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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

[Neruz]

This has recently been proven to be absolute bullshit, which is why people tend to get uppity when someone starts screaming "BUT PIRACY IS COSTING THE INDUSTRY REAL DOLLARS", because, as it turns out, piracy isn't costing the industry anything at all.
Ironically, some more recent numbers released by various publishers and developers heavily suggest that restrictive DRM, unlike piracy, does in fact cost sales.

I don't have any counterproof on this, but my uneducated guess is that a statistically significant number of people who would otherwise spend money on the products is pirating them instead. It makes sense. Pirating things is easy, and the target demographic for software is big enough to contain some morally but not economically bankrupt characters who could afford to buy their stuff, but won't as long as they can get it for free. And if piracy was costing the industry nothing, why would they spend time and money on developing DRM? Spending money on being mean for no reason sounds like a bad business practice.

Because the majority of the industry takes the same view you do: 'it makes sense!'

EA has recently admitted they were wrong about piracy being lost sales. And have announced they intend to drop 'punishment' type DRM in favor of providing incentives and extras to people with legit copies, rather than punishing those without.

Now, i don't know about you, but when Electronic Fucking Arts admitted they were wrong about DRM and Piracy, i was pretty gobsmacked.


iirc, there was also an indy company that did a sort of experiment by introducing DRM into their game, and discovered that upon the introduction of DRM, for every 1000 pirates they lost, they gained 1 sale.

--EDIT--

The game was Richochet Infinity; article here.

[Grakelin]

Why are you so scared about it? Don't pirate things and if they do touch your connection, sue them. Easy.

The thing about suing people is that you have to be in the right within the confines of the law in order to win.

So if the government passes a law that says they can look into your connection whenever they want, you can't sue them for acting on this.

You might as well say "Don't worry, just don't be a Jew, and if the Nazis genocide your entire ethnicity, just sue them. Easy."

I don't have any counterproof on this, but my uneducated guess is that a statistically significant number of people who would otherwise spend money on the products is pirating them instead. It makes sense. Pirating things is easy, and the target demographic for software is big enough to contain some morally but not economically bankrupt characters who could afford to buy their stuff, but won't as long as they can get it for free. And if piracy was costing the industry nothing, why would they spend time and money on developing DRM? Spending money on being mean for no reason sounds like a bad business practice.

Pirating things is easy for movies and PC software, yes. Here are some things you need to realize, though:

A) The vast majority of people aren't actually as computer proficient as the people on this forum (Read: All Forums. Even the stupidest people you meet on the forum you frequent are better with their computer than a large portion of the populace). You would be amazed at how many people (even young people) still don't know how to use Word or send out E-mails. If the dude can't send an e-mail, he can't pirate your game. Have you seen the message boards on these torrent sites? Half the people there don't even know how to get their pirated software to run.

B) Pirating console games is a bit trickier, and requires you to mod your hardware and stuff yadder yadder. If somebody's going to that kind of effort not to pay for your shit, they're not paying for your shit.

C) Pirated games don't emulate the multiplayer very well. Games with online features or gameplay (such as Call of Duty, or Spore, or World of Warcraft) just aren't worth stealing. Call of Duty requires 16 GBs of space to steal (8 GB CD Image, which you then have to install), and all you get is an eight hour single player mode? Please. Even the private pirate servers suck.

Nobody ever seems to bring up the victories against pirates, either, possibly because people don't notice them. The first Mass Effect was unplayable in the pirated version because the galaxy map would break down and crash the game. You could play up until you left the huge city-station the first time, and then you were done. As far as I know, it's still like this (I have my own copy now, so I don't need to test this theory, though when I did test it, it had been out for a month). It's strange how Mass Effect didn't get any attention for defeating the pirates (though, I guess they had other things to talk about at the time).

If piracy is costing money anywhere, it's in foreign markets. Entire businesses have been set up across the Middle East (and it has been like this for over 10 years, at least, I visited one such store in Damascus in August 2001, and my roommate's boyfriend says they have several in Qatar) which are dedicated to selling bootleg video games for a dollar or two. Before you retort "But they're pooooooor", do some research to discover that these places aren't aimed at the poor Middle Easterners (who don't have computers anyways) but at the rich Middle Easterners (especially in places like Dubai and Qatar, where everybody has a maid and drives the fanciest car they can). Those people can afford to pay the same prices. Instead of trying to crack down in the West, producers should be trying to strike a deal with the Royal Families of the Gulf to get some regulations going.

[Neruz]

It's also important to note that regardless of DRM - in Spore and in World of Goo, around 90% of the existing copies of the games are pirated.

Imma quote Shamus for this part, since he said it better than i can:

How much does DRM help stop piracy?

None.

Well, "none" if you're talking about widespread torrent-based internet piracy, anyway. We don't even need to cite a number for that one. All we need is to think about it. The process of pirating Galactic Civilizations II (DRM free) and Spore (extra-zesty DRM) is exactly the same: You find it and download it. How can the DRM impact the rate of piracy when the DRM doesn't exist for the pirates? (Unless we're talking about DRM adding to piracy by causing people to pirate out of protest, which is another whole can of worms.)

The only possible impact DRM can have on net piracy is to (maybe?) slow down the cracker and delay the game from appearing on the torrents. But that number seems to have more to do with how famous the title is. Spore was available to pirates before release day, so it's pretty hard to imagine the DRM ever did anyone any good. If the game was released DRM free and appeared on the torrents (say) a day earlier, would that have changed the sales numbers?

But the kind of piracy it can stop is casual piracy. Simple friend-to-friend sharing of discs and installs can be thwarted by a simple disc check. Most gamers don't have the skills to edit an executable and bypass even something as simple as that, much less tangle with SecuROM.

But it's important to note that the 90% figures we see above come from both DRM and DRM-free games.

Grakelin, i don't know what you mean about Mass Effect being unplayable when pirated. I pirated ME a week after it came out; fully functional, no issues. I actually downloaded the pirated copy because Steam was being a dick at the time and refusing to download it, Steam decided it would download it after all about a month later, whereupon i ported my character over and killed the pirated copy, since i didn't need it.

[ein]

EA admits they were wrong about piracy.

...
Ye gods, 2012 is coming!
Prepare for the end of the world..!

[Neruz]

EA admits they were wrong about piracy.

...
Ye gods, 2012 is coming!
Prepare for the end of the world..!

I know, when i saw that article i sat in stunned silence in front of my computer for a full minute.

[Grakelin]

Grakelin, i don't know what you mean about Mass Effect being unplayable when pirated. I pirated ME a week after it came out; fully functional, no issues. I actually downloaded the pirated copy because Steam was being a dick at the time and refusing to download it, Steam decided it would download it after all about a month later, whereupon i ported my character over and killed the pirated copy, since i didn't need it.

You must have gotten lucky, then, because all sorts of people were having this blackout issue. Maybe the release you found was done by the fortunate sceners.

[Soadreqm]

The thing about suing people is that you have to be in the right within the confines of the law in order to win.

So if the government passes a law that says they can look into your connection whenever they want, you can't sue them for acting on this.

You might as well say "Don't worry, just don't be a Jew, and if the Nazis genocide your entire ethnicity, just sue them. Easy."

While the GOVERNMENT could just have you shot by snipers RIGHT NOW and you could respond with nothing but an armed revolt, most DRM folks are privately owned companies. Those operate on quite a different scale. If Electronic Arts tried to genocide the jews, the government would have THEM shot by snipers. Or arrest all their employees for murder, if they wanted to follow the protocol.

A law will never get passed that privately owned companies can look into people's connections whenever they want, because that would include everyone. Not just multi-billion-dollar megacorporations, but also individual hackers who founded a company for the legal loophole.

Also I have nothing to say to the rest of your post.

[Neruz]

Grakelin, i don't know what you mean about Mass Effect being unplayable when pirated. I pirated ME a week after it came out; fully functional, no issues. I actually downloaded the pirated copy because Steam was being a dick at the time and refusing to download it, Steam decided it would download it after all about a month later, whereupon i ported my character over and killed the pirated copy, since i didn't need it.

You must have gotten lucky, then, because all sorts of people were having this blackout issue. Maybe the release you found was done by the fortunate sceners.

If you're getting the 'lots of people having X issue' from the comments under the torrent, then i'm here to tell you that the comments on torrents are full of people who often do not even know how to turn their computer on.

If not; first i've heard about it.

[Virex]

This should be mandatory for anyone debating piracy. Skip to section 4 for the sappy details.

Most interestingly, World of Goo had a piracy rate of aproximately 90%, while it's quite the oposit of what people say to be a high-profile game for pirating (no DRM to speak off, reasonably cheap, praised by pretty much everyone who ever played it, made by a small company not interested in money grabbing etc.). Even worse, The humble indie bundle has a piracy rate of 25%...

Besides that, if we use Ricochet as an indication, 0.1% of pirated coppies would've been normal sales. This here's a pretty nice list for making estimates (though I think it's erring a bit on the low side). If we ignore Spore for the moment, we get a download ammount of aproximately 8 million coppies. Make that 10 million to account for things not on the list. 0.1% of 10 millions is 100.000 coppies that were lost in sales. Using a lifetime price figure of 20 dollars to account for things that are naturaly cheaper and things that end up in the bargain bin, we end up with a figure of 2 million dollars worth of lost sales in 2008, counting torrents alone. Might be higher, because an estimated 10 million downloads over the total of 2008 is probably on the low end.

Edit: Things are even worse on the Mac gaming market..

[Aqizzar]

Wait wait wait... There's a Mac gaming market?  Whoa.  Well, they should really expect that, billing themselves as the "indie" computer company and all.

Regarding the piracy rate of something that's as cheap as one cent, like the bundle, I think they're missing a crucial point that must be brought up in "piracy /= lost sales" argument.  Even paying one cent is still an infinite gulf of difference from paying nothing, because paying anything at all still necessitates a transaction.  Forget the rambling about how little effort there is and whatnot.  If you don't have a bank account, or whatever way to conduct an online transaction, you just can't buy stuff.  Ditto if you have no real money, as most people under 18/19 do.  So you pirate.  I know when I was a teenager and I didn't have any money, and by extension I didn't have a bank account, I pirated a lot.

Funnily enough, I was actually thinking of pirating something just tonight, Operation: Inner Space.  It's a game from 1994, so obscure that are no pirating sources for it, and they haven't even updated the website in two years, but still expect people to pay $25 for a copy, or $40 of the full package of editor and graphics.  There is an element of pride involved, especially when it comes to long out-of-date games like old Lucas Arts titles and stuff that you can't even find copies of to buy.  (Yeah, you can easily get Inner Space, but I'm talking about age.)

[Keita]

Heres a bit of a dilmema for you people that I'd like to ask to do with piracy.

I'm sure you've all at least heard of a game called Starcraft, it's my fav RTS game I have if not my fav overall game.

I've bought the game a total of three times. 'Three times?' I hear you ask, well, My first copy was when it was still considrably new a long time ago on CD. I played that game so much the disc stopped working about 5 years ago.

My next copy was one in a bargin at a games shop, '£2 for Starcraft?!? I'll take it!' Unfortunaly this was a bashed up CD that couldn't keep up with my constant playing and also gave in and refused to work.

My final copy was bought online, the first and last time I've ever bought anything online. I bought it off of steam when they released it as a special I think because of Starcraft II was announced but the game refused to work and Steam refused to do anything about it or even give me a refund (destroying any faith I had in online shopping)

TL;DRBought three copies of starcraft and for different reasons they don't work.

So my question to you is, after buying a game three times, is it ok to torrent a stable version online?

[Jreengus]

Hey, remember when Bill Gates wrote an open letter complaining that so many people had stolen his software it would be impossible for him to live off of selling it.

Man, it's a shame that business went under, it had some cool ideas.

[Keita]

Hey, remember when Bill Gates wrote an open letter complaining that so many people had stolen his software it would be impossible for him to live off of selling it.

wasn't that when they released software on tapes?

[Aqizzar]

So my question to you is, after buying a game three times, is it ok to torrent a stable version online?

Actually, you just have to buy it once, as long as you hang onto proof of the purchase.  One of my friends actually lost (won?) the million-to-one-lottery of being picked up for piracy.  He received a cease-and-desist order from Blizzard (or maybe it was the law on Blizzard's behalf, I forget) threatening legal action, with proof of his IP torrenting Diablo 2.  Except he actually bought Diablo 2 complete with serial number, and was replacing the disc he lost.  They shut up and left in defeat.

The irony of course being that Diablo 2 was one of maybe five games he ever actually paid money for.  That was the one they caught him on.

[Keita]

So my question to you is, after buying a game three times, is it ok to torrent a stable version online?

Actually, you just have to buy it once, as long as you hang onto proof of the purchase.  One of my friends actually lost (won?) the million-to-one-lottery of being picked up for piracy.  He received a cease-and-desist order from Blizzard (or maybe it was the law on Blizzard's behalf, I forget) threatening legal action, with proof of his IP torrenting Diablo 2.  Except he actually bought Diablo 2 complete with serial number, and was replacing the disc he lost.  They shut up and left in defeat.

The irony of course being that Diablo 2 was one of maybe five games he ever actually paid money for.  That was the one they caught him on.

I know that by law I'm ok, but I want to know what other people think about this.

Also lol at Blizzad fail.