Trilligan said:
Alterego-X said:
Yeah, because taking advantage of others' work without paying is the same thing as slavery, right?
Work without pay is slavery by definition, methinks.
FORCED work without pay is slavery. E.g. Wikipedia editors are not slaves, they are volunteers
Besides, taking advantage of work without paying for it, is not the same thing as working without getting paid. I expect to get my TV shows for free, yet the artists get paid. I get Escapist articles for free, as well.
The point is, that we are expecting entire work categories, art mediums, products, etc, to be provided either to be done for free, or earn their profits through indirect means instead of directly charging money from it's users.
The difference between many of these and video game piracy, is not an inherent moral difference, just a matter of tradition, legal potential, and industrial inertia.
Trilligan said:
...This is also why your Brony-printers are not pirates. They might well be 'stealing' ponies, but they are using artistic templates and what's been known for ages as 'artistic license' to create something new.
Umm, yes, that's what I just said. You brought up that if matter replicators would exist everyone would pirate ponies and Hasbro would go bankrupt, that I countered with proof that even when 3D printers exist, original products are being created by creative people without Hasbro, even now.
Trilligan said:
Piracy, however, is nothing at all like that, because piracy requires absolutely minimal input on the part of the pirate. There is no creativity in piracy. There's no requirement for intelligent input at all on the part of the pirate. It subtracts from artistic media - in the same way a leech might - without adding anything positive at all. And here's the thing about leeches - one or two can be an annoyance, but ultimately will have little effect. The more you add, however, the more detrimental the effect will be.
Are all the freeloading viewers subtracting from from TV shows, webcomics, anime, or web original videos? How is piracy different from these, other than not being legal?
Would you rather write a book that sells 20.000 copies and no one else reads it, or one that sells 20.000 copies and 200.000 more people read it's pirated copies? (in your answer, take it into account that established fans might eventually buy your next books, buy your merch, fund your swordfighting-game-kickstarter, pay for your signature on comic-con, etc.
Trilligan said:
Piracy may well drive change in these industries - but not all change is good change.
Because this isn't a matter of fear of change, it is ultimately a matter of bottom-lines. Game studios employ people who have families to feed, and most pirates just blatantly ignore that. If a game studio can't make a profit because pirates are leeching off their software, they will eventually decide that their bottom line is not big enough to warrant their expense - they will no longer be able to pay their bills, and the checks of the people who work for them. And then, we won't have game studios. We won't have indie developers. We'll just have a bunch of pirates with nothing left to leech off of.
There are studies suggesting that legalized piracy doesn't decrease studio incomes, in countries where it happened, the kind of people who are still buying digital content now when it's easy to pirate are doing it as fans, out of principle, would keep buying anyways just to reward the creators at their own pleasure.
And even ignoring that, if everyone would get used to not paying for raw IP content, there are all the potential alternate revenues. "nothing left" would be a vast overstatement in either case.
Trilligan said:
Alterego-X said:
Well, maybe "harr-harr, free stuff" is part of the core motivation, but there are reasons why the digital copyright doesn't work anyways, and how giving it up could still work.
It often feels like "harr-harr, free stuff" is the only motivation, and all the words heaped on top of it are just trying to justify outright selfishness.
I for one have yet to see a valid reason someone who takes the tremendous time and effort and expense to create something like a videogame ought to expect that all their input will ultimately gain them nothing because pirates deserve to play that game without paying for it, or even expending any effort to get it.
So let me ask you this: if I spent four years of my life in college learning programming and another five years working my way through the drudgiest, most menial code-crunching jobs to build my resume, to find a low-paying gig with a small but passionate indie developer finally doing what I love, turning my creative energy directly into awesome videogames, why do you think you should reap the benefits of my effort without even so much as a thank you?
How is that okay? Explain it to me, please.
Replace programming with architecture, and video game with bridge.
If I design a bridge with all my skills and sweat and passion, why should you drive through it without thanking me?
If I as a preacher hold a beautiful sermon with all my skill and passion, why should random people listen to it without even being forced to give offerings?
If as a game journalist, I want to review gams on the Internet, why should the general nternet-reading audience just reap the benefits without paying before laying their eyes on it?
Very, very few jobs come with the priviledge that you can choose what happens with the product of your work, and what people are allowed to do with it. In fact, many Video Game creators, who are not studio owners, aren't really in control of the games that they work on. If you want to be a programmer in a larger team, it's not your choice how the game will be distributed. The company might decide that it will be released F2P, and let me play it for free, relying on a smaller circle of paying fans, or I might decide that I will pirate it anyways, and let them get their money from a smaller circle of paying fans. You get your salary either way. Why is the latter that much worse for you?
I don't think that copyright is immoral, like certain people. I don't want to force all artists to work for free. But it must be admitted, that forcing everyone to pay for their personal officially bought version, doesn't work anymore. As Cory Doctorow said:
Cory Doctorow said:
" It's the twenty-first century. Copying stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today (or if it does, it'll be because civilization has collapsed, at which point we'll have other problems). Hard drives aren't going to get bulkier, more expensive, or less capacious. Networks won't get slower or harder to access.
If you're not making art with the intention of having it copied, you're not really making art for the twenty-first century. There's something charming about making work you don't want to be copied, in the same way that it's nice to go to a Pioneer Village and see the olde-timey blacksmith shoeing a horse at his traditional forge. But it's hardly, you know, contemporary. "
