You are a pirate!

[LordDz]

As I do not have access to Medvih's tower, I'll post this in here:
Tomorrow I've got to make a short speech about Piracy, and I kind of think it's good.

So does anyone have a few arguments about what is so good about.. piratebay.org and such sites, and some counters to the arguments as
Piracy makes music companies lose money, game developers lose money etc..

 

[Your Friendly Bot]

I buy pirated games not because I'm a cheapass. I buy it because there is no way I could EVER.

I plan to buy Starcraft II original because I wanna Battle.Net ^_^!

 

[errorz]

OK so cyber-piracy is a illegal action an can be punished
before u use torrents:
1.u can get TRACKED by ur ip!
2.can get sued
3.always be sure that u download only that thing u dont need any Troyans u know....
so it is garanteed that u will not be happy after the 2000 download cuz
a poll said that every 2000 torrent contains viruses,malware,keyloggers,tracking cockies aplications!

 

[LordDz]

OK so cyber-piracy is a illegal action an can be punished
before u use torrents:
1.u can get TRACKED by ur ip!
2.can get sued
3.always be sure that u download only that thing u dont need any Troyans u know....
so it is garanteed that u will not be happy after the 2000 download cuz
a poll said that every 2000 torrent contains viruses,malware,keyloggers,tracking cockies aplications!

And a poll is complete truth. Seriously man, you've got to think a bit before you dl.

And as I told you in my first post: I wanted arguments FOR it, not someone preaching how bad it is and that you can get caught/there will be viruses.
(I've never had a virus from it).

 

[errorz]

hey! i argumented !

 

[LordDz]

hey! i argumented !

Well, please give a source of your poll at least instead of giving false claims .

 

[Gilles]

You get free stuff. That's the only reason people do it, so is there really any point in trying to rationalize why it's "okay to do"? Not imo.

You could say that it forces companies to sell products at a more competitive price, rather than having huge markup.

 

[LordDz]

You get free stuff. That's the only reason people do it, so is there really any point in trying to rationalize why it's "okay to do"? Not imo.

You could say that it forces companies to sell products at a more competitive price, rather than having huge markup.

Yeah, and that it also helps people learn, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the programmers and modelers on this site didn't pay for their programs in the first turn.

 

[Masiah]

Compells companies to lower the prices if they expect to compete with piracy.

 

[Gausslander]

You get free stuff. That's the only reason people do it, so is there really any point in trying to rationalize why it's "okay to do"? Not imo.

You could say that it forces companies to sell products at a more competitive price, rather than having huge markup.

True. I'd just lower the retail price on video games.

 

[Aeroblyctos]

We have to remember that programs costs a lot of money. We, students, don't have that much money. That's why some of us download programs.

 

[Linaze]

You are a pirate!
... And I am a duck!

 

[Super-Sheep]

YouTube - You are a pirate

 

[Your Friendly Bot]

I saw a dual layered DVD disk for 1 buck.

Fat DVD cover for 4 bucks.

Paper for 1 buck.

Ink for 1 buck as well.

What makes a game 60 dollars???

 

[Super-Sheep]

Code game by yourself then if its so easy.

 

[Eleandor]

Taken from the GNU website, just replace "software" with "music" if you like.

Owners make several kinds of arguments for giving them the power to control how we use information:

• Name calling.
  Owners use smear words such as “piracy” and “theft”, as well as expert terminology such as “intellectual property” and “damage”, to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public—a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects.
  Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects are about whether it is right to take an object away from someone else. They don't directly apply to making a copy of something. But the owners ask us to apply them anyway.
• Exaggeration.
  Owners say that they suffer “harm” or “economic loss” when users copy programs themselves. But the copying has no direct effect on the owner, and it harms no one. The owner can lose only if the person who made the copy would otherwise have paid for one from the owner.
  A little thought shows that most such people would not have bought copies. Yet the owners compute their “losses” as if each and every one would have bought a copy. That is exaggeration—to put it kindly.
• The law.
  Owners often describe the current state of the law, and the harsh penalties they can threaten us with. Implicit in this approach is the suggestion that today's law reflects an unquestionable view of morality—yet at the same time, we are urged to regard these penalties as facts of nature that can't be blamed on anyone.
  This line of persuasion isn't designed to stand up to critical thinking; it's intended to reinforce a habitual mental pathway.
  It's elementary that laws don't decide right and wrong. Every American should know that, forty years ago, it was against the law in many states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists would say sitting there was wrong.
• Natural rights.
  Authors often claim a special connection with programs they have written, and go on to assert that, as a result, their desires and interests concerning the program simply outweigh those of anyone else—or even those of the whole rest of the world. (Typically companies, not authors, hold the copyrights on software, but we are expected to ignore this discrepancy.)
  To those who propose this as an ethical axiom—the author is more important than you—I can only say that I, a notable software author myself, call it bunk.
  But people in general are only likely to feel any sympathy with the natural rights claims for two reasons.
  One reason is an overstretched analogy with material objects. When I cook spaghetti, I do object if someone else eats it, because then I cannot eat it. His action hurts me exactly as much as it benefits him; only one of us can eat the spaghetti, so the question is, which? The smallest distinction between us is enough to tip the ethical balance.
  But whether you run or change a program I wrote affects you directly and me only indirectly. Whether you give a copy to your friend affects you and your friend much more than it affects me. I shouldn't have the power to tell you not to do these things. No one should.
  The second reason is that people have been told that natural rights for authors is the accepted and unquestioned tradition of our society.
  As a matter of history, the opposite is true. The idea of natural rights of authors was proposed and decisively rejected when the US Constitution was drawn up. That's why the Constitution only permits a system of copyright and does not require one; that's why it says that copyright must be temporary. It also states that the purpose of copyright is to promote progress—not to reward authors. Copyright does reward authors somewhat, and publishers more, but that is intended as a means of modifying their behavior.
  The real established tradition of our society is that copyright cuts into the natural rights of the public—and that this can only be justified for the public's sake.
• Economics.
  The final argument made for having owners of software is that this leads to production of more software.
  Unlike the others, this argument at least takes a legitimate approach to the subject. It is based on a valid goal—satisfying the users of software. And it is empirically clear that people will produce more of something if they are well paid for doing so.
  But the economic argument has a flaw: it is based on the assumption that the difference is only a matter of how much money we have to pay. It assumes that “production of software” is what we want, whether the software has owners or not.
  People readily accept this assumption because it accords with our experiences with material objects. Consider a sandwich, for instance. You might well be able to get an equivalent sandwich either free or for a price. If so, the amount you pay is the only difference. Whether or not you have to buy it, the sandwich has the same taste, the same nutritional value, and in either case you can only eat it once. Whether you get the sandwich from an owner or not cannot directly affect anything but the amount of money you have afterwards.
  This is true for any kind of material object—whether or not it has an owner does not directly affect what it is, or what you can do with it if you acquire it.
  But if a program has an owner, this very much affects what it is, and what you can do with a copy if you buy one. The difference is not just a matter of money. The system of owners of software encourages software owners to produce something—but not what society really needs. And it causes intangible ethical pollution that affects us all.

Bottom line is: there are 2 possible scenario's:

1) I like something. If I like something, I pay for it. I couldn't play on battle.net so I simply bought warcraft. I really like certain music, so I bought it. I might actually not have bought warcraft if I never played it before.
2) I'm "ok" with something, but won't buy it anyway. If I could, I'd download it though, but even if I couldn't download it, I still wouldn't buy it. In fact, if I do notice I like a movie, I'll probably pay for it because I've only been able to watch it in low-quality.

No company gains or loses anything from me downloading certain stuff off the internet. So I'm pretty cool with me downloading pirated stuff.

 

[Your Friendly Bot]

Code game by yourself then if its so easy.

... The song's great actually. At least the start...

And, I know it's hard... But, so much games are undeservingly 60 bucks.

 

[Masiah]

Don't buy them then.

 

[Super-Sheep]

If you and your company makes one game for 2 years (like blizz makes 5 years) are you sure you want to sell it for 10 bucks per game?

 

[Razorbrain]

EDIT : Seems i was pretty slow on making a post

Ontopic thou, torrents and filesharing can be considered good becouse artists and gamemakers that do not have the best reputation get to share their work with people who have never heard of them before. It also gives people a chance to try something out before purchasing it legally.

 

[Your Friendly Bot]

You do have points.

I guess I'm just a criminal.

Besides, better off this way cause I could have never attain those anyway.

 

[The_wand_mirror]

Code game by yourself then if its so easy.

Dude, CoD4 was fucking 60,- euros while CoD5 was 55,- =/

Activision is a bitch...

(I bought it nonetheless, btw i am aware why they keep the high price!)

Anyways, downloading music comes in handy in the genre of ''underground music''.

And i've also heard that some bands are pretty fund of people downloading their music legaly because they mostly end up buying something anyway if they like it. And like this their music is also able to reach a wider range of public.

 

[Slaydon]

It should be possible to lend/try the games b4 you buy them, i think all the other who "pirates" would try the game before they buy it, but dont buy's it.

 

[Pyritie]

The funny thing is that excessive anti-piracy stuff just encourages more piracy. Take spore for example.

Then again, if you don't put any sort of anti-piracy stuff on your program and decide to "trust" people, you still get mass-piracy. Look at world of goo for example. 90% piracy rate, and that's not very good at all for a team of two developers.

 

[Masiah]

World of Goo it's actually one of the few games that really deserves to get bought for it's price.

 

[LordDz]

The funny thing is that excessive anti-piracy stuff just encourages more piracy. Take spore for example.

Then again, if you don't put any sort of anti-piracy stuff on your program and decide to "trust" people, you still get mass-piracy. Look at world of goo for example. 90% piracy rate, and that's not very good at all for a team of two developers.

But then again, they didn't release a boxed copy here, so there was no other way for me to get it. (Can't use online payments until I'm18)

 

[Pyritie]

Audiosurf has been sold primarily by steam and it doesn't have such a high piracy rate. Plus it gets updates like all the time so the pirated version is way behind the current version. And it's only $10

 

[Callahan]

I agree with that GNU quote on some point.
Companies think as if every pirated copy of their product was a loss but if the pirate wouldn't have bought it if he couldn't pirates these musoc then it's the same result.

Music can be made in numeric data.
So why compagnies keep investing to product CDs while customers can product their own unit for free with a computer?
Because the fact is that buying CD make a profit since customers pay a bit more than it cost to product.With piracy none earn money but none lose money.

 

[Hakeem]

If you and your company makes one game for 2 years (like blizz makes 5 years) are you sure you want to sell it for 10 bucks per game?

If your focus is on making money, as opposed to making an awesome game, I'm not going to buy it.