Poll: A situation in which piracy is OK? [Read first]

[Regiment]

From a purely objective legal standpoint, downloading a game that is not made explicitly free by its creators and company is piracy, regardless of the reasons or rationale.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

No its not. Its still illegal, its still morally wrong and you're not entitled to a free copy just because you bought it already. The industry doesn't work like that.

But maybe it should. If you pay for the game on one playform why should you have to pay full price again to play it on another? Some companies already do this. Valve has done it with their mac ports. Legaly, you right. Morally however, there is a lot more grey area than your willing to admit. What you pay for (ethicaly) is the developers hard work in creating something for you to enjoy. They only did that hard work once, so you should only have to pay once. I am aware that there is a lot of work that goes into various ports but the value of that work is a lot less than the value of them creating the entire game once. It's not a black and white world.

You're not buying a second copy when you use the Mac Ports. You're still using the copy of the game you bought from Steam. In other words, Valve is giving you the copy you bought from them. If you buy it for a Console, you're not buying it from Valve, you're buying it from Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo or some 3rd party publisher in which Valve doesn't get any of the profits. You're not entitled to a free copy if you didn't buy it from that distributor. There is no grey area, this is still piracy. You would still be denying profits from someone through the use of illegal acts and therefore it would be morally wrong and ethically wrong to do such an act.

To be honest, I don't care at all about the publishers. There are some publishers out their that have single handedly caused the collapse of more developers than piracy or second hand sales ever has. My ethical compase is more concerned about the developers. I do understand that publishers play their part and that they deserve their cut. So I buy X game for Y dollars. If I was to buy the same game again then there are people (companies) involved that will get a payout again for zero aditional work. Once the game is made, thats it, no more cost. I would be more open to paying a reduced price for the same game on a different port. I want people to get my money for their hard work. I don't want to have to pay them twice though.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

From a purely objective legal standpoint, downloading a game that is not made explicitly free by its creators and company is piracy, regardless of the reasons or rationale.

Nobody is arguing that it isn't (at least I hope not). People are discussing the ethics of it in an attempt to justify their acts of piracy as not being morally wrong. What people are saying is "...yes, its wrong. But in this case ... it's morally ok."

 

[daydreamerdeluxe]

So do you not pay for food that don't like, even after eating all of it?

Of course not.

Yet you would watch a movie, and not pay for it, if you don't like it.

Entitled. Just admit it. It's okay. It doesn't mean you are evil incarnate.

I dunno, you do realise that on, the back of near enough every single food packaging it says "If you didn't completely enjoy this product, please send the packaging back for a full refund", to paraphrase? Theoretically, if you didn't like the food, after eating all of it you could request a refund.

Flawed analogy is flawed.

 

[DrDango]

no he ONLY situation that it would be morally right is if. You can't buy it in your country or its abandonware (abandonware means tht the dev team will not recive money weather you buy it or not)