Poll: How Far do you Agree with Piracy?

[Hazy]

C for me. The only games I've ever torrented is Earthbound and Mother 3.

 

[mythbuster343]

Only B. you should be able to trade in your faulty copy of a game for a better one at gamestop or something. But since you can't, you should be able to pirate it.

 

[kjrubberducky]

For me, personally, I'd only go up to B. But I can see how C can be called for in certain situations. I wouldn't do it, but don't see anything wrong with others doing it. IMO, D is selling the rights to use that software to someone else; it doesn't matter if you sold it, you don't own it anymore, so it's pirating. E and F are only excuses; in my experience, they still pirate even when there is a demo out; it's the same as G.

 

[Heinrich843]

Spoilers: Everyone that says pirating is stealing needs to get back to economy and marketing 101. The only way it would actually be remotely possible to "lose" a sale is if someone bought the game with store credit, went home, didn't open the game or install it, downloaded, installed and played a copy from TPB and the likes and THEN returned the unopened game for full credit back. Until then, nothing was lost, as they didn't receive any money in the first place. And unless they somehow had millions of signed contracts from people all over the world guaranteeing they'd buy the next album/game, arguing "but we predicted this many sales!11" amounts to predicting tomorrow's lottery numbers and complain when you don't win the top prize.

Likewise, internet "pirates" are just the new scapegoats of several industries that need someone to blame for their lousy quality. In the 80s, the tape recorder was the bad guy because it allowed you to record music off the radio, and back then the music industry declared it would be dead in a few years if it kept going. Repeat for first being able to burn cds in the 90's, to Napster, to the current torrent system. The fact is that they have NEVER sold more cds or games than they do now. Just take a note of how many times per year the record for "most albums sold in a week/month" is broken and how many games go gold (this is also based on pre-orders), get Game of the Year editions, expansion packs etc. that would not be possible through lousy sales.

Their actual problem is two-fold, if you ask me: First of all, the overall quality is lousy in the extreme. How many of your albums do you actually listen to, full length, today? Good artists are definitely out there, which brings me to the second problem they have: Everyone and their mother does it today. American Idol, X-Factor, America's got talent and so on and so on for every single country on Earth (no, really, even Afghanistan has X-Factor or Idol, I can't remember which). ALL of these have to have an album made for the winner, regardless of actual talent. Then there are also thousands upon thousands of tiny studios/record companies that all need artists to stay afloat. When was the last time you could mention a few thousand rock stars? The exact same thing applies for games: There are untold amounts of 5-people game developers around and they're just not good enough to make the next Starcraft or DOOM or Baldur's Gate.

Tl; dr: They are flooding an oversaturated market with thousands of products of questionable quality, making the ones that are actually GOOD sell less than they might be able to because people are simply sick and tired of the general level of quality. It's getting so bad it's like asking you to buy vegetables from a single farmer out of the millions of farms around the world: To the average person, there's simply no difference between the vegetables, and it applies to music and games too. Why buy Game 1 when there's also Game 2, Game 3 and Game 37637823628 to choose between? And why buy Britney when you can buy Aguilera, the latest Idol/X-Factor/Whatever winner and so on.

The following was written whilst an insomniac was incapable of sleeping and thus decided to show up here. If you believe the post to be rambling, it probably is.

I concur good Sir.

In addition to all of this I'd like to tack on with my seal of approval that it is fairly common amongst fanboys to say that pirates attempt to bring a logically misled point to the table. That being said, it tis' not an all inclusive statement. (Obviously there's exceptions and I would be rather hypocritical to not state otherwise.)Much of these so called "Game Supporters" are nothing but ignorant consumers. (We...really...really don't need more of these out there..really, they're a plague.) I admit to buying few games, but they were indeed games of quality. In a land of console ports, the standards of quality are falling at terminal velocity. Capitalism plays a rather large role in this of course, because they can make money even if the game does nothing to entertain any single being on this planet. WHY YOU ASK?! I do say! It is because the industry would rather release their software in stores behind false advertising and non-game play CGI than to actually make a quality game. Now of course the standards of quality will always be relevant to those who hold them, but there is indeed a middle ground, and the vast majority of the population can seem to agree that a game needs to fall into a certain area of quality in order for it to be of sufficient quality.

However much of the rage against the entertainment industry is in the way they treat their consumers. We can pop onto a forum and internet tough guy it down, and claim that companies actually want to leave off DRM from their games, and the few exceptions that do, are proof enough for the entire argument to be negated. However, we know this to be a logical fallacy, and as such.. we should not agree with it. It has come to the attention of many of these persons pirating "intellectual property", that it is more of a hassle to legally buy a game than to pirate it and crack it. Why is this so? Well, my guess at it would be that this is obviously due to the greedy ways of these companies and corporations. Any person on this forum who claims there's nothing wrong with buying EVERY game they ever sought to even play for a few minutes can go ahead and check their system sub folders and find nice little Securom and other such DRM material on their computers.

A little while ago, intellectual property was used for the purposes of allowing an individual to solely profit from their works, be it a book they wrote, an invention of theirs..etc. This as history apparently tells us, was to prevent others from taking their ideas or products themselves, and selling them off to others for their own profit. That is to say that the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory scenario where the competition steals Wonka's products is made illegal by this, and justly so. - My problem with the application of it today is that the entertainment "industry" is abusing this for their own profit to feed their greed. As stated before by a previous poster, they predict sales, and assume that the number needs to meet what they predicted. How many of us have changed our mind about something we planned to buy? Not only that, but how accurate are these sales projections, and who is making them? The industry seeks to exploit loop holes and non-specific information, yet the information they bring to the table is often undisputed information with little or no proof as to it's validity. A good example of this would be when a company decided that they would compare the amount of patch downloads with the sales figures. They then took those numbers and subtracted the recorded sale amount from the recorded patch download amount. They then proceeded to believe that the rest was piracy. Pardon me for interrupting that theory, but downloading patches does by no means certify that ...any particular person is in possession of a working copy of the game before and after patching. That is to say, software is riddled with variables which can and will halt the positive function of the software. Other various points can be made about other possible actions which resulted in those additional patch downloads, but the fact is that these actions which they execute are often at times for the sole purpose of monetary gain in their favour, if it is justified or not.

I sense this post is a tad too lengthy, and that no one who reads this will care of it's content, and those who do not read it will object in any case. I ask to those of you who have honoured me by reading this, "When you go to a store to buy a physical product, do they track how you use that product past the sale? Do they monitor and restrict your use of these products to yourself only, and no other persons. Do they take the seeds from the produce and tell you not to plant them under punishment of law?"

I'm sure some of those are a bit of a stretch, however, I welcome anyone to come up with some more.

 

[Zinras]

I agree with Heinrich and would like to add that copyright laws today are downright retarded. In most countries, they are in effect until 70 years after the creator's death. This also means that among other things, "abandonware" does not exist (so yes, if you ever downloaded Super Cars for the Amiga or similar, enjoy your possible lawsuit). IP works so that even if a company that owns the rights go bankrupt, the rights would either be sold as part of an auction or go to whoever is the lead desginer or similar and then his/her family. So to legally obtain a copy through free download without consent from the IP holder, you must wait at least until the entire game devoloping team dies and then take a 70 year nap, hoping no one else picked up the license while you were out cold.

This rule made perfect sense 300 years ago when you couldn't expect to live past 40, meaning your IP was largely gone around the time your grandchildren were grown up (in the time before TV, radio and internet, it took a looooooooong time for knowledge of new music, a new play or whatever to go around the world, meaning the IP secured not just your income but also that of your kids and grandkids). However, since a young person today can likely expect to live to be 100 if you take medical developments and a healthy lifestyle into account, the IP won't be gone for up to 170 years. Can you imagine anyone wanting to play Crysis in 170 years? Because I sure can't.

Tbh, they should make it more in line with the patents on medicine. Those patents last 10-15 years, which is also WAY beyond a normal game's lifespan. The average game is completely dead after 2-3 years, so an IP of 10 to 15 years shouldn't be a problem for the game itself (setting, characters etc. can use the existing laws of course). As it is atm, you can tell your grandkids that when they retire, they can finally be able to play a game you enjoyed so much when you were 12.

/sarcasm
Isn't that awesome?
/sarcasm

 

[Eykal]

Well, this thread is dead, you can't admit to B, C, D, E, F or G without having your post deleted...

You're an idiot.
By choosing it it's not saying that YOU HAVE DONE THOSE, it's saying that YOU THINK IT IS OKAY IF____.
Read the sentences before trolling.

Actually he said that because few posted were deleted on the first page because they admitted to having done an illegal things.

I have also deleted the posts where the user admitted to having done an illegal action to protect them.

Please comment ABOUT the illegal action, but DO NOT admit doing an illegal action on these forums.

Yes, he deleted posts from people who admitted to illegal actions, the above person was saying that you couldn't vote because that would be admitting, which it is not.

 

[ItsAChiaotzu]

Was i the only one who was hoping this was about sailing pirates?

 

[quiet_samurai]

If anyone saays they would rather buy something than get it free is either a liar or Mother Fucking Theresa. And the latter is dead.

 

[neuromasser]

Yes, he deleted posts from people who admitted to illegal actions, the above person was saying that you couldn't vote because that would be admitting, which it is not.

No, he was saying that you can't post without having your post deleted. He didn't mention voting at all. You just assumed that.

 

[Yowsa]

piracy is bad inless your stealing from ted grimms the ceo of appel