Im fine as long as they don’t mess up my… no, our internet experience by removing large quantities of information, e.g. most youtube videos. If ‘stealing’ copyrighted material means someone gets hurt then they are in the right. If it means rich companies get more money, then fuck them. Basically SOPA/PIPA are taking freedom from the poorer people (majority) and giving rights to the rich. If people can’t afford something then … they can’t afford something so they steal it, and internet stealing isn’t actually affecting anyone because information can be copied an infinite(basically) amount of times… meaning they are not stealing… if you think about it!
That’s the argument that everyone pro-piracy (or at least anti-anti-piracy) throws around, though, and it’s fundamentally flawed. Yes, it’s true that freely downloadable, pirated content will reach some viewers who the paid content has never reached and will never reach. But the fact remains that people who are perfectly capable of paying for the content now feel entitled to get that content for free, just because it’s an option.
I don’t claim to have the moral high ground here, by the way - I have pirated music in the past and continue to occasionally pirate it today, although I mostly listen to it on youtube - so I still consume pirated music, even if I’m not downloading it directly.
I recently found an article that claims that most pirates would pay for the legal services if they were as cheap and convenient enough as BitTorrent.
Here’s a link: https://www.news.com.au/technology/internet-pirates-say-theyd-pay-for-legal-downloads/story-e6frfro0-1225863187697
Give it a read, it’s interesting.
People have always wanted simplicity and low prices. That’s never going to change.
Yes there is a difference from bagels at a bagel stand. They’re different in that A) (and I didn’t mention this earlier) the bagels were in an office setting where your co-workers could catch you stealing and disapprove and B) a physical object was taken which, regardless of the actual morality, is a harder crime to commit than online theft and C) the loss on the part of the owner is far more clear cut. A-C all make stealing in this situation far LESS likely than online stealing. There is no survey, this is the best that I can give you. But clearly, whatever percent piracy is at, it’s gonna be a lot worse than that 20%. Look up Freakonomics bagel guy if you want to read more on it. And if the copy you got was bad then you just suck at pirating.
This is comedic gold. :lol: The stigma against console gamers is really getting old, and that’s coming from a primarily PC gamer such as myself. And the part where you think that being an avid book reader and computer literate are exclusive? I’m seriously laughing my ass off right now. How do you come up with this shit? Just because you don’t read doesn’t mean people who do can’t use computers, or people who use computers don’t read. I mean seriously, how do you even come to that conclusion?
I’m really not trying to say that piracy is a good thing, or even justified. But I’d say it gets overplayed; not necessarily in the scope (I’m not so ignorant I don’t realize that it is HUGE) but in the backlash against it. Look at the lawsuits by the RIAA against people they’ve prosecuted for piracy and try to tell me it’s a justified response. Look at freakin’ SOPA/PIPA. There needs to be a more appropriate response to piracy than this hand-chopping.
They’re not mutually exclusive. But the number of computer geeks in the avid book reading community is a minority. And the number of avid book readers in the computer geek community is a minority. Therefor, regardless of the overlap, each group as a whole can have very different characteristics. You clearly don’t understand statistics for shit. To point out just how stupid your argument is I will distill it for you “Group A has members in Group B and Group B has members in Group A, therefor, Group A and Group B can’t be all that different.” For a condescending douche (yeah I know I’m one too 
) you sure are horrifically WRONG.
Oh, and yes console users are electronic fucktards, that’s just the way it is. Consoles are designed to target casuals, casuals are generally electronic fucktards. Therefor, the majority of console users are electronic fucktards. That’s just they way it works. The console community DESERVES it’s stigma. Do you know how many console friends I’ve convinced to try BF3 only to hear them bitch about how it’s mediocre? EVERY DAMN TIME I ask them, they say they’ve never even tried anything but tdm and/or say “Da fuck is squad spawning?”. They’re about 90% fucktard. Why do you think CoD is infinitely more popular on console than on pc? PC players are the gaming elite and the PC is the Cadillac of gaming, but lets not get into that. Lets just settle with console users are generally pathetically tech un-savvy and don’t pirate on their console not out of moral reasons but out of practical reasons.
Now can you please actually answer more than 5% of the shit I smashed your argument with?
I don’t see what knowing how to use a computer and liking to read have to do with each other.
I’m claiming that generally, the avid book reading community is more scrupulous than the interwebz community, therefor, somebody from the interwebz is more likely to pirate their media (Games movies music) than someone from the avid book reading community. Well really, this whole subject is kind of stupid. Because looking back at the original argument, the “crowd” was movie/video game/music fans versus the book community. But my point still stands; even as general as movie/video game/music is, book readers are still more likely to have a moral objection to any form of piracy than movie/video game/music fans. Movie/video game/music is pretty much describing everyone so really what I’m saying is avid book readers are more scrupulous than the average person.
And where exactly are you getting this from? Because it sounds like bullshit to me.
You’re pretty much saying that if you like books you can’t like movies/music/video games. Which as I’ve said, reeks of bullshit.
Oh come the fuck on. You’re falling for the same thing as jethrosoup. Stop paying attention to him. “On the whole Group A is more X than Group B”. Whether or not the two groups overlap is IRRELEVANT. Come the fuck on. Is it really that hard to understand? Lets make it simple with numbers. Group A includes 10 13 9 15 8 14 7. Group B is the 15 14 and 13 found in Group A. They both overlap, in fact, Group B is contained entirely by Group A. Yet the statement “Group B has higher numerical values than Group A” is still ENTIRELY VALID. Now lets pretend that Group A was "Fans of music, movies and/or video games and Group B is “Avid book readers”. Now lets say that each number represented one person’s “scrupulousness”. Clearly, the statement “Group B has higher scrupuls than Group A” can be ENTIRELY valid without implying that Group A and Group B are mutually exclusive. I never ONCE said or implied that book readers and the internet or, as in the last post, “everyone”, were mutually exclusive. I just made some claims about each group’s nature and Jethrosoup ran off on his own tangent using bizarre made up statistical analysis.
No one is “using bizarre made up statistical analysis” but you, champ.
While I agree that console gamers are generally more “plug and play OMG YES IT WORKS!”, the PSP, Dreamcast, and DS are all incredibly easy to pirate games for. You know what’s on a UMD? 9660.ISO. No, you don’t need to convert the contents of the disc into an ISO, it’s already done for you, by Sony, you just need the means to rip it off of the disc, which is incredibly easy. I’m running 6.60 ME-1.2 right now. (6.60 is the current official firmware) You know how I installed it? I ran the installer from 6.60 official firmware. Hackers cracked the PSP completely about a year ago, and can get anything to run on official firmware. 6.60 ME-1.2 can do (almost) everything that the old standby custom firmware 5.00 M33-6 can do, including load ISOs (with no patching needed to get around Sony’s attempts to stop ISO loading) and rip UMDs.
(I feel I need to say, I rip my own UMDs and don’t share them with anybody, because I don’t like long loading times. The access speed of my memory stick is much faster than the access speed of the UMD drive. I don’t download PSP games, and the few that I have downloaded in the past I ended up buying.)
With the Dreamcast, assuming your console wasn’t too “new” it was as simple as burning your download to a CD.
(I have never downloaded a Dreamcast game, even though my Dreamcast was capable of playing burned games)
With the DS, you just needed to buy a special cartridge that could hold a memory stick, and drop your ROM on there.
(I have never downloaded a DS game, and do not and never have owned the hardware to play downloaded games)
Some consoles are cracked wide open, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Plus, it doesn’t really take any know-how to run sketchy stuff on them, it’s as easy as download and go. While others, like the 360 and PS3, require much more work, and lock you out of online play, unlike the PSP, DS, and Dreamcast, where you still get full functionality.
You have stupid friends, therefore all console gamers are stupid. Flawless logic.
Most of your shit is so full of holes it needs no response. People can read it and immediately tell you don’t have much of a clue what you’re talking about.
I’m really not trying to sound like an asshole here but you’re not backing up your assertions. Why do you claim to know so much about these “groups” of people? How would you even know? The information you gather about your “buddies” and people you know and how you think they behave is not evidence enough to be making these claims.
I haven’t researched people and statistics and stuff like this, but the claims your making don’t sound remotely plausible. Here’s how it figures in my mind: Smart people are usually well read. Smart people are usually tech savvy. There is ABSOLUTELY a significant overlap.
hahahahahaha
And that is why I still have him on ignore.
Hi garth!
So while they’re at it the FBI should close down Dropbox, ALL torrent sites, googlemail, hotmail…well basically anything which allows you to send files.
They should also arrest you if you take a DVD to your friend’s place to watch it because your friend didn’t pay for that DVD.
Infact, should you watch a film with your family they should also be arrested unless they all purchased a copy.
Honestly, Garth, I didn’t understand your “statistics” and “facts” a whole lot either. I don’t see how PDFs of books are any different then mp3s, movie files, games, etc. I mean, one you listen to (mp3), one you watch (movies), one you interact with (games), and one you read (PDF) are not too different. I don’t see how PDFs don’t count.
Also, your claim of people who read generally don’t play games and vice versa also seemed a little out there. I’m an avid reader, but I love me a good game of Half-Life Deathmatch, CSS, or any other game. And I don’t think you can really call me a minority in this either. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not insulting you or anything, but your claims aren’t exactly too believable to me, or anyone else for that matter.
I’m looking through some music that I am interested in buying and I don’t see why CDs have to be so expensive. The ones that I’m looking at are all around $15-$20 which is really high. Hell, I saw The Wall today at Target for $22. This is after I bought Serenity, a 2 hour movie on Bluray, for $15. Why does 2 hours of superior format (Bluray) video cost less than 1 hour of CD music?
If the stock exchange sees that a company is making less profits than the previous quarter, they’ll assume that they’re doing poorly. Because they used to charge high prices before, charging realistic/lower prices for products would lower their profits, which would cause their stocks to drop in price, which leads to a vicious circle where the company is always losing more and more, until it crashes and burns.
They dug the hole, so now they’re throwing customers in it to avoid falling in themselves.