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[Criptfeind]

Although the line is blurry, it is certainly there. I would certainly say those two are differing, because once again scale.

The idea is that, on just a single case, without looking at the whole, both of those are the same, morally, on the other hand, you most likely can't borrow thousands of songs from your friend, or even if you do, that means other people are not.

Downloading does not have the restriction.

Honestly, I know you guys wont like this, but I feel the difference in not in the morality itself, but in the ease.

Or perhaps another thing, downloading is not immoral, but uploading is? Which makes downloading immoral by association?

Edit: That's the hard thing about this, no single person can really do enough to say "Oh. You're a bad person for pirating." It's simple not a big enough deal. It only turns bad when taken as a whole. Which makes it very hard to make people understand what they are doing is wrong, but it actually is not. It only contributes a tiny part that by itself is really not 'wrong'

[Neonivek]

Here is where the issue of Piracy in videogames doesn't exactly line up.

The games that are pirated the most are games that also sell the most. As well people who pirate also do buy videogames and usually have a fund for videogames.

The reason why I say BAD videogames are hurt by piracy is because they are the ones where pirates would not buy their game because their game is BAAAAD! Great games arn't hurt by piracy because they are the ones that get the most sales and where the pirates would not only buy their game but would tell people about it.

Look at Spore, it was one of the most pirated games ever... and inspite of the fact that a lot of people absolutely hated it and that it was one of the most disapointing releases of all time. It sold GREAT!

There have even been people who have actually gone as far to say that Piracy has INCREASED sales for certain games by giving a game a larger more verbal community then it would have had.

Some's issue is that you are counting twice. Some are refering to every pirated copy as a "lost sale". However that is the thing, no one knows how much piracy REALLY hurts the videogame industry now. It is all guessing and what a lot of other people are finding out is that the "injury" statements are just flat out inflated..

[palsch]

This is an interesting case I just came across. The comments are interesting as well.

Incidentally, I own the software and love it. I used an old version that was free for around a year on my old phone, then tried the new trial version (lasts a week with all features enabled). I then tried to go without it for about two months before caving and buying it. There are a number of free alternatives that just lack a few features, including a default music player on the phone, but this one is easily the best all-round package.

In this case the developer has decided to go after the distributors while not making a relatively major change to the app that would make piracy near impossible by cutting off a small but significant part of an already small market. The community has even come up with ways to legally purchase software not technically available in certain regions (effectively hacking your phone to avoid having to pirate things). For most people buying the app is easier than piracy, especially when it comes to updates or backups.

I don't think most of the excuses for why people pirate or why developers shouldn't care apply here. Be interesting to hear some other perspectives.

[Neonivek]

I don't think most of the excuses for why people pirate or why developers shouldn't care apply here

It isn't that they shouldn't it is that the projections on how bad it is, is rather inflated (the estimates for profits if piracy didn't exist are anywhere from double profit to a bit more fair 10% profit boost)

When frankly... We don't even really know if piracy hurt sales.

In this case the developer has decided to go after the distributors while not making a relatively major change to the app that would make piracy near impossible by cutting off a small but significant part of an already small market

Oddly enough I've heard of developers creating anti-piracy software that actually was an attempt to prevent 3rd party software development.

Its the lovely thing about Anti-piracy, the vast majority is a attempt to hurt things completely unrelated to piracy (If we assume the company isn't stupid)... such as Resale, 3rd party developers (Not a new thing), or to reinforce their own programs.

[Deadmeat1471]

I think one issue is more important than all the others; companys having the long term support of consumers.

For example, i've played X-Com, Alpha Centauri, Civilisation etc etc my whole childhood. If the same company had made something say 5 or 10 years ago - I'd be awesomely optimistic. This has changed however.

I bought Civ V not because I thought it would be the best game ever, but because it was made by a company I trusted to do a good job. I believe with the money they had, the time, the company and the skill they did not fulfill my expectations as someone who has played all the other civilisations and Firaxis games.

For some reason company's all of a sudden think they can rush out a shoddy job which is half finished and is not up to the standard people expect, then they cry about piracy.
It's not just nostalgia, I am still playing X-Com, Alpha Centauri and the like. These games are so well made and well thought out, they never get old.
New AAA titles seem to be designed to get old so they can sell DLC and expansions better. This is not the way it was, and should be.

The gaming industry has changed into a mass production machine, theres no personal touch, theres no finess, theirs no attempt to listen to fans like indies do.

It looks to me that now that gaming is popular, its being dummed down and milked for all the money it can make, instead of being what it was in the 80's and 90's and so on which is an essentially niche 'gamers' market.
We've lost the games, the companys and the market to the average idiot on the street, because they out number the nerds, basicly.


All this has pissed people off, made them distrust the companys and not feel the slightest bit bad about pirating their games. They'd feel really bad for pirating an indie game though!

[SalmonGod]

I have mixed feelings about piracy in regards to small-time developers such as in that article.  On the one hand, it can actually hurt them, unlike the major corporate powers who will make their profits regardless.  On the other hand, it can also help them, and attempting to combat piracy is pretty much never a beneficial thing to do.  It's really up to the pirates themselves to make good or bad of it.  If in the course of pirating stuff, people try to spread knowledge about good things that deserve recognition and funding and try to eventually pay for things if they can afford it, then I consider it a net benefit in the end.  I think things often play out this way, but not always.  I think most often this comes down to the developer's relationship with the internet community.  I guarantee that guy is going to be personally disliked now by many of the people responsible for piracy of his stuff, and he's far less likely to ever see the beneficial side of it.

But the real issue is that we need to remodel our economy to allow us to use resources to their full potential extent without victimizing anybody in the process.  There will never been a 100% right or wrong answer on this issue in the meantime.  I side with the pirates, because I believe it's the best way to instigate that change.

[Deadmeat1471]

I've always said, internet piracy is just a small way of people expressing their disgust with capitalism by redistributing goods to themselves.

People will say, no it isn't, its about grabbing goods for free because you can. There are many people who could pirate, who don't. I would suggest the amount of rich people and middle class who don't pirate, vastly outnumbers the rest. Because they would not lower themselves to that degree. They feel they are 'better than' piracy, whilst the poor do not feel this at all.

In a society where a banker gets paid a normal workers wage in 30 years, in one payment FOR GETTING FIRED as a golden parachute on top of his salery, I really think pirates who steal a £30 game have nothing to be ashamed of whatsoever.

Piracy is a crime in law, capitalism is a crime in moral terms and in terms of unfairness.
Which law is higher at the end of the day? id posit moral law is infinitely more important than the illegality of internet piracy.


For all time the poor have been arrested for stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families while the rich aristocracy and capitalists bleed the poor dry while sucking the value of their labor out for their own, paying them a pittance and pocketing the very vast difference. And what  labor do they do for their vast share of the wealth? they simply have the wealth to begin with.

Capitalism claims everyone can become rich.


Our politicians, few aren't rich. We even have a house of Lords, unelected, several have crimial records, vastly rich and powerful.

The prime minister, born into wealth.
The deputy prime minister, son of a banker, given a job in daddies bank.

Are these the role models for our children? for egalitarian capitalism? hereditary wealth and nepotism by private school aristocrats?

[Loud Whispers]

Are these the role models for our children? for egalitarian capitalism? hereditary wealth and nepotism by private school aristocrats?

Yep.

[Deadmeat1471]

Are these the role models for our children? for egalitarian capitalism? hereditary wealth and nepotism by private school aristocrats?

Yep.

I will raise my kids on tales of their own worth as human beings and that a good days work for a good days pay is a honest and just thing. I doubt they will ever get a honest return on their labor in my lifetime, and for that I am very sad.

No human being is worth 100 times or 1000 times more than another human being. I don't care whether he is a cleaner or a doctor. Peoples lives should not be given happiness based on what job they were lucky enough to get into through their luck of whether they were born to a rich family or born to a poor family.

[Frumple]

There's days I wish that sort of reasoning actually worked

In any case, what hell does all that have to do with people illicitly copying the works of people not affiliated with major corporations, and doing so without any compensation involved? It's okay to kick the little guy because the big guy's doing wrong and they happen to be wearing the same style of shirt?

Don't mince things. Piracy is immoral in most cases, but only slightly. Corruption and the ways that capitalism has been twisted are related, not identical issues. Conflation is something you should avoid.

I'm not even against piracy, similar to how most people aren't against speeding (i.e. driving unsafely), but saying it's moral is blatantly wrong. You cannot take from someone without compensation or consultation (and agreement from the party being taken from) morally. At best it is amoral (in times of extreme scarcity or distress, ferex, thievery is understandable. Similarly, great, life-saving, technologies are understandably copied without recomp at times. When there is either great benefit or no great harm, the immorality is either limited or countered). In most cases it is strictly immoral.

E: Clarity: Immorality doesn't stop most people until it's of a certain magnitude. Piracy/copyright infringement is definitely below that threshold in most cases.

[Deadmeat1471]

You cannot take from someone without compensation or consultation (and agreement from the party being taken from) morally.

Not to be off topic but I would suggest that the morality of not taking from others works well when you have much to have taken from you in the first place. When you have little and they have much and the one with much has no justification in having much through their own labors, well I feel that theft and piracy begins to break down as being morally subject.

I would say it is more morally indignant to have wealth you didn't earn while some people are starving. As said before, many of the examples of the wealthy were simply born into it, rather than earn't their bread as the poor do.

E. I am against theft generally, as I do not think it is right to take others property especially if they are poor. I am simply stating that if there is a reletively harm free way for people to rebalance the disgustingly unbalanced wealth disparity a bit, well I do not see that as a crime.

In France people were guillotined in the hundreds of thousands, in Russia people were shot and a bloody civil war ensued. In the Western world people downloaded Spore onto their computers.

[SalmonGod]

You don't even have to say anything so ideologically polarizing.

I think many among the current generation of youth simply recognize two aspects of capitalism that are now absurd since technology has changed our context.

1.  That we are expected to be consumers of culture and not participants in it.  Allowing us too much interaction interferes with efficient commodification and marketing.
2.  That in order for creators to support themselves, the rest of the population must be prevented from making use of their creations to their fullest extent.  We must be forcefully limited from realizing our potential due to the way our economy defines value.

These precepts are absurdity to the extent that the majority of technically literate young adults make a regular habit of defying them.

[sonerohi]

I can't help but equate piracy and terrorism in my mind, because the way they get handled in today's world is just ridiculous. You cannot wage a war on terrorism. You can wage one on terrorists, yes, but not on the over-arching idea of it. Piracy will happen, plain and simple. It is simply a means of getting the music or game in question. The important thing about piracy that hardly ever is addressed is motive. I pirated Terraria. They had no demo offered, so I pirated it and played for a while to see if I wanted to buy it. I then bought myself a copy, and got it as a gift for several friends. I may be biased, but I think that was a good action on my part. Because of piracy, in that instance, the crew got five sales. At the same time, I cannot vouch for other people who used the same link as me. People probably got the game and never payed for it. If piracy were to magically shut down entirely, it'd be a very mixed-bag result. My older brother bought Skyrim for the PS3, then pirated it on his PC so he could mod. Is that a lost sale somehow? The best anti-piracy measures I've ever seen have been these old things called "demos" coupled with these antiquated things called "options". If I buy a hand axe at the hardware store, it is mine to use however; I can melt down the head and sell it for scrap metal if I want. But doing the same thing with some software is a crime, in some manner.

[Deadmeat1471]

One random thought I had from my days studying Policing and such.



Most people are law abiding not because they have thought about and decided on a morally rightious philosophy to live by, but because they fear the repurcussions if they are caught.
The reason this is important to the piracy issue is because it is very unlikely people will be caught, and if they are there are few legal legs to stand on in regards to prosecution.

The reason this is the case is because internet piracy isn't simple theft, it's taking a product and replicating it, while this is in itself isn't a crime - there are no lorries with people in ski masks jumping around to arrest. However if you share this with someone else, youre in dodgy ground.

But then, If i bring a film for me and my friends to watch, that is the same simialar to piracy, but no one in even the worst court would ever try and sue me for this.

Or what if I need to make a backup CD for something? My Master of Orion 3 main disc for example
has been scratched beyond repair for many years. The second I lend it to a friend, is this piracy?
On top of this the game doesn't detect the disk, so I have to use a PIRATE crack to play a game I have bought many years ago.

My conclusion:

There is no way to regulate internet piracy in a free society.

Full stop.

[SalmonGod]

Wow I actually forgot about it, but I pirated Terraria, too.  I already had my mind made up that I was going to buy the game, but I caught a leak about a week before the release date.  Why not?  I was excited.  It was like getting a little sneak preview.  I still bought it the day it was released.  I even had extra appreciation for the work of the developers, as I got to witness a lot of the cleaning up they did in that last week.  I also got them 8 more sales through recommendations to friends and family.