:facepalm:
What did you expect? It was probably for a different region than your player.
That example is so bad it blew my mind on how awful it is.
Do I really need to explain this?
To be honest, I pirate almost everything besides games (because I almost only buy pc games, and that must not die!) because the music corporations are to stupid to take profit of the internet and censor almost everything with music on there, and the big movie industries most of the time produce utter bullshit that somehow manages to get rated high all over the world (read Highschool musical) which isn’t worth buying (I had to buy it for some shitty school project).
TL;DR : movies from big corporations aren’t worth buying so I download them.
Well, you can’t blame a person when they realize torrents don’t have regions.
It is funny that you don’t understand what you are talking about. at all. The idea here isn’t directly the money, it’s the idea that they worked years on this, it is their work, it is their jewel, and if you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it. They expect to be paid for this, because when they get paid for a game, they have the money to live, and continue making games, and it feels as if people really liked their work. What this means is that they don’t care whether you have the money or not, if you dont, you gtfo and away from their work!
I pirate, but only really shitty games when im bored and have nothing else to play, like halo. I don’t pirate valve games, they’re awesome.
You know, it’s this kind of simplifying logic which results in Anal and Oral sex being illegal in some countries (“Stop calling it consentual adult activity! If someone stuck his dick in my ass/mouth, I would feel hurt, so what you’re doing is clearly wrong and you will be punished!”)
Or to the kind of short-circuit logic:
- “Don’t befriend Joseph, he’s a murderer!”
- “What?! Whom did he kill?? I didn’t know he killed anyone?”
- “Well, he hasn’t yet, but he lied to me once, and as you surely know, who ever lies does also steal and could kill as well, so he’s a murderer!” (“Who lies also steals and could as well kill” is a proverb similar to the English “… would steal sheep”)
THEFT is very clearly defined. Copyright infringement does not fit into the definition.
Your first paragraph was awesome. You ruined it all with the last paragraph.
First of all, Halo is a great game. Second of all, even if you don’t like the game, Bungie or any other “shitty” (hahaha) developer put as much time and effort into making those “shitty” (HAHAHAHA) games as any other developer. If you like the game, buy it. If you don’t like the game, don’t pirate it. IT WAS THE POINT YOU FUCKING MADE IN YOUR FIRST PARAGRAPH![/SIZE]
Hundred years ago, a comedian had to make a show in the streets including 80% of his tricks for free, and only after that, when enough audience gathered, could he open the Circus tent and say: “Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to see my masterpiece trick, when I will be eaten alive by this huge crocodile and then jump the other end out unharmed, for mere 10 pennies, you can enter the tent and see it!”
Now, the question is – if the first 1 hour of movie was free (in theatre), and then there would be a break and someone asked “Whoever wants to see the rest of the movie, please remain seated and pay 10 bucks. The rest of you, thank you for coming and good night.” – how many people would usually get up and leave?
We’ve turned Comedians (Entertainers) into celebrities. And now, when there’s a paradigm shift and they ought to look for new means of gaining profit, they cry “it’s not fair! they want us to return to the Street Comedian style! How evil!”
I have no hesitation if I feel inclined to obtain a duplication of material some people may call “copyrighted”. I still buy DVDs on occasion, the ones which show real promise (Star Wars original trilogy? count me in) and the rare game (but I mean rare since being utterly disappointed by Sim City Societies…in fact I haven’t purchased a new game since then. If I play these days, I play something I already have. To the point of busting out the N64. I haven’t even played HL2 Ep1 yet. I’m waiting for when it gets packaged with Episodes 2 & 3).
I have even downloaded albums which I have the CD for, because I do not trust my ripping software.
These decisions have never crossed over into the physical domain of real theft. The last act I committed was at age 7, lifting a matchbox car from an acquaintance’s chest full. The guilt was sufficient.
Actually, I’ve taken things in recent years…but things that are left abandoned. And I use them. If some stranger hadn’t forgotten their umbrella in a book store for at least 45 minutes, then I’d be getting soaked. I had waited out of consideration for the peer, but alas they did not return by then.
Its funny that you patronise me for being ignorant about the subject matter of this thread, then completely misunderstand what I was talking about.
Cutting the moral crud out of your argument leaves this: People deserve to be paid. But if I am never going to buy a game (like, say…Halo 2), then the company receives, from me, $0. If I then download this game, then the company receives, from me, that same $0. Why are they losing anything?
You say yourself that you make a judgement call as to whether or not a game deserves money. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. But under your own logic, you should gtfo away from their work.
It is like the ancient proverb ’ do as I say, not as I do '.
Just because I cannot always follow the rules I lay out does not mean that it is ok to do what I do, it’s just a state of mind that I have that developpers that can’t develop a game worth **** dont deserve ****. Now I know that this is wrong, but I’m not going to try to correct this, because I don’t pirate much, like 2 or 3 times a year, and I can live with myself. I do not contradict myself, for I believe in what I said, and if I could feel like whoever made halo deserved money, I would give them some, but I cant and I’m sorry.
I can however say that what I do is stealing, although you can call it copyright infringement under technical terms and feel at peace, however much you want to lie to yourself, everyone knows that morally, it’s stealing.
I bet game developers wake up in the morning and say “where did I put that goddamn game… Oh fuck those nasty pirates stole it again! Now I can’t sell it and make a living…”
So, according to the logic in this thread, developers are only allowed to make 1 disk that holds the data, and they have to sell that one disk to one user to make a living? The whole idea of music, movies, computer applications etc is that the master data’s being replicated tens of thousands of times so it can be distributed to the wanting masses that, in their turn, pay for the data. That’s how the developers have to make money… That’s how -every- company has to make money.
Copying music, data or video -is- stealing, because you’re factually taking the exact same content that you didn’t create yourself, and use it for your own need, without paying the original creator. No, in practice it’s not the same as stealing a car, but in theory it is. Cars are built according to a master design as well. Car builders also take that one thing and replicate it tens of thousands of times so it can be distributed to the wanting masses that, in their turn, pay for it.
I don’t see a single valid reason why one should download a copy of the original master data for their own pleasure without paying for it, especially not with the massive amount of legal possibilities to preview music, movies, applications, etc we have today.
Sure, you can say that it’s too expensive, to which I can reply that houses are too expensive as well, cars are too expensive as well, TVs are too expensive as well. If you ask me, everything’s overpriced because companies want a bigger profit margin, but that’s no argument to start stealing them.
Sure you can say you don’t agree with the business strategy a developer has, to which I can reply that I don’t agree with Nike’s business plan to use 10 year old Africans to make their shoes, yet I won’t steal Nike shoes.
So basically you critique me for missing the point of the thread, then apologise to crappy developers for making shit that you don’t have enough money to pay for, and hence pirate, which is exactly the point I was making. There is NO difference to the developer between you downloading a game or you just not playing it: They still don’t get any of your money. Hence, why is it morally shameful to pirate games?
I do believe that game developers deserve money, I just don’t have any to give them. Should I chastise myself for not prioritising buying shovelware above, you know, food and car insurance? Surely not. But for developers, me pirating a game and me not playing a game give them the same net result, so I should, by your logic, feel the same degree of moral reprehensibility that I do from not buying a game as I should from pirating a game.
In other words, me pirating a game means no money for developers. Developers sad. Me not buying a game because of lack of moneys means no money for developers. Developers equally sad. Hence, me buying car insurance should make me feel as guilty as pirating a game.
The difference with all of those things is, of course, that they have material value. They are, physically, worth something, which means that their theft actually costs the owner of them something. Another difference is that most of the things you listed are necessities, not normal commodities. The difference being that, well, I have no choice but to buy them, but with games, movies and music I can be extremely picky.
How about this one:
At last count, I have over 10,000 songs on my iPod (when I will get around to listening to them all I will never know). Last time I checked, I have 10 CDs in my cupboard, and my parents have about a hundred in a folder somewhere (but most are Roy Orbison, so I tend to avoid them like the plague). I have never bought a track off the internet. The result of this big stocktake is that there’s quite a large difference between the total amount of music I have on my iPod and the total amount of music I legally own (or, rather, own the license to listen to, since you can’t truly ‘own’ another’s intellectual property).
Now, my net income is, well, low, given that I’m a uni student with lots of expenses and not much spare income. That means that I don’t have that much money to throw around in between the girlfriend and the infinitely long list of games I have to play. Basically the end result is that I don’t have much money to spend on music, but I endeavour to buy CDs of the bands I really like (see: Metallica, Muse, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Black Sabbath, etc), and I even went to see Dream Theater when they came to Melbourne last year. So I try to support bands when I can, if I can.
The end result of all of this is that, well, I don’t have enough money to legally buy all the music that’s on my iPod. Not in a million, billion years. I don’t have enough money to buy all the games I play, but I don’t download movies (because of the bandwidth restrictions and the Video Ezy just down the street), so let’s ignore that one. So, according to you, my iPod should contain nothing more than the 6 CDs I own and the 100 or so Roy Orbison tapes stashed away somewhere in my parents’ room. But, in fact, it contains several hundred times that amount.
But who cares? I’ve made my reasons for downloading clear, and nothing bar a sudden and massive drop in price will change anything. If music and games suddenly became undownloadable, then I would just go without. So who cares? Who loses? The music industry and game developers still don’t get any of my money, and I listen to more music and play more games than I would otherwise, and I learn to like more bands and games that way too (and, hence, buy more games in the future).
So, in answer to your question: Nobody cares that I pirate. That’s why it isn’t stealing.
I have 1770 songs in my playlist at the moment. About 90% of those I own on CD, the other 10% is legal download through “download single for free”-days and the iTunes store. All the music I have I listen to (duh), and there isn’t a single band/song in there that I dislike. I buy my albums when I know the album’s good, and I know they’re good because I was able to preview them the legal way.
My playlist is also the result of buying albums since I was 12, I’m (nearly) 25 now, so that’s 13 years of buying albums. Sure there’s a bunch of albums/bands I don’t listen to anymore (and they’re not in my iTunes, anyway). I generally tend to buy an album every month (depends on what’s being released… Last album I bought was 3 weeks ago, last one before that was October 2009). €12 once a month (or possible once per 2 months) really isn’t that big of an expense.
So in short: my playlist is short but sweet. It holds all the music I like to listen to at any moment of the day. Every cent I spent on the music, has not been wasted.
So in short, you like giving money away.
I agree with the fact that not playing a game at all and pirating a game are exactly the same thing for the developer, when I make enough money, surely I’ll buy myself a few games.
Don’t worry, I have the 20 bucks that halo costs xD, and I’m sure you do as well. All you are doing is rationalizing your copyright infringements, you just don’t understand the game industry, and I don’t understand that you can morally steal like this without feeling the least guilt. I’m not happy about pirating, I just know I would be even more unhappy if I bought such a bad game ^^. The truth is, on top of the fact that you don’t deserve a game you didn’t buy, you can’t know for sure you wouldn’t have bought it; the thought of playing such a good game could have made you buy it, but you didn’t consider that could happen because you took the easy way, why pay when it’s just as easy to pirate, right?
Besides, if you really didn’t have the money to pay for the games you pirate, you either pirate a shitload of games, or you’re in need of financial help, I rather believe you don’t feel the little money you have left over after using the most of it for necessities you be spent on games, hence, do you enjoy playing video games? Or do you just see it as an escape from boredom a couple hours a month?
Yeah, but they’re hard to steal.
Convenience is definitely a factor.
There is a very real difference though. There is no resources lost on people who pirate games. If nothing is measurably lost, then nothing is taken, thus no theft takes place. It is however against the legal method of use of the developers intellectual rights. It’s not theft, it’s a violation of use policy. It’s also illegal, but it has different implications. If I borrow a friends car and drive around all the time without a license or insurance, I’m not stealing anything, but I am also doing something illegal. That’s not a very good metaphore, but it’s all I can come up with right now.
There isn’t a valid reason. Unless a company violates the EULA, an end user isn’t legally entitled to use a product without paying. Even if the company does violate the EULA a user isn’t entitled to use a product without paying for it. It simply means that you shouldn’t have to pay a company for not living up the agreement, you don’t magically get access.
That isn’t an excuse, but I do think it is a factor in piracy rates. If something is overpriced, there may be more piracy. Doesn’t make it right, but it does seem to hold true in many examples.
If you had the materials, would you have anything against making shoes of your own that are exact copies of the ones Nike creates based on publicly available designs? Technically Nike doesn’t loose anything unless you WERE going to buy those shoes. However, it is a patented design, and you aren’t supposed to use it without their permission.