This is more a personal, emotional qualm, though, like a phobia or a bigotry - but in this case, against people getting for free what you've paid for. Assessed rationally, that situation doesn't cost you anything - you'd have bought it anyway, their actions don't cost you extra. It has no direct impact on you, just a psychological impact on your pride and your values. It's hard to say whether this is their fault or yours; really, I think, it's something you have to get over, even though they are doing something wrong. Your indignation isn't the reason we punish them; we punish them because what they do is illegal. So you may as well find a way to put those feelings aside - they're inconsequential and in the end just make you angrier and less happy.
And do you have any proof that you, or any other paying customer, are doing anything of the sort? While it may be the case that game prices are at the level they are because of piracy it's just as likely to be the case that they are at the level because that's what the publisher thinks they can squeeze out of people.
Yes, the games companies would not exist if there were no paying customers, you know I nearly laughed at your reply Krazeh, how stupid can someone be???!!! There's all the proof you need. Game devs rely on sales, from people who are willing to buy their copies to pay the wages and other costs associated with bringing new titles to market. Most people who pirate are not willing to purchase the title, so when they do pirate they are leeching off those who have paid. Simple really, and no silly attempts at justification will change that fact. Do I feel resentment to those who pirate? In all honesty, yes I do. They should all acquire some suitable VD, share that around amongst themselves and go play on the motorway as far as I am concerned. I accepted at some point in my life that I have to pay for commercial products, regardless of whether it was for pleasure or work, it's about time the pirates grew up and did the same imho.
He actually stated that if they are let off, then those who used to pay for games started to pirate because you have the privelege, then why wouldn't we, would cause losses for companies, and in the end if everyone pirated the games because others got let off then there would be no money to make no more games.
I sympathise with the sentiment but I can't help but point out that it's totally unfair, unfounded and egotistical. Having a strong violent desire to impose your morality on others is exactly what motivated America's instigation - and our subsequent involvement - in the Iraq war, which you were speaking passionately against in another thread. It's a stretch, but basically what I'm saying is that wanting to force your moral conclusions on others makes you George W Bush. Normally having refined moral intuitions indicates maturity, but that's kinda cancelled out if you can't tolerate the fact that other people have different moral codes. A lot of these kids simply don't believe that their pirating is wrong - and rather than try to convince them with reasoned persuasion and facts, you're content to sit back and silently hate them for not having learnt as much as you? If you really cherish your values and principles, your motivation should be to explain them to others and help them around to your way of thinking, not to just use them as an excuse to stereotype kids who don't know better. edit - It's a disturbing prospect, but it's theoretical. In reality, if piracy were going to spiral out exponentially like that, it would have happened a long time ago - in reality it's been pretty steady, to the best of my knowledge, for a while now. The simple fact is there are, and will always be, a huge proportion of gamers who are perfectly happy to buy games, who prefer it to piracy anyway, or who have strong moral intuitions against piracy and therefore never will. I'm beginning to wonder whether either side is even a problem in reality. It's entirely possible that both have established a symbiotic harmony, and that the present situation is perfectly sustainable ad infinitum.
No, you're talking about copyright infringement, of which, due to lack of verifiable research data, the impact on sales cannot be determined as of yet. In some cases, like home taping, it was decided that the impact was negligible or even positive, and as such an exception was made in the law to make this legal. What the impact of P2P file sharing is is simply unknown at this time as far as games are concerned. For music, independent research has shown that the impact is POSITIVE, so the same argument could be made for legalizing it. This legalizing does not have to be free. In many countries, like my own, this legalizing was done by imposing a levy/tax to compensate the artists. It may not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to uphold this law. You complain about people taking things for free, but you have no solution whatsoever on how to stop these people from doing so. If there is no solution to stop them, perhaps it would be better to legalize via taxing. At least that puts money in the pockets of the artists, whereas jumping up and down screaming bloody murder will only get you a heart attack.
Come off the high horse here Boiled.........what the ferk do you think I have been doing for the last 14-15 pages? EDIT: Feck me, 22 pages now!! As for hate, I don't hate anyone. I do think that piracy is a childish and immature act. I also think that those who choose to pirate need to stop pretending it doesn't hurt anyone, it's just pathetic reasoning that allows them to keep thinking like this.
I haven't. I've been saying that the system that allows most people to obtain such material is wrong. Your argument rests on the fact that certain people are, from a revenue point, neutral; They would not be buying it anyway. That in itself is debatable, but let's assume you are right. The system they used to download it, is also used by those who would, or may have paid for it should no other means be available. It will almost certainly also be used by those who's INTENTIONS are to steal it and not pay for it. My argument is that piracy should be treated very harshly for these reasons, and trying to determine someone's INTENT is next to impossible. All you can do is stop the dissemination of the games by cracking down on P2P. You neglect to realise that by downloading, you are also seeding to others, and those others may not be as honourable as you. You are unwittingly aiding others to obtain the game also. No, buying it second hand is not theft, because if all parties are honest, the old user will stop being the owner, and also stop using the software, as another takes his place. I'm assuming you have not been on the receiving end of copyright infringement? Thought not. You'd feel differently if you had. I don't care about the demographics of one group vs. another, the fact is while pirating games in any way is tolerated, it WILL be abused by the groups that ARE just stealing it. There is no way around this, and no amount of posturing and argument can deny this fact. Unless you are also prepared to say that you don;'t care about that, or try to say that even THOSE people aren't harming the industry, you have to concede that P2P sharing of computer games does way more harm than good. If you deny this you just have your head in teh sand. Yes.. there is. No one denies this. However, both parties use the same system to obtain the games, so while one party may be morally clean, the other isn't. Do we ignore the other? My point.... which you still don't get... is that while mass P2P sharing of illegal material exists, there are many more people who are merely stealing than evaluating, and while it may seem unfair to the latter, the former necessitates the clamp down on P2P sharing. The fact that I've paid, and some chav hasn't is annoying, that's what! The fact that all those people out there downloading who DON'T fit into your moral camp ARE harming the industry, and I end up paying more. That's what. I'm with stuartpb on this: I think those in favour of being able to obtain pirate games for ANY reason (lets not re-hash) are probably under 18, have no money, and are desperate to justify what they do for fear of losing the ability to obtain software for free, knowing that they can probably not afford to BUY all the stuff they want. I'm not saying any one particular person on her fits that profile... i'll just say that I've seen these people come and go over a period longer than most people in this thread have been alive. The delicious irony is that the people I knew 25 years ago who sounded just like you lot.. now buy games, and agree with me... now they have the money to buy them. Co-incidence? I think it is not.
I'm not convinced you've been reading other peoples' posts as carefully as your own. Phulshof and I have put forward pretty watertight accounts to explain why our actions don't hurt anyone, and nobody has been able to offer any counter-argument. I agree with you re: the prolific pirates, the Group 3/4s, who feel somehow justified and don't buy games. But you do an injustice to the 5/6 by branding them as immature, rationalizing kids too. At the very least, explain how pirating and then buying hurts anybody - I thought we'd established that it actually benefits developers.
At the day, how many other people do as you claim to? If you can give me that answer, then I know that I shouldn't worry about piracy. If you cannot, then how can you expect me not to be worried? As for establishing whether try b4 u buy works as a business model, forgive me if I don't take your reasoning as a definitive answer. For one, are you honestly telling me you have bought every single game you have pirated? Or just the ones you felt worthy of a purchase? If it's the latter, then you are no better than the ones who had no intention of buying in the first place!
Why is this important? If it's always morally wrong to copy, then the size of group 5 and 6 is of no importance. If it's only morally wrong if the net result is negative for the artists, then it only matters if group 4 > group 6. Group 5 is, as far as copyright infringement goes, of no impact to the revenue of the artists, because without or without the copy they would have bought the game eventually.
I was referring to Boiled's claim that it is morally right as long as a purchase is made in the end. I do consider all piracy to be wrong, there are legal and morally right ways to address every single issue raised in defense of piracy, something that has been ignored ad infinitum here.
Every single one that could still be bought. I haven't bothered with System Shock 2 and the like because the developers wouldn't make a cent and the games are no longer on retail. I really am that good a guy, I pirated half the games in the world and now I legitimately own half the games in the world I'll take a photo of my PC shelf sometime. It's depressing (not least because I've played about a third of them). As for the rest, one thing I was careful to clarify earlier is that I'm not describing piracy at large. I am against piracy. I am against p2p and torrents and the illegal distribution of pirated games. I keep saying this but it gets lost in the flurry of new posts in this thread. My rather unusual balancing act is to claim that, within that belief, my own actions are moral. I condemn piracy at large and will welcome and aid its downfall if and when I can, but until then I pirate-and-buy with full consistency, no exceptions. This benefits myself and the developers, it supports the industry and, since I do not use p2p or torrent methods to pirate, it in no way supports or aids the existing pirate distribution systems. Moral acts from within, and aided by, an immoral system. I'm very proud of it. There is one, final, tiny flaw in this framework. But I don't want to give it away just yet
Seriously are you that obtuse or are you deliberately missing the point? Where did I say anything or even get into the matter of games companies not existing if there were no paying customers? Of course they wouldn't and I don't think that's ever been in question. The point being discussed was what harm was being caused to paying customers by people downloading and you claimed that you were caused harm because you, and other customers, were sponsoring their activities. The act of sponsoring would imply that you were paying more than you should be because some of your money has to be used to offset the money alleged to have been lost due to downloads. It was this I was asking for proof of, i.e. are current prices levels because there is a need to charge more to offset losses from pirates or because publishers think people will pay that price? Didn't think it was that difficult a query to be honest but apparently it was. And your argument rests on the harm being caused by people downloading is greater than the gains caused by people downloading and then going on to buy a proper copy. As phulshof has tried to point out numerous times there has been no real studies done to actually determine whether that is the case and until those are done we can't objectively look at the issue. Plus you seem to be mixing the issue of piracy itself with one of the mechanisms by which piracy can occur. They are different subjects and should be looked at separately, especially as the mechanisms themselves do also have perfectly legitimate uses. Firstly I don't recall having said I downloaded anything and secondly even if I did I wouldn't use Bittorrent to do it so no I wouldn't be seeding or unwittingly aiding others. How does any of that change the fact that someone is using a copy of a piece of software without providing any recompense to the author? Why is their act of obtaining a copy without paying anything to the author more morally acceptable than someone who downloads? You should care about demographics are those are the important issues in discussions about the rights or wrong of piracy, it's morality, whether it's legal status should change and the harm it may be causing to the industry. And no I don't have to concede that the sharing of computer games, P2P or otheriwse, does way more harm than good unless you have some independent research study you'd like to put forward to show that what you're stating is in fact true. People who purchase second hand are harming hte industry but you're happy with that. It seems that in reality you're not all that bothered about the industry, it's more about the indignation that you've had to pay for something while someone else happens and at the end of the day you don't care where the money goes as long as someone has been paid.
Certainly, but to be quite honest: I don't care much for moral outrage. I care about artists getting paid. Let's look at those groups again: 1. do not copy, do not buy 2. do not copy, buy 3. copy, do not buy, would not have bought anyway 4. copy, do not buy, would have bought without the copy 5. copy, buy, would have bought without the copy 6. copy, buy, would not have bought without the copy In today's world, groups 2, 5, and 6 provide the artist with income. In a "perfect" world without copyright infringement, groups 2, 4, and 5 provide the artist with income. So if group 4 > group 6, the artist is better off in a copyright infringement free world, and if group 6 > group 4, the artist is better off in today's world. I'd like to know which group is bigger: 4 or 6 before I decide on what to do about copyright infringement. As you also may notice, the size of group 1, 2, 3, and 5 is completely irrelevant from an artist's income point of view as far as the existence of copyright infringement is concerned. 2 and 5 will always provide them with income, and 1 and 3 will never provide them with income.
Uhm...repost? Did the website just durp or did your browser? edit - oh nevermind, it was a clipboard durp.
Same old bollocks different tune.............final note: pirates need to grow up and realise that there is no such thing as a free ticket in life
If you download something which you then go on to buy why is that, in your view, morally wrong? Is it simply because someone has broken a law? Or is there something more to it?
So what you're saying is you don't want to, or can't, come up with a cogent response so you're not going to try and just throw in a veiled insult?
