Replace 'steal' with 'copy' and we can have propaganda-free debate. It's not stealing when nothing is lost. Not saying that copying is never bad, but to equate copying a CD to stealing it from it's case is nonsense.

... there were points?

More seriously:
Pretty much the only ones I remember are "if you can afford to play a game, you can afford to buy a game", and "ask them for a demo instead of pirating."
First one: Not necessarily. Ignoring that many regular pirates pirate more than they could afford if they dropped their food and possibly roof, to use myself as an example, I acquired my computer years ago, and it was at a discount. My financial circumstances have changed since then - if I did not have this computer, I would not be able to afford it again.
Second one: Pirating and requesting a demo aren't exclusive. No point there.
Pissing off your fanbase may, by some companies, be considered counterproductive to protecting your profits, actually.
I'm not getting what products which are tangible, finite resources have to do with products which... are not.
If someone developed a magical portal of infinite caviar that costs no one anything to use, then yes, I'd consider stealing some.

I pirate things because I see no reason not to. No developer has been affected by my downloading of software or media. I cannot, at present, afford them, and I'm currently eagerly awaiting the day when I can acquire legal copies of commercial software which I consider to be worth buying.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 19 2011, 10:35 pm by EzDay281.

Things that I keep for personal use, I usually won't consider buying, but if I do things for public use, I'll usually find a free alternative, if there are none, it means I'll have to wait until I get enough money to afford it.

I used to have Photoshop, now I have Gimp.
I used to have 3DS Max, now I have Blender.

When it comes to games, I will usually like to play more after I have bought the game. I've got games from different sources before, but they didn't feel as serious to my eyes and I would end up not playing it. ( Verb tenses...)

But I guess that one something I hate is to have to buy games from websites that I don't trust. I like to track where my money goes so I usually always pay cash wherever I go. Buying online breaks one of my paradigms.

Ez, games and computers are a luxury, not a necessity. If you can't afford to buy a game, why do you steal it, when it is not a necessity?

Computer games, movies, music, and software are not generally physical, yet they have had an amount of effort put into them. The people who put that effort into their product want something back from that effort. When you buy a game, you aren't paying for the bits and bytes making up the game; you're paying for the skills, time, effort, and knowledge behind the game. And when you pirate, you are taking all that effort and time and skill and knowledge and investment for nothing, against the law, against the desires of the people who made the game. And yet all you can say is 'it isn't tangible and doesn't hurt anyone' or 'I can't afford it so I HAVE to steal it even though I don't need it and there are free alternatives.'

I just don't lie to myself and admit that I'm not a perfectly moral and selfless person.

Evidently that's hard for most people.

This pretty much sums it up for me. I've had times where I'm like "Man this is good" and I buy it, but most of the time I just play it once, decide it's not even worth continuing to play, and scrap it completely. Guess I'm just picky about my games.

And the demo excuse? Unfortunately I don't go for that. They could easily put some of the funnest parts in the game in it. Or the game could seem fun in the demo, but then you realize you don't do anything else BUT what's in the demo, and you mistake a repetitive game for something that could be great.

I 100% agree with you. That is the most solid reason not to pay for games/music/software. I only pay for things that are a necessity.

No, the people who made the game do not own it. The company who employs the people who made it owns it.

You get what you pay for. If everyone pirated games, the game companies would go out of business, and there would be no more games to buy. Part of the reason games are expensive is because of the number of people that just pirate them. If the game company sold more copies, they could afford to sell them at a lower price, and they would have more money to invest in making better games, games that meet your standards of being "worth buying"

Is it even possible to gather statistics on the amount of revenue lost due to pirating? How does one track that sort of thing. Anyone who is saying games are expensive today is because of the huge number of piraters would have to surely provide statistics to back that claim up...

I don't pirate many games, mostly movies. I don't try to rationalise it though, I know it's wrong. I don't do it much these days, but am I going to go and re-buy all the games I pirated? Hell no. I'm not that frivolous with my money. I guess I have low moral integrity.

The whole, 'its not stealing because there is no hard copy' is just a buffer for some nasty cognitive dissonance. When you are pirating a game you are essentially stealing X $ amount (at the time you pirated it) from whatever company made it. The more pirates you have, the less revenue companies generate, and the less likely they are to continue making games.



Put simply, if everyone pirates, the gaming industry dies. The only games that get created when there is no cost-benefits are games made as a hobby, usually by a person or a small group of people. If this was all the game industry had left to generate new releases, we'd all be a very bored bunch. Applying Kant's Categorical Imperative, we should stop pirating.

Prove me wrong?

If someone didn't have enough money to buy the game, doesn't that mean that the corporation would not have got his money in the first place?

I believe that after a certain age, that argument would not work, but wouldn't that mean that unless you make money, piracy should not be a problem?

Because I want to, and I have yet to see any reason not to.
(Lieing there. I'm wondering when someone will point out the obvious reason that the effects of most pirating aren't exclusive to the individual regardless of willingness to pay or not were pirating not an option)
Perhaps I'll contribute to this when it's not financially impossible for me to do so without being immensely irresponsible.
Don't project your own moral compass upon others. That something strikes you as intuitively "wrong" does not mean that everyone's intuition necessarily agrees, nor that there's any objective basis to it.
The one point where I will agree that pirating has an unavoidable problem is that I do care what people do with the things that I make, and as a hypothetical commercial developer, I would not want lots of people taking it without paying. I consider this an acceptable loss.
To paraphrase:
"Really? Awesome, I'm going to go download Photoshop a million times and put Adobe out of business! Because that's how pirating works, right?"
False. The more pirates who pirate in place of buying you have, the less revenue companies generate.
Regarding my above rebuttal: You're welcome.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 20 2011, 9:21 pm by EzDay281.

My two cents:

I used to pirate a lot. Why? 'Cause I didn't have money to buy the shit, and had no moral objection to 'stealing'.

"You wouldn't steal a car"

Sure I would! In fact I've done it. You can't force morals on to people, simple as that.

And I do pay for games now, because I have a lot of money. Hoorah.

I personally pay for any game I can afford. I can tell you that I myself have not pirated a single game I would have payed for if pirating was not an option.

I don't pirate anything anymore, and I don't appreciate it when people do it. I actually come down on my boyfriend for doing it, but otherwise it is like Sym says...you can't change human behavior, you can't force morals on people.

I try to force my BF to change, but you can't change people... ???

I'm just being honest. I know I can't change him, but I can object to what he does, too. I don't have to like everything he does to love him <3

Everyone else though, meh.

You mean replace "copy" with "steal". It's theft, there is no debate. In fact, there is no debate on this issue at all; it breaks down into 2 simple facts. If you're ok with theft, then pirate stuff. If your moral decency prevents you, then don't. I happen to be okay with stealing from large corporations where the CEO's make bazillions of dollars and the programmers don't. I wouldn't pirate an indie game with three developers trying to put bread on the table though. But I don't try and call it something besides theft. Oddly enough I don't think I've ever pirated a game though, just music/movies.

lol

brb killing blizzard

snip

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 23 2011, 8:43 am by Tuxedo-Templar.