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Yes, and it should be punished under theft.

Yes, and it should be punished under copyright law.

Yes, but it shouldn't be punished.

Certain cases are crimes.

I feel ambivalent towards piracy being a crime.

No, but it should be punished.

No, it is a natural part of a consumer's routine.

No, not at all.

Other

Don't Care / View Poll

[Bauglir]

-snip-

[bjlong]

Why does it matter that artist loose money?

Because if artists lose money, they have to make something other than art for a living. Surely a DF fan understands this principle? Thing is, Toady's realized the proper response, and most artists (or, probably more accurately, publishers), have not.

Which is?

[ChairmanPoo]

changing the business model to fit better with the current situation. And, lo and behold, it works.

[Phmcw]

My point Bauglir realy. And of course, the whole piracy will kill the usual buisness model is nothing but a lie. It may make it less rentable, but as long as we don't cu our entertrainement spending there will still be money to make.

[Soadreqm]

Why does it matter that artists loose money?

As always and as usual, technology has rendered something else incredibly cheap. Books became a thousand times cheaper after the invention of the printer printing press, aluminium price pummelled plummeted after we found out how to get it from bauxite, industrial revolution decreased the price of everything, and now, information is almost free to share. Not that free actually, we still pay for Internet access and storage of data isn't free either. But as entertainment companyies are powerful, they try to refrain us to use from using what is ours, by, basically, controlling any exchange of data. So we must fight them. Simple.

I thought the music and software industries were actually YOUNGER than trivially easy file sharing. In fact, they were only made possible by trivially easy file sharing; you can't make assloads of money from selling music if you need to carve the discs out of platinum or something. Film industry, maybe not. They had a nice golden age of glory before VHS came.

Anyway, if quality software was cheap-as-free to make, shouldn't the miracle of Free Market Capitalism push prices down? For some strange reason, the existence of free software isn't pushing commercial software out of business. Without knowing more of the matter, one could guess that having loads of money to spend on making their product is giving commercial software some kind of edge over volunteer-driven projects. Which would suggest that despite being information, software isn't free to make. Truly shocking. The same goes for music. And film. And books.

Entertainment companies are providing a service, at their terms. If you disagree with the terms, you are free to not use their service. If you need the service, pray and hope entertainment companies feel gracious enough to keep providing it.
Speaking of Toady One, I don't think his business model would work for the game industry. He's been making his game for like six years now, and it is nowhere close to nearing completion. Modern games with sophisticated graphics are fairly expensive to make, requiring game developers to take millions of dollars of other people's money in advance to afford it. They then work very hard, cutting features as needed to meet the deadline. And for most of its development cycle, the game won't be entertaining to play at all. Most games in Alpha state are horrible, unplayable monsters, and developers have to pay the testers to play them, rather than the other way round.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Piracy is the reason why I will probably never make games to sell (even for like, $2 a game) because I'll only sell a single copy. Then that person will go onto a file sharing site and then everyone will have it, and then no one will buy it because everyone already has it.

I will then have completely wasted my time.

[Soadreqm]

Ah, but if you ask like a million dollars for that single copy you are scheduled to sell, you can still make a decent profit if you manage to keep the production costs low enough.

[quinnr]

That's...an awesome idea.

If the entire world manages to raise millions of dollars, you can have the game.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Ah, but if you ask like a million dollars for that single copy you are scheduled to sell, you can still make a decent profit if you manage to keep the production costs low enough.

Name one person who would pay a million dollars for a computer game.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Or, as a respected video game designer, you ask for money beforehand. Once you get your full payment, you make and release the game for free distribution to everyone forever.

Ah, but to become a respected video game designer, who people would pay money to on the trust that he will make a good game, you have to pay your dues.

You work as a game designer and release your games for free, accepting general donations. You work as part of a game designer team which is selling some kind of subscription game (like an MMO or something that just constantly updates with new content, or microtransactions, or whatever).

Look at it this way. Pick a game you really like, where the project director also made a couple games you also liked. He puts out a press release saying he's going to make a sequel. Imagine that he has already made a good sequel, and you liked that too. So you're willing to pour $20 or $100 or whatever into the project so he can get paid and begin working on it. When he's done, you like everyone else can download the game.

Free riders are a problem. The people who pay into it may feel like chumps. But if you don't get enough people paying in, the project fails and nobody gets the game.

I know I paid my money to Toady. When 1.0 comes around he's definitely going to get an envelope from me again. I would totally be a part of a Threshhold Pledge thing. And I'm the cheapest gamer you will ever meet.

I have made figurines and wargaming terrain out of carboard and paper that I had lying around.

[Firehound]

Because it's not taking anything. It is, quite literally, asking someone what the content in question looks like, and reproducing it on your own machine. Trying to label that "theft" would be like trying to label "creating, at your own labor and expense, an exact copy of a given car, by asking someone who owned one what it looked like" as "grand theft auto".

Yes, clicking a download link and building a car are exactly the same thing.

And that would still be illegal, because you're not a licensed manufacturer of the design, and you're not paying the designer any royalties for using their car design.  Really, this argument just keeps coming back to a myopic, egotistical interpretation of a very shallow understanding of the law, where murder and theft are the only crimes, and if you can use good enough wordplay, anything you do is perfectly legal because it doesn't fit an incredibly strict interpretation of that shallow understanding of the law.

An apt description of the American Legal system.

"Your wrong because their lawyer sounds better then yours."

[Mandaril]

This far I've resisted the temptation to download anything, partly because of wonderful service named Spotify. However I'm extremely tempted to sometimes just download the latest episodes of my favourite series, for example. Why?

In tens and tens of channels, there are only few things I watch, and my country shows the episodes with YEARS of delay. If at all. So I can easily imagine why someone like me would download, if they did.

If I downloaded stuff, it would be because I have no other way to see the stuff I want. Seriously, up to year or more wait for a dvd/bluray release to come out because I can't see it from tv? I can take it now, but if the service providers don't make things better, one day I might not be able to resist the temptation.