To all the people who think piracy is cool, fine, etc do any of you get paid for creative content?

[IamQ]

My two cents on piracy are this: I think it's bad. I know it's bad. But as long as it's avaible I'll use it, and when/if it's gone I won't hate.

It's bad, but I'll do it anyway?

Okay?

Yup. I don't know what more to say. I know it's bad, but christ it's so easy I can't stop myself.

 

[Reaper195]

While OP's point is rather valid, people are still going to pirate stuff. SOme people do it simply so they don't have to pay and then give some bullshit excuse, and some, like me, simply pirate stuff because we can't afford it, and then buy the stuff afterwards. I downloaded the film "The Boondock Saints"....nearly a decade ago. I spent five years trying to find it on DVD, but couldn't. Yes, I could've ordered it from overseas, but it was region locked, and fuck having a useless DVD I can't work. When I finally saw a copy that was my region, I bought the hell out of it (Looks like the same will end up happening for the sequel, since I can't find a copy).

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'm a programmer. If copyright/ownership isn't respected then my job becomes meaningless because my work becomes free. I'm against piracy because I'm for having a job and being able to use my skills. (As opposed to having to flip burgers because I my work is forcibly open source). You can make any argument you want to justify piracy but in the end piracy can and will hurt me and my ability to have a job.

 

[Entitled]

There are several well-known examples of creators openly supporting piracy. The novelist Paulo Coelho was always a proponent of filesharing, even uploading some of his own novels on piratebay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Coelho

The writer Cory Doctorow released his novels under Creative Commons for free, while being on record saying "If you're not making art with the intention of having it copied, you're not really making art for the twenty-first century." http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/

There are also various stories about musicians self-pirating themselves to gain an audience. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120906/18581520306/three-artists-piracy-sharing-disruption-turning-filesharers-into-your-street-team.shtml

 

[DEAD34345]

Doesn't matter. If you can't afford it, videogames/movies/books/tv shows/other piratable media are not necessary for life; you're not stealing bread to feed your family, here, so, "I can't afford it," is not a valid excuse for piracy.

You see, the thing about piracy is that it doesn't need an excuse. The act of piracy in and of itself harms no-one...

Except the creator you're stealing from.

First of all, legally, piracy is not stealing. Ethically, piracy is not stealing. Do you know why stealing is generally considered to be wrong? It's because it takes an item away from the original owner, it's not because getting free stuff is evil. Piracy completely avoids the "taking something away" part, leaving only the "getting free stuff" part. It's still illegal, but it's treated completely different as it is in fact something completely different.

Anyway, I'd like you to tell me. How does it harm the creator? Does the idea that someone is enjoying something they made without paying them just torment their very soul, or something? As far as I can tell, it doesn't really affect them, and it doesn't have much to do with them at all.

...so many pirates just go ahead and do it without some special circumstance or reason. "I can't afford it" isn't really a valid excuse for piracy, but "Random internet man doesn't like it" is also not a valid reason to not pirate.

Basically, telling people they have no excuse to pirate is not going to change any minds, if you want to convince someone not to pirate you'd have to give them an actual reason why they shouldn't.

Actually, I find that whole attitude kind of disgusting anyway. Like poor people don't deserve anything other than food and shelter, because obviously they just don't work as hard as rich people, and don't deserve it.

As someone who's mom once got scurvy when I was growing up because we couldn't afford fruit for everyone, I have to say poor people don't deserve luxury items they can't afford. And it has nothing to do with how hard they work and everything to do with nobody deserves anything they can't afford. If you want to make an argument for raising minimum wage so poor people can more easily afford luxury items, or subsidizing low-incoming housing, or doing any number of other things that will allow poor people to afford luxury items, or shortening copyright length so art enters the public domain sooner, or starting a charity to get videogames to poor kids, I'm all ears. But not paying creators isn't the answer.

Further, movies, music (radio, anyone?), books, and videogames are dirt cheap (okay, that's a lie, they're cheaper than dirt. Dirt's fracking expensive; have you ever bought fertilizer?) if you don't buy them new, if you wait for price drops, and if you spend the time to look around in the right places (I'm talking about in America; the morality and ethics of pirating because you're poor in other countries is for citizens of those countries to debate). And if you're starving and you have an XBox, SELL YOUR XBOX AND BUY SOME FOOD.

Anyway, what consumers "deserve" really has nothing to do with it; what matters is what the artists deserve. And artists deserve to be paid. Artists deserve to have their work distributed how they want it distributed, even if their distribution model of choice is incredibly stupid and annoying.

Why? Because they made it. Because they sat down one day and said, "You know, it would be good if I made this thing, and shared it with people, and the people I shared it with supported me financially so I could make more things like it without having to worry about a day job." Because they pour their lives into their work, and the people who read/play/watch their creations have an obligation to compensate them for the time they spent crafting that experience.

In a fight between someone who makes something and someone who takes something, I'll side with the creator almost every time. No, I do not make a distinction between a giant corporation and an indie developer; creators are creators, no matter their bottom line.

And you know what happens when nobody pays artists? We don't have artists anymore, except ones who are independently wealthy. So there's that.

So, poor people don't deserve things they can't afford. Even if they can get this thing without harming anyone, they're still not allowed to have it because they "don't deserve it". Why don't they deserve it? Are rich people better than poor people, and hence they're the only ones who deserve to have entertainment?

You see, we seem to disagree on very fundamental levels, because I don't understand the basis of your arguments in the first place. Being poor is not a choice, so when I see a way poor people can get some of the same benefits as rich people without actually taking anything away from anyone else, I think hey, that's great. You say it's wrong, but I still don't understand why exactly.

If the main issue is that you believe it's somehow harming the industry as a whole, then I'd say you are simply misinformed. If the main issue is the rights of the artist choosing who gets to view their work, perhaps I can at least understand where you're coming from a little, but I still disagree. I think that the quality of life of the people who pirate these games (especially if they'd have no other way of getting them) is far more important than the wishes of the creator to arbitrarily restrict their product. If they simply didn't want people to have the content they wouldn't have released it, why does it matter to them if people other than their customers also get to use it?

 

[Phlakes]

I don't charge since nothing I do right now is at any cost to me, but if I force myself to live off peanut butter and Coke and four hours of sleep a night to create something, charge for it for that reason, and people decide to take it for free, fuck them. Seriously. It's almost making it personal.

 

[chadachada123]

I can't speak for games, but with music, the VAST majority of money made from artists is made through live shows, as they make very little from CD sales.

CD sales are just advertising to get people to go to see them live.

So to answer your question, OP, were I an artist, I would take the routes that Skrillex and Nine Inch Nails have done: I would consider piracy just free advertising for the REAL money-makers (live shows). Trent Reznor even released one of his albums on his website free of charge, with donation optional for a physical copy, and ended up making millions from it.

The various bands I have seen live have gotten WAY more money from me then they ever could from CD purchases from me, since the production studio takes most of the money from CD sales, on top of the shirts that I've bought while at concerts.

I know that I would have never seen Enter Shikari live if my friend hadn't pirated their music, too.

In addition to all of this, the only reason that the majority of my friends pirate music to begin with is just because they're low on cash. When they have cash, they buy music instead or go to shows, but when they don't, they pirate, because it harms absolutely nobody. The "lost" money/sales would never go to the artist to begin with, since the money is non-existent.

TL;DR: Piracy is free publicity for the REAL source of income for musicians, which is live shows. Anyone complaining about music piracy is an idiot that doesn't understand how artists make their money.

 

[chadachada123]

Dude, you are wasting your time. People who advocate piracy as being a good thing are a bigger class of idiot than we can even comprehend at the moment.

Your asking why people justify theft (And people who claim piracy isn't theft should have their brain taken away by social services) and expecting rational responses. There are none.

So...Notch is an idiot, because he told someone it was okay to pirate his work until he tried it out and got the money to buy it for real?

So...Skrillex is an idiot, because he views piracy as ultimately beneficial as it gets him far more popularity on the radio and for his live shows (from which he's made millions)?

So...Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is an idiot, because he told his publisher to fuck off and released his own album on his own website absolutely for free with an option to donate (and was okay with piracy of it), and made millions of dollars from donations alone ALONG WITH the millions he's made from live shows since then?

I'll ignore your claim that piracy is theft for now, but even that is unwarranted, and makes it appear as though your own brain is in need of "[being] taken away by social services." I'll instead just post these pictures offering just some of the explanations for piracy:

Are you seriously comparing the one on the left to the one on the middle-right?

Spoiler

Official XKCD comic:

Spoiler

The reason many people pirate is because of how developers/publishers fuck them in the ass:

Spoiler

 

[Entitled]

I don't charge since nothing I do right now is at any cost to me, but if I force myself to live off peanut butter and Coke and four hours of sleep a night to create something, charge for it for that reason, and people decide to take it for free, fuck them. Seriously. It's almost making it personal.

And what if an artist happens to be personally offended by some users living with their Fair Use rights, taking screenshots, quoting lines, etc? Or if they get offended by the fact that their intellectualy property can't be infinitely inherited by their heirs, that it disappears after an amount of time?

What I am getting at is, that obviously artists don't really have TOTAL control over what happens with their work. We can limit their rights with Public domain, fair use, and similar laws so in some cases society can freely use their content, in cases where the common good outwheights their personal rights.

There is no clear-cut line between these rights, and the part of intellectual property laws that says that artists are allowed to limit the creation of personal copies through the Internet. It's a matter of historical happenstance that the line was drawn there.

But as the Internet changes the rules, and more and more people, (including many artists mentioned above!) are beginning to feel that there is nothing wrong with piracy, the fact that some artist feel personally offended might become meaningless. Of course most of them will continue to push the agenda that means more control for them, but that doesn't mean that they are entitled to decide how much control copyright should give them.

 

[DYin01]

I play in a few bands and I write pretty much all the music in one of them. I really don't mind if anyone pirates our music. In fact, we put it up for free. Most of my friends (including some in slightly more well known bands) don't really care all that much either.

Then again, there's one big difference between music and gaming and that's that album sales aren't the only income for musicians and the games ARE the only income for the developers.

 

[Olas]

Piracy is illegal too. So there's that.

 

[Entitled]

Piracy is illegal too. So there's that.

Only in certain countries.

 

[BernardoOne]

Piracy is illegal too. So there's that.

Not in my country.

 

[Signa]

I don't think piracy is okay, but I do it anyways.

As an aside, I never planned on buying any of the games I "stole" in the first place.

Let me ask you this: would you buy a game that you "stole[footnote]I'm quoting you here. Copyright infringment isn't theft, even though it can seem close sometimes[/footnote]" if you enjoyed it enough for the asking price? Or did you "steal" it just because it was free and you had some time to burn? Would you start buying things if you couldn't steal them?

These are questions that should be answered by people like you in conversations like this. A lot of people think that a pirate would never buy something because once they have it, they don't need to spend money on a real copy. Others feel that DRM is an evil necessity, and that it still does encourage people to buy a game they would have otherwise pirated.

Or did I just pick up the wrong meaning from your comment? Did you mean that you only stole things you never would have bought to begin with? If so, did you ever change your plans and buy something you "stole" because you did like it?

 

[DoPo]

I've seen one study published in the Netherlands (I believe) that said that the net effects of piracy were neutral as the money people weren't spending on the things they were pirating they were spending in other areas of the economy.

This would be a no-brainer. People spend money all the time. If they don't spend it on one thing, they'll spend it on another. But how does this make it a neutral effect? If instead of spending, say, 100$ on video games, one spends them on a new sofa, I don't see this as a neutral balance. The same argument can be had about robbers - sure they can steal money, but the money gets back into the economy, so it seems that robbery has a neutral effect.

I'd like to see this study.

Dude...read what you wrote. Robbers STEAL money. STEAL. How is that comparable to "oh, I don't want to buy THIS, so I'll buy THAT instead"? Am I a robber for getting milk instead of juice at the supermarket?

They also spend the money back to the economy, yes? So it's a neutral effect - no money is lost overall. It makes as much sense as piracy having a neutral effect on the economy.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

My two cents:

I have one pirated game: Suikoden II. I had my original copy stolen from me, and the resale value on sites like Amazon and Ebay is around $190-300 USD, thus it is too expensive to replace legally.

Even then, I am part of a movement to get Konami to release the game on the PSN worldwide, so that way I can own the game legally. I am literally campaigning on Facebook to give Konami my money, but they seem reluctant to take it for some reason. You can visit us here: http://www.facebook.com/SuikodenRevival

Piracy is far more about distribution and convenience than just getting something for free. Often, gamers are either region-locked out of the games they wish to play, or their country has banned or embargoed those games. Sure, there are some jerks out there that like ripping people off, but I have never met one in real life.

Also, does anyone else think it strange that the Opening Post uses phrases like: "content creator" and the like? Those types of corporate "power words", i.e. vague idiot-speak, are usually not used by artists themselves. Because they usually have aesthetic sense enough to realize using that kind of language makes them look like fools.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I like to read interviews with authors and autobiographies and the one thing I noticed is that the authors I like, the really serious ones who have something to say, just want their stuff to be read no matter what. All the fakes (think 50 Shades of Gray and Harry Potter) just want the book sales. Take from that what you will.