Educate me about piracy

[Dendio]

I always buy my games legally. One of the people I play wow with does not buy games legally, he pirates. Now im in the states and hes in canada. He tells me that pirating is legal in canada. That doesnt make sense. Why do countries allow pirating? People are so strict over everything else that involves money, so why are great companies like cd projekt red having to deal with 5 million + illegal downloads for all the hard work they put into a great game.

My wow friend was on vent and announced as he went to a site and downloaded with no repercussions.
How is this allowed? Why is this allowed? Im pretty sure the powers that be could at least put an end to the more popular piracy sites. I feel that piracy is holding our industry back and keeping investors from taking the pc platform seriously

People feel so unthreatened about piracy that they nonchalantly admit to it. Thats like a thief walking out the front door of a jewelry shop while whistling dixie! Something is wrong with the system. I dont know why people are able to do what they are doing, but if you know why piracy is allowed then please educate me

 

[Azure-Supernova]

See, piracy is a sticky subject. Not only because it sets up a perfect debate on forums, but because of current laws it's made illegal through EULAs and enforcing Copyright and Intellectual Property laws, but as it doesn't fall into the current definition of 'theft' or 'bootlegging' there's a lot of debate over whether it currently breaks any of the laws today.

I'm all against piracy, but for anything to be done laws need to change to combat it.

 

[Radeonx]

See, the thing about a lot of the popular sites is that they are stationed in European countries that don't have copyright laws, so the sites can't be taken down.
If SOPA somehow is passed, this will change, but would end up causing a ridiculous amounts of problems that would be much worse, but that's another discussion completely.

 

[Issurru]

As far as I know, pirating in canada is illegal (i'm a canadian too) it used to be that we payed more for blank cd's and dvd's which was supposed to go to publishers and what not. But it became illegal awhile ago, at lest 3 or 4 years ago i'm sure (that's when music became illegal to download so games/movies should be exactly the same). So from what I know your friend is wrong/misinformed or possibly just lying.

Then again it took me how long to find out it was illegal since I don't exactly keep up with laws that don't affect me and I never have checked up on said law so i'm not 100% sure. Just around 90%

 

[babinro]

Pirating is not legal in Canada. However, there is almost no chance of being punished for the act.

In rare cases, say once a year, you'll read an article in the paper on how people are being sued thousands of dollars for piracy. This seems to happen so rarely that you'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting in trouble for piracy.

Things I don't understand are why those sites allowed to operate where it's commonly known nearly %100 of the populous utilize it for illegal purpose. Why are our ISP's allowed to so tightly protect our information when it comes to accessing those sites. You'd think with so many billions of lost dollars at stake that governments would be quick to enact laws to crack down on piracy.

 

[NEREVAR117]

You have millions of people pirating, and you simply cannot catch or jail them all. It would be a bigger challenge than the 'war' on drugs. I know big businesses and certain people in Congress are attempting to stem the issue with recent legislation, such as SOPA, by essentially going Nazi Germany on the American-located web-servers. Thankfully, these bills have been unsuccessful so far; I'd rather not have my established freedoms limited in favor of a rich man buying another Ferrari.

Pirating is not legal in Canada. However, there is almost no chance of being punished for the act.

In rare cases, say once a year, you'll read an article in the paper on how people are being sued thousands of dollars for piracy. This seems to happen so rarely that you'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting in trouble for piracy.

Things I don't understand are why those sites allowed to operate where it's commonly known nearly %100 of the populous utilize it for illegal purpose. Why are our ISP's allowed to so tightly protect our information when it comes to accessing those sites.

It's called service rights. It profits the ISPs in the end because they're protecting their customers.

 

[Radeonx]

It isn't allowed and I'm pretty certain that it's illegal in Canada.

However, pirates are not the easiest bunch to catch. Get one, and there's a million billion trillion gazi... a lot of others right behind him. It makes your chances of getting caught pretty damned small, though not quite infinitesimally so. The best thing to do is threaten and show everyone that you can actually catch one. "Hey, everyone, this is what we'll do if we catch you"! But even that doesn't deter people because, hey, none of their buddies are getting caught.

On top of that, the nature of Torrents makes it very hard to catch downloaders, unless of course you put a traceable file in the torrent you uploaded.
And even then, it will be called out by the tons of users of whatever site you use anyways, so it is pretty difficult.

 

[the spud]

I don't think it is legal in Canada...

OT: Yeah, I am for the most part against piracy, but there are 2 situations where it is morally acceptable in my eyes.

1: I think we can agree on this one. It is OK to pirate if the game was never released in your region and it probably won't be there anytime soon.

2: This might be a little more controversial, but I think it is acceptable to pirate when a game is no longer in circulation and there is no way any money can get to the people who worked on it.

So yeah, basically the EC system of morality.

 

[JET1971]

Piracy is not legal in Canada. the issue is there is far less a game company from a forign nation can do about a Canadian pirating. Ubi Montreal wouldnt have that issue though.

as for subscription games like WOW they tend to put on blinders as long as the subscription fee gets paid because thats where the real money comes from. as long as he doesnt brag about it a moderator will probably ignore it.

As for the numbers of pirated copies of games you need to realize a few things, the game company reported amount of pirated copies compared to purchased is bullshit. if a game sells 1 million copies there is no way there is 5 million pirated thats just absurd to imagine that 5 out of 6 gamers are pirates. but thats just where the game can be purchased.

those who cannot purchase the game for whatever reason that its not available where they are cannot be considered an actual pirate even if they did pirate the game. those people are potential customers that the game company decided to ignore and is there fault for creating the pirate. thats a large percentage of pirates whos download needs to be removed from the estimate.

then another issue with piracy numbers is where the companies get them from. they collect those numbers from the amount of torrent downloads. a torrent is download information only and not the actual download itself. many pirates will download more than one torrent, and the majority of those torrents will download either a broken unplayable version, includes virus, or whatever reason making the pirate download another. on some it could be 1 out of every 10 will be a non working copy. so subtract all the broken non working copies and the extra torrent downloads and you have a much smaller number.

How many of the pirated copies are actual customers who pirated it because the DRM was draconian or made the game unplayable? I know 16 of the FarCry 2 pirated copies was actual legit customers because I was 1 of them and the group i played with all did the same thing after we bought the game legaly. that can be a significant amount of pirated version in cases like all of Ubisofts.

Next issue is how many of those pirated copies was for demo purposes because the game company did not make a demo? I do that if I am not sure about the title and they dont have a demo, I may play a couple levels and if the game is good i will go an buy it, if its shit i delete it. so take those numbers away from the pirated copies.

All that leaves you with an insignificant amount of actual pirated copies of games from people like your friend who refuses to buy a game. the amount of pirates is probably around 1 out of every 100 gamers. I know 1 and i know about 100 gamers. how many gamers do you know compared to how many are pirating games? So with that ratio thats much more realistic though most likely incorrect but close, if there was 1 million copies sold then 100 thousand copies were actualy pirated.

Now what can game companies do about it? actualy for the real pirates absolutly nothing. should they try? sure but it wont work and if they resort to draconian DRM then they will just make the issue worse. but they can do something about many of the pirates that couldnt buy the game by releasing it worldwide and ignore the pirates from countries that ban the game.

 

[ToAsTy McBuTTeR]

As far as I know, pirating in canada is illegal (i'm a canadian too) it used to be that we payed more for blank cd's and dvd's which was supposed to go to publishers and what not. But it became illegal awhile ago, at lest 3 or 4 years ago i'm sure (that's when music became illegal to download so games/movies should be exactly the same). So from what I know your friend is wrong/misinformed or possibly just lying.

Then again it took me how long to find out it was illegal since I don't exactly keep up with laws that don't affect me and I never have checked up on said law so i'm not 100% sure. Just around 90%

i have nothing to add. but your avatar is fantastic and that's one of my favorite animes!!!

OT: pirates arent annoying, the measures devs take to stop them... that DONT WORK just piss off those of us who do the right thing and buy our games legally... they do know that when they pirate them they bypass the DRM right?

 

[Kopikatsu]

Pirating is not legal in Canada. However, there is almost no chance of being punished for the act.

In rare cases, say once a year, you'll read an article in the paper on how people are being sued thousands of dollars for piracy. This seems to happen so rarely that you'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting in trouble for piracy.

Things I don't understand are why those sites allowed to operate where it's commonly known nearly %100 of the populous utilize it for illegal purpose. Why are our ISP's allowed to so tightly protect our information when it comes to accessing those sites. You'd think with so many billions of lost dollars at stake that governments would be quick to enact laws to crack down on piracy.

Yeaaaaah.

Pirate Bay is totally a legitimate site that doesn't break any laws. They should totally be allowed to continue to operate!

 

[viranimus]

Im not going to go into a full diatribe explaining it all, I will say, "piracy" boils down to a buzz word that CEOs of media publishers brow beat into the public so that when they take it to lobbyists to get illegal and unrealistic laws like SOPA, stop IP, ACTA, ect created, they can find some degree of traction with the ignorant and uninformed masses who believe whatever their favorite content provider tells them to think


It is one of the single most over exaggerated uses of a word in history.

Beyond that, watch the Dec 1st epsiode of The Colbert report to get a chance to see this being actively (albeit slightly humorously) debated by those who are actually relevant to the situation.


http://www.hulu.com/watch/306295/the-colbert-report-thu-dec-1-2011#s-p1-so-i0


EDIT: It basically is sort of like screaming FIRE in a crowded theater. Except the fire in question is being generated by a lighter. It is a real thing, but its actual threat is so microscopic compared to what it actually is.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

Pirate sites like the bay are up because they only host torrents.
It's really hard to track the million users sending billions of packages to each other.
anyway, copying =/= stealing. It's still harmful though.

Pirating is not legal in Canada. However, there is almost no chance of being punished for the act.

In rare cases, say once a year, you'll read an article in the paper on how people are being sued thousands of dollars for piracy. This seems to happen so rarely that you'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting in trouble for piracy.

Things I don't understand are why those sites allowed to operate where it's commonly known nearly %100 of the populous utilize it for illegal purpose. Why are our ISP's allowed to so tightly protect our information when it comes to accessing those sites. You'd think with so many billions of lost dollars at stake that governments would be quick to enact laws to crack down on piracy.

Yeaaaaah.

Pirate Bay is totally a legitimate site that doesn't break any laws. They should totally be allowed to continue to operate!

The pirate bay is 100% legal.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Pirate sites like the bay are up because they only host torrents.
It's really hard to track the million users sending billions of packages to each other.
anyway, copying =/= stealing. It's still harmful though.

Pirating is not legal in Canada. However, there is almost no chance of being punished for the act.

In rare cases, say once a year, you'll read an article in the paper on how people are being sued thousands of dollars for piracy. This seems to happen so rarely that you'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting in trouble for piracy.

Things I don't understand are why those sites allowed to operate where it's commonly known nearly %100 of the populous utilize it for illegal purpose. Why are our ISP's allowed to so tightly protect our information when it comes to accessing those sites. You'd think with so many billions of lost dollars at stake that governments would be quick to enact laws to crack down on piracy.

Yeaaaaah.

Pirate Bay is totally a legitimate site that doesn't break any laws. They should totally be allowed to continue to operate!

The pirate bay is 100% legal.

Somehow I doubt that entirely.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

Pirate sites like the bay are up because they only host torrents.
It's really hard to track the million users sending billions of packages to each other.
anyway, copying =/= stealing. It's still harmful though.

Pirating is not legal in Canada. However, there is almost no chance of being punished for the act.

In rare cases, say once a year, you'll read an article in the paper on how people are being sued thousands of dollars for piracy. This seems to happen so rarely that you'd have a much better chance of winning the lottery than getting in trouble for piracy.

Things I don't understand are why those sites allowed to operate where it's commonly known nearly %100 of the populous utilize it for illegal purpose. Why are our ISP's allowed to so tightly protect our information when it comes to accessing those sites. You'd think with so many billions of lost dollars at stake that governments would be quick to enact laws to crack down on piracy.

Yeaaaaah.

Pirate Bay is totally a legitimate site that doesn't break any laws. They should totally be allowed to continue to operate!

The pirate bay is 100% legal.

Somehow I doubt that entirely.

Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site.

http://thepiratebay.org/about
The torrent files contain nothing copyrighted, hosting them is legal in Sweden.

 

[Darkmantle]

It isn't allowed and I'm pretty certain that it's illegal in Canada.

However, pirates are not the easiest bunch to catch. Get one, and there's a million billion trillion gazi... a lot of others right behind him. It makes your chances of getting caught pretty damned small, though not quite infinitesimally so. The best thing to do is threaten and show everyone that you can actually catch one. "Hey, everyone, this is what we'll do if we catch you"! But even that doesn't deter people because, hey, none of their buddies are getting caught.

I'm pretty sure pirating was completely legal in Canada up until last year. and even now the law is still so new and untested that it might fall. Apparently the law did not recognize the copying of files as theft, because no physical damage was done.

I'm not joking, I looked it up one day

 

[Dave29]

I'm only educated on piracy on South America, and only for movies and console-games.
If that works too, let me know.

 

[Something Amyss]

He tells me that pirating is legal in canada. That doesnt make sense.

Kind of a partial truth. They certainly have been less draconian in their attempts to curb piracy, and therefore have been frequently labeled as "permissive."