Close, but no cigar - stealing is taking property (or whatever you want to call it) without permission or right. This begs the question...who legally owns the software? The people who license it. Who owns copied software? The people who license it. No matter how you paint the picture and what ridiculous analogies you choose to employ, copying software without paying for a licence is stealing it.
No, he was right. Theft is the act of dishonestly appropriating property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. You can't permanently deprive the owner of property which you have copied while leaving them in possession of the original. This is why we have different laws to deal with the two different acts. Edit: Let me ask you this, say you've just bought a new CD which you bring home and rip to mp3 so you can put it on your mp3 player. Have you stolen the music?
There is no such thing as 'identity theft' when it comes to the law, so no, it isn't actually stealing. Someone can commit fraud by using your personal details and passing them off as their own, but they wouldn't be charged with theft just because they have obtained your private details, and neither would a pirate for making or downloading a copy of a game. Like I said, it may seem logical and correct to think of it as stealing and I wouldn't necessarily argue with you there, but we still need to distinguish between them legally because they are technically not the same thing.
So the overriding opinion here is that there is no real justification for pirating software (or other media). I must say, even though I have a long history of piracy and for many years wouldn't buy a game even if it was below £10, I have now changed quite a bit. I think Valve's steam was probably the catalyst for me because more and more I find myself preferring to buy a game legitimately. I also think hard work and brilliant game design should be rewarded. So I guess your comments here have helped me evaluate things or implant the idea more firmly that piracy isn't a good idea. As many of you have said, if I don't think a game is good enough then I should just give it a miss. If a game is great then perhaps even £29 is reasonable if I spend a long time playing it. I still have the option to save money with the steam sales when I can. But I suspect there will be times when I pay close to regular price for a new game if it's hot enough. I'm pretty sure I will with BF3. And I think you're right when some of you say it comes down to greed. We are all quick to react when we're deceived by greedy corporations but actually we can be pretty greedy also. You people may look dumb but you make some very good points. Incidentally, I have an iPhone3 3GS and although I thought about Jailbreaking it once or twice I never thought about pirating software on it. I know jailbreaking is legal but I don't want the potential problems. All of my paid apps I pay for and I have bought a lot. iPhone apps are generally massively cheaper than PC software but then again PC is generally more sophisticated. I must say though I have been doing as some others here have mentioned that when a game demo is not available, they download pirate copy and if they like it, buy the game. I think my new motto is that famous pirate nfo message: "If you like this software, support the developer and buy it". One excuse I used to make was that some high end pc applications were "overpriced". I would complain about the price of Photoshop and say "if it wasn't so expensive I'd buy a legit copy". What I should have said was - if I can't afford this software I will use a cheaper alternative. Anyway, can't believe my about turn. Feels like one of those Christian rebirth things and you're all waiting to hug me (I realise the reality is that many of you are psychotic and waiting to punch my head in). So, thank you for your opinions.
Eh? Where did I mention theft? I was referring to the idea that games are too expensive according to the OP...
I actually agree with this, but I can't stand the semantics of it - the law doesn't recognise piracy as theft (there is no question there) but that's the law, and it defines things very specifically because it has to. The nature of theft changes drastically when you introduce things that essentially aren't "things," software being a prime example.
you fail to realize that some of us don't have that money. i would rather spend that on upgrading my pc so it could games at medium settings at 1280x1024 res screen. i would work full time for £600 (i'm still at college) yes i have pirated in my past but that stopped a long time ago specially looking at the fact that onlive(playpack) is only $10 a month (£7) and as said before things such as steeam sale (damn i lost battlefield badcompany 2 for a fiver didn't know it was on)onlive said some people still dodn't have good enough internet access
sell one of your sli-ed cards and spend it on games the entire gta sries can be had for £20 on steam with no sale on
It's also a criminal offence as per section 107(1)(e) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Can't stand most 3rd person games. GTA IV is impressive though. I will need SLI for BF3. I get up to 197 fps max settings on BC2 with 4 x AA. Was funny to see the Nvidia 590 with a much lower FPS on the same game. I didn't plan on getting SLI. It just happened because I wanted to bring 3d mark 2011 to it's knees. It was a sperm of the moment type of thing. I'd never tried SLI before but I have been amazed how efficient it is. In 2d desktop the current draw is no more than that of a single GPU. Max current draw for entire system in a DX11 game is 320 to 520 watts. Portal 2 was half that.
This, although I do sympathize with feathers' point about game prices. I don't use it as an excuse to pirate, however. If I pirate, it's to try a game out before buying it, not to protest its pricing. I really do find a lot of games to be too expensive. In response, I refuse to buy them. But pirating them...no. Piracy is interpreted by developers and publishers as demonstrated interest in their product, and so is a kind of indirect support, and I don't want to give them that. And it hikes prices up further, perpetuating the situation. In any event, we're all attacking feathers like he was defending piracy as protest, but was he? From my reading of the OP, he was just speculating as to whether it was a factor, not condoning it... edit - Oh, and just a word about the "piracy is/isn't theft" argument: drop it. Just leave it alone forever, it doesn't matter. The debated issue in every piracy thread is whether piracy is wrong, not whether it's theft: demonstrating that it's theft doesn't necessarily entail that it's wrong, and it can be wrong without being theft. It's just not relevant whether or not piracy is technically theft. I dearly hope we can one day drop that stupid, pedantic, irrelevant fight once and for all, and leave it to the lawyers to bicker over.
So very true, and then devs/publishers use that against the PC gaming community, promoting crappy console ports because their attitude is going towards "why even care about PC gamers, half of them will just pirate it anyway"... Anyhow, this was kind of a troll thread imho. The topic of piracy is getting rather stale in general, though I have to admit the "piracy guide" pic is just hilarious. Not to mention the thread tags, epic. We'll revisit the issue when we can "pirate" physical objects from the net, shall we?
Yup, that is correct. It's great that we have you to categories this thread. I didn't realise it was a troll thread but since I recently watched an excellent movie titled: "Trolljegeren" - you brought back fond memories. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740707/ Since piracy is stale in your opinion I think we should talk about power lines in Norway being used to keep giant Trolls from wondering into inhabited areas.
Oh hey feathers, do you feel I personally attacked you or something, you don't have to get sarcastic I wasn't the first one to comment about beating a dead cat now. And what, do you actually expect peope to come on here and agree, "oh yeah piracy is great screw those devs and their expensive games"...? No, it's fishing for reactions, hence the troll. Come on.
I wanted opinions and actually, I didn't expect to be swayed. But the opinions expressed here have confirmed to me that if I value something enough to spend time on it then I shouldn't have a problem paying for it. It was really just an issue over the amount but again the arguments I've seen here also helped convince me that even £29 isn't so bad for a very good game. So for me it was useful getting your opinions even though I know that some of you are somewhat psychotic... Psychotics are almost people too and so your opinions count for something. I don't think I will complain so much in future about the prospect of paying for a game. So this Trolling has been useful. (but I will still get most of my games cut price from that place where they specialise in the control and flow of hot air).
Fair enough, maybe troll was too harsh. And for the record, I agree with you on the fact that some games may be overpriced (especially on launch), but my argument was simply that it still doesn't justify pirating. I admit it, I'm cheap and 90% of my purchases are Steam specials as I'd rather dump the cash in hardware. So my Steam account is probably worth ten times as much as I actually paid... Plus, like some have mentionned the value is definitely there, though maybe hard to see. For example, I paid what, like $40 for Fallout: New Vegas and I dropped over 150 hours into it; so it cost me about $0.27 an hour for my playtime, and I've enjoyed every second of it. Nowadays if I ever pirate a game it's really for lack of a demo, as I want try a game before I decide to dump my hard earned cash, into it. And I usually end up buying it afterwards anyway... I love PC gaming but I realize that despite the dev's devotion it still comes down to economics. So I personally feel that if I want to keep seeing quality (non-indie) titles released in the future, I should purchase a copy and do my part in trying to keep it a profitable industry.
