To the people who don't pirate: Is life really so bad?

[xXGeckoXx]

A fate well deserved. They just give you demo's with good bits so you would buy a game. And when it turns out to be shit, you already bought it and are stuck with it.

I download a game and if I like it I buy it. Same goes with movies, music and everything else.

You avatar goes well with that statement...Thats a good way to put it and i dont pirate disks and am and i use the Xbox 360.

 

[WlknCntrdiction]

I pirate whatever, whenever I feel like it. I say that everytime someone talks to me about pirating. I'm not going to be able to change anyones mind or make them see logic or alternatives(much like with religion)so I just accept that their opinion on it is never going to change and thus I just continue to pirate without their opinion having impacted on me in anyway, cause I'm sure my opinion hasn't impacted them in anyway either.

Everyone wins, I get to pirate witout constantly someone shouting "It's wrong" down my ear hole and they can go back to spouting their nonsense somewhere else(again much like with religion).

 

[Jaythulhu]

Pirating movies feeds babies. Adult Swim told me so.

 

[ultra_v_89]

Although I certainly don't believe piracy is a victimless crime, I don't really believe the impact is as big as it is made out to be. I'll put it this way, who doesn't like free stuff? Hell, half of my dietary intake consists of supermarket testers. Would I accept a free copy of Viva Pinata? Hell yes I would! Now would I pay $40 for Viva Pinata? Fuck no! Sure I wouldn't own the game if I didn't pirate it but I wouldn't have bought it either so the developer would lose nothing. Piracy becomes a problem when people pirate stuff they would have otherwise bought. Having said that I don't pirate games and certainly not Viva Pinata as that came with the 360 With regards to music, I download that which I can't otherwise get, for example I buy the albums of a band but they have some songs only on their singles, which I have not bought because I don't feel the need to purchase the same song twice, so I download those tracks.

 

[742]

i dont pirate, i dont have much money and i frequently go without. when mass effect came around i REALLY wanted to play it (i have some money when a game from bioware is released? awesome! i dont have to go on a ramen diet for the next month!) but, i have a strict "no more installing obvious viruses on any computer that you plan to use on my network, im ashamed to be related to you-silence, you will speak when spoken to from this point on"(yes im kind of a *****, but in that case it was actually deserved) policy that i feel should apply equally to me, and if i werent so lazy i would pirate mass effect in a second (i also have a somewhat more personal "friends dont let friends waste money on EA" policy, but i figured it was developed mostly pre-EA so it was ok, and besides, stealing from EA is like going back in time and stealing from nazis, its actually a GOOD thing and if you were going to buy the game, but then decided to pirate instead it IS stealing.) so yes, stealing money from a crime lord who probably stole it from someone else first(EA stole from me, they owe me at least two games.)and routinely has children murdered isnt wrong, and stealing money from nazis is in the same category as feeding the homeless.

 

[Locust]

Justifications and morals aside, the reasons people pirate are quite simply because they can. I could write up a big paragraph justifying why I downloaded something illegally, but it simply comes down to the fact that I'm not going to pay money for some music or a game if I don't really need to. I have the choice of paying something to someone I don't even know or getting it for free, and pirating it isn't really going to have any repercussions so I'm naturally going to choose that. I'll buy something if I have to, i.e. if I want to play it online or I generally feel the developer could use the money, but I'm not going to give cash away mindlessly to some mega corporation. It might not be the nicest thing to do, but it makes my life easier. If not pirating suits you just fine, well, by all means keep to it, it's good you can resist temptation like that.

 

[nipsen]

I onyl pirate games with DRM.
They need to learn their lesson

Why is DRM around in the first place?

The incorrect assumption they can monetise every download?

Student scum download due to a complete lack of funds, but much of piracy started on the internet in the early days because of mp3s. People wanted digital music, and there was no way to get it, then became an easy way to get movies digitally, and tv (before your country picked up the syndication). A whole industry has built up around it, the Home Theatre PC and all digital mobile players.

Some people also make an incorrect assumption that every person who downloads is playing the game, sitting back laughing at how they paid nothing for it and downloading the next one. I'm sure these people exist, but there is also a swath of people who download it, decide its a steamer and never play it again. Which is why they will never monetise it, and why piracy will always exist.

Most of this whole thing started due to a digital revolution, and media companies have been playing catch up since. The whole problem will compound even more in the coming years with this recession/depression/implosion

^this. I could add that realistically people with a steady income might buy, say, about two games, five- six cds and four dvds every month - and it's already more than you have time to watch and play, if you're also doing something else. So people can't actually buy and use remotely as much as the anti- piracy lobby suggests they are helping the industry recover.

 

[P1p3s]

I just don't quite see how its easier to live with knowing that you've stolen a game than to just go without.

I did not steal it, i copied it.

and the difference is? you still have it, and you didn't pay for it ;o)

I don't pirate, and it makes me appreciate what I do have and be more selective in my gaming. I don't pirate music either, if it was my intellectual property I wouldn't want people stealing it.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

I onyl pirate games with DRM.
They need to learn their lesson

You mean "pirate anything made by EA", right?

 

[scotth266]

I only pirate things that aren't out anymore (Games on old systems like N64 up to the GBA games, some PC games) or that aren't sold by normal retailers anymore, because the companies that made them no longer recieve money if you buy them through Gamestop.
I don't pirate much anywho.

 

[Cowabungaa]

pirates do nothing but steal it and play it.

No they don't, it's called COPYright for a reason. Someone buys the game, you copy the game from them. And that's what you're not allowed to do, you can't copy the stuff. Nothing is stolen because technically, nothing is gone, you simply duplicated the game, and that's illegal.

Anyway, I pirate a bit. Mostly music, because I always look for individual songs and not complete albums, movies wich are very hard to get or tv shows wich aren't broadcasted here, like Battlestar Galactica. I've only downloaded 2 games, Far Cry 2 because I wanted to try it out and there wasn't a demo (found it meeh, decided not to buy it). Nowadays I don't have that much money for games anymore, and I pick the games I ultimatly buy very carefully, wich means I always want to play a demo before I even consider buying the game. And well, in the case of Far Cry 2 there isn't a demo, so I gotta download it to try it out (no fellow gamers around here to try it, yea I'm lonely).
O and Homeworld 2 for some reason, not so much interested in the game just in a mod (Battlestar mod).

As for the topic question: would life be 'so bad'? Well I think I would be worse off yes, mostly in the music departement. I would've never gotten into jazz, various types of metal, opera and something wierd called psytrance without piracy.

 

[Erana]

You borrow a game from a friend meaning you are playing it without spending any money on it, how is that different from someone uploading a game online and sharing it with 10,000 of their friends?

Well, I could argue that they can't have their game when you're using it, because they've given their lisense to do so to the person who borrows it temporarily 'n all, but you really just answered your own question.

 

[Erikaiht]

I just don't quite see how its easier to live with knowing that you've stolen a game than to just go without.

Pirating is not stealing. When you pirate software, you copy it. The one you copy it from still gets to keep theirs. When you steal, the person you steal from loses their copy. Noone loses anything if I copy software, I merely create another of it.

And no, they don't lose profit either. I've never given them my money, and I never had any intention to do so. "You can't lose what you do not have".

Edit: Also, as for the reason for pirating: Consumers get software with copyright protection, shitty internet validation and stuff. Pirates get cracked software, meaning without the annoying protection. Conclusion - if you pirate software, you get a superior product. So what they're doing, in essence, is punishing people for paying for the product by supplying them with an inferior product.

Edit: A prime example is the recent spore release. Buyers get to install it four (?) times, then it's done. A pirate can install it an infinite amount of times.

Further edit: Also, I don't pirate myself. But most of the arguments for not doing so are... really dumb.

It is stealing, you are stealing money away from the developer.

It's also easy to find cracks for the game you bought.

In the case of spore, it's 4 computers with accounts on sporepedia, infinite off. you can't have a single account on sporepedia with a pirated version due to key code problems.

 

[Erikaiht]

Well, when you pirate, you are stealing an intellectual product. You steal money from the developer as well as stealing their right as a company to limit distribution of a game.

 

[Erikaiht]

pirates do nothing but steal it and play it.

No they don't, it's called COPYright for a reason. Someone buys the game, you copy the game from them. And that's what you're not allowed to do, you can't copy the stuff. Nothing is stolen because technically, nothing is gone, you simply duplicated the game, and that's illegal.

Anyway, I pirate a bit. Mostly music, because I always look for individual songs and not complete albums, movies wich are very hard to get or tv shows wich aren't broadcasted here, like Battlestar Galactica. I've only downloaded 2 games, Far Cry 2 because I wanted to try it out and there wasn't a demo (found it meeh, decided not to buy it). Nowadays I don't have that much money for games anymore, and I pick the games I ultimatly buy very carefully, wich means I always want to play a demo before I even consider buying the game. And well, in the case of Far Cry 2 there isn't a demo, so I gotta download it to try it out (no fellow gamers around here to try it, yea I'm lonely).
O and Homeworld 2 for some reason, not so much interested in the game just in a mod (Battlestar mod).

As for the topic question: would life be 'so bad'? Well I think I would be worse off yes, mostly in the music departement. I would've never gotten into jazz, various types of metal, opera and something wierd called psytrance without piracy.

And Copyright was enacted to prevent people from stealing someones else idea without paying. By definition, they've stolen if you break a copyright.

 

[Erikaiht]

I have a challenge 4 u pro piraters. Learn a programming language then make a short game in full 3d then out the kinks then still tell me the companies still dont deserve the money.

No kidding, what I think most people fail to realize, you don't just rob people of the money they worked for, but they worked for hundred and hundreds of hours, with hundreds of people. By pirating, you are telling them, "I don't want to pay for the work you labored for months on."

 

[groval]

I download things in this manor because;
A) Because it's easy and quick
B) Because it's effectively annonymous, barring the IP issue there's hardly a chance of getting caught.
C) It's free.
I only get games that I don't want to play online else I buy them. I don't feel any sense of guilt from stealing from multi-national coperations and i'm not doing it to spite them. I do it because I want to get something.

I do like being called a pirate. That's just the icing on the cake.

Yarrr.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Well, when you pirate, you are stealing an intellectual product. You steal money from the developer as well as stealing their right as a company to limit distribution of a game.

You're not stealing any money, they don't own that money yet. Robbing a bank is stealing money, pickpocketing is stealing money. Pirates just copying the orignal, that's a big difference since again, nothing is technically stolen e.a missing from the shelves, nothing is gone. Heck the whole essence of copyright infringement is rather the opposite of stealing: you're making more of something (wich you're not allowed to do in this case) instead of actually taking stuff away from them, wich is stealing. The only thing you're really doing, money-wise, is limiting there profits, and that's not illegal. Afterall, not buying stuff is also limiting a developers profit.
The latter does capture the essence: developers have the right to limit distribution, but ofcourse you can't steal that right from them, you can only violate (as in human rights violations) that right. And that's what pirates are doing, they're not stealing but they're violating the rights of developers.