Here's the conclusion of that article:


General practice when you're trying to prove a point is making sure that a source you're citing actually agrees with it. Good try, though.

Where is that quote from? Its not in the wikipedia article.

Your quote doesn't say why its wrong to pirate. To me it just shows corporate greed.

Its wrong because the law says so. Because without intellectual property, it would be meaningless to even 'produce' these kinds of stuff such as movies, games, and music.

A company is a group formed to profit from their activities, not to lose money- but to gain.

Look, if you're going to argue that Piracy is actually right- you'll never win the cause. But if you argue that Pirate Bay is only a search engine, that might be feasible since they are not the ones truly responsible. \

He didn't quote it from anywhere. He phrased it himself with the contents from this topic.

Did you read the section entitled 'The effects of copyright infringement on digital culture' or did I make that entire section up too?

Uh from the looks of it, what you've phrased is completely different from that section's point. Piracy is a economic loss to a company no matter how you look at it. But against free competitors, they would rather have their software pirated then people using the other free (or the competitor's). Its not taking advantage of what profit (because frankly, there is net loss than profit) they can get, only scavanging what little they can muster up.

Finally someone on the other side got around to saying this, my only regret is that Faz- didn't say it. Instead I only get to pwn Dazed.

You really need to take a step back and looks what you are saying here. You just went into the zone of ideology. Your kind of mentality will not survive much longer in the 21st century. This attitude that entertaining music/games/movies only come about through the pursuit of profits. You won't be missed.

Uhh, most of the starcraft maps and mods on this very website are meaningless? A lot of the people here don't care about intellectual property or what-have-you, but create content anyway.

There's this fun little thing called "Open Source"; you might want to look into it.

He is right though, any major company must sell somehow, not everyone can be open-source, because if they were then the donations and gratitude that they received from being free before are no longer there, and they no longer have anything to run on. Not to mention, small things like maps and such on here are nothing compared to large programs like Photoshop, you can't just make Photoshop as a little side thing, it is a massive project and you need money to complete something on that scale.

Yes, there are companies like Mozilla and Java that seem to be able to get by on a large scale without selling their major product, but these companies never do quite as well as the main companies, financial-wise, and they almost always have another product that must be paid for.

If you're going to argue the immorality of piracy, we might as well say monopolies are moral too. How dare we stop companies from trying to own 100% of the market and then charging as much as they want. When a company doesn't have a monopoly it is an economic loss.

And do you see those companies struggling because of piracy? If they are I haven't heard about it.

And although one might pirate because they believe in open source, the two do not always go together. I might pirate something, not because I think it should be free and open source, but because I think it is not worth what it is currently being charged for.

Anyway, arguing whether piracy is right or wrong is pointless. You aren't going to convince most pirates to stop pirating by arguing that it's immoral. As long as people can pirate and not suffer consequences they will continue to do it, regardless of whether it is right or wrong. Hell, even if there were consequences there would still be people who would take the risk and pirate anyway. People always try to circumvent the law and all things related to security and integrity.

I always win - whether I'm arguing that something is right or wrong. Although one might say I always lose when I do that. But that's what happens when you talk about "right" and "wrong".

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Apr 20 2009, 7:27 pm by Urine.

I'm not arguing against piracy, as I do it myself, and I think there's no real issue with it, because the majority of people don't have any clue in the world how to pirate something like Photoshop, even though it's ridiculously simple, so the small percentage of people doing it doesn't really affect companies, but what I am arguing is that you cannot argue that those companies should hand it out for free, like some open-source programs are, because they need to make money somehow to continue making large programs.

Then your argument seems OT and more about an open source issue rather than piracy.

That's 'cuz it was in response to this:


I apologize for not quoting.

I welcome you to name a single successful or popular game that was created and distributed for free.

Open source might be the way for some things, but the simple fact is that people work harder and with better results when they get something out of it, namely: a paycheck. How many people are going to want to be rock stars if there's no money for even the best musicians? How many people are going to be game developers who have their game taken freely by anyone who wants it? In today's society so revolved around money, creating a quality product free of charge as your full time job is simply not an option. It's incredibly short-sighted to think that original, high-quality products will be created if there is no opportunity for profit from such development.

As for what I quoted earlier, it's from an article of the Economist which was referenced in the Wikipedia section "The effects of copyright infringement on digital culture." The article concludes that piracy can sometimes be beneficial, but usually hurts companies. Ironically, a quote therein from Bill Gates is used (out of context) to support the opposite conclusion.

FRAXY. Anything ON THE FUCKING INTERNET.

Me. I perform piano recitals for free. You are obviously not a musician (and if you are, a poor one indeed) because if you were, you'd realize playing music isn't about money.

People make free games all the time. Getting paid is just a bonus.

Piracy does not affect companies. Want to know why? Because if something was worth the price, they would BUY it. I'm not going to buy Photoshop when I can get GIMP for free, so, if I can get something for free that is just as good or better than the original product in question, why not get that product? Why would I buy 3D software that costs upwards of $1000 when I can evaluate it and obviously see it is not worth over 1000 dollars?

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Mazapan/you-have-to-burn-the-rope


OOOOOOHHHH NOOOOO FAZ WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH OUT ALL THE BANDS THAT ARE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY! I mean GOD! I don't want to live in a world without 3 Days Grace!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 21 2009, 2:13 am by ClansAreForGays.

I guess you and CAFG both missed the "successful or popular" part.

Yep, and how many people have pirated your piano recital music online? Zero? Music is a hobby for you, it's not your job.

How many bands whose music DOES get pirated would be self sufficient if music was entirely "open-source"? Very few bands and artists can support themselves through merchandise and ticket sales alone.

Evidently you missed "full time job." Something original done in a person's spare time is most likely not going come close to rivaling a quality product. If there's exceptions, I already asked you to provide one.

What determines the $1000 tag? The time and work that was spent developing all of the hundreds of original features in Photoshop. GIMP has some of those features, but it's pretty damned easy to copy something once you know what it does. For analogy, I could create a map like Temple Siege in a week, but it's the idea and the originality that makes the game great.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 21 2009, 3:10 am by FaZ-.

Free Programs that Rival the Ones that Cost Money

Anim8or
Blender
Dev C++
The Quake Engine
AVS 4 You
Sauerbraten (video game) <-- THIS IS FREE, POPULAR, AND SUCCESSFUL. YOU JUST GOT OWNED.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_game_engines <-- Rival the expensive game engines that companies use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_software_packages <-- Owned.

It's actually "illegal" to take film of the recitals, and people do anyway. People that pirate my piano recitals, about 2 or 3 per recital, I've performed about 10, so about 25 people have "pirated" my recitals. Hobbies and jobs are very similar.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 21 2009, 4:18 am by A_of-s_t.

Did anyone ever finish a RPG on sauerbraten yet? I could recall some trying to be made but meh.

I'm not much of a gamer but I can talk about music.

As a musician myself, I've recorded several material, the fact is, that music is about art and not money. You could easily say that being a musician is just a hobby for me but the fact is that it is not. Being an artist is a full time job for me. I study architecture, I have taken several art & drawing lessons plus I have been a musician for over 15 years now. I am currently taking a photography course. See what I mean with being an artist?

My point is, that even if I did sell my work, that I won't, and just imagine that I actually happen to find a torrent for my full discography I'll be damn proud of myself that people are actually trying to hear my music in anyway they can. I must have done something right if people are "pirating" me.

But I'm pretty sure you're that close minded that you will ask for real examples. Sure, why not?
Radiohead released a disk to be fully downloaded by the internet. On their website, before downloading the disk, you'd be asked How much would you actually pay for the material, you could pick a number or you could just say $0 and get the download anyway.
Their sales actually increased after that. You can google it yourself if you didn't know about this.
Coldplay also released singles to be freely downloaded.
Metallica also released some material to be downloaded for free.
Jamiroquai and Oasis are also considering the stunt made by Radiohead.


Paying $1000 for a program is absolutely ridiculous, IMO, but software that is worth more than $500 is not to be expected to be bought by someone just to make signatures on a forum site, of course. The high prices are mainly aimed at people with their own companies, freelancers and such. "Professionals" for that matter.
Which is why many and many softwares and companies already realised that and have started offering things like "student discount", which is brilliant.

I myself have tons of software that are (all together) around $25,000. I've got only two of them that are not "legal". The rest have been provided to me by nice people with multiple licenses and such.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 21 2009, 3:08 pm by Doodan. Reason: removed flame

The quake Engine is old and was released as freeware a while ago because no one would bother buying an outdated product. Other newer engines such as GoldSrc far surpassed it, those became the ones being purchased for use. You won't find a single commercially successful game using one of those free game engines.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 21 2009, 3:09 pm by Doodan. Reason: Please improve the quality of your posts