To anyone who thinks piracy is ok

[shootthebandit]

LOL.

The level of ignorance in this thread is disturbing.

spoken like a true brit, i salute you

the cinemas and movie producers are to blame, they show all the best bits on the ad and we pay in excess of £15 for what weve already seen. if you are a parent you could be paying £60 to take 3 kids to see a film. and the fact you cant bring your own food is just a con. why not download the film, stream it to your TV (a few quid worth of cables) and buy a MULTIPACK of microwave popcorn (one quid) and a 2litre bottle of coke (which are usually two for one) and youve got exactly the same experience and youve saved about £45

 

[Kair]

It only covers 'piracy' in a market economy. I have drawn a little illustration to help you realize the error of limiting infinite resources for profit.

 

[Gralian]

OK. I'm going to pull out my ultimate argument against pirates now.

If you are pro-piracy, I implore you to quote me and answer this question.

-I have no XBox or good PC.
-I'm not going to buy a PS3 in the forseeable future, due to lack of money.

So, my question is this - why shouldn't I steal a PS3? What is the difference between that and piracy?

Because theft is depriving someone of their property. Piracy is copying that property while the original owner still has the original copy. Think about it this way: Someone puts up a game file as a torrent. When people download that torrent, they aren't taking that torrent for themselves. They are creating a copy of that torrent. Other members or 'peers' of the swarm share torrent information to copy it faster. At the end of the download, everyone has a copy of that torrent and the original poster still has his original copy. It is theft because copying that information is not permitted by the copyright act. (please don't get mad at me if this is wrong somewhat, i'm not a lawyer and haven't studied law). If you steal a PS3, you are not making a copy of one. You are physically removing it and depriving the original owner of it. That is theft and there is a difference.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

If they started pricing right I wouldn't consider piracy. 60$ for medal of honor? 50$ for front mission evo? 40$ for dead rising 2? These games are not worth the price, and I've gotten ripped off way to many times. Oh and for anyone who says "you can wait for the prices to drop" take a look at CoD MW 2. Still 60$ after about 2 years, and it's only half as good as CoD 4. Price them reasonably and sure I'd buy it. The only time I wouldn't pirate ever would be for companies just starting.

They cost too much is no excuse. If you think game companies are asking for too much money, don't buy their games, you can clearly get more use out of the money you've saved.

That's no reason to pirate, is it?

If he doesn't buy the game, it doesn't matter if he pirates because it was never a sale in the first place.

Granted, but if he didn't buy it, I don't think it's appropriate for him and judge it even if it is a bad game, because other people did legitimately go out and spend money on it.

Well, maybe it isn't fair that I bought a game for $20 that other people paid $60 for?

Nope, that is fair, you clearly waited out for quite a while or have found a decent shop, which is hard enough.

 

[Koroviev]

It only covers piracy in a market economy. I have drawn a little illustration to help you realize the error of limiting infinite resources for profit.

Well, you quite literally illustrated your point, but that doesn't substantiate your claims.

 

[Digitaldreamer7]

I don't think piracy is alright, but I stopped giving a shit when the developers stopped developing the games half way through.

This^^^

So I dont get flagged by people for agreeing with someone else's opinion im going to restate it.

I don't think piracy is alright, but I stopped giving a shit when the developers stopped developing the games half way through

 

[shootthebandit]

I'm not going to buy a PS3 in the forseeable future, due to lack of money.

So, my question is this - why shouldn't I steal a PS3?

because they're heavy, imagine trying to run away from a burly security guard with a PS3 and they're also usually kept in a secure section of the store

does that answer youre question?

 

[Alphavillain]

I don't have anything against pirates per se, only those that try to justify it on some Robin Hood-style basis. If you're a pirate and you say "fuck it", that's honest. But it IS theft, pure and simple.

 

[Ghost]

It only covers 'piracy' in a market economy. I have drawn a little illustration to help you realize the error of limiting infinite resources for profit.

'Free Information'? I hope you don't mean every game/program/script should be free.

Would you spend hundreds of hours learning C then C++/Java or what have you, then working full time to develop an application only to give it out for (to quote Ned Flanders) NOTHING AT ALL! NOTHING AT ALL! ?

You say everyone would benefit, not the designers and developers who would be living in cardboard boxes. And consider the lack of competition that would all of a sudden exist, there would be no motivation to make a better program than your rivals.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

People can use whatever logic they damn well please and use whatever numbers they damn well please, the bottom line once people have started pirating they will continue to do so. It's like an old dirty habit a person has that they cannot stop doing.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Well, there goes your argument that paying less than someone else is unfair.

Does it, now? Is finding a store where you can get games little cheaper as difficult as downloading stuff from torrents?

No, not really. Not even close.

If you buy a game for 20$, the guys selling it to you still got it for the full price.

 

[Ghost]

OK. I'm going to pull out my ultimate argument against pirates now.

If you are pro-piracy, I implore you to quote me and answer this question.

-I have no XBox or good PC.
-I'm not going to buy a PS3 in the forseeable future, due to lack of money.

So, my question is this - why shouldn't I steal a PS3? What is the difference between that and piracy?

Well if you steal a PS3 console from a retail outlet, they have paid for that specific console, so that is a genuine lost sale to them.

However, if you pirate a game a copy has already been bought, so if you where going to buy the game yourself that is a lost sale (although significantly less than the money the ps3 would have sold for). BUT, if you weren't going to buy the game to begin with, you may end up liking it and becoming interested in the franchise and buying the game if you see it on sale, or buying sequels to it.

Consider Autodesk: 3DS Max is a program which costs a shitload, as in thousands of dollars for a single user license. But its only copy protection is a CD key, and they have never blacklisted any cd keys (keys from years ago still work). Why? They want people to steal their software, because if they don't like it it's no lost sale, and if they do like it and get good with the software, and get a job which involves using it, they'll have to buy a license.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

"I'd quit stealing if the prices weren't so high for crap games"
Then why bother playing if the games are crap? Hypocrite entitlists. Learn about inflation, development costs and the meaning of integrity. People like that are also most likely the kids who see the pot of unattended candy in front of a house on Halloween and instead of taking one like the sign says, they dump the whole bucket in their bag/pillowcase/container.
Also learn how to bargain shop. I've found plenty of games way underpriced at various stores (e.g. Orange Box for $10 USD @ Target 2 months after it came out on 360, Brand New copy of Dragon Age Origins Collectors Edition for $30 at a Best Buy 1 month after release, Fallout 3 Collectors for $29.99 at a Walmart a few months after release)

But of course people will go to any extreme to justify their actions however in the wrong they are.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

People can use whatever logic they damn well please and use whatever numbers they damn well please, the bottom line once people have started pirating they will continue to do so. It's like an old dirty habit a person has that they cannot stop doing.

Not true, I haven't pirated a game in years. For a while I was pirating alot of games but I quit.

Then you're a rare case.

 

[nofear220]

in depth look at piracy

here is the most in depth look at it

 

[thublihnk]

OK. I'm going to pull out my ultimate argument against pirates now.

If you are pro-piracy, I implore you to quote me and answer this question.

-I have no XBox or good PC.
-I'm not going to buy a PS3 in the forseeable future, due to lack of money.

So, my question is this - why shouldn't I steal a PS3? What is the difference between that and piracy?

You're stealing a physical object. Pirates are copying a file, no direct losses happen, the only thing lost is the potential for a sale (and even that isn't lost).

OT: Piracy isn't a good thing, but devs are only hurting themselves when they trip over themselves to A) shame their fans or B)make it more difficult for paying customers to use their product. Also, the technology that pirates use (such as torrents) could be used by the game industry to turn distribution costs to almost zero.

 

[Chewster]

I don't think anyone in their right mind would necessarily say that piracy is OK, but I will say that there is a ton of misinformation that gets spread around by those who have a vested interest in holding tight control over whatever material they may own (and I don't mean individual artist here, I generally mean the big players like record labels or game companies or whatever). This isn't about economics or lost sales, but about control. Companies have lost it to a degree and that makes them nervous so they want it back.

People on either side, those who say "pirate everything" and those who say "piracy is theft and all pirates need to burn in hell" or whatever, both contribute absolutely nothing to the discussion and generally have a severe lack of understanding about copyright and the nature of media products in general.