Why? Price is a good argument IMO. When the average salaries in your country are about $600 a month, but stores try to sell you a movie for $50 each (if available). A music CD for $25-$50, games for $80-$100... You get the point, right? I dont pirate my games, but thats me, but I wouldnt blame anybody in my country for downloading things online.

- Hollywood/Media Companies should also be blamed. They are resisting change and not willing to move with the times..They rely too much on the government/legislation to fix the problem of piracy.

I am utilizing a utilitarian morality structure whereby there is less of a problem with me taking a copy of something even if the original owner does not wish it. What occurred is a zero-loss situation (though utilitarianism does incorporate morality into utility. By pirating it and justifying my piracy, i may be making myself morally weaker for other grey-area situations, and i may be angering the rightful owner of the intellectual property, both matters which have to be taken into account, and which is why i do not totally justify it)

But in practical matters, what occurred is a zero-loss situation. Being a non-customer, my acquisition of the product without the owners consent presents no loss of opportunity, of potential money, and theoretical dollars are all the anti-piracy lobby has to throw around, but of course they count everything out fully, representing all pirated copies as "lost" sales when that is nowhere near the case, and is economically unverifiable unless large-scale polling was done of consumers on their piracy habits (which is unlikely unless confidentiality were assured) across multiple countries (because remember, piracy is a lot more economically justifiable in second/third world countries where official distribution channels are even more inefficient than they are in the developed world)

Really, intensive research should be done on this, to put to bed the myths about intellectual property piracy and to leave the screaming media moguls (glares at Rupert Murdoch) with no leg to stand on.

/thread

There there even though your not a ninja atleast your not a Sega Fanboy....

(when the slinkey burns it's me realizing how sad it is being a sega fanboy in this age and day..)

boy this is so not my area for many reasons but when you show the cover of the album Justified then i can tell you allot about that, but i'll pass. maybe?

the group Nsync charged $45 for their cheapest seats, which was more expensive then allot of tickets and rivals the Back Street boys who's tickets for their cheapest seats were $25-$36.

well that was when i covered music and now i cover nothing.

with all of that being said, pirates should stop taking money from the mouths of families, and Publishers should give their artist better deals.

the female vocal group TLC made 89 cents an album when crazy sexy cool was released in the 90's, making $8m of more then $800m i, n profitand when all was said and done, they only took home 5k each lol. maybe it was 15k? then again this one shouldn't be news to anyone.

why should i make a work of art, only for someone to steal it because they can? the creator of this art spent more then enough of their lives creating it, yet you want to go out and take from them because you can't afford it?

well that's why i'm a late adopter, and don't buy games at launch. it simply cost to much, and i'm a cheap bastard.

in closing, if you did not create it, you don't own it, but if you buy it then it's yours. but if it says anything about copying this product is prohibited, then you've placed yourself under a contract and are obligated to follow the rules of that contract.

that said, it doesn't mean you can't sell your contract to someone else for a profit, and that's what your doing when you sell your games to Gamestop, or who ever.

That is why I pirate: I'm cheap

Piracy in no way, shape or form even helps the original creator. And the excuses that pirates are the most loyal fan is just mind-blowing. There is no justification to it. I steam all the animes and mangas online for my pressure there is no way around to it. I am cheap and I wont use the excess of everything is too expensive.

People pirate because it's easy and it saves them money.

These are the only two reasons and every other so called reason is just to make them justify it to themselves. with all these weak excuses they only point out that they actually know it's wrong, but they just don't want to admit it.

No-one is denying that they're not doing it because it's easy and cheap, but one has to consider whether it is immoral to acquire things easily and cheaply. Your morality system implies that the motive for your actions helps determine rightness and wrongness, when really the root of rational morality is about outcomes, pursuant to the verbose posts i've been running about the matter in the past week.

Am I the only one opposed to the term "pirating" being used in regards to illegal file sharing and distribution?

I mean seriously, it has nothing to do with what ACTUAL pirates did back in the day... namely attack and raid merchant ships, slaughter the crew, and steal all the bounty for themselves. They didn't meet up with other pirates and trade all of their stuff (a good portion of which was obtained legally in the first place) with each other in a friendly, sociable setting.