What exactly is the moral difference between pirating a game and borrowing one if you...

[veloper]

It's counterfeiting (essentially). When more money gets printed than is supposed to be in circulation; it devalues the currency.

That analogy doesn't hold up, because you cannot buy any things with that data you downloaded. The data simply has no percieved value, unlike fiat money.

Only when you make a copy of the box and the manual and the dics and sell it for the real thing, you can speak of counterfeiting. That thing does happen around the world, but it's not the kind of piracy we are talking about here.

It's not a 1:1 analogy, but it stands that the product itself is still being devalued as copies exist that the creator has not been duly compensated for.

It may not have 'perceived' value, but it does have negotiated value.

The data itself has no value at all. It exists in infinite supplies. Switching 1s and zeros around can be done quickly, indefinitely and at virtually no cost.
The valuable stuff happens long before the game hits the shelves. It's the development of the software that is valuable.

Supporting the developers is good, but let's just keep calling software piracy, "piracy" in short and leave the counterfeiting term for making genuine-looking copies.

 

[senordesol]

It's counterfeiting (essentially). When more money gets printed than is supposed to be in circulation; it devalues the currency.

That analogy doesn't hold up, because you cannot buy any things with that data you downloaded. The data simply has no percieved value, unlike fiat money.

Only when you make a copy of the box and the manual and the dics and sell it for the real thing, you can speak of counterfeiting. That thing does happen around the world, but it's not the kind of piracy we are talking about here.

It's not a 1:1 analogy, but it stands that the product itself is still being devalued as copies exist that the creator has not been duly compensated for.

It may not have 'perceived' value, but it does have negotiated value.

The data itself has no value at all. It exists in infinite supplies. Switching 1s and zeros around can be done quickly, indefinitely and at virtually no cost.
The valuable stuff happens long before the game hits the shelves. It's the development of the software that is valuable.

Supporting the developers is good, but let's just keep calling software piracy, "piracy" in short and leave the counterfeiting term for making genuine-looking copies.

Quibbling over terms is of no interest to me. A product has been made available for sale and if a copy exists that has not been acceptably negotiated; then that is morally wrong. 'Thievery', 'Copyright Infringement', 'Counterfeiting', 'Happy Fun Time'; whatever you want to call it - it still remains that there's someone out there who is owed money and is not getting it.

 

[veloper]

It's counterfeiting (essentially). When more money gets printed than is supposed to be in circulation; it devalues the currency.

That analogy doesn't hold up, because you cannot buy any things with that data you downloaded. The data simply has no percieved value, unlike fiat money.

Only when you make a copy of the box and the manual and the dics and sell it for the real thing, you can speak of counterfeiting. That thing does happen around the world, but it's not the kind of piracy we are talking about here.

It's not a 1:1 analogy, but it stands that the product itself is still being devalued as copies exist that the creator has not been duly compensated for.

It may not have 'perceived' value, but it does have negotiated value.

The data itself has no value at all. It exists in infinite supplies. Switching 1s and zeros around can be done quickly, indefinitely and at virtually no cost.
The valuable stuff happens long before the game hits the shelves. It's the development of the software that is valuable.

Supporting the developers is good, but let's just keep calling software piracy, "piracy" in short and leave the counterfeiting term for making genuine-looking copies.

Quibbling over terms is of no interest to me. A product has been made available for sale and if a copy exists that has not been acceptably negotiated; then that is morally wrong. 'Thievery', 'Copyright Infringement', 'Counterfeiting', 'Happy Fun Time'; whatever you want to call it - it still remains that there's someone out there who is owed money and is not getting it.

Happy Fun Time sounds good to me.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

In spite of whatever you might be led to believe from Kant's Categorical Imperative, not every specific action's morality can be inferred from the exaggerated scenario of what if everyone would be always doing the exact same thing.

This is a deeply ironic statement. I mean you probably meant to intimidate me by identifying my philosophical lens. But seeing as I have no idea what you're talking about, it's actually just a tremendous compliment.

As Woody Allen said, ?If everybody went to the same restaurant one evening to eat blintzes, there?d be chaos. But they don't?.

If everyone would always pirate everything, there would be chaos. But they don't.

And you're comparing fundamentally different behaviors and expecting me not to call you on it? Legitimate patronage of a physical space versus illegally downloading software via the relatively non-existent logistics of online space? Woody Allen would readily admit that his own statement completely falls apart if everyone in the world can merely download the blintzes to their home computers. Sorry, clever quote, but not remotely applicable.

You are talking about a "ridiculous vacuum hypothetical", but you are the one who ignores the actual real life context of an action, for a reductio ad absurdum hypothetical. The question about the difference between borrowing and pirating, already implicitly takes it into account that certain acts of piracy could decrease a creator's profitability, and specifically cited an example that doesn't.

I'm actually not implying that piracy decreases the creator's profitability. I'm not involving the creator in the slightest. The creators will charge whatever they have to charge to make the games they make. We both know this. I'm attacking pirates from the position of a legitimate customer. Every dollar a pirate doesn't pay for a game is a dollar my fellow legit customers and I must pay. Pirates aren't taking money out of developer pockets. They're taking money out of mine.

The question is "what if I download one game, instead of borrowing it." That's not a vacuum hypothetical, that's the context of a thing that real people actually do. They occasionally stand there, with no money in their pocket, and start wondering whether they should just borrow it (which is legal), or pirate it (which would be more comfortable for everyone involved). What the moral consequences of that particular question are, can't be answered with generalizations of what other people could possibly be doing with other acts of piracy.

How is not a vacuum hypothetical if it fails to take into account the accrued impact of the aggregate? Also, how is pirating it more comfortable for everyone involved? Are developers not "everyone"? Are paying customers not "everyone"? Faulty-ass premise there.

You can't "destroy the no-lost-sale argument" by meging all acts that can be described with the word "piracy" into a big pile of equivalence, when what people are arguing for is exactly that it's depending on a case-by-case basis.

In what cases are people saying piracy is okay?

I'm destroying the "no lost sale" argument with a system-level analysis. I'm not concerned with the circuitry of any arguments between point A and point B. I'm only concerned with what enters the system (my money) and what exits the system (hours of entertainment for me AND people who didn't pay a goddamn thing). It doesn't matter how effectively anyone argues the intervening premises if the conclusion doesn't pass the most basic of common-sense checks. The only thing we're proving is that the language of the debate is flawed and insufficient.

 

[chuckdm]

When you buy a game you buy one copy.

Except that you aren't. Not any more. Back when people bought games in stores on CDs this was true. Now when you pay $60 for a new release on Origin and for whatever reason EA doesn't like your conduct your "ownership" of your 1 copy of the game gets revoked and even though you can never play it again, you never get even a pro-rated portion of your money back. Why? Because you never "owned" a copy of the game to begin with. You merely "licensed" a "use" of the game that can thus be unlicensed at any time.

If I'm going to be accused of theft, I want proof that it belonged to someone else to steal it from in the first place. Most games now don't, so if I'm just pirating a game that NOBODY can legally "own" then all I'm really pirating is a license for the game.

That said, if ownership of a game is worth $50 that's fine, too. But a "license" for "use" should be worth less, because it IS less. A brand new Cadillac may be $80,000, but if I go rent one from a car rental I'm not going to pay anywhere near that for the "use" of the car. Even though I can still do EVERYTHING with that car - drive it, fill it with gas, even wreck it - I expect to pay less for something I am using than something I get to own. Just the same, if I don't have outright ownership of a game, I want a discount on the license. That is FAIR.

And if what I'm being accused of doing is pirating a game that, if I owned it, is only worth $50, then the value of what I pirated should be what, like $5? Fine, sell AAA game "licenses" for $5 and I'll never pirate another game again.

(Also, NOTE: I don't really pirate games any more. Now I buy a single copy on steam/origin/etc and then pirate a single copy so I can play what I paid for without the stupid DRM and am no longer subject to some EA exec deciding my "license" is up. I still sympathize with those who do, though. Piracy is a response to oppression at the hands of corporations, nothing less.)

 

[Entitled]

This is a deeply ironic statement. I mean you probably meant to intimidate me by identifying my philosophical lens. But seeing as I have no idea what you're talking about, it's actually just a tremendous compliment.

The Categorical Imperative is the following statement:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

A useful philosophical axiom, that basically says "don't be selfish at the expense of others, lead a kind of life that everyone could lead".

But whether you were familiar with it's name or not, the argument that you have employed is a subtly misused variation of it:

"Commit only that action, whereby you can, at the same time, will that everyone commits the same action."

All that I wanted to demonstrate with the quote about the blintzes, where Allen comically demonstrates a flawed interpretation of the categorical imperative, is that you can't really apply that train of logic for specific actions of individuals, but only for the maxims, the moral guidelines that also include the why, not just the what.

By assuming that the "If no one pays money for games..." is what would happen if the moral worldview of pro-piracy arguments would become universal, you are not really extrapolating the maxim that pirates are acting on, but the specific action without the context of why when and how they consider it acceptable in that particular case. (see later below)

And you're comparing fundamentally different behaviors and expecting me not to call you on it? Legitimate patronage of a physical space versus illegally downloading software via the relatively non-existent logistics of online space?

No, beyond that point of how neither of them can be incriminated just by extrapolating the action into universal, I'm not claiming that blintzes and digital content are particularly similar. I could have used any other action as an example of how they can all become dangerous if vewed through the lens of "if everyone do thst same thing".

Your distinction between "legitimate" and "illegal" actions is an appeal to legality, but we are talking about morality here. The question is what makes something legitimate, or illegitimate, not whether or not they happen to be illegal under current US law.

In what cases are people saying piracy is okay?

The most common arguments seem to revolve around the cases where the work is present as a positive externality [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality], a benefit that is available for others after the creators had their own motives to create it and profit from it. From the audience's point of view, these examples include every time you couldn't have plausibly bought the content anyways. (you couldn't have paid, it wasn't released in your country, it isn't sold any more (or in a reasonably accessible way, etc).

The idea is, that don't be a freeloader, you are supposed to pay for your own games as much as you would anyways, don't use piracy as an excuse to save money at the expense of others, just to access content beyond what you otherwise could.

The theme of this thread is one typical example of this, a situation where you could choose between borrowing a game or pirating it.

Look at your games shelf. If beyond buying those, you would have also pirated all the other games that you ever wanted to play, but couldn't, and I did the same, you wouldn't owe me anything and I wouldn't owe you anything, we didn't take away anything from each other, (or from the creator). So that would be a maxim that could become a universal law without harming each other.

 

[TehCookie]

When you buy a game you buy one copy.

Except that you aren't. Not any more. Back when people bought games in stores on CDs this was true. Now when you pay $60 for a new release on Origin and for whatever reason EA doesn't like your conduct your "ownership" of your 1 copy of the game gets revoked and even though you can never play it again, you never get even a pro-rated portion of your money back. Why? Because you never "owned" a copy of the game to begin with. You merely "licensed" a "use" of the game that can thus be unlicensed at any time.

If I'm going to be accused of theft, I want proof that it belonged to someone else to steal it from in the first place. Most games now don't, so if I'm just pirating a game that NOBODY can legally "own" then all I'm really pirating is a license for the game.

That said, if ownership of a game is worth $50 that's fine, too. But a "license" for "use" should be worth less, because it IS less. A brand new Cadillac may be $80,000, but if I go rent one from a car rental I'm not going to pay anywhere near that for the "use" of the car. Even though I can still do EVERYTHING with that car - drive it, fill it with gas, even wreck it - I expect to pay less for something I am using than something I get to own. Just the same, if I don't have outright ownership of a game, I want a discount on the license. That is FAIR.

And if what I'm being accused of doing is pirating a game that, if I owned it, is only worth $50, then the value of what I pirated should be what, like $5? Fine, sell AAA game "licenses" for $5 and I'll never pirate another game again.

(Also, NOTE: I don't really pirate games any more. Now I buy a single copy on steam/origin/etc and then pirate a single copy so I can play what I paid for without the stupid DRM and am no longer subject to some EA exec deciding my "license" is up. I still sympathize with those who do, though. Piracy is a response to oppression at the hands of corporations, nothing less.)

I did mentioned DD here:

DD is different since you're not buying a game, but a license to play it I think. That's why you can download it anywhere but it's against the TOS to share or lend your account to someone. If you think it's morally wrong to disregard an agreement than that's wrong as well.

Of course asking if something is morally wrong depends on your morals. However I think even admitting you use to pirate can earn you a warning.

 

[rob_simple]

If I loan a game to my friend, then fair enough that is one sale the company loses. If I rip it and put it up online for anyone to download, that is potentially thousands of sales the company loses.

Potentially. Many people pirate things they have no intention of paying money for in any case, so it hardly seems like the term "lost sale" is applicable to such instances.

Oh brilliant, this argument again. So does that mean I can go into a restaurant and start eating off of peoples' plates, because I never had any intention of buying dinner there? Does that mean I can break into a hotel room and spend the night without repercussions because it was empty anyway?

First, I was only addressing your lost sales argument, which, as I have just shown, is flawed. So calm down >:|

Second, no to both those cases, because your actions have the direct effect of costing the restaurant (or customer) and hotel money, no matter what. Even if the hotel was empty, they still need to pay for cleaning and whatnot so the next person can stay there (and how would you even get a key card? But I digress).

And playing a game without paying the developer money has a direct effect on them because they are not receiving payment for the product that often costs millions to make. If this wasn't the system that most developers expected people to go through, then all games would be free to play.

There are so many easy, legal ways to try before you buy these days --download a demo, rent, borrow from a friend, watch Let's Plays-- so the 'I wasn't going to buy it anyway' argument holds less water than ever; it is now purely a false justification to take something without paying for it.

If you have no intention of paying money for a service then you have absolutely no right to access that service.

Prove it. Proclamations without supporting arguments are little more than hot air. I'm not saying I disagree with your conclusions, but expecting everyone to just defer to your wisdom on the matter without giving them a reason why is rather arrogant.

Prove what? That taking something that costs money without paying for it is dishonest? Isn't that obvious to anyone with even a shred of a conscience?

No matter what way you try and slice it, millions of people pirating statistically equals more lost sales than if nobody pirated, and it also equals more lost sales than if one in two people bought legally and shared with a friend.

No disagreement (in practice), but if the entire crux of your philosophical argument relies on the premise of their being lost sales, and it is even theoretically plausible that a pirated product wouldn't actually result in lost sales, then the argument lacks solid grounding.

The crux of my argument does not lie on lost sales, that is why I said potentially, it is indeed plausible that pirating wouldn't result in lost sales --there is even evidence from developers to suggest that piracy increases their sales-- but you cannot sit there and tell me that if 100% of people pirated at all times that it would result in less lost sales than if 50% of people bought a product and loaned it to a friend.

I don't have a philosophical stance on piracy, truth be told I don't really give a shit, but I do have a logical stance that if you take something you're supposed to pay for, no matter what way you try to justify it, then you are being dishonest.

OT:Lending is not the same as pirating for many reasons that other people have already laid out.

 

[rob_simple]

Truth be told, I look forward to a day when all information is free and people create products for the joy of creating and distributing them, and not because it's a way to generate wealth.

Uh huh, that's a nice idea, in theory, unfortunately we are living in the real world and not some hippy commune, therefore we have to consider this thing called the economy. People need money to survive, that is the world we live in, and by pirating, whether you would have bought it or not, you are contributing to the problem of these people not getting paid much more than you are if you actually paid for the damn things you want to use.

Personally, I don't agree that games should cost £40. Does that mean I pirate them, as a result? Nope, I wait for them to come down to a price I find agreeable, or I don't buy/play them at all.

Yes. Every moral and ethical claim must be backed up, especially if you apply your morals and ethics to others. Saying "Everyone should already be aware of this" doesn't add anything to the discussion.

You're right, I am totally making the assumption that, 'taking something without paying for it is wrong' is a universal truth. How foolish of me. I mean, it's not as if every country in the world has laws along those lines; this is definitely a fringe morality that I should have to justify, in detail.

This thread is about the moral and ethical arguments about piracy. If you want to bring legality into it, that is your prerogative, but I have no interest in discussing legality. Everyone here knows where that road leads.

Yes, and where do laws come from? They are based on the general, moral consensus of any given nation (in theory, at least). Therefore, it makes sense that, when you are given more and more legal avenues to travel, it becomes increasingly immoral/illogical to stick with the only illegal one, just because it's the most convenient for you.

I don't see merit in other people deciding for you whether a thing is "something you're supposed to pay for"

So essentially what you are saying is, if someone creates something and says, 'I would like X amount of money for it,' you believe it is acceptable for everyone else to say, 'nah I don't think so, I'm taking it for free'? If you don't agree that it's worth paying for, the only right you have is to not buy it; you have no right to take something for free just because you think it should be free.

Only if the person would have paid money for the game otherwise. There aren't grounds for expecting this statement to hold up if the person was not going to pay money for the product under any circumstances.

It holds up either way. If you are using something for free that you should have paid for then you are taking money away from that person because, if you had went through the proper channels you should have to access that content/service, they would have been paid. If you're never going to pay for something, you should never be able to use/do that something; it's that simple.

Just because you were never going to pay for it does not give you carte blanche to take it, anyway. There is absolutely no moral justification to that course of action. People can do it all they want, it's not my place to tell them what to do, but whether it costs the developers money or not, they are still accessing a service they are supposed to pay money for without paying for it. Even if it doesn't have a direct impact on the developer via lost sales, it is still immoral.

Think of it like this: If you catch a ten pound/dollar note blowing through the wind and decide to keep it, is that immoral? After all, whoever it belongs to is almost certainly never going to track it down --and even if they do, what way do you have of verifying it belongs to them?-- if you hand it in at a police station they're only going to put it in the kitty for the Christmas night out, so what difference does it make if you keep it?

Logically, the decision to keep it is a sound one, since the person who lost the money is never going to get it back either way, but it is still dishonest to keep the money because it isn't yours; you haven't earned it.

 

[Resetti's_Replicas]

It's about the principle. While the act of piracy does very little harm itself, the fact that a person WOULD do it says something about them That they deserve something for nothing. That ethics and morals can be ignored when it's convenient. That it's ok since their chances of getting caught are so slim.

I'm not saying we should lock up all the pirates as a preventative measure. But maybe think about what I've said when you're picking a roommate or new hire.

 

[Jmp_man]

It holds up either way. If you are using something for free that you should have paid for then you are taking money away from that person because, if you had went through the proper channels you should have to access that content/service, they would have been paid. If you're never going to pay for something, you should never be able to use/do that something; it's that simple. -Snip-

I just wanna' jump in here for a second and ask you... what if you are NOT able to legally purchase the product you want? Let's say that for whatever reason it's not available in your country or not being sold anymore... stuff like that. Also what about if the product is able to be purchased but the creator of the work doesn't get anything from the sale of the product (say... the only way to get a game is off Ebay)? I suppose the First-sale doctrine could be argued at this point however so there's that...

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

By assuming that the "If no one pays money for games..." is what would happen if the moral worldview of pro-piracy arguments would become universal, you are not really extrapolating the maxim that pirates are acting on, but the specific action without the context of why when and how they consider it acceptable in that particular case. (see later below)

If the argument needs to fit that form, then my argument would be something more akin to "people use a very limited set of morally justified circumstances to enable a broader culture of destructive piracy". Of my half dozen friends who game on PC, precisely NONE of them pay for any games they don't absolutely have to (persistent online or severely DRM'd games being the only real exception). They trot out the same excuses as every other pirate - "I wouldn't buy it, so what's the difference?"; "If I like it, I'll buy it"; "it doesn't affect you, so why would you care?". In the end, they are gaining hundreds of hours of entertainment for free, and I am paying like a sucker. Why is that okay? How is that moral?

No, beyond that point of how neither of them can be incriminated just by extrapolating the action into universal, I'm not claiming that blintzes and digital content are particularly similar. I could have used any other action as an example of how they can all become dangerous if vewed through the lens of "if everyone do thst same thing".

Not true. There absolutely needs to be a distinction between acts that realistically can be undertaken by virtually everyone (remotely downloading a pirated copy of a video game) and acts that are extremely unlikely to be undertaken by virtually everyone (the entire population gathering around a single geographic location). The "online" component completely changes the rules here, which is one reason why the old "maxims" and argumentative forms aren't holding up. They simply don't apply to what we're talking about any longer.

This is why I consistently request that people take a higher level view of the issue. You can stay on the ground floor navigating the specific circuitry of the arguments if you like, but it seems pointless when the simple "left side in, right side out" analysis shows imbalance. The inescapable conclusion: we're not using the correct language to describe the middle of the equation. I don't care how you explain away the facts if the end result is that I subsidize gaming for freeloaders. Unless you want to posit something along the lines of "all games should be made for free", and I'm not sure that's a rabbit-hole worth falling down.

Your distinction between "legitimate" and "illegal" actions is an appeal to legality, but we are talking about morality here. The question is what makes something legitimate, or illegitimate, not whether or not they happen to be illegal under current US law.

If I, as a legitimate customer, feel slighted and unfairly treated by my fellow "gamers", how is that not a moral or legitimate issue? I'm being taken advantage of. That's almost textbook "immoral".

The idea is, that don't be a freeloader, you are supposed to pay for your own games as much as you would anyways, don't use piracy as an excuse to save money at the expense of others, just to access content beyond what you otherwise could.

I think we could have a discussion about the prevalence of this legitimate piracy versus the immoral variety - and whether or not the overall good is served by allowing the rare good instances to pave way for what appear to be the far more numerous bad instances.

The theme of this thread is one typical example of this, a situation where you could choose between borrowing a game or pirating it.

If you replicate the loaning of a game completely, from exclusive play rights (no simultaneous play) to logistic considerations (no one more than a short drive away, no more than 2-3 total "lendings"), then the piracy is effectively identical. That's really sort of a pointless question, though, isn't? I mean if you can precisely clone the input/output of a behavior, how is it going to be morally different?

Of course, I don't believe this sort of piracy exists. You'd be shirking most of the advantages of modern technology in the process.

Look at your games shelf. If beyond buying those, you would have also pirated all the other games that you ever wanted to play, but couldn't, and I did the same, you wouldn't owe me anything and I wouldn't owe you anything, we didn't take away anything from each other, (or from the creator). So that would be a maxim that could become a universal law without harming each other.

Why are we entitled to play games beyond our means? If we can't afford more than the games we have, why is it suddenly okay for us to pirate the ones we don't? What is to stop us from "responsibly limiting" our disposable income to the point where we can no longer buy any games at all... and then gaining guilt-free access to all games through suddenly legitimate piracy? If I'm the creator in this situation, I know what I'm thinking: if you want my game but you can't afford it, makes changes in your own life to enable you to properly purchase my product/service. Get a better job or divert those funds from other interests.

The overriding issues are the ease of piracy given the delivery system (internet) and the infinite nature of the product (software). A lot of people say you encourage people to pirate when you don't provide easy enough access to your product, but we're reaching a point where that bar is just too damn high. I mean my friends can download any game ever made 100% free, without DRM, at the touch of a few buttons. What possible convenience can a developer offer to compete with that?

I'm rambling. I'd still like to see someone dispute my bird's eye view argument, though. If my money goes in, along with the money of every other legitimate customer, and untold gaming hours come out (including countless entertainment hours for people who never paid a dime), how is that a morally defensible arrangement?

 

[rob_simple]

It holds up either way. If you are using something for free that you should have paid for then you are taking money away from that person because, if you had went through the proper channels you should have to access that content/service, they would have been paid. If you're never going to pay for something, you should never be able to use/do that something; it's that simple. -Snip-

I just wanna' jump in here for a second and ask you... what if you are NOT able to legally purchase the product you want? Let's say that for whatever reason it's not available in your country or not being sold anymore... stuff like that. Also what about if the product is able to be purchased but the creator of the work doesn't get anything from the sale of the product (say... the only way to get a game is off Ebay)? I suppose the First-sale doctrine could be argued at this point however so there's that...

That is a very good point, and one I have argued in favour of in the past. If there is absolutely no other way to obtain the product, then I would say it is justified, but with gaming in particular that is almost never the case nowadays; with virtual stores constantly updating their catalogue (I never thought I'd get the chance to play Klonoa or Tombi before the PSN was a thing.) As to the eBay part, I'd say that falls more under used games sales, which is an entirely different argument that I don't know we should be getting into on this particular thread...

In conclusion: It's one thing to pirate something you literally cannot access in any other way, but entirely different to pirate something just because you don't believe you should have to pay for it, which is what the other guy is arguing for.

That's how my moral compass lies, anyway; your mileage may vary.

 

[Entitled]

If the argument needs to fit that form, then my argument would be something more akin to "people use a very limited set of morally justified circumstances to enable a broader culture of destructive piracy".

That would be more convincing if there would be any actual "destructive" effect of piracy visible on a global scale.

During the past decade as online file-sharing grew to be commonly accessible, the entertainment industry, grew in every concievable sense [http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/theskyisrising.pdf], including in the number of works published, and the profits of individual industries, even during the recession.

Several studies have been made about pirates being the largest legitimate consumers [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks/] of entertainment industries, including one that was based on the Dutch decriminalization of file-sharing [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerlan].

Your anecdotes about "your friends" not paying for anything, are dwarfed by the consistent precedent of easily available piracy coexisting with a flourishing content industry.

Of my half dozen friends who game on PC, precisely NONE of them pay for any games they don't absolutely have to (persistent online or severely DRM'd games being the only real exception). They trot out the same excuses as every other pirate - "I wouldn't buy it, so what's the difference?"; "If I like it, I'll buy it"; "it doesn't affect you, so why would you care?". In the end, they are gaining hundreds of hours of entertainment for free, and I am paying like a sucker. Why is that okay? How is that moral?

So, in the end, why would you expect them to pay for games? To actually support the artists, or to make you feel like less of a sucker? If the first one could be acchieved just by them paying more for certain games while playing the same amount of games, then why would you also expect them to also make a much bigger sacrifice and "go without" any games that they can't afford, just to morally stand up against a "culture of piracy"?

I find the problems your arguments surprisingly similar to those of abstinance only sex education, or weed criminalization: If you detect that some young people can get into trouble due to sex or drugs, then identifying the problem in "higher level view" is the worst possible thing that you could do. If you are deciding that the problem is the "culture of sex", or the "culture of drugs", and make sweeping generalizations about all acts falling under these broader concepts whether or not they specifically harm anyone, you will inevitably have to make false arguments "for the greater good".

There are plenty of meth heads on the streets, who have noticed that their parents' arguments about weed are full of shit, and then assumed that maybe the whole "destructive culture of drugs" idea is full of shit. Of which they were wrong, but it's partially the fault of that "higher level view" if they came to this conclusion after poking holes in the "illegal drugs = always bad" rule.

Not true. There absolutely needs to be a distinction between acts that realistically can be undertaken by virtually everyone (remotely downloading a pirated copy of a video game) and acts that are extremely unlikely to be undertaken by virtually everyone (the entire population gathering around a single geographic location). The "online" component completely changes the rules here, which is one reason why the old "maxims" and argumentative forms aren't holding up. They simply don't apply to what we're talking about any longer.

This is why I consistently request that people take a higher level view of the issue. You can stay on the ground floor navigating the specific circuitry of the arguments if you like, but it seems pointless when the simple "left side in, right side out" analysis shows imbalance. The inescapable conclusion: we're not using the correct language to describe the middle of the equation. I don't care how you explain away the facts if the end result is that I subsidize gaming for freeloaders. Unless you want to posit something along the lines of "all games should be made for free", and I'm not sure that's a rabbit-hole worth falling down.

The problem is, that piracy is still easily accessible, even if you choose to go on full abstinance against it. Whether I am asking people not to be freeloaders, or you are asking them to always follow copyright law, we are asking them to say to to the dangers of the tragedy of the commons, the only difference is that you are doing it in an overly broad and restrictive way.

The only reason why you can consider piracy to be the line in the sand, is because YOU made it out to be. Just like the War on Drugs drew the line before weed, the War on Piracy drew the line before personal file-sharing, and both created an arbitrary dichotomy:

"Everything on this side of the line is ILLEGAL DRUGS, and they are BAD, even though some specific usage of them is no worse than legal drugs, you should abstain from them or you will encourage the general CULTURE OF DRUGS (which we have just defined in the first place with this line here)"

"Everything on this side of the line is PIRACY, and it is are BAD, even though some specific acts of it are no worse than legal data access, you should abstain from it or you will encourage the general CULTURE OF PIRACY (which we have just defined in the first place with this line here)".

We are living in an online culture. Right now, you are downloadied this sentence, and copied it in your cache. Then you might go to youtube, to watch a fan remix of a movie scene, or start to read a My Little Pony fanfiction (no horsefucking, just the whacky adventures type), you start play a Game of Thrones mod of Crusader Kings II, and you might prefer to play it with the series soundtrack...

In this online world, downloading and sharing and copying and redistributing copyrighted information, is all around us. People get accustomed to the idea that this is the way it should be. We click on buttons, and information appears. In this context, setting up a morality that revolves around free downloading being wrong, is a lot more unfeasible than freeloading and never paying for anything being wrong.

If I, as a legitimate customer, feel slighted and unfairly treated by my fellow "gamers", how is that not a moral or legitimate issue? I'm being taken advantage of. That's almost textbook "immoral".

The saying goes "The right to swing my fist ends where the your nose begins".

It is NOT "The right to swing my fist ends where the you feel like your nose is being unfairly treated".

That you "feel slighted", and you are "taken advantage of", are not the same thing.

Fairness is defied by facts, not by feelings. If piracy isn't actually destroying the content industry, then your intuitive feelings about it are factually wrong in the larger picture, and have no relevance.

If you replicate the loaning of a game completely, from exclusive play rights (no simultaneous play) to logistic considerations (no one more than a short drive away, no more than 2-3 total "lendings"), then the piracy is effectively identical. That's really sort of a pointless question, though, isn't? I mean if you can precisely clone the input/output of a behavior, how is it going to be morally different?

Of course, I don't believe this sort of piracy exists. You'd be shirking most of the advantages of modern technology in the process.

The point is that if you don't replicate the loaning of a game completely, then the worst thing that you can say about it is still that due to your own conceptual categories, it can encourage other, worse forms of piracy.

If I pirate a game instead of borrowing it, then my friend can continue playing it, that's an adventage for both of us. The advantages of modern technology make it possible for millions of other people who didn't even have a chance to borrow it to play as well, that's a benefit for all of us.

As long as we are talking about my conceptual category of the act, "pirating a game instead of borrowing it", no other economical consideration comes into the picture. (not counting the benefits of more people getting familiar with the game, and possibly getting into the franchise and buying future games).

Why are we entitled to play games beyond our means? If we can't afford more than the games we have, why is it suddenly okay for us to pirate the ones we don't?

Why AREN'T we entitled to play games?

I'm not even joking here. Usually, the reply to this is the place for bad analogies to how it's the creator's "property", and about the evils of "getting stuff for free", but of course the significant difference is that here we are not talking about "taking away stuff", but about accessing information.

Copyright is one of the areas where it's useful to limit the freedom of information for the societal benefits of artists making a living. If every publisher would be allowed for anyone's book, or TV channel could air any show, there would be chaos.

But if we have discovered one aspect of copyright law, the universal restriction on personal file-sharing, that by-and-large isn't necessary for the industry, and possibly doesn't even contribute to it, then what is the further justification for continuing to limit other freedoms for it's sake?

What is to stop us from "responsibly limiting" our disposable income to the point where we can no longer buy any games at all...

The same thing that stops you from pirating any games.

The overriding issues are the ease of piracy given the delivery system (internet) and the infinite nature of the product (software). A lot of people say you encourage people to pirate when you don't provide easy enough access to your product, but we're reaching a point where that bar is just too damn high. I mean my friends can download any game ever made 100% free, without DRM, at the touch of a few buttons. What possible convenience can a developer offer to compete with that?

The same benefits that are evidently good enough for you.

I'm rambling. I'd still like to see someone dispute my bird's eye view argument, though. If my money goes in, along with the money of every other legitimate customer, and untold gaming hours come out (including countless entertainment hours for people who never paid a dime), how is that a morally defensible arrangement?

You might want to read my other posts in this thread, replies to James Joseph Emerald asking a similar question, #42, #52, #82, and #96. about wheter "enjoying the fruits of other people's labour without paying" is wrong.


The short reply is, that there is such a thing in the economy as a "positive externality", which means when someone does a work, and you end up benefiting from it either willingly or by presence. Some of them are shunned as freeloading, but there are plenty of examples that are considered the daily part of life.

In the entertainment industry itself, the classic examples of this are the various limitations and exceptions to copyright [Limitations and exceptions to copyright].

If it's right to read an old novel for free because it's "Public Domain", to record a TV show on DVD because of "Fair Use", then how could it be morally indefensible, that at least in some cases we are entitled to enjoy certain accesses to copyrighted works for free?

If that's the case, why is the "piracy" of file-sharing so fundamentally different from these?

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

During the past decade as online file-sharing grew to be commonly accessible, the entertainment industry, grew in every concievable sense [http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/theskyisrising.pdf], including in the number of works published, and the profits of individual industries, even during the recession.

Several studies have been made about pirates being the largest legitimate consumers [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks/] of entertainment industries, including one that was based on the Dutch decriminalization of file-sharing [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerlan].

So correlations, yes? The explosion of entertainment revenues couldn't possibly have anything to do with an increasingly leisure-focused population? Seems we'd have an easy time attributing increased sales to the wonderful effects of modern agriculture on the free time of the ever-exploding foreign markets of developing nations.

And the notion that software pirates, who are probably the most tech-savvy subset of people on the planet, also happen to consume the most media through legal channels doesn't mean piracy isn't bad. It means that people who pirate also buy stuff. You wouldn't let white collar criminals off the hook for stealing sports cars if they were also the number one consumers of sports cars, would you?

Your anecdotes about "your friends" not paying for anything, are dwarfed by the consistent precedent of easily available piracy coexisting with a flourishing content industry.

There are certainly instances of criminal populations coexisting with non-criminal populations, yes.

So, in the end, why would you expect them to pay for games? To actually support the artists, or to make you feel like less of a sucker? If the first one could be acchieved just by them paying more for certain games while playing the same amount of games, then why would you also expect them to also make a much bigger sacrifice and "go without" any games that they can't afford, just to morally stand up against a "culture of piracy"?

If they don't pay, why should I? If no one pays, how do the games get made? How is this different from advocating for shoplifting because not everyone shoplifts? Or for stealing cable? You're coming off as the cool kid berating the goody two-shoes for tattling. Thing is: the entire system of game creation is propped up by paying customers. If you're not a paying customer, you're a freeloader, and I have every right to disapprove of, demonize, and attempt to fight/outlaw your behavior. I'm subsidizing your gaming. I never agreed to do so.

How is "going without" any games they can't afford a sacrifice of any sort? Since when did it become okay to baseline expect everything in that fashion? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. If you can't afford a speedboat, are you sacrificing a speedboat? How much more backwards is this conversation going to get?

I find the problems your arguments surprisingly similar to those of abstinance only sex education, or weed criminalization: If you detect that some young people can get into trouble due to sex or drugs, then identifying the problem in "higher level view" is the worst possible thing that you could do. If you are deciding that the problem is the "culture of sex", or the "culture of drugs", and make sweeping generalizations about all acts falling under these broader concepts whether or not they specifically harm anyone, you will inevitably have to make false arguments "for the greater good".

Except that we've long since discovered language to adequately explain away these other issues. We know why abstinence only sex education doesn't work. We know why criminalizing weed doesn't work. We discovered reasons for the input/output disparity in these systems. No one has done this for software piracy, to my mind. If you can dive into the meat of the system and adequately explain away the imbalance in some fashion that does not damn piracy, I'm all ears. Please explain to me why it's okay for me to pay for my games while other people play the same games for free. Explain why I have to be the adult who pays for my shit but I don't get to punish those who refuse?

There are plenty of meth heads on the streets, who have noticed that their parents' arguments about weed are full of shit, and then assumed that maybe the whole "destructive culture of drugs" idea is full of shit. Of which they were wrong, but it's partially the fault of that "higher level view" if they came to this conclusion after poking holes in the "illegal drugs = always bad" rule.

Again, people have studied weed to the nines and know pretty much everything about it. Anyone who has seen meth used knows all they need to about that drug as well. Software piracy involves far less tangible properties and is clearly a more complicated and nebulous area of discussion. You obviously can't damn the shit outright through the higher level view, but you can recognize the obvious imbalance and realize the arguments in place are falling short. Things aren't adding up - at least not for the people paying for this industry.

The problem is, that piracy is still easily accessible, even if you choose to go on full abstinance against it. Whether I am asking people not to be freeloaders, or you are asking them to always follow copyright law, we are asking them to say to to the dangers of the tragedy of the commons, the only difference is that you are doing it in an overly broad and restrictive way.

The only reason why you can consider piracy to be the line in the sand, is because YOU made it out to be. Just like the War on Drugs drew the line before weed, the War on Piracy drew the line before personal file-sharing, and both created an arbitrary dichotomy:

This is verging on pure semantic nonsense. If you're going to disassemble an argument in this fashion, where everything I think or believe is 100% opinion and open to pure interpretation and raw dissension despite any evidence I put forth, we're not having anything resembling a discussion. It's just dudes pounding on keys.

But if you're into quotes, I'll share one of my favorites: "Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere." As reasoning beings, all we do is draw lines. If you're going to eject that basic truth, there's no foundation for human interaction.

In this online world, downloading and sharing and copying and redistributing copyrighted information, is all around us. People get accustomed to the idea that this is the way it should be. We click on buttons, and information appears. In this context, setting up a morality that revolves around free downloading being wrong, is a lot more unfeasible than freeloading and never paying for anything being wrong.

So now your argument is that the genie is out of the bottle so whatcha gonna do? If your goal is to make me feel angry and foolish for paying for any of my games, you're nearing your goal. Hopefully everyone who pays catches on as well. Maybe we'll banish this industry to the hobbyist developers inside of a few months.

It is NOT "The right to swing my fist ends where the you feel like your nose is being unfairly treated".

That you "feel slighted", and you are "taken advantage of", are not the same thing.

Fairness is defied by facts, not by feelings. If piracy isn't actually destroying the content industry, then your intuitive feelings about it are factually wrong in the larger picture, and have no relevance.

So we've two classes of people, then. One that supports the industry, and one that leeches off of that support. And because I am not physically or financially distressed by this, all is apparently well. I should happily dedicate a sizable portion of my disposable income to the continuation of gaming while others utilize that same disposable income to better their lives in other fashions, yes? Maybe they buy better clothes or eat at fancier restaurants or purchase cable television, right?

Am I justified in stealing fancier clothes to cover the gap, then? Can I steal cable and food? I mean none of these stores are going to go under if I help myself to a few choice items, and I'm obviously entitled. I can't afford to buy the things because I'm buying the games for all of us. I'll leave the software pirates to buy the clothes and food, and then I'll just steal that stuff to make up the difference. Seems fair.

All money and time is measured as an asset. Software pirates help themselves to a quality of life above and beyond their means through theft of entertainment. If I make sacrifices to afford entertainment, shouldn't I commit thefts in other areas of commerce to keep my quality of life on par?

The point is that if you don't replicate the loaning of a game completely, then the worst thing that you can say about it is still that due to your own conceptual categories, it can encourage other, worse forms of piracy.

If there exist avenues for clear benefit, exactly how often do people choose not to traverse those avenues? Game theory tears apart all of this.

If I pirate a game instead of borrowing it, then my friend can continue playing it, that's an adventage for both of us. The advantages of modern technology make it possible for millions of other people who didn't even have a chance to borrow it to play as well, that's a benefit for all of us.

I see the loaning of games locally, with the logistics of an actual disc and real physical contact, as a gesture of goodwill from the producers. They would rather every single person who ever plays a game pay for the privilege, but most of the creators are sensible and human enough to realize we should probably be allowed to lend games back and forth between a small handful of local friends. Turn this into widespread sharing, unbound by traditional logistics, and the whole thing quickly turns from a gesture of goodwill to a freeloading wildfire.

If people don't have a chance to buy it because it is not supported in their market, that might be viewed as a failure in publishing. Or maybe the policing of such remote markets is completely unfeasible, which means the money spent localizing and distributing the product could never be recovered. Either way, this does not justify the piracy of men and women living in the United States and other well developed nations. In the same way you do not demonize a man for certain crimes in the third world as you would a man committing the same crimes in the first world.

As long as we are talking about my conceptual category of the act, "pirating a game instead of borrowing it", no other economical consideration comes into the picture. (not counting the benefits of more people getting familiar with the game, and possibly getting into the franchise and buying future games).

Sort of a hilarious qualifier there. As long as we're talking about what you've defined as having no economic considerations... it has no economic considerations. Circular. Useless.

Why AREN'T we entitled to play games?

I'm not even joking here. Usually, the reply to this is the place for bad analogies to how it's the creator's "property", and about the evils of "getting stuff for free", but of course the significant difference is that here we are not talking about "taking away stuff", but about accessing information.

If you want to make all software 100% free, who would choose to develop the software? As a profession? For no pay? Do we begin underwriting software projects as a society for the greater good? Are we living in some distant utopian future where all of our basic needs are met, free of charge, and everyone does as they please for pure gratification only? We need to fit our models to the world we have. If game makers aren't compensated, they won't spend the time and resources creating the games. If they are to be compensated, it shouldn't fall upon a subset of suckers to pony up.

The same thing that stops you from pirating any games.

So the thing that stops me from pirating games (the belief that it is theft or copyright infringement or some other morally wrong action) is no different from the impulse that stops a person from shoplifting or stealing cable or stealing food?

The same benefits that are evidently good enough for you.

Ah, so the only thing a creator can offer to compete with the ease of piracy is a sense of morality? How does your overriding philosophy not plunge us into utter chaos again?

The short reply is, that there is such a thing in the economy as a "positive externality", which means when someone does a work, and you end up benefiting from it either willingly or by presence. Some of them are shunned as freeloading, but there are plenty of examples that are considered the daily part of life.

In the entertainment industry itself, the classic examples of this are the various limitations and exceptions to copyright [Limitations and exceptions to copyright].

If it's right to read an old novel for free because it's "Public Domain", to record a TV show on DVD because of "Fair Use", then how could it be morally indefensible, that at least in some cases we are entitled to enjoy certain accesses to copyrighted works for free?

If that's the case, why is the "piracy" of file-sharing so fundamentally different from these?

Because everyone is pirating intellivision games.

No respect for context. Just an argumentative form rigidly applied to all things at once. If someone can read a thousand year old play for free, why can't someone else play Witcher 3 for free?

If you can't think up an answer to that question, you're descended into a relativistic hellhole from which there really is no return. I don't see how the world would thrive (or not fall apart) with you at the helm. And I'm not even a capitalist.

 

[BarkBarker]

.......Who bothers lending people games that don't have demos or they aren't happy to buy themselves, I'll borrow something I'm on the edge about or not willing to pay full fucking price for something I know isn't worth the money, but piracy advocates giving it to everyone and anyone who wants it with nothing for the creator, how many people do you REALLY think are gonna go out and pay for a legit copy of something they already have? Look at Steam, I remember there was one game that people could decide to pay for, be it full price or nothing....and I do recall a number around 60% not paying a single damn penny, if I borrow something, I have it why my friend doesn't, between a small group of people, not a lot of harm done to the creator, but if I go pirate, potentially millions of copies without pay, and the creator gets FUCK ALL, I mean yeah that could happen if one guy lent his game out to millions, but all in all the significance is it is both illegal to do it, and it shoots the creators in the foot and then drips lemon juice on the wound, can anyone really say they pirate because they want to try out a game? HOW MANY can say from the bottom of their heart that they play the game without paying for it to see if it is worth their money, they 90% of the time just want free shit with minimum effort.