NJ5 said: nordlead said: I used to a long time ago when I was young and stupid and it was the popular thing to do and Napster was all the rage Now I work in computer software and luckily no one will pirate my software, but I can completely understand not appreciating not being paid for your work. Also, the whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyways" doesn't make it acceptable in any way shape or form. Just accept that you're being an asshole and pirate away. Then at least you are being honest. It may not make it acceptable to some people, but the point still stands that when you're pirating something you would never be able to buy, you're not having a negative economic impact on the company selling the software. That's irrefutable.

yes, but if you pirate it, you don't have the right to enjoy the other persons hard labor. If said person wanted you to have it for free, then they would say so, but that isn't the case. They want to be paid for their work for you to benefit and if you pirate you do them wrong. That is irrefutable. Now, if you want to pirate, don't try to hide behind these excuses to make yourself fell better.

Well that's definitely true for my brother. He owns like over 3000 CDs (not exaggerating here), but he also has a lot of illegal CDs which he can't find for a good price.

But it's not true for me :(

nordlead said: NJ5 said: nordlead said: I used to a long time ago when I was young and stupid and it was the popular thing to do and Napster was all the rage Now I work in computer software and luckily no one will pirate my software, but I can completely understand not appreciating not being paid for your work. Also, the whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyways" doesn't make it acceptable in any way shape or form. Just accept that you're being an asshole and pirate away. Then at least you are being honest. It may not make it acceptable to some people, but the point still stands that when you're pirating something you would never be able to buy, you're not having a negative economic impact on the company selling the software. That's irrefutable.   yes, but if you pirate it, you don't have the right to enjoy the other persons hard labor. If said person wanted you to have it for free, then they would say so, but that isn't the case. They want to be paid for their work for you to benefit and if you pirate you do them wrong. That is irrefutable. Now, if you want to pirate, don't try to hide behind these excuses to make yourself fell better.

When we're talking about things like teenagers downloading 3D studio MAX (a multi $k program) to play around, I find it really hard to say it's wrong. Especially when that might put them on a career path which makes them buy later versions of it later on.

nordlead said: NJ5 said: nordlead said: I used to a long time ago when I was young and stupid and it was the popular thing to do and Napster was all the rage Now I work in computer software and luckily no one will pirate my software, but I can completely understand not appreciating not being paid for your work. Also, the whole "I wouldn't have bought it anyways" doesn't make it acceptable in any way shape or form. Just accept that you're being an asshole and pirate away. Then at least you are being honest. It may not make it acceptable to some people, but the point still stands that when you're pirating something you would never be able to buy, you're not having a negative economic impact on the company selling the software. That's irrefutable.   yes, but if you pirate it, you don't have the right to enjoy the other persons hard labor. If said person wanted you to have it for free, then they would say so, but that isn't the case. They want to be paid for their work for you to benefit and if you pirate you do them wrong. That is irrefutable. Now, if you want to pirate, don't try to hide behind these excuses to make yourself fell better.

I didn't ever understand these kind of posts.

Just try to believe, that I'm not denying anything that I would consider shameful. On this forum, I always honestly wrote what I thought about things. I'm not pretending to be anything. I honestly admitted many things what others would automatically consider immoral, weird, or just pathetic.  I wouldn't have any problem with admitting that I pirate things for the lulz, if that would be how I feel. 

But I happen to believe that piracy is morally, economically, politically, etc, acceptable.  

There are many other people like me. But according to you, we shouldn't even discuss the possibilities, or tell our opinions, like if we would be some sort of cannibalistic serial killer rapists, or something similar, that is so obviously "wrong because it is wrong". 

I picked all the time, but now that I think about it, I've been using mostly freeware stuff for awhile now, so maybe not all the time. I don't pirate games so much anymore though, I just lurk for steam sales, and I have a real job and all so I really should pay for the games, not like I'm in school anymore. One thing really great about software on computer these days is that there a lot of open source stuff and really good freewares that are even better than commercial products, which is mighty sad from another perspective.

I pirate music, movies and games. Most of the games I download are older roms which are not available in any legal and portable form to use with my emulator enabled handheld. I however also download games that I want to try before I buy. A recent example of this was Torchlight, which I ended up liking and getting from my Steam Secret Santa last year. Some games/game content simply isn't worth any money. An example of this would be the Borderlands Zombie Island DLC, which should have been included with the main game.

Applications are one thing I hate paying for. I have bought a few but even then I get treated as a second class person when a much updated version comes out and my license doesn't work with it. That's probably my biggest issue with legitimate software apart from activation/deactivation drm. I think the only context that I'd buy legal software was if it was for a business computer or something was heavily discounted. That said, I do choose freeware where possible if it's comparable to paid alternatives (VLC > Quicktime, ps3mediaserver > MediaLink for example).

It's more like "People that buy a lot of music often pirate music, because they already spent all their money for it!".

@Topic

No, I never pirate things.

Here's another way of looking at pirating, technically the thing that's being pirated is just being shared not stolen, because in order for it to be pirated in the first place someone must of bought it. If I let a friend borrow a game I own is that not pirating?

I pirate TV shows mostly. I live in an entertainment vacuum here where I either have to wait one year for the shows, a year and-a half and get a gimped version (edited Top Gear that has had 15 minutes shaved off, mostly the funny moments) or I don't get to see them at all due to the apathy of the shaite channels we have.
But the shit teenage shows we always get in good time...

I used to, many moons ago. Then I came to my senses and stopped stealing. I've since either destroyed anything I pirated or sought out legit copies, and while I'm not finished with that second task yet (there's a lot of work to do, and some of them have gotten very hard to find) I'd like to think that I've made good progress.