Downloading is a human right.

[Nemu]

While I disagree that "downloading is a human right", I tend to side more with pirates than I do with non-pirates as I am of the generation that grew up with CDs being priced high because "it costs a lot to produce them". Fine, okay, you tell me that they are priced $15 (average) because they cost a lot to be made (in reality it cost about 3 bucks, but whatever), and I have to accept it in order to own the music that I want.

Now, iTunes and Amazon (et al) offer the same albums for....$10-14 a pop, why? It certainly doesn't cost the same amount to "produce" these albums, so why are consumers forced to buy music that they like (in TERRIBLE audio-quality, btw) for CD-era prices? Because companies are greedy and are pissed that people grew tired of spending a ton of money for poorly produced/written/performed music. How many people have liked a song, spend 10-15 bucks on an album and HATE the album? Chance is chance, sure, but folks can't afford to throw money away these days.

I will gladly pirate an album by an artist, take a listen and if it's good, I'll buy it (bought 2 newly-released albums this week, even, not to mention an EP). If it's not, it's deleted anyway. I'm sorry that the artist is "robbed" of the pittance that he/she/they didn't receive from an album sale, but I'm no longer willing to spend a lot of money on something that I MIGHT not like.[footnote] Plus, it's no secret that musicians make their money on tour, if I hated the album, 9 times out of 10 I wasn't going to EVER pay to see them live, anyway.[/footnote]

 

[BeerTent]

snop

It's still not theft. It might be something immoral, but it's certainly not theft.
Theft requires that something which is stolen, i.e. no longer in the hands of the person it was stolen from.[...]

Okay, I'll nab your bank account credentials and take all of your funds. Oh! It's not theft! Nothing PHYSICAL was taken! No matter how many times people parrot this it's still false. By downloading this game, you are in possession of something that, by law, you're not permitted to have. Theft, is to steal. By definition, stealing is to take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it. While you could argue that torrents is "returning." You're not returning to the publisher, who is the individual providing the service or product. When EA finds that you have this metaphorical copy of Mirror's edge, they will nail you in the exact same manner if you "procured" a physical copy of the game from, I dunno, "The EA store." The only difference that instead of the disc, they take your HDD as evidence. (And if you're anything like me, videos involving a large number of midget "actors" might surface in there too...)

I am really more against big publishers like EA and Activision than I am against smaller publishers.

I'd prefer there'd be no consoles at all (or at least make them cheaper and without subscriptions!!)

Publishers have little to no interest in creativity. That doesn't mean they aren't useful for getting a game known.

I haven't much to say here because, that's all you. If you don't like a publisher, that's okay! But when you rob a middle man, you're robbing the developer too. If you don't agree with a publisher, don't play their games. Just because you don't agree with a publisher, this doesn't give you a right to circumvent Origin's DRM.[footnote]I'm also purely using EA as an example here. Because the EULA's are super easy to find.[/footnote]

Morality aside. Fuck morals, that's a personal thing that's not covered by law or the social contract... You do not have a right to posses something you've pirated. If piracy is not theft, then it's its own crime, punishable in the exact same method. I'd be more open to that statement if someone would say something other than "It's not stealing, man. It has to be PHYSICAL!"

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

The problem is, people usually don't get paid for the work through game purchases. Somebody ELSE who then funds the artists/programmers etc gets paid.

This is technically true, but if the person funding the project isn't getting payed, he's not going to fund the project, and then, if the project is large-scale, it generally just won't happen. Kickstarter is great at counteracting this, but it's not a limitless resource.

An artist does his work because others want him to do it? That's a fairly modern way of looking at it, and not an accurate one. What makes an artist is the production of artistic works, not in any added stipulation about his getting paid for them.

This is true. But the thing is, making a large-scale work of art, say a movie or a videogame, especially a high-quality one, takes a lot of time, even with huge groups of people. Enough time that if you do it, it's what you're doing full-time. Thus, if you want to finish the project, rather than dying of starvation halfway through, you need to be making a paycheck for it.

 

[Twilight_guy]

*In Inigo Montoya voice* I don't think this means what you think it means.

This sounds like ti has a buttload of qualifiers applied to it, so I doubt its as cut and dry and as you would like it to look.

That said, So0 long as companies are selling there products and making money, I'm happy. If that stops being true, I will start randomly murdering pirates because my profession will be worthless and I will be an angry bum.

 

[Vegosiux]

Piracy = stealing.

That's all there is to it. Don't care what a law says.

Seriously, do not post opinions as facts.

Because what the law says, that's a fact, and that's the framework under which things are going to play out in case of an infarction - all the empowered institutions are going to care about what the law says, not what you think in case you're, say, filing a lawsuit against someone pirating a piece of software you designed.

You have to realize that staying within the legal definitions and differentiating between theft and copyright infringement is not the same as saying "Piracy is OK", no matter how you want to spin it that way.

Is piracy the same as theft? No.
Does that make piracy OK? Well...no.

Why does it have to be "theft" to be considered "something you really shouldn't be doing" in people's eyes?

 

[conmag9]

snop

It's still not theft. It might be something immoral, but it's certainly not theft.
Theft requires that something which is stolen, i.e. no longer in the hands of the person it was stolen from.[...]

Okay, I'll nab your bank account credentials and take all of your funds. Oh! It's not theft! Nothing PHYSICAL was taken!

False analogy. The correct one would be if you went into his bank account and copied the money, leaving his perfectly alone. This is still illegal, and immoral, but it's not stealing. Equating it to stealing is simply an emotional tactic to obscure the fact that copyright infringment, while still wrong, is objectively less serious than theft of that same product (yes, I am using objectively correctly. With theft, the victim has lost the original AND the thief gets it. Copyright infringement has the copier get it, but the original is not lost).

If it isn't clear, this is NOT saying that copyright infringement is okay, but the legal definition is different and it's irksome to see it misconstrued. That, and the penalties are completely out of scale. If I walked up and murdered an artist, I could get less jail time than if I'd pirated 10 of his or her songs. How does that make any sense?


Anyway, even beyond the moral/legal aspect of it, from a practical point of view, piracy isn't going away. If artists want to keep making money (which they probably deserve! Though just because you put a lot of work into something doesn't mean it's going to sell, which should be taken into account), alternative methods must be pursued to keep up with the changes in the market. Things are going to get copied, so learn to monotize regardless (and there are most certainly ways to do so). DRM is a waste of enormous amounts of developer time for something usually cracked within a day or two so stop throwing good money after bad after it. Should artists HAVE to deal with this sort of thing? No, but if you plug your ears and scream about how unfair reality is, you're not going to get very far.

Again, I'm not endorsing piracy or saying it's okay, I'm just acknowledging that the way the market works is changing and those who work in it have to change with it. This isn't a pleasant period of transition, but it's necessary nonetheless.

 

[Whitbane]

Downloading something you pay for might be a human right, but stealing it and trying to justify that theft is beyond stupid.

You want to buy something, pay for it.
Not enough funds? Wait and save up.

 

[Vegosiux]

I seriously doubt more than a handful of people are actually all "fuck artists."

no, they are "true artists do it for free!" which to me is essentially the same thing

Ehm, no, it's mainly a priority thing, I suppose. Say, you want to create art, and you want to make money. Depending on which of those things you pick as your main objective, you are or aren't an "artist".

It's rather nice that being an artist is not mutually exclusive with making money! But I do see it as mutually exclusive with making money being your primary concern.

 

[lazinesslord]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

Doing it for the art is nice and all but artists still need to pay their rent, pay their taxes, have food in the fridge, and provide for their families. (That last one ain't cheap.)

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Downloading something you pay for might be a human right, but stealing it and trying to justify that theft is beyond stupid.

You want to buy something, pay for it.
Not enough funds? Wait and save up.

Bromigo, no matter how many times you tell yourself "Downloading is theft!" saying it one more time is still not going to make it true.

Same argument could be made against used games or sharing games as well.

"Want to borrow a game? Too bad, wait and save up for your own copy!" "Cant afford a new copy? Wait and save up, you cant have a used copy!"

Sharing and used media are 100% the same to a publisher or aritst, as they are not seeing a penny of revenue for the people consuming their work beyond the first purchaser, same as downloads.

Like fucking hell are they the same. I have never shared a game between me and my 5,000 friends, and no one else has, because nobody has 5,000 friends. When I share a game with my friend, we are using one copy at a time and, unless the game is designed to be played by m ultiple people, only one of us is playing it at once. The same can not be said of piracy. Finally, when I share a game with a friend, I am not breaking virtually every part of copyright law, even the sane parts. Piracy does (and while I'd like to assume you understand I'm exaggerating here... well, I don't have that much faith in you, so here's this parenthetical pointing it out). And as someone who would someday like to be an artist, it definitely is not the fucking same to me. Yes the piracy is theft argument is dumb and wrong, but seriously, the idea that sharing a single, physical copy with a friend is the same as sharing thousands of digital copies with total strangers is a whole other level of bullshit, and you must know it. I'm just hoping that you're being sarcastic here.

 

[Vault101]

Ehm, no, it's mainly a priority thing, I suppose. Say, you want to create art, and you want to make money. Depending on which of those things you pick as your main objective, you are or aren't an "artist".

It's rather nice that being an artist is not mutually exclusive with making money! But I do see it as mutually exclusive with making money being your primary concern.

thats not what I'm saying!

if you went into with money being your primary objective than your wasting your time, you might as well learn to play the stock market or something because its quite rare you'll actually make alot of money....most people/artists should know that

its not about making money, is about being able to survive, fame and excess money is merely a by product

 

[Lilani]

While we're at it, let's not knock down strawmen by pretending that the above quote is remotely true.

It's weird seeing someone simultaneously acknowledge the complexity of the situation, but also then do a blanket assault on straw-logic.

I seriously doubt more than a handful of people are actually all "fuck artists."

As Vault said, I have seen people try to justify piracy with "True artists do it for free, anyway!" Those are the people I am criticizing. However, things regarding piracy get more complicated when you're talking about things that are rare or never got a proper release, or when it comes to old games that never got a release on digital stores. That is what I mean by it is a complex subject.

And like I said, people like our friend in the blog the OP linked, making a "pirate party" and wearing an eyepatch in his Facebook photo, are not helping anybody. They're just giving themselves the appearance of "Arr, I'm a pirate and I take what I want!"