Why I don't like piracy: a software developer's thoughts.

[Dommyboy]

What about people that believe in everything on the internet should be free?
What about people who can't afford a overpriced piece of software?
Software and games are far too overpriced today, buying a game in Australia is not worth it entirely and paying $110 for a game that lasts 6 hours is far from worth it. Not exactly going anywhere with these points but while piracy does effect the industry in some way, maybe if developers made games worth paying the full price for and didn't have so many design flaws in it.
If pirating stopped we wouldn't have quite a few of the fixes and patches for games we have today. The person who made the travel fix in STALKER pirated the game and said it worked best with a crack, same with the person who made the armorer and the fella who put a patch for photoshop to stop some crashes.
Piracy has created a large community of people working together, while not for the greater good or justice, they seem to work for the well-being of people and to help them..

 

[poleboy]

Please don't break posts into so many bits. It muddles arguements and often leads to misquoting *cough*.

I disagree. Long unbroken replies to long unbroken posts muddles arguments if anything. If you don't know what argument I'm responding to, misunderstandings are much more likely to take place.

/S

Quoting. Don't break up a person's post into individual sentences and clauses. It clutters up the page and makes it harder for other users to enjoy the forums. If you wish to respond to a particularly lengthy post, just quote the first paragraph for reference and address the entire post.

Also, you quoted me for something that Cheeze said. Just saying.

 

[molesgallus]

we live in a sick hypocritical society. people are disillusioned by our sick capitalist system, they feel it is acceptable to fuck over the big companies that are fucking over everyone else, anyway.

 

[Zallest]

This all seems a bit over my head because I don't pirate often but the few times i have it was for a well... decent reason. Like pirating a game i already own.

Lets say I bought "The Mexican Devil 2" and at some point and time in the future i magically lost the piece of plastic it was stored on. Instead of buying a "new" copy of the game I pirate a version instead. Sure it is technically stealing but it is stealing what I already own which is the right to be able to play this game.

You should never really pirate something because you can't afford it. If you can't afford it then to bad so sad you can't have it but when it comes down to things and companies are asking for the 50 or 60 or 110 dollars or whatever form of currency you use for a unfinished, incomplete, glitched out piece of crap. Then I'd pirate it out of spite. Play the game but don't pay for it cause the bastards never finished the thing!

 

[Sayvara]

What about people that believe in everything on the internet should be free?

What about people who can't afford a overpriced piece of software?

...

Piracy has created a large community of people working together, while not for the greater good or justice, they seem to work for the well-being of people and to help them.

They are free to believe anything they want... but it doesn't make them right.

If people cannot afford it, tough. It's bad for all but this argument was never an excuse for trespassing or stealing. I can for instance never ever afford a Bugatti Veyron, but that doesn't make it allright for me to borrow one without asking permission just so I can have the pleasure of driving it.

And the blurb about pirates working to help people... don't make me laugh. Ever since the demo scene first saw daylight in the C64 and Amiga era, it has been abundantly clear that pirates are all about making a name for themselves. They are egotistic attention seekers and the highest cred goes to the one that managed to crack a game first. Sure there are a few idealists who genuinely try to make games more accessible for everyonee... but the majority of the game crackers are on no other mission that try to show everyone they have the fastst dick of the lot.

Quoting. Don't break up a person's post into individual sentences and clauses. It clutters up the page and makes it harder for other users to enjoy the forums. If you wish to respond to a particularly lengthy post, just quote the first paragraph for reference and address the entire post.

Also, you quoted me for something that Cheeze said. Just saying.

Gotcha... my bad. I'll edit shortly.

/S

 

[Saskwach]

The framing of the question (or statement, as 'twere) in the OP has coloured the debate, IMO. "Piracy is bad, it's theft [therefore it must be stopped]." There were a few tacit nods to customer rights along the way.
But that's the rub isn't it? That piracy isn't nice is besides the point: of course it isn't, but what are you going to do about it? Unless a solution is suggested we're simply shaking our heads at the state of things - not very helpful.
There are two ways to look at this problem - the piracy side, and the developer/publisher side. The piracy side is what we're doing here: "isn't it just terrible, it should be stopped." The dev/pub side is "it's not nice, but how do we deal with it?" The first is useless self-pity that achieves nothing; the second is looking at solutions and results - actually useful.
This thread is about the first view of things. The problem with that is it clouds our view of solutions. If we go into the second side of things - solutions - with the conclusion that piracy is bad and must be stopped, we'll have a skewed view of what to do about it: every customer is a potential pirate. If you look at it from the other side of things - many pirates are potential customers, and many customers don't like being treated like pirates - it's clear that DRM is often counter-productive. I hate to bring up DRM when it's not technically part of the debate but that's the problem: when you look at piracy with the "pirates bad" view then the logical conclusion is DRM.
Lamenting piracy does not help you make money, which is what I'm assuming you want. Looking at honest solutions does. That's why I'm tired of hearing how terrible piracy is.

 

[Dommyboy]

You should never really pirate something because you can't afford it. If you can't afford it then to bad so sad you can't have it but when it comes down to things and companies are asking for the 50 or 60 or 110 dollars or whatever form of currency you use for a unfinished, incomplete, glitched out piece of crap. Then I'd pirate it out of spite. Play the game but don't pay for it cause the bastards never finished the thing!

I really have to stop using this game as an example but STALKER Clear Sky fits that well. Filled with bugs, glitches and annoying AI, hardly even worth $50 AU. You can't even finish the game properly at the moment :\

While I will agree with that pirating is bad. Full stop. Though notice the games that are actually good don't get hurt really at all by piracy? DMC4 supposedly got pirated really badly upon release but when it came down to it, nobody wanted to play a button masher on a keyboard and break the keyboard so the developers resorted to calling piracy on it. Call of Duty 4 made great sales because of its multiplayer being worth buying the CD key and its low graphical requirements. Piracy will stay around for as long as humans can think outside the box. It's a dog-eat-dog world, nothing is fair and just when it comes down to it, no matter how wrong, inhumane or un-brotherly it is, people will still partake in wrong doings.

 

[Logan Westbrook]

Also, your analogy to a car is flawed: when someone takes your car from you, they *actually* take your car from you. When someone pirates your software, they don't actually take the source code out of your office to copy it (at least the kind of piracy I'm defending here). They use a copy that already left your possession. That's a significant difference that gets lost in this discussion when--to go back to my point to nilcypher--people call piracy 'theft'.

Let's put it in a different context then. I go to a store, see a DVD I like the look of, pick it up and walk out of the store with it. Is that theft? I haven't taken the master reel, or whatever the film term is, but I still took something that didn't belong to me.

I suppose you could argue that in the example above, I had taken a copy that the store had paid for, while in video game piracy that isn't the case. This is true, but the developer/publisher is deprived of earnings, which I would consider a type of theft as well.

Sayvara and others on the 'piracy is always bad' end of things, I have a question:

would you rather:

--the world be made up of pirates who buy two of your products and pirate one of them;

or

--the world be made up of honest consumers that pirate none of your products, but only buy one of them?

This example is absurd. For every one pirate who buys two products and pirates one, how many buy no products at all and just download them illegally?

 

[Zallest]

I really have to stop using this game as an example but STALKER Clear Sky fits that well. Filled with bugs, glitches and annoying AI, hardly even worth $50 AU. You can't even finish the game properly at the moment :\

Exactly, Pirate the game out of spite if you want to play it but paying $50 AU or even $25 US is stupid if they never finished it or put no effort into making it a playable game.

 

[thisbymaster]

As a software developer myself I find you full of crap. The facts are that it is the game makers who don't understand the idea of yours and mine. If I buy a product from you I now have to right to do whatever I want with it. What if you bought a car but couldn't open the trunk or the windows because the car maker would call you a crimial for it? Software is just like any other product, the consumer can do whatever they want at anytime. You need to let go of your work once it is sold. What if an artist sold you a painting, and then told you couldn't hang it up but had to keep it covered and in a vault? Does the artist still have the right to tell you what to do? No, you paid the money for it, it is yours.

On the idea of piracy, believe it or not it a good thing for the industry. RIAA produced a study (that they quickly buried) that showed piracy increased sales because it let people try out a service before having to shell out money. DRM is another reason piracy is getting stronger, companies are trying to tell people what they can and can't do with there products. These companies need to just sit back and count their money, not acting like a spoiled brat over other people playing with their toys.

 

[Syntax Error]

Piracy is Theft. DRM is infringment of rights. So both sides are wrong.

Until there is a legal way to protect work on the internet its just like all the people stealing paperclips from their office. They will do it, and you can't stop them.

There may not be a legal method left to stop piracy, however, you can always go to the technical/developer's side for an answer. [http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.htm]

This is also the issue that got me started here in The Escapist. I got the link from this thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.65777?page=3#705349]. My reaction to this topic can be seen at that thread.

As developers, the fight against piracy should start with yourselves.

 

[Sayvara]

we live in a sick hypocritical society. people are disillusioned by our sick capitalist system, they feel it is acceptable to fuck over the big companies that are fucking over everyone else, anyway.

Was there a point to this nonsensical blurb?

Playing the Victim card doesn't work. The only ones impressed by it as by those that try to run the same scam. To the rest, you just come out as a whiner from the activist left who blame everything that isn't peachy in your life on others.

What exactly are you after here? A pat on the back for respecting my rights occationally?

YUP! That was my point: would you rather someone put twice as much money in your pocket and occasionally--actually, a whole lot more than just occasionally--respect your rights, or always respect your rights and put half as much money in your pocket?

Well if that was the question, then I already answered it. You are talking about positive side effects of pirating and whether I would excuse it for the sake of earning more money.

Further more you seem to be misrepresenting my opinion. I never said that any unauthorized copy is inherently bad. The important part, which is kind of fuzzy I'll agree, it to respect the rights and wishes of the property owner. For instance I don't think that an unauthorized copy of Visual Studio Professional that some bedroom programmer uses just to learn VS is a bad thing, because I'm very certain that Microsoft does not mind someone learning to use their product. However, the minute that he uses VS to make software that he starts to sell... then it's a whole different ballgame.

Finally, if I do sell my software in any other manner than making it donation-ware or gratis-ware, then I really don't have a choice but to take a stand against piracy because the consumer laws of this country dictates that must I deal fairly, i.e. I must not give don't give vastly different pricing to roughly equal customers.

The framing of the question (or statement, as 'twere) in the OP has coloured the debate, IMO. "Piracy is bad, it's theft [therefore it must be stopped]." There were a few tacit nods to customer rights along the way.
But that's the rub isn't it? That piracy isn't nice is besides the point: of course it isn't, but what are you going to do about it?

I did not say that! Go back to the OP and read again. I said: I do not like piracy because it violates a commonly accepted principle: that of sanctity of property; Yours & Mine.

So what am I going to do about people pirating? Well first of all I can show you my dislike about it and argue that pirating is in violation of principles that most people accept in every other situation. For some it will make them realize they are using double standards and as such get a wee bit of guilty conscience and start concidering buying the software since there are real people, and not just megacorps, that take offence to pirating.

Secondly I have posted plenty of hints as to what I want producers to do to help reduce the problem. The most important thing they can do is to give customers incentive to buy the software rather than pirating it. Factors to concider here are: pricing; quality; ease of purchase; customer support; product updates; product content; replayability, and so forth. Producers need to make the peopel want to buy the software rather then to try bullying them into not pirating.

Does that answer your question?

/S

 

[KSarty]

This is nothing but a rant. You're obviously pissed off but you didn't add any new views on the subject or even suggest that people should discuss your views, you just ended it with a middle school style closing sentence. This is more of a blog than an actual forum post, since you just needed to vent.

On topic: thisbymaster's post is pretty much exactly the same as my view on the subject. If I bought it, I can do whatever the hell I want with it, I might even let my friends borrow it despite the obvious evil of such a thing.

 

[Sayvara]

Let's put it in a different context then. I go to a store, see a DVD I like the look of, pick it up and walk out of the store with it. Is that theft? I haven't taken the master reel, or whatever the film term is, but I still took something that didn't belong to me.

I suppose you could argue that in the example above, I had taken a copy that the store had paid for, while in video game piracy that isn't the case. This is true, but the developer/publisher is deprived of earnings, which I would consider a type of theft as well.

Let me make the example even clearer: you go to a DVD rental store; you take a DVD home without paying; you watch it; you go back to the store and put the DVD back in the shelf. Never during this time were they out of copies to rent to others meaning that you "borrowed" an otherwise unused copy.

Right or wrong?

I think it's wrong. The store didn't lose any money on it, but you used their property without permission.

As a software developer myself I find you full of crap. The facts are that it is the game makers who don't understand the idea of yours and mine. If I buy a product from you I now have to right to do whatever I want with it.

Again let me refer to the example with the car rental. Does the fact that you bought the right to use the car for one day for 50 USD give you the right to smash it into a heap of metal scrap? No it does not. That wasn't the condition of the sale.

Same with software. The "product" you refer to is not a license to use the developer's property in any and every manner possible.

/S

 

[Sayvara]

This is nothing but a rant. You're obviously pissed off but you didn't add any new views on the subject or even suggest that people should discuss your views, you just ended it with a middle school style closing sentence. This is more of a blog than an actual forum post, since you just needed to vent.

Well since we are now on page three with 75+ posts I think that your opinion has already been proved wrong empirically. People are discussing it lively so apparently there was something about it worth to debate after all, your opinion to the contrary.

/S