My beef with piracy.

[quantumsoul]

I like to have beef with my piracy too. Mmmmm beef.

 

[cheese_wizington]

Why can't we just let people keep to themselves.

If you are against piracy, don't do it! If you aren't against piracy, go right ahead!

 

[slopeslider]

Another thing that I'd just like to say:

You know that 30+ minutes of DRM we have to put up with before we start playing any game. We have pirates to thank for that. Their selfish nature is not only killing the gaming economy but also giving us ridiculous amounts of DRM to wade through. Developers now don't have a choice. Pirates are creating an environment in which maximum profits come from Ubisoft DRM-ing us to death while the Humble Indie Bundle still gets pirated even though it's being offered for free.

Pirates are unnafected by drm.
PIRATES ARE UNNAFECTED BY THE DRM.
The drm is there to stop pirates.
but PIRATES ARE UNNAFECTED BY THE DRM.
1. Lose the drm, if someone wants it free they'll get it free
2. Lower costs by not implementing costly drm
3. Lower price to $55 or so new.
4. Gain fans who hate drm and love your games
5.Gain massive goodwill from everyone. "Oh hey guys price cut on ALL our present and future games, no drm, power to the players!"
???
6.PROFIT!!!

Remember AC2? UNcracked for weeks, yet sales were not through the roof with repentant pirates willing to pay $60 because they wanted it NOW. NO, they waited it out and pirated the crap out of it.

I recently 'pirated' The metroid trilogy on wii. I have metroid 1 and 2 on gamecube, I bought 3 on wii and my wii broke with it inside of it, ruining the game. I then bought another wii.
I DIDN'T pirate no more heroes 2 and mario galaxy 2, I'm still saving up money to get them because I believe in those games and want SUDA 51 and Nintendo to make more.

So on a scale of 1-10, how much of an evil pirating thief am I?

 

[Donald L]

The bottom line is that Piracy is theft. I don't care what justifications people use.

Want free games? There are plenty of sites that offer free games in exchange for watching an ad or something. Also, there is abandonware, games that the creators have abandoned.

Want new games? Buy them or hire them.

Game makers keep making what is popular, not what is considered 'good'. Games that get sequels are ones that made their creators a lot of money, not ones that have artistic merit or people enjoyed.

 

[aaron552]

But how could someone justify killing a newborn baby then? Is there are moral good to it perhaps, or bad? Or neither?

One side of the abortion debate is that abortion is killing babies. I don't have a position in that particular debate but, from a certain point of view, justifying abortion is the same as justifying the killing of a newborn baby.

Of course it's also completely offtopic.

Back on topic.
Piracy is against the law. Pirates are breaking the law. These are FACTS. What is slightly less clear is whether piracy is damaging to the creators - it may be to a certain extent, but there is research that suggests that music pirates tend to buy more music than non-pirates or that piracy could amount to free advertising - it is not a black and white thing.

The law should definitely not be used as an objective standard of morality, since laws almost definitely are not created from one. Saying that piracy is wrong just because it is against the law is fallacious. The real reason why piracy is wrong is because the creator of the content did not give the pirate permission to obtain their work for free.

If you believe that you can copy someone's work without permission, especially if it's for personal use only, then you will believe that there is nothing wrong with piracy. This does not make you wrong (necessarily), just a bit of an asshole.

 

[aaron552]

If you want to get games, BUY THEM."

And if the game is no longer sold, or was never sold, where you live? I've been in this situation before. I didn't pirate, but I was certainly tempted to.

 

[atombeast707]

Yes, pirating is bad.
Do I care? Not really.
I may or may not pirate games all of the time. Is it stealing? Maybe. Do I care? Not in the slightest.

How about this justification:

Libraries are places that host other people's intellectual property that you can view for free while the creator makes no money off of it, whether you enjoy it or not.

Actually, libraries must purchase the books.
So if it could be equivalent to anything, it would be burning a disc of a game and letting people use it for a monthly membership.

agreed but replace games with movies and anime and music.

also, i think the analogy of pirating is perfectly akin to that of a library, because someone had to pay for it before they put it on the internet, right? so if this is true, then it would be like a library, but on a much grander scale, and no due dates (even though you can just ignore charges at libraries)

 

[aaron552]

The bottom line is that Piracy is theft. I don't care what justifications people use.

Want free games? There are plenty of sites that offer free games in exchange for watching an ad or something. Also, there is abandonware, games that the creators have abandoned.

Want new games? Buy them or hire them.

Game makers keep making what is popular, not what is considered 'good'. Games that get sequels are ones that made their creators a lot of money, not ones that have artistic merit or people enjoyed.

I am so tired of these posts of:

"I don't care what logical justification there is for piracy. It's theft. It just is. And how can you justify theft? You can't.

If you want to get games, BUY THEM."

That was your entire post.

I don't think you read my post.

Also, in that situation you should obviously pirate, seeing as the industry is not possibly losing a sale.

Pirating abandonware or games not available in your region is still illegal. It is still "theft". But somehow it's okay because the companies aren't losing anything? That just doesn't seem right.

According to your logic, because vintage Ferraris aren't sold in my area, it's OK for me to steal one from my neighbor who imported one at significant expense?

EDIT: My point is that piracy isn't exactly analogous to stealing. In fact, the part where the creators don't get money isn't the problem. If I create a game and give it to my friends for free on the proviso that they don't distribute it further (think closed beta), is it piracy if they do so? It is. The problem with piracy is that it is distribution without permission, not that the creators aren't compensated for their work.

 

[Koeryn]

This is the problem that I have with piracy.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4003-the-pirate-bay/

Also, I'm broke. I would love to pay for every game that I play. I would love to buy every console. I'd also like for there to be world peace, give every homeless person ten thousand dollars, and be out of high school. Like it or not, I can't do any of those. In fact, I can hardly buy one game a year with the money I end up with. I don't pretend I'm not stealing, but I'm playing the industries games, standing up for them in public, and hopefully supporting them later on in life. I hope they can support me for just a little bit longer.

Give every homeless person $10,000? Are you insane? Can you imagine the inflation that would cause?

That, and 90% of them would buy a fancy car, lots of booze, and be homeless again in two-to-three months.

 

[Low Key]

It's not that I'm against better copyright protection, I'm against the government invading my privacy. While I see the OP has no problem with it in their own country, here in America, we believe in freedom. I'm not talking about the broad ideology, I mean the right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure. It's the fourth amendment of the Bill of Rights. It pretty much states that citizens won't be viewed as criminals from the get go just so the government can search their shit.

Thanks to this current bill though, the government will apparently be able to revoke that right whenever they please. Busting someone for searching for a torrent sounds innocent enough, but that means the government has access to everything else we do online as well, and that's really none of their business. If I am doing my banking online, I'd have to enter my account and PIN numbers, both of which the government would then have, and I'm not okay with that. Or they could see trade secrets and sensitive material from companies and read emails without a warrant. They don't need to know that information, and with as shady as they have been acting as of late, I wouldn't want them to know it either. Who knows who will see it?

The Bill of Rights has protected citizens for over 200 years. There should be NO REASON why it shouldn't continue to protect citizens. You can go ahead and call it an archaic and outdated document, but YOU'D BE WRONG.

 

[Low Key]

This is the problem that I have with piracy.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4003-the-pirate-bay/

Also, I'm broke. I would love to pay for every game that I play. I would love to buy every console. I'd also like for there to be world peace, give every homeless person ten thousand dollars, and be out of high school. Like it or not, I can't do any of those. In fact, I can hardly buy one game a year with the money I end up with. I don't pretend I'm not stealing, but I'm playing the industries games, standing up for them in public, and hopefully supporting them later on in life. I hope they can support me for just a little bit longer.

Give every homeless person $10,000? Are you insane? Can you imagine the inflation that would cause?

That, and 90% of them would buy a fancy car, lots of booze, and be homeless again in two-to-three months.

Yes they would. Here [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/95216/a_homeless_man_blows_100000_of_free.html?cat=9] is an excellent link about that.

 

[VotZ]

Downloaders and single pirates are not really the problem, they are a small group compared to the people who do buy games.
Yet you can't really blame some of the consumers of pirated copies of games when the market doesn't encourage buying original copies. In my country pirated game stores are three times more comon than licensed ones and they sell lots more. Gamers already have to pay thice for their consoles so they make sure they can play pirate games (worth 5 dollars) so they don't have to pay 90 or 100 dollars for an original.
I have to admit it doeasen't make me proud, but I would buy licensed games if they only were priced right, like n the states. Video game companies are wasting a good oportunity by pricing their games so high overseas, people would buy more licensed copies if it wasn't for the price since the console market here is actually very good, almost everyone I know, high or low class has at least a PS2,but mainly becouse they can pirate.
One last example: in the wii store channel games are really cheap, and people here don't hack or pirate those, but then they take away the option to pay with a credit card and leave us with the scratch cards that are sold at more than twice the price that they are worth... Although it is not as popular, it may be one step away from piracy.
Can't say it's right but can you blame store owners for wanting to sale more than consoles? or players wanting to have games more accesible?
The industry shouldn't atack but adapt to be more accesible to these players and earn that money the right way.

 

[crazypsyko666]

This is the problem that I have with piracy.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4003-the-pirate-bay/

Also, I'm broke. I would love to pay for every game that I play. I would love to buy every console. I'd also like for there to be world peace, give every homeless person ten thousand dollars, and be out of high school. Like it or not, I can't do any of those. In fact, I can hardly buy one game a year with the money I end up with. I don't pretend I'm not stealing, but I'm playing the industries games, standing up for them in public, and hopefully supporting them later on in life. I hope they can support me for just a little bit longer.

Give every homeless person $10,000? Are you insane? Can you imagine the inflation that would cause?

That, and 90% of them would buy a fancy car, lots of booze, and be homeless again in two-to-three months.

Wouldn't it be funny, though? Watching a bunch of drunk homeless people driving around at top speed, beard and rags blowing in the wind? Quite a picture, that one.

 

[Koeryn]

This is the problem that I have with piracy.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4003-the-pirate-bay/

Also, I'm broke. I would love to pay for every game that I play. I would love to buy every console. I'd also like for there to be world peace, give every homeless person ten thousand dollars, and be out of high school. Like it or not, I can't do any of those. In fact, I can hardly buy one game a year with the money I end up with. I don't pretend I'm not stealing, but I'm playing the industries games, standing up for them in public, and hopefully supporting them later on in life. I hope they can support me for just a little bit longer.

Give every homeless person $10,000? Are you insane? Can you imagine the inflation that would cause?

That, and 90% of them would buy a fancy car, lots of booze, and be homeless again in two-to-three months.

Yes they would. Here [http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/95216/a_homeless_man_blows_100000_of_free.html?cat=9] is an excellent link about that.

Thank you, I knew the information, was just too lazy to track the source. =p

This is the problem that I have with piracy.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-4003-the-pirate-bay/

Also, I'm broke. I would love to pay for every game that I play. I would love to buy every console. I'd also like for there to be world peace, give every homeless person ten thousand dollars, and be out of high school. Like it or not, I can't do any of those. In fact, I can hardly buy one game a year with the money I end up with. I don't pretend I'm not stealing, but I'm playing the industries games, standing up for them in public, and hopefully supporting them later on in life. I hope they can support me for just a little bit longer.

Give every homeless person $10,000? Are you insane? Can you imagine the inflation that would cause?

That, and 90% of them would buy a fancy car, lots of booze, and be homeless again in two-to-three months.

Wouldn't it be funny, though? Watching a bunch of drunk homeless people driving around at top speed, beard and rags blowing in the wind? Quite a picture, that one.

It'd be just like the ending to Mr. Deeds! But with more dead people!

 

[Reaper195]

I'm for Piracy because most movies that come out suck, and I refuse to have to pay for something so incredibly not worth the money (Avatar). As for music...I download most of my music because it's impossible to find almost all of the music I listen to in the country I live in. It's all bloody Justa Beaver, and Lady Gaga....