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Forums - PC Discussion - Why is there so much negativity toward piracy?

 

Have you ever pirated anything?

Yes 124 73.37%
 
No 45 26.63%
 
Total:169

It's wrong but part of the system, piracy will always be a thing



                                                                                     

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Because it is stealing. No matter how you want to rationalize it, you do not have the right to take the property of another (physical or intellectual) without restitution. If you feel the price is unfair, you have the option of not buying it. This isn't a life sustaining product we're talking about, so don't use that "oh but Sony/Microsoft/whoever is so rich " argument.

Now have I pirated stuff? Absolutely. But, I'm not going to pretend it was in any way justified.



ps3-sales! said:
KLAMarine said:
ps3-sales! said:

I don't pirate for my Ps4.

Would you if you had the chance?

I would not. That might sound ludacrious and hypothetical BS; but truely I would not. I enjoy giving certain people money for their crafted games. Supporting my favorite developer like Naughty Dog who in interviews have impressed me with their general love for gaming; or those indie studios for a few hours 100% worth my $15 like Thatgamecompany and Journey.

Would you be okay with others pirating games from Naughty Dog or Thatgamecompany?



ps3-sales! said:

Stop acting so high and mighty. Would the industry fail if everyone pirated things? Duh. Will that ever happen? No.

 

So a little bit of crime is morally acceptable. I think you confuse the difference between a socially tolerable level of crime and and moral acceptance of a certain level of crime. At this point in time it is not possible to eradicate crime, so social institutions are merely trying to stop it from getting out of hand. So the moral pradigm is that as long as crime stays below a certain level society can function reasonably well. But that's not to say that it is socially acceptable to commit crimes, so long as it's only a small group of people doing it.

If you want a new model for copyable products that are subject to copyright controls rather than discrete ownership controls, then you should be strongly advocating for that. But you should not be committing crimes as part of your crusade. I happen to think that the current copyright contruct is bad, but I still pay for content if there isn't a legal way of getting it (or similar) for free. I don't use pirated MSOffice, I use OpenOffice. I don't download movies / TV shows (which is illegal), I watch free streaming content (which is legal), though I do  also subscribe to paid streaming services (Netflix).

Personally I think Netflix and the like should have a free version (with ads and sub-HD quality) and a piad version (ad free and HD quality). People will still tend to go for the paid version because they don't want the ads and they want the HD quality. But for people with more limited finances the content is still available in a legit form. 



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

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LuckyTrouble said:
TheDarkShape said:
ps3-sales! said:
TheGoldenBoy said:
It's stealing.

I don't believe I need to explain to you why stealing is wrong.


You are the reason why the 1% laughs at people. 

If you want to fork over $15 for that new music album or movie to makes millionaires  more millions, have fun.

Christ, you're a moron.

Hi there.  I'm one of those non-millionaires who works on movies, and I've absolutely lost work because projects were shut down due to lack of money stemming from, you guessed it, piracy.

You're a thief.  Own it.

Tastes salty. You may have been told the project got shutdown due to piracy, but the fact is, if something is worth buying, people will spend money on it. You only have yourself to blame if you turn out a product nobody wants that nobody buys. If it never went up for piracy, that just means there would be almost no audience rather than the small one it got.

If you want to be bitter and blame piracy, you can do it all day everyday, standing on a street corner shouting through a megaphone in your nearest big city's downtown. Recognize that you're wrong though. Piracy is not substantial enough to finanically impact a project, and even then, you make the entirely wrong assumption that every download is a lost sale. Demand for a product and demand for a paid product are two very different things.


Thank you.  Please tell me more about the situation that I went through that you, in fact, did not.



Intel i7-8086k @ 5.1 GHz | Asus Maximus X Hero | 32GB Ballistix Sport LT 2400Mhz RAM | Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti

KLAMarine said:
ps3-sales! said:
KLAMarine said:
ps3-sales! said:

I don't pirate for my Ps4.

Would you if you had the chance?

I would not. That might sound ludacrious and hypothetical BS; but truely I would not. I enjoy giving certain people money for their crafted games. Supporting my favorite developer like Naughty Dog who in interviews have impressed me with their general love for gaming; or those indie studios for a few hours 100% worth my $15 like Thatgamecompany and Journey.

Would you be okay with others pirating games from Naughty Dog or Thatgamecompany?


I don't really care what other gamers do. 

They would pirate for a number of different reasons. It's just X and Y. 



Currently own:

 

  • Ps4

 

Currently playing: Witcher 3, Walking Dead S1/2, GTA5, Dying Light, Tomb Raider Remaster, MGS Ground Zeros

ps3-sales! said:
TheGoldenBoy said:
It's stealing.

You are the reason why the 1% laughs at people. 

If you want to fork over $15 for that new music album or movie to makes millionaires  more millions, have fun.

Entertainment isn't a need, it's a want. I don't have to listen to music, play games or watch movies. I do it because I want to and thus pay for it, like you would any other service. I'm willing fork over $15 if it's something I like and will enjoy. I have no problem with that.

I also don't have a problem with people that do pirate. If you want to pirate something, go for it, it's your life. However, asking people why it's wrong or calling out people that don't do it makes you like like a fucking idiot.



LuckyTrouble said:
Bofferbrauer said:

Legally speaking, piracy is theft in pretty much every juristiction worldwide. While, as you explained, it doesn't exactly fit into the classic scheme of a theft, it could be still considered as one since you're taking something from the owner unaware, in this case the data of the software. And while they are not losing any data in the process, you're still getting something which you haven't paid or worked for or been given as a gift, which is another definition of a theft.

While not every pirated copy translates in an otherwise bought copy lost, the ratio is around 90%, in some cases even above 95%. Worst case being probably World of Goo, which has been downloaded over 16 million times yet not even broke the 500k sales. The Witcher games, which get released DRM-free on PC, also have piracy rates above 80%, meaning for every bought copy there are over 4 pirated copies. Which also proves that your third point is totally wrong to begin with. What's true about it is that piracy on current gen consoles is almost unexistent - but that's more because cracking their anti-piracy measures has become extremly difficult

Also, while the companies which made the games might be very rich, I still feel that pirating software is a big slap in the face to every programmer/artist/IT worker involved into making that game or program. The company might not be worthy of our respect, but their basic employes certainly do.

Your entire second point implies that you understood what I said, and then went the completely other way with it. You still seem to believe that piracy = lost sales. You can throw numbers at me all day, but it doesn't change the fact that those 16 million people largely would never have bought World of Goo. I'd be amazed if even 2% of all those pirates would have bought the game if they had absolutely zero ability to pirate. I admit I may have generalized a little too much saying they wouldn't impact if every pirate in the world suddenly went legit, but at the same time, piracy rates, on average, are much, much, much lower than those numbers. I mean, you're pulling out the worst of the outliers. The Wii was cracked wide open, and if I remember correctly, it was only a number in the hundreds of thousands for people that even downloaded the most basic program required for Wii homebrew and piracy. It goes back to the idea that demand for a product and demand for a paid product are entirely different things. If people think something is worth money, they will spend that money on it outside of flimsy justifications for piracy.

In the end, developers simply need to make a product that people want to buy. I know it isn't easy, and it's unfair to put all the responsibility on them, but if people think a game is worth money, money will be spent. Games like Rocket League are a great example of that.

Edit: Also, piracy is not theft. People like to call piracy the same as theft, but in the end, piracy falls under a different set of laws such as copyright and intellectual property laws.

If they never would have bought the game, then why did they bother to download it in the first place? And don't say to try out the game as World of Goo had a free demo of the game for this.

@the other bolded part: That's a bit of a trap, as a product more people willing to buy also means at the same time more people willing to own or play it by the same percentage. So while sales would go up, piracy wouldn't go down (hence why I mentioned the Witcher series in my previous post, highly acclaimed game by both critics and core gamers, yet still abysmal piracy rates)

I agree both games are among the worst examples, but that was also due to both games having no copy protection, thus making piracy very easy. They were also both acclaimed by gamers and critics, thus also giving much incentive to do so

I'm also not saying that I'm innocent. I was even a mod on an (now dead, it's name was abandonware-paradise.fr) abandonware site 6 years ago. But we also had a clear rule there: any game legally available on any other site (like the then still young GOG or the developers/publishers website) got it's download link removed and a link to where to buy the game legally. Which was in the end ironically the doom for the site, as most wanted the games for free.



It is theft. People who steal are nothing more than worthless thugs. I have never stolen anything in my life. It is wrong, period.



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