Piracy

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Of course piracy is wrong. I have never pirated anything in adulthood, but I had several pirated games for my Commodore 64 in my youth. The thing is, at the time I was using programs to copy other people's games (and supply them copies from my collection) I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I can only chalk it up to intellectual immaturity (I don't remember exactly, but I was probably about 12 years old at the time). I took the attitude that there's this program that allows me copy from one floppy disk to another floppy disk, so it must be OK to use it.

In fact, not only did I fail to consider that by copying the game I was potentially costing the producer money, I took the attitude of how smart I was to be SAVING money. I feel that there's a good chance that attitude is still prevalent today. That there's a lot of kids out there pirating software, music, etc., that actually do not understand (or fail to contemplate the possibility) that their actions are illegal. I know I certainly didn't. However, if you are an adult and start rationalizing it by saying things like, "Everybody does it" you are only kidding yourself. Any adult that looks at it with even an iota of intellectual honesty should be able to see that while the crime is faceless, it is not victimless.

 

I'm not making my life more convenient at the expense of them, which is the entire point. I'm not costing them a cent. Yes, I acknowledge that they put in hard work into it, but that's not even relevant because I can't afford to give them the money they're asking for it anyway. They can put in as much hard work as they please but I cannot pay them for it whether I use the program or not.

They do not lose anything by me pirating the program, therefor, it is ridiculous to say that I am using it at their expense.

Um, actually, the course is on Flash. Using Flash is a requirement. I have a few options - I could a) Do all the work at uni, using their licensed copies of Flash, b) pony up $800 and buy myself a copy, or c) Pirate it.
There is no practical difference to Adobe whether I do a or c - they would see exactly the same profit, and lose nothing. I am not going to do b - I am not going to spend pretty much all the money I have on a program that I don't see using outside of university.

So, travel for 3 hours a day to get to/from uni when I don't need to go in order to work on assignments in the dingy labs there, or grab a copy off a friend and do everything from home. When there is simply no practical difference to anyone but me, it's an incredibly easy decision to make.

I don't think it's too much to ask that pirates be portrayed as humans rather than these mythical pirate-machines that seem to come up in every discussion like this. The mythical pirate-machines don't give a **** about anyone but themselves, pirate everything no matter what because ooooh, shiny thing, and never give anything back.

It ignores that these people don't really exist. Well, sure, there's probably a few out there, but I doubt it's a significant portion of pirates. Pirates are not persistantly pirates. Defining people by what they do inevitably leads to these sorts of ridiculous generalisations. Pirates do not *only* pirate - most of them probably have some source of income and more than likely spend a good portion of that on entertainment. Sure, things are pirated, but that's not the be all and the end all. What they don't spend on what they pirated, they're probably going to spend on something related anyway, and probably wouldn't have bought everything they pirated if it wasn't freely available.

See also the studies I linked to above, which gives evidence that there's a correlation between those who pirate and those who buy stuff. People who like their digital entertainment both buy and pirate it freely, they're not just leechers (despite what I said before in what I think is a rather bad analogy).

Yup, there's the mythical pirate again. They're also completely incapable of realising that supporting those who create the things they enjoy will hopefully lead to more things that they enjoy.

You're painting everything with too large a brush. Idiots and arseholes exist, but they're not the be all and the end all. Pirates are quite capable of reason and morality - their reasoning and morality are different to yours, but it's there nevertheless.

And you show again and again that you've missed the logic that I'm using. I haven't been saying that's it's okay to do it simply because I can. It's okay for me to do it because it doesn't hurt anyone for me to do so.

While I frankly don't care if someone steals from someone rich enough not to notice it, it's plainly not the same thing at all. Copying data != taking something from someone (i.e. theft). They're entirely different things.

It's really not my concern what other people do, and what they can afford or would and would have bought. Should alcohol manufacturers be responsible if someone who can legally buy alcohol does so and gives it to a minor later? I'm not responsible for what other people do with what I give them.

Yes, they are identical, but I'm honestly still not seeing what difference it makes whether I pirate it or just don't buy it. Hell, it might be best to just ignore the rest of the post and focus on that, because that's what I'm interested in. I still, despite all that up there, have no idea why it's a bad thing.

Not entitled to make the choice? I can see where you're coming from there, perhaps, but don't agree. You believe (if I'm not mistaken) that as the people who made the product - well, made it - they are the ones entitled to choose how it is used/distributed - yes? And here are pirates going 'bugger that, I'll ignore their conditions on me getting it and carry on anyway'.

Now, I don't really have a problem with your view here. It's a completely valid view of how intellectual/non-physical property should work. However, I just don't find the creator's entitlement to be that important, and their feelings of entitlement really don't feel any more valid as anyone else's to me or at least, not in a significant enough manner that I feel any obligation to observe their sense of entitlement.

So, this one is probably just one of those fundamental differences in thinking about things. From one view - the creator has a moral entitlement to do whatever they want with what they make, and from the other, special entitlement to something isn't considered important. As 'entitlement' is a thoroughly human concept, touting your view as the One True Moral Way isn't going to sway those in the other camp much, I think.

Yeech. Who's advocating that? We're pirates, not Stalinists...

Though I guess it's worth noting that capitalism isn't the only valid economic system. Piracy highlights a flaw in capitalism, really. Capitalism criminalises sharing because it's bad for business (in theory, anyway. The reality is clouded and difficult to seperate from the nonsense). Sharing - normally considered a virtue - suddenly becomes a HORRIBLE CRIME!!! and because big corporations are so good at marketing this, people believe it.

A note to add to an already bloated post, but book piracy (which is what I mostly dabble in) is really no worse than going to a library, or even just buying it second hand. How much does the creator see in any case? Nothing (the library pays a set rate, but they'd get that whether you borrowed the book or not). I can get books without giving a cent to the author in any case, is this wrong...?

Also, all this crap about maturity is just that - crap. Stop bringing it up. If you want to perceive yourself as mature and believe that because of this your opinion and moral system has more weight - sure, great, go ahead. Just keep it out of any discussion where reasoning is important. Implying that other people are immature because they disagree with you is an ugly way of discussing.

... and another also, I'm quite willing to concede that 'because everyone does it' is not a valid argument for whether it's morally correct to do it or not. As a practical matter though, accepting that as everyone is doing it, trying to smash it, criminalising millions of people, etc. is just not a sane way of trying to solve it. Sure, millions of people *can* be wrong, but seeing that there are millions of them and they don't think it's wrong, it might be better to find alternative approaches or try and see new angles on it that turn it from a negative into a positive. Otherwise, start setting up that lunar penal colony, because the 'problem' isn't going away.

 

Aik-

The "intellectual immaturity" I was talking about was not referring to you - it was referring to myself. I thought that was clear in my post when I mentioned I was 12 at the time. In fact, the entire first paragraph was talking about what I was thinking at the time, and was not passing judgement on why anyone else pirates software. Most people are not intellectually mature at the age of 12 (although some people have the intellectual maturity of a 12-year old - and that's a joke that's also not referring to you).

Just because you feel intellectual immaturity is not a reason that you pirate software doesn't mean it's "crap" and that we should "stop bringing it up". I happen to think intellectual immaturity is a major reason why I pirated software in my youth, and therefore I think it was completely relevant to mention that in my post. While I later suggested that there are other children who pirate software for similar reasons, I never mentioned intellectual immaturity is a reason why adults - like yourself - pirate software.

 

That is from the same story I linked to, and quite frankly, I just don't believe them. I want to see how they collected and analysed their data because 12000 for a pinball game sounds ridiculous.

 

I actually think the analogy fits rather well allthough it's inteprented badly. I think the man buying the alcohol and selling it to kids is the pirate though. Well he's not buying it but let's say he takes the recepiet for the alcoholic beverage and starts to distill the alcohol himself and hands it over to kids. In a similar way pirates make material clearly not meant for children readily and easily avalaible for them.

Well they aren't exactly promoting usage of external software but recommend the default security settings of browsers which usually block atleast some adds.

Of course but when a product has been around for ten years without any redistribution in my opinion it's more than fair to assume it to be abandoned. This might change sometime in the future of course but I'll reserve the judgement to myself. I have yet to err on this regard but should that happen I'm more than willing to buy the rereleased version. It is a bit of a grey are though.

 

That's another situation where I won't push the issue.

Exactly. Very few people can claim their hands are clean in this matter. Most of these people who engage in this activity are regular human beings. This does not excuse what they do...

 

i just have to correct you here, where i come from you can freely copy any book or music for that matter, that you have borrowed from, say the library.. so that is NOT theft, legally at least.

 

It is legal over here in Finland too, you can make a copy for private use. I thought that this would be common though, not the opposite.

 

I downloaded the interview that was mentioned in the General News thread here, where they talked to three designers at WotC. They mentioned that the leakage of the core books a week before the release of 4th edition was not planned, but they figure that it did increase sales of the books as people saw the books and realized that it wasn't the disaster that the players were preparing for...

While it doesn't make it right, it has had an upside for them...

 

I don't think that's technically legal anymore with the recent hotly debated copyright reform which according to quite a few went somewhat too far.

This is somewhat incorrect. The new EU directives about copyrigths pretty much require all of the nordic countries to reform their copyright laws, which is something that was allready done in Finland and currently is being done in Sweden. I'd also like to point out that sharing files has as far as I know allways been illegal around here but downloading them has not. This is also mainly due to the fact that the legal process has been lagging behind techonological development and there has been serious lack of political interest in reforming these laws. Due to EU and the entertainment buisness lobbying a lot there has been increased will to reform these laws. Also the parties that actually openly condone pircay are very small and none of the big parties that form government actually have such opinions, atleast not openly.

 

Yes it is, I checked it from the ministry of education site just to be sure. For example, you are allowed to make a copy of a book or a music CD for private use which you have borrowed from a library. The same goes for copying your newest music CD to your best friend. Although, if you go into specifics, you are only allowed to do so if you do not have to circumvent any efficient copy protection methods. But that is irrelevant in this case. You are not allowed to make copies (except for backup purposes) of computer software.

As Morgoroth said, copyright is taken very seriously here these days, too seriously in fact. There is a small RIAA-like hunt going on here. Thanks to the idiots who were lobbying the recent reform. But at least some common sense and fair use still remains. I will not go further into copyright laws, since it is not really on-topic, I think.

 

always download

I haven't bought a CD, DVD or PC game in years.
Looking at the way the rich in America spend their money, I'd say that it's bad for the environment to fuel that fire.
I've never been a sucker for the newest of the new, so I don't need to get that new movie or that trendy new CD. Also, the newest PC games are all graphic rubbish anyway, too much emphasis goes to graphic design, and I'm not going to pay for that.
All in all, I wouldn't have bought any of these new CDs/DVDs/games even if I couldn't download them, so there is no loss of income. All that has happened, is that I have access to more entertainment. Whether designers etc are okay with that or not, isn't an issue for me.
I like games with depth and replayability, and that's not what games are being made into nowadays. Stuff like World of Warcraft is just colourful baby's toys encouraging RPGers to go play first person shooters, a more lucrative market, because FPSers buy a new game every week.
Good games were:
-Civilization 2, later versions are okay, but they should have improved game depth instead of graphics. If PC requirements had remained low, you could play it for hours on a low-spec PC without needing to slurp electricity.
-Europa Universalis 1 & 2: EU2 is one of the last games I bought, but the CD broke. Now I use a compressed installer fille that's 44mb!, with the 1.09 patch that's only 60mb. I can keep it on my USB! According to history students, this is the most historically accurate game on the market. EU3 is a spiralling disappointment; graphic designers took over, and the historic depth is completely down the drain.
-Infinity engine games: I love the isometric perspective, potentially infinite maps you can travel to, and party tactics. Lots of replayability in that alone. Plus the sheer numbers of fanbuilt mods add a lot of free content too.