So you are telling me that all the stuff you download is shit and never worth the money at all and yet you keep doing it. You sure have a whole lot of free time. Please, we all know these are stupid excuses to feel better with yourself and convice that "it's not that bad" when it actually means that you want everything for free.

I'm not going to say I haven't pirated something in my life because that would be bs but haven't done it for a long while and I doubt that's gonna change. It's just wrong especially if you are not a kid and you actually work.

I personally don't care about piracy but people who makes up excuses and try to justify/hidde their real intentions are plain pathetic and unable of putting themselves in the shoes of the rest.

A pirated copy is NOT the same as a lost sale. NEVER. *edit* never the same, you cannot put an equal sign between them. Some might be, others might turn into sales, most was never intended to be sales anyways *edit*

A lot of people download music/movies/games as "demos" and then proceed to buy them. If you're on the fence, and you get to try it, people often spend money on stuff they like.
Piracy has been shown to INCREASE sales. There have been multiple studies on this, and also on the overall impact of piracy. It has never been as bad as people make it out to be, and it never will be.

Look at Spotify and Netflix. People will always pay for good services. The industry is evolving, digital media is changing and creators need to adapt.


I buy a lot of indie games, I usually buy every other game I want on steam or gog (often brand new). I go to the cinema every now and then. I've been to 4 concerts, and I'm definetely going to visit more of them before I die. Call it petty crime or whatever, but I seriously feel like I can pirate every now and then without ever doing any harm, and if everyone did the same as me I still feel like the industries would be 100% fine.

Pretty much this, OP

Companies invested a lot in PR to help and make the image of piracy really really bad. And it worked.

What I like about pirated software and movies is that the quality often exceeds that of bought stuff quite significantly. When looking for music, you get crystal clear FLACs as a pirate. When buying on iTunes, you're stuck with 256 kbps AAC. Which isn't exactly bad, but I would expect more for the price. With movies I always remember how I had to watch bagillions of nasty ads on DVD and Blu-Ray. Pirated movies don't have that. It became less of a problem with digital movies. Then there are games. When you buy a game for PC, you get DRM and other shit like there's no tomorrow. I don't want steam, I don't want Origin and I don't want Rockstar Social Club or any other shit. With pirated games, that is possible. It goes to a point where I buy stuff and then get the pirated version anyway, because it's just less of a hassle. You also don't have problems with servers shutting down making your game unplayable. You don't have to mess with always online. The publishers want to fight pirates with all that stuff. But in fact, they are just raising the worth of pirated copies.

So yai for pirates for removing shit from our software. But I still buy my stuff or lend movies on iTunes. I have the money though. When I was in school back in the days, that was a whole different story. I just couldn't afford games or anything like that, so I pirated. I don't feel bad because of it. I would have never played Civ 2 otherwise. And if I wouldn't have played that, I wouldn't have bought Civ 4 and Civ 5. And that's just one example.

It's not an easy topic, but I don't think piracy is bad per se.

Stop playing pirated video games and do some study/apply for a new job that'll bring you a better income? :p

I don't pirate at all now. It's something i left behind after I graduated. IT was mainly TV shows I downloaded, but part of that was we had one communal TV for several hundred people in the dorm hahah.

I do think if you can afford to pay for something you should do. But most people who I know who pirate everything could actually afford to buy the stuff. That really annoys me. I do agree that an illegal download most definitely does not equal a lost sale though. So when "we lost£X billion to piracy"comes up, that is utter bull.

If you do pirate something and love it though, you really should buy it. Although the gist of OP is they're rich and it hurts no one. There is a reason there are games which bombed commercially but have huge cult followings wanting sequels that will likely never be greenlit.

Lets say your a farmer, with an abundance of food you feed the dogs the horses the cows (all animals that work fof you) and you still have alot to sell and go around. Now the only problem is that this big raccoon always seems to get in and eat a small percentage of your crop he tells his friends who also steals a percentage of your crops, throughout all your efforts you cant stop those dam racoons they dont deserve your crops they do nothing for you. Thats piracy in a nutshell

Absolutely not. I only pirate good stuff that I know I will enjoy. I certainly don't want to waste my time and disc space on a ton of crap that's floating around.

I am just saying that I would not pay for that good stuff either:

- Good movie - I'm not going to the movie theater, paying ridiculous ticket prices to get bothered by people talking, chewing or texting. I'm certainly not paying for a DVD towatch a movie once or twice and then it collects dust on the shelf.    Find it, download it, watch it, delete it. 

- TV series - I'm not going to wait for a TV network in my country to buy the show, then wait for an assigned month, day or hour to watch it or record it. Find it, download it, watch it, delete it. If it's bad, forget it, if it's good keep watching new episodes.

- Music - I've been pirating music for 30 years, sure in the beginning you had to put up with crap quality of cassette tapes, but I don't see a reason to pay €15-20 for a CD that might have a couple of good songs, and I'm certainly not paying one euro per song. There is very little quality music out there anyway, I'm certainly not downloading every crappy album.

As for underlined: I work. I just think that I can spend my money on other things if I don't spend it on things that I can get for free. And I don't really give a crap if it's wrong or right, it's my duty to pirate it and company's duty to prevent me from doing it. Sometimes they are successful, most of the times they're not. It has nothing to do with being a kid, it has everything to do with not wanting to pay for things.

And you and all the rest can simply go around moralizing and frowning upon me and the like, it does not really bother me. I never attempted to hide my true intentions, they are written right here.

Not quite. Automated downloading and deleting as part of the process of streaming is legal, doesn't matter what site you're using. User controlled downloading, watching/listening and deleting (or not because it's user choice) is illegal. 

The original piracy was basically defined by the type of flag a ship was displaying. If a ship was displaying a country's flag then it was an act of war (or taxation), and accepted unde rthe rules of engagement. If the ship was not displaying a country's flag it was piracy, and of course the victim couldn't blame a country for losing their stuff. So piracy has always been all about the legal nuances.

yup.

using the argument of "if just one person/a few people do it it doesn't make a difference" is flawed as it infers that the action is acceptable for all.

some more spanners into the argument.

Why are set top boxes with recording functionality legal to sell? Isn't that pirating stuff you see on tv to a device you have at home?

borrowing original content from a fried to enjoy that doesn't belong to you, is that not stealing revenue from sales to to original IP owner?