Piracy is wrong, however I still do it as I use the cost benefit analysis.

Go and buy a dumb film for 20 dollars or download it in a few mins and watch it for free?

I think piracy has had a big effect. The Hollywood box office is only decent due to increased prices and 3D however admissions are all down. However the overseas markets is booming.


It has effectively killed the dvd market as sure online is big but nowhere as profitable as DVD's were.

I download movies mostly, never for games for consoles as Its too hard, also I do buy apps for the Iphone and I only download old games for the PC like Age of Empires 2 or Rome Total War.
Music, its weird you can so easily take YouTube songs and make MP3's that it does not seem illegal at all. Is it?


Piracy is huge but mostly in the under 30 group. I know very few who do not do it but its mostly from teens and young adults with not much money. Ever since I started working with the bank, I spend more on entertainment (more apps and more going to a theater)

I really detest this part of any pro-piracy arguement, as they try to make out that they aren't actually commiting theft. Here is a (fictional) example why it still is theft: 

Mr Clucky has just opened a fried chicken restaurant where all the chicken with his secret herbs and spices. Across the street is one of Colonel Sanders successful restaurants that is part of his fried chicken restaurant chain. On trying his new competitor's chicken, Colonel Sanders is horrified to find that it tastes better than his own recipe. Desperate to maintain his restaurant's success, Colonel Sanders hacks into Mr Clucky's computer and downloads a copy of his secret chicken recipe. He does not delete Mr Clucky's own copy, telling himself he is not stealing as he has made another copy rather than taking Mr Clucky's own. When Colonel Sanders chain launches their new and imporved recipe with a massive marketing campaign, Mr Clucky's restaurant forced to close.

I know this probably not a great example, and I'm sure a fair number of people will pull me up on it, but despite making his own copy, Colonel Sanders has stolen from Mr Clucky as he has used Mr Clucky's propety without his consent. If you don't call that theft, then its industrial espionage, which is even worse.

There are issues I have with media companies with do push me to the brink of piracy (although I have never done it). I hate that the 'new' episodes of American Dad that I just watched on the BBC are actually 2 years old and the USA is already getting Season 7 whilst I'm only able to get Series 5. Also, in the last place I worked, I was told my a colleague that the store was forced to stop playing the radio in the stock-room as the music companies demaded they pay an (extremely excessive) fee for 'public broadcasting'. This was in spite of the fact it was in the stock-room and nobody on the store front could hear it. The colleague in question said as a result he pirates all his music now, which I can sympathises with as in cases like that the music companies really dont help themselves.

Colonel Sanders made a copy of something Mr. Clucky owned, I find that to be different from me buying a DVD, making a copy of it and then giving it out to people I know. Mr. Clucky didn't make his recipe publicly available, but in my case I made the DVD I owned publicly available.

If I can't make a copy because I don't own it then why should I have to pay for it?

If I take a picture of the Mona Lisa and have that photo enlarged to fit a big photo frame in my home, did I steal it? It is the same argument I brought up before. Was I stealing when I used to record the songs off the radio onto cassette tapes? They were made publicly available and I decided to grab some.

It isn't theft because nothing was actually stolen from anyone, but rather someone made copies of something they own and shared it with others at no profit to themselves.

Weren't you taught that sharing is caring?

You legally can, and thats even good for the artist. Its publicity for their current work, then their future works might have enough demand to license and release it here.

The other great thing behind piracy is distribution of discontinued works. That isnt legal though, but maybe it should.

Its down to the publisher and/or artist to license and distribute their works in your country, if they dont, then its their problem not yours.

Tbh most films have been pants lately, I can see why so many would pirate them, Hollywood has really gone down the shitter lately.

I don't do it personally, but then again I stopped buying DVD's and going to cinema.

I don't pirate.

Although what I do find funny... and what NOBODY ever acknowledges is....

Piracy is considered wrong because what is being pirated is trivial.

There was that saying a while back "You wouldn't download a car."

If someone found a way for you to download a car for free to where you made an exact copy of a car without pay someone....

they would win the nobel prize and be heralded as one of the greatest scientists ever, who created a service for man possibly unparreled by anyone.

We'd completely change how cars were created, either paying for car design through government funding, philantrophist funding or in general just a bunch of people seeing a concept for a car and throwing 5-10 dollars at the creator hoping they mad a better car.

Does anyone deny that?   If so... what if they found a way for people to download food?  Make exact copies.   Would we turn away replicator technology in the future?

I think there is a real arguement outside of both sides selfish arguements over what they want, to ask.... is the entire systemic way we make digital media wrong?  Should we look at how we would pay for essential items if it worked the same way?   Rather then either trying to hold back a tidal wave with a cookie sheet, or justify a broken status quo where creators fee robbed?

Truth is, there should be no artists but indy artists.  Who either get government grants, philantrophist grants, or grants from people working together to pay the bills for developers.   Well or are just your tradition Indy author, who creates games and then hopes enough people recipricates and gives money via paypal to make bigger games.

The counter arguement to that would be the Virtual console and it's ilk.   If I pirated Super Mario Bros 3 anywhere between the SNES to Wii era what's my motivation to buy it?

I agree, which is why I feel file sharing isn't a one-way street like the media and corporations like to paint it as.

Yes I agree, thats a good counter argument. But I find a bit sad that some great works are left in oblivion. We never know if those works will ever be distributed again. For example, I recently burn a copy of Dragon Force on sega saturn, i lost my copy and couldnt find it. I could have bought it used over ebay, but then, it would still not give anything to the publisher and the artists. Personally, I feel ok with downloading undistributed piece of work.

I feel this is where the major sticking point is with piracy, because of the fundamental differences between hardware and software. I don't think anyone debates you own a CD or DVD, but what you don't own is the content that is stored on them. You've effectively bought a license to use to CD/DVD to access the content for your own use. Copying the content and disrupting it, is going against the license that you agreed to when you bought the CD/DVD.

I also feel if pirates were in the other position, they would feel differently. If they invested a huge amount of time and money into making something, only to find a guy down the street was making copies and giving them away they would be rather angry. 

In you 'sharing is caring' arguement, you might be sharing but you're also competing with somebody with their own creation, which is unfair in every business sense.