copywrite laws make it illegal since you are not allowed to sell, distribute or circumvent any protection on the discs etc etc
Also, an interesting side note on this subject; it is also illegal (in current UK law) to copy a CD you own (or any other media for that mater) onto your PC. This is unknown to most consumers as as far as we were all concerned we had the right to do this for 'backing up' our discs (as they have a tendency to get scratched and damaged easily). But yeh, according to current law this is in fact illegal. However, it is not something that law enforcement is actually concerned about. Want to know more? Read this link from BBC BBC News link about copyright
I think that percentage wise the levels have stayed roughly the same. Back in my Amstrad days I would say that 80% of my games were copied. I do believe that the vast majority of people who download a game would rarely go and purchase it if the download wasnt an option. The fact that a lot of companies will spew out so many poor games only adds to the problem. I no longer download any games myself, I cant afford another fine! But of the ones I did download I think I subsequently bought 2 of them, the rest werent worth the cost.
To me personally it seems like a larger crime to have no clue what difference "their" and "they are" have than to download a game to see if it's worth the purchase. This is also a point that ALL the "omgomg downloading bits is stealing"-sheep miss. MANY people want to see if the game is any good before shelling the money on actually buying it. Ofcourse there are also those who have no intentions to buy the game, they just want to have it for free, but it still isn't THE SAME AS STEALING FROM THE STORE because they never would have been customers anyway, nobody really loses money. Also about music and movies. I have ripper and will continue ripping every single audio CD to the computer. Browsing though a pile of CDs is just way too much work. Is someone really going to call me a criminal now?
I get the education deals for MS software, Office and windows 7 @ £30each, it's not worth the effort of downloading and cracking. In general I buy 99% of the stuff. I occasionally use photoshop blag version, but most of the time I use paint.net or gimpshop (gimp with a photoship gui). I coudn't justify the expense of photoshop for the amout of use it would get. If I were ever to do comercial 'shop stuff, I'd get it in aflash. THe only exception to that is when a Game is released in such a half-arsed fashion as to be unplayable, for example "saints row 2" Buggy- Glitchy- Awful. I feel in all honesty that THQ owe me a game. So the next THQ game that comes out I may well try out on an extended basis to see if it is as buggy and awful as saints2. But, Like I said, I'm 99% legit.
I think that's something that the music industry has seen. At what point does a games developer or artist (or indie movie maker) change from "I'm just happy that people are getting to see/experience what I'm producing" to "THESE SCUM BAGS ARE RUINING MY COMPANY!" Without the same scum bags, the artist/studio would unlikely have got the coverage to make them more successful in the first place. I think something needs to change. I don't pirate software or movies because it's relatively inexpensive. Maybe £20 a month on games averaged out over the year for me but I'm not a heavy gamer. With music though, the amount I wanted to the amount I could afford vastly differed and I pre spotify I downloaded hundreds upon hundreds of albums a year. Both the games and TV industry need to come up with inventive ways, not to fight piracy, but like Spotify offer a viable alternative. I'm happy to pay £10 a month. Hell, I'd pay £30 a month for spotify. I'm certainly not the person to come up with these creative alternative, but someone needs too.
I think that's a very fair point too. Supreme Commander(THQ Incidentally) , FSX, GTA IV... All games that I love and wouldn't dream of copying because I believe in a fair price for a good product but as you say, not everything is great and it certainly sucks when you pay £30 for something that's just awful.
I tend to agree, and my personal feeling is that, say the opportunity for piracy weren't there, if I would reach for my wallet and buy the product, then I generally do. Other times, I might be curious to try something out, or need it for a one-off task, and forking out the dosh just wouldn't happen. So no lost sale. For example, some years back I bought Pinnacle Studio to edit my wedding video, but the software crashed so often it was essentially unuseable - so I downloaded a sneaky copy of Pinnacle Liquid Edition. It was £400 I wouldn't have spent if that was my only option, and the software I did actually buy from them was worthless. So they kinda owed me for my time. So yeah, piracy to me is a grey area - if you're a freelance graphic designer you should buy Adobe CS or whatever you prefer using. If you're just using Indesign to knock up an invitation to your kids birthday party (cause let's face it - Publisher sucks), you're probably not going to cough up £700 for Creative Suite, no matter what Adobe likes to think. Also - every designer I know has a cracked copy of CS3, 4 or 5 on their home machine - but they make sure the company they work for buys the latest software for their workstation - so in some cases piracy = gained sales.
I would love to see the faces on my staff of my local B&Q, if one day I decided to take a drill from their shelves, proceed to walk out without paying, try it at home for a few days by drilling plenty of holes, and then if I liked it - return to pay for it. To me, the excuse of piracy for the purposes of "trying out" games follows exactly the same logic. It's still theft, albeit digital theft. There is also no such thing as a victimless crime, piracy does affect companies, and can have adverse effects on the profit margin of said companies. Don't think I am getting holier than thou eithier, because I wasn't averse to playing pirate copies of games as a kid, and I also remember watching many pirate DVD's too. But I didn't try to kid anyone or myself that I wasn't doing anything wrong though. If it floats your boat, then fine, but trying to excuse it as harmless is naive (or ignorant) in my opinion. I know not many will agree here, and that's fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, including me
That's a flawed analogy. The correct analogy would be going into B&Q, looking at the drill, then going home and making a copy, exact in every detail. The drill is still available for sale in the shop the whole time. All you've done is breach copyright, not physically steal anything.
I agree, this is a much more sensible way to look at it than some of the responses here. Piracy is definitely a grey area. There are many situations in which piracy can technically benefit the copyright holder, and many others where there is no benefit or loss. Of course, some people just pirate stuff and use it without paying for it, and the law has to protect developers from that. The fact that the law also blanket covers a loads of other things (such as copying a CD for your car) doesn't automatically make them immoral in the same way - it's just easier to make everything illegal than to write (and later interpret) complex laws that make allowances in situations where piracy isn't causing harm.
Fair point on the analogy, but I still personally see piracy as theft. If I was to write a book, should I not be afforded protection from someone copying that book verbatim. As we know, I already would be protected. I would call anyone who did copy the book a thief (amongst other things). It's just that with the ease at which people can pirate, and the scale at which it is happening, we try to kid ourselves that we are doing nothing wrong.
I don't pirate games I find them value for money on the whole. Music however is another matter. I don't mind giving bands money, but **** should be cheaper. One example - years ago I started getting into classic rock. I got into Kiss big time. Now I didn't go and buy all their back catalogue, I mean who can afford to go spend like 15 or so albums at full whack in one go? Anyway, I got them another way and since then I have gone to see them twice and bought their latest album. I can pretty much assure you that without me getting their back catalogue they wouldn't have had me going to their gigs, buying their merch or their latest album. This story goes for pretty much every band/artist I enjoy. Copyright on recorded material should elapse far, far sooner than it does. I find the idea of lifelong royalties absurd. If you do some work you get paid for it at the time and then move on and keep working. Getting paid for work you did 30 or 40 years ago is ridiculous! I am an engineer. When I design a transformer or some part of a substation I dont get a yearly fee because it hasn't blown up. I get paid at the time and move on. It should be the same for bands/artists. Now that we have the internet, distribution is cheap so maybe they can't be free (there will always be overheads) but old albums/tracks should be sold at the absolute minimum. It would increase sales for the latest albums and also get more people going to shows because there would be more fans.
Digging a bit deeper and consulting the oracle of all knowledge (wikipedia) the difference between copyright infringement and theft was defined (although it is American, and the case was 25 years ago!)
Yes, yes you have. And in doing so you only stoke the pride held by the shameless portion of pirates who think it's cool, whilst simultaneously mistaking and pigeonholing conscientious pirates like me. Of course, if I tell you that you shouldn't morally impinge upon people I'd be doing exactly that, so all I'll say is that it's extremely frustrating and demeaning to be talked down to by people who think you're scum because you've downloaded a game or two. A lot of you are waving around very lofty moral language on this subject, in fact. If you think piracy is a grave moral issue in which there are clear good and bad guys you should probably read the news now and then to regain some perspective. Piracy is a few kids getting a toy for free and a few businessmen making a few less million a year. That's not a moral issue, it's bloody inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Here in Sweden we have those who avoid paying for the tickets for trainrides. Which directly means that the ticket prices continuously rises. More people hitching rides for free -> higher prices -> more people thinking the prices are too steep -> more people hitching rides for free. I think that logic could be applied to pirating software aswell. That being said I still pirate software, but only if I'm damned unsure if it's worth its cost. Otherwise I buy the game, I couldn't dream about pirating a game like Mass Effect.
Ahh this old chestnut. It's amazing how ignorant people are about UK copyright law, first off, piracy is not theft. Things in the UK that are also copyright infringement: Copying a CD to computer/Mp3 player Keep anything on your VCR/DVD recorder/HDD Recorder for longer than 48 hours Lending a Book/Game/Magazine/DVD to a friend Any of you done any of those things? I'm sure you all have, and your all depriving artist's of revenue in exactly the same way as downloading a copy of the game/movie/whatever from the internet. It's about time everyone got off there high horses are realised that copyright infringement is a part of everyday life, it always has been and always will be, until the archaic laws are changed and business models brought out of the 19th century.
