# Opinions on piracy.



## Ohhai

I thought it'd be a great idea to start a thread about the taboo issue of piracy.

Now I'm all for piracy, I believe it helps give the consumer a "Try before you buy" approach, I believe that it'll take money away from the large business people, and the little known people in music will benefit heavily from it, due to it acting as free advertising.

Piracy in video games I believe benefits the consumer once again, by allowing them to experience the full (Or near full) game themselves, to see if their system can run it, to see how broken it truly is, which'll hopefully force companies to release higher quality games, and provide a better experience.

There's of course the moral argument "You're taking money out of the hands of people who made it! Wouldn't you be angry if someone got your work for free?" Which in my case, if someone could make a 1:1 exact copy of my work, then I say go for it, I've offered my services to people for free plenty of times, with no expectations of getting anything in return.

"But piracy is called so because pirates would do just that, steal."
U r dum.
I'm not even going to go into detail why using something's name as your basis.

Also if you borrow a game from a friend, or buy a game second hand, the money won't go to the developers anyway.


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## FTFADIA

I download movies and music but I don't consider it stealing because I only download movies that a) I would never pay to go see b) everyone I know has seen it already and I would never pay to rent a movie, I'd wait till it's free on tv so I can pvr it. For music I've never purchased a cd in my life and probably never would so they were never getting money out of me anyways. 

As for games I purchase all my games. I think it's bad for the gaming community to be pirating games because unlike music artists, almost 100% of their revenue come from selling the game. I do admit I had my ps1 modded to play burnt games but I was poor then and couldn't afford video games. I think this applies to movies as well where they're income comes from selling tickets. 

Musicians have other sources of revenue so it doesn't affect them as much I believe. I believe that pirating hurts the big names and companies but helps the more indie bands get their name/work out. But this is all conjecture cause I really don't have any stats/studies to back it up so I could be totally off.


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## talisman

I spent many years when I was younger trying to defend piracy and come up with reason why it was morally acceptable, but nowadays I don't try to defend it, because really there is no good moral argument for piracy. In the end, whether the product is digital or physical you're still getting the benefit from it without rewarding the creator or retailer.

There's plenty of criticism that can be levelled at the music, movie, games industries and I don't think their attitudes or attempts to thwart piracy do anything to make them morally superior to the pirates.

That said would I have ever discovered my favourite genres of music without file sharing? Would I have wasted lots of money on inferior games if I didn't have the option to 'try before I buy' thanks to all these release groups and crack writers? Would I have the ability to watch tv programmes unfairly being aired in the US months before the UK without people sharing TV captures?

Although none of this makes piracy morally right it does provide compelling reasons to favour it regardless of the moral dilemma it poses. It gives people power and control which over-zealous copyright laws and self-interested media industries seem to want to take away, so really there's very little incentive not to take advantage of this digital phenomenon (for me at least).


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## Cyrus

If it wasn't for downloads and piracy in general there'd be a lot of real good films that people wouldn't even know about. I remember a story about a producer on a film sending a message to a well known downloads site, basically thanking the editor for posting the film because said film had gotten a large increase in orders. I don't really care for music but I do my bit when it comes to film and buy the ones I like.


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## Some Russian Guy

the devil is not piracy... it's the mass media, that incites lemmings to buy buy buy, and most importantly... to consume the media itself


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## seafolly

I'm all for "try before you buy" so long as you actually BUY what you like. I think a lot of folks are guilty of reassuring themselves with that saying but never get around to making a purchase. 

With music, I'll buy the vinyl and/or attend a concert. I'm also a concert photographer so I'll toss in advertising, ha. I just make a list at the end of the year of who I really enjoyed and do one big shop. 

With books, I'll buy the hardcopy.

With movies I'll stream or download but if I enjoyed it I'll buy the DVD. 

With games I'll rent it if I'm not sure but I've never, ever pirated a Wii game/modded the Wii. I am guilty of pirating The Sims for my Mac. But that's it, beyond that I'm clean! I figure it balances out because I bought The Sims: Medieval for a friend.  In all the instances that I've pirated, I've been able to experience media I never would have due to being a starving student. There are certainly benefits to the lesser known artists for piracy. Hence why some bands release free albums.


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## Marakunda

I think it's alright...

I've pirated a few games, it was easy. It's barely a crime if you ask me, I don't see how it can be. It's simply downloading something off the internet, something anyone can do. 

That being said, taking money from deserving people is always a sad thing. If I really like something that much, I'll definitely buy it. But like others have said, to me it's sorta a "try before you buy" deal...


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## Scrub-Zero

The day i cry for plundering the cyber seas is the day i get arrested and put in a cell with a 6'6, 250 pounds inmate. But for now i think im pretty safe in Canadian waters.

I bought my fair share of legal games BTW since I've been gaming since the 1980s. Now i just don't give a crap anymore about buying legal. I'll only buy the games i really enjoy and know i will play again, and again.


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## werdiscv

I used to pirate a lot of games when I was a teenager with no money. Don't believe there's anything wrong with that, I didn't have any money anyway so I pirated because I was bored.
Now I have a job and tend to buy most of my games on Steam. Good prices (during the sales) and it's very convenient. I don't mind paying for such a great service. I've even bought some games that I pirated in the past, because I thought they were great.
About movies and music though... I still pirate it all, and refuse to give even a single dollar to the *******s in Hollywood. Unlike Valve and most other videogame companies, Hollywood just doesn't "get" the internet, or how business is done in the 21st century. They are desperately clinging to their old dying business model and trying to ruin the internet with **** like the DMCA and SOPA, instead of utilizing it like say Steam. Because of this, I will never buy another movie or music CD, at least until the whole entertainment industry falls apart or the dinosaurs in charge are replaced with more competent people.


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## Micronian

I think there are all kinds of reasons for internet piracy, but I don't think the majority of these reasons are as unscrupulous as the act of robbing a bank, or mugging a person for their wallet. 

Anyone advocating such extremes are either out of touch, or have a hidden agenda.


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## ShyGuy86

Ohhai said:


> http://www.eatliver.com/img/2008/3428.jpg


I prefer this more elaborate version:










Although, the piggies are still a lot cooler than the lame stars.


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## Famous

Gross commercial copyright infringement.... yes. thats the thing that makes me go $£"^$"£ expletive deletive....
I have uploaded loads of my music to the internetz, and guess what, 

On searching, I was thrilled to see my work being offered for download for free. 

I was less thrilled though to find websites offering my work for a premium. 

How do they expect to make money off that when its free anyway.?


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## centrino

I'm for and against it at the same time....depends on the situation.

When I was younger I didn't have money so I used to crack videogames. Now I'm older and have enough money so I don't mind spending a few dollars and saving time instead of trying to crack games nowadays that takes forever.

bottom line:
If you can afford it then pay for it! If you can't then crack it!


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## njodis

Online piracy is really not a black and white issue at all. I personally believe that there is a line that's crossed once you start profiting from the piracy.

A lot of people pirate. My computer-illiterate relatives download movies and music. I personally don't have any problem with pirating for personal use. However, if you are profiting from copyright infringement, yeah, that's no good. I personally have to deal with people ripping off my work (web content) and profiting from it, which isn't quite the same as pirating movies and music, but close enough. Sites like RapidShare and MegaUpload probably earn 99% of their income from people who use the services to pirate. Almost all torrent sites turn a profit, too. Some people physically sell bootleg copies of movies and music.

If I was a musician or similar and people downloaded my music because they liked it, then whatever. I'd have a problem if they were bootlegging it and selling it, though, or making a profit indirectly by having it on a torrent site and then accepting donations, etc.


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## Haunty

To me it depends on the media. Music bands can throw a concert and sell tickets and make money that way, but money from record sales mostly goes to record companies, a 3rd party, which is becoming an obsolete industry.

Also, posting a youtube video with a song in it is not piracy or copyright as far as I'm concerned, it's free marketing. I've discovered lots of songs on youtube that I went and bought off of iTunes, never would have known about them otherwise. Yet companies like WMG insist on removing all their content.

Software and games companies need to make money to pay for development. But not all are reasonably priced.

Same with movies, but theater ticket sales are the main revenue, and DVD/Blueray is overpriced cash-cow.


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## GunnyHighway

ShyGuy86 said:


> Although, the piggies are still a lot cooler than the lame stars.


coughcough










I'm a dirty pirate, to a large degree. I have about a terabyte of downloaded stuff right now. (Although quite minimal compared to some) However, I am a "Try before you buy" type person. I haven't bought many CDs recently, but the ones that really stood out I bought. I have every Protest The Hero CD, as well as the new Foo Fighters and Megadeth, to list a couple. There's a couple games that I have found to be utter **** and I am happy I pirated them because the game developers didn't deserve that money.

I agree though, once you start profiting then you're going a bit far.


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## Ohhai

and over 50 games on gog.com which I'd have never found without piracy.
Not to mention the few non-digital games I have.


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## Famous

You have a great resource database there Ohhai


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## The Silent 1

Haunty said:


> To me it depends on the media. Music bands can throw a concert and sell tickets and make money that way, but money from record sales mostly goes to record companies, a 3rd party, which is becoming an obsolete industry.


Yeah, its hard for me to feel like I'm supporting the artist, when I know they typically only get .10 on the dollar for every CD sold. But cd sales can help artists get more creative freedom from their labels, it ensures more albums, and of course theres other people who have to get paid as well.

As far as games go, I think pirating games hurts the gaming industry far more than it does the music industry as artists can still put on concerts for which they receive most of the money. Of course game developers make nothing off the sale of used games either, but used games sales still help fuel the video game market as a whole.


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## DeeperUnderstanding

I can see the arguments on both sides.

I definitely think it's stupid what the record companies are trying to do, though. Locking people up for file sharing is stupid. 

Plus, many don't realize that it's wrong, which is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater.


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## OldSchoolSkater

Skylaishot said:


> I think it's alright...
> 
> *I've pirated a few games, it was easy. It's barely a crime if you ask me, I don't see how it can be. It's simply downloading something off the internet, something anyone can do. *
> 
> That being said, taking money from deserving people is always a sad thing. If I really like something that much, I'll definitely buy it. But like others have said, to me it's sorta a "try before you buy" deal...


Just because it's "easy" doesn't make it legal or morally acceptable, in my opinion. And "simply downloading something off the internet, something anyone can do" is a fairly poor argument to me - there are plenty of things that "anyone can do," especially on the internet. That does not make them legal or morally acceptable either.

I find that people who use the "try before you buy" argument don't actually ever buy the products that they pirate, so that isn't valid in my opinion either.

Here's how I break it down - theft and piracy are the same thing, you are getting something for nothing through an illegal format and therefore taking money from the people who had worked very hard to produce it - whether it's game developers, music artists, etc, you are still taking money out of their pocket by not paying for their services. It is illegal and I try to steer clear these days, although I have done it in the past and I do occasionally load up my ipod with music from someone else's computer.

To me, the only real argument here is "I can't afford it" or "I'm too cheap to pay for it," in which case you should simply learn to live your life without it. Stealing is stealing, and I don't think anyone can justify it to me.


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## ShyGuy86

GunnyHighway said:


> coughcough


Yay!! Piggies!!



OldSchoolSkater said:


> theft and piracy are the same thing


If theft and piracy were the same thing, you wouldn't need copyright infringement laws because, you know, you'd already have theft laws. I'm sorry, but there's a whole jurisprudence out there on the matter. It's not like someone can just wake up in the morning and make two different things the same.
Please do observe the handy guides provided. Now with more piggies.


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## OldSchoolSkater

ShyGuy86 said:


> Yay!! Piggies!!
> 
> If theft and piracy were the same thing, you wouldn't need copyright infringement laws because, you know, you'd already have theft laws. I'm sorry, but there's a whole jurisprudence out there on the matter. It's not like someone can just wake up in the morning and make two different things the same.
> Please do observe the handy guides provided. They have piggies.


Haha (piggies). Justify it however you want. Pirating is stealing to me. That's what pirates were known for - stealing things that weren't theirs. My opinion and beliefs,nothing more.


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## Metal_Heart

OldSchoolSkater said:


> Just because it's "easy" doesn't make it legal or morally acceptable, in my opinion. And "simply downloading something off the internet, something anyone can do" is a fairly poor argument to me - there are plenty of things that "anyone can do," especially on the internet. That does not make them legal or morally acceptable either.
> 
> I find that people who use the "try before you buy" argument don't actually ever buy the products that they pirate, so that isn't valid in my opinion either.
> 
> Here's how I break it down - theft and piracy are the same thing, you are getting something for nothing through an illegal format and therefore taking money from the people who had worked very hard to produce it - whether it's game developers, music artists, etc, you are still taking money out of their pocket by not paying for their services. It is illegal and I try to steer clear these days, although I have done it in the past and I do occasionally load up my ipod with music from someone else's computer.
> 
> To me, the only real argument here is "I can't afford it" or "I'm too cheap to pay for it," in which case you should simply learn to live your life without it. Stealing is stealing, and I don't think anyone can justify it to me.


I feel I'm with you on this one.

We might be out-numbered but as an artist of sorts who runs their own business I really don't see any justification in piracy or copyright theft. A lot of the people I know who have downloaded movies, watched tv shows online, downloaded albums have hardly ever ended up purchasing them afterwards even if a) they really enjoy what they have downloaded and b) they have enough money to buy them.

Some smaller artists do give away some songs for free, and accept donations rather than making people pay for their work... but this is their own choice and merely a marketing tool to gain new fans. If they gave all of their work away for free they wouldn't make any money, and people saying they can make money from concerts don't really understand that smalls bands aren't getting paid much for playing gigs anymore... and some bands when starting out even have to pay the clubs and bars to play in their venue. So the only artists really making much money from concerts are the bigger bands that are already well established and can justify charging over the earth for gig tickets.

I've downloaded free sample songs that artists have chosen to give away for free, and it's a great advertising tool because it made me desperate to hear the rest of their album.. and I purchased those albums afterwards. To say that small artists have a different agenda to bigger companies and record labels is a bit odd in my opinion, they are all still businesses and still need to earn money.

There's a big difference between borrowing a dvd to a friend and uploading a film for people to download on the internet.. where your friend purchased a physical copy of a film and only you or a couple people borrow it (and then may want to buy their own copy soon after) but someone uploads a film to the internet for people to illegally download or stream and hundreds of thousands of people can instantly download that one thing.

When I can't afford dvd's, or to buy cd's, or to go to the cinema, then I just don't watch those films until I can afford it.. or I listen to the music on the artists website (bumping up their website hits) until I can afford their album or their single or to see them play live.

The way I see it is, if I really loved an artists work then I would be stupid not to purchase their work eventually... because if nobody did then they would never produce any more work.


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## Ohhai

I find it rather disgusting the counter-arguments are all about money, or even the NAME of what it's called, if you are making money not for your passion and love for the art, then I certainly don't want you to benefit from it in anyway.

If however you spend a lot of your time making music, and money is restricting you from being able to spend more time on your passion/hobby/art, then I sympathise with you, but hope that file sharing increases until the point where you're well known for your work.

I haven't bought an album from a huge record label in years, I only ever buy from small record labels or independent released music, my last album was about a month ago named "Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo school of medicine - Audacity of Hype" which cost me twice as much albums usually do because I chose to get it from the US from the people themselves, and even then they sent me the wrong album, however I got a wonderful message written in felt tip saying "Hey Harry, Enjoy the (Music note)! - Jared & the A.T. Crüe..." which made me extremly happy that I purchased it, and although I received the wrong album, I certainly plan to purchase from them many times in the future.

Also if you're going to go on about how it's called piracy, change the word to file sharing, because as we all know sharing is caring, regardless of legality.

"I hate all these big, silly rock stars who moan--at least they’re downloading your music and paying attention, know what I mean? You should appreciate that--what are you moaning about? You’ve got five big houses, so shut up." - Noel Gallagher (Ex-Oasis member).


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## OldSchoolSkater

Ohhai said:


> I find it rather disgusting the counter-arguments are all about money, or even the NAME of what it's called, if you are making money not for your passion and love for the art, then I certainly don't want you to benefit from it in anyway.
> 
> If however you spend a lot of your time making music, and money is restricting you from being able to spend more time on your passion/hobby/art, then I sympathise with you, but hope that file sharing increases until the point where you're well known for your work.
> 
> I haven't bought an album from a huge record label in years, I only ever buy from small record labels or independent released music, my last album was about a month ago named "Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo school of medicine - Audacity of Hype" which cost me twice as much albums usually do because I chose to get it from the US from the people themselves, and even then they sent me the wrong album, however I got a wonderful message written in felt tip saying "Hey Harry, Enjoy the (Music note)! - Jared & the A.T. Crüe..." which made me extremly happy that I purchased it, and although I received the wrong album, I certainly plan to purchase from them many times in the future.
> 
> Also if you're going to go on about how it's called piracy, change the word to file sharing, because as we all know sharing is caring, regardless of legality.
> 
> "I hate all these big, silly rock stars who moan--at least they're downloading your music and paying attention, know what I mean? You should appreciate that--what are you moaning about? You've got five big houses, so shut up." - Noel Gallagher (Ex-Oasis member).


Yeah, people do it for the love of art, or music, etc. BUT, that doesn't change the fact that they need to make money.

And people are arguing that piracy is not wrong because it's not stealing - call it whatever you want it's still wrong and illegal.

I don't expect many of you to see things my way, because then you would actually have to make yourself pay for music, games, movies, etc.

Call it what you want - piracy is illegal for a reason and I'm very sad that many of you can't allow yourself to see this.


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## njodis

OldSchoolSkater said:


> and I do occasionally load up my ipod with music from someone else's computer.


How is that in any way different from downloading the music from the internet?


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## leave me alone

If there wasnt for piracy, I would never hear most of my favorite bands - I wouldnt even know they exist. If there wasnt for piracy, I would never seen 90% of movies/tv shows I have seen. Same with PC games... I actually buy stuff that I like and which I know is quality.

If you are an artist and feel like I've stolen from you - lemme ask you. Do you prefer me having pirated version of your stuff or never even hear of you? Pirates are potential fans too.

People who use piracy for their own profits - now that is bad, I wont argue with that.


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## OldSchoolSkater

njodis said:


> How is that in any way different from downloading the music from the internet?


My friend buys an album - I put it on my iPod and listen to it. If i like it I buy the album and probably another album by the same artist. Downloading music from the internet would lead me to believe that this person has no intention to purchase any music by that artist.

And I stated that I did this to show that I am not 100% on the level either. But, in my defense, I do purchase most of these albums legally even though I could just keep the versions on my iPod.

I don't mean to offend anyone. Just how I've thought about it over the years.


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## GunnyHighway

What I dislike is the generalization happening here. Just because _*you*_ don't see people buying stuff after it's been tried, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I know a lot of people don't in general, but I personally know more that do.

Personally, I hang out in IRC with a decently sized group of guys from a computer hardware site called Hardware Canucks. Ages range from 17 to over 50, all over Canada. I can say 90% of us there do try before you buy, as we often talk about games there and people usually end up buying them after we've tossed around some torrent links _*if we feel the money is deserved*_.

Also, as said, I think it really can be helpful for artists. I wouldn't have heard of one of my favourite bands (Protest The Hero) if I hadn't "pirated" Kezia. However, I now own all three albums since then, the first two signed by Tim Millar (guitarist) and I've been to one of their concerts and a shirt. And if you want to bring money into the equation, where do you think they got most money from? Those three albums or the single concert and a t-shirt? (Answer: concert + tee)


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## luceo

Do small bands even get their stuff pirated anyway? I've looked for local stuff plenty of times and never found anything. Well, except for the stuff that the artists have chosen to distribute themselves. Also, in the past 5-6 years of playing in local bands, I've never met any musician that is opposed to piracy.

One of the other positive things about piracy is that it makes things accessible that previously would have been lost forever. I have a whole pile of obscure songs made by artists who were never signed to any label, have long since died and their recordings were rare at the time and are only available via second hand trade today (if you're lucky enough to stumble across a copy). Now tell me, who are you stealing from then? It would be near impossible to own those, except that some lucky people who own the original recordings have ripped them to mp3 and distributed them. There's so many more examples of that just in my relatively small collection alone.


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## Xtraneous

If I had the money to pay for Music, Movies, Games, etc... I'd pay. Simple as that for me, really. But I don't )):


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## Blawnka

I haven't payed for a movie in years. Why pay for a movie/music you might possibly hate? I don't see a point myself.


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## creep

Anyone who comes up with the ideas and puts in the work to create a work of art should have full say in how it is used and distributed, period. Whether they choose to market their work by contract, via record label or similar bodies or provide it to the public as a free service really isn't any of our business.

As to whether or not piracy actually hurts or helps the industry, I really couldn't say. Its hard to overlook though, piracy advocates are making arguments from a completely self-serving view point and never seem to have anything substantial to back them up. Anyone who wants something, never has to try very hard to come up for a reason justifying simply taking it. Then again piracy has been a concern for awhile and I haven't noticed anything like a decline in worthwhile creative outputs over that time. From an ethical perspective however its definitively wrong.



leave me alone said:


> If there wasnt for piracy, I would never hear most of my favorite bands - I wouldnt even know they exist. If there wasnt for piracy, I would never seen 90% of movies/tv shows I have seen. Same with PC games... I actually buy stuff that I like and which I know is quality.


Honestly, I discovered a lot of bands this way I never would have heard of and consequently went on to purchase a lot things I otherwise wouldn't have. That was ten years ago though, not quite out of dial-up age yet, where the computer would have to be left running overnight in order to download an albums worth of material. The internet has come a long way since then however and your arguments been pretty much rendered mute considering the number of free or fairly cheap completely legal resources allowing you to sample the work, often in full of almost any artist out there. see - YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm, Netflix, Hulu, the public library and so on.



leave me alone said:


> If you are an artist and feel like I've stolen from you - lemme ask you. Do you prefer me having pirated version of your stuff or never even hear of you? Pirates are potential fans too.


Don't care! Pirates are like that deadbeat freeloader guy at the party, who when everybody is asked to chip in to buy pizza, apologetically claims not to have the money but then goes on to eat more than their fair share. Really, who needs you? Real fans pay.


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## Charizard

I support piracy because I support public libraries and rental stores. It's as simple as that.

I think that you should be able to trial _every_ product before you have to buy into it. If I download a movie and then love it, guess what? I'm going to want to go out and buy a physical copy! There's a sale that never would have happened otherwise.

That being said, the people who pirate something, enjoy it and use it, and then _don't_ turn around and support the creator? They have no moral ground to stand on.


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## James_Russell

I love buying physical copies of records and CD's. I just prefer holding the CD or LP in my hand and sticking it on. And of course sound quality is the other advantage.

However i'm far from rich so do plenty of the time just download music. I hate to pay for digital downloads. With the exception of Lossless audio being an option.

I like to know money is going to the artists I love. Especially as plenty of the artists I listen to are very obscure and far from rich.

So yes Piracy is wrong. But I still do it. But I make sure that I eventually get the record.


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## Xtraneous

Osnap


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## leave me alone

creep said:


> Anyone who comes up with the ideas and puts in the work to create a work of art should have full say in how it is used and distributed, period. Whether they choose to market their work by contract, via record label or similar bodies or provide it to the public as a free service really isn't any of our business.
> 
> As to whether or not piracy actually hurts or helps the industry, I really couldn't say. Its hard to overlook though, piracy advocates are making arguments from a completely self-serving view point and never seem to have anything substantial to back them up. Anyone who wants something, never has to try very hard to come up for a reason justifying simply taking it. Then again piracy has been a concern for awhile and I haven't noticed anything like a decline in worthwhile creative outputs over that time. From an ethical perspective however its definitively wrong.
> 
> Honestly, I discovered a lot of bands this way I never would have heard of and consequently went on to purchase a lot things I otherwise wouldn't have. That was ten years ago though, not quite out of dial-up age yet, where the computer would have to be left running overnight in order to download an albums worth of material. The internet has come a long way since then however and your arguments been pretty much rendered mute considering the number of free or fairly cheap completely legal resources allowing you to sample the work, often in full of almost any artist out there. see - YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm, Netflix, Hulu, the public library and so on.


It doesnt matter whether you pirate it or listen to it on youtube, it is essentially the same thing. You are getting music for free, makes no difference at all. Yes, listening on youtube is legal and pirating is ilegal. Do I care? No. Also, this doesnt apply for movies/games. Gaming companies doesnt make demos anymore, so the only way to try it out is to pirate it.



creep said:


> Don't care! Pirates are like that deadbeat freeloader guy at the party, who when everybody is asked to chip in to buy pizza, apologetically claims not to have the money but then goes on to eat more than their fair share. Really, who needs you? *Real fans pay*.





leave me alone said:


> I actually buy stuff that I like and which I know is quality.


I cant pay for everything, though, I could never afford it. (this is why) Maybe later when I get a job, I'll slowly build up my collection. I already own few discographies of my favorite bands.


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## low

talisman said:


> I spent many years when I was younger trying to defend piracy and come up with reason why it was morally acceptable, but nowadays I don't try to defend it, because really there is no good moral argument for piracy. In the end, whether the product is digital or physical you're still getting the benefit from it without rewarding the creator or retailer.
> 
> There's plenty of criticism that can be levelled at the music, movie, games industries and I don't think their attitudes or attempts to thwart piracy do anything to make them morally superior to the pirates.
> 
> That said would I have ever discovered my favourite genres of music without file sharing? Would I have wasted lots of money on inferior games if I didn't have the option to 'try before I buy' thanks to all these release groups and crack writers? Would I have the ability to watch tv programmes unfairly being aired in the US months before the UK without people sharing TV captures?
> 
> Although none of this makes piracy morally right it does provide compelling reasons to favour it regardless of the moral dilemma it poses. It gives people power and control which over-zealous copyright laws and self-interested media industries seem to want to take away, so really there's very little incentive not to take advantage of this digital phenomenon (for me at least).


I like this reply. Seems quite fair. I don't feel good ripping off the creator but there's no way I can afford to pay the prices they charge. I'm not even working. I buy next to nothing.


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## Metal_Heart

creep said:


> Anyone who comes up with the ideas and puts in the work to create a work of art should have full say in how it is used and distributed, period. Whether they choose to market their work by contract, via record label or similar bodies or provide it to the public as a free service really isn't any of our business.
> 
> As to whether or not piracy actually hurts or helps the industry, I really couldn't say. Its hard to overlook though, piracy advocates are making arguments from a completely self-serving view point and never seem to have anything substantial to back them up. Anyone who wants something, never has to try very hard to come up for a reason justifying simply taking it. Then again piracy has been a concern for awhile and I haven't noticed anything like a decline in worthwhile creative outputs over that time. From an ethical perspective however its definitively wrong.
> 
> Honestly, I discovered a lot of bands this way I never would have heard of and consequently went on to purchase a lot things I otherwise wouldn't have. That was ten years ago though, not quite out of dial-up age yet, where the computer would have to be left running overnight in order to download an albums worth of material. The internet has come a long way since then however and your arguments been pretty much rendered mute considering the number of free or fairly cheap completely legal resources allowing you to sample the work, often in full of almost any artist out there. see - YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm, Netflix, Hulu, the public library and so on.
> 
> Don't care! Pirates are like that deadbeat freeloader guy at the party, who when everybody is asked to chip in to buy pizza, apologetically claims not to have the money but then goes on to eat more than their fair share. Really, who needs you? Real fans pay.


I love this post, I can't believe there aren't more posts like this. The amount of people trying to morally justify piracy is actually quite shocking.

People who use the "but it's free advertising and marketing for the smaller artists" excuse, need to understand that a lot of smaller lesser known artists do give samples tracks away for free on their website or let you listen to their music on their website.. Surely this is enough to decide whether or not you would like to purchase their album. Downloading a whole album illegally and putting it on a CD or your ipod does not count as "trying before you buy" or "free advertising for that band"... it counts as full on stealing. It should be up to the artist or band whether they let people download a song or two for free before asking people to purchase their album... and it is up to the artist or band to decide how _they_ advertise their product.

It's not up to you to decide how a person advertises their product and comparing that with how a library works is absurd.

If people are going to make stupid comparisn's, how about this for one;
When I couldn't afford to buy food every week (something completely necessary to my well being) I just went without.. I didn't go to the shop, steal it, and then say "well I wouldn't have paid for it anyway so it makes no difference" It's illegal, and not fair on the consumers that have HAD to pay for their food etc.

Now music, games, and films are not necessary for you to live.. they are luxury things... so why oh why is it that important that you must have/steal them if you cannot afford them?

It's one thing to have a copy of an album from a friend, or download a few songs here and there which I am sure everybody with a computer has done at some point...... but to justify it morally is crazy. If you're going to do something that's wrong, at least admit it's wrong than come up with silly excuses to do it.


----------



## Ohhai

creep said:


> Don't care! Pirates are like that deadbeat freeloader guy at the party, who when everybody is asked to chip in to buy pizza, apologetically claims not to have the money but then goes on to eat more than their fair share. Really, who needs you? Real fans pay.


It'd have been more accurate if you said the dead beat didn't chip in for the pizza, made a copy of the pizza, so then everyone could have pizza, even though some paid, and others didn't.


----------



## Ohhai

Metal_Heart said:


> If you're going to do something that's wrong, at least admit it's wrong than come up with silly excuses to do it.


But I don't think it's inherently wrong, I truly believe if it's good enough then it'll make most people buy other products of the bands, as Gunny stated he paid for a shirt and went to a concert to a band he would never have heard if it wasn't for piracy.

and even if you classified it as stealing, it costs the artists nothing, not every download is a lost sale.



> 'Q: So Bjork is not superstitious then?
> A: "You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and ****s everything up." Bjork gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. "God bless the internet," she adds.
> Q: And what about you, then?
> A: "I'll still be there, waving a pirate flag."'


----------



## creep

leave me alone said:


> It doesnt matter whether you pirate it or listen to it on youtube, it is essentially the same thing. You are getting music for free, makes no difference at all. Yes, listening on youtube is legal and pirating is ilegal. Do I care?


If I want to listen to music hunched over my laptop, one song at a time, pausing between each track to do a search on the next song I might want to listen to, YouTube is where I go. If I want to listen to a song anytime I want- through my stereo, in my car or on my mp3 player when I'm out and about or if I want to make a playlist or arrange it in various other ways for my enjoyment and convenience I go ahead and purchase it. When you pay for a song, you're not really buying the song itself, what you're getting is the legal right to enjoy that song in a set number of predetermined ways.



leave me alone said:


> No. Also, this doesnt apply for movies/games. Gaming companies doesnt make demos anymore, so the only way to try it out is to pirate it.


Oh, boo-hoo. We live an age where we can watch almost any movie for the equivalent of about a dollar if were willing to wait three or four months past when it first debuts at the theater, seriously you can wait. Don't you have the option of renting a game if you're hesitant on paying the full price?

Another post made the argument we should always have the option to "try before you buy". Many businesses offer the 'try before buying' option in marketing their product in certain instances but where they do so it amounts to good competitive practice, not to be confused with an automatic right you have as a consumer. It certainly wouldn't apply to movies and video games where most of the actual value to the product tends to comes from built up hype and advertising, a value which is diminished significantly once the product has been personally experienced. Most movies aren't worth it to most people to watch more than once, let alone to spend money on that option, even if the movie happens to be good. Its much more natural to look towards whatever the next thing coming out is than to go back to whatever we've already watched. While I'm not defending bad movies or video games or whatever, those who make them certainly do have the right to take every advantage available to try and sucker you into paying for them.



Ohhai said:


> It'd have been more accurate if you said the dead beat didn't chip in for the pizza, made a copy of the pizza, so then everyone could have pizza, even though some paid, and others didn't.


Not unrelated, my favorite pizza place will now be shutting its doors next week due to dwindling profits from fewer sold pizzas. Oh well, we've still got the chain restaurants.

The statement was made to address issues of character, towards those who have no qualms in taking but themselves never seem to have anything to offer, which I feel is quite accurate.


----------



## millenniumman75

In my case, the music I was looking for is NOT out on CDs, DVDs, or anything and never has been. The music is over 40 years old by this point and was specifically made for use on a game show (check the age I just mentioned and think about a certain game show that has been on that long :wink).

The only way to get access was to specifically request it and pay thousands of dollars. Since Fair Use (Personal use only) is exercised, I still paid a fee to get access, but not nearly the cost of the license.


----------



## MobiusX

it's fun, i get music this way


----------



## njodis

Metal_Heart said:


> If people are going to make stupid comparisn's, how about this for one;
> When I couldn't afford to buy food every week (something completely necessary to my well being) I just went without.. I didn't go to the shop, steal it, and then say "well I wouldn't have paid for it anyway so it makes no difference" It's illegal, and not fair on the consumers that have HAD to pay for their food etc.


I'm sorry, but these kinds of comparisons that people keep giving are not valid.

If you steal food from a shop, that is a tangible loss for the shop. They paid for the food in order to sell it for a profit, and now they no longer have the food. They have to eat that lost profit, and they could give you an amount down to the penny in money that was lost.

If you download a music CD from the internet, there is no such tangible loss. There is no lost profit to be eaten, and there's absolutely no way Band X can tell you exactly how much money was lost. If you download a music CD right now, Band X would have absolutely no idea that it happened.

It really annoys me when people start throwing up comparisons like this that aren't at all comparable. I'm not trying to justify piracy at all, really, but all this is doing is confusing the issue and not helping one bit.


----------



## leave me alone

creep said:


> Oh, boo-hoo. We live an age where we can watch almost any movie for the equivalent of about a dollar if were willing to wait three or four months past when it first debuts at the theater, seriously you can wait. Don't you have the option of renting a game if you're hesitant on paying the full price?


Could you please send me a link to a site where I can get digital copies of movies that came out in 2011, cost about a dollar and are in HD, preferably in .mkv format? Thanks.

Renting a game? How much that costs? Really, spending money just to play a game for 5-10mins isnt worth my money. Most of the new games are awful.

Music.. I prefer to buy albums in digital form, but itunes and amazon arent available in my country as far as I know. I've purchased few albums directly from the artist, but usually the files are only available in .mp3 format, which is not good enough for me. If I had to buy CDs, I would overpay half of the price on shipping.

As for the stealing food comparisons - I guess we are talking about different piracy here. Once again, I'd like to refer you to the picture that is posted on first page of this threads.

Just to be clear here, I am not saying that piracy is always right and morale thing to do and everyone should download their stuff ilegally. I am simply stating that it isnt always as black and white as many people try to portrait.


----------



## Silent Hell

I find this topic fascinating, it actually relates to a book I read awhile back "Free - the future of a radical price" by Chris Anderson. This book postulates about what happens when supply is so abundant that the price goes down to zero or so low that no one pays attention to it. 

It explains piracy/copy right infringement as a function of economics that cannot be stopped, considering the extremely low cost of reproduction and distribution. Not that there aren't any moral implications to be considered, but their existence cannot curb or enforce people's behavior (as it seems little else can). And who can define exactly what is lost or was never going to be bought in the first place - I listen to many musicians that I know I was never going to purchase anyway. If anything they gained my attention, instead of suffering a loss. 

At this point businesses will just have to change to go along with this new model if they want to profit off of it.


----------



## MindOverMood

njodis said:


> I'm sorry, but these kinds of comparisons that people keep giving are not valid.
> 
> If you steal food from a shop, that is a tangible loss for the shop. They paid for the food in order to sell it for a profit, and now they no longer have the food. They have to eat that lost profit, and they could give you an amount down to the penny in money that was lost.
> 
> If you download a music CD from the internet, there is no such tangible loss. There is no lost profit to be eaten, and there's absolutely no way Band X can tell you exactly how much money was lost. If you download a music CD right now, Band X would have absolutely no idea that it happened.
> 
> It really annoys me when people start throwing up comparisons like this that aren't at all comparable. I'm not trying to justify piracy at all, really, but all this is doing is confusing the issue and not helping one bit.


Amen.


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## Classified

Copywrite last way too long, and if the original arist has past away, they don't need the money.

I don't pirate games, I don't play many though. The Zelda one I downloaded I had and purchased 20 years ago.

I have ripped some movies, but I probably have spent more time downloading or ripping than actually watching the movies. I have purchased many movies and still go to the theater.

But, the whole economy needs to figure out where it is going. Are we going to be socialist or communist where all digital content is free, but the people need to work to provide a good life to artists. Or are we ok with the current status, where big artists are still doing great, iTunes is easier than downloading and adding metadata, and concerts are still big business. The digital coping makes communism work since it doesn't take much extra effort to put a digital file on multiple devices, unlike food, products, or weapons.

I have stopped software piracy once I moved away from Windows. Linux is easy, and I have enough money to pay for Mac software now.


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## JimmyDeansRetartedCousin

I have no scruples when it comes to internet piracy.

e-books, music, film, all at no expense.


*thumbs up*


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## Ohhai

Classified said:


> But, the whole economy needs to figure out where it is going. Are we going to be socialist or communist where all digital content is free, but the people need to work to provide a good life to artists. Or are we ok with the current status, where big artists are still doing great, iTunes is easier than downloading and adding metadata, and concerts are still big business. The digital coping makes communism work since it doesn't take much extra effort to put a digital file on multiple devices, unlike food, products, or weapons.


Green party is where it's at.


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## lonelyjew

Ohhai said:


> I find it rather disgusting the counter-arguments are all about money, or even the NAME of what it's called, if you are making money not for your passion and love for the art, then I certainly don't want you to benefit from it in anyway.


Wow. Who the hell do you think you are to tell people what reasons they should have to create something? To be frank, you and every other person on here defending file sharing are only grasping for reasons to justify your own immoral actions, because you prefer to see yourselves as people who care about morality, and place it above convenience, or having to spend money. The fact of the matter is that people (musicians, programmers, directors, photographers, producers, artist, marketers, and many others) busted their asses to make a product which you clearly have an interest in, and that you enjoy well enough to play through. You may occasionally buy a product, but even the "try before you buy" mentality is utter crap when there is no dearth of reviews to be found, and that usually there are samples/demos available so you can actually try before you buy. If you want to pirate crap, go for it, but don't delude yourself into thinking you're a crusader on the high seas, preserving the freedom of the interwebz, because, in fact, you're a thief.

BTW, yes, I have used pirated software, played a pirated game or two, and downloaded music illegally, I however don't fill my head with fantasies that let me think that it's the moral thing to do. :roll.


----------



## Classified

Ohhai said:


> Green party is where it's at.


I agree. That is the party that gets it.


----------



## Ohhai

lonelyjew said:


> Wow. Who the hell do you think you are to tell people what reasons they should have to create something? To be frank, you and every other person on here defending file sharing are only grasping for reasons to justify your own immoral actions, because you prefer to see yourselves as people who care about morality, and place it above convenience, or having to spend money. The fact of the matter is that people (musicians, programmers, directors, photographers, producers, artist, marketers, and many others) busted their asses to make a product which you clearly have an interest in, and that you enjoy well enough to play through. You may occasionally buy a product, but even the "try before you buy" mentality is utter crap when there is no dearth of reviews to be found, and that usually there are samples/demos available so you can actually try before you buy. If you want to pirate crap, go for it, but don't delude yourself into thinking you're a crusader on the high seas, preserving the freedom of the interwebz, because, in fact, you're a thief.
> 
> BTW, yes, I have used pirated software, played a pirated game or two, and downloaded music illegally, I however don't fill my head with fantasies that let me think that it's the moral thing to do. :roll.


This was pretty well written and rather well argued, only problem is I try to distance myself from morality alot, I have Nazi memorability, I make semi-racist jokes with everyone including my black friends, and frankly I mess with people for the joy of it, and I really couldn't careless about the morality of it.

but nice work pointing out that I was dictating why people should make music/products, that I cannot dispute.

Also if someone truly busted there *** making a product, and it's a product they poured their heart and soul into, then there's not much to worry about, since plenty of people will find a way to give them money, whether it being buying the same thing they pirated it, going to a show, buying merch, or a plethora of other ways.

Edit; I'm incredibly tired, and I realise I need to work the last paragraph when I awake.
Edit 2; Changed my mind, looks fine.


----------



## Classified

lonelyjew said:


> Wow. Who the hell do you think you are to tell people what reasons they should have to create something? To be frank, you and every other person on here defending file sharing are only grasping for reasons to justify your own immoral actions, because you prefer to see yourselves as people who care about morality, and place it above convenience, or having to spend money. ...


The problem is that this 'new' economy and the hard labor economy haven't been meshing well for a long time. If you get paid by the hour as the vast majority of people are it is one thing, but becoming rich by levering the masses isn't the same. The problem is the tax structure isn't set up to reward working anymore.

And the artists are getting screwed by the companies a lot of the time. And the companies are writing laws and messing with the people.


----------



## GunnyHighway

lonelyjew said:


> ~snip~


I sure am horrible for trying all these things and then giving them my money because I felt they deserved it...yup, guess I should just go off myself since I'm so horrible.

This is only the stuff sitting on my desk.





































You can't lump everyone who regularly fileshares into one group. Another thing is here in Canada, we have pretty terrible bandwidth caps. There is no ****ing way in hell I will pay a company money, use up part of my bandwidth limit, and THEN find out it's a buggy piece of crap/poorly made game/whatever else that I would feel as a waste of money. If I buy the game after downloading it, it's usually as simple as putting in my game's product key. Poof, _*no harm done whatsoever*_, and I already have it installed so I can play right away. If it's crap, I uninstall it and delete it. Still no harm done.


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## Ohhai

GunnyHighway said:


> Images and stuff


I see this as a competition now, give me a moment.

Edit;
GoG.com: http://i.imgur.com/a1B4G.jpg
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/obesity/games?tab=all
Amazon: http://i.imgur.com/aVUfR.jpg


----------



## Huk phin

I may or may not have "pirated" some major software apps that I would have bought if I had that kind of cash. Apps like Final Cut and Photoshop, which if I did pirate them, would only be used for personal use and never used for profit (which would justify purchasing them). 

Is this kind of thing ok? No. But like others have said, it has a kind of "Robbin Hood" feel when you are talking about big time companies and their super expensive software.

Oddly enough, I bought a software app some years ago that allowed you to make "back-up copies" of your DVD's (just in case, you know). For whatever reason I never used that app on any DVD's that I did not already own. To rent/borrow a movie and make a copy of it did seem like steeling to me.


----------



## Metal_Heart

njodis said:


> I'm sorry, but these kinds of comparisons that people keep giving are not valid.
> 
> If you steal food from a shop, that is a tangible loss for the shop. They paid for the food in order to sell it for a profit, and now they no longer have the food. They have to eat that lost profit, and they could give you an amount down to the penny in money that was lost.
> 
> If you download a music CD from the internet, there is no such tangible loss. There is no lost profit to be eaten, and there's absolutely no way Band X can tell you exactly how much money was lost. If you download a music CD right now, Band X would have absolutely no idea that it happened.
> 
> It really annoys me when people start throwing up comparisons like this that aren't at all comparable. I'm not trying to justify piracy at all, really, but all this is doing is confusing the issue and not helping one bit.


But if you actually read my entire post properly you'd understand that _that_ was _the point I was trying to make in the first place_. People keep making silly comparisns to morally justify piracy, when there should be no moral justification.

If people feel the need to defend and justify something so much, they clearly know what they're doing is wrong... they just don't want to admit it.

While copying someone is not a direct loss to company or artists, it's still a loss if a few hundred or few thousand people download their music/film illegally rather than paying for it or waiting to pay for it.. which a lot of people do now even if they _can_ afford to pay for the product. They've lost sales, and that still hurts a business or an artist no matter which way you try and justify or look at it.



lonelyjew said:


> Wow. Who the hell do you think you are to tell people what reasons they should have to create something? To be frank, you and every other person on here defending file sharing are only grasping for reasons to justify your own immoral actions, because you prefer to see yourselves as people who care about morality, and place it above convenience, or having to spend money. The fact of the matter is that people (musicians, programmers, directors, photographers, producers, artist, marketers, and many others) busted their asses to make a product which you clearly have an interest in, and that you enjoy well enough to play through. You may occasionally buy a product, but even the "try before you buy" mentality is utter crap when there is no dearth of reviews to be found, and that usually there are samples/demos available so you can actually try before you buy. If you want to pirate crap, go for it, but don't delude yourself into thinking you're a crusader on the high seas, preserving the freedom of the interwebz, because, in fact, you're a thief.
> 
> BTW, yes, I have used pirated software, played a pirated game or two, and downloaded music illegally, I however don't fill my head with fantasies that let me think that it's the moral thing to do. :roll.


EXACTLY!!


----------



## Metal_Heart

Ohhai said:


> But I don't think it's inherently wrong, I truly believe if it's good enough then it'll make most people buy other products of the bands, as Gunny stated he paid for a shirt and went to a concert to a band he would never have heard if it wasn't for piracy.
> 
> and even if you classified it as stealing, it costs the artists nothing, not every download is a lost sale.


If somebody wants a product that a band is selling so badly surely they buy each of those products, not just buy other products to justify never paying for their album.

It's a little ignorant to believe it costs the artist nothing. It does. It costs them the instruments they play on, the time in the recording studio, all the other costs and overheads that it takes to make an album and to advertise it... because if they don't make that money BACK plus profit, then yes they make a loss. So if people would rather download albums for free and not give anything towards the making of that album, they really don't value the artist that much do they? because they clearly don't want them to be very successful.


----------



## leave me alone

Ohhai said:


> I see this as a competition now, give me a moment.
> 
> Edit;
> GoG.com: http://i.imgur.com/a1B4G.jpg
> Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/obesity/games?tab=all
> Amazon: http://i.imgur.com/aVUfR.jpg


Not bad for a dirty pirate.

Here is mine: removed

It is not THAT many, but I'd say its ok for someone who has been broke and without any income for years.

I've been wondering, you people who are strongly againts piracy, do you play any games/listen to any music? How many copies/albums you buy avarage per year?


----------



## GunnyHighway

Ohhai said:


> I see this as a competition now, give me a moment.


Knew that was coming :b But helps prove my point as well.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

leave me alone said:


> Not bad for a dirty pirate.
> 
> Here is mine: [removed per request - neo]
> 
> It is not THAT many, but I'd say its ok for someone who has been broke and without any income for years.
> 
> I've been wondering, you people who are strongly againts piracy, do you play any games/listen to any music? How many copies/albums you buy avarage per year?


It's tough to say how much I buy per year, but the point is that I DO buy these products. By pirating them you are not giving the artist or company a very fair chance at being successful. If you want game developers to make more games than you need to pay for them in order for the company to make money and be able to fund/want to fund another one.

Same with music. By pirating an album you are taking away from their sales, (both monetary and chart number) which in turn reflect on how well the band does, and in turn again will help them and the record companies decide if they should make another one.

Again, as I've stated before, I haven't seen one good argument for piracy that doesn't come off as someone just being cheap. At least there are some people who will admit it is wrong rather than disillusion themselves into thinking it is victimless. It is a big deal and this is why several hundred "regular" people have ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars or gone to prison - it directly affects sales and chart numbers, as well as may make the creator feel as if their product wasn't very good. It is stealing, plain and simple. Taking something without paying for it is stealing.

Imagine if everyone just hacked Morrowind or whatever the first one was, and NO ONE paid for it. Do you think they would have spent any time, effort, or funding into making sequels such as Skyrim, etc? It is very, very doubtful they would have the time or determination to make a new 100 hour game that no one is going to pay for.


----------



## njodis

There has been piracy for as long as it has been possible to make copies of media. Morrowind was available to download illegally at release, so that point is moot. I would be amazed if a doomsday scenario like you suggested were to occur where "no one" paid for a game.

You want an argument for piracy? People who download illegal versions of media have a far better experience than those who shell out their hard-earned money for it.

1. Buy a DVD and you get to sit through 10 minutes of unskippable warnings and previews before you can even watch the movie.

*Download it illegally and you get just the movie without the fluff.*

2. Buy a game and you'll get a bunch of restrictions telling you what you can and can't do with a product you purchased. Extremely intrusive DRM is included in almost every game these days. Publishers like Ubisoft have games that you can't even play single player without maintaining a constant online connection to their DRM servers. Others let you install the game only a few times. A lot of times legitimate owners of the software will somehow trigger a false positive on the DRM, in turn triggering all types of problems.

*Download it illegally and you get a game that just works without restrictions.*

3. Buy a digital music album and you are restricted to where you can and can't listen to it. You get it in sub-par quality, too, from almost all distributors. A few years ago, companies like Sony were putting spyware on their physical CDs that would automatically install itself if the user put it in their computer.

*Download it illegally and have it in lossless, CD-quality format that you can listen to anywhere and do anything you want with it.*

4. Watch your favourite show on TV and get interrupted every 10 minutes with commercials 2x louder than the show, yelling at you to buy cars and soft drinks and computers. You have to watch it or record it when it airs.

*Download it illegally and it has no commercials or interruptions whatsoever. You can watch it whenever you please, on any device you might have that can play video.*

Now, there are a few exceptions to these points that I'm sure someone will love to bring up (Netflix, etc) but overall there's one point I want to get across: when companies start giving their customers the superior experience, people will be more inclined to shell out their money. I am hard-pressed to think of any example of the customer getting a superior product to the person that illegally downloaded it, and that is pretty telling. We can't include examples like online-only games, because those are not playable with pirated versions.

Companies like Steam are doing well in the face of big bad "piracy" and it's because they gave great service and fairly unobtrusive DRM. The fact that they still have DRM is holding them back in my eyes (_what happens to your games when Steam doesn't exist anymore?_) but they're one of the few companies that I believe understands the issue at hand.

Most companies have their heads so far up their asses that I doubt they'll ever even consider this. I can only imagine a software company trying to explain to their elderly shareholders that they're not going to include any DRM in their latest game even though it makes it completely miserable for the customers.

Now, I've spent way too long on this post that probably no one will even read or care about so I should probably get back to work.


----------



## leave me alone

OldSchoolSkater said:


> *It's tough to say how much I buy per year, but the point is that I DO buy these products.* By pirating them you are not giving the artist or company a very fair chance at being successful. If you want game developers to make more games than you need to pay for them in order for the company to make money and be able to fund/want to fund another one.
> 
> Same with music. By pirating an album you are taking away from their sales, (both monetary and chart number) which in turn reflect on how well the band does, and in turn again will help them and the record companies decide if they should make another one.
> 
> Again, as I've stated before, I haven't seen one good argument for piracy that doesn't come off as someone just being cheap. At least there are some people who will admit it is wrong rather than disillusion themselves into thinking it is victimless. It is a big deal and this is why several hundred "regular" people have ended up owing hundreds of thousands of dollars or gone to prison - it directly affects sales and chart numbers, as well as may make the creator feel as if their product wasn't very good. It is stealing, plain and simple. Taking something without paying for it is stealing.
> 
> Imagine if everyone just hacked Morrowind or whatever the first one was, and NO ONE paid for it. Do you think they would have spent any time, effort, or funding into making sequels such as Skyrim, etc? It is very, very doubtful they would have the time or determination to make a new 100 hour game that no one is going to pay for.


That was my point as well. I was talking about products that you actually buy, not download ilegally. Good job avoiding my question and turning it againts me though. 

I dont disagree with everything you've said, but again the issue is not as black and white as you trying to make it be.

Now that you brought up Skyrim,... I really wanted to buy this game, but unfortunately it wasnt available on Steam in my region. So I downloaded a cracked version, patched it up and everything. After roughly 5 hours of gameplay, I find out that there is a script bug that causes my PC to BSOD. This issue happens on all versions of the game, obviously (cracked or not) and was not yet adressed by Bethesda. So even if I bought the game, I couldnt finish it due to this issue. People on the forums are raging, because most of the retail places wont give them refund. If they had pirated the game, it would have save them 60$.



njodis said:


> ...


Gabe Newell approves of this post.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem


----------



## Metal_Heart

njodis said:


> There has been piracy for as long as it has been possible to make copies of media. Morrowind was available to download illegally at release, so that point is moot. I would be amazed if a doomsday scenario like you suggested were to occur where "no one" paid for a game.
> 
> You want an argument for piracy? People who download illegal versions of media have a far better experience than those who shell out their hard-earned money for it.
> 
> 1. Buy a DVD and you get to sit through 10 minutes of unskippable warnings and previews before you can even watch the movie.
> 
> *Download it illegally and you get just the movie without the fluff.*
> 
> 2. Buy a game and you'll get a bunch of restrictions telling you what you can and can't do with a product you purchased. Extremely intrusive DRM is included in almost every game these days. Publishers like Ubisoft have games that you can't even play single player without maintaining a constant online connection to their DRM servers. Others let you install the game only a few times. A lot of times legitimate owners of the software will somehow trigger a false positive on the DRM, in turn triggering all types of problems.
> 
> *Download it illegally and you get a game that just works without restrictions.*
> 
> 3. Buy a digital music album and you are restricted to where you can and can't listen to it. You get it in sub-par quality, too, from almost all distributors. A few years ago, companies like Sony were putting spyware on their physical CDs that would automatically install itself if the user put it in their computer.
> 
> *Download it illegally and have it in lossless, CD-quality format that you can listen to anywhere and do anything you want with it.*
> 
> 4. Watch your favourite show on TV and get interrupted every 10 minutes with commercials 2x louder than the show, yelling at you to buy cars and soft drinks and computers. You have to watch it or record it when it airs.
> 
> *Download it illegally and it has no commercials or interruptions whatsoever. You can watch it whenever you please, on any device you might have that can play video.*
> 
> Now, there are a few exceptions to these points that I'm sure someone will love to bring up (Netflix, etc) but overall there's one point I want to get across: when companies start giving their customers the superior experience, people will be more inclined to shell out their money. I am hard-pressed to think of any example of the customer getting a superior product to the person that illegally downloaded it, and that is pretty telling. We can't include examples like online-only games, because those are not playable with pirated versions.
> 
> Companies like Steam are doing well in the face of big bad "piracy" and it's because they gave great service and fairly unobtrusive DRM. The fact that they still have DRM is holding them back in my eyes (_what happens to your games when Steam doesn't exist anymore?_) but they're one of the few companies that I believe understands the issue at hand.
> 
> Most companies have their heads so far up their asses that I doubt they'll ever even consider this. I can only imagine a software company trying to explain to their elderly shareholders that they're not going to include any DRM in their latest game even though it makes it completely miserable for the customers.
> 
> Now, I've spent way too long on this post that probably no one will even read or care about so I should probably get back to work.


 Again, all these points are totally self serving and do not _morally justify_ pirating music/dvds/games.

The advertising you experience when you watch tv shows is there for the purpose of the channel making money, if the channel didn't make money through their advertising then most of them would seize to exist which means the tv shows would have a very hard time getting contracts in which case they wouldn't even make them in the first place. If a tv show doesn't get a contract it doesn't get made... and it wouldn't be available for you to download illegally either.

The reasoning behind terms and conditions when you buy a product is so that you use it for your own personal enjoyment and not commercially as artists and companies earn their money through commercial use of their songs etc. also.. it's not up to YOU to determine where you can use their songs especially if you download it illegally as you have not contributed anything towards the creators in the first place.

Just because you download it without the restrictions doesn't mean you can do anything you want with it, downloading it in the first place is illegal nevermind anything else you are doing it with it.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

leave me alone said:


> *That was my point as well. I was talking about products that you actually buy, not download ilegally. Good job avoiding my question and turning it againts me though*.
> 
> I dont disagree with everything you've said, but again the issue is not as black and white as you trying to make it be.
> 
> Now that you brought up Skyrim,... I really wanted to buy this game, but unfortunately it wasnt available on Steam in my region. So I downloaded a cracked version, patched it up and everything. After roughly 5 hours of gameplay, I find out that there is a script bug that causes my PC to BSOD. This issue happens on all versions of the game, obviously (cracked or not) and was not yet adressed by Bethesda. So even if I bought the game, I couldnt finish it due to this issue. People on the forums are raging, because most of the retail places wont give them refund. If they had pirated the game, it would have save them 60$.
> 
> Gabe Newell approves of this post.
> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem


How am I avoiding the question? I told you I don't count how many albums/games/movies I buy per year, but that I DO buy them rather than pirate them. Here's info from the last 3 weeks, since you are so sure I avoided your question:
1. Video Games - I bought Gears of War 3 and Metal Gear Solid HD collection both on sale from Best Buy.
2. Music - I borrowed an Augury album from my friend and when I liked it I went and purchased the album for myself through iTunes. I then also used iTunes to purchase an old Pixies album, as well as a few random 99 cent songs.
3. Movies - I bought Casino Royale for $2 from Best Buy and received 2 seasons of Psych as a gift, which were paid for.

Now, you can take that and multiply it out to a full year if you'd like but I don't see the point. The point is that I actually PAY for these items, unlike pirating.

As far as problems with Skyrim go, they'd have more money to fix the problem had everyone who cracked it actually paid for it. Also, when you purchase a product you are not promised that it will be perfect, especially from Bethesda who is known for similar issues. If it's not worth paying for than I don't see why you would play it, in my opinion.

I'm not sure why it isn't black and white, I don't pirate = legal and supporting the creators, while you pirate = illegal and not supporting the creators.

Don't complain about broken products if you didn't pay for them, in my opinion.


----------



## njodis

Metal_Heart said:


> Again, all these points are totally self serving and do not _morally justify_ pirating music/dvds/games.


I'm not _trying_ to morally justify anything. I completely agree that it's not right to pirate things. There is ultimately no acceptable reason to do it. But people can go back and forth on the subject of why it's immoral all day and never get anywhere, or they can discuss _why_ it happens and try to fix the root cause.



Metal_Heart said:


> The advertising you experience when you watch tv shows is there for the purpose of the channel making money, if the channel didn't make money through their advertising then most of them would seize to exist which means the tv shows would have a very hard time getting contracts in which case they wouldn't even make them in the first place. If a tv show doesn't get a contract it doesn't get made... and it wouldn't be available for you to download illegally either.


My post was clearly talking about paid services; I am obviously not suggesting that everything should be free, which is frankly a bit of a strawman argument. Originally, cable television existed as a purchased alternative to free television and didn't have any commercials - hence the subscription fee. Over time they introduced commercials back into it again, so now you pay $70/month for the privilege of being sold more products. Give people a paid service that allows them to watch any show when they want, without advertisements and other interruptions, and you will have a service on par with just torrenting everything. You'll never completely eliminate it, but I am positive it would convert a large number of people that pirate TV shows.

Services like Hulu are going in the right direction, but have a few problems: namely the fact that it's only available to Americans, and that the available shows are limited and lag behind network television in availability.



Metal_Heart said:


> The reasoning behind terms and conditions when you buy a product is so that you use it for your own personal enjoyment and not commercially as artists and companies earn their money through commercial use of their songs etc. also.. it's not up to YOU to determine where you can use their songs especially if you download it illegally as you have not contributed anything towards the creators in the first place.
> 
> Just because you download it without the restrictions doesn't mean you can do anything you want with it, downloading it in the first place is illegal nevermind anything else you are doing it with it.


I don't know what you're arguing here, to be honest. Again, my entire post was talking about providing people with a paid service that gives them a better service than illegally downloading. I wasn't exactly arguing that people should be allowed to do literally _anything_ they want with purchased materials, but yes, you should be do anything for your own personal enjoyment with the product you purchased. I don't believe that purchasing a TV show download from iTunes/Amazon should be locked to watching it only on their computer or iPod. You purchased it, so why can't you watch it on your tablet, or non-Apple mp3 player? Can you think of any good reasons why that should be? I can't.


----------



## Ohhai

OldSchoolSkater said:


> How am I avoiding the question? I told you I don't count how many albums/games/movies I buy per year, but that I DO buy them rather than pirate them. Here's info from the last 3 weeks, since you are so sure I avoided your question:
> 1. Video Games - I bought Gears of War 3 and Metal Gear Solid HD collection both on sale from Best Buy.
> 2. Music - I borrowed an Augury album from my friend and when I liked it I went and purchased the album for myself through iTunes. I then also used iTunes to purchase an old Pixies album, as well as a few random 99 cent songs.
> 3. Movies - I bought Casino Royale for $2 from Best Buy and received 2 seasons of Psych as a gift, which were paid for.
> 
> Now, you can take that and multiply it out to a full year if you'd like but I don't see the point. The point is that I actually PAY for these items, unlike pirating.
> 
> As far as problems with Skyrim go, they'd have more money to fix the problem had everyone who cracked it actually paid for it. Also, when you purchase a product you are not promised that it will be perfect, especially from Bethesda who is known for similar issues. If it's not worth paying for than I don't see why you would play it, in my opinion.
> 
> I'm not sure why it isn't black and white, I don't pirate = legal and supporting the creators, while you pirate = illegal and not supporting the creators.
> 
> Don't complain about broken products if you didn't pay for them, in my opinion.


You're becoming less and less rational, it's pretty clear here that most pirates (at least on this forum) buy a large amount of products if the creators deserve it, if you're not sure whether something's worth paying for, pirate it, then get the money to the creators in whatever way you see fit.

Skyrim had a ton of purchases and tons of funding, it is one of the buggiest games released last year STILL.

If you don't think a creator deserves money for a product, pirate it.
If you're unsure whether the products is worth money, pirate it.
If you wish to support the creators for a good product, purchase it.

Not a black and white issue, and those rules are certainly subject to change, just because something's illegal, doesn't make it wrong.


----------



## diamondheart89

Let's just say that out of all the possible morally wrong things to do in the world, pirating is very low on my list.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

Ohhai said:


> You're becoming less and less rational, it's pretty clear here that most pirates (at least on this forum) buy a large amount of products if the creators deserve it, if you're not sure whether something's worth paying for, pirate it, then get the money to the creators in whatever way you see fit.
> 
> Skyrim had a ton of purchases and tons of funding, it is one of the buggiest games released last year STILL.
> 
> If you don't think a creator deserves money for a product, pirate it.
> If you're unsure whether the products is worth money, pirate it.
> If you wish to support the creators for a good product, purchase it.
> 
> Not a black and white issue, and those rules are certainly subject to change, just because something's illegal, doesn't make it wrong.


It is totally rational. Thinking that you are better than everyone else and shouldn't have to pay for a service or product, like everyone else does, is irrational.

Honestly, you are coming off as cheap and have no real data to show that pirating is ok. It is illegal, which would make it wrong. Breaking the law is wrong, so pirating is wrong. No? Too tough to comprehend? Then please explain to me why it is ok to take something without paying for it, and use a real argument unlike the others I've seen on here.

I'm not sure how much more clear I can make it. You are stealing and however you want to justify that is fine. I just prefer to live a moderately moral and legal lifestyle so I don't steal, I don't pirate, and I try to support people whose products I enjoy and would like them to continue making.

If you don't pay for something then you have no right to complain, in my opinion. What other laws, that are enforced, are ok to break because you feel like it? As a contributing American I do not find it ok to break the law just because you are too cheap or poor to purchase it legally. If you can't afford it then learn to live without it or get a damn job and work for your money like the rest of us.


----------



## leave me alone

OldSchoolSkater said:


> How am I avoiding the question? I told you I don't count how many albums/games/movies I buy per year, but that I DO buy them rather than pirate them. Here's info from the last 3 weeks, since you are so sure I avoided your question:
> 1. Video Games - I bought Gears of War 3 and Metal Gear Solid HD collection both on sale from Best Buy.
> 2. Music - I borrowed an Augury album from my friend and when I liked it I went and purchased the album for myself through iTunes. I then also used iTunes to purchase an old Pixies album, as well as a few random 99 cent songs.
> 3. Movies - I bought Casino Royale for $2 from Best Buy and received 2 seasons of Psych as a gift, which were paid for.
> 
> Now, you can take that and multiply it out to a full year if you'd like but I don't see the point. The point is that I actually PAY for these items, unlike pirating.
> 
> As far as problems with Skyrim go, *they'd have more money to fix the problem had everyone who cracked it actually paid for it. Also, when you purchase a product you are not promised that it will be perfect*, especially from Bethesda who is known for similar issues. If it's not worth paying for than I don't see why you would play it, in my opinion.
> 
> I'm not sure why it isn't black and white, I don't pirate = legal and supporting the creators, while you pirate = illegal and not supporting the creators.
> 
> Don't complain about broken products if you didn't pay for them, in my opinion.


Product must not be defective in a way its intended to be use, pretty sure thats the law here and everywhere else.

I am not going to argue with your other points, since I am too exhausted and I would be pretty much repeating things that already been said here.


----------



## njodis

OldSchoolSkater said:


> I'm not sure how much more clear I can make it. You are stealing and however you want to justify that is fine. I just prefer to live a moderately moral and legal lifestyle so I don't steal, I don't pirate, and I try to support people whose products I enjoy and would like them to continue making.


You openly stated that you copy music off of a friend's computer which is absolutely no different from downloading it, so I'd watch the high horse if I were you.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

Metal_Heart said:


> If people feel the need to defend and justify something so much, they clearly know what they're doing is wrong... they just don't want to admit it.





Metal_Heart said:


> lonelyjew said:
> 
> 
> 
> To be frank, you and every other person on here defending file sharing are only grasping for reasons to justify your own immoral actions, because you prefer to see yourselves as people who care about morality,
> 
> 
> 
> EXACTLY!!
Click to expand...




Ohhai said:


> If you wish to support the creators for a good product, purchase it.


We can declare whatever we want to be moral or amoral, but as people forming an moral opinion on an economical function that's kind of useless.

Yes, pirates have some motivation to make it seem like the right thing. Well what do you know, that's what drives all human behaviour. None of us like to think we're in the wrong.

More to the point, now: Piracy is a huge and complicated thing to study. Pirates are sometimes people with no money. Pirates also sometimes are addicted to hoarding huge amounts of porn and entire TV series and other stuff. It's not summarizable by its relation to the model of music sales everyone sees in the high street.

Obviously 2 things in place of 1 is a blessing. The problem is when the creator of a work i.e. tv show, music artist isn't paid ENOUGH for the work. Which is debatable as in some cases they are richly overpaid as a result of the existing models which create *a lot* of hype and press for the best works. A system people are afraid to move away from. Well, change is scary. And yet. Here we are with Youtube being hugely successful as it delivers many billions or so videos to people daily for free. And that is called creating value.

Related point: businesses should be creating value. But you don't hear that kind of talk from people wanting to set up a business for the first time. They more or less want to grab a loophole or scam someone over to make a quick buck.

The same kind of thinking and quick jumping to conclusions is all I see about piracy.

So yeah. We just need a system where music, games and all can be distributed and people get paid enough but not too much and everyone that can pay, contributes. But huge amounts of money invested in DLC and new businesses and servers and plenty of bandwidth cost i.e. game distribution.. it's not so smart.

About Skyrim: software like that costs a lot of money, and increasingly more to fix. Are gamers responsible to fit the bill for a flawed software development model brought on by the culture of the game development industry?

Not to mention Skyrim had a ton of PR making the profit pretty nice. Legality aside, then, they won't miss a little money. So like I said, there's no simple answer.

And all this factors into a problem about people possibly being deprived of culture/enjoyment if they don't have the latest games and stuff.

And obviously, if you could download a car, you would.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

OldSchoolSkater said:


> You are stealing and however you want to justify that is fine. I just prefer to live a moderately moral and legal lifestyle so I don't steal, I don't pirate, and I try to support people whose products I enjoy and would like them to continue making.


Well what if you wanted to get more in life, and only, you were missing out because you didn't have enough money to fund your music addiction. What if all the TV shows in your country are bad and you miss the old ones. What if Japan has good TV and you'd like to watch those because they fill a hole in the childish you.

But no, you'll say, you don't know you'd ever like them.

Well, there I present to you the problem with living in a bubble and being afraid to look out.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

Metal_Heart said:


> it's not up to YOU to determine where you can use their songs especially if you download it illegally as you have not contributed anything towards the creators in the first place.


And I'd agree with this if tradition and law were truth. But they're not, and they're not as deeply rooted in reality as the human condition. Hence, those little children in Brazil getting new games instead of paying a month's wages for a Playstation 1 game, that's progress in society. Isn't it beautiful?


----------



## diamondheart89

Okay, the idea that because something is illegal, it is immoral (amoral?) is completely bull****. Yeah lets go buy t-shirts made by trafficked children legally but OH NO! don't ever pirate a game from a giant company that makes millions off of a product that's not worth the amount of money they're charging for it. Oh the evil. Forgive me if I am not sufficiently impressed by that hypocrisy. Basically, I try to avoid the larger evils in life: murder, rape, taking advantage of people who don't deserve it, and trying to do good in society as much as possible by donating both money and time (and possibly bone marrow) to worthy causes. But if you want to vilify me for not paying for an overpriced and widely used piece of software as a broke uni student, then I really couldn't care less. It doesn't bother me one bit.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

njodis said:


> You openly stated that you copy music off of a friend's computer which is absolutely no different from downloading it, so I'd watch the high horse if I were you.


Putting a couple albums on my ipod from another persons computer, who LEGALLY downloaded them, is completely legal. Also, I've stated more than once that I normally purchase these albums after I listen to them as well. Again, this is legal as far as Apple, iTunes, and the record companies they support are concerned.

I am not on a high horse by any means, I just don't find pirating games, music, and movies to be morally or ethically correct (as well as illegal).

I am done arguing my position, as they are my opinions and you may take or leave them. There are several of you who feel the need to justify your pirating to me, and the truth is you will not be able to do so. I have my beliefs and you have yours, I am just surprised to see how many people condone illegal activity.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> Well what if you wanted to get more in life, and only, you were missing out because you didn't have enough money to fund your music addiction. What if all the TV shows in your country are bad and you miss the old ones. What if Japan has good TV and you'd like to watch those because they fill a hole in the childish you.
> 
> But no, you'll say, you don't know you'd ever like them.
> 
> Well, there I present to you the problem with living in a bubble and being afraid to look out.


Living within defined laws is not living in a bubble. If you can't afford it you shouldn't steal it - it is a very immoral message to send to our children that if you can't afford something then go steal it. I can't afford a new car but I do not go out and steal one, saying I can't afford it. I can't afford a house but I don't go steal one and say I should have it because I can't afford it.


----------



## diamondheart89

OldSchoolSkater said:


> Putting a couple albums on my ipod from another persons computer, who LEGALLY downloaded them, is completely legal. Also, I've stated more than once that I normally purchase these albums after I listen to them as well. Again, this is legal as far as Apple, iTunes, and the record companies they support are concerned.
> 
> I am not on a high horse by any means, I just don't find pirating games, music, and movies to be morally or ethically correct (as well as illegal).
> 
> I am done arguing my position, as they are my opinions and you may take or leave them. There are several of you who feel the need to justify your pirating to me, and the truth is you will not be able to do so. I have my beliefs and you have yours, I am just surprised to see how many people condone illegal activity.


But many of the good/fun things in life are illegal. And many of the horrible things in life are completely legal. Laws aren't a very good reflection of GOOD and BAD as you'd think. This is where you have to use your own brain a bit. For example, gay marriage is illegal in many states, so was inter-racial marriage, does that make them ''bad''? Laws are usually way behind reality anyway. There has to be a middle ground on this issue, but clearly, the current system isn't it. I agree that artists deserve their earnings, but I also agree that paying tons of money for a single piece of software/music just because they want more money for less quality isn't right. You're right that everyone has their beliefs and you can't change them though. However I disagree that the decision to pirate something is automatically ''bad''.


----------



## njodis

OldSchoolSkater said:


> Putting a couple albums on my ipod from another persons computer, who LEGALLY downloaded them, is completely legal. Also, I've stated more than once that I normally purchase these albums after I listen to them as well. Again, this is legal as far as Apple, iTunes, and the record companies they support are concerned.


No, that's completely false. Purchasing music from iTunes or any other legal source doesn't give you a license to share it with anyone else. Copying music that a friend purchased _is_ copyright infringement, or as you and most other people here like to call it, _piracy_.

I honestly don't care if you share music with friends - and I'm sure most people don't - but calling it anything other than equal to piracy is inaccurate. It is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same thing as downloading it online illegally.

No offense intended, but you are being extremely hypocritical.


----------



## Ohhai

diamondheart89 said:


> Okay, the idea that because something is illegal, it is immoral (amoral?) is completely bull****. Yeah lets go buy t-shirts made by trafficked children legally but OH NO! don't ever pirate a game from a giant company that makes millions off of a product that's not worth the amount of money they're charging for it. Oh the evil. Forgive me if I am not sufficiently impressed by that hypocrisy. Basically, I try to avoid the larger evils in life: murder, rape, taking advantage of people who don't deserve it, and trying to do good in society as much as possible by donating both money and time (and possibly bone marrow) to worthy causes. But if you want to vilify me for not paying for an overpriced and widely used piece of software as a broke uni student, then I really couldn't care less. It doesn't bother me one bit.


I love you.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

OldSchoolSkater said:


> jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well what if you wanted to get more in life, and only, you were missing out because you didn't have enough money to fund your music addiction. What if all the TV shows in your country are bad and you miss the old ones. What if Japan has good TV and you'd like to watch those because they fill a hole in the childish you.
> 
> But no, you'll say, you don't know you'd ever like them.
> 
> Well, there I present to you the problem with living in a bubble and being afraid to look out.
> 
> 
> 
> Living within defined laws is not living in a bubble. If you can't afford it you shouldn't steal it - it is a very immoral message to send to our children that if you can't afford something then go steal it. I can't afford a new car but I do not go out and steal one, saying I can't afford it. I can't afford a house but I don't go steal one and say I should have it because I can't afford it.
Click to expand...

So, children in poor countries shouldn't be able to listen to new and popular music because they can't afford it?

It's not so much living within the law that's living in a bubble, but worshipping law as ground truth. This is why we all have the ability to think for ourselves. If the 10 commandments were absolute we wouldn't need our own minds. Disproving their validity.

It's terrifying that "poor people can't have a car" becomes "poor people with a computer can't have a car game because that messes with our chance to be richer"

It's all easily said when you're the person in the rich country.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

creep said:


> Not unrelated, my favorite pizza place will now be shutting its doors next week due to dwindling profits from fewer sold pizzas. Oh well, we've still got the chain restaurants.
> 
> The statement was made to address issues of character, towards those who have no qualms in taking but themselves never seem to have anything to offer, which I feel is quite accurate.


Again: easier said when you have the money to pay for those products. Who are we to make judgements about who is allowed to experience what?

The only real argument there is that people with no money are as much victim to depravity in a cultural sense as they are to financial depravity. And by that harsh reality of consequence is how piracy works.. "Anything goes"; "Free for all".


----------



## creep

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> Again: easier said when you have the money to pay for those products. Who are we to make judgements about who is allowed to experience what?
> 
> The only real argument there is that people with no money are as much victim to depravity in a cultural sense as they are to financial depravity. And by that harsh reality of consequence is how piracy works.. "Anything goes"; "Free for all".


I really only skimmed parts of a few of your post, so I could be missing something about whatever it is your trying to say. I think this is fair however as you yourself seem perfectly willing to ignore or quote out of context anything that contradicts your own view.

But seriously, are you really trying to equate you're being able to get the new Call of Duty game or whatever without paying anything for it as being some kind of blow for solidarity for the impoverished and destitute of the world?

Because that is totally asinine.

Perhaps I've fallen victim to something of a harsh generalization when it comes to pirates. When I think of pirates the picture in my mind is always of the same guy. Because its more or less seems like the guy you encounter over and over in only slightly different variations every time the issue comes up. Teenager or possibly early twentyish dude chained to his personal computer thirteen hours a day, living in an affluent country, who has the capacity to pay for these completely non-essential luxury items, even if his particular case might require him to save up for a little bit but would choose not to simply on the grounds that he can. Who it would cause no actual harm to go without, though any suggestion of such would be a grave insult to their jealously guarded sense of self-entitlement and whose every argument and justification could easily be seen as stemming from said sense of entitlement. I don't necessarily hold this guy any ill will, he might not be entirely or even particularly bad. But would I loan him money? It seems like a bad idea. If i had a daughter would he be allowed to date her. Absolutely not. That's what I was referring to before by issues of character and guys avoiding chipping in for the pizza.

The wee kids in Africa never occurred to me. I'm sure they're glad to have you to speak up for them though.

And no I don't care anything about making judgments or dictating who should get to experience what. To me piracy isn't an issue of deprivation but protecting the rights of the persons who perform the hard work to create something so they be allowed to benefit from their efforts. Yes, I am aware production company's screw over creative people if allowed. No, its not clear to me how you're doing them any favors by not paying for their work.


----------



## lonelyjew

Ohhai said:


> only problem is I try to distance myself from morality alot, I have Nazi memorability, I make semi-racist jokes with everyone including my black friends, and frankly I mess with people for the joy of it, and I really couldn't careless about the morality of it.


You committed a large amount of time typing the many posts you've put in this thread, a few of which show the games you bought after downloading illegally. Maybe you're playing the devil's advocate, but it seems to me that you do care, at least enough to not want to be labeled an amoral thief.



njodis said:


> *Download it illegally and you get just the movie without the fluff.*
> *Download it illegally and you get a game that just works without restrictions.*
> *Download it illegally and have it in lossless, CD-quality format that you can listen to anywhere and do anything you want with it.*
> *Download it illegally and it has no commercials or interruptions whatsoever. You can watch it whenever you please, on any device you might have that can play video.*


These only go as far as to justify downloading illegally *as long as you buy the flawed product*. I also take issue with the last one. You realize that TV stations make the vast majority of their money from commercials right? The money you pay for non premium cable does not go to stations, but solely to the service provider, that sends the signal to you. Thus provide you entertainment at no monetary cost, but a time cost.



jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> So, children in poor countries shouldn't be able to listen to new and popular music because they can't afford it?


This is by far the silliest thing I've read in this thread. Enjoyment of downloaded pop music is not a natural right. Enjoying a video game is not a natural right. Someone who creates something is not obligated to share it with everyone. That isn't nice, but what we do have a right over is control control over our own intellectual property.


----------



## luceo

I was just reading this article by an indie iPhone/Android app developer, thought you guys might find this part interesting.



> *Piracy?*
> It's a problem, always has been in the software industry. As a kid I pirated all my software, because I felt like these were giant, faceless corporations that didn't need my money, and I had no money to give them anyway. I pirated operating systems, I pirated apps, I pirated games. Then one day I got a job, and learnt just how hard it is to make good software, and a switch went off in my head. Now I pay for every piece of software I have, sometimes I buy apps I don't even need, just because I appreciate the level of crafts(wo)manship and care that went into them. If it's too expensive and I can't afford it, I just don't use it.
> 
> The real problem is that when you're a company of 2.5 people, piracy really hurts. Every lost sale makes it harder to stay around and keep making (what are hopefully) great apps. You can argue all day about how these people wouldn't have bought your app anyway, and piracy is good because more people get to try your apps, but that doesn't change the fact that piracy costs us money. We spend money on server infrastructure that is used by paying customers and pirates alike. We answer emails and support from pirates (we know who you are by the way). You can't stop piracy, people that want to steal your app badly will find a way. You can minimise it, but our feeling is every minute you spend fighting piracy you've wasted. It's better served devoted to your paying customers. Up until now all we've done to our software is put in server & client code so we know who the pirates are, and who the paying customers are. We don't do anything with that information, it's just food for thought.
> 
> Speaking of food, I'll leave you with this thought: every time you pirate a piece of software from an independent developer, we get closer to that developer never making another app, or updating their app, because they've gone off and got another job. It's like breaking into your favourite corner store, do it enough times, and they'll close their doors forever.


----------



## Metal_Heart

Ohhai said:


> If you don't think a creator deserves money for a product, pirate it.
> If you're unsure whether the products is worth money, pirate it.
> If you wish to support the creators for a good product, purchase it.


Do you realise what you're saying? It's not up to you to determine whether a creator doesn't deserve to be rewarded for their *work* and* effort*.. and why in gods name would you even want something anyway if you didn't believe was worth paying for in the first place.



jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> Well what if you wanted to get more in life, and only, you were missing out because you didn't have enough money to fund your music addiction. What if all the TV shows in your country are bad and you miss the old ones. What if Japan has good TV and you'd like to watch those because they fill a hole in the childish you.
> 
> But no, you'll say, you don't know you'd ever like them.
> 
> Well, there I present to you the problem with living in a bubble and being afraid to look out.


This is probably the oddest post on this entire thread, actually quite amusing that somebody has tried to use a "do-goody" excuse to illegally download stuff. 
Let's put it this way, when I've been dirt broke, been kicked out of my home and haven't been able to afford food.. do you think that I downloaded music illegally because it helped me solve my life problems and stopped me from being poor? NO. What I couldn't afford, and what I still can't afford... I do without.

Music, films and games are not your given right as a human being, you do not need them to survive. They are a luxury, they are entertainment, they are simply a bonus. People work hard to make these products and deserve to be paid for their work just like everybody deserves to get paid in their job. If you can't afford it, you still don't need it, so live without it.

I dislike not being able to buy cd's and films when I want them, even now that I run a business.. entertainment is the last of my priorities as food, bills and investment into my business will always come first... but I don't illegally download albums to my ipod and download films when I haven't got the money for them... I simply wait.

If I can never afford all the albums that I want, it's just tough luck isn't it.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

creep said:


> I really only skimmed parts of a few of your post, so I could be missing something about whatever it is your trying to say. I think this is fair however as you yourself seem perfectly willing to ignore or quote out of context anything that contradicts your own view.
> 
> But seriously, are you really trying to equate you're being able to get the new Call of Duty game or whatever without paying anything for it as being some kind of blow for solidarity for the impoverished and destitute of the world?


You're entitled to think I'm dragging quotes out of context (maybe you're talking about yours?) but I will assure you I haven't tried to do that. Your quote about the pizza in particular: character may not translate to something economically meaningful, and that's precisely why morality isn't a good indicator for economical.. action, or imbalance or whatever. A killer is morally bad, economically second.

I'm not trying to defend piracy. But our current system is broken. In fact, I predict that you'll be able to sell your effort in solving problems online in the future. Which will basically alleviate economic goods from barriers somewhat. Time spent thinking and stressing about that ebay purchase can be used to get it. And we all know that less time wasted = a richer economy, as time = money.

But it being a blow to the impoverished of the world? Why not? Why can't 2 things be true at the same time?



creep said:


> Because its more or less seems like the guy you encounter over and over in only slightly different variations every time the issue comes up. Teenager or possibly early twentyish dude


I can also accurately generalize that after a certain age in the earlier twenties people stop being able to change their views on life so easily. And I can attribute that to all people much older being stubborn and grown the wrong way. But does it get us anywhere? I don't think it does. I would rather try to get something positive to take away.



creep said:


> If i had a daughter would he be allowed to date her. Absolutely not. That's what I was referring to before by issues of character and guys avoiding chipping in for the pizza.


So I would not be allowed to date this hypothetical daughter because in my quest for life I've engaged in copyright infringement, the lifestyle of which has enabled me to realize a lot of things about psychology and video game design, and so on, and the reality is I can now go on to make some video games so by the time I'm much older there will be many fans in support of the hypothetical dating. But I suppose the older generation is always critical and overprotective, right?



creep said:


> The wee kids in Africa never occurred to me. I'm sure they're glad to have you to speak up for them though.


Yes! Because if no-one speaks for the voiceless, who will? And will our understanding be accurate?



luceo said:


> I was just reading this article by an indie iPhone/Android app developer, thought you guys might find this part interesting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Speaking of food, I'll leave you with this thought: every time you pirate a piece of software from an independent developer, we get closer to that developer never making another app, or updating their app, because they've gone off and got another job. It's like breaking into your favourite corner store, do it enough times, and they'll close their doors forever.
Click to expand...




lonelyjew said:


> The fact of the matter is that people (musicians, programmers, directors, photographers, producers, artist, marketers, and many others) busted their asses to make a product which you clearly have an interest in.


That argument has merit, but piracy cannot be compared to the direct theft of something. It is, then, an economical hack of sorts. Creating value which, according to the old system, shouldn't have existed in the first place.

My point being: who are we to decide such a hack shouldn't exist.

Morality is a sickeningly intolerant generalized idea of how to behave. That doesn't make it right. There is no implicit right and wrong in this world, get over it.



JimmyDeansRetartedCousin said:


> I have no scruples when it comes to internet piracy.
> 
> e-books, music, film, all at no expense.
> 
> *thumbs up*


I'd say, if you are going to contribute to the economy better by doing that (i.e. what taxes go towards.. schooling, "creating jobs".. read: investing in people) then society shouldn't really have an issue with that. It's free investment.



Ohhai said:


> only problem is I try to distance myself from morality alot, I have Nazi memorability, I make semi-racist jokes with everyone including my black friends, and frankly I mess with people for the joy of it, and I really couldn't careless about the morality of it.


Nothing wrong with enjoying racist jokes. I'm sure there's a nice human being in there, don't get so down that other people don't understand you ;D



lonelyjew said:


> jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:
> 
> 
> 
> So, children in poor countries shouldn't be able to listen to new and popular music because they can't afford it?
> 
> 
> 
> This is by far the silliest thing I've read in this thread. Enjoyment of downloaded pop music is not a natural right. Enjoying a video game is not a natural right. Someone who creates something is not obligated to share it with everyone. That isn't nice, but what we do have a right over is control control over our own intellectual property.
Click to expand...

I wrote those words because I intended for you to think it over rather than jumping to what current society says.

Nobody has implicit rights. We have only legal and economic frameworks like capitalism. And somewhere along the line they are going to be broken and it doesn't help if people revert to them for security.



Metal_Heart said:


> when I've been dirt broke, been kicked out of my home and haven't been able to afford food.. do you think that I downloaded music illegally because it helped me solve my life problems and stopped me from being poor? NO. What I couldn't afford, and what I still can't afford... I do without.


I'm sure making a depressed person happy is a damn good use of music, and I'd be happy to help you there if I had the money. I'm sure if you could go to the artist directly they would be touched enough to offer a similar thing.

I'm saying stoic morality isn't necessarily right. If I have no money to buy food for the week, should I just give up and starve? No, I should ask for help. If I want help with SA and the health service doesn't really have the money, I should still ask for help, and maybe they'll have some evidence to get a bigger budget next year. Who knows.

Glad you found my post somewhat interesting 



Metal_Heart said:


> Music, films and games are not your given right as a human being, you do not need them to survive. They are a luxury, they are entertainment, they are simply a bonus.


Ah, the great mystery of the meaning of life. In this case it's kind of like the theory of relativity. A poor kid in a poor country and all he sees is poor? Fine. North Korea.

A group of people in a poor country seeing Mcdonalds and other western influences, the story and promise of happiness, well that causes people to feel hard done by and makes them frustrated.

When you say "you do not need them to survive", then in a case such as a child being the only one in his peer group that can't afford a game (again, not trying to relate any of this to myself) it's kind of subjective.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

Metal_Heart said:


> What I couldn't afford, and what I still can't afford... I do without.


Yeah I guess this applies more with food. But not content. As someone else mentioned, as well as me, youtube serves billions of free videos a day, and somehow amazingly they are able to keep it financially afloat. They are pretty much genius.

Like youtube, if we can have more free stuff as long as everyone still gets paid, i.e., more people see the same TV episodes that wouldn't have originally been involved with it

i.e. the example I gave about watching Japanese TV which is a legal grey area: the Japanese TV already falls back on their own economy to pay for it

.. why can't we have this?

that's included when you argue against piracy.

Of course, I'm not arguing for something that would break the economy. that's not good. But surely if we can get more things to more people for the same cost, which is what piracy is currently delivering, then that would be great.

Well, I guess my arguments are irrelevant because they're not opinions on piracy. XD


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

Metal_Heart said:


> jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well what if you wanted to get more in life, and only, you were missing out because you didn't have enough money to fund your music addiction. What if all the TV shows in your country are bad and you miss the old ones. What if Japan has good TV and you'd like to watch those because they fill a hole in the childish you.
> 
> But no, you'll say, you don't know you'd ever like them.
> 
> Well, there I present to you the problem with living in a bubble and being afraid to look out.
> 
> 
> 
> This is probably the oddest post on this entire thread, actually quite amusing that somebody has tried to use a "do-goody" excuse to illegally download stuff.
Click to expand...

Glad to have brightened your day. What I am talking about there is a real thing.. cultural enlightenment. And I'm sure that's exactly what has sparked the recent re-entry of anime into western culture and licensing companies that are allowing Japanese animation studios to get some money from it.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

creep said:


> And no I don't care anything about making judgments or dictating who should get to experience what. To me piracy isn't an issue of deprivation but protecting the rights of the persons who perform the hard work to create something so they be allowed to benefit from their efforts. Yes, I am aware production company's screw over creative people if allowed


I'll ignore that last bit (that I didn't quote) because I feel I answered that already.

"Protecting the rights" is an example where the rich are able to stake claim in something and, indirectly yes, claw more back. This is what happened in every single instance of the world being conquered. There is a chain leading from the rich to the poor and that's how it stays extreme.

edit: yeah, this might not look to be true if you see every creator of some work (like the "slaved really hard over the music/game" in an angelic light. But the fact is we live in an economy where all money must come from somewhere. Somebody must get ****** over for us to live in a rich country, with gas guzzling cars and computers, all of us together whether or not our little differences in behaviour are morally acceptable.

I try to look at things from an economical perspective in this case, to find the knowledge for myself and compare it against such things as IP law.

If you don't or can't argue any more and are going to accuse me of twisting your words or something, then I'm not going to be able to help. However I'm always happy to argue the point some more because I learn whenever I do !

..and with the "who gets to experience what", I'm just saying none of us are above humanity itself. We don't know what we're dealing with in that sense, or if we did the world would be under control. But we are overpopulated. There's many conflicting views. In the end we just try to make things better and in that way we're also flawed. More people living better lives is not sustainable.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> You're entitled to think I'm dragging quotes out of context (maybe you're talking about yours?) but I will assure you I haven't tried to do that. Your quote about the pizza in particular: character may not translate to something economically meaningful, and that's precisely why morality isn't a good indicator for economical.. action, or imbalance or whatever. A killer is morally bad, economically second.
> 
> I'm not trying to defend piracy. But our current system is broken. In fact, I predict that you'll be able to sell your effort in solving problems online in the future. Which will basically alleviate economic goods from barriers somewhat. Time spent thinking and stressing about that ebay purchase can be used to get it. And we all know that less time wasted = a richer economy, as time = money.
> 
> But it being a blow to the impoverished of the world? Why not? Why can't 2 things be true at the same time?
> 
> I can also accurately generalize that after a certain age in the earlier twenties people stop being able to change their views on life so easily. And I can attribute that to all people much older being stubborn and grown the wrong way. But does it get us anywhere? I don't think it does. I would rather try to get something positive to take away.
> 
> So I would not be allowed to date this hypothetical daughter because in my quest for life I've engaged in copyright infringement, the lifestyle of which has enabled me to realize a lot of things about psychology and video game design, and so on, and the reality is I can now go on to make some video games so by the time I'm much older there will be many fans in support of the hypothetical dating. But I suppose the older generation is always critical and overprotective, right?
> 
> Yes! Because if no-one speaks for the voiceless, who will? And will our understanding be accurate?
> 
> That argument has merit, but piracy cannot be compared to the direct theft of something. It is, then, an economical hack of sorts. Creating value which, according to the old system, shouldn't have existed in the first place.
> 
> My point being: who are we to decide such a hack shouldn't exist.
> 
> Morality is a sickeningly intolerant generalized idea of how to behave. That doesn't make it right. There is no implicit right and wrong in this world, get over it.
> 
> I'd say, if you are going to contribute to the economy better by doing that (i.e. what taxes go towards.. schooling, "creating jobs".. read: investing in people) then society shouldn't really have an issue with that. It's free investment.
> 
> Nothing wrong with enjoying racist jokes. I'm sure there's a nice human being in there, don't get so down that other people don't understand you ;D
> 
> I wrote those words because I intended for you to think it over rather than jumping to what current society says.
> 
> Nobody has implicit rights. We have only legal and economic frameworks like capitalism. And somewhere along the line they are going to be broken and it doesn't help if people revert to them for security.
> 
> I'm sure making a depressed person happy is a damn good use of music, and I'd be happy to help you there if I had the money. I'm sure if you could go to the artist directly they would be touched enough to offer a similar thing.
> 
> I'm saying stoic morality isn't necessarily right. If I have no money to buy food for the week, should I just give up and starve? No, I should ask for help. If I want help with SA and the health service doesn't really have the money, I should still ask for help, and maybe they'll have some evidence to get a bigger budget next year. Who knows.
> 
> Glad you found my post somewhat interesting
> 
> Ah, the great mystery of the meaning of life. In this case it's kind of like the theory of relativity. A poor kid in a poor country and all he sees is poor? Fine. North Korea.
> 
> A group of people in a poor country seeing Mcdonalds and other western influences, the story and promise of happiness, well that causes people to feel hard done by and makes them frustrated.
> 
> When you say "you do not need them to survive", then in a case such as a child being the only one in his peer group that can't afford a game (again, not trying to relate any of this to myself) it's kind of subjective.


:um

:spit

The best part about this thread is that there are some who justify their pirating movies and games by saying children in 3rd world countries are sheltered and deprived. Do you get it? These children and deprived of clean water, shelter, enough food, and standard human rights. Comparing the two is just....not...right...


----------



## Metal_Heart

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> I'm sure making a depressed person happy is a damn good use of music, and I'd be happy to help you there if I had the money. I'm sure if you could go to the artist directly they would be touched enough to offer a similar thing.
> 
> I'm saying stoic morality isn't necessarily right. If I have no money to buy food for the week, should I just give up and starve? No, I should ask for help. If I want help with SA and the health service doesn't really have the money, I should still ask for help, and maybe they'll have some evidence to get a bigger budget next year. Who knows.


But that's not the same as stealing something and taking it without permission. It should be up to the maker of the product to decide whether they give it out for free, be it to certain people or to everyone. It shouldn't be up to anybody else. The same way as if when I asked someone to help me pay for food when I needed food, if they did.. then great! but if they didn't I wouldn't steal the money from their wallets to pay for it just because I'm starving.

Again though, you need food to live so you have more of a reason to ask for it if you absolutely can not get it for yourself.. but music and films, you don't _need _so have no _right to have_. If artists starting handing out their songs for free to people who were depressed, how unfair would that be to the happy people who paid for their product.. ? lmao. It's just a silly way of putting it and it seems like people are really grasping at straws to morally justify copyright theft.



OldSchoolSkater said:


> :um
> 
> :spit
> 
> The best part about this thread is that there are some who justify their pirating movies and games by saying children in 3rd world countries are sheltered and deprived. Do you get it? These children and deprived of clean water, shelter, enough food, and standard human rights. Comparing the two is just....not...right...


It baffles me lol. It's the weirdest comparisn I've read so far >_<


----------



## Ohhai

Metal_Heart said:


> Do you realise what you're saying? It's not up to you to determine whether a creator doesn't deserve to be rewarded for their *work* and* effort*.. and why in gods name would you even want something anyway if you didn't believe was worth paying for in the first place.


Yarrr









Actually it should be up to the individual to decide whether they deserve money or not.


----------



## Metal_Heart

Ohhai said:


> Yarrr
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Actually it should be up to the individual to decide whether they deserve money or not.


So you only download songs illegally if it's from a big record label and you pay for all songs independantly recorded by artists? Really? 
Somehow I have a hard time believing that's how it works when people download music etc.


----------



## Ohhai

Metal_Heart said:


> So you only download songs illegally if it's from a big record label and you pay for all songs independantly recorded by artists? Really?
> Somehow I have a hard time believing that's how it works when people download music etc.


If it's a small band, I will still pirate their music, just to get a taste of it, if I end up liking the album, like I've said a million and one times, I will purchase something to encourage them making more music, be it a different album, shirts, a concert ticket, or even the same album I pirated, just because it was genuinely good enough to own.

Oh, but **** big named record labels.


----------



## leave me alone

Metal_Heart said:


> Somehow I have a hard time believing that's how it works when people download music etc.


I think that it actually is how it works in most cases (Not all, of course). Your avarage pirate dont listen to underground/independent music, dont play indie games etc. Pirates who do listen to indie music and play indie games tend to have more "refined" taste and are not completly indifferent towards the people who created the product. Also, with smaller artists there is a problem with availability, although that may be just a problem in my country.

_(I am not trying advocate piracy or argue about its morality)_


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

Ohhai said:


> Yarrr
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Actually it should be up to the individual to decide whether they deserve money or not.


It really disturbs me that you think this is who you are taking money from when pirating. I highly suggest you do some more research. '

Also, just because these people already have money doesn't mean that it is acceptable to steal their products.

I have not seen one good argument for pirating music, games, or movies. So far all I have heard is "I'm too lame and cheap to pay for anything I want, and I am a spoiled American who feels like I'm owed something by people more successful than me."


----------



## leave me alone

OldSchoolSkater said:


> So far all I have heard is "I'm too lame and cheap to pay for anything I want, and I am a spoiled American who feels like I'm owed something by people more successful than me."


Pretty quick on judging people, eh?


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

leave me alone said:


> Pretty quick on judging people, eh?


I'm just trying to summarize what I've heard as far as valid arguments for piracy on this thread and that is all that I've gotten out of it. There have been no good arguments, all I've heard is "I'm owed this because I can't afford it," or "they have enough money already why should I give them any of mine?" I find these to be poor arguments and lead me to believe that these people are spoiled.

I'm not judging anyone, but I would have more respect for people who pirated if they would just admit that it is wrong and move on.

I will admit that apparently I pirate music by borrowing albums from friends and then purchasing it if I like it. I will put a couple albums on my ipod from a friends computer, where he downloaded or purchased them legally, then if I like it I buy the album or I delete it off my ipod if I do not. I was not aware that this was considered pirating but according to this thread it is and I will admit that this is wrong. In fact, I probably wont do it anymore just so I'm not a hypocrite, as someone accused me of being one earlier.


----------



## leave me alone

OldSchoolSkater said:


> There have been no good arguments, all I've heard is "I'm owed this because I can't afford it," or "they have enough money already why should I give them any of mine?"


I disagree, I've read some good arguments in this thread, but I am not gonna force them down your throat.



OldSchoolSkater said:


> I'm not judging anyone, but I would have more respect for people who pirated if they would just admit that it is wrong and move on.


Fair enough.


----------



## lonelyjew

OldSchoolSkater said:


> I'm just trying to summarize what I've heard as far as valid arguments for piracy on this thread and that is all that I've gotten out of it. There have been no good arguments, all I've heard is "I'm owed this because I can't afford it," or "they have enough money already why should I give them any of mine?" I find these to be poor arguments and lead me to believe that these people are spoiled.


+1

Seriously, every person on here feels entitled to steal because lord knows their life would just end if they had to buy an album after _only _listening to samples of it online, having to go all the way to a sore, A STORE!, to listen to it, or suffer a game demo and actual read (pfft! reading, seriously, who reads lol?) a review to decide whether they want a game, and the same applies to movies, because there is just no way in hell I, or any sensible human being, ever, in the history of mankind, would be willing to fork over $5 whole dollars to rent the DVD! What is this insane world coming to when I have to pay to enjoy the services people provide me! Woes me, the world we live in is too cruel, where we are expected to pay for the things which others make to bring us happiness, or go without, because without these things [being free], I would die, just die.


----------



## Metal_Heart

lonelyjew said:


> +1
> 
> Seriously, every person on here feels entitled to steal because lord knows their life would just end if they had to buy an album after _only _listening to samples of it online, having to go all the way to a sore, A STORE!, to listen to it, or suffer a game demo and actual read (pfft! reading, seriously, who reads lol?) a review to decide whether they want a game, and the same applies to movies, because there is just no way in hell I, or any sensible human being, ever, in the history of mankind, would be willing to fork over $5 whole dollars to rent the DVD! What is this insane world coming to when I have to pay to enjoy the services people provide me! Woes me, the world we live in is too cruel, where we are expected to pay for the things which others make to bring us happiness, or go without, because without these things [being free], I would die, just die.


best post in the whole damn thread.


----------



## Misanthropic79

Ohhai said:


> Yarrr
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Actually it should be up to the individual to decide whether they deserve money or not.


:lol ^ Never seen so many a**holes crammed into such a small space.

This thread's a little heated but good to see you're all basically playing nice and just debating the topic. I'm kinda in the middle on this.

Firstly if poor/lower class people pirate stuff more power to 'em. I doubt many of them have enough of a download limit to pirate en masse (individually) and they were obviously never going to buy what they couldn't afford anyway so these companies/individuals aren't really losing anything.

Personally my pirating depends on the situation and overall I feel it evens out.

I pirate movies pretty regulary and stealing from people like Rupert Murdoch is poetic justice really. You don't get to be that rich without learning to cheat the system and steal from the taxpayer/government on a yearly basis with dodgy tax right off's etc.

But my theft from Rupert Murdoch evens out. I steal from him by downloading the odd FOX produced movie but on the other hand I give money to him for Foxtel pay TV and although I PAY for the TV he still inundates me with constant repeats and f**king life insurance ads. He's ripping me off so if he misses out on his cut of the odd stolen movie, I couldn't care less.

Music wise, if I like it chances are it's being offered free from the unsigned artist on soundcloud etc. The last album I downloaded was uploaded to Frostwire and offered free of charge by the artist himself (Brock Bennigan).

As for the signed groups I'll use Atmosphere as an example. I own everything they've released (bar "Sad Clown") but I couldn't find Deep Puddle Dynamics new so I just ripped it. Also I won't lie, I do rip a cd worth of individual songs maybe once a month but that's mainly because it's a pain to go to 3 different stores, search music, enter card details, download all the songs to get enough tracks to fill a disc, then burn when I'm in an instant gratification mood. I own over 100 cd's and have around half that again in paid downloads (from ithinkmusic.com) so I feel it all evens out.

I don't like pop music so my opinion on people pirating that s**t is giant who cares? This idea that musicians are entitled to riches doesn't gel with me. To me a TRUE artist does it for the love of the art, a sellout is in it for the cash. Stealing from sellouts is just more poetic justice. They've sold their souls why should I care that they're not as rich as they could be?

Games, I never pirate. The industry works differently to Movies/TV/Music. Games cost a fortune to produce and 100% of the budget that goes towards making more games comes from purchases. I want new games so I always pay.

Look ultimately piracy IS wrong but in this world none of us truly play by ALL the rules and on the other hand we're all getting screwed one way or another so to me pirating is just more of the same general theme. Life isn't fair, whaddya gonna do? :stu


----------



## creep

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> You're entitled to think I'm dragging quotes out of context (maybe you're talking about yours?) but I will assure you I haven't tried to do that. Your quote about the pizza in particular: character may not translate to something economically meaningful, and that's precisely why morality isn't a good indicator for economical.. action, or imbalance or whatever. A killer is morally bad, economically second.
> 
> I'm not trying to defend piracy. But our current system is broken. In fact, I predict that you'll be able to sell your effort in solving problems online in the future. Which will basically alleviate economic goods from barriers somewhat. Time spent thinking and stressing about that ebay purchase can be used to get it. And we all know that less time wasted = a richer economy, as time = money.
> 
> But it being a blow to the impoverished of the world? Why not? Why can't 2 things be true at the same time?


I hate to say this because it could easily be made out that I'm just using it as an excuse to to dodge your points, also I worry about having the same problem. But a lot of your writing style isn't all that clear and concise. I'm reading different things about the system being broken and whatnot, which might be true but I'm having trouble relating your examples or how this justifies piracy to the real world in any meaningful way. Perhaps it requires more elaboration on your part. Perhaps I am just dumb.



jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> I can also accurately generalize that after a certain age in the earlier twenties people stop being able to change their views on life so easily. And I can attribute that to all people much older being stubborn and grown the wrong way. But does it get us anywhere? I don't think it does. I would rather try to get something positive to take away.


Every time I hear an older person say something like "I've gotten too old to change or to do things a different way..", I seriously want to slap the hell out of them. I hear younger people (not to mention kleptomaniacs and alcoholics) make similar comments all the time. Not about age necessarily but claims amounting to "this is who I am, I may as well accept it." Its a cop-out, its lazy, its a convenient excuse to get out of doing something, without having to feel too bad about it. So no, I don't believe your generalization is at all accurate.

If there's a clear cut difference between those two groups maybe it lies less in number of years lived than in an understanding of what it feels like to have to work for a living and an ability to sympathize more with other people who also have to work for a living not to mention a more first hand understanding of practical realities, as opposed the second group that doesn't work yet or who might work but still maintains options like falling back on ones parents or altering their career path without major cost.



> So I would not be allowed to date this hypothetical daughter because in my quest for life I've engaged in copyright infringement.......


Well, there are lots worse things a person could be into, but I do require some evidence one possesses a basic set of values, such as a desire to pull one's own weight and to owe up to own ones deeds, rather than trying to justify them. These say a lot about a person.



> ...the lifestyle of which has enabled me to realize a lot of things about psychology and video game design, and so on, and the reality is I can now go on to make some video games so by the time I'm much older there will be many fans in support of the hypothetical dating. But I suppose the older generation is always critical and overprotective, right?


Playing video games has made you a psychological and programing genius? What?



> Yes! Because if no-one speaks for the voiceless, who will? And will our understanding be accurate?


But your understanding, at least as you seem to be explaining it, would place video games and the like somewhere near the base of maslow's hierarchy of needs. Video games can be fun but anyone who can't imagine living a fulfilled life without them has much deeper issues.

If you were really speaking up for the voiceless don't you think it would come across as more genuine if as opposed to trying to get yourself free games, you were trying to get them water that isn't tarnished by factory run off and human feces or education that could give them more opportunities. Opportunities that would perhaps even allow some of them to go to on become even greater psychological and program geniuses even than you claim all than time squandered playing video games has made yourself.



> My point being: who are we to decide such a hack shouldn't exist.


This statement sounds righteous on the surface but thinking about it a little bit it doesn't actually seem to mean anything. Who are we to decide anything at all?



> Morality is a sickeningly intolerant generalized idea of how to behave. That doesn't make it right. There is no implicit right and wrong in this world, get over it.


I think you're using the fact that certain groups and people often twist the concept of morality to promote their own personal agenda's - intolerance, oppression of women, various nonsense based in traditions, etc, to claim their is no such thing as morality.

We all have the ability to treat one another fairly, with the same regard we feel like we ourselves deserve and to give one another our due for our efforts. Acting on that is what I would term 'morality'. Some of the time its more complicated but usually its a surprisingly easy code to go by. You are free to your own view though.



> I'd say, if you are going to contribute to the economy better by doing that (i.e. what taxes go towards.. schooling, "creating jobs".. read: investing in people) then society shouldn't really have an issue with that. It's free investment.


Well if you like movies and music and video games and all that somebody has to pay for them.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

OldSchoolSkater said:


> The best part about this thread is that there are some who justify their pirating movies and games by saying children in 3rd world countries are sheltered and deprived. Do you get it? These children and deprived of clean water, shelter, enough food, and standard human rights. Comparing the two is just....not...right...





Metal_Heart said:


> It baffles me lol. It's the weirdest comparisn I've read so far >_<


Well, you two may notice I reply to all the points that oppose my view in the thread.

I'll wait for you both to catch up with my last few posts..



creep said:


> I hate to say this because it could easily be made out that I'm just using it as an excuse to to dodge your points, also I worry about having the same problem. But a lot of your writing style isn't all that clear and concise. I'm reading different things about the system being broken and whatnot, which might be true but I'm having trouble relating your examples or how this justifies piracy to the real world in any meaningful way. Perhaps it requires more elaboration on your part. Perhaps I am just dumb.


Yeah my writing's all over the place, sorry.

Well, for the most part yeah, this (piracy) all has to do with the economy and the complex concept of value. Well, I guess the economics of it is a lot of information.. and I really want to prove myself wrong. But, I haven't had anything come my way that does. I'll blog about it. But, maybe a forum isn't the best place.



creep said:


> Every time I hear an older person say something like "I've gotten too old to change or to do things a different way..", I seriously want to slap the hell out of them. I hear younger people (not to mention kleptomaniacs and alcoholics) make similar comments all the time. Not about age necessarily but claims amounting to "this is who I am, I may as well accept it." Its a cop-out, its lazy, its a convenient excuse to get out of doing something, without having to feel too bad about it. So no, I don't believe your generalization is at all accurate.


Well that's great to hear!



creep said:


> If there's a clear cut difference between those two groups maybe it lies less in number of years lived than in an understanding of what it feels like to have to work for a living and an ability to sympathize more with other people who also have to work for a living not to mention a more first hand understanding of practical realities, as opposed the second group that doesn't work yet or who might work but still maintains options like falling back on ones parents or altering their career path without major cost.


I get the impression this is kind of true, yeah, generally. But it's only a generalization, right?



creep said:


> Well, there are lots worse things a person could be into, but I do require some evidence one possesses a basic set of values, such as a desire to pull one's own weight and to owe up to own ones deeds, rather than trying to justify them. These say a lot about a person.


Sounds reasonable.



creep said:


> Playing video games has made you a psychological and programing genius? What?


Well, not so much that, but the whole internet culture and the association of the internet with all these things. Game design theory, Wikipedia leading me to anything I want, all that. Liberal nature of it all, kinda. And none of the journey I've gone through would be possible with some kind of system that takes down all copyright violations, or aims to, i.e. SOPA. so I'm with the anti-SOPA people. The culture of the internet, innovation, online culture.. it's all pretty interesting and great stuff.



creep said:


> But your understanding, at least as you seem to be explaining it, would place video games and the like somewhere near the base of maslow's hierarchy of needs. Video games can be fun but anyone who can't imagine living a fulfilled life without them has much deeper issues.


Well I didn't say it's a needs in a given heirarchial table. But, in context, like the example I gave of a child missing out on a game when his friends all have it, yeah that's likely to impend on his quality of life i.e. he is more of an outcast now. Obviously, at some point these claims become extreme.. but everything's extreme if it's not considered normal within today's society.



creep said:


> If you were really speaking up for the voiceless don't you think it would come across as more genuine if as opposed to trying to get yourself free games, you were trying to get them water that isn't tarnished by factory run off and human feces or education that could give them more opportunities. Opportunities that would perhaps even allow some of them to go to on become even greater psychological and program geniuses even than you claim all than time squandered playing video games has made yourself.


Well, I'll speak for what I know about, and leave the rest of the issues for those who know about them, those I would in that sense hold responsible for voicing such opinions.

I can choose to speak for points on philosophy that nobody else to my knowledge is speaking about.



creep said:


> I think you're using the fact that certain groups and people often twist the concept of morality to promote their own personal agenda's - intolerance, oppression of women, various nonsense based in traditions, etc, to claim their is no such thing as morality.
> 
> We all have the ability to treat one another fairly, with the same regard we feel like we ourselves deserve and to give one another our due for our efforts. Acting on that is what I would term 'morality'. Some of the time its more complicated but usually its a surprisingly easy code to go by. You are free to your own view though.


Oh, no, I'm not saying morality doesn't exist. But it's limited. I highlighted the limitations. It's not fit for anything like economical reasoning.



creep said:


> creep said:
> 
> 
> 
> My point being: who are we to decide such a hack shouldn't exist.
> 
> 
> 
> This statement sounds righteous on the surface but thinking about it a little bit it doesn't actually seem to mean anything. Who are we to decide anything at all?
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to sound righteous there, sorry if I come across that way. I'm saying who are we to stop duplicates of TV shows being enjoyed in another country that's financially unaffected by this?

But now that you mention it, yeah. That's a great question. Who are we to decide any of this? We can't even keep track of all the facts involved in decision making efforts. We're inherently flawed by emotional and other biases which hold us hostage in decision making. Votes are cast by people that didn't bother to read up on things for themselves. So that's a great question..

That's what this argument is turning out to be, as I see it.. "you shouldn't pirate because that's bad" vs. "piracy creates value"

And nobody can counter "piracy creates value" with law, or the god card. Or an economical explanation that proves making copies of things takes away money. It can only prove that it takes away potential sales. Which is another thing entirely.



creep said:


> Well if you like movies and music and video games and all that somebody has to pay for them.


Yes. Mass piracy right now would be very bad.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

creep said:


> I hate to say this because it could easily be made out that I'm just using it as an excuse to to dodge your points, also I worry about having the same problem. But a lot of your writing style isn't all that clear and concise. I'm reading different things about the system being broken and whatnot, which might be true but I'm having trouble relating your examples or how this justifies piracy to the real world in any meaningful way. Perhaps it requires more elaboration on your part. Perhaps I am just dumb.


There are some really great examples though, I assure you. There are examples like in Spain and countries with more grey areas surrounding piracy where anime TV shows, sometimes highly priced software is passed around without a thought. This creates huge value in that there are copies of software produced.. those software already being well supported in the relevant industries. We have just added something. Ideally this will change and more users can support each piece of software.. that's a trend that has sometimes come out of piracy i.e. music popularity growing with online piracy.

For some people: they may have no means to make a payment because of being in a different country, or so on. They may simply be a little too young to pay. Piracy opens the door to all of these people, all at once. (and so there are other factors like addiction..)

But yes, for some people the things they can gain access to for free mean a huge amount to them. And who is to say that they know a better economical model than that? If you don't have a better model, then you can't really come and criticize it. Just how you can't come along and say white people are supreme, or we should all live in a Westernized society.

..or I may be talking crap now.

One of the best things to come out of piracy in my opinion is crowd funding, or more specifically the Indie Bundles for indie videogames. Everyone chips in some $6 or however much they can pay, and they do have enough money at the end. And everyone feels great about contributing. And some of it goes to charity.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> I'll wait for you both to catch up with my last few posts..


I'm not sure I understand - have I not been trying to reply to each and every one of these posts that have quoted me? There have been a couple dozen notifications about me being quoted in this thread, so I'm sorry if I haven't touched on every point that you have made.

Also, I want to let you all know I am done arguing my opinion. It has been a great dialogue so far, and as someone else mentioned I feel that we have been "playing nice" for the most part, so that's good. I simply feel that I have nothing else to say regarding this and I would be repeating myself more than I already have. So thank you to everyone who has participated in this thread so far. I may check back once in a while to see what other opinions come up.


----------



## Help please

There should be a 'try before you buy' on almost every paid download...

I agree that hard working devs should get their cut, but at a reasonable price... Charging £££ for software is stupid...

That being said if I can't afford it, I don't don my pirate hat...


----------



## Mc Borg

Ohhai said:


> There's of course the moral argument "You're taking money out of the hands of people who made it! Wouldn't you be angry if someone got your work for free?" Which in my case, if someone could make a 1:1 exact copy of my work, then I say go for it, I've offered my services to people for free plenty of times, with no expectations of getting anything in return.


The reason this argument fails is that when a person works, they only get paid once for a their service(s). In the case of music, etc. the artist can potentially be payed an_ infinite_ amount of money by a potentially _infinite_ amount of people for a _single_ task performed. They're not analogous at all. A songwriter can spend an hour creating a song and potentially be a billionaire if everyone with an internet connection payed to download it. Another person can work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and only get payed a single time for his finite services.

The way I see it is that if a person wasn't even going to buy it in the first place, why would it matter?
Situation A: Person goes without listening to music; copyright holder/artist doesn't get paid.
Situation B: Person downloads album; copyright holder/artist doesn't get paid.

Nothing tangible is being taken from the latter, so I don't see the big deal. People are presupposing that these downloaders would have bought these albums had they not had them freely available, which isn't necessarily the case. I'd be willing to bet that it's the exact opposite. Most people who download illegally _only_ listen to the music because it's freely available to them. And in many cases they only have knowledge of the music through illegal downloading.


----------



## GunnyHighway

Mc Borg said:


> Nothing tangible is being taken from the latter, so I don't see the big deal. People are presupposing that these downloaders would have bought these albums had they not had them freely available, which isn't necessarily the case. I'd be willing to bet that it's the exact opposite. Most people who download illegally _only_ listen to the music because it's freely available to them. And in many cases they only have knowledge of the music through illegal downloading.


Yay, people making sense in here! As said many times, a lot of us wouldn't know certain bands if it wasn't for pirating. Especially true for myself as before a couple years ago, I knew nothing but what was played on the radio.

It seems that everybody adamantly against pirating has ignored the posts about "try before you buy" since to be honest, they make complete sense. Me downloading something and deleting it if it's not worth my money, nobody gets hurt. Me downloading it and enjoying it, then paying for said product, everybody's happy. I don't see the problem with that.

All I can say is don't paint everybody the same. Just because your vision of a "pirate" is a freeloader who contributes nothing, doesn't mean everybody is. Hell, myself and even Ohhai (sorry if anybody else did and I missed it, tired and cranky) have showed you the effects of what our terrible piracy has done...the cruel, cruel thing of _*buying the products we liked*_. OH NO THE WORLD IS GOING TO END BECAUSE WE DIDN'T PAY FIRST!


----------



## gorbulas

I only read 2 pages of this and I need to get to bed soon but I have to reply to this. 

Record Labels- are behind the times. they don't know what to do so they call downloading "stealing". a large number of artists don't care if you download their music and spread it. it creates new fans, fans that might attend their concerts. there are some greedy artists out there that record labels brainwash. 

Movie Industry - they have always had this problem because their commercial products even before the internet was being targeted. it just grew exponentially when the internet took off. i mean you can only really watch a movie once. personally, I either watch the movie i really want to see at the theaters. then wait for the dvd to come out. for old movies, i skip that process altogether and just download it. i mean 10-20 yr old movies that you can't find in stores. 

tv shows- this really pisses me off the most. the shows get aired for people to watch. if someone misses the tv show, they're screwed because the morons think places like hulu is bad and tv shows rarely run the episodes again. screw you guys. do you want me to watch the show or not? retards in charge there. i hated it when FOX changed it to 8 days on hulu. if you're a regular viewer that watches it on air but misses one episode, you ARE forced to pirate. excuse my language, but **** them. 

ill reply later with games and other stuff. i have to go.


----------



## Ohhai

Rather new argument;
It's my religion. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16424659

Also my favourite band in the world (Cancerslug) don't even offer their music for sale, there's a total of ONE album you can purchase online, the rest you have to attend their cheap shows to get, when Alex Story the lead singer was asked what he thinks about all his work being available on piratebay, he said something along the lines of "It's great, saves me giving away my albums away for free as much at shows" , I have never purchased any of their items, because frankly it's incredibly difficult to get to England, and they wouldn't want someone paying out the *** for their art, I could not respect those beautiful psychopaths more.

Also; enjoy listening to a TON of their music for free, uploaded by the artists themselves:
http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/artist_songs/986115










Edit; They've actually just announce yesterday their first 4 albums are available for physical purchase.
http://www.reverbnation.com/store/store/artist_986115
$10 per album, $6 for their oldest which was one of my favourites.

Also this post doesn't contribute to the discussion much apart from showing that some artists truly are doing it for passion, not money.


----------



## gorbulas

just a quick reply about games ....
http://www.destructoid.com/ubisoft-drm-allegedly-blocking-new-computer-hardware-219823.phtml

read this. a perfect example on how anti-piracy hurts the user. so what is a player going to do, get the crack or stop playing the game? need i say more? pirating games is bad but it at least keeps the developers honest on how good their games are. in the olden days there is a thing called shareware which is non existent today. you try the shareware, and then buy it. very few games has demos. a lot of games are going multiplayer to prevent piracy, which is fine but multiplayer is not for every game.


----------



## successful

Lil Wayne Own a $15 Million dollar home & a $1.5 Million dollar car...
Adele is getting paid Millions with "21",Still number 1 on itunes....
Will Smith make crazy millions every time a movie drop...
Nerds will still support Harry Potter even after everyone downloaded the movie illegally.

soooooo...why should every single person spend money on their albums & Movies again when we don't have anywhere near as much as they're making? These people get paid millions regardless. Don't have $11 every time i want to buy a movie or album.

It's good to support a few albums and movies, But It's the 2000's people not going to buy EVERY Single album they want to hear..Piracy is good for the users imo.


----------



## Uranium

"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not." -Bill Gates

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9

Some piracy is good.


----------



## PickleNose

File sharing is wealth redistribution at it's finest.


----------



## leave me alone

> While most of the major entertainment industry companies wage war against BitTorrent sites, the Songwriters Association of Canada prefers to embrace file-sharing. Speaking with TorrentFreak, vice president Jean-Robert Bisaillon says that the Internet has revived the music business. Sharing music is part of people's nature and the songwriters want to legalize file-sharing, while compensating the artists whose works are shared.


Full article: http://torrentfreak.com/canadian-songwriters-want-to-legalize-file-sharing-111206/


----------



## One Man Wolfpack

*Megaupload Shut Down*

Thought this was relevant


> Megaupload, one of the internet's largest
> file-sharing sites, has been shut down by
> officials in the US.
> 
> The site's founder have been charged with
> violating piracy laws.
> 
> Federal prosecutors have accused it of costing
> copyright holders more than $500m
> (£320m) in lost revenue. The firm says it was
> diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material.


Full Story


----------



## Micronian

I don't understand why the government has to go through such lengths to make a trivial point. Shutting down Megaupload will not solve anything. Other methods to share will pop up, and it'll just escalate the antagonism.

It's just like the drug trade. The US government goes to Bolivia and burns down some coca farms, then another 5 pop up. Nothing changes and nobody's happy.

Whoever is making a living off of these arrests and investigations is the real winner, because the "war" will never end. I think they're the real pirates.


----------



## MindOverMood

One Man Wolfpack said:


> Thought this was relevant
> Full Story


Never knew Swizz Beatz was CEO of Megaopload:blank


----------



## gorbulas

One Man Wolfpack said:


> Thought this was relevant
> Full Story


i want to also link this reddit discussion. the topmost reply has links that show that the RIAA (Universal Music) think they're above copyright law. they're in bed with the US govt and can do whatever they want. pretty scary, isn't?


----------



## Meli24R

GunnyHighway said:


> Yay, people making sense in here! As said many times, a lot of us wouldn't know certain bands if it wasn't for pirating. Especially true for myself as before a couple years ago, I knew nothing but what was played on the radio.
> It seems that everybody adamantly against pirating has ignored the posts about "try before you buy" since to be honest, they make complete sense. Me downloading something and deleting it if it's not worth my money, nobody gets hurt. Me downloading it and enjoying it, then paying for said product, everybody's happy. I don't see the problem with that.
> 
> All I can say is don't paint everybody the same. Just because your vision of a "pirate" is a freeloader who contributes nothing, doesn't mean everybody is. Hell, myself and even Ohhai (sorry if anybody else did and I missed it, tired and cranky) have showed you the effects of what our terrible piracy has done...the cruel, cruel thing of _*buying the products we liked*_. OH NO THE WORLD IS GOING TO END BECAUSE WE DIDN'T PAY FIRST!


Totally agree. There's a ton of music I wouldn't have even been aware of if it weren't for piracy. I often download songs illegally before buying them to see if I like them. Itunes and amazon won't allow users to listen to a song in its entirety unless you buy it. And some music I like is pretty obscure and I can't even find it on youtube. I'm not going to fork over a dollar or more for a song unless I've listened to it the whole way through.

I download tv shows too, but I also DVR them and/or usually end up buying the dvds. I do this because I enjoy video editing. I make fan videos to the shows I like and post them online (a lot of them have been taken down for copyright infringment) 
The fanvidding community is huge and really I think fanvidders are doing the television and movie industries a favor. I've gotten into a ton of new shows because of fanvids. I've also had people tell me that they've started watching shows because of my vids. These industries should be happy to have people who are basically advertising their films/shows and bringing in new viewers.


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## Dr Hobo Scratch MD

without piracy i might as well convert my pc into a easy bake oven. at least it can supply me with tasty treats. cause i cant see no other purpose for the electricity it consumes.


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## jg43i9jghy0t4555

gorbulas said:


> just a quick reply about games ....
> http://www.destructoid.com/ubisoft-drm-allegedly-blocking-new-computer-hardware-219823.phtml
> 
> read this. a perfect example on how anti-piracy hurts the user. so what is a player going to do, get the crack or stop playing the game? need i say more? pirating games is bad but it at least keeps the developers honest on how good their games are. in the olden days there is a thing called shareware which is non existent today. you try the shareware, and then buy it. very few games has demos. a lot of games are going multiplayer to prevent piracy, which is fine but multiplayer is not for every game.


The industry is trying to change, there's a recent effort to move to free-to-play, but of course there's more to it than that. Every model has problems, I think having demos though is still problematic.. look at xbox live, you can get trials of most games but how is that going to help when platforms like iOS/any small device, flash have smaller games with smaller download times.. better tradeoffs. And accessibility. Free CDs in magazines, for software, was great back then. Now.. not so much.

Now, ironically, the accessibility battle is somewhat in web engine preference.. a kind of perversion of the notion of "what's good will get heard of by word of mouth/etc"

But yeah, on the surface, DLC harms the experience for players, but, I guess it's not so bad. But it puts a negative spin on the experience ultimately.. that it doesn't deserve.. which will help people drift to piracy for the wrong reasons. complicated stuff.

Again.. discussions on the web in general and especially news articles are unreliable for proof. These people get paid to be opinionated, and there are hardly enough experts on stuff where a lot of legal aspects converge.


----------



## jg43i9jghy0t4555

GunnyHighway said:


> Yay, people making sense in here! As said many times, a lot of us wouldn't know certain bands if it wasn't for pirating. Especially true for myself as before a couple years ago, I knew nothing but what was played on the radio.
> 
> It seems that everybody adamantly against pirating has ignored the posts about "try before you buy" since to be honest, they make complete sense. Me downloading something and deleting it if it's not worth my money, nobody gets hurt. Me downloading it and enjoying it, then paying for said product, everybody's happy. I don't see the problem with that.


Yeah, that's one of very few certainties here.. that people who haven't experienced something will be critical. This pattern is really obvious, it's essentially the same as "God hates ***s". People can be like that.

Not to link this with the people in particular who have posted here, I have nothing personally harmful to say, but it is relevant:



House in House M.D. said:


> Rules are just helpful guidelines for stupid people who can't make up their own minds.


----------



## OldSchoolSkater

I'm not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from. Why you are owed a "try before you buy' option? I know that my company does not give out free products for people to try before they buy. 

Also, this could be a good idea but only if people actually buy the product after "trying" it out. In my experience, those who pirate on a regular basis DO NOT purchase anything after they try it. They file it away, enjoy it, and continue to download more things illegally.


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## GunnyHighway

I'm done with this thread. You just assume everybody is a freeloader even though 3 of us have shown you evidence otherwise. I feel entitled to try stuff before I buy it because in the world of today, there is a lot of stuff I personally feel is not high enough quality to deserve my money. Call me whatever negative things you want, I call it being smart with my money. 

Glad to know talking about piracy to some is like talking to some religion fanatics who ignore everything you say. :blank


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## OldSchoolSkater

GunnyHighway said:


> I'm done with this thread. You just assume everybody is a freeloader even though 3 of us have shown you evidence otherwise. I feel entitled to try stuff before I buy it because in the world of today, there is a lot of stuff I personally feel is not high enough quality to deserve my money. Call me whatever negative things you want, I call it being smart with my money.
> 
> Glad to know talking about piracy to some is like talking to some religion fanatics who ignore everything you say. : blank


I'm sorry - I just have not seen any evidence to show that you are owed a "try before you buy." And what evidence have you shown me?

And if you feel that in the world of today there are things that are not high enough quality to deserve your money then why not just live without it rather than pirate/steal it? I'm just challenging you to prove to me that you are truely owed something that you believe you are.


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## lonelyjew

Micronian said:


> I don't understand why the government has to go through such lengths to make a trivial point. Shutting down Megaupload will not solve anything. Other methods to share will pop up, and it'll just escalate the antagonism.
> 
> It's just like the drug trade. The US government goes to Bolivia and burns down some coca farms, then another 5 pop up. Nothing changes and nobody's happy.
> 
> Whoever is making a living off of these arrests and investigations is the real winner, because the "war" will never end. I think they're the real pirates.


You realize that Megaupload made hundreds of millions of dollars by promoting piracy right? Were most of you against profiting off of this? This isn't like drugs at all, it's like a ring of thieves.


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## Monroee

I agree with the 'try before you buy' opinion. But maybe it's because, I actually abide by that. Now, the thing is, I don't actually "like" most of the music I try out. Which to me is a good thing, I don't want to support an artist that sucks. Trust me, I made that mistake with Maroon 5, & that was the last time I bought an album just based on the singles I heard.

But when I actually "like" an artist, once in a blue moon because everything sucks nowadays, I will go out & buy their work.


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## Chopkinsca

I just bought F.E.A.R, a game which I had pirated in the past. I felt it was a game that the developers deserved to be paid for. The only reason I didn't buy it sooner was I couldn't find it in stores and only just now found a way to pay for things online (i didn't know you could use a debit bank account for paypal).

I pirated Warcraft 3, but never played past the Human campaign. One day I bought the battlechest and have played the game quite a bit since then. This was an example of using a pirated version as a demo.

Pirating World of Warcraft is what got me into the game. I torrented the game and tried to play on private servers. Those private servers sucked and I wanted to play the game properly, so I went out and bought the game. I've been playing the game legit for about 4 years off and on now.

The first time I played Starcraft was at a friends house who pirated the game. Since then, I've bought the game twice (lost my discs in a move one time).


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## gorbulas

lonelyjew said:


> You realize that Megaupload made hundreds of millions of dollars by promoting piracy right? Were most of you against profiting off of this? This isn't like drugs at all, it's like a ring of thieves.


Megaupload is not used just for piracy. They also take down links if they get notice of them.


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## Micronian

lonelyjew said:


> You realize that Megaupload made hundreds of millions of dollars by promoting piracy right? Were most of you against profiting off of this? This isn't like drugs at all, it's like a ring of thieves.


As I said:


Micronian said:


> Shutting down Megaupload will not solve anything.


I'm not talking about about _promoting _anything, or any act relating to it; I'm talking about the actual act of an end user obtaining a copy (of whatever). Obtaining bootleg copies of things has been around for a long time. MegaUpload did not start it, nor will this shutdown end it.

I was thinking about this last night, actually. And my conclusion wasn't so much that people are greedy, or antagonistic to the law. I think it has to do more with the medium. when it is so much easier, convenient, and affordable, to do something, people will do it. 40 years ago, people traded/sold 45s, then Cassettes and VHS, then digital files. I remember, before mp3s and movie files took off, people on the internet would trade VHS tapes, relying on the easier way to *communicate*. Then came napster. Then came all kinds of things. And I believe it's because the medium has become so convenient/inexpensive that it makes no sense to pay for it.

It makes no sense to pay x amount of dollars on a medium that didn't cost much to make, or deliver. the RIAA and MPAA know this so well. I figure if they really want to cut down pirating they should avoid media that is easy to copy. (i.e. only promote/produce concerts, only show movies in theaters, and forget about the distribution of cds and dvds). I wonder why don't they make content delivery so easy, affordable, and ubiquitous to the end user that file sharing becomes less convenient than what you can get from the legit distributor?.

but no. They make us pay $19.99 for a cardboard box and a plastic disc for something we have already seen and paid for at the theater, or concert. They want us to go to the mall and shop when we can otherwise have the content at the push of a button. This is was the same consumption model done in 1945--more than 60 years ago--and the RIAA/MPAA still want us to do it this way! it's ridiculous!

I feel they're the ones who are out of touch (and the ones who need to be shut down), while the newer ways to deliver content keep getting brushed aside and criminalized.


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## ShyGuy86

Micronian said:


> I remember, before mp3s and movie files took off, people on the internet would trade VHS tapes


Oh yeah! In fact, the owners of a certain TV show actively encouraged fans to "keep circulating the tapes!".


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## lonelyjew

gorbulas said:


> Megaupload is not used just for piracy. They also take down links if they get notice of them.


From what I've read, they actively participated in getting movies and shows on there before they even premiered. Even if they hadn't, are you going to deny that even though there were other uses, the vast majority of their traffic was for the pirated products (ranging from shows, music, movies, to comics, and off course porn) being hosted?



Micronian said:


> MegaUpload did not start it, nor will this shutdown end it.


Off course not, but they happily made tons of money off of it, knowingly and facilitated in it, which means they knowingly violated the law, so I fail to see why they shouldn't have been shut down.


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## Ohhai

lonelyjew said:


> Off course not, but they happily made tons of money off of it, knowingly and facilitated in it, which means they knowingly violated the law, so I fail to see why they shouldn't have been shut down.


Youtube and google do the same thing.


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## lonelyjew

Ohhai said:


> Youtube and google do the same thing.


Oh, can you you give me a single example of google or youtube itself actively finding and hosting copyrighted material?

Google doesn't host pirated content, it's a search engine. Youtube actually makes a real attempt at taking down copyrighted material, and is very successful in doing so. While they obviously can't get everything, it is clear what their stance is on this. Also, very importantly, *youtube relies on original content for it's popularity*, not copyrighted material.


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## Ohhai

lonelyjew said:


> Oh, can you you give me a single example of google or youtube itself actively finding and hosting copyrighted material?
> 
> Google doesn't host pirated content, it's a search engine. Youtube actually makes a real attempt at taking down copyrighted material, and is very successful in doing so. While they obviously can't get everything, it is clear what their stance is on this. Also, very importantly, *youtube relies on original content for it's popularity*, not copyrighted material.







Megaupload also tried to take down copy written material as soon as they get confirmation about it being copy written, they had a top 100 downloaded full of downloads ALL legal, including game companies that decided to use Megaupload's hosting rather than their own, due to it being cheaper.

Google itself has cache'd copy written material, it's on their server, regardless of them knowing it's copy written.

See the well known Copy written Yahoo logo: http://bit.ly/yU7LXF

If you'd like to question the legality of that, then feel free to read; http://bit.ly/y1wGbp
Where a student is being extradited for hosting a site that links to copy written material.


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## PickleNose

OldSchoolSkater said:


> I'm sorry - I just have not seen any evidence to show that you are owed a "try before you buy." And what evidence have you shown me?


 No one owes anyone anything, TBH. But if you're trying to sell a disc full of digits for $20 - $30 a pop in a world filled with hundreds of millions of interconnected copy machines, you might want to consider that the wind is against you. Yeah, technically, they can get the law on their side but they're going to lose. Either that or they're going to destroy the internet trying to win.

There was a time when you could run a business shining shoes just about anywhere in the world. Things have changed, you'd have to set up shop somewhere unique where people need their shoes shined or you wouldn't make enough to buy a Coke in a week.

The internet was/is a game changer.


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## Xtraneous

@[email protected]


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## Nathan Talli




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## diamondheart89

OldSchoolSkater said:


> I'm just trying to summarize what I've heard as far as valid arguments for piracy on this thread and that is all that I've gotten out of it. There have been no good arguments, all I've heard is "I'm owed this because I can't afford it," or "they have enough money already why should I give them any of mine?" I find these to be poor arguments and lead me to believe that these people are spoiled.
> 
> I'm not judging anyone, but I would have more respect for people who pirated if they would just admit that it is wrong and move on.
> 
> I will admit that apparently I pirate music by borrowing albums from friends and then purchasing it if I like it. I will put a couple albums on my ipod from a friends computer, where he downloaded or purchased them legally, then if I like it I buy the album or I delete it off my ipod if I do not. I was not aware that this was considered pirating but according to this thread it is and I will admit that this is wrong. In fact, I probably wont do it anymore just so I'm not a hypocrite, as someone accused me of being one earlier.


You find them poor arguments because you disagree with them. That doesn't nullify their validity. I think your argument is unrealistic and short-sighted, but that doesn't automatically mean it's worthless. Anyway, I personally feel that pirating is okay in some cases and not in others. It's not a moral crisis for me. It's a case by case basis. I don't apply a generalized moral code for everything ever. :| Lying is not wrong in every case, neither is stealing. It depends on how much harm you're doing.


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## Shoelaces

talisman said:


> I spent many years when I was younger trying to defend piracy and come up with reason why it was morally acceptable, but nowadays I don't try to defend it, because really there is no good moral argument for piracy. In the end, whether the product is digital or physical you're still getting the benefit from it without rewarding the creator or retailer.
> 
> There's plenty of criticism that can be levelled at the music, movie, games industries and I don't think their attitudes or attempts to thwart piracy do anything to make them morally superior to the pirates.
> 
> That said would I have ever discovered my favourite genres of music without file sharing? Would I have wasted lots of money on inferior games if I didn't have the option to 'try before I buy' thanks to all these release groups and crack writers? Would I have the ability to watch tv programmes unfairly being aired in the US months before the UK without people sharing TV captures?
> 
> Although none of this makes piracy morally right it does provide compelling reasons to favour it regardless of the moral dilemma it poses. It gives people power and control which over-zealous copyright laws and self-interested media industries seem to want to take away, so really there's very little incentive not to take advantage of this digital phenomenon (for me at least).


I agree with *talisman* on this. It doesn't matter whether a band is filthy rich from concert-income or whether piracy allows, for example, smaller budget movies to become better known to the large audience - Piracy is still stealing. Someone makes a song or a movie using their own funds for equipment, instruments, composers, props, actors, experts, whatever - and you distribute the labor of their work for free. That record companies and managers get a big slice of the profit doesn't validate it either. So yes, I think piracy is morally unacceptable unless it has the authorization of the makers.

How musicians and people in the film industry make their products better-known is up to them. They can still send some samples to the media, the Internet, make an account on a site and upload their own songs et cetera. Some films and albums may be non-profit.

It's a whole different matter and a much more difficult problem to solve how piracy can be stopped.


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## Brightpaperwarewolf

OldSchoolSkater said:


> I'm not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from. Why you are owed a "try before you buy' option? I know that my company does not give out free products for people to try before they buy.
> 
> Also, this could be a good idea but only if people actually buy the product after "trying" it out. In my experience, those who pirate on a regular basis DO NOT purchase anything after they try it. They file it away, enjoy it, and continue to download more things illegally.


The music industry is not the same as selling a bar of soap.

I been to a lot of concerts of bands I wouldn't have heard of otherwise. If their album is really good, I'd buy it in vinyl. People have discussed copyright issues for years, back to a-tracks and tapes. Is it any different than making a tape for a friend? Back in the days, that was the thing to do when you didn't have a lot of money. You shared collections with friends exchanging tapes to minimize the cost of buying CDs or tapes. If someone purchases a physical copy, why shouldn't have the right to distribute it for friends as long as it's not for commercial intention, aka selling it for money. If someone really liked it, they would pay for an upgrade in sound.

All I see in this piracy laws is a music industry which is dominated by people who don't really have skill and with bills like SOPA, they are trying to leverage laws to protect crappy music. A band can be commercially succeed is one who really does have the best sound. A band like Phish is the best example. They music is pirated all the time. If they attacked their fan base for doing so, they would have no fans. But that's not where they make their money. They make it with the live show, merchandise etc. Are they really going to give a crap if one of their fan rips off a few of their live albums when they person is eventually going to start going to their shows regularly, buying shirts, posters and various merchandise. As of today, you can't download a T-shirt. If there are artists that refuse to put their music to the test in the live arena basing their business model on the experience rather than on the studio format, then they are afraid they will be exposed. It's time for the major music industry to stop protecting crappy artists. Good bands would make money whether music is pirated or not.


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## luceo

OldSchoolSkater said:


> Also, this could be a good idea but only if people actually buy the product after "trying" it out. In my experience, those who pirate on a regular basis DO NOT purchase anything after they try it. They file it away, enjoy it, and continue to download more things illegally.


Looks like your experience may be wrong.


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## gorbulas

Shoelaces said:


> So yes, I think piracy is morally unacceptable unless it has the authorization of the makers.


That is horribly wrong. I bet there are many music artists out there that won't mind if people share their music. Its the record labels that are doing the suing - not the actual people making the music.


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## iAmCodeMonkey

Shoelaces said:


> It doesn't matter whether a band is filthy rich from concert-income or whether piracy allows, for example, smaller budget movies to become better known to the large audience - Piracy is still stealing. Someone makes a song or a movie using their own funds for equipment, instruments, composers, props, actors, experts, whatever - and you distribute the labor of their work for free. That record companies and managers get a big slice of the profit doesn't validate it either. So yes, I think piracy is morally unacceptable unless it has the authorization of the makers.


Um, the music artists and movie creators are not the ones being so paranoid about the issue of piracy. It is the record labels and movie studios, along with their respective industries, who feel that -any- download of a song or movie from the internet, or simply making a copy of said media is "stealing".

And like the poster above me said, THEY are the ones who are suing people for piracy, and NOT the artists or movie creators THEMSELVES.

It reminds me of the game industry where the developers get a small slice of the profits when a game is released, and the majority of the money gotten from sales goes to the publishers.

PS: Oh, and by the way, Piracy is not stealing in the traditional sense of the word, since the media you downloaded is still stored on a server somewhere.

You are merely downloading a -copy- of said media that someone else decided to upload onto the Internet.

THOSE are the people who should be prosecuted, the individuals who uploaded the media in the first place, while disregarding any EULA notices on the packaging (End-User-License-Agreement.)


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## iAmCodeMonkey

gorbulas said:


> That is horribly wrong. I bet there are many music artists out there that won't mind if people share their music. Its the record labels that are doing the suing - not the actual people making the music.


Bingo!!!


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## dave twothree

Piracy isn't right. Many products though are very overpriced. 

Lower prices and a more convenient method of purchasing would cut down a lot of piracy, though there will always be those who'll still do it. 

Itunes and Steam are good examples of how music and games should be distributed.


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## Micronian

gorbulas said:


> That is horribly wrong. I bet there are many music artists out there that won't mind if people share their music. Its the record labels that are doing the suing - not the actual people making the music.


I agree, and here's an example:
I was "digitizing" some old LPs on Monday, and I noticed that all the artists were dead for more than 10 years.

I thought to myself: 
Q: If I were to download--or pirate--a digital copy of this, would I really be taking food away from these artists' mouths? 
A: No, because they're already dead.

Q: So, If I were to pay for a digital copy, how much of the money would go to the artist?
A: Most likely $0.00

Q: So then, where would the money go to?
A: Obviously to the publisher, and, I would hope, the sound engineers for remastering the albums (but it still makes me wonder if it's still worth the ~$20--especially with no artist to pay. Somebody is obviously taking in more money than they should...).

The point I'm making here is kind of trivial, I guess, since it's the new stuff that generates the millions of $$. But I think it illustrates how uninvolved the artist is in the consumerist machine. with the ease of digital mixing/recording, and online distribution, I don't really see much purpose to the "record label", yet they're the ones doing the lawsuits, influencing the lawmakers, and still taking in all the money.


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## John316C

Im totally down with it. Saves me money. But dont blame me or people like me blame the money system. If you've got 1/4 a brain as I do you know Im 120% right. The same argument can be said for any necessity of life. Don't look at it as a rigid unchanging rule. Look at it as stealing in the context of _____. For instance stealing something to survive is actually NO different than stealing a video game/song. Look at it in terms of the thief. To the thief, that's what they need to be happy according to THEM. You can live in "moral" righteousness if you want that's your choice; but living in moral righteousness is going to do absolutly nothing unless your willing to FORCE others to obey you. Forget about whats right and whats wrong. Because its completely living with your head in the clouds. You are living in a fantasy land where you can paint everything bad/good. It is complex. Take this moral dilemma for example. There is 2 slices of apple left. There are 3 people. You cannot divide the apple. What is the moral choice. Show me a moral person who can solve this. Now look at another example. There is a person with a problem (any problem) and its causing him/her pain. That person doesn't have the ability to attain the product legitimately by them-self. This person cannot get another person to get it by them-self either. What is the moral choice. It should be obvious that it is to STEAL the item. Because there is NO other choice. The immoral choice IS the MORAL choice. So obviously it should be OBVIOUS that there is no moral imperative. In the end the MORAL choice to is to choose your happiness and your needs over others needs and who can say otherwise? Only someone who's been "brainwashed" by their peers. Just like the government/your parents/friends brainwash you into believing what they believe. So how do you know that your beliefs are your own original beliefs, or was it someone else whose beliefs you accepted as your own. I personally do whatever I want. I rip movies, video games and songs. But like I said before in different words... you cant fix the problem by patching up the effects; you need to fix the cause and the cause is the global monetary system, maybe not necessarily money. Maybe money is more like bananas or gold or maybe its more like paper with no real significance. Maybe! the cause is the whole global monetary distribution system and its only going to get worse as more people grow poor and in an effort to raise some kind of wealth, whether it be a feeling or food or money.. and as they grow poor, they will have more children to compensate their sick ones they cannot care. And those ones who cannot afford "whatever" WILL steal. Who can tell me otherwise.


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## nbtac41

in my opinion,there is no piracy if the developer/creator of a movie will sell its DVD at reasonable price/s..
for example,the film makers already had millions of profits when they first show their movies in theaters before they produce their movies on DVDs..
the price of original DVD here in the philippines goes from peso 750-peso 800 (us dollar 18-20). but when the producers of original DVDs knew that it wont sell,they reduce the price to even low, like peso 150-peso 200, which is still too pricey for us..i,myself even sell pirated DVDs (but not on mass scale). the cost of one blank DVD here is only peso 6 to peso 15. (us 15 cents). just wonder why they sell their DVDs at very untolerable price. is it greed?


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## jg43i9jghy0t4555

nbtac41 said:


> the cost of one blank DVD here is only peso 6 to peso 15. (us 15 cents). just wonder why they sell their DVDs at very untolerable price. is it greed?


Here we go, someone on this very forum can vouch for some of these points.



PickleNose said:


> File sharing is wealth redistribution at it's finest.


It's wealth creation! Problem being wealth created in the traditional sense can be damaged when this happens too much.

If everyone shared every TV show and movie, the creators of these things would be getting it free too. Think about that. That's effectively payment for all they do right there. The problem then, is, how do we financially support the creators? But, there's lots of money in the world. It's just a problem of who gets paid more. Sadly and pathetically, all we are doing is arguing over why the old model is flawed.

And sadly, the vast majority of the people in the world don't think for themselves and resort to being angry because of someone else's opinion. This is what politics in general has become. We no longer solve problems, we just turn our focus to some other injustice that society created, and we try to patch things up like creating another patch over a story based on a lie. At some point we know the barrel runs dry.


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## jg43i9jghy0t4555

John316C said:


> you cant fix the problem by patching up the effects; you need to fix the cause and the cause is the global monetary system, maybe not necessarily money. Maybe money is more like bananas or gold or maybe its more like paper with no real significance. Maybe! the cause is the whole global monetary distribution system and its only going to get worse as more people grow poor and in an effort to raise some kind of wealth


Wow totally what I started talking about. Amen to that, bro..

There will always be more people to argue against whoever comes up with a smart solution.. that's the state of the world right now


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## jg43i9jghy0t4555

iAmCodeMonkey said:


> It reminds me of the game industry where the developers get a small slice of the profits when a game is released, and the majority of the money gotten from sales goes to the publishers.


Yep. Since the developers slaved so hard to get the game out there.. you are actually helping that aim by getting the game to more people. In fact, we wouldn't need whole degree programs and research for marketing and advertising for video games and music if there was an open market where people just "upvoted" the best products.


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## jg43i9jghy0t4555

Micronian said:


> A: No, because they're already dead.


I guess we're lucky that anti-piracy people are willing to make such nonsense claims which makes people pirate in the meantime while we develop and explore how piracy and similar things may help us.


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## phoenixwright

I have to admit that I do commit piracy (I don't pirate EVERYTHING. But I do pirate a lot of stuff). Do I think it's right? No. I do it because I can get away with it. If people just pirated everything and didn't buy anything, the computer software industry, gaming industry, the music industry, the movie/tv industry, the book publishing industry, etc. would collapse. It would be nice to see prices go down to make stuff more affordable obviously.


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## gorbulas

the major recording labels jam a lot of the music down our throats on the radio. most of the pop stations you see songs being played multiple times a day basically brainwashing us. that's why the smaller indie labels like file sharing because it gets them out there. they can't use the radio. 

game publishers finance the development of a game. that means they need to recoup the money they spent on the developer while they are making it. especially when games are taking longer, the publishers want as much money as possible before the games flops or no longer sells.


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## DeeperUnderstanding

If I really like an artist, I will buy their album. If I don't buy their album, I will go see them in concert, buy merchandise from their website, or somehow else support them.


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## heroin

I think it's awesome.

And I think it's disgusting that people expect to keep living off work they did for a couple of weeks 30 years ago when they recorded that one album that turned into a hit.

Before mass media came along, these singing and dancing b*stards were jesters, beggars and minstrels who had to perform (i.e. actually work) each time they needed money. Now they expect people to keep paying for the one song they sang long ago. **** that.


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## PickleNose

jg43i9jghy0t4555 said:


> It's wealth creation! Problem being wealth created in the traditional sense can be damaged when this happens too much.


 I think you missed my point.


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## MetalRacer

I think the Law has blurred the lines of what is piracy. The copyright holders want to squeeze as much money out of the products the publish as possible. But at the same time, they hype the **** out of everything they expect to make money, regardless of quality. Please bear in mind that the Publisher is not the same as the person or group that created the product. Every Publishers wettest dream would consist of charging every person that hears even a portion of any song that they've published every single time they hear it, unless it is on the Radio.

I believe there is a big difference between their definition of Piracy and the common man's definition of Piracy. They would have Piracy defined as recording a song off of the Radio using an 8-Track Tape (if any of you even know what that is, dont raise your hands all at once). However, the Common Man would define Piracy as someone claiming to be the Creator of said content, and distributing it for profit. I take a Final Fantasy game, maybe hack it, take out everyone's name but my own, slap my name on it, then try to sell it as being MY product, that in my definition is Piracy.

I think most of us agree that Piracy is benefiting somehow from the distribution of a product that isnt technically yours. I download a movie off of some website while it is still in theaters, burn several DVD's of the movie, then sell them, I dont pay the Studios any money, the content creators a dime, and tell the Publishers they can go piss into the wind. That is what I believe is Piracy. Downloading a song off the internet for Personal Use, I.E. you don't sell it, to me, is the same as listening to it on the Radio. You can listen to a song on the Radio, if you are willing to put up with commercials, or pay a subscription fee to Satellite Radio, but for all practical purposes, you are listening to it for free. The Radio Station can not guarantee that you will listen to the Commercials. The Radio Station affords its operating costs by either Commercials or Subscriptions (Satellite). From the Commercial percpective, the Advertiser would prefer that you listen to their Commercials rather than the content that attracted you to that station to begin with. Same thing goes for TV.

Now, something has changed in the last century. But lets think about what changed. Content Producers still want people to view or listen to their content. The Consumer wants to view the Content that the Content Producers produce. But getting that media (visual, audio, book, or game) from the Content Producer to the Consumer used to require a Middle Man. A TV station. A Radio Station. A Satellite Radio Station. A Game Publisher. A Book Publisher. A Cinema. Theater. Etc. Etc. Etc. What has changed in the last several years is that we have found ways to cut out the Middle Man, and the Middle Man is not happy about that.

Another topic to focus on is that Media used to be a One Way Street. Publishers were the ones who controlled which bands played, which movies made it into Theaters, which books and games got published. With the Internet, the Media has shifted from being completely controlled by the Publishers to being nearly entirely controlled by the Consumers, which is what allowed us to cut out the Middle Men. We self generate the response and demand for the content. We utilize social networks, forums, chat rooms, text msgs, and every other advantage the Interwebs have to offer us to communicate with each other as to what kinds of content are worth half a squirt of piss and what is the best content out there. We no longer listen to Movie Critics to tell us to go see movies that suck while they pan and criticize anyones product that hasnt bought their influence. We all know that the Major Middle Men are so heavily influenced that their reviews and recommendations can not be trusted. We know that you and I have nothing to lose or gain by giving a good movie a good review and a ****ty movie a ****ty review. We are as completely honest and unbiased about calling something what we feel it really is. And that is a massive threat to the Middle Men.

The Middle Men gained so much power, money and influence before the Internet when the could tell us what to pay for and what not to pay for that they ended up being the ones who funded most of the products. That influence still lingers, but is quickly diminishing. They've resorted to trying to assert themselves as being important in the industry by Lobbying for stricter Anti Piracy Laws and DRM to try to persuade us to continue to think that they are still important. The Middle Men are no longer important in the Age of the Internet. They are going the way of the Dinosaur and the Dodo Bird and Print Media. They are Extinct. They just havent realized it yet. The Age when the Middle Men controlled your content is Over. 

The Future is the Consumers. We control which companies sink and swim based on our unbiased opinions. The Content Producers dont need the self-important Middle Men to distribute their content. We have a direct line of communication with the Content Producers to tell them what we want, what we dont want, and what our opinions are of their content. In that respect, absolutely nothing has changed in regards to the relationship between the Content Producers and the Consumers. Content Producers still want to produce content, and consumers still want to consume their content. The consumers will still pay for content when they believe that the Content Creator will be the one to benefit from paying for it. However, most of us could really give a **** less if the Publishers get paid. We dont need Publishers any more to get our content. But, the Publishers, the Middle Men have continued to try to maintain their importance in the relationship between the Creators and Content Producers and we the Consumers.

The Publishers are usually the ones that suffer the most from Piracy, when in fact I believe it is the Publishers that are committing the greatest Piracy of all. They have twisted the law to turn us into Criminals and themselves into Heroes. They get paid for distributing content that they did not create. They claim that any content that any Content Producers produce is their Intellectual Property. I believe the Middle Men are the REAL Pirates. They take our money, money that we want the Content Producers to have. They steal the Content from the Content Producers, claim it as their own, and "sell rights to License" the use of that material. They steal both the Content and the Money. The Publishers and Middle Men are Parasites. They are the Criminals. They are the Real Pirates. I would be tempted to say that there is only ONE fact that makes what they do as being Legal, and that is the Agreement between the Content Producers and the Publishers, but alas, I can not even say that. The Content Producers are so desparate and the Publishers (Middle Men) are so greedy for even more money that they bully and pretty much force the Conetnt Producer to give them absolutely everything that they work to create.

We always complain that DRM screws over the Consumer. But what we dont gripe about is the Content Producers point of view, where in order for them to get funding from the Publisher, they have to sign over 80% of the profits of their Intellectual Propert over to the Publsiher, as well as the rights to the Intellectual Property as well. So we have DRM on the side of the Consumers there to screw us over, but the Content Producers get just as screwed over. The Consumers outnumber the Content Producers, so often their voices are drown out in the sea of DRM rants. However, look at the real cause of the problem. The Real Cause of the problem is neither the Consumer or the Content Producer, but the Middle Men. The Publishers. Both DRM that screws the Consumer and Legalized Theft frmo the Content Producers are inventions of the Publishers in order for them to maintain a fading presence in a fully digital world.


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## MetalRacer

I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert about ten years ago, where I stuck around after the show to get Trent Reznor's autograph. When I met him, I shook his hand, and gave him twenty bucks. I told him that I pirated his last CD, but since I knew he was coming to town, I'd rather give Trent the money personally and his Publisher didnt deserve a bigger chunk of the profit for the Content he created. He was a little puzzled, but graciously accepted the money, said "Thank you", gave me the CD (which I already pirated) and he autographed, and moved on to sign his next fan's CD. He didn't seem to troubled by the fact that not only I flat out told him I pirated his music I think because not only did I buy that CD right then and there, but he got an extra twenty bucks on top of me now having a legitimate copy of his music. I dont know if that had anything to do with Trent's decision to try a different method of distribution and changed his stance on Piracy or not, but it might have. Now, I just referred to buying his music to be legitimate, however, that is the Legal Definition, and not my opinion. As far as I am concerned, that so called "legitimate copy" is about as illegitimate as you can possibly get. Trent got screwed, and I got screwed out of my effort to pay Trent for the copy. Now, I wont deny that a CD is physical media and someone has to produce a CD, then go through the effort of copying the music onto that CD. The CD producer does deserve a share for having done some work, but when I can just go to NIN's website, make a financial exchange for me to have a copy of his music, I call that a Legitmate Copy. The CD's were usually produced and manufactured by the now defunct Publisher. The Publisher that overcharges NIN for the production of their CD's. Then, the Publisher who creates the CD wants to put screwy software on those CD's (Sony Rootkit) to keep us from "Pirating" what they've already stolen from the Content Producers. That to me is NOT a Legitimate Copy.

Let me change the subject for a minute. There is a Big Difference between what I will start referring to as Static Media and Dynamic Media. The difference between the two is that Static Media is something like a Movie, a Song, a Book, or something that you can NOT interact with. Dynamic Media would include Games and Software. I think there is a big difference between the definitions of Piracy for each. The examples that I provideded earlier where I listen to a Song (Static Media) on the Radio is not considered Theft or Piracy, as I can listen to it for free. However, when I play a Game (Dynamic Media) that I download, I have no other way to interact or observe tht type of Media than to be directly involved with it. I can't listen to a Video Game on the Radio, or watch it on TV. I can only play it on my computer, or what ever electronic device I need to play said Media. That to me does meet a definition of Theft, but not necessarily Piracy. Piracy is to benefit from the distribution of someone elses content. Essencially Pirates act as the Middle Men where they act as Publishers, but never agreed with the Content Producers to give them one Red Cent.

This is where I think a lot of people are not making the association of what really is theft, based on what type of Media they are observing or interacting with. I dont feel that if you download a song off the internet for free without paying either the Content Producer or the Publisher that it constitues Theft because you can observe that Media without having to pay for it. The Content Producers still get paid regardless if we pay for a subscription to Satellite Radio, or just listen to it on the Radio subsidized by Commercials. Dynamic Media on the other hand can ONLY be interacted with as that is its ONLY form of entertainment. Game Makers dont get paid if someone watches a video of someone else playing their game on YouTube, they only get paid when we the consumers buy the content they produced, and even then, they dont get their fair share, unless they've figured out that they dont need the Publishers any more.

Thus, Downloading Songs, Movies, and TV Shows = Not Illegal, Downloading Games = Illegal, but not Piracy. The Real Pirates are the Publishers who steal the Content from the Content Producers as their own, and profit from it.

Thoughts and reactions? Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not? Debate.


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## Skyliner

Great thoughts, MetalRacer. I have a lot of respect for Trent in terms of his thoughts on the music industry, and of course his music. I think he has had, and will continue to have, a lot of influence, which is great. I feel more inclined to pay for his music though, because he offers things many artists don't, like FLAC versions of albums, etc.

I pirate TV shows and movies, and music occasionally. This is mainly because I can listen to most music for free online, via sites like Grooveshark and Spotify. It's a good way to discover new music - if you feel like trying out a load of new artists, you don't want to have to spend time downloading their albums, only to find out that they suck.

Sure, either way you're not 'paying' for the music, but (I hate to use this phrase) at the end of the day, that artist has gained way more publicity than they ever would have if their music was solely 'paid for'. I will happily pay for hard copies of albums if I really like them, or really want to support the artist. 

I guess another issue for people is money - I think most people admit that they just don't have the money to go out and buy CD's/DVD's/games all the time. When it's free and accessible on the internet, why would you pay for it? I guess it's a bit like pornography, also - anything you can think of is online and accessible, so why wouldn't you? The sad thing about the state of the music industry now is the lack of proper record stores, but I guess we're just moving with the times - there isn't a need for that service any more, at least to the majority.


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## DeeperUnderstanding

I have just discovered the joys of Spotify.

With free/premium services like this, who needs piracy? You don't even have to buy the album, you just stream it for free. Everybody wins, and nobody loses. No rules or laws are broken.

I admit, I pirated Van Halen's latest, but I have since deleted it...because I have it on spotify. And at some point, I plan on buying the vinyl...that's how awesome it is!

You can listen to music pretty much everywhere. There are tons of free radio apps on your phone. There's Pandora. There's AOL Radio. There's Spotify. There's MySpace. There's iTunes radio stations. 

You don't really need to pirate anymore. Piracy is outdated.


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## Charliegirl6

Throughout history there have been pirates. How do you think those rich aristocrats got their land and money? By lies swindling and force.. Why stop now? The rich are too rich, they steal and invest in underdogs ideas and creative genius.

If you puchas a CD from a Charity, does the music cooperation get money... no... if you download music does the industry get money.. no. Your badwith provider does. Share and share alike. 

The only bad pirates out there are the ones making fake dodgy DVD's for profit... the numbers of peeps downloading a single song or a game no longer sold in shops is harmless in comparison. 

Industry makes most of it's money on royalties and advetisng. They tend to be pirates themselves finding loop holes and **** to avoid paying out for artworks and such used in their adds. 

That's my take.. I you block the internet you block creativity, and potentially isolating people to songs and films they haven't yet seen or heard before. How will they ever expect us to purchase them?? It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.


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## OldSchoolSkater

Charliegirl6 said:


> Throughout history there have been pirates. How do you think those rich aristocrats got their land and money? By lies swindling and force.. Why stop now? The rich are too rich, they steal and invest in underdogs ideas and creative genius.
> 
> If you puchas a CD from a Charity, does the music cooperation get money... no... if you download music does the industry get money.. no. Your badwith provider does. Share and share alike.
> 
> The only bad pirates out there are the ones making fake dodgy DVD's for profit... the numbers of peeps downloading a single song or a game no longer sold in shops is harmless in comparison.
> 
> Industry makes most of it's money on royalties and advetisng. They tend to be pirates themselves finding loop holes and **** to avoid paying out for artworks and such used in their adds.
> 
> That's my take.. I you block the internet you block creativity, and potentially isolating people to songs and films they haven't yet seen or heard before. How will they ever expect us to purchase them?? It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.


So by your logic, since I've never heard of a band or a movie before I saw it on the internet it justifies me downloading it illegally rather than paying for it?


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## lonelyjew

Charliegirl6 said:


> Throughout history there have been pirates. How do you think those rich aristocrats got their land and money? By lies swindling and force.. Why stop now? The rich are too rich, they steal and invest in underdogs ideas and creative genius.
> 
> If you puchas a CD from a Charity, does the music cooperation get money... no... if you download music does the industry get money.. no. Your badwith provider does. Share and share alike.
> 
> The only bad pirates out there are the ones making fake dodgy DVD's for profit... the numbers of peeps downloading a single song or a game no longer sold in shops is harmless in comparison.
> 
> Industry makes most of it's money on royalties and advetisng. They tend to be pirates themselves finding loop holes and **** to avoid paying out for artworks and such used in their adds.
> 
> That's my take.. I you block the internet you block creativity, and potentially isolating people to songs and films they haven't yet seen or heard before. How will they ever expect us to purchase them?? It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.


This is quite possibly the most ridiculous post I've seen on the this forum.


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## gorbulas

lonelyjew said:


> This is quite possibly the most ridiculous post I've seen on the this forum.


That's quite an improper reply. You need to state why you don't agree with it.

Personally, some of the examples are a bit far fetched but I agree it. Profiting from someone's else work is a big no-no. But sharing, IMO, is acceptable.


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## gorbulas

OldSchoolSkater said:


> So by your logic, since I've never heard of a band or a movie before I saw it on the internet it justifies me downloading it illegally rather than paying for it?


I will answer that one. Just because its illegal in the United States, doesn't mean its immoral or unacceptable. Movies are another issue because one you see it, the value of it goes away. I often download movies I seen in the theaters just to go back and see the things that I missed the first time. But for music, it should be shared. Pay for it if you like it.


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## lonelyjew

gorbulas said:


> That's quite an improper reply. You need to state why you don't agree with it.
> 
> Personally, some of the examples are a bit far fetched but I agree it. Profiting from someone's else work is a big no-no. But sharing, IMO, is acceptable.


You can go back and find my earlier posts if you want my view. In this case, the sense of entitlement in that post, which went well above and beyond the point of ludicrousness, prompted my post.


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## jg43i9jghy0t4555

heroin said:


> I think it's awesome.
> 
> And I think it's disgusting that people expect to keep living off work they did for a couple of weeks 30 years ago when they recorded that one album that turned into a hit.
> 
> Before mass media came along, these singing and dancing b*stards were jesters, beggars and minstrels who had to perform (i.e. actually work) each time they needed money. Now they expect people to keep paying for the one song they sang long ago. **** that.


yeah, that's something really messed up about our economy..

I'd rather pay for things that I like and *not* have to have ads forced down my throat on websites, in everwhere I go. I don't like what the world is coming to in that sense, and it *does* make more sense to me, to pay for things directly, however, it's often not possible. And that's why we have things like sale of web traffic, sponsored cars and sponsored athletes, footballers, and free-to-play games that hook you onto the game making you purchase virtual items.. and so on and so on. Our economy just grows and stretches, milks, wherever it can.


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## DeeperUnderstanding

I also like a band called Gong.

Most of their stuff is out of print, hard to find, or just plain unavailable..._except_ on the internet. I buy what I can from iTunes, but sometimes an artist just doesn't make their music available, except through piracy. How else am I supposed to obtain those albums?


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## Ohhai

Charliegirl6 said:


> Throughout history there have been pirates. How do you think those rich aristocrats got their land and money? By lies swindling and force.. Why stop now? The rich are too rich, they steal and invest in underdogs ideas and creative genius.


All you have to do now is say your username is a reference to Charles Manson and I'm all yours.

Piracy, wealth redistribution at a small level.


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