Internet Piracy

[Arkuski]

I hope we can all have fun debating for and against internet piracy. I'm really interested to see where everyone's stance is on this, so I can be ultra edgy trole contrarian. But seriously, I think this is a very serious subject we are discussing and I encourage everyone to weigh in.

[Razor]

arkuski, serious subject, same sentence

l 0 L

[psychoangel691]

I'd like to be able to look at it like no big deal because all these companies make so much money, but the problem is that when they start losing money they start hurting the little guys that don't make so much money. The big guys at the company have to make their huge salary you know. Nobody else matters.

[choof]

stepmania

[Charu]

Stepmania is Internet Piracy. We're taking songs, stepping it, and releasing files that are on albums!

Piracy!

[dAnceguy117]

Originally Posted by Charu

Stepmania is Internet Piracy. We're taking songs, stepping it, and releasing files that are on albums!

Piracy!

this is actually true.

[Kibblre]

Tommy Refenes, programmer of Super Meat Boy:

"As a forward-thinking developer who exists in the present, I realize and accept that a pirated copy of a digital game does not equate to money being taken out of my pocket," Refenes begins.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/20/te...ty-drm-piracy/

I like his stance on piracy.

EDIT: This one's a good read too: http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/07/27/is-piracy-good

[mellonxcollie]

"a pirated copy of a digital game does not equate to money being taken out of my pocket"

This is really what it comes down to in my opinion. "Stealing" means that you are taking something from someone and they can no longer profit from that thing. If you steal a bag of chips from the store, the store can no longer make a profit from those chips and they lose the money that they spent to order the chips to the store. When something is pirated, nothing is lost in that sense. The only thing that is lost is "potential" sales which really means nothing. The creator can still distribute and profit from their creation regardless of how many people pirate it.

I worked at a movie theatre for years and got into unlimited movies (+ a guest!) for free. While I was working there I probably saw 2-3 movies a week. Since I've stopped working there about 3 years ago I've probably seen less than 10 movies that entire time. I only go to the movies now when there is something that I really want to see. The fact is that the only reason I saw those movies is because I got into them for free, I would not have spent money on them otherwise. The same is true of most pirated media I consume. If I had to pay for it, I just wouldn't watch it at all, and if I like it enough, I do pay for it or try to support the franchise in other ways (ie anime figures).

[devonin]

For every person who doesn't pirate unless they know they would never buy it anyway, 100 unemployed teenagers are just pirating every single piece of media they consume ever.

Check how many people pledge 1 cent for humble bundles, and 1 or 0 cents for the 'pay what you want' things you can find around these days.

[popsicle_3000]

Originally Posted by devonin

Check how many people pledge 1 cent for humble bundles, and 1 or 0 cents for the 'pay what you want' things you can find around these days.

i see those and think that it must not be legit...

[noname219]

Pay-what-you-want only works when you have a strong social web presence and have a product users like love.

[top]

i love set your own prices. always go with the zeroooooo~

man it sucks to be a poor loser :/

[omega_grunt666]

If the person can't afford the content, or doesn't want to pay for it, then no one is really losing money on it. If the product is good, it will sell well despite any amount of pirating going on in the background. That being said I don't fully support it, but there are cases where pirating is actually helpful, like when a game is no longer available on the market or the developer shuts down/stop supporting it.

Sometimes software doesn't have a trial version or the trial version is so limited you can't get a good idea of how well it will work for you. I've used a ton of cracked versions of software for various reasons, and when it turns out its something I'll actually use on a regular basis, I'll support the dev and pay for a legit copy. Without that avenue to try before I buy I probably wouldn't even have given it a second thought and walked off, so at least in this case pirating has made a few people a little bit of money.

My stance on music piracy is about the same, downloading for personal use in Canada is not a crime. If the artist is good I'll buy an album/merch and or go to a concert. Hard to have any sympathy for music copyright when you see ridiculous things like the RIAA suing some stay at home mom for $1.92M over 24 songs. Granted in that case it was a bit of a power user scenario, but I've yet to hear a "damages" quote that wasn't pulled out of some ones ass who has no realistic idea of the actual figures. Oh yeah, if those 105 downloaders didn't have this one mp3 available from you, they probably would of all bought 6 albums a piece and gone to every concert for the rest of the artists career. And named their children after them, and remodeled their house with artist-approved materials. But because they got that one for free, none of that happened. $1,000,000,000,000 plz. The kind of musical piracy that needs to be targeted is people like Will.I.Am.

[Pseudo Enigma]

I pirate so I know what to spend the extremely small amount of money I have on.

[JohnRedWolf87]

I'm subscribed to Marvel Unlimited, where I can read digital comics on Marvel's website for a yearly fee.

However, as much as they try to keep up by adding comics every week, some older comics are missing from the database. Therefore, I download torrents of any comics they don't have uploaded.

I'm paying them $60 a year for unlimited access to their comics, anyways, so no harm done.

[adlp]

it's complicated

[Ohaider]

inevitable issue that if prevented would cause too much protesting to police

[Izzy]

They fixed that problem on amazon awhile ago. They make it really easy to spend money with 1 click buy.

[omega_grunt666]

It can't be that much of a novelty if thousands of businesses only do sales online. Its not particularly hard to arrange transactions online, if someone is smart enough to figure out how to get money in the first place they are more than qualified enough to figure out how to spend it in a different way. I don't think making it any easier is going to help "solve" piracy. And in what ways can it really be made easier? Most of the steps involved are providing billing/contact information which are necessary if you intend on purchasing physical goods or the transaction goes wrong for whatever reason. (After initial setup it is actually as easy as click and go. In fact, some people prefer a more complicated payment system because of the risk of fraud)

Generally speaking its HARDER to get the content for free because you need to know reliable sources (Or how to find/distinguish between them) or risk being infected by malware.

Ultimately the problem is there aren't any anti-piracy measures available that don't hurt the average consumer. People want content on all their various devices and locking it in any way can interfere with that. There are thousands of ways to share files and millions of files to be shared. Its just not possible to monitor all channels to keep pirated material unavailable. And even if it was easier to control, you still have thousands of people who for legitimate reasons would be looking for/finding ways around the system. It would also disrupt all the positive effects outlined in my previous post (Keeping legacy content available, trial before purchase, etc) in addition to making physical theft a more viable alternative. (ACTUALLY harmful)

We could spend millions trying to fight piracy but the means are so common there really isn't much point. Who is it really hurting? Look at Game of Thrones, the most pirated TV series of all time. HBO has straight up said that had no impact on its financial success.

You can measure the success of something by how torrented it is, but can you show me one shred of proof that pirating something has caused measurable damage to anyone? The reason the system works is content worth paying for is being bought, and if it isn't then its even less likely to be pirated. Things like humble bundle can operate because digital items cost nothing to produce more of, its 100% initial development cost. And that can easily be covered by the people paying more than $0.1. (The average even with those people is a few dollars) Besides, I don't actually think there has been a game included in a humble bundle that hasn't already made its costs back in initial sales before its inclusion. Putting things on sale is a great way to make money, something sold for less is better then something not sold at all. (it works for physical stores, why wouldn't it work 10x better when the stock is unlimited and free?) Anyways, It seems like most of the copyright cases are akin to patent trolls trying to get money where it isn't due. Of course the line is drawn when someone is attempting to make money off of someone else's work, that is legitimate copyright infringement. But as far as personal use and alike, no harm no fowl?

[devonin]

HBO is a paid subscription service for virtually everybody who watches it. One show airing on HBO isn't going to be hurt by piracy because everybody who has HBO has it for more than just Game of Thrones and won't cancel it just because they can pirate GoT. And the people who don't have HBO don't have HBO so they aren't costing them any money by downloading it instead of not watching it.