An excuse for Piracy.

[Cherry Cola]

Why do people need to excuse what they do?

If you're a pirate, admit that you're an opportunist dickhead and be done with it. Nobody cares if you have an excuse.

 

[Talshere]

snip

In fairness the orange box is 5 games. Not 1.

CoD4:2 is just a rip off. They upped the price to be on par with console games despite the fact that PC ports dont have to pay licensing fees, which is the major pricing difference when you look at PC equivalent games on consoles, and are no where near as difficult to part as from console to console, meaning its far quicker and cheaper, with no additional licensing required.

Just the whole aspect of CoD4:2 is a rip off. I refused to buy it point blank. In not even sure Id take it if it was offered for free just on principle.

Basically the extra you pay goes straight into Iwards pockets.

 

[deathandtaxes]

Why do people need to excuse what they do?

If you're a pirate, admit that you're an opportunist dickhead and be done with it. Nobody cares if you have an excuse.

and let me reiterate for you : no a pirate is someone who steals ships and cargo, stealing data is copyright infringement.

 

[teh_Canape]

snip v2.5

in all fairnessm MW2 is a pretty good game on it's own (yes, I said it, dealwithit.png)

and the prices there are not only because of they are legit (piracy is pretty big here) but those two are especially expensive because they're imports

 

[DanielSPG]

(I for one think it's insane that a copyright for music lasts for 75 years after an artist dies.

funny story actually. It used to be 40 years after the copyright was given. No matter if the artist was alive or not. But then Mickey turned 40. So they changed the law. Seriously, ur child friendly company called Disney has the power and influence to change the law if enough money is involved,

Who the fuck is making his money then? I'll give you three guesses, and the fact that the music industry takes about 70% of all money made via record sales, you should get it right fairly quick) but the industry just wants to put everyone in jail, basically taking away all potential sales from every project they have. Think about it, their potential sales argument is negated by their actions, it's like saying "if you can't pay me I'll kill you" dead men make no money, and what are the chances that a woman of 35 is gonna come up with a million dollars to pay the industry back after they sue her? Like hell.
Also we only charge money for finite things, (things that there are limited number of) before the internet there were only so many CD/records of a single album, now that the internet exists anyone can get a copy at any time, why the hell should some one get paid? Talent? Ok, you let me know when everyone should send their money to Leonardo for painting the Mona Lisa that we have all probably viewed a virtual copy of on the internet before. Same difference. I'm an aspiring musician, I've recently started to learn how to play guitar and I'm working on vocals and I'm pretty good at writing, so I'm gonna join the music industry one day, but I'm sure as hell not gonna be like all the other rock stars who complain that their millions of dollars won't keep paying the insurance on their priceless vehicles. Let's be honest, we pay hollywood too much money now, why the hell do they need more? Tell you what, when every rock star in the world sells their highly expensive old cars and gives that money to the poor I'll stop downloading the occasional album (only downloaded one album in the past three months, only had two good songs, go figure).

I agree with you wholeheartedly that the music industry's roll in current music REproduction is overrated. Why some1 should get paid for making music that is available on the internet? Cus it's a day job... I'm sure you can play the guitar quite nicely and you singing is lovely etc.. But if you want to make quality recordings and good music, it will either take you decades to finish one album or you wont have time to earn your living. That and you gotta record the shit. Dont give me crap about home recordings U want something to sound professional u go to a studio.

In other words, producing the music of professional quality still costs money. The persons producing the music will want to pay rent, eat etc and still be full time profesional musicians. So if you don't pay for an mp3 online, how will they get paid? Live shows are a great example, but not every musician or music genre will play live. The answer just isn't that simple.

So how do we keep it fair? You make a good point when you say the artists don;t need the money after they die. So consider this. A musician makes a song. He charges an hour rate for his time writing the song, he adds production costs to this, this added up gives us figure X. This musician, in order to keep being a musician professionally, must earn X off this song. As soon as X is reached the music can then be freely available. So how are we going to achieve this? Let the musician do his own promotion, charging X/(expected amount of copies distributed) per copy? Think about the promotion a -beginning- professional musician would have to do to get people to notice his or her song between the millions of songs available on the internet already. And what if X is reached. Stop selling the song? or offer it for free? That would be unfair to the people that DID actually pay in the period before X was reached. So maybe the artist should simply sell the song for X to an external distributor. In which case we're almost back to the original situation of the "music industry" Reproducing your music. Like I said, I don;t have the answers. I know saying: music should be free, period. is definitely NOT the answer, nor is piracy.

 

[LadyMint]

I'm not really a fan of Linkin Park. But, I understand your sentiment with downloading/piracy.

I would prefer to pay for something rather than pirating it, but at times that option isn't available for what I'm specifically looking for. Like episodes of a TV show that I don't have access to for one reason or another. And while I know people scoff at the "try before you buy" argument, as someone who purchases PC games more often than console ones, I find it to be the most accurate excuse for me. I have become a dedicated and paying fan of a few franchises thanks to "borrowing" a copy from someone. I've also saved myself money by finding out that a game wasn't as enjoyable as I thought it would be based on reviews and footage.

I don't pretend to be some champion for consumer justice trying to justify piracy. I just know that some companies wouldn't have me as a paying customer at all if I hadn't tried their product for free first.

 

[Talshere]

snip v2.5

in all fairnessm MW2 is a pretty good game on it's own (yes, I said it, dealwithit.png)

and the prices there are not only because of they are legit (piracy is pretty big here) but those two are especially expensive because they're imports

The campaign is by all accounts very good, even if it dropped the whole "realism bid". But its no longer then the MW1 campain, and they buggered over the online aspect because they removed player hosted servers in favour of the crappy P2P system consoles have to suffer, then surprise surprise they try and sell us map pack, things that previously we've never had to do because the the PLAYERS generated hundreds of maps of equal quality. Possibly even better.

But if we are paying over the odds by £5-£10, then taking into account how much more the pound and dollar are worth, piled on top of the fact they are imports, is it any wonder they are stupidly overpriced. No game is worth 40 quid for what....8 hours worth of campaign?

 

[teh_Canape]

snip

true, but you know, we always get raped here when it comes to technology and shit, but eh, what can we do =/

 

[orangecharger]

Interesting links regarding Canada's copyright laws, it's media levy, and the Supreme Court's view on P2P file sharing in Canada.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2238/125/

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i31d64fe32d365c0270aa4c9f526c985f

Um the only time Linkin Park was sort of cool was 10 years ago? Wait no I am thinking of Limp Bizkit -- Linkin Park was never cool.

 

[8-Bit Grin]

I don't make excuses, I admit that I'm a penny pincher like a mature human being.

Video games are a hobby, and food is a necessity.

In order to eat what I'd like and at the same time have fun, I sometimes 'pirate' games.

It's a very selfish way of thinking, but I never claimed to be a selfless individual.

 

[quantumsoul]

I've done some some pirating. I have no need to justify it nor am I proud of it. I just didn't want to spend the money. Did Black Beard need to justify his piracy? Of course not. We all sometimes do bad things out of selfishness. Just don't do it all the time or buy after you like it.

 

[WittyInfidel]

My logic follows thus:

If you need to stop and come up for an excuse for it, you shouldn't be doing it. You know you shouldn't be doing it. You know it is not acceptable. You just had to stop and think of a way to rationalize it away.

If you know you shouldn't be doing it, don't do it. If/when you get caught, face the consequences of it. It's not like you didn't know it was coming.

I don't know, trying to rationalize in such a manner strikes me a lying, and I hate liars with a dark, consuming hatred.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

So today I got into an argument with a friend who labeled me a criminal because I pirate a fair bit of software. I've used up all my usual reasoning on him until so I had to think of something new. It was today that I also downloaded Linkin Park's new album, A Thousand Suns and the only word I can think to describe it is just bad. It's really bad, it has nothing of the Linkin Park of old and even if it wasn't by them it would still be a shitty album. This is what I used in my argument, that if I paid good money for that at a store I would be outraged that I had wasted my hard earned cash. As it is I'm just annoyed that a band I used to quite like has gone so downhill (though that's not new news or anything).

So Escapists, I pose you two questions.
1. What is your excuse for Piracy?
2. What did you think of Linkin Park's new album? It's alright you can say it's bad.

Piracy has no excuse. You're just either too lazy to go to the sotre like a normal human being, or you refuse to pay money like another human being. If the album was good, you still pirated it, and you stilled paid no money for it.

I doubt you'd walk up to the store and say "Well I downloaded this a few days ago, and WOW is it goo, here's the money for my part" and walk away.

If you buy a PS3 game, you don't know what you're getting except by reviews. Do the same with your music

 

[XelaisPWN]

Honestly, there is no excuse for piracy. Piracy is just wrong. If someone went out of their way to spend a lot of money and time for the sake of entertainment, don't you think they should get that investment back, plus profit? Yeah, it's true, they do anyway, but piracy still makes me feel bad.

I'm not trying to make anyone ashamed, in fact, I've participated in my share of piracy. Nobody's perfect, and sometimes when I'm scrapped for cash I get desperate. But I don't feel good about torrenting anything, with a few exceptions. When Trent Renzor uploaded some NIN tracks to TPB, I thought that was awesome.

By the way, I don't care for Linkin Park, and most of the industrial metal craze. I don't really see the appeal.

 

[havass]

No excuse. Other than 'I have no money to afford everysingle shit I want'. And I think that's not valid. Heh. I feel that i'm obliged to pirate TV shows, though. They don't show it over here and I want to watch it, so...

 

[ragestreet]

1. I don't need an excuse to do things I find fun.
2. I don't really like Linkin Park all that much.

 

[XelaisPWN]

Legally, there is no excuse. Honestly, I've heard some musicians outright say to steal their music if you don't have it already (Tally Hall, Streetlight Manifesto, Renard) because that's a good way to spread it. But legally it doesn't matter what they said personally. It's against the law and that's that. Technically it makes no sense, but that's not what anyone cares about.

This I can get behind. I torrented Slash for this reason, also for bonus tracks not available in the US. But they're about to be released in the US anyway, I'll have to buy them off of Zune or something.

 

[Kserijaro]

I don't pay for crappy games. Most games are crap.All new games are uber recycled crap. The ones I would like to buy are long before pulled of the sale list.

 

[deathandtaxes]

My logic follows thus:

If you need to stop and come up for an excuse for it, you shouldn't be doing it. You know you shouldn't be doing it. You know it is not acceptable. You just had to stop and think of a way to rationalize it away.

If you know you shouldn't be doing it, don't do it. If/when you get caught, face the consequences of it. It's not like you didn't know it was coming.

I don't know, trying to rationalize in such a manner strikes me a lying, and I hate liars with a dark, consuming hatred.

So if you were say homosexual in Saudi-Arabi your saying you wouldn't have the same issues and fears about being with your lover and instead try and rationalise them away?

Fear of doing something which is against the law and has possible repercussions is not a yard stick for morality, suggesting that it is so is rather disgusting.