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Piracy

Whisper

Logic :(
What is your stance on piracy? Should certain software be open to piracy after being off the market? Is piracy actually stealing since nothing is stolen but shared? Anything else related to piracy may be included.
 

Joey

New Member
I think we've forgoten what "sharing" is. The reason we're taught to share when we're a kid, is to promote doing good for others, even if it's not good for you. You have a ball as a child, and you share it with your brother. Sometimes you get to use it, sometimes they get to use it. That's sharing. Making infinite copies without degeneration of the orignals is something completely different. It destroys the value of a commodity.

That's not to say I'm above piracy. I haven't bought an album in 3 years, and even then, I had downloaded those albums first. But to sit here, and try to rationalize your actions by saying it's "sharing" instead of "stealing" is just absurd. We're all dirting fuckin' thieves, quit lying to your self.

The right to play a game, for instance, costs money. If some how, you aquire the ability to play a game, and you didn't trade the asking price for it, then you stole it. Just becaue you didn't actively goto a store, and stuff that shit in your jeans, doesn't mean you didn't steal it.
 

madsoul

Member
we just got a new law here in Sweden (1 april) that will make it hard for people who pirate. you could have to get charged with ALOT of money for only downloaded like one movie from that date if they decide to scare the public. and the big seeders that share alot of content can get arested etc. now the big music and movie industry can fish for individuals as much as they want to scare away people from pirating.

and the piratebay guys got taken too.

eh, il be off downloading music for a while now until there is another sullotion.
 

Cryox

Bro.
music is different IMO, i mean, a friend gets a new album, he lets you borrow it, and you return it to him Monday with all the songs on your iPod. I mean, who hasn't done this?

Now, when i get a song offline, i think this same thing, it's like borrowing the CD from a friend
 

LocutusEstBorg

Active Member
IMO its only harmful to the industry if the person who pirated would have actually bought it if there was no pirated version.

Over here lots of people buy original albums because audio CDs are reasonably priced at around Rs. 100-200 (2-5$). English albums are almost exclusively pirated because they are hardly available. People would rather spend 20 minutes downloading an album than drive halfway around the city searching for the original. That's the fault of the publishers for not taking an interest in their own sales, not the pirates.

PC games sell kind of OK because they are subsidized. Around 1 in 50 people buy an original copy. I'm the only one in my class of 100 who has an original Counter-Strike on Steam! Most titles are Rs. 999 (20$) at launch. Valve games are like Orange Box are cheaper at Rs.500 (10$).

GTA IV is only around Rs. 375 (8$) !!!!! It was completely sold out for a month after launch. So I downloaded it and finished it first, then I later bought the original but I haven't even opened the disc, its just lying on the table :S The map is cool though. At 4 DVDs, even the pirated version was almost as expensive at the original so most people just bought the original!

PSP games have no freaking chance at Rs. 1499 per game. LOL, who are the kidding charging that much. PS3 and 360 games don't have a chance either at Rs. 2700 per game!!! The PS3 doesn't sell at all because there are no pirated games. Lots of people have 360s though.

And PC 'software' as such has ZERO sales here. There's no way to buy them even if you wanted to, and people here are don't use credit cards online.

Basically you can't expect to setup a Bentley showroom over here and hope to make a profit. If they price stuff accordingly to the target economy, it'll sell.
 

Dan

Contributor
I only download music allbums occasionally ( as in the new ones ), and if i like them, i will go out and buy them, if not, i'll just delete.

Besides music, the only other things i've downloaded is Zone Alarm Security Suite & Guitar Pro 5.
 

Sir_Axxewraith

cant fux widdit
I don't see how, as GP5 knows if it's pirated and a message comes up explaining that they will send details to your ISP.

Happened to everyone I know who pirated.
 

LocutusEstBorg

Active Member
I don't see how, as GP5 knows if it's pirated and a message comes up explaining that they will send details to your ISP.

Happened to everyone I know who pirated.


Most protections work well against the average idiot who doesn't know how to use a computer properly. I think developers need look no further than to implement their own protections. No matter what they do, a pirated version is going to come out. Commercial protections are a blatant ripoff and probably harm the industry more than the pirates (who might have bought the original if not for the pirated version).

A prime example would be Rockstar spending 250000$ on a custom Securom. They had the first few laughs at the initial flurry of crack attempts, but then a serious group like Razor1911 owned it in under a week, and the initial crack/Securom loader continues to work with the latest patches 4 months later!

Instead they should have invested that money in hiring an optimization specialist to make the game run better!
 

-chw42-

Like a Boss
It's bad for the industry and it's wrong. But still, almost everybody does it.
 

LocutusEstBorg

Active Member
It's bad for the industry and it's wrong. But still, almost everybody does it.

Its not bad for the industry if it doesn't result in a lost sale. I know someone who is a complete cheapskate and has never bought any genuine software. Are you saying that he hurt the industry? If there were no pirated stuff he wouldn't even have bought a PC. Thats EXACTLY the reason why the PS3 is a complete failure in places like China and others.
 
Most consoles wouldn't be anything without pirating.

---------- Post added at 12:27 PM EST ---------- Previous post was at 12:26 PM EST ----------

Its not bad for the industry if it doesn't result in a lost sale. I know someone who is a complete cheapskate and has never bought any genuine software. Are you saying that he hurt the industry? If there were no pirated stuff he wouldn't even have bought a PC. Thats EXACTLY the reason why the PS3 is a complete failure in places like China and others.

Ahh, you kinda beat me to that :p
 

RoBz

sucker
Take the genre electro house here. It's sometimes dubbed as "blog house", because that's how new tracks come about for the most part, they're uploaded to blogs where someone might do a little review of it if it's a popular artist or might even just attach the song to the end of a blog post for no real reason.

These artists like it too, it gets their tracks popular and then when it's touring time they sell more tickets.

Everybody wins.
 

Colm

New Member
Piracy is not harmful to musicians. If it was, musicians would treat it as harmful.
Let's take Nine Inch Nails' 2008 album The Slip. It was released on the NIN website in numerous formats including V0 MP3, CD-quality lossless formats and greater-than-CD-quality WAVE audio. The formats are important. When Radiohead released In Rainbows, they only distributed low quality MP3 files. People would still buy the physical album if they wanted quality.
So why was this album released for free? In such a format that there is no benefit to buying the album?
The album got people listening to NIN. More people go to live preformances.

Live preformances are the key to success.

Those who suffer from the piracy are the record companies. They're a link no longer needed for musicians.
 

-chw42-

Like a Boss
Its not bad for the industry if it doesn't result in a lost sale. I know someone who is a complete cheapskate and has never bought any genuine software. Are you saying that he hurt the industry? If there were no pirated stuff he wouldn't even have bought a PC. Thats EXACTLY the reason why the PS3 is a complete failure in places like China and others.

I can attest that I've intended on buying a lot of things that I have pirated...

I think a lot of others might say the same.
 

eighty4

Active Member
My view is that if you're on a private torrent site, it's more sharing that pirating. If you openly release it to the masses - it's pirating.
 

Clint

Clintoris
You can't honestly expect an unbiased view of piracy from the Business Software Alliance...

Anyway, I find the term "stealing" to be misleading because that implies a physical item being taken, where it can no longer be used by others. But when you're making a copy, that doesn't make it any less useful to others.

I don't know what the solution to piracy is. Is it education to increase awareness? If you shoplift, you could be caught on camera. When you're online, who's to stop you the second you commit a crime? There is no immediate punishment, if there is any punishment at all, which makes people think, "Oh, it won't happen to me, I'm only downloading a few songs."
 

Trigun

That guy, who Records Music.
Piracy IMHO is a point of a view, some see it as stealing like bootlegging, I see stealing in itself the theft of a physical item. My view of piracy is that you are just obtaining a copy of digital data not something that can be physically stolen, after all it's only data.

it's like asking the question "Is a glass of milk half full or Half empty" It's completely up to your point of view
 

LocutusEstBorg

Active Member
It IS stealing if you can afford to buy it, but you choose to pirate it. But not if you REALLY would never blow that amount of money on it, in which case you can look at it as only making a copy which doesn't hurt anyone else.

Assume a hobbyist developer downloaded Visual Studio. Do you think he would actually blow 2000$ on it?? It seems Microsoft realizes that anyone who has the cash to buy it will buy it and the rest WILL pirate it, so there is absolutely no protection in Visual Studio.
 

eighty4

Active Member
It's not stealing if I didn't take it from a reseller or the company. SOMEONE bought it and decided to share it with me.
 
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