, including Daggerfall, and Steam and other online sellers have supersales regularly. If you're not using public library internet to write this post, then like Hell can you not afford $4.00 for Oblivion or even just one cent for the HIB.

Most of the games I have been playing are:

- Operation Flashpoint: GOTY
- SWAT 4
- ARMA2: Free
- TF2

Two are free, the rest I have owned for years.

Just because I am defending that everyone is a criminal and badmouthing pirates isn't any proof of moral integrity doesn't mean I have been playing all the games recently released illegally.

 

[Zorpheus]

Don't argue with a fictional opponent called "the pirates". It's called strawmanning.

None of the actual people posting in this thread, made the argument that "everyone is entitled to all media, and we should all get everything for free", just that following copyright laws isn't moral on it's own. Supporting the industry is good, but getting a specific content for free doesn't directly mean a refusal to support the industry.

If everyone would act based on these by pro-piracy morals, that wouldn't hurt the industry, it would just make content more universally available.

Like in your expanded analogy. If everyone would ride the bus for free, that woul ruin public transport. But if everyone would be willing to pay for tickets in general, but willing to take an extra stop in the cases like when they don't happen to have extra money, and the bus happens to be mostly empty, public transport would be a lot more comfortable and user-friendly.

Nobody has to explicitly make the argument that they're entitled to all media, because the idea is inherently made in their stance.

Why would people be entitled to having an extra stop? Because they simply can't afford it? Why does that magically make them entitled to something for free? If you can't afford it, you don't get it. Anything extra beyond what you can't afford makes the bus line lose profits, which then limits its ability to maintain itself.

 

[Wargamer]

A) prove what I'm doing is wrong, and B) use the right fucking terminology.

Words cannot even describe...

You can't justify piracy. You just can't. The only argument you could theoretically bring up is the "stealing bread to feed your family", but even that falls completely flat, because games/movies/music are a privilege that you pay for.

You are breaking the law, it doesn't matter what everyone else calls it or who holds the copyright or how much profit the developer makes. You act like giving money to a publisher is like supporting an evil empire, well you know what? They're just doing their fucking job.

My job is to kick you in the head until you die. You have no right to say that's wrong because I'm "doing my fucking job".

My logic is "right and wrong are social concepts." In other words, something is only wrong if the majority say it is wrong. Thing is, it's the MINORITY who decide law. The only way to counter that is to simply ignore the law on such a scale that it cannot be countered. One person pirating? That a government can punish. A hundred? Sure. A hundred million? Where would you begin?

As I said, it comes down to proving what I am doing is wrong, and why. Take VHS cassettes. The law was you could only watch them ONCE. You recorded a TV program, watched it ONCE, and destroyed the tape. I broke that law, or had others break it for me, at least once a week when I was a kid. Should I go to jail? Should my parents? Or should we just collectively agree that law is wrong?

Another example; it is (or certainly was) illegal in the UK to upload a CD to your hard drive. It was considered an act of piracy. So, if I want to listen to my brand new CD on my iPod, I have to buy ANOTHER COPY just for the iPod. I broke that law, as did most of the country. Should we turn Britain into a giant prison now? No, we should say "that's a retarded law" and move on.

But the reoccuring problem with this, as I mentioned, is what PEOPLE see as wrong and what the LAW sees as wrong are two different things, and we should NOT bow to the law; the law should bow to us. It is there to serve and protect US, not to be catered to.

Fighting Piracy by saying "you're stealing from people!" is bullshit. It isn't stealing when I tape programs off the TV (they actually let you do that now with Sky+ and the like). It isn't stealing when I burn my CDs onto my PC, or burn mp3s onto a disk (again, that's now pretty much legalised by the companies themselves), just as it isn't stealing when I help myself to a copy of Microsoft Office.

Ultimately, we need a fair compromise; we need to find the middle point where people feel they are being treated fairly by companies, and where companies feel they are getting a fair return for their efforts. Apple did it with the music industry (you can actually pay an annual fee to Apple now in order for them to them to 'legalise' your illegal music collection - they'll even upgrade poor quality stolen mp3s to superior copies for free!), we just need to see the same happen to other media.

 

[Wargamer]

Don't argue with a fictional opponent called "the pirates". It's called strawmanning.

None of the actual people posting in this thread, made the argument that "everyone is entitled to all media, and we should all get everything for free", just that following copyright laws isn't moral on it's own. Supporting the industry is good, but getting a specific content for free doesn't directly mean a refusal to support the industry.

If everyone would act based on these by pro-piracy morals, that wouldn't hurt the industry, it would just make content more universally available.

Like in your expanded analogy. If everyone would ride the bus for free, that woul ruin public transport. But if everyone would be willing to pay for tickets in general, but willing to take an extra stop in the cases like when they don't happen to have extra money, and the bus happens to be mostly empty, public transport would be a lot more comfortable and user-friendly.

Nobody has to explicitly make the argument that they're entitled to all media, because the idea is inherently made in their stance.

Why would people be entitled to having an extra stop? Because they simply can't afford it? Why does that magically make them entitled to something for free? If you can't afford it, you don't get it. Anything extra beyond what you can't afford makes the bus line lose profits, which then limits its ability to maintain itself.

Well you are blatantly wrong.

It is not "inherent" in our arguments. Based on iTunes pricing I've pirated about £5 worth of music, and bought around £500 worth. Of that pirated £5 worth, the bulk of it is stuff I cannot find on iTunes. In short, it is material I cannot legally purchase. That is NOT A LOST SALE; it was never going to BE a sale.

The Bus analogy is a perfect one. A bus can hold sixty people, and twenty people pay to ride. Another ten want to ride, but cannot pay. Should they be turned away? No, they shouldn't. The reason you let them ride for free is once they've learned that they like riding the bus, they've become a potential customer. Some will never actually pay to ride, but as long as they aren't taking up space from paying customers, that's not an issue to anyone. Moreover, if just ONE person goes from free-rider to paying customer, wasn't it worth the freebies you gave out?

That's pretty much how the bulk of piracy works; you aren't losing anything physical. At worst, you're losing POTENTIAL. Thing is, that happens EVERY FUCKING DAY. I walked past a Starbucks today whilst thinking "I could sure use a drink." I didn't go in. Instead, I decided to wait until I got home. OH NO! I'VE STOLEN A SALE OFF STARBUCKS!
That is how stupid anti-piracy people sound to us. Whenever we're told "this is just like stealing a jet plane!" we dismiss the speaker as a retard.

We 'Pirates' are all driven by our own internal morals. I won't pirate anything, so long as A) I can obtain it legally, and B) I can obtain it at a fair price. If these conditions cannot be met, I'll pirate. Keep in mind, those same conditions are what ensure a sale; if you overcharge me for a service, or refuse service full stop, I am what is known as a 'Lost Sale'. In short, I only pirate once a business has alienated me by denying the quality of service I desire.

The answer is not to throw a tantrum and criminalise everyone; the answer is to look at those two conditions, and why you failed to meet them. Quite often the reasons are piss-poor ("we won't release this outside of America" or "we want to make a fucking huge markup on this"). Until a business shows willing to actually sit down with 'Pirates' and discuss why they pirate, things are not going to change.

 

[Wargamer]

I would love to test kitchen appliances before buying them too, but there's no real way to do that. Since I can't break in a store to steal one and return it if it doesn't fit my needs, and get away with it (which is the important part, really) - well, i'm SOL.

Ah, so here we go. The real deciding factor is simply whether you can get away with it. Thanks a whole lot. So basically you're saying that the software companies are right. They simply need better DRM to keep you from being able to get away with it. And so when they add things that require constant online for a single-player game, we can look directly at you as to the cause of why.

What an amoral, selfish piece of work. I sincerely hope that no good people are your friends, because they're obviously going to get hurt one day when it poses some minor benefit for you.

I can usually return an appliance for store credit. I cannot return a PSN download for PSN credit, or return a downloaded mp3.

That's one of the reasons people pirate; we're being asked to risk our money WITH NO CHANCE OF REFUND if we are not satisfied.

 

[Alterego-X]

The answer is not to look at those two conditions because, and here's the key, you don't get to unilaterally decide what a fair price is. You see, fair implies there's two sides to the equation, and you're completely disregarding the side that actually went to the trouble of creating the product. The difference is like between being a decent, moral member of society, and being a selfish twat.

If the side that is creating the product has unreasonable demands, then a decent, moral member of society should ignore those.

Otherwise, they would get to unilaterally force bad systems on us.

 

[Quakester]

People can make the argument that piracy is stealing potential but the problem is that more often than not, it's stealing that potential for good. A small percentage of people who pirate games may purchase later on but that is more the exception and not the rule.

Not having a guarantee of enjoyment in no way excuses piracy. There are more than a few products that you can't return for your money back. Try going to a movie theater and then ask for your money back because you didn't like the movie.

 

[Quakester]

The answer is not to look at those two conditions because, and here's the key, you don't get to unilaterally decide what a fair price is. You see, fair implies there's two sides to the equation, and you're completely disregarding the side that actually went to the trouble of creating the product. The difference is like between being a decent, moral member of society, and being a selfish twat.

If the side that is creating the product has unreasonable demands, then a decent, moral member of society should ignore those.

Otherwise, they would get to unilaterally force bad systems on us.

They are not forcing a bad system on anyone. If they were making a product that you needed to have then they would be forcing it on you. You don't have to buy their product.

 

[Alterego-X]

The answer is not to look at those two conditions because, and here's the key, you don't get to unilaterally decide what a fair price is. You see, fair implies there's two sides to the equation, and you're completely disregarding the side that actually went to the trouble of creating the product. The difference is like between being a decent, moral member of society, and being a selfish twat.

If the side that is creating the product has unreasonable demands, then a decent, moral member of society should ignore those.

Otherwise, they would get to unilaterally force bad systems on us.

They are not forcing a bad system on anyone. If they were making a product that you needed to have then they would be forcing it on you. You don't have to buy their product.

They are forcing it on society as a whole.

The Internet made copy control obselete, and the overwhelming majority of the digital native generation considers it natural to download without any limits (while also supporting artists whenever they can).

Yet they insist on laws like SOPA, and slowing down Internet's evolution as much as they can, and arbitarily arresting a few random people for doing what everyone else around them does, as a scare tactic, just to uphold the status quo and preserve their rights that once made sense, but don't do any more.