I often get a used copy because some Japanese ps2/psp games are between $50 and $70 new. It's just not worth it to me and a well-preserved copy for half that price is what I'd really rather have.

Alterego-X said: 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.

Right... so, in the first case, where does this infinite money come from on the first parties? So... I like Atlus and the games they make. How's about I leave my system running for a week straight with an Atlus game in it? So someone has to pay $168 to Atlus for this week. I do this, say, 4 times, and that's $672- more than any current system on the market with a $300 markup. At this point, they (1st parties) are going to be selling time to play, rather than systems. Otherwise, there's no incentive to release a system at all, if it opens you up to payout liabilities that can easily far exceed the total revenue from a system sale.

The second case still falls to an argument I made prior. Say we do only have 3 companies left. (Whom they are is irrelevant.) What incentive do any of these companies have to make a game for an existing system, if they won't see any ROI from it? They won't. It will again push us back to the 1 system, 1 game method. After all, I certainly wouldn't spend $10 million making a game that I won't see anything come back on. If I want to see money come back to me from it, I'll have to make it on a new system, forcing people to buy the upgraded (?) hardware.

Millennium said: Kirameo 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. 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. The used games industry doesn't hurt the industry at all, because the industry has no right to prevent resale. This works exactly like any physical product: if you buy, for example, a couch, the maker of the couch cannot prevent you from reselling it, even if that might "deprive" the maker of a further sale. No one would argue that this hurts the furniture industry, which faces far greater manufacturing costs than the game industry does; therefore it does not hurt the game industry either. The entire point of the first-sale doctrine is, much like the rest of copyright, an attempt to make buying and selling intellectual property as similar as possible to buying and selling physical property, and that is why resale is fair use. But this also extends further: a furniture maker cannot prevent resale, but it (and its associated stores) can take steps to prevent theft, which does hurt the industry, just as the theft of games does.

 

There's a difference. Software doesn't deteriorate as physical objects do. So buying an used game and a new game are almost the same thing, the difference is that one is cheaper. In the other hand, a couch will deteriorate over time. And you don't see people "Hey, I bought this couch and I finished it yesterday so I'm selling it!". And you wouldn't download a car :)

I'm just rambling.

the only game i eer pirated wad CoD 4 and then later i deleted it :P but i usually dl songs and programs like sony vegas for editing or the photoshop program but anyways i bought those again (the real product with actual money) lol since in my country u can barely find them or its highly overpriced :P and i hate buying stuff from the internet here thats why i want to go to USA but anyways... the only things i pirate are songs but i usually buy the CDs but its faster to just dl it off the internet too lol limewire FTW!

Hey, you're getting paid to report pirates too?

Cypher1980 said: Millennium said: Cypher1980 said: 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 ? Yes, yes it is. The way that copyright fundamentally works is that any copy made of a work belongs, initially, to the rightsholder. They can do whatever they want with it -license it out, sell it, destroy it, or whatever- but it is theirs. If you make a copy and do not have some sort of arrangement with them or some other legitimate right (i.e. backup, installation, time-shifting, compatibility, or the handful of other very specific acts collectively known as "fair use"), then you must render it up to them immediately, or else you have stolen that copy. Piracy is theft, plain and simple. "Making a copy" does not prevent this; in fact, that copy what makes it theft in the first place. Pirates are nothing more than common thieves. I had no idea it was so serious. But if so why not just convict the pirates for theft in the courts. Its a much more serious offence than copyright infringement. The message would then be loud and clear that piracy is a serious crime.

You have never been in Canada, or Russia , or Netherlands because there and here it is a crime to distribute copyrighted materials not download them so the distrubotours are in red heat not piraters.

 

And as long as its not a crime and it doesnt hurt the companies I like there's nothin wrong with it.

Cypher1980 said: Millennium said: Cypher1980 said: 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 ? Yes, yes it is. The way that copyright fundamentally works is that any copy made of a work belongs, initially, to the rightsholder. They can do whatever they want with it -license it out, sell it, destroy it, or whatever- but it is theirs. If you make a copy and do not have some sort of arrangement with them or some other legitimate right (i.e. backup, installation, time-shifting, compatibility, or the handful of other very specific acts collectively known as "fair use"), then you must render it up to them immediately, or else you have stolen that copy. Piracy is theft, plain and simple. "Making a copy" does not prevent this; in fact, that copy what makes it theft in the first place. Pirates are nothing more than common thieves. I had no idea it was so serious. But if so why not just convict the pirates for theft in the courts. Its a much more serious offence than copyright infringement. The message would then be loud and clear that piracy is a serious crime.

Perhaps they should, then. I do think that the balance of copyright is currently skewed more toward producers than it ought to be, to the point where I believe that DRM in any form should be illegal as an infringement on the rights of legitimate users. But there is still a difference between legitimate use and theft.

The works of RMS, who I'm sure a lot of the thieves here have read and taken as "inspiration"- are not a justification for piracy. They never once argue that software should not be sold. If anything, they argue for IP to mimic physical property much more closely than it currently does, with copies rather than licenses being the product for sale. Revisionist interpretations completely miss the point of what he was trying to say, and represent a serious twisting of his words for the sake of LOL I GET GAEMS 4 FREE FIGHT THE POWAH. It's reprehensible.

Kirameo said: dunno001 said: Kirameo said: dunno001 said: 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. I'm not going to the used market, as, unlike piracy, used games are legal to buy, and for every argument against, there's one for. That's something that nobody's going to agree on. And let's be honest- if someone traded in a game after a week, that means it wasn't worth keeping to them. As for buying habits, that's also going to vary from person to person. I have a roommate who used to pirate stuff, that has stopped of free will, and is trying to buy legit physical copies of everything he ever pirated. Conversely, I'm also trying to talk the other roommate into not getting FF13 at all, or, if she insists, waiting to get a used copy. (I expect used copies to start showing up about 2 days after release.) But why would you get an used copy? I mean, it's almost the same thing as piracy because the company does not receive money and you get the game. The difference is that you are getting a physical copy (while pirats do not) and the seller of the game gets benefited.

It's far from the same thing as a pirated copy in my eyes. My goal in getting the software (in this case) is not to support the developer, but to do things right, and by right, I mean:
-Legally. I have a copy of the game that has been authorized by the rights holder to exist.
-Resale value. Should I choose to get rid of the game, it can be fairly resold without crossing any IP laws.
-No modding. In the case of FF13, we'd be getting the 360 version. If the system is modded and MS detects it, then it gets bricked from online, for violation of the MS TOS.
-Physical copy. Yeah, you mentioned this, but it can be put on a shelf with other games and look good.

So no, there is a significant difference from piracy and buying used. Besides, didn't you say that if you couldn't get a used copy, you'd probably buy new? What's to say that my removing the used copy means someone else wouldn't buy new instead of that used copy I got?

Like I'm gonna pay a few thousand bucks to use Adobe's software.

Kirameo said: Millennium said: Kirameo 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. 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. The used games industry doesn't hurt the industry at all, because the industry has no right to prevent resale. This works exactly like any physical product: if you buy, for example, a couch, the maker of the couch cannot prevent you from reselling it, even if that might "deprive" the maker of a further sale. No one would argue that this hurts the furniture industry, which faces far greater manufacturing costs than the game industry does; therefore it does not hurt the game industry either. The entire point of the first-sale doctrine is, much like the rest of copyright, an attempt to make buying and selling intellectual property as similar as possible to buying and selling physical property, and that is why resale is fair use. But this also extends further: a furniture maker cannot prevent resale, but it (and its associated stores) can take steps to prevent theft, which does hurt the industry, just as the theft of games does.   There's a difference. Software doesn't deteriorate as physical objects do. So buying an used game and a new game are almost the same thing, the difference is that one is cheaper. In the other hand, a couch will deteriorate over time. And you don't see people "Hey, I bought this couch and I finished it yesterday so I'm selling it!". And you wouldn't download a car :) I'm just rambling.

Not all physical objects deteriorate so readily. That's one of the reasons gold and jewels and similar objects are considered so precious. Obviously these things still deteriorate over time -all things do- but not to any appreciable degree. Some even get more valuable as they get older. I used a couch as a familiar example that most people probably have, and while it does deteriorate over time, people often get a great deal of use out of it: it's a valuable physical object.

It's true that people often resell games much more quickly than many other objects. However, this isn't relevant. People resell things when they no longer have any use for them, and if games have so little replay value that people turn it over in a day or two, that's the fault (and problem) of the game maker and nobody else.

By the way, I would download a car if I could, and if it was legal to do so. Home manufacturing is a fascinating field, and it's interesting to see how things are starting to grow in that direction.