Poll: Can piracy be justified?

[Spectral Dragon]

I think it could be argued as a form of protest. For example, ebooks for my Kindle cost almost as much as a paperback copy, and in some cases cost more. I stick to the free and cheap books I find, but I feel that one could argue that pirating books is a form of protest against the insane pricing set by companies when all you really need is an author and an editor. That said, I don't condone piracy.

This is something I encountered a while back. I figured I'd get a kindle for my university books, since ONE book weighed literally 5 kilos, so I checked first - okay, cheap enough on amazon, but their "international" kindles are ridiculously expensive. I got one cheaper though, went to ordering the book... The book is not available in Europe.

I was just so angry - I'd gone through MASSIVE problems in tracking down and getting a kindle without having to sell a kidney or 3, and amazon hadn't said ANYTHING about the book not being available. That's one occasion I'd tell people to become pirates - in the sense of looting amazon's warehouses.

Prices seem odd too, but can be about as high as hardback while cutting loads of costs on shipping and publishing... Something is awry there.

 

[Ninonybox_v1legacy]

Piracy can sometimes have its place.

I was going to quote the video myself as well, beat me to the punch sir.

 

[twaddle]

I'm sorry but I had to play Pandora's Tower, which never had a release in NA. I'll still buy it when it comes here though

 

[Trippy Turtle]

It can't be justified but anyone who does it wouldn't care. If I went and downloaded a movie or game I would not lose any sleep wondering if I was a bad person.
Its all neighbors dead pets under my bed that make me wonder that.

 

[4RM3D]

...
I mean, if I read lots of webcomics without donating to their creator, or watch all TV anime series without ever buying a blu-ray boxset, am I harming them by choosing the free option?
...

You are mostly right, but you picked a wrong example here. When you are watching TV series on TV, then the TV station still gets a revenue out of commercials which is also based on the amount of viewers and even more importantly the amount of viewers is an indication to renew or cancel the series.

If people pirate TV series then the numbers get skewed. Even so I find myself guilty to this. I have no desire to wait +1 year for the content to become available in my country. To make matters worse, US website greet me with the message: "This content is not available in your area". Well, screw them. But I do buy the DVD/Blu-ray boxset once it is available for a decent price.

And I just noticed someone else mentioned something similar:

...
Let's take any modern show shown in the US right now, new show, it comes out on Tuesday nights, the rest of the world can't see it, so someone from the US puts it on a torrent site, and hey presto, the whole world can see the same episode within merely hours of it airing in the US. What this does, is then later when the other countries go to air it on their channel, no one watches it, and hopefully they get the idea 'well gee, if we take [insert unexceptable amount of time to wait] to air this show, it'll have already been watched by our potential audience, and we won't get any ratings on it, that's bad, we should try to air it as fast as physically possible so we do get the ratings' and then piracy will be minimized.

 

[Geno DCLXVI]

In my hometown, there is only piracy. As in, there are literally ZERO physical stores that sell genuine copies of PC games, digital distribution notwithstanding. So do I shell out cash to get a physical copy that's still illegally acquired, or do I get a copy off of The Pirate Bay for free?

Digital distribution is always an option, of course, but I don't have a credit card yet.

 

[Sean951]

I think it could be argued as a form of protest. For example, ebooks for my Kindle cost almost as much as a paperback copy, and in some cases cost more. I stick to the free and cheap books I find, but I feel that one could argue that pirating books is a form of protest against the insane pricing set by companies when all you really need is an author and an editor. That said, I don't condone piracy.

This is something I encountered a while back. I figured I'd get a kindle for my university books, since ONE book weighed literally 5 kilos, so I checked first - okay, cheap enough on amazon, but their "international" kindles are ridiculously expensive. I got one cheaper though, went to ordering the book... The book is not available in Europe.

I was just so angry - I'd gone through MASSIVE problems in tracking down and getting a kindle without having to sell a kidney or 3, and amazon hadn't said ANYTHING about the book not being available. That's one occasion I'd tell people to become pirates - in the sense of looting amazon's warehouses.

Prices seem odd too, but can be about as high as hardback while cutting loads of costs on shipping and publishing... Something is awry there.

The minute authors realize they don't really need publisher anymore, or publishers realize that a book sold at $3-5.00 will sell significantly better than the same book at $10, is the moment when ebooks will see a significant decline in pirating.

 

[Seydaman]

If the product is otherwise unavIlable to you, I do not mnd it being pirated.

 

[ICantBelieveItGoesBoom]

Generally I feel that if it is impossible or ridiculously difficult to get a decent version of the media you would like legally, it is justifiable.

 

[BENZOOKA]

In some cases yes. Pfft.

Hasn't this topic been handled to death and beyond already, albeit its ridiculously subjective nature... It never leads anywhere.

And I still commented. Fuck me, right?

 

[Twilight_guy]

You can justify anything. That doesn't necessarily make it any less wrong or right. There are stone cold murders who think they've done nothing wrong and are perfectly justified.

 

[sammysoso]

If something is available legally, then pirating it is unjustifiable.

 

[Dangit2019]

If you payed money for something, and didn't receive what you payed for due to poor service handling, it is justified. Otherwise, no.

 

[NotALiberal]

Wow.. reasonable discourse on piracy, on THE ESCAPIST?!?

This... I must be dreaming..

Usually these sorts of threads are filled with "Hurr durr you are literally worse than Hitler if you advocate or pirate anything and you probably kill kittens and are a douchebag. BENDING OVER FOR MASSIVE CORPORATIONS 4 LYFE YO!!!11!".

Look, without getting too much into it, I think it can be summed up like this: Why would ANYONE pay for a decidedly inferior product that costs $, when you could get that exact some product for free, and at a vastly superior quality? In this case, no matter your personal moral judgement on the matter, piracy is justified in this case, from a purely economical standpoint.

 

[regalphantom]

I would argue the only time it is acceptable to pirate (ie, download the files from a website without the initial owners permission) is when you have already purchased a game and retain the liscence, but for some reason your installation CD is damaged or missing. For example, I recently decided to re-install the original starcraft/broodwar onto my new laptop, but I was missing the second installation disk, meaning that although I retained a CD key, I did not have any way of actually installing the game. Although Blizzard has their act together and you can download the client from their website, if they did not have that option, I would have had to pirate the game to get the install files so I could actually play it. Cross-Platform and region-locked piracy is a more grey issue, but in some cases, pirating a game you own to get a version that isn't heavily censored or something could be acceptable, but that is a topic that one would have to heavily debate.

 

[4RM3D]

In some cases yes. Pfft.

Hasn't this topic been handled to death and beyond already, albeit its ridiculously subjective nature... It never leads anywhere.

And I still commented. Fuck me, right?

Stirring up a hornet's nest, right.

You can justify anything. That doesn't necessarily make it any less wrong or right. There are stone cold murders who think they've done nothing wrong and are perfectly justified.

You have a person trying to justify their deeds. Then a step further is the community (in this case) accepting that person's reasoning.

Of course everyone can justify anything, if they want too. But it is more interesting to discuss if this justification is accepted by the crowd.

 

[crazyrabbits]

if it's impossible for me to get it in other ways... If this game isn't made anymore, and no copy of it is available used. I've often wondered why for example Origin doesn't put all kinds of old games EA own IP's for on there. I can imagine loads of old titles from them and others that I'd love to be able to buy and play, titles that are not available on places like Steam, Origin, Gamers Gate og GoG...

Most of the Origin Systems games (Wing Commander, Ultima, etc.) are on GoG. I don't know about the rest, but it does take time to negotiate the rights to sell older games.

 

[GAunderrated]

I do pirate games from time to time to use as demos. Since morally is subjective, my own personal morals when it comes to pirated games is if I don't like it 1-5 hours in, i uninstall it. If I do like it I buy it. Of course if there is a rare case of a company disgusting me as a consumer with DRM (ubisoft) I will not purchase it, though that is a rare case.

 

[crazyrabbits]

You can justify anything. That doesn't necessarily make it any less wrong or right. There are stone cold murders who think they've done nothing wrong and are perfectly justified.

That's a strawman argument. The taking of a human life in no way equates to copying or sharing data.

Again, if a product isn't available in your country (and never will be), its copyright owner has suppressed all avenues of obtaining it legally, and/or it has been out of print for years, there's nothing wrong with downloading a copy. The owner isn't losing a sale simply because they didn't make it available in the first place.

 

[Twilight_guy]

You can justify anything. That doesn't necessarily make it any less wrong or right. There are stone cold murders who think they've done nothing wrong and are perfectly justified.

You have a person trying to justify their deeds. Then a step further is the community (in this case) accepting that person's reasoning.

Of course everyone can justify anything, if they want too. But it is more interesting to discuss if this justification is accepted by the crowd.

I don't think so. Appeal to popularity is a logical fallacy. If a million everyone believe that 1+1=3, it doesn't make it any more correct. I don't find arguing about what a group thinks on a moral issue to be particularly interesting since unless you stumble upon some sort of highly complex group dynamic with interesting implications, its often the same argument with that fallacy added.