Poll: Can piracy be justified?

[4RM3D]

Without getting into too much, yes it can be justified sometimes. But! It is far, far easier for it to be rationalized, which is what most people do.

Interesting choice of words, maybe I should have used 'rationalize' instead of 'justify'. Although 'justify' seems like a natural extension of 'rationalize'.

I think it could be argued as a form of protest. For example, ebooks for my Kindle cost almost as much as a paperback copy, and in some cases cost more. I stick to the free and cheap books I find, but I feel that one could argue that pirating books is a form of protest against the insane pricing set by companies when all you really need is an author and an editor. That said, I don't condone piracy.

EDIT: I have "pirated" some ebooks as well, but that was to save money buying a second copy since I already own a hard copy.

Same thing is happening with Steam. The digital copies are usually more expensive that the physical counterparts. I would almost think that there is an angry mob of retailers outside of Valve HQ with pitchforks ready to storm Valve if Valve start selling new games for less than the retail price.

 

[Mark Benedict]

If it is impossible to obtain legally, pirate away.

If it is nearly impossible to legally obtain... my logic falls apart here. All these are legally piracy that doesn't fall under the fist category.

*Functional old cartridge games and working systems are hard to come by. They are available, but it's rather impractical and can get pricey.

*Limited edition digital content on physical media is another snag. My thought process is along the lines of, "I'd buy it if I could buy it from you (the artist)." Collectors can be strange at times, and retail has a certain comfort to it. I'd love to hear an instrumental version of the album "Crack the Skye", but unfortunately, I'm roughly 3 years and I'm guessing ~$50 short at this point.

*Old software in general. I, for instance, would like to play System Shock 1&2. I've heard good things about them, but they were a little before my time. Sorry for being born late? $250+ each for a game that very well might not work on my system is ridiculous. Make it available someplace; some of the people pirating the software might be more than willing to pay for it. I was only slightly disappointed that the Thief series doesn't work on my computer. I'll get it working eventually. Not 100% clear on how, but I will.

 

[RivFader86]

Nope Piracy can't be justified but excused...kinda

- The media is not being released in your country - see No3.

- The media is being censored or otherwise is inferior in your country - Not the Publishers problem, with that i could justify pirateing movies here in germany because i don't like the dub and some games because they cut down on the violence

- The media is released at unfairly high prices (I'm looking at you Australia) - Again not the publishers problem (i'm talking about excuseing piracy in generall one can of course "i pirate this because i couldn't otherwise afford it" as a personal excuse

- The media is being released with (intrusive) DRM or other kind of regional restrictions that makes the media unplayable for you - Then don't use it simple as that, best example happened to me yesterday i went to ikea and at the register they asked me for my zip code so i had two options, give it to them or say no...going "no no no no NOOOOOO you no get mah info" grab my Jansö lamp and run away without paying is however not a legal/excuseable/justifiable option. (i am aware of the fact that something like a zip code (without even giving my full name) is vastly different than the ammount of information gathered by Origin for example but the point remains the same). I don't think DRM is an excuse at all since you only have to deal with it really in multiplayer games/modes which (as far as i know) you can't crack anyways so you have to buy it either way and if you just want to play a single player game or only play in single player mode nothing stops you from buying the game and then use a crack to circumvent the DRM

 

[Spectral Dragon]

I think it could be argued as a form of protest. For example, ebooks for my Kindle cost almost as much as a paperback copy, and in some cases cost more. I stick to the free and cheap books I find, but I feel that one could argue that pirating books is a form of protest against the insane pricing set by companies when all you really need is an author and an editor. That said, I don't condone piracy.

This is something I encountered a while back. I figured I'd get a kindle for my university books, since ONE book weighed literally 5 kilos, so I checked first - okay, cheap enough on amazon, but their "international" kindles are ridiculously expensive. I got one cheaper though, went to ordering the book... The book is not available in Europe.

I was just so angry - I'd gone through MASSIVE problems in tracking down and getting a kindle without having to sell a kidney or 3, and amazon hadn't said ANYTHING about the book not being available. That's one occasion I'd tell people to become pirates - in the sense of looting amazon's warehouses.

Prices seem odd too, but can be about as high as hardback while cutting loads of costs on shipping and publishing... Something is awry there.

 

[Ninonybox_v1legacy]

Piracy can sometimes have its place.

I was going to quote the video myself as well, beat me to the punch sir.

 

[twaddle]

I'm sorry but I had to play Pandora's Tower, which never had a release in NA. I'll still buy it when it comes here though

 

[Trippy Turtle]

It can't be justified but anyone who does it wouldn't care. If I went and downloaded a movie or game I would not lose any sleep wondering if I was a bad person.
Its all neighbors dead pets under my bed that make me wonder that.

 

[4RM3D]

...
I mean, if I read lots of webcomics without donating to their creator, or watch all TV anime series without ever buying a blu-ray boxset, am I harming them by choosing the free option?
...

You are mostly right, but you picked a wrong example here. When you are watching TV series on TV, then the TV station still gets a revenue out of commercials which is also based on the amount of viewers and even more importantly the amount of viewers is an indication to renew or cancel the series.

If people pirate TV series then the numbers get skewed. Even so I find myself guilty to this. I have no desire to wait +1 year for the content to become available in my country. To make matters worse, US website greet me with the message: "This content is not available in your area". Well, screw them. But I do buy the DVD/Blu-ray boxset once it is available for a decent price.

And I just noticed someone else mentioned something similar:

...
Let's take any modern show shown in the US right now, new show, it comes out on Tuesday nights, the rest of the world can't see it, so someone from the US puts it on a torrent site, and hey presto, the whole world can see the same episode within merely hours of it airing in the US. What this does, is then later when the other countries go to air it on their channel, no one watches it, and hopefully they get the idea 'well gee, if we take [insert unexceptable amount of time to wait] to air this show, it'll have already been watched by our potential audience, and we won't get any ratings on it, that's bad, we should try to air it as fast as physically possible so we do get the ratings' and then piracy will be minimized.

 

[Geno DCLXVI]

In my hometown, there is only piracy. As in, there are literally ZERO physical stores that sell genuine copies of PC games, digital distribution notwithstanding. So do I shell out cash to get a physical copy that's still illegally acquired, or do I get a copy off of The Pirate Bay for free?

Digital distribution is always an option, of course, but I don't have a credit card yet.

 

[Sean951]

I think it could be argued as a form of protest. For example, ebooks for my Kindle cost almost as much as a paperback copy, and in some cases cost more. I stick to the free and cheap books I find, but I feel that one could argue that pirating books is a form of protest against the insane pricing set by companies when all you really need is an author and an editor. That said, I don't condone piracy.

This is something I encountered a while back. I figured I'd get a kindle for my university books, since ONE book weighed literally 5 kilos, so I checked first - okay, cheap enough on amazon, but their "international" kindles are ridiculously expensive. I got one cheaper though, went to ordering the book... The book is not available in Europe.

I was just so angry - I'd gone through MASSIVE problems in tracking down and getting a kindle without having to sell a kidney or 3, and amazon hadn't said ANYTHING about the book not being available. That's one occasion I'd tell people to become pirates - in the sense of looting amazon's warehouses.

Prices seem odd too, but can be about as high as hardback while cutting loads of costs on shipping and publishing... Something is awry there.

The minute authors realize they don't really need publisher anymore, or publishers realize that a book sold at $3-5.00 will sell significantly better than the same book at $10, is the moment when ebooks will see a significant decline in pirating.

 

[Seydaman]

If the product is otherwise unavIlable to you, I do not mnd it being pirated.

 

[ICantBelieveItGoesBoom]

Generally I feel that if it is impossible or ridiculously difficult to get a decent version of the media you would like legally, it is justifiable.

 

[BENZOOKA]

In some cases yes. Pfft.

Hasn't this topic been handled to death and beyond already, albeit its ridiculously subjective nature... It never leads anywhere.

And I still commented. Fuck me, right?

 

[Twilight_guy]

You can justify anything. That doesn't necessarily make it any less wrong or right. There are stone cold murders who think they've done nothing wrong and are perfectly justified.

 

[sammysoso]

If something is available legally, then pirating it is unjustifiable.

 

[Dangit2019]

If you payed money for something, and didn't receive what you payed for due to poor service handling, it is justified. Otherwise, no.

 

[NotALiberal]

Wow.. reasonable discourse on piracy, on THE ESCAPIST?!?

This... I must be dreaming..

Usually these sorts of threads are filled with "Hurr durr you are literally worse than Hitler if you advocate or pirate anything and you probably kill kittens and are a douchebag. BENDING OVER FOR MASSIVE CORPORATIONS 4 LYFE YO!!!11!".

Look, without getting too much into it, I think it can be summed up like this: Why would ANYONE pay for a decidedly inferior product that costs $, when you could get that exact some product for free, and at a vastly superior quality? In this case, no matter your personal moral judgement on the matter, piracy is justified in this case, from a purely economical standpoint.

 

[regalphantom]

I would argue the only time it is acceptable to pirate (ie, download the files from a website without the initial owners permission) is when you have already purchased a game and retain the liscence, but for some reason your installation CD is damaged or missing. For example, I recently decided to re-install the original starcraft/broodwar onto my new laptop, but I was missing the second installation disk, meaning that although I retained a CD key, I did not have any way of actually installing the game. Although Blizzard has their act together and you can download the client from their website, if they did not have that option, I would have had to pirate the game to get the install files so I could actually play it. Cross-Platform and region-locked piracy is a more grey issue, but in some cases, pirating a game you own to get a version that isn't heavily censored or something could be acceptable, but that is a topic that one would have to heavily debate.