The company could track all unique peers on torrents that distribute their game and come up with an estimate.

I like you even more now.

To be on topic, I just don't care about the companies unless I like them. Like Bethesda.

The crux of the argument boils down to like, 'you shouldn't litter'. But there's garbage all over the pavements anywayz.

Yeah yeah yeah, you shouldn't pirate games because it is bad n shit. But everyone else is doing it? What is your little noble deed of self righteousness going to achieve? Nothing. Anyone who doesn't pirate games is just ignorant of technology :3

Nah not true. For example I'm an aspiring game developer, so I have a higher respect than a lot of people for video games.

I have a respect for people who make good games. Will you make good games, I wonder? Or will I be forced to download your game over and over and over and cause you to lose billions in a heartbeat?

lololol

On a semi-related tangential twist. I went into GameStation today, and they were like, sign here, you get SkyRim for free when it comes out, and you pay 48 to 72 hours later. I was lyk: "wtf u being srs?", and teh dude was all lyk: "Yeah bro, new sale laws n shit". Needless to say, I kno what I'll be doing from the 11th of November until the 13th .

That's what companies should be doing.

"Oh wow this games awesome, maybe I'll buy it instead of pirating it cause they did such a good job."

Very few are going to buy it, they're just going to return it.

I hope you're hungry, because these are some words you will be eating in the near future, sir.

Saying that everyone does it so it's ok isn't justification, it's rationalization.
Yeah when you pirate a copy of something that company isn't techincally losing money, but that company invests money into making that copy in the first place. If they don't generate enough income to replace the money they invested in the first place, they are losing money.

It's a debate on definitions then. I don't even believe it should be regarded as piracy until I start trying to sell my copies. Now, I understand that's just my personal idea of piracy and not what is generally accepted (anymore), but it's true to the core that a collection of a certain set of ones and zeros are not retain-able property.

How I justify it: When you make something digital (ones and zeros) you are taking on advantages and disadvantages. Advantage - can presented and edited digitally with a computer. Disadvantage - you have now physically turned your idea into ones and zeros. Ones and zeros are not owned by anyone. You want all the advantages of making something digital, but none of the disadvantages? YOU WANT TO JUST USE TECHNOLOGY FOR FREE?!

No one is forcing you to make your product digital. Sell tickets to your performances if it's all about the money for you, and if you record something, keep it vinyl.

When I parade a new painting around busy streets looking for a buyer, I don't freak out and call the cops when someone takes a picture of it.

True dat.

The real criminals are the Warez groups who break through DRM and release copies to torrent hubs.

But, the software protection which companies put on their games is a joke, and its basically a loophole waiting to get raped.

Persecuting the average torrenter will solve nothing in the long run. And governments aren't too keen to start passing laws that hit on ISPs big time.

So deal with it.

No, I am not talking about subjective moral values. I am talking what qualifies as stealing, as theft. I am arguing that piracy is stealing. Whether you think stealing is immoral or moral is up to your own moral compass. I am also arguing that the rationalisations people use to say piracy is not theft is to avoid cognitive dissonance that would arise if they did believe stealing was immoral, believed piracy to be stealing, and yet still pirated. Make sense?

And to those who think stealing is moral, or amoral, I'm afraid the majority of human civilisation looks down upon you.

Come on, don't straw man, you know what I mean. A customer only has to cost Adobe one copy of the game because they pirated it instead of buying it. Having additional copies wouldn't matter, unless they started passing those copies off to others. In which case, Adobe would lose the amount of dollars they would have gained had those people payed for the product rather than stealing it.

Yes. This is, obviously, what I meant. Of course pirates are pirating in place of buying. I know very few pirates who actually buy games they already have pirated.

You replied to only a fraction of my post and the replies were mostly straw-mans. Come on, put some effort in, please.

When I still had Windows, I would download games all the time. Now that I am on Linux, everything is open source (Almost everything).

For some reasons, now, instead of playing games, I watch walkthroughs of games. I believe I feel to same way as if I was playing the game, but without the need to think as much. It's like watching movies.

Private, he wasn't using the straw man fallacy, or any fallacy. Please use don't throw around big words because you saw someone smart say it.

And neither you, nor anyone, in this topic has been able to do that. You don't get to move onto point C when you have even shown how A = B

Oops. Misread your first sentence in the quote. Sorry.
Though I still disagree, I don't really care about the whole "arguing definitions" thing in this context, so, eh.
I'm not sure what you mean, and either interpretation I can come up with is flawed.
1. "Pirating directly causes the company to lose money" (this is suggested by your current post): As we've been over, this is not true, as it cannot be generalized to all pirating, only a specific subset.
2. "Pirating is stealing from the company, a value worth $X" (re-reading your older post, this is the impression I get): Except that stealing $X causes the company to have less money than it otherwise would, and therefore pirating and stealing $X are not equitable.
So if I did not have the option of downloading things, I'd be buying them with money that I do not have?
Most people that I know are not terribly well-off, with either no income (and thus being, as I have stated of myself, incapable of purchasing the things they pirate), or else all of their money is already allocated to things that we can easily agree are higher priority than piratable goods, taking into account all of the free but generally lesser-quality things that anti-pirating folks like to talk about.
I was assuming that by "Prove me wrong", you were referring to "Applying Kant's Categorical Imperative, we should stop pirating," a claim which relies on the assumption that pirating, not a specific and non-exhaustive subset of pirating, causes companies to have less money than they do, which is false.

I'm not sure what else you expect me to respond to.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 21 2011, 4:36 am by EzDay281.

Moving this to Lite Discussion. That is all.

After talking to some people IRL, I've decided I need to do some more research into intellectual property rights and read some books that will apparently give me a headache before I continue in this discussion. I was going to say some stuff about potential profit but apparently that's a no go. BAI

I'm just wondering if most of you would shoplift if you could easily get away with it. That is what pirating seems to boil down to, the ability to do something illegal without repercussions. As long as we can admit we're all terrible people with no morals, then I guess we're all happy people.

And if you watch mine, you might just learn a thing or two about game design! ! And how mad a person can get for trivial things.

But, yeah, I only play games to make those LP's these days. I have to think more, and add commentary, but it's the only thing that keeps me going when I feel like ragequitting.

If I could shoplift and easily get away with it? Hell yes. I want free pizza.