Poll: Let's Discuss Piracy

[mayney93]

everyone here must have heard of MTV cribs, thats my excuse for not feeling bad about pirates and there service to society

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Piracy is stealing, stealing is a crime. Disputing that fact is moronic.

I'm sick of the "try-before-you-buy"; "I can't afford it, but what difference does it make?"; "Why do corporations deserve my money?"; "DRM made me do it!" bullshit arguments.

yes. these are horrible horrible stupid arguements trying to have justification.


the only only only only time that i am even slightly okay with it, is really old games, where the systems are basically all broken or hard to find, and the games themselves are even harder and older to find to the point that it causes massive amounts of pain for something so simple, so even if you did have the chance to go and buy it, the money would only be going to a gamestop like location, it wouldn't be going anywhere near any company that had possibly owned it in the past.

 

[Darkenwrath]

grawwwwwww this has been DONE TO DEATH, search bar instead of trying to get views and replies....

/trollout

 

[fenrizz]

Spoiler

*Sigh* To summarize. Piracy is stealing. You are depriving a company of money for their product, I am not sure what stealing is if it isn't that.

Everyone brings up the argument that people are pirate games are just "testing the game" they are making sure that the company made a good product etc... Really? How many people once they have a game will actually go out and buy it because they now think it is good?

Lets figure half, that sound like a huge overestimate but we will just use it as an example.
MW2 had 4.1 million illegal downloads on the PC (these stats come from Torrent Freak who say they get them from torrent trackers). Simple math says that Activision lost 123 million in revenue due to piracy. I would say thats a rather large sum of money.

I think I will just save this and copy paste it into any other threads that pop up.

Avtivision did not lose 123 million.
There is no proof that even one of those 4.1 million would have bought the game if it had not been available for downloading.

Well you can't prove it either way, but let me put it a different way: They lost (in my example) 123 million in revenue on a product was used, but not paid for.

To bring it back to the argument at hand: So if wasn't free they might not have gotten the game? That is logical and does indeed make sense. But why should they get to play the game for free when I have to pay $60 for it? If you say well you could just pirate too and then applied that logic to everyone then no one would get to play video games or listen to music because there would be no money to produce it.

True that, but I wasn't gonna suggest that you pirate it too.

The video game industry is bigger than ever, and MW2 is now the most sold game ever created.
I do not for a second believe that the consequences of piracy are even close to as big as the industry claims.

But, my point was; 1 download does not equal 1 lost sale.


Also, Piracy is not the same stealing.
And claiming that it is, is a time proven way to derail any attempt at constructive debate on the subject.

yes. these are horrible horrible stupid arguements trying to have justification.

That is horribly arrogant of you.
Pro piracy arguments are not only justifications.

Just because our views differ does not make my mere "justifications".

 

[omega 616]

This topic will not end well. Let me just say that piracy, no matter how you see it, is stealing. I don't care how people try to sugar-coat it by claiming 'try before you buy' or other such bullshit, because you know full well it's stealing.

Whether this stops you doing it or not is another matter, but just don't try to call it something it's not. Admit, and accept that you're a thief who steals their games.

Well, actually, it's not theft. Not in the eyes of the law, economists or the vast majority of consumers.

Define stealing then? You are taking data that doesn't belong to you, without paying for it or asking permission, thats stealing. Thats the very definition of it, well data can be changed for whatever.

 

[UbarElite]

Yes, but it should not be punished.

I didn't answer that because I feel it isn't a bad crime or anything. It is bad, but fighting a legal battle against it, treating personal privacy as collateral damage and spending the time, effort and money needed to shut it down would probably do a lot more harm than good.

Simply put: Piracy is probably not doing as much damage as people think.

Basically paraphrasing Shamus Young here (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7467-Experienced-Points-Impossible-to-beat-DRM), but even when pirating a game is not an option, it appears that most (almost all) pirates will not buy a game if they cannot download it.

Assuming the fight to stop piracy did not destroy publishers, I'm not sure how many legitimate customers they will have left once they decide that your computer, data, information and privacy do not matter when their profits are on the line (and again, I'm not sure if the cost of eliminating piracy via total war against it would pay for itself in revenue). It might be better to drop expensive anti-piracy measures, spend that money making a game that people will actually want to buy, use it to make additional benefits for paying customers (rather than an additional cost to paying customers) or just burn it.

 

[Mcupobob]

To be honest I've pirated 3 games but I really don't consider it stealing, these games are not for sale anymore I could buy them used if im lucky enough to find it or buy it online but if I do then I'm still not supporting the company that made it I'm supporting some guy who's re-saleing his old games and why would I want to do that when theres people out there willing to put their games online and share with me?

 

[NeutralMunchHotel]

discussed to death.

done to death

done to death

done to death

DONE TO DEATH

And you people say the topic of piracy is repetitive...

 

[Sev72]

*snip*

True that, but I wasn't gonna suggest that you pirate it too.

The video game industry is bigger than ever, and MW2 is now the most sold game ever created.
I do not for a second believe that the consequences of piracy are even close to as big as the industry claims.

But, my point was; 1 download does not equal 1 lost sale.


Also, Piracy is not the same stealing.
And claiming that it is, is a time proven way to derail any attempt at constructive debate on the subject.

Could you define consequences? The statistics I cited were from an independent site so I fail to see how the gaming industries claims affect what I said.

I agree that 1 download does not translate to 1 lost sale. But someone is still using a product that they didn't pay for.

I still fail to see how piracy is not stealing (on a side note I don't think for a second that individuals should be prosecuted for piracy, just major distributors) could you explain to me why you don't think it is stealing, I am curious.

For the sake of argument we won't say that piracy is stealing, and we certainly won't use the terrible "well you wouldn't steal a car" line. If you practice piracy you are obtaining/using a product for free that others have to pay for. I don't see how that is justifiable/"fair" if we want to go that far. If you can't afford something, you can't have it, that is how our society works.

 

[Flour]

However it is a crime because it's breaking copyright laws. That's kind of the reason those laws exist. You can make any justification you like - like I said, I honestly could not care less. But it is a fact that you are breaking the law. If that doesn't bother you then don't worry about it!

In parts of Europe it's legal to download software for personal use. It's against the law to share it with anyone else, but legal to download.

 

[-AC80-]

not as big of a problem than 2nd hand and all they do is put up first day dlc wooo that 'll stop 'em!

 

[Knight of Cydonia]

(this applies to anyone who have ever involved in piracy)

OT:If I ever made a masterpiece then people pirated it and sold it and all that shit i'd be pretty pissed so...yeah. Piracy is bad.

 

[joshthor]

look, i have pirated things in the past, but i do believe piracy is a crime. however, currently it has too stiff of punishment if caught.

torrent piracy doesnt really hurt anyone, the people who do it wouldnt buy the products in question anyway, however, street piracy (ripping movies, music, games, etc...) and selling them does, simply because those are people actually willing to pay for the media in question.

i think piracy should be treated this way: if caught pirating, you simply must pay for the goods you pirated at their current market value. (ie.. if they are unavailable new - it is free, if it has a dropped price it is that price), however, if you are caught distributing - through bittorrent or otherwise - you must pay 4 times the value of the item plus double any profits you gain from said item.

edit:
i also want to add, while piracy is a crime, it can also be used as a catalyst for good. there is no way half of the artist who make it big today would be as big as they are if not for the sharing of music, the more people with the music the more people who will go to concerts and fill the seats; by pirating overpriced software and learning it, you can learn how to use it so when you get in a business setting you will actually buy it.

^^^^^^ NOTE: IM NOT CONDONING THIS ^^^^^^

tv shows: im not even sure if it is really piracy. its free over the air. they should really give torrent downloads for all tv shows with commercials imbedded, the advertiser still gets his name out which pays for the shows and the consumer can watch whenever. 2 dollars a show? screw you itunes. im not paying 50 dollars for a season.

movies and video games it just sucks for though. i cant see any logical way piracy can help those industries.

 

[Doug]

The vast majority of people who have access to the internet have done an act of piracy on the internet (something like 90% of teens had over 700 illegally downloaded songs on their portable music players). Making piracy an arrestable crime under law would mean a lot of people would be criminalised for it. See American prohibition, which created organised crime.

One point - prohibition was a boon to organized crime as it provided a huge profit opportunity - to whit, booze sales. With piracy, the downloaders aren't willing to pay anything much - in fact, the recent "Humble Bundle" where you could name your own price (i.e. $0.01), and have it all go to charity still had about 25% of all downloads as piracy.

As for piracy as a whole, the supposed justifications for piracy fall flat to me when it covers a software bundle, being sold for charity, which you could donate as little as $0.01. That said, the responses of publishers in the various media forms has been ineffective at best, damaging at worst; if anything, its increased the desire to pirate because the pirated product ends up being superior because it isn't loaded with harmful and restrictive DRM (for games and movies) or briming with unskippable adverts (Disney DVDs, and probably others). Also, ironically, you don't get annoying anti-piracy ads on the pirated versions of things. That said, I still think piracy is a crime, but I doubt that enforcing the law in this case will do anything useful, and will more than likely cripple the very markets these companies think they are trying to save.

 

[HontooNoNeko]

Piracy is a crime its pointless to argue otherwise. I think it should be punishable but its a waste of time and money to try any legal action so letting them off is the best course of action.

As for the one pirate doesn't equal one lost sale argument I'm sorry but as much as I would like to believe that it is indeed a valid defense it isn't. Try pulling that it on a cop, it won't help.

"No officer I wasn't stealing that car. There was no proof that anyone had any intent of buying it and I had no intent of paying for it so as far as the company is concerned there was no profit lost."

 

[cheese_wizington]

It's a crime. But it's not a big deal...

 

[Ewyx]

Let's not discuss it. These threads pop up way to often, and nothing new ever is said.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

Sure, technically it's a crime, but when your stealing a $0.99 song from a multi-million dollar business your not even making a dent.