An instance of piracy being okay?

[s0p0g]

Why do people say these things?

Piracy. Is. Illegal.

Doesn't matter what moral label you try to attach to it to justify it, that one fact isn't changing.

no argument there. but:
not being legal doesn't mean not being legitimate.
and something that is legitimate usually is morally good, or at the very least not bad. that's why it's legitimate.

also, what Giantpanda602 and The Lunatic said

some time ago friends and i talked about piracy. most of us came to the conclusion that it is legitimate to get a game (movie, music, whatever) via "unofficial channels", try it for some time, and if one like it, he buys it, and if not, deletes it. of course demos were mentioned too, as method of choice to try a new game, but most of us thought that demos don't show enough. especially in times when you cannot bring a game back to a store for a refund in case you didn't like it, i understand why some people go back to pirating (at first)
illegal? yes? ok? decide for yourself.
my method of choice, if i am not >90% sure whether i should get a game or not (after reading reviews, watching vids, looking at what people whine about), is waiting for a friend of mine to get it, then i'll take a look at it, listen to what he's got to say about the game, and then i make a decision.


the biggest problem with old(er) games in my oppinion is getting the money where it should be - the devs. buying a game second hand only makes it cheaper for the first buyer. or, in the case of gamestop and the like, feeds a parasite, as they even make profit with that

would it not be possible to somehow establish a system where you could "donate" money to the devs and then get green lights to get a specific game in whatever way you find? (if you cannot get a "real" copy of the game, be it digital or physical on a disc; not all devs/publishers have their own stores (thanks steam for bringing back some awesome games! and for all those awesome indie-games!))

 

[Extragorey]

Steam is where it can be found, as well as all other Bethesda goodness.

Except for Daggerfall. But that's abandonware now, so no one really cares how you get your hands on it.

My first thought to this was find someone who owns it, kidnapp their closest loved one and tell them the ransom is their copy of Daggerfall. Is that wierd?

Yes.

But Daggerfall is actually freeware now - it's been officially released on the Bethesda website, along with Arena.
http://bethblog.com/index.php/2009/07/09/daggerfall-now-available-for-free/

As for the matter at hand, piracy is always wrong. No exceptions.
However, if you lose your disc I think it's reasonable to download a "fixed EXE" so the game will run without it - since you already own the game.

 

[Jazoni89]

I think piracy is more stricter in the states than in other countries.

For example, in the UK, the only way to get arrested for piracy is if you sell pirate goods for profit, which is totally, and utterly fair.

Also, their was a mention recently that the government was going to make stricter laws about music piracy in this country by getting isp's to ban people that who downloads lots of songs from peer to peer networks, but that was met with extreme amounts of backlash, so those plans never came into fruition.

Now we move on to games, were no one even gives two shits. No seriously, the amount of people that say emulation is bad or terrible, don't even realise that hardly anyone even knows what a emulator even is, let alone the legal stance on it.

I tell you a story, my matey who works in the games shop down the road just got these handheld megadrives to sell. Me being the cynical gamer i am, i saw that one of the handhelds had a SD card slot with the writing on the box saying "add even more games with the SD card". I then wondered if they were endorsed by Sega, which in a few website clicks later i find out they actually are.

So yeah, Sega was endorsing people to download roms to put on this third party handheld. If that's a sign that companies don't give two shits, i don't know what is.

Also, the retro gaming magazine Retro Gamer also endorses the use of emulation to play old games (hell they even bundled roms and emulators on a disc with their older issues.) Especially MAME, which without it, means that many great arcade games would be lost forever.

When it comes to newer games it's a different story altogether, as the companies still make a profit for each game sold, so in reality it's downright stealing. Though with older titles no one is making a profit on those games, so even if you get the game legally or not, their's zero difference (unless the game in question is that of a downloadable game you can acquire by paying for it, but even then its not a psychical product you can buy from a shop which in turn could be unavailable to you).

if emulation is illegal, then we should say that buying second hand is also illegal too, as no one other than the retailer is getting any money for it.

This is my stance on piracy, and Emulation, agree with it or not, i seriously think that everyone should get out of their little ignorant holes they dug, and start realising that game related piracy for older games isn't really that bad. In fact it could be used for a whole lot of good especially when it's MAME related.

 

[Indecipherable]

My girlfriend found a copy of Morrowind recently, and has been talking about it near constantly---it's been years since I played it and thinking about it again, I've started to look into getting a copy for myself on PC (I used to have the xbox version). It's not at my local Gamestop, or Babbages, whatever, and the copy online I've found isn't the GOTY edition.

I realized something.

Of all the places I can purchase this game, not one benefits the developers at all. If all the copies circulated are used, only gamestop or whoever's on ebay gets any money.

It would be like scavenging a super-duper-mart instead of buying from raiders, just getting the torrent. :/

Am I just a jaded pirate?

Not that it's immediately obvious but I don't necessarily subscribe to the thought that the second hand market contributes nothing to the primary producer.

Let's say the game has an intrinsic fun value of $50 to you.

You know that it's residual value (resell value) will be $20 in 2 years time.

Without adjusting for the time-value of money, you would be prepared to pay $70 for this game. If there were no secondary market, you would be only prepared to pay $50 for this game.

For the producer of this game, they can simply choose to sell one unit at $50 (by somehow locking out the secondary market) or one unit at $70. This swings even more in the favour of the producer of the game when DLC is included, as for $50 they sell to one person or for $70 they sell to two.

You tell me now if the secondary market is killing game production?

 

[Timmibal]

Not that it's immediately obvious but I don't necessarily subscribe to the thought that the second hand market contributes nothing to the primary producer.

Let's say the game has an intrinsic fun value of $50 to you.

You know that it's residual value (resell value) will be $20 in 2 years time.

Without adjusting for the time-value of money, you would be prepared to pay $70 for this game. If there were no secondary market, you would be only prepared to pay $50 for this game.

For the producer of this game, they can simply choose to sell one unit at $50 (by somehow locking out the secondary market) or one unit at $70. This swings even more in the favour of the producer of the game when DLC is included, as for $50 they sell to one person or for $70 they sell to two.

You tell me now if the secondary market is killing game production?

wat.jpg

I think you've got your reasoning a little backwards there. The games market is a much smaller fishin' hole than say, the movie market. This market is further shrunk by the retailers selling second hand, since, obviously, a pre-owned sale equates to a 1:1 loss to the producer. It's the only media market that has to deal with retailers double-dipping in this regard, and it stinks.

This is why we're starting to see projects to reward gamers who buy new, whether it be free 1 use DLC codes or clumsy swipes to negate the legal loophole of the resale market such as EA's project $10. It would be completely pointless for a producer to increase their base price arbitrarily to attempt to counter resale, as that would simply drive more people to the marginally cheaper resale market.

Not only does Resale contribute nothing to the primary producer, it actively works to compete against it using the producers own IP.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Why do people say these things?

Piracy. Is. Illegal.

Doesn't matter what moral label you try to attach to it to justify it, that one fact isn't changing.

Woah there. Take Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Mother 3. Neither game was released outside of Japan. Is it wrong for someone to play those games on an emulator?

 

[Indecipherable]

Not that it's immediately obvious but I don't necessarily subscribe to the thought that the second hand market contributes nothing to the primary producer.

Let's say the game has an intrinsic fun value of $50 to you.

You know that it's residual value (resell value) will be $20 in 2 years time.

Without adjusting for the time-value of money, you would be prepared to pay $70 for this game. If there were no secondary market, you would be only prepared to pay $50 for this game.

For the producer of this game, they can simply choose to sell one unit at $50 (by somehow locking out the secondary market) or one unit at $70. This swings even more in the favour of the producer of the game when DLC is included, as for $50 they sell to one person or for $70 they sell to two.

You tell me now if the secondary market is killing game production?

wat.jpg

I think you've got your reasoning a little backwards there. The games market is a much smaller fishin' hole than say, the movie market. This market is further shrunk by the retailers selling second hand, since, obviously, a pre-owned sale equates to a 1:1 loss to the producer. It's the only media market that has to deal with retailers double-dipping in this regard, and it stinks.

This is why we're starting to see projects to reward gamers who buy new, whether it be free 1 use DLC codes or clumsy swipes to negate the legal loophole of the resale market such as EA's project $10. It would be completely pointless for a producer to increase their base price arbitrarily to attempt to counter resale, as that would simply drive more people to the marginally cheaper resale market.

Not only does Resale contribute nothing to the primary producer, it actively works to compete against it using the producers own IP.

Actually I think I quite proved above that having a secondary market gives more money to the producer. A pre-owned sale does not equate to a 1:1 loss because the person purchasing it was not prepared to pay the full value (else they would have when it came out). It just a method of practicing price discrimination.

 

[Just_A_Glitch]

Case of piracy being okay coming up.

Warped Tour last year, I was talking with the band Closure in Moscow, and I asked if they had a copy of their EP to buy (already had an iTunes copy, but I like physical copies of things). Due to some legal issues though, they can't sell it outside of Australia for some reason, so they, and this is pretty awesome, wrote something on a small piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a direct link to the EP on a torrent site, with the words "Go for it" written down.

I love those guys. If the band themselves told me to do it, I will oblige. I mean, I didn't since I already legally owned a digital copy, but the point is that they were okay with it.

 

[Nieroshai]

An instance of theft for personal gain instead of survival? You make me laugh. Theft is theft, and I don't find it in me to let someone off unless they stole to survive.

 

[Lawyer105]

Morally, I think Piracy is okay when nothing is lost, no purchase would have been made anyway, so, who's actually losing money here?

Legally, it's always wrong, but, I mean, if nothing is lost and nothing would be gained, what's the big deal?

I'd only be able to consider the above argument where there's no possibility of purchase. For example - pirating because "I'm too poor to buy games" just doesn't cut it. If you've got the hardware, you can get the games - you just can't get as many as you'd like to. You could also rent.

But if you're a serious Japanophile (or whatever it's called) and you're desperate to get your hands on "Random Game XIII - Identical to the First XII" or whatever and there's no possibility that it will ever be released in your area, then I guess I can kind of see it. Assuming it can't be bought online or imported.

Why do people say these things?

Piracy. Is. Illegal.

Doesn't matter what moral label you try to attach to it to justify it, that one fact isn't changing.

I'd argue that the only person who should push a piracy charge would be the developer or the publisher. Both stand to lose from piracy.

But once they're not selling the product (or they're not selling it online / export to your area) and only second-hand versions are around, nobody who owns (or has an interest in) the copyright CAN actually lose out, because they could never make a sale anyways. At that point, I don't really think piracy comes into it.

Also, their was a mention recently that the government was going to make stricter laws about music piracy in this country by getting isp's to ban people that who downloads lots of songs from peer to peer networks, but that was met with extreme amounts of backlash, so those plans never came into fruition.

Are you sure about that? I was pretty sure that it's already active:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act#Section_3_to_16

In my opinion, though I never do it, piracy is ok under one of two circumstances
1)Its ok to pirate a game currently still being sold new by retailers if you previously purchased the game and lost it/it got destroyed
2)Its ok to pirate a game if nobody but Gamestop/whatever company you're buying it from is the only person that gets the money anymore because the game was discontinued

I agree with 2) completely (as noted above).

But I'm not sure I agree with 1). Some companies sell annual licences to use their software (and gaming companies get HUGE stick when they try this). In that sort of circumstance, where you've paid your annual fee, I could see obtaining another version if yours was corrupt. You've paid for the use of the software for a year, after all...

But for a significant portion of stuff, afaik you've purchased the DISK, and the rights to use the contents of that disk. It's an item. In some ways it's a bit like buying a car (and with it, the right to drive that car). If you drove it into a pole or whatever, you couldn't just head to the showroom and walk off with another, right? Kinda (but not completely) the same thing.

Not that it's immediately obvious but I don't necessarily subscribe to the thought that the second hand market contributes nothing to the primary producer.

Let's say the game has an intrinsic fun value of $50 to you.

You know that it's residual value (resell value) will be $20 in 2 years time.

Without adjusting for the time-value of money, you would be prepared to pay $70 for this game. If there were no secondary market, you would be only prepared to pay $50 for this game.

For the producer of this game, they can simply choose to sell one unit at $50 (by somehow locking out the secondary market) or one unit at $70. This swings even more in the favour of the producer of the game when DLC is included, as for $50 they sell to one person or for $70 they sell to two.

You tell me now if the secondary market is killing game production?

I'm afraid your logic is a little flawed here.

To start with the biggest problem, you've assumed a resale of 2 years. Plenty of resales happen within 3 months. Since the majority of people are kinda cheap, and most don't care about the developers, they'll wait 2-3 months after release to pick up a 2nd hand copy. Developer gets only a thousand sales, rather than e.g. 1,400, because of the second hand market.

Next, you've assumed the potential for a dual-pricing system. This is utterly unfeasible without the kind of lunatic DRM that Ubisoft put into play... and even then, we saw how well that protected them from pirates, so it would never work. All the cheapies would buy a "sole owner" copy and sell that on. It's not hard to get your hands on a crack disk, and I doubt too many 2nd hand buyers would worry much about that - especially if they'd purchased it. Also, even if they marked the disk "Not for resale" or whatever, they'd never be able to enforce it without insanely draconian laws. The movie industry tried that with sale copies - and there are still stores that are renting sale copies.

I dunno... I just can't see your ideas working. Sorry.

I also download cracks for games so I can play them without CD. You can blame Steam for that, it's spoilt me.

I consider both of these uses to be morally and legally OK.

I seem to recall something in Legalese about not modifying / editing / reverse-engineering etc. the software, so I wouldn't be too sure that it's legal.

Also, this is kinda picky, but saying something is moral implies a certain level of goodness / rightness. It's more accurate to say that it is not IMmoral. Sorry - I get picky about that stuff sometimes!

Case of piracy being okay coming up.

Warped Tour last year, I was talking with the band Closure in Moscow, and I asked if they had a copy of their EP to buy (already had an iTunes copy, but I like physical copies of things). Due to some legal issues though, they can't sell it outside of Australia for some reason, so they, and this is pretty awesome, wrote something on a small piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a direct link to the EP on a torrent site, with the words "Go for it" written down.

I love those guys. If the band themselves told me to do it, I will oblige. I mean, I didn't since I already legally owned a digital copy, but the point is that they were okay with it.

Umm.... I don't think that really counts as piracy. If they'd said "Sure! Here's a copy!" and handed it to you for free, would you say it's piracy because you didn't pay? It's their stuff, they can hand it out if they want to. Piracy is where you take it without their permission.

 

[Indecipherable]

Not that it's immediately obvious but I don't necessarily subscribe to the thought that the second hand market contributes nothing to the primary producer.

Let's say the game has an intrinsic fun value of $50 to you.

You know that it's residual value (resell value) will be $20 in 2 years time.

Without adjusting for the time-value of money, you would be prepared to pay $70 for this game. If there were no secondary market, you would be only prepared to pay $50 for this game.

For the producer of this game, they can simply choose to sell one unit at $50 (by somehow locking out the secondary market) or one unit at $70. This swings even more in the favour of the producer of the game when DLC is included, as for $50 they sell to one person or for $70 they sell to two.

You tell me now if the secondary market is killing game production?

I'm afraid your logic is a little flawed here.

To start with the biggest problem, you've assumed a resale of 2 years. Plenty of resales happen within 3 months. Since the majority of people are kinda cheap, and most don't care about the developers, they'll wait 2-3 months after release to pick up a 2nd hand copy. Developer gets only a thousand sales, rather than e.g. 1,400, because of the second hand market.

Next, you've assumed the potential for a dual-pricing system. This is utterly unfeasible without the kind of lunatic DRM that Ubisoft put into play... and even then, we saw how well that protected them from pirates, so it would never work. All the cheapies would buy a "sole owner" copy and sell that on. It's not hard to get your hands on a crack disk, and I doubt too many 2nd hand buyers would worry much about that - especially if they'd purchased it. Also, even if they marked the disk "Not for resale" or whatever, they'd never be able to enforce it without insanely draconian laws. The movie industry tried that with sale copies - and there are still stores that are renting sale copies.

I dunno... I just can't see your ideas working. Sorry.

Earlier resale = greater benefit to producer due to the time-value of money. They get the $20 quicker which is better than them getting the money later. Simply put, $20 now is worth more than $20 in two years, so what you argue is in fact supporting my proposition. Your argument about the quantity of sales is on a false premise that people will pay more than they are willing.

A dual pricing system already exists on the secondary market. It's called selling at a discount and takes place in those places like EBay.

The rest of your argument was tangential and had nothing to do with the economics of the the secondary market but rather about how difficult it is to prevent it. If you want to get into that, then you can add that this difficulty = money = further supporting my argument that they should let it happen.

So what you propose only strengthens my argument.

 

[Dejawesp]

Piracy is always wrong. I don't care how you try to justify it.

You do not get to decide how other people's intellectual property is distributed. And you definitely do not get to take the moral high ground when you are stealing other peoples software because you are too cheap to pay and support something you enjoy.

 

[Hiphophippo]

Only thing to take from this thread is that everyone has a moral "line in the sand" as it were regarding piracy. Some won't do it at all. Some will only do this. Some will only do that.

This shouldn't surprise anyone.

 

[Indecipherable]

Piracy is always wrong. I don't care how you try to justify it.

You do not get to decide how other people's intellectual property is distributed. And you definitely do not get to take the moral high ground when you are stealing other peoples software because you are too cheap to pay and support something you enjoy.

Here's a question, just to play the Devil's Advocate.

What if you are totally unwilling to pay for the game to begin with, so you pirate it.

Upon playing it, you decide it's actually really good, so you do two things.

1st: You tell your friends to try it out, and generate revenue for the game studio.
2nd: You purchase the expansion/DLC/part 2 of the game, and generate further revenue.

If you hadn't pirated the game, the studio would have none of that. Note that I am NOT condoning piracy and I pay for everything on my computer, but there are ways that it can work in the favor of the game studios themselves.

 

[Lawyer105]

Earlier resale = greater benefit to producer due to the time-value of money. They get the $20 quicker which is better than them getting the money later. Simply put, $20 now is worth more than $20 in two years, so what you argue is in fact supporting my proposition. Your argument about the quantity of sales is on a false premise that people will pay more than they are willing.

Wait, what? You realise that the developer and publisher don't see ANY of the second hand sale money, right?

To see that money (using your system as an example), they would have to:
1) have two sets of product (with two slightly different code bases); AND
2) be able to prohibit people from on-selling a "sole user" copy (which they can't do effectively and efficiently with current systems); AND
3) subsequently publish two versions of every patch, upgrade etc. so they don't overwrite the lockdown software.

It cannot work as you describe under current conditions.

A dual pricing system already exists on the secondary market. It's called selling at a discount and takes place in those places like EBay.

That's not dual pricing... that's a single product that two different people are selling at two different prices. Your system is predicated on the practical existence of two separate products. And as noted above, it cannot work.

So what you propose only strengthens my argument.

Ummm... no. Your incoherency weakens yours.

1st: You tell your friends to try it out, and generate revenue for the game studio.
2nd: You purchase the expansion/DLC/part 2 of the game, and generate further revenue.

1) Assuming they don't pirate it either. That's like saying "Gee... this car I stole is awesome, all my friends are buying it now, so I've done them a favour!". That's just silly.

2) If you're so totally against paying for the game, I find it hard to believe you'd spend money on DLC or a sequel without pirating those too. If it was that awesome, and you were now prepared to spend some money, why wouldn't you go buy the product you pirated in the first place?

Lameass argument.

 

[Indecipherable]

Earlier resale = greater benefit to producer due to the time-value of money. They get the $20 quicker which is better than them getting the money later. Simply put, $20 now is worth more than $20 in two years, so what you argue is in fact supporting my proposition. Your argument about the quantity of sales is on a false premise that people will pay more than they are willing.

Wait, what? You realise that the developer and publisher don't see ANY of the second hand sale money, right?

To see that money (using your system as an example), they would have to:
1) have two sets of product (with two slightly different code bases); AND
2) be able to prohibit people from on-selling a "sole user" copy (which they can't do effectively and efficiently with current systems); AND
3) subsequently publish two versions of every patch, upgrade etc. so they don't overwrite the lockdown software.

It cannot work as you describe under current conditions.

A dual pricing system already exists on the secondary market. It's called selling at a discount and takes place in those places like EBay.

That's not dual pricing... that's a single product that two different people are selling at two different prices. Your system is predicated on the practical existence of two separate products. And as noted above, it cannot work.

So what you propose only strengthens my argument.

Ummm... no. Your incoherency weakens yours.

The developers see the additional $20 on the initial sale of the product.

The rest is basic economics.

 

[drummond13]

Why do people say these things?

Piracy. Is. Illegal.

Doesn't matter what moral label you try to attach to it to justify it, that one fact isn't changing.

surely the moral label is important, it is what defines law in the first place

Law is still the law.

But law does not equal morality. For example, it's illegal to buy alcohol in New York on Sunday before noon. Does this mean that buying alcohol is immoral before noon and then suddenly becomes moral? Piracy being illegal doesn't invalidate this thread's question.