Poll: What's wrong with piracy

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Yes.

If creative property does not have value of some sort, then why should creative people keep on creating it? I am a musician, a writer and an occasional amateur actor, and I believe that since all of these things require a commitment on my part, I should be rewarded for that commitment. Nothing in life is free and money does make the world go round and buys happiness at the same time, so I expect money for my work, unless I have actively decided it is to be free. (I go to open mic nights in the knowledge that I am not receiving payment, I would not expect to be asked to play an hour and a half set of my own songs at a bar without receiving some form of payment)

Argue all you want about how 'creative content should be free and shared with everyone' but go out and start asking every artist whether they think that's true. Sure you'll get the occasional internet blogger or Randall Monroe who'll say he believes in Creative Commons Attribution, but it's not the norm by a very, very long stretch. And nor should it be.

The plain facts are pretty simple. The music industry sales dropped by half when the internet and downloading became a thing. Since the music is still as widespread as it always was, this was not because suddenly half the world stopped buying music, it was because they were now getting it illegally. Some game companies claim between 60 and 90 percent piracy rates for their games. The argument 'but I wouldn't spend money on it anyway' does not cut it. If you want to support the creative team that made the game, you spend your money on it, otherwise youa re acting like a self-entitled fuckwit.

What 'right' do you have to own the game?

If a single pirate can answer this question I will shut up about this forever. What moral 'right' do you have to own the game? Why should you not pay money for it?

This isn't a question about why you pirate, or whether piracy is bad or not, the true question should be, Why do you believe that you need the game? Why is it such a fundamental need that you feel it should be provided to you for free?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

If you intend to play the game, you should purchase it.

Now this is clearly wrong. What if I haven't enough money? Now i'm not suggesting that I should pirate it (it seems everyone likes to put words in peoples mouths ITT), but just pointing out that determining whether someone "intends" to do something isn't as simple as you make it out to be. If we're going to have a useful discussion, we can't keep making absurd leaps of logic.

I don't think it's an absurd leap of logic to suggest that by owning something you want it, and that if you want something someone else is legally trying to sell you should purchase it off of them.

I think you may have misinterpreted my words - I did not suggest that if you pirate something you had the intention of paying for it initially. I only said that if you want something you should have to pay for it, and should not expect to receive that 'something' unless you do.

I would have thought the difference is clear - before the concept of intellectual property existed, we could not treat piracy as interfering with another's property rights, because of that lack of physical form. The idea of theft needs to be confined to physical goods to keep the objective of the law focused on the property holder - who is, after all, the one who suffers. If we're considering taking intangibles to be 'theft' to focus shifts to the 'thief', so the law loses all of its context and serves no one. And we all end up totally confused.


All I'm saying is that the concept of piracy is different from the concept of theft, and so must be treated in a different way from theft if we want to tackle the problem seriously. Making widespread assertions like "piracy is theft" helps no one, and solves nothing.

 

[Rhatar Khurin]

i have downloaded disk images for games in the past, but only for games i already have but mislaid (or got stolen) the disks for it

 

[SD-Fiend]

I've nothing to say so here's this:

 

[robert01]

Morally piracy us only wrong if you think it is wrong, that is how morals work. Same with anything else.

To clarify piracy is not theft or stealing. Sorry to inform you people that have been told and convinced otherwise. Stealing is when you go into Walmart and decide that you want Skyrim and take it of the shelf. That is stealing, there is a loss of physical property. Pirating is when you decide you want Skyrim and you download it from a torrent site, there is no physical property being lost. See the difference? Probably not, but I can try.

And that is why so man people pirate stuff, because there is no physical loss attached to it. I bet 99 percent of people who pirate stuff on a regular basis wouldn't go into a store and steal it. Because there is a physical relation to what they are taking.

There are pros and cons to piracy just as there is to most things.

And anyone that thinks the shit they put in the cases today are manuals need to grab a game from the early 1990s or late 1980s and see what a real fucking game manual looks like.

 

[Smurf McSmurfington]

Morals are subjective. Right and wrong are subjective. So it really isn't right nor wrong to pirate, it just is.
As for the damage it's doing... well really the actual DAMAGE it's doing is relatively small, small enough that it really doesn't deserve all the attention it's getting.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Because Piracy has the capacity to Kill the Video Game Entertainment Industry.

When it comes down to it, the investors in the companies hold the purse strings. If they can't see a viable profit to be made in the venture of 'make video games' simply because a huge chunk of the profit is lost to Theft... then they will just take their large bags of money and go else where. Invest in something that has safer or more reliable returns.

No more money = You won't see games like Modern Warfare 3 or Skyrim.

Although it is very 'gloom and doom'-y.
But it is something that is entirely capable.

it is undoubtable that many major investors have stopped putting money into Design studios and publishing companies simply because they did not feel that a +30-40% loss of profit due to Theft was acceptable.

But Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3 have just sold millions of copies. I remain unconvinced that piracy has the capacity to destroy the industry, poor sales are what could kill the industry, and although sometimes piracy may contribute to that it is silly to say that piracy is the only reason. Personally I wish that publishers would be more honest and say "please don't pirate our games because we want more money" not the current rhetoric they spew that all game sales go into some mythic "new game fund" and that by buying games you are directly contributing to the next game.

Wrong.

Skyrim (Xbox 360 sales) - 1,792,893
Skyrim (PS3 sales) - 960,490
Skyrim (PC sales) - 555,804

I don't know if you know this, but the Elder Scrolls series is well-known for modding and the PC gaming community. It sells well on the consoles, but they've always done the best on PCs.

Not this time it looks like. I wonder why.

 

[Red Roark]

I would not be buying as 63 monthly comics had I not been introduced to the genre through piracy. A bunch of people I know wouldn't have gotten into comics at all if they hadn't found a way to get them for free. I later saw those people buying trades of there favorite stories, an act they never would have considered beforehand. Now there's a shift to digital comics, and while I'm glad that it will probably compensate for some of the losses of piracy but all the same, I think now that instant gratification is becoming expected piracy has an important role to play in the comic industry.

The comic industry is very different then the gaming industry, and I would say generally benefits more from piracy then the gaming industry though I don't know if that's enough to make up for the base drop in sales. Comic books aren't particularly easy to get into if you do it the old fashioned way, stores and elitist nerds can be intimidating, and a lot of people are still scared of the nerdy stigma that comes with the art-form. Some people don't want to be seen walking into a comic shop, or are not comfortable with the atmosphere of their LCS. To a new comer it can seem like more trouble then it's worth. It's a lot easier to tell someone they should check out a certain arc, have them send me a text 20 minutes later saying "THAT WAS AWESOME! WHERE CAN I GET MORE?!" and watch them develop as bigger fans over time as they go on to buy trades, on-goings, back issues, key-chains, T-shirts, posters, and eventually statues & action figures.

I buy my series now because I can, I love and want to support the comic industry. Though I remember a time where I couldn't and am grateful piracy kept me rooted and supporting this art-form. If I dropped out of continuity I may have never come back, and lost my fanboyism, writing it off as "kids stuff" and missing a lot of great stories in the time where I couldn't afford luxuries. So I don't get too mad at piracy, it's here the only question is how do you cope with it? Personally I think digital comics and dropping digital prices are a great first step.

 

[Rhatar Khurin]

Because Piracy has the capacity to Kill the Video Game Entertainment Industry.

When it comes down to it, the investors in the companies hold the purse strings. If they can't see a viable profit to be made in the venture of 'make video games' simply because a huge chunk of the profit is lost to Theft... then they will just take their large bags of money and go else where. Invest in something that has safer or more reliable returns.

No more money = You won't see games like Modern Warfare 3 or Skyrim.

Although it is very 'gloom and doom'-y.
But it is something that is entirely capable.

it is undoubtable that many major investors have stopped putting money into Design studios and publishing companies simply because they did not feel that a +30-40% loss of profit due to Theft was acceptable.

But Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3 have just sold millions of copies. I remain unconvinced that piracy has the capacity to destroy the industry, poor sales are what could kill the industry, and although sometimes piracy may contribute to that it is silly to say that piracy is the only reason. Personally I wish that publishers would be more honest and say "please don't pirate our games because we want more money" not the current rhetoric they spew that all game sales go into some mythic "new game fund" and that by buying games you are directly contributing to the next game.

Wrong.

Skyrim (Xbox 360 sales) - 1,792,893
Skyrim (PS3 sales) - 960,490
Skyrim (PC sales) - 555,804

I don't know if you know this, but the Elder Scrolls series is well-known for modding and the PC gaming community. It sells well on the consoles, but they've always done the best on PCs.

Not this time it looks like. I wonder why.

Skyrim is steam launched, how do pirates get around that?
Tbh i think that's just a measure of normal sales, not because loads of peeps on the PC have been downloading it.
There are obviously a lot more peeps that use consoles for gaming as it's far far cheaper

 

[Magnicon]

Wrong.

Skyrim (Xbox 360 sales) - 1,792,893
Skyrim (PS3 sales) - 960,490
Skyrim (PC sales) - 555,804

I don't know if you know this, but the Elder Scrolls series is well-known for modding and the PC gaming community. It sells well on the consoles, but they've always done the best on PCs.

Not this time it looks like. I wonder why.

Sigh. Wrong.

I don't know if you know this, but 550k+ sales for any game on the PC these days is ridiculously high.

A lot of major games now are made on consoles and then ported onto the PC. Ubisoft recently stated that they need only 50k sales on PC for it to be worth it.

All those numbers show is that consoles are significantly more popular then the PC these days. Which of course has been a well known fact for years now.

EDIT: I keep seeing people saying stuff about Steam and suggesting you can't pirate something on it. Steam games have been some of first ways that pirates have been cracking games lately. Everything can be cracked people, EVERYTHING.

 

[Xanthious]

Because Piracy has the capacity to Kill the Video Game Entertainment Industry.

When it comes down to it, the investors in the companies hold the purse strings. If they can't see a viable profit to be made in the venture of 'make video games' simply because a huge chunk of the profit is lost to Theft... then they will just take their large bags of money and go else where. Invest in something that has safer or more reliable returns.

No more money = You won't see games like Modern Warfare 3 or Skyrim.

Although it is very 'gloom and doom'-y.
But it is something that is entirely capable.

it is undoubtable that many major investors have stopped putting money into Design studios and publishing companies simply because they did not feel that a +30-40% loss of profit due to Theft was acceptable.

But Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3 have just sold millions of copies. I remain unconvinced that piracy has the capacity to destroy the industry, poor sales are what could kill the industry, and although sometimes piracy may contribute to that it is silly to say that piracy is the only reason. Personally I wish that publishers would be more honest and say "please don't pirate our games because we want more money" not the current rhetoric they spew that all game sales go into some mythic "new game fund" and that by buying games you are directly contributing to the next game.

Wrong.

Skyrim (Xbox 360 sales) - 1,792,893
Skyrim (PS3 sales) - 960,490
Skyrim (PC sales) - 555,804

I don't know if you know this, but the Elder Scrolls series is well-known for modding and the PC gaming community. It sells well on the consoles, but they've always done the best on PCs.

Not this time it looks like. I wonder why.

You do of course realize the PC figure is only retail sales and doesn't factor in digital sales. Unless Steam wants to release it's figures we have no real way of knowing exactly how many actual PC copies were sold. Furthermore, PC is the one platform currently where digital sales have overtaken retail sales so in reality the PC could very well be as much as double or more than the number of boxed copies sold.

Also the current number of retail sales at this point in time is estimated around 730,000 NOT counting digital sales. So again it's very very likely that the PC is actually ahead of the PS3 and probably just a hair behind the Xbox 360 when you factor in digital sales.

Looking at those numbers it seems that Skyrim is doing just fine on PC. It's hardly a surprise that a AAA title is going to sell best on a console like the 360 but still it's still very likely handily broken a million total sales for PC in it's first three weeks and that's pretty damn impressive. If anything I'd argue that the Skyrim is doing BETTER on PCs than any of the four previous Elder Scrolls titles have to date.

 

[Thistlehart]

Yes, to your question "Is piracy wrong in a moral sense?"

Concerning my personal morality, it is wrong. It is theft for no quantifiable reason beyond simple greed or impatience. Any reasons given to justify it are childish excuses, or I should say, I have yet to hear any that are more than that.
You may not have stuffed it under your shirt and scampered out the door with it, but it's still theft.
You denied the people who spent significant portions of their lives to create it their compensation. That is theft.
You don't steal something that you don't need to survive. To do so is theft.

However, my morality doesn't apply to most people. They probably wouldn't like it.

 

[bootz]

Yes.

If creative property does not have value of some sort, then why should creative people keep on creating it? I am a musician, a writer and an occasional amateur actor, and I believe that since all of these things require a commitment on my part, I should be rewarded for that commitment. Nothing in life is free and money does make the world go round and buys happiness at the same time, so I expect money for my work, unless I have actively decided it is to be free. (I go to open mic nights in the knowledge that I am not receiving payment, I would not expect to be asked to play an hour and a half set of my own songs at a bar without receiving some form of payment)

Argue all you want about how 'creative content should be free and shared with everyone' but go out and start asking every artist whether they think that's true. Sure you'll get the occasional internet blogger or Randall Monroe who'll say he believes in Creative Commons Attribution, but it's not the norm by a very, very long stretch. And nor should it be.

The plain facts are pretty simple. The music industry sales dropped by half when the internet and downloading became a thing. Since the music is still as widespread as it always was, this was not because suddenly half the world stopped buying music, it was because they were now getting it illegally. Some game companies claim between 60 and 90 percent piracy rates for their games. The argument 'but I wouldn't spend money on it anyway' does not cut it. If you want to support the creative team that made the game, you spend your money on it, otherwise youa re acting like a self-entitled fuckwit.

What 'right' do you have to own the game?

If a single pirate can answer this question I will shut up about this forever. What moral 'right' do you have to own the game? Why should you not pay money for it?

This isn't a question about why you pirate, or whether piracy is bad or not, the true question should be, Why do you believe that you need the game? Why is it such a fundamental need that you feel it should be provided to you for free?

You're post required commitment. Did you feel entitled to get payed for it. I mean I can assign any monetary value for my creative response. $5 per reader pls. Anyone who doesn't pay me is a pirate and getting my creative work for free.

 

[SonicKoala]

I would have thought the difference is clear - before the concept of intellectual property existed, we could not treat piracy as interfering with another's property rights, because of that lack of physical form. The idea of theft needs to be confined to physical goods to keep the objective of the law focused on the property holder - who is, after all, the one who suffers. If we're considering taking intangibles to be 'theft' to focus shifts to the 'thief', so the law loses all of its context and serves no one. And we all end up totally confused.


All I'm saying is that the concept of piracy is different from the concept of theft, and so must be treated in a different way from theft if we want to tackle the problem seriously. Making widespread assertions like "piracy is theft" helps no one, and solves nothing.

Are you suggesting that piracy be treated more lightly than theft? And if so, why is that? When it comes down to it, the theft of a physical copy of a game and the piracy of a digital copy is essentially the same thing; the only difference is the tangible packaging and game disc, which is nothing more than a vehicle for delivering what both individuals (the one who steals a physical copy and the one that pirates a digital copy) is after.

To suggest that the law should remain static in its treatment of theft as being a matter wholly resigned to physical property seems inherently backward, since, in this day and age, the possession of digital property is socially ubiquitous.

 

[Randomperson9999999]

piracy is like stealing something that will regenerate instantly

 

[MiriaJiyuu]

I pirate a lot of things, but I never pirate games. Games make their money directly from copies sold. A developer only makes money after they break even, thinking your actions don't hurt an industry is just stupid because it does. Also, don't pull that, it's just $60 crap, its 60 times however many people think that, and that's a lot more than you think.

 

[TokenRupee]

Well it is stealing, so I'd say it's wrong in a moral sense. Then again, if someone were to pirate a CoD game or another AAA game that was a re-hash of last year's, I probably wouldn't bat an eye to it. I think a lot of piracy could possibly be alleviated if studios would just release a demo of the finished version of their game so people can get a taste of it. Even the first level or thirty minutes would be good.

 

[Radeonx]

I pretty much agree with you.
I mean, piracy is the lost of a potential sale, but all of the top pirated games are still selling massively well and are still making a fuckload of money for the creators of the game.
It isn't good, but I don't think it is as bad as a lot of people here make it out to be.

But if they bought the game instead of pirating, immagine thier proffits then!

No matter how you slice it, pirate a game and companies loose money. That's usually why people don't like it.

No, they don't.
They lose the potential to gain money, which isn't actual money. Everyone who doesn't pirate a game didn't buy the game instead.

 

[Furioso]

I don't even know how it could be argued that piracy is morally right, it's stealing, and it isn't exactly a loaf of bread you're going to feed to your family, it's a luxury item, that you're stealing, so of course it's wrong

 

[ACman]

Answered yes to the poll.

But I would argue that copyright law as it stand is also immoral. Life of the author plus 70 years or 150 years for corporate ownership is too long.

.