Yes I do all the time. Things are just too expensive around here. I have only bought like 3 original CD's (Simple plan (when i was a tupid kid) and 2 L'arc~en~Ciel albums from eBay(I lurf them)). As for videogames... The last time I bought a videogame must be when I bought pokemon gold for my GB. Movies? I pirate 'em all.

Gilgamesh said: 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 think the difference there would be that if you take the game back, your friend no longer can play the game, but that's not so if your friend cracks the game, then returns the game to you, which would be considered pirating on his/her part, not yours.

Gilgamesh said: 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?

That is not piracy, as while your friend is borrowing the game, it deprives you of the ability to play it. There was one license sold, and one copy existing for it. This is fine (even if a few companies may want to say otherwise). What would be piracy is if you made a copy of it for your friend, as your one license now can be used twice concurrently. I assume that Canada also has something like the US's version of right to resell? Loaning it is selling it for $0, with the intent that it will be sold back to you at a later time for $0. Weird wording, I know, but it does allow it to fall into the fair use part.

Alterego-X said: I honestly believe that the entertainment industry should change its attitude, not me. Nowadays, anyone is able to freely copy any software trough the Internet, therefore they should accept this and try to earn their profit from other services, such as quality cinemas, live concerts, game hardware (consoles and peripherals, etc. ), instead of selling copies of the software for money, based on archaic copyright protection laws.

Ah, but you don't see the flaw within. If software becomes unsustainable, there will be ways found around requiring it. Right now, yes, what is used is what you call "archaic copyright protection laws." However, if we freely allow software to be pirated, then how would any game company, except Sony, MS, or Nintendo, ever make money? Simple- they couldn't without drastic change. And the change I see happening? A return of a console property of the early-mid 1970s: a console designed to play 1 game, and that's it. Of course, this will drive the price of games through the roof, as each one needs to be its own system. The big 3 will also join in this game, as they have no incentive to pay to make more games for their systems, if they can be stolen and played freely. So, sorry, but I do want to keep those "archaic" laws around, as it keeps games in an affordable price range for me. (I guess the question to ask is, would you pay $400 for FF13? Or, for that matter, any HD game? How about $250 for a Wii game?)

dunno001 said: Gilgamesh said: 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? That is not piracy, as while your friend is borrowing the game, it deprives you of the ability to play it. There was one license sold, and one copy existing for it. This is fine (even if a few companies may want to say otherwise). What would be piracy is if you made a copy of it for your friend, as your one license now can be used twice concurrently. I assume that Canada also has something like the US's version of right to resell? Loaning it is selling it for $0, with the intent that it will be sold back to you at a later time for $0. Weird wording, I know, but it does allow it to fall into the fair use part.

That makes sense, but companies don't abide by it. If I buy a game and lose/damage the DVD, they'll make me pay for another license and another copy. Shouldn't it be possible to buy a copy for cheaper if you already have the license?

 

Mostly anime and TV series. Some Japanese music and films.
I have pirated software like Photoshop etc, I still wouldn't buy that sort of stuff because it's just to play around for me, I've never made any money out anything I've made with those programs and it's just too expensive to just buy to have around. The only software I've bought in my entire life are Windows XP, Windows 7 (both really cheap, and not counting 98 SE and Vista, which came with my laptops), OpenCanvas, ArtRage (I still don't make any money out of the last two, and they are just to doodle, but they are cheap and hence worth it), Zoomplayer, Directory Opus - prices for those were between $25 and $80 and I've put a lot of hours of usage in them.

And I've pirated games but as far as I remember there isn't a game I've managed to play for more than 1-2 hours (in other words enjoyed it enough) that I haven't bought.

As for the actual response to the poll - due to anime it's probably going to be "all the time". I don't really give it much thought though, it's mostly stuff I'd be able to watch on TV if I were in Japan.

dunno001 said: Gilgamesh said: 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? That is not piracy, as while your friend is borrowing the game, it deprives you of the ability to play it. There was one license sold, and one copy existing for it. This is fine (even if a few companies may want to say otherwise). What would be piracy is if you made a copy of it for your friend, as your one license now can be used twice concurrently. I assume that Canada also has something like the US's version of right to resell? Loaning it is selling it for $0, with the intent that it will be sold back to you at a later time for $0. Weird wording, I know, but it does allow it to fall into the fair use part.

The used games market argueably hurts the industry more than piracy.

 

If I buy a physical copy that is used (meaning that the company doesn't benefit from it) I'm sure I would most likely buy a new copy (benefiting the company) if there was not an used one.

In the other hand, someone who pirates most likely would not buy the game if he could not pirate it.

Millennium said: 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.

Pirating digitally is stealing ?

NJ5 said: dunno001 said: Gilgamesh said: 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? That is not piracy, as while your friend is borrowing the game, it deprives you of the ability to play it. There was one license sold, and one copy existing for it. This is fine (even if a few companies may want to say otherwise). What would be piracy is if you made a copy of it for your friend, as your one license now can be used twice concurrently. I assume that Canada also has something like the US's version of right to resell? Loaning it is selling it for $0, with the intent that it will be sold back to you at a later time for $0. Weird wording, I know, but it does allow it to fall into the fair use part. That makes sense, but companies don't abide by it. If I buy a game and lose/damage the DVD, they'll make me pay for another license and another copy. Shouldn't it be possible to buy a copy for cheaper if you already have the license?

I know that a couple of companies used to do this, though I don't know if they do anymore. I do wish it is something that they would do. For disc items, I would probably say that you need to send in the damaged copy with, say, about $10 to cover shipping, pressing costs, etc. However, this also ran into logistics problems of if you need to take a game OOP, or if someone has a problem with your game outside of a region you have say in. (I'm guessing this is why nobody does it in actuality.) Take this scenario: my copy of Persona 1 (PS1) got scratched, and I ask Atlus USA for a replacement. I live in Europe. Atlus would run into 2 issues- first, they probably don't have spare copies of P1 still laying around. (If they did, I think they'd happily sell them.) So they would need to press more. But, the costs for pressing 1 disk are, well, not feasable. Secondly, they only have rights to distribute the game in North America. Knowingly shipping a game directly outside of NA violates these rights given to them by Atlus JP. (Did Persona 1 get an EU release? If so, it's also in violation of the company who got EU distro rights.)

So sure, if these issues could be dealt with, I'd love to see it become commonplace. But it won't happen, as it's a cost incurred setting up the system for something that has a high potential of reducing revenue.

dunno001 said: Alterego-X said: I honestly believe that the entertainment industry should change its attitude, not me. Nowadays, anyone is able to freely copy any software trough the Internet, therefore they should accept this and try to earn their profit from other services, such as quality cinemas, live concerts, game hardware (consoles and peripherals, etc. ), instead of selling copies of the software for money, based on archaic copyright protection laws.  Ah, but you don't see the flaw within. If software becomes unsustainable, there will be ways found around requiring it. Right now, yes, what is used is what you call "archaic copyright protection laws." However, if we freely allow software to be pirated, then how would any game company, except Sony, MS, or Nintendo, ever make money? Simple- they couldn't without drastic change. And the change I see happening? A return of a console property of the early-mid 1970s: a console designed to play 1 game, and that's it. Of course, this will drive the price of games through the roof, as each one needs to be its own system. The big 3 will also join in this game, as they have no incentive to pay to make more games for their systems, if they can be stolen and played freely. So, sorry, but I do want to keep those "archaic" laws around, as it keeps games in an affordable price range for me. (I guess the question to ask is, would you pay $400 for FF13? Or, for that matter, any HD game? How about $250 for a Wii game?)

There are various ways around that, for example, the most simple one would be selling the three consoles for about $200-$300 more, and let all games be freely distributed on them. Third parties could get their share from the 1st party like $1 for every hour someone spends logged in a game (that was legally copied/downloaded for free). 

This would create a system where everyone would pay and get the same amounts, but would remove the insecurity of paying for untouchable software. 

Another plausibility I just thought of, is that all the mergers an acquisitions will result in very few companies that will all end up being first parties. This is where we are heading more realistically thinking, a few more mergers happen like Activision-Blizzard's was, and we will have 2-3 entities strong enough to launch their own consoles, and let Sony and Microsoft rot with their weak first party.