The Problem with Piracy...

[jboking]

maybe if games werent so fucking expensive. do you think majority of teenagers have money to throw around? i know i dont
besides, these companies are trying to rip us off the same way we rip them off when we pirate

You have no clue how much money those companies actually make in profit on each disk do you? It's around $5. They aren't cheating you, they are charging a price that allows them to make a profit, which is the only thing that can justify even entering the market of video games.




Disclaimer: none of this was meant to be confrontational, simply informative.

do you have that the companies only make like 5 bucks? im not doubting you or calling bullshit. i just wanna see

It was from an old issue of game informer, I'm looking for it online but can't seem to find any information regarding where the money goes from each disc sold. I find it to be pretty common knowledge though. After all, consider all the places the money has to be split between. Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft(they all take a large portion than you would think) - The expenses of running the building - Debt acquired from the game development(there is almost always a good amount of this) - and then the actual profit. I wasn't even able to remember all of the places it goes and it is already easy to see how they could only be making $5 in profit.

Just remember, they aren't cheating you, they are charging the price they have too.

No, not at all, and perhaps that wasn't the best wording.

I simply meant peple who say 'piracy is wrong' without putting any real thought behind why they think that that is so. You haven't done this, and I respect your point.

Fair enough.

 

[Kubanator]

I'll assume this comment is directed at me.

When I said there were no reprocussions, I was talking about the punishment-y aspect of it. They aren't going to come round and smash me to pieces because I've done it, so why shouldn't I do it?

I hope you realise with what I say I'm taking some kind of artistic licence... when I say it, this isn't what I actually feel, it's more like a question that challenges people.

Some 'torrent'-ers may feel like that (I don't do torrents, that's getting slightly more illegal) but I'm just using it as a challenging question. I hope you've seen the way that this has all been written.

Finally, I have never used the 'definition of theft' argument. I have fully accepted that what I have done can be construed as 'theft'.

Oh, and 'Sorry but are you stupid'? I hope not, and I don't think insults are a great way to start an argument. Sorry, but those are just one person's opinions.

Your argument is there is no one to stop me, so if I profit from it I should do it. Do you steal from your dad's wallet while he sleeps? Do you auction off your parents stuff when they don't use them much? Do you "borrow" you parents credit card for small purchases, because they wouldn't bother finding out where that 10$ went? Do you take the games that your friends never play? Do you take candy from a baby simply because a baby cant stop you?

 

[effilctar]

Snip

The REAL problem with piracy is that these 'pirates' don't have peg legs and a parrot.

 

[Uncreation]

"I pirate whatever I want. If I couldn't pirate, I'd go back to shoplifting them."

Funniest comment i have read in a while. If it was not meant as a joke... then it's even funnier i think. ))

 

[Rolling Thunder]

I'll assume this comment is directed at me.

When I said there were no reprocussions, I was talking about the punishment-y aspect of it. They aren't going to come round and smash me to pieces because I've done it, so why shouldn't I do it?

I hope you realise with what I say I'm taking some kind of artistic licence... when I say it, this isn't what I actually feel, it's more like a question that challenges people.

Some 'torrent'-ers may feel like that (I don't do torrents, that's getting slightly more illegal) but I'm just using it as a challenging question. I hope you've seen the way that this has all been written.

Finally, I have never used the 'definition of theft' argument. I have fully accepted that what I have done can be construed as 'theft'.

Oh, and 'Sorry but are you stupid'? I hope not, and I don't think insults are a great way to start an argument. Sorry, but those are just one person's opinions.

Your argument is there is no one to stop me, so if I profit from it I should do it. Do you steal from your dad's wallet while he sleeps? Do you auction off your parents stuff when they don't use them much? Do you "borrow" you parents credit card for small purchases, because they wouldn't bother finding out where that 10$ went? Do you take the games that your friends never play? Do you take candy from a baby simply because a baby cant stop you?

Strawman argument - presenting pirates as being wholly morally corrupt.


Tell me then - if we are arguing that piracy is immoral, then surely it is equally immoral for these companies to attempt to avoid paying taxes, no? Since they are, in essence, trying to not pay for a service provided by the state, surely, therefore, Games Developers and Publishers are equally guilty.

Let's be frank here - everyone cheats the system, so much so that cheating the system is part of the same system. It's not going to crush anything, merely change it.

 

[Kubanator]

Strawman argument - presenting pirates as being wholly morally corrupt.


Tell me then - if we are arguing that piracy is immoral, then surely it is equally immoral for these companies to attempt to avoid paying taxes, no? Since they are, in essence, trying to not pay for a service provided by the state, surely, therefore, Games Developers and Publishers are equally guilty.

Let's be frank here - everyone cheats the system, so much so that cheating the system is part of the same system. It's not going to crush anything, merely change it.

Strawman argument means I misrepresent your position, and then attack the falsified position. Your position was that if there is no consequence to an action in which you benefit you should do it. Taking candy from a child has no consequence, as the child cannot do anything to you, and you benefit by gaining candy.

Now you're saying that everyone else does it so it's morally acceptable. That's the equivalent of justifying murder because genocide happens. Also, the difference between taxes and piracy is that in taxes there are specific rules you are allowed to follow in order to minimize the amount of money you spend. The IRS still receives money, but they agree to follow the rules that they created and collect only the amount the rules say they can. In piracy the developer receives nothing, and the pirate enjoys the exploitation of the hard work of others.

Ok, if everyone cheats the government, and no one pays taxes, what would happen? Change of course. But not the super happy fun times change. You would lose medicare and education, crime would skyrocket, people would begin dying from a lack of water, food or hygiene. In short anarchy. If everyone cheats the developers, what happens? Developers shut down, no music, movies, TV shows, or games for anyone. Ie, a complete shutdown of innovation. If you were allowed to take car designs and build the cars to sell them? Auto industry shuts down. Doesn't matter who's ideas you steal, when you steal you cripple the industry.

 

[FoolKiller]

Hey, whatever you gotta tell yourself. You could always, you know, get a better job to subsidize your expensive habits. Or get better at budgeting the money you have. Don't claim that piracy is your only logical option...you're just greedy and want more stuff for less money.

I can't help but feel you misunderstood my point.

The thing is, it's impossible to justify buying games once you have the means to get them for free. Try this: get a game for your birthday, then save up to buy it again. It's quite hard to do.

Your logic is flawed as getting 2 of something is not the same as getting a fake one and a real one.

More to the point, for certain items I prefer to own the actual item instead of a copy. If I don't think the game is that worthwhile I would rent it, burn it, play it, and then destroy the copy (don't need evidence of my misdoing lying about).

Piracy is a complex thing. While it is true that the company wouldn't make money off of you if you burn a game instead of buying it because you don't like it enough, the people that copy games and sell them are hurting the industry.

As for the music industry, I wholly approve of downloading mp3s for personal use. I do believe in supporting the music industry but not the way that it is run. I don't want to buy a whole album for X amount of money just to get a song. Now I don't have any objection to buying individual songs through iTunes or another digital sales site, but I would want the uncompressed media file and not some mp3.

And just to note: video games have gotten a lot cheaper over the past twenty years. By this I mean that price of games (not consoles) has stayed the same while the cost of living has gone up drastically.

 

[Mordwyl]

I buy the game if the company deserves it. Frankly I hate paying companies that churn out crap to produce more crap and by process of natural selection the ones to survive are good companies.

We should learn from past mistakes and avoid a second videogame crash.

 

[Kubanator]

I buy the game if the company deserves it. Frankly I hate paying companies that churn out crap to produce more crap and by process of natural selection the ones to survive are good companies.

We should learn from past mistakes and avoid a second videogame crash.

Ok, so if the company churns out crap, why pirate their games? Piracy enforces a natural selection against good games, as only good games will be pirated, essentially encouraging bad game design. Although since bad games won't sell either, what you end up with is no games. So in the end piracy encourages every dev to quit developing games.

 

[Mordwyl]

I buy the game if the company deserves it. Frankly I hate paying companies that churn out crap to produce more crap and by process of natural selection the ones to survive are good companies.

We should learn from past mistakes and avoid a second videogame crash.

Ok, so if the company churns out crap, why pirate their games? Piracy enforces a natural selection against good games, as only good games will be pirated, essentially encouraging bad game design. Although since bad games won't sell either, what you end up with is no games. So in the end piracy encourages every dev to quit developing games.

I don't pirate good games. That's not to say you're not in the wrong as I've seen plenty of good companies go defunct because their games weren't popular or sold enough such as Sogna, the producer of the Viper series, Almanac of the legendary EVO: Search for Eden and even Bullfrog of Populous and Dungeon Keeper fame.

What I'm trying to say is, if people who can afford the games but pirate them instead are not just doing it out of selfishness but are subconsciously giving a message to the developers as to make their games suck less.

 

[Kubanator]

I don't pirate good games. That's not to say you're not in the wrong as I've seen plenty of good companies go defunct because their games weren't popular or sold enough such as Sogna, the producer of the Viper series, Almanac of the legendary EVO: Search for Eden and even Bullfrog of Populous and Dungeon Keeper fame.

That really doesn't put me in the wrong. Piracy only plagues the good developers. Bad developers don't have to deal with piracy, they deal with the fact that their games are so bad, no one buys them. Good developers go out because they get plagued by piracy and bad marketing. Still waiting on DK3 BTW.

What I'm trying to say is, if people who can afford the games but pirate them instead are not just doing it out of selfishness but are subconsciously giving a message to the developers as to make their games suck less.

What you're saying is that people pirate because they don't think the price to quality ratio is good enough? You're saying that the person should be able to dictate how much the company sells their games for, or how good a game has to be to sell for that price, and if the company doesn't listen they have a right to play it for free.

 

[capnjack]

... is that it's incredibly hard to justify stopping.

The problem with piracy is the terminology. Piracy sounds like a bad thing - pillaging, taking things from others. When you download copyrighted content, you haven't taken anything from anyone. The choice to support or not support that content is still in your hands. I have somewhat less of a problem when piracy is solely referred to as the act of ripping and sharing a file from a hard-copy, but it is still a very powerful/misleading word to use, since nothing is being taken away. In many ways, this thing called "piracy" can be taken advantage of by the very people who claim it is hurting them.

My real problem with piracy is that there is no evidence that it is hurting any industry, and there is zero corellation between how much something is pirated and the downturn of any market. Even in the cases where piracy has risen, and media companies have taken a hit (the only one where that is true is one branch of the music industry - cd sales) and there is no correlation between the two things. For example, you can't say that piracy is hurting the music industry without taking into account youtube, internet radio, itunes, cd-ripping. It's new technology that is hurting CD sales - and that isn't a bad thing. The music industry just needs to come up with ways to make money from their music, which is true when there is any new technology.

This isn't a justification for piracy because piracy doesn't need a justification. The entire terminology and mindset around it needs to be revised. It's used as a hot-topic for media corporations to lay the blame on others, simply because some of them can't figure out how to adapt business models for new markets and new technology.

As far as gaming goes, some of the most pirated games are also some of the most popular - and there is neither proof that the people who downloaded the games didn't ultimately buy the game, weren't going to buy it in the first place, or didn't have any money to buy it.

With all that, I still think it's very important to support the things you love. But most people do that anyway - download an album, become a huge fan, go to a concert, buy a t-shirt, etc. That's way more common than you'd think.

 

[Andantil]

I don't think about it.

 

[Kubanator]

The problem with piracy is the terminology. Piracy sounds like a bad thing - pillaging, taking things from others. When you download copyrighted content, you haven't taken anything from anyone. The choice to support or not support that content is still in your hands. I have somewhat less of a problem when piracy is solely referred to as the act of ripping and sharing a file from a hard-copy, but it is still a very powerful/misleading word to use, since nothing is being taken away. In many ways, this thing called "piracy" can be taken advantage of by the very people who claim it is hurting them.

Piracy is the theft of information.

My real problem with piracy is that there is no evidence that it is hurting any industry, and there is zero corellation between how much something is pirated and the downturn of any market. Even in the cases where piracy has risen, and media companies have taken a hit (the only one where that is true is one branch of the music industry - cd sales) and there is no correlation between the two things. For example, you can't say that piracy is hurting the music industry without taking into account youtube, internet radio, itunes, cd-ripping. It's new technology that is hurting CD sales - and that isn't a bad thing. The music industry just needs to come up with ways to make money from their music, which is true when there is any new technology.

So intellectual creators (Musicians, film crews, game studios) should accommodate for people who intent to take their work without compensation.

This isn't a justification for piracy because piracy doesn't need a justification. The entire terminology and mindset around it needs to be revised. It's used as a hot-topic for media corporations to lay the blame on others, simply because some of them can't figure out how to adapt business models for new markets and new technology.

Look, it doesn't matter what the company does with their property. If they make music and only sell it to people who belong to an exclusive club, piracy is still theft. The right to use the data you download is given upon purchase. You do not have ownership of the data itself, because if you did you could simply hand it to everyone in the world, ensuring that the creator only receives 5$ for 10000 hours of work.

As far as gaming goes, some of the most pirated games are also some of the most popular - and there is neither proof that the people who downloaded the games didn't ultimately buy the game, weren't going to buy it in the first place, or didn't have any money to buy it.

If they didn't buy the game, they didn't own the right to play it. They stole the right to play it. Money is work in physical form. It is given in compensation for work. Why would the work they do be worth 0$ why your job pays you a healthy sum. If you don't have the money to buy it, then you're still saying the effort they put in is valueless, and yet you want it, so the product has to have some value. And if you weren't planning to buy it in the first place then again, you've claimed their work as valueless why giving value to the game.

With all that, I still think it's very important to support the things you love. But most people do that anyway - download an album, become a huge fan, go to a concert, buy a t-shirt, etc. That's way more common than you'd think.

If the musician found that giving away his music and having more people in concerts would make more money, he'd do it. But that's his decision, not yours.

 

[FoolKiller]

I don't pirate good games. That's not to say you're not in the wrong as I've seen plenty of good companies go defunct because their games weren't popular or sold enough such as Sogna, the producer of the Viper series, Almanac of the legendary EVO: Search for Eden and even Bullfrog of Populous and Dungeon Keeper fame.

That really doesn't put me in the wrong. Piracy only plagues the good developers. Bad developers don't have to deal with piracy, they deal with the fact that their games are so bad, no one buys them. Good developers go out because they get plagued by piracy and bad marketing. Still waiting on DK3 BTW.

What I'm trying to say is, if people who can afford the games but pirate them instead are not just doing it out of selfishness but are subconsciously giving a message to the developers as to make their games suck less.

What you're saying is that people pirate because they don't think the price to quality ratio is good enough? You're saying that the person should be able to dictate how much the company sells their games for, or how good a game has to be to sell for that price, and if the company doesn't listen they have a right to play it for free.

Could you kindly correct your post. You have me quoted but I did not write any of those things. Thank you.

 

[Kubanator]

I don't pirate good games. That's not to say you're not in the wrong as I've seen plenty of good companies go defunct because their games weren't popular or sold enough such as Sogna, the producer of the Viper series, Almanac of the legendary EVO: Search for Eden and even Bullfrog of Populous and Dungeon Keeper fame.

That really doesn't put me in the wrong. Piracy only plagues the good developers. Bad developers don't have to deal with piracy, they deal with the fact that their games are so bad, no one buys them. Good developers go out because they get plagued by piracy and bad marketing. Still waiting on DK3 BTW.

What I'm trying to say is, if people who can afford the games but pirate them instead are not just doing it out of selfishness but are subconsciously giving a message to the developers as to make their games suck less.

What you're saying is that people pirate because they don't think the price to quality ratio is good enough? You're saying that the person should be able to dictate how much the company sells their games for, or how good a game has to be to sell for that price, and if the company doesn't listen they have a right to play it for free.

Could you kindly correct your post. You have me quoted but I did not write any of those things. Thank you.

Oh wrong name. My mistake.

 

[FoolKiller]

If the musician found that giving away his music and having more people in concerts would make more money, he'd do it. But that's his decision, not yours.

The glaring example of this was the Radiohead album In Rainbows. They released the album digitally allowing people to pay whatever they thought was fair and while many paid nothing, quite a few people paid a 'fair' amount. A couple of months later the CD was released and did manage to still claim number one on the billboards. Makes you wonder if piracy is really hurting the top notch stuff at all?

 

[jboking]

snip

I'll let you know when I get up the courage to look through this freaking pile of magazines. If you get the urge to look through your magazines there should be a picture of a pie chart explaining it.

Also, if you disagree with the analysis of where your money goes that I've provided, perhaps you could provide one of your own. Do you have an opinion on the subject.

 

[NeutralMunchHotel]

I'll assume this comment is directed at me.

When I said there were no reprocussions, I was talking about the punishment-y aspect of it. They aren't going to come round and smash me to pieces because I've done it, so why shouldn't I do it?

I hope you realise with what I say I'm taking some kind of artistic licence... when I say it, this isn't what I actually feel, it's more like a question that challenges people.

Some 'torrent'-ers may feel like that (I don't do torrents, that's getting slightly more illegal) but I'm just using it as a challenging question. I hope you've seen the way that this has all been written.

Finally, I have never used the 'definition of theft' argument. I have fully accepted that what I have done can be construed as 'theft'.

Oh, and 'Sorry but are you stupid'? I hope not, and I don't think insults are a great way to start an argument. Sorry, but those are just one person's opinions.

Your argument is there is no one to stop me, so if I profit from it I should do it. Do you steal from your dad's wallet while he sleeps? Do you auction off your parents stuff when they don't use them much? Do you "borrow" you parents credit card for small purchases, because they wouldn't bother finding out where that 10$ went? Do you take the games that your friends never play? Do you take candy from a baby simply because a baby cant stop you?

No. No. No. No. And No.

The thing is, I don't see how this is relevant whatsoever. The fact that no-one can stop me is just a factor in the whole thing that leads you to 'I want to pirate Imagine: Party Babiez', with the main point being that 'I don't want to spend money on something I could get for free'.