Grooveshark+Pandora take the place of pirating to me, I agree with Mill. As for movies, I stream most of those as well. Netflix when possible, blinkx when not. I don't mind advertisements as long as they're not ridiculous. Some sites make them ridiculously loud and remove volume control which is just annoying.

In the case of games, the next generation is unfortunately just limiting ourselves because of how mercilessly games have been pirated in the past. SC2 is essentially online only because around 10 million people pirated WarCraft 3 to play DotA. HoN is the same way. The nice thing here is that games are more and more becoming inherently multiplayer and so losing some single player capacity isn't much of an issue, to me. What is annoying is seeing top tournaments like the GSL and MLG have to use Battle.net, but evidently Blizzard doesn't feel that they can trust that server binaries would stay private for long.

I'll have to play devil's advocate and say that most console games have delivered far superior single player experiences than PC games for me in the recent years. However, console games are ridiculously overpriced, so purchases are very carefully planned ahead. I'm not a multiplayer kind of guy, so I haven't really invested too much in games at all, buying nor pirating, for quite a long time. To be honest, if it wasn't for LP'ing, I probably wouldn't be playing what games I am playing right now.

Youtube's quality is utterly atrocious for audio, so I only use it to help me locate names and that's it.

I agree with the streaming thing; it falls under the umbrella of "convenient commercial services" for me. I, for example, pay for Netflix, so anything I pirate is that which Netflix doesn't have. It's just more convenient. If I had an extra $15 per month laying around, I'd get the Zune Pass (free streaming of any song, ability to download onto devices), and I wouldn't need a music library at all (except for rare Russian music, sadly). As for iTunes, I believe I read that they removed the DRM at some point; I don't know about the bitrate. Nevertheless, it's convenient, as you can easily download it, listen to it, or move it to a portable device. That's what I call convenience.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 1 2011, 1:28 pm by Centreri.

An interesting point. Also, OP did not have a statement. Also, OP only had one source to get info from - none of those are very intellectual moves in my mind.

Electronic Piracy isn't going to stop unless there's a societal drive for it to stop - and there isn't. Personally I don't pirate and I haven't for several years now.

I don't like it. I like the idea that someone can own their intellectual property without worrying about someone stealing it. But there's bigger fish to fry than most of anything you guys pirate, such as international pirates. Its really bad in some countries - to keep people from pirating straight off the radio, I think songs are interrupted every fifteen seconds in India.

At the same time, many musicians encourage people to pirate their music because they don't see a lot of money from CD/mp3 sales. However, they do see money from merch and concert attendance. So the thought is...maybe if you pirate a song, you'll come see them preform.

@Fire_Kame

The point was for YOU to give me the links and other things.
The "thoughts" can be anything, and the discussion can also be anything that's within topic.
In other words, if you think my thought is biased, then you're more than welcome to argue against it. In fact, I'd like you to find more objective sources about piracy, just to prove your intellect.
I purposely left it like this so there're a lot of things you can explore.

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@MA, Faz, and Mesk

Cool, I didn't know these. I never tried Netflix, and I don't stream because the quality usually sucks.
I'm not much of a movie watcher (I watched The Matrix 2 years after its release ><), so I normally just wait until there's a movie that everyone's raving about, and then I go to the theatre to watch it with my friends. Because of this, I find anything else excessive.

This isn't true for games, though. I've been playing SC1 for the longest time... mostly because I just couldn't spend over 50$ on a game that probably would not have as much lasting effect as SC1 did for me. Therefore, pirating games for me is almost a godsend. It let me try old, classic games (via emulators) that I've never had the pleasure to, such as Zelda OoT, Mario 64, Kirby 64, Chrono Trigger, Pokemon, etc.

On the other hand, I don't really enjoy pirating new games. I find them rather troublesome to crack (maybe cause I'm just noob)... and I don't mind waiting until the game price drops to $20... Which is what I did for Just Cause 2.

The reason why I'm saying this is because I don't pirate a lot myself... So I'm not sure to what extent Pirating is like. Are people in someway just "addicted" to pirating, because they feel that they're "beating the system", so to say? Or is it really a matter of convenience?

Incidentally, youtube's sound quality is 128 kbps on a normal quality video (assuming the sound originally uploaded is at least that) and 192 kbps on a high quality video.

That is pretty terrible quality. I don't take anything below 320CBR if I can. Youtube butchers everything I upload and I hate it.

No one here can claim they're not a pirate if they listen to music on youtube, because technically 99% of the music on youtube is being uploaded by people other than the publishers/artists, and is thus pirated.


I can't think of many games that needed more than moving an exe or dll file to crack completely and wholly. If that's too hard for you I think computers in general must be a trial by fire ordeal. Securom and its many cousins have completely crippled my computer in the past, much less the DRM that comes with audio editing software or 3d apps. I've never, ever encountered a virus or worm more destructive than DRM.

http://askville.amazon.com/legal-download-file-youtube-personal-media-converter/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=10331504
Of course, that agrees with you in that if the source is illegal, then it's not OK to rip it. However, if you dl it from the youtube channel of the original author, it's his legit music so you're allowed to rip it. For example, if you download dimrain's music from his youtube channel, it's fine (as long as you don't sell it) but if you download it from a fan's channel, it isn't OK.
I've also heard something along the lines of "if the audio or video has been changed in any way it counts as a remix so it isn't illegal" but I don't know much about how true that is.

Yeah, if the artist or publisher uploads it they have rights to it and it's basically the same thing as downloading free songs.

I wish I still had the source for this, but I believe there was an incident of cops getting sued for copyright infringement from playing songs over their radio. This was in Europe I think, though.

Copyright is really goddamned confusing.

On the debate over the convenience (or lack thereof) of online music vendors, I agree completely that iTunes is a DRM-riddled mess with pretty much zero convenience value.

However, there are good vendors out there - 7digital is very good. No DRM - you can redownload music you've bought at any time, bitrate and filetype clearly displayed before you buy anything, decent selection etc etc. The world needs more sellers like that if music piracy is going to be reined in.

Most people don't care about DRM, and iTunes allows you to buy the music with a simple interface right from your device-syncing program. That's what I meant by convenience. The Zune Pass is Microsoft's solution to the problem; it's infinite music streaming and saving to devices for $15/month, so you can theoretically be able to access all the music available with internet access. Grooveshark and Pandora are also good alternatives.

People dislike paying monthly fees for music. Spotify has managed to reverse this trend somewhat, but people much prefer to "own" music. Not everyone has an "always on" Internet connection, especially when they are on the go (which is when lots of people listen to their music!).

iTunes is convenient right up to the point where you want to transfer your music to another computer or you need to format your hard drive. Creating backups is not convenient - only being able to download your purchases once without having to beg and grovel to Apple is not convenient.

I agree that people'd much rather "own" music rather than stream it.
It's practically the same problem for battle.net 2

Using b.net 2 as an example, I'd much rather have the maps downloaded onto my folder than have it temporary, so I can open it and look at it in the editor while offline...
It isn't safe to assume that everyone has an internet connection at all times. What if I wanted to work on my map while on an airplane?
Because of this, if a cracked version of the editor turns up that doesn't require internet, I'd download it, even if I rarely edit maps while offline. Even if I perceive it to be an inconvenience, I'd go for the better version.

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Making encryptions, bulky codes, and general programming chaos simply ISN'T the way to solve piracy. Doing so creates a vicious cycle where developers try to create more coding to stop people who will eventually crack the codes. Consequently, both the consumers and the developers are hurt in this system. More money has to be poured to make these extra codes, while the paying customers have to deal with program limitations that are unfair and annoying, forcing them to risk pirating illegal versions. Neither party wins.

The psychology behind pirating things is that it is more easy to do, and it doesn't cost any money. Developers cannot compete with either of these factors. They have to focus on things that make the legit copy better. The reasoning behind bulky code protections is to stop people who are looking to save a few bucks. However, this problem has ballooned to a point in which these protections actually make the final, legit product worse than protection-free, pirated versions.

What's even worse are protection means that are constantly present. This means that even though a customer have paid for the product, and have trudged through all the legal protections, installation protections, and of course various other new protections, they still end up with a product that's worse than the pirated versions. For many customers, this is just unacceptable. They'd rather spend the initial trouble of getting the pirated version than spend money to buy the legit version and have a constant headache.

Even IF I've bought the legit copy, as long as I know that there is a better version out there, I'd much rather have that version.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 8 2011, 2:08 am by UnholyUrine.

Since when is pirating something easier than buying it? Go on Zune/iTunes, click "buy song", boom, it's on your harddrive and syncing to your Zune/iPod.

Yeah but you gotta put in like, your credit card info and shit and make an account and login and whatnot. Then someone steals your credit card info, and you gotta call your bank to get those charges removed, and on top of that people start sending junk mail to your address and your email account, and someone purchases a million dollar home in your name and resells it illegally leaving you with the debt, and it just goes on and on and on.

Or, you can go to google, type in the song name, and download it. Unless you're the 1/100,000,000 who gets caught.

You only have to put in credit card information once. And you'd be doing that for app purchases and such anyway. If it were free, I'd definitely use iTunes or Zune instead. Purely the cost issue for me.

What about DRM's?

But yeah, I'm just exaggerating to make a point.