A potentially original take on piracy? Probably not, but interesting.

[monkeymo4d]

Its actually refreshing to see someone's view on how piracy develops and how we can reduce it. Although I dont believe the eradication of piracy would lead to the poor masses rising up against the government in a revolution deus ex style, I would agree that the increase in piracy is a combination of the availability of free software, decrease in jobs, increased prices of games and the state of the worlds economy.

So how do we remedy this situation?
1. Well firstly I would have developers have more of an input into the making of internet regulation laws instead of leaving it to greedy publishers who are only playing the piracy card for more money(Im looking at you EA and Activision)

2. Increase quality of games and lower prices. This is my opinion but Im finding it more and more frustratingly difficult to buy games when devs charge you full price for a which offers content which is worth half as much but I admit this point depends on your own taste and granted some may argue that you cant have both.

3. The gaming community as a whole need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves are we really helping anyone by pirating? Is it worth? Personally I do believe piracy is wrong but speaking from my own experience I wont condemn anyone who pirated anything while in my the same situation cause I feel that would be hypocritical.

Lastly this is just my opinion on the whole thing , If governments have to fire nurses , doctors and engineers just to get by and we as humanity find it more important to argue over whether Hollywood should get more money, then obviously as humanity has failed.

 

[TheCorpseMan99]

Not too original, kind of preachy but I can see where you're coming from. I don't mind piracy under certain circumstances, and usually I just download games no longer in production that I can't find at my local retail store.

 

[Epona]

10 years ago I used to by pirated PS1 games from a shifty asian marketeer simply because he had games that were never released in Australia at the time (I never bought copied games that were already on the shelves).
The way I see it I was justified in supporting this guys business because he was tapping into a market the game distributors neglected & benefitted from it. If they released it on the shelves I would have bought it, the companies would have made their profit, everybody but the pirate wins. Because they didn't release it on the shelves, they made no money. So when I bought the copied version that game company would have been completely unaffected, just suffer a lost opertunity.
Ofcourse everythings completely different now so theres very little justifiable loopholes these days.

Also, the same goes for foreign games that were never translated in english. If I can find a game iv been wanting to play for ages with an english translation that I can download for free I will. If buying that game as a released english translated version is an option I will but if it isnt then im not doing any game companies any harm by buying/taking a copy of a product they're not selling. Again, the lost opertunities are their problem.

So you gonna pirate The Last Story?

 

[Savagezion]

If you pirate a game then you aren't an honest gamer... not sure what you are getting at with the magic beans (unless you are trying, poorly, to insult me ), sorry.

What if someone admits to piracy and doesn't hide it? Then they are. "Honest" is a loaded term there. As well, A game? singular? I imagine that is a typo. The best way to put it is that if you pirate a game, you don't support the game. Or that any support you try to claim is minimal at best. However, to attack their integrity is a fallacy. Your view of consumerism extends into a product support or brand loyalty theirs extends into Industrial economics or organization.

That's just semantics really. I think the context of what I was saying was clear.

It is but the context of your post says that anyone who pirates, you see as a "bad person". That's pretty much all it states really and that's fine. That's your prerogative. I was merely pointing out that the two sides are looking in opposites directions on the same issue. One is arguing from economics the other is arguing from morality. That is important to note because morality laws are a slippery slope.

I think the biggest problem with this debate is that piracy hides its true form under a blanket. As a result, a lot of conjecture from both sides comes up often about what's under there all the way to why its under there. Because everything is hidden, it is easy to draw false conclusions when looking directly at the issue. The only place you can draw conclusions from is whatever the hell is under the blanket's effects on everything around the blanket. So far, everything around the blanket is either uninterrupted or seeing larger returns in annual income reports. Now it is hard to know why that it is, but it is. This doesn't mean piracy is good necessarily but there is no denying that piracy and high sales are always together. The problem is no one knows if high sales are attached to piracy or if piracy is attached to high sales.
If you claim you know what is under the blanket, people are going to call bullshit because nobody does. The game industry is claiming they know what is under the blanket and everyone knows they are full of it. You cannot remove the blanket unfortunately but the industry is trying to kill whatever is under there and their battle could very well lead to worse sales if they succeed. There actually is more weight to the fact it would cost sales due to the "phantom money" argument posed by the industry. However, even if we split it 50/50 and make it even odds, killing whatever is under the blanket is a dangerous move for the industry.

 

[Psub Xero]

Was the game you purchased the one that was cracked and uploaded as a torrent? No? Then they didn't it steal from you.

This is the sort of analogy you're trying to make: You buy a pair of sunglasses. Right after you pay for your sunglasses, somebody shoplifts a pair. That person didn't steal the sunglasses from you, they stole it from the store. It would have made no difference if you had bought orange juice or a nice sweater instead of the sunglasses. They stole the sunglasses, and the sunglasses belonged to the store. End of story.

So you are saying that all stealing is wrong and admitting that piracy is stealing. That is the weakest argument for piracy ever.

You know, when I buy something at Wal Mart, I give no thought at all to shoplifters. Why do you care how others acquire games? Jealous that they are saving money?

Jealousy, yeah, that is it. I am almost jealous of murderers because they don't have to deal with people they don't like anymore. Some people just have good moral alignments and don't like when others are bad.

Why did you get this idea that saying "piracy isn't the same as theft" is defending piracy? Cause, news for you, it isn't defending piracy. It's merely stating that someone needs to get their definitions in order.

That is complete bull and you know it, you aren't fixing the definition you are saying "theft is bad but piracy is not theft therefore piracy is not bad". Even so you twist both the definitions of piracy and theft to try to make them look dissimilar. Not only is that outright dishonesty appalling but you often fail at making them look different. Newsflash: you will succeed because piracy is theft. There is no two ways about it. People make a living selling digital files and you are stealing them for yourself without paying. Sure some people give away their files for free but those are not the files you are stealing now are they?

 

[Suijen]

Is it pirating if

A) Your brother who lives with you owns the game and he gave you the game, a game that you would have bought if your brother didn't buy it

B) You download a bootleg of the game and play it, and two years later buy the game at a much lower price than the release day price, assuming you're applying the case of piracy after the person bought the game.

C) You own the game in a different format (say, XBOX360), but want to play it for PC, so you download the PC version of the game. Or, if you own the game in Chinese, and want to play it for English and download the English version.

D) A game developer releases a game, I purchase it legitimately, but I still cannot play it because of DRM and still can't play it (I had this problem for Assassin's Creed 2 PC). Let's say the problem is due to the DRM requiring some Windows file that you can't find or whatnot.

E) You own two copies of a game on Steam (regular game, GOTY with all DLCs) and you want to give the right of playing one of the games to your friend so he downloads a bootleg.

 

[Epona]

Jealousy, yeah, that is it. I am almost jealous of murderers because they don't have to deal with people they don't like anymore. Some people just have good moral alignments and don't like when others are bad.

Then what is it? Do you go on forums and talk about your hate for murderers and if not, why do it for piracy?

 

[Krion_Vark]

I really can't buy the whole "can't afford the product" if those people have the hardware to play this games. If you can afford a TV + console or a PC strong enough to play the games than you can also afford the games.

TV's are cheap as hell these days and a PC is pretty much a requirement if you want to do ANYTHING.

A PC that can play most of the games coming out right now are around 500-600 dollars at the lowest settings.

 

[Daymo]

I have only ever pirated if i was curious about a game, but there was no demo (or the demo wasn't enough to show off the game).

Every game i have ever pirated, and liked, i bought.

If i had bought every game that i wasn't too sure about, then games like Duke Nukem would have been a commercial success - although i did bite the bullet and buy it on release day without pirating - big mistake, but reinforces my point.

My argument is, if there wasn't pirates the games industry would be flooded by crap games, because they would be making money off of it.

Another example - i pirated Skyrim, because i hated oblivion, so i thought i'd give skyrim a try. I LOVE it, and immediately went out and bought it brand new!

Having said all this, i rarely do pirate.

Ot: I'm sorry if this has already been said to you, but duke nukem had a demo....

It is saying that the government with out trying has found a way to keep the populous happy, but is now trying to reverse that. Maddox wrote some article on how PIPA/SOPA passing would be a good thing to get people to do something besides sign just an online petition or similar.

 

[Alterego-X]

The problem with copyright arguments is that everyone is talking in hyperboles, and pretends to have some grand moral stance on it. Like abortion debates, where the "pro-life" side constantly screams "Abortion is murder!" while pro-choice are all about "abortion bans are slavery against women!".

The same way, apparently every "anti-copyright" person claims to argue from some sort of inherent RIGHT to download stuff, like the freedom of speech, to abolish the tyranny of publishers, while every "pro-copyright" person claims to be the protector of artists' complete control over their property against thieves.

Except, that if you think about it, even the "anti-copyright" and "Pro-copyright" tags are misleadingly extreme.

For example, every argument I have ever seen for IP liberalization, argued that artists could continue to earn profits from ads, merch, and even selling physical copies for collectors, and that assumes that they still have an IP, it just should extend to forcing everyone to charge for digital copies. You don't really want to "take away artists property", just define it in a way that is more appropriate for the Internet.

An the same goes for "pro-copyright" people. Artists don't have "Full control" over their products, even with the current laws. Their property is limited by Fair Use, by expiration to Public Domain, by the realities of certain industries that can't charge for every copy (TV, Internet), etc. You don't really believe that any of these are "theft", either, and the only moral difference between these and piracy, is that the current laws only extend to the former. You are not arguing against the very idea that copying a work is inherently wrong, just that the currently drawn legal line is right where it is, and shouldn't be moved for some reason.

 

[Spitfire]

snip

I'm not from the US, so I don't have the same frame of reference as you, but that's indeed an interesting take on piracy.

It's fact that the biggest consumers of pirated content are countries that are either poor, or where there's great economic disparity between social classes. In my opinion, one of the main motivators for piracy, is the lack of price adjustment for different economies.

I live in Romania, where a retail triple A game can cost half, or in some cases over half, of the minimum wage here. Add to that the overall poor economic state of the country (low income, few jobs, so on), and it's little wonder that legitimate consumers end up being in the minority. Such is the case in many countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Thankfully, there are a number of great digital distributors out there, who are making entertainment more affordable for all, particularly on the videogames front. Having said that, however, even a Steam promotion is not affordable enough for many people, and this just goes back to my original point.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

My initial argument was something of a starter, but it really boggles my mind that people are still attempting to wiggle out from under it. I'll reiterate...

1. The game industry cannot function without capital to pay for its productions. If there is no money to make games, games are not made. I would like to see an argument disproving this, and preferrably not one that has us all playing hobby-made games with 16-bit graphics.

2. The money that keeps the games industry afloat comes from honest game-buying gamers. Sort of an obvious one, this. I mean where else would the money come from? Are investors piling on just for the fun of it? No. They're investing, and my hard-earned cash is their return.

3. People who play games for free (aka pirates) enjoy all the fruits of a professional game industry without contributing anything to it. They enjoy a very tangible net gain in the form of countless hours of entertainment while sacrificing literally nothing.

4. If my fellow honest customers and I are putting all of the money in, and pirates are pulling out entertainment that would not be possible without my investment, there is no debating the fact that I am subsidizing their entertainment. I'm paying for them to play.

5. What word would you use to describe a person enjoying something that costs money at the expense of the person who paid for it without his/her consent?

I think people don't "get it" because the piracy debate has always been framed as "pirates versus publishers". Those are murky waters with plenty of room for semantics, but that's not where I'm coming from at all. I'm skipping (or maybe preempting) that argument with a far simpler and far stronger one: framed instead as "paying customers versus pirates", the pirates really don't have a fucking leg to stand on.

But I'm ever the self-destructive thinker, so I went ahead and constructed what I perceive to be the only legitimate excuse for piracy: "I'm poor, and I have no real prospects to improve my situation because I live in a third world country or the rough equivalent, and I believe my circumstances to be unnecessary and largely caused by a global economic system that functions only to increase the disparity of wealth between haves and have nots."

One significant problem: I'm not sure it's fair to the entertainment industry that they should be responsible for the lion's share of redistributing the wealth.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Pretty much the internet has allowed access to unlimited entertainment and knowledge to anybody that can connect to it. Which when you think about it is pretty utopian. Yet of course you have the bad eggs in the world that don't want others to have such abilities.

While i think such an eventuallity is truly utopian i have to call into question the artists wishes. You see if an artist works on something. And then decides his hard work should be distrubted, sold, kept, hoarded or what have you then it should be. Since he worked on it he should decide what should happen. I think forcing this artist to give up his property without giving him a choice, against his will, is far from utopian. It sounds VERY dictator like.

Utopian:"YOU MAKE ART?! GIVE HERE. NOW WE ALL ENJOY!"

Artist:"But i made this... i wanted to sell it at an auction"

Utopian:"NO! You made art and we ALL ENJOY! Why are you SO SELFISH!"

Artist:"I just want to control what happens with my work"

Utopian:"YOU MAKE MORE NOW, WE LOVE YOUR WORK. But you want to control?! SO selfish. Now make
more. And make better. Its very good"

Artist:"Ok :C"

Doesnt that seem far from utopian to you? Sure in a utopia all artists would want to share their art for free. But today they dont. And we should respect that. Since they made it and i have no claim or "deserve" any of their hard work. I think its wrong to do this against their will.

 

[TheDooD]

Pretty much the internet has allowed access to unlimited entertainment and knowledge to anybody that can connect to it. Which when you think about it is pretty utopian. Yet of course you have the bad eggs in the world that don't want others to have such abilities.

While i think such an eventuallity is truly utopian i have to call into question the artists wishes. You see if an artist works on something. And then decides his hard work should be distrubted, sold, kept, hoarded or what have you then it should be. Since he worked on it he should decide what should happen. I think forcing this artist to give up his property without giving him a choice, against his will, is far from utopian. It sounds VERY dictator like.

Utopian:"YOU MAKE ART?! GIVE HERE. NOW WE ALL ENJOY!"

Artist:"But i made this... i wanted to sell it at an auction"

Utopian:"NO! You made art and we ALL ENJOY! Why are you SO SELFISH!"

Artist:"I just want to control what happens with my work"

Utopian:"YOU MAKE MORE NOW, WE LOVE YOUR WORK. But you want to control?! SO selfish. Now make
more. And make better. Its very good"

Artist:"Ok :C"

Doesnt that seem far from utopian to you? Sure in a utopia all artists would want to share their art for free. But today they dont. And we should respect that. Since they made it and i have no claim or "deserve" any of their hard work. I think its wrong to do this against their will.

I'm talking about Live streaming and Youtube that's the real unlimited entertainment. That's what the bad eggs really want to shut down because why watch jersey shore when you can what far worse train wreck type shit online.

Also most artist don't care and rather just have people know who they are above all else. Plus online it's not the real picture its always a copy of the original. So your auction comparison pretty much falls flat unless the artwork is on EBAY and in it's original or limited release state. Which is very hard and pretty easily to punish for forgery.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

I'm talking about Live streaming and Youtube that's the real unlimited entertainment. That's what the bad eggs really want to shut down because why watch jersey shore when you can what far worse train wreck type shit online.

Also most artist don't care and rather just have people know who they are above all else. Plus online it's not REAL picture its always a copy of the original. So your auction comparison pretty much falls flat unless the artwork is on EBAY and in it's original or limited release state. Which is very hard and pretty easily to punish for forgery.

Cant argue with youtube, in those cases you have a point.

Its the most artists dont care thing that gets me :/

It doesnt matter if most artists dont care. If some do they have a right to their work, their property and their talent. And at the end of the day you dont deserve any of it. For free or otherwise. They choose to share it with you, maybe its for monetary gain but thats irrelivant, they could deny their talent to everyone if they so chose and no one would be in any position to complain or claim they have to keep working. If an artist doesnt care they can upload their work to pirate bay, limewire, give out free CD copies or whatever. But they dont. They actually want their work to be distrubuted fairly for money. And thats their choice.

The auction was irrelivent in that scenario, the idea was that the artist didnt WANT to share his work in that way, he wanted to share it in a different way. And the masses have no say in what that way is. Nor should they be able to force the artist simply because "most artists dont care".

 

[Alterego-X]

in that scenario, the idea was that the artist didnt WANT to share his work in that way, he wanted to share it in a different way. And the masses have no say in what that way is. Nor should they be able to force the artist simply because "most artists dont care".

Actually, artists can't just choose "any" way to profit from their work. They can choose several, and righ now, selling copies happens to be one of them.

But, for example, what if an artist feels that they want to publically display their work, and let the government support them financially from tax money that is collected for that purpose? They can't do that, because there is no such system in effect.

Or what if a game developer wants to earn profits by putting an ad on the loading screen, just like TV shows make a profit from ad segments? Again, they can't do that, because realistically, ads don't pay enough for that.

They can't do ANYTHING with their work, they are limited by the reality around them. And if in the near future, reality would be that getting payed for copies becomes unrealistic, that wouldn't be some great moral crisis, just a system change.

 

[TheDooD]

I'm talking about Live streaming and Youtube that's the real unlimited entertainment. That's what the bad eggs really want to shut down because why watch jersey shore when you can what far worse train wreck type shit online.

Also most artist don't care and rather just have people know who they are above all else. Plus online it's not REAL picture its always a copy of the original. So your auction comparison pretty much falls flat unless the artwork is on EBAY and in it's original or limited release state. Which is very hard and pretty easily to punish for forgery.

Cant argue with youtube, in those cases you have a point.

Its the most artists dont care thing that gets me :/

It doesnt matter if most artists dont care. If some do they have a right to their work, their property and their talent. And at the end of the day you dont deserve any of it. For free or otherwise. They choose to share it with you, maybe its for monetary gain but thats irrelivant, they could deny their talent to everyone if they so chose and no one would be in any position to complain or claim they have to keep working. If an artist doesnt care they can upload their work to pirate bay, limewire, give out free CD copies or whatever. But they dont. They actually want their work to be distrubuted fairly for money. And thats their choice.

The auction was irrelivent in that scenario, the idea was that the artist didnt WANT to share his work in that way, he wanted to share it in a different way. And the masses have no say in what that way is. Nor should they be able to force the artist simply because "most artists dont care".

Yea an artists MAY want to keep their exclusive but these days they have to expect their work is gonna spread across the net like wildfire if it's really good. So trying to control it is pretty much pointless when the latter just nets more fans and potential buyers. It's there work nobody is gonna say other wise that artist drew said piece of work. or those characters are all his or her concepts. These tracks are from this guy. Most just want to be seen and heard because they love what they do. If people want to pay for something exclusive they can do that yet they aren't gonna keep said work away from other fans.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

in that scenario, the idea was that the artist didnt WANT to share his work in that way, he wanted to share it in a different way. And the masses have no say in what that way is. Nor should they be able to force the artist simply because "most artists dont care".

Actually, artists can't just choose "any" way to profit from their work. They can choose several, and righ now, selling copies happens to be one of them.

But, for example, what if an artist feels that they want to publically display their work, and let the government support them financially from tax money that is collected for that purpose? They can't do that, because there is no such system in effect.

Or what if a game developer wants to earn profits by putting an ad on the loading screen, just like TV shows make a profit from ad segments? Again, they can't do that, because realistically, ads don't pay enough for that.

They can't do ANYTHING with their work, they are limited by the reality around them. And if in the near future, reality would be that getting payed for copies becomes unrealistic, that wouldn't be some great moral crisis, just a system change.

Im simpley responding to the idea that in a utopian future all art will be freely available to all and that anyone in the way of this dream by preventing piracy is a "bad egg". To which i responded the above. That although, as you say, the possibilities are grounded in reality the artist gets to look at what they can do and decide whats better. The idea that we deserve this free unlimited information doesnt sound utopian, as many artists do not want their work given away for free to everyone.

Selfish? Maybe. But its their choice. I was simply pointing out that it isnt utopian to force artists to give up their work as the person i quoted implied it was. Its very dictator like, the artist having only a single option of "Make available to all for free" and nothing else. And although utopian for us, the consumer, it isnt utopian for the artist who now has no control over the work. It sounds VERY dystopian and brutal to forcefully strip an artist of all their creations, sure they get credit but the second that "brush" leaves the paper its out of their hands in terms of where it goes and what happens to it. That seems wrong to me.

If the system changes all consenting artists can take part. No moral dillema in the system. All moral dillemas here arise from the artists desires being defied for selfish greed on the part of the consumer. Sure the artist probably should just want to be heard. But we cant tell them that, or make them think it. Its all about choice.