Stealing=/=Pirating

Perhaps it's more comparable to bootlegging? If you purchase a bootleg DVD are you a thief? Is it just the guy who created the bootleg that's a thief? I mean, you *are* fueling the illegal process. If someone steals £100,000 and gives you £50,000 did you technically steal the money?

Just because, in this great ol' digital age, you copy files rather than steal a truckload of video games doesn't make it any more justifiable. Sure, you're technically not depleting their stock but in the digital age the parameters of stealing have to be redefined. You're still illegally consuming the product product.

I don't think i've ever pirated any game ever. In fact I rarely pirate anything, torrenting and all this shit sounds like way too much hard work.

That would kind of work if that was a remaster.

It's a remake though, so that does not apply at all. I feel weird that I even need to point that out.

It really really isn't. It's why so many people do it. It's easy and any feeling of risk is almost negligible.

Guess I'm just thick then.

Well, I wasn't trying to shove it in your face, STM. Just that you're mistaken.

"Well I liked the original Robocop movie so I'm sure the remake will be good too"

Even with remasters, sometimes you want to make sure it runs well/is a good port/etc.

Transaction:

<--- Product
Money --->

Theft:

<--- Product
Money -x

Piracy:

<--- Product
Money -x

Wrong. Should be like that:

Piracy:
<--- Product
Money ???

Only thing Ive ever torrented was a folder containing concept art and sprites for Awesomenauts, and that was from a link provided by the devs.

In MM's eyes you're a criminal, deal with it.

Thats okay...
We're all criminals in one way or another.

How does that make him a criminal at all? If it was a torrent provided by the devs it's not pirating/stealing. Torrenting doesn't mean pirating, it's just that most pirating is done through torrenting. Not every ship is a pirate ship.

With digital priacy, isn't it more like this -
?- Product
Money -X

The difference between pirating a digital album and stealing a physical copy is that, not including publisher/hosting/whatever costs (which are real), you're not taking money away from anyone. There's not a finite supply of what you're taking. You haven't limited the pool. The product is the questionable thing, but the fact that no money changes hands is the same.

e: Shit I forgot to refresh before posting. Job, he's just talking shit and trying to bait someone into explaining that torrenting != piracy.

I'm a'going to move this one to NOG, as it's turned into a rather tiresome argument about the ethics of pirating.

That's not strictly true though is it? I mean, the person selling still no doubt has to pay upload costs and if it's their own site, all the costs that come with running it. If you can't afford to buy the latest album or you don't want to pay for it then you shouldn't have it.

oh no people are actively posting about a topic how boring


Depends on where it’s hosted. Most digital retailers will just take a cut of sales instead of an up-front cost. Plus most piracy will take place on external hosting run by neither the developer nor the storefront, so the cost of hosting isn’t a factor.

Oh I definitely still think it's wrong, and I know that it does cost people money. It's just a much more accurate description compared to what Varrok said, without going into painstaking detail.

I pirated Gemini Rue. I liked it so much that I bought it. I probably wouldn't buy it otherwise. My first contact to Oddworld games were also pirated copies I got as a small child (I didn't pirate those myself though), I also bought them later, when I got my own money to spend. There are many more examples I definitely should not share.

That said, you can still keep talking shit about pirating and about people like me hurting the developers (especially those who never pirated anything have the most to say, ironically), but you really seem blinded and biased concerning something what you don't really understand.

Also, I'm surprised people take seriously some of my obviously bait-y/joke-y posts. This current post is serious, though. Duuh

When you went and bought the games that was a transaction of money for product. When you pirated the game it was neither. Pirating games is bad. To call me (or anyone) blind and biased for thinking that is troll material no matter how serious you say you are, or at the very least senselessly inflammatory.

Case 1:

I've never pirated Gemini Rue.
I didn't play it, therefore I didn't dub it a great game and I've never bought it.

The result:
Developers got no money from me. I didn't get any satisfaction from playing.

------

Case 2:

I've pirated Gemini Rue.
I played it, it was awesome so I bought it.

The result:
Developers got the money from me. I'm also happy, because I played the game.

You pirated the game. And then you bought the game. You can't combine those things into one righteous action. You're gleefully ignoring case 3 where you pirate the game, then don't buy it.

I'm not saying you're a horrible person for pirating in this one instance. I'm saying that when you pirate something you take a piece of work you aren't entitled to without any money changing hands. It's different to stealing a physical copy of something, but it's still not a Morally Green thing to do.

You mistakenly see the issue with piracy, despite that what you should concentrate on is douchebagism.

Piracy is piracy. You can't say that because you did it one time and it was all fine that it's an ok thing to do. You can't pretend that pirating something isn't wrong by separating yourself from the "bad" pirates. How do you know that you would have purchased the game at the time you pirated it? As you said, you only bought it because it was awesome.

Let's talk about the time I pirated Cube World. I had seen footage of the game, and thought it looked really awesome. I was aware it had its shortcomings, but I was determined that I wanted to buy it. At the time I had no way of actually paying the money, so I pirated it. I was sure that I was going to follow it up with money one day. It turns out the game was really dull. I hardly even ended up playing it, and definitely never purchased it. Piracy saved me $15.

Was that an ok thing to do? Of course not, and I acknowledge that I did the wrong thing. Do I regret pirating it? No, it saved me money! If I had waited until I had a means of purchasing it, I would have seen that the game was a lot less than I originally thought, and has had really patchy development. Instead I downloaded something I had no entitlement to.

Well, it seems ok to m-....
...what?!
You have a very strange and illogical views on the world, Phylum. In your mind, the correct way of doing things is buying games based of how they look in media footage and not how they actually play, which, in my humble opinion, should be the right criteria for buying games. You'd easily put the blame on yourself for the game being bad, and admit that you did the right thing giving your money away to the developers who obviously failed their goal to provide entertainment to you. Your justification is that you should have known how good the game really is, despite you're having basically no means to judge it without actually playing it. (Considering the case with no free demo)

Also, I bet that you're not wholeheartedly against commercial music being on youtube to hear for free. If you were consistent with yourself, you'd feel like a thief hearing a song before deciding to buy it, you'd buy the album beforehand, and even if it turned bad you'd prefer it over hearing it first without paying the artist.

It really is the same. And "piracy is piracy" is such a weak argument, you can't even provide a convincing statement against it except mentioning a situation, where some dick who, despite having money to buy a thing he/she likes, decides to get it for free, which is not the fault of piracy, but the fault of that despicable individual.

what

I'm probably too tired to be refuting this right now, but MM isn't on Steam to tag in for me.

First off don't cast me as someone feeling "blame". I did the wrong thing, but I don't give a fuck.

Now, I agree that we should be able to know how a game plays before we buy it, which is why smart devs send review copies to gaming media early, release demos, go F2P, etc. But I also know that I have no entitlement to know how a game plays if the person publishing it doesn't give me it. That's on their head, and it doesn't make it ok to pirate it as some kind of quality assurance.

I'm glad you bring up the example of Youtube music - even if you try to tell me how I feel about it to cast me into some hypocrisy without giving me a chance to voice my opinions. If you upload someone's album to Youtube without their permission, that's 1000x worse than piracy. If you listen to an unautorised upload on Youtube, that's piracy and I definitely feel that it's bad. Again though, smart publishers/artists give people a way to sample what's on the album before they buy it. They release singles, get radio playtime, do TV promotions and play concerts! Until you actually hand the money over, you have no right to listen to the album, unless it's free somewhere like Bandcamp.

Imagine you go into a bookstore, and settle down to read an entire novel. Naturally the staff try to stop you. You explain that you're just going to read the book to make sure it's good, and that you'll pay once you're certain of that. They still seem unimpressed, so you continue that you're morally right, because you're not actually stealing the book. It's still on their premise - they aren't losing anything by letting you read it. Can you guess what the staff say? It's something along the lines of either "Go to a library", or "Read a review". Before you pay the money, the bookstore won't allow you to see inside the covers, because you don't actually own what's inside the covers. With digital content there are no physical covers, just a license that allows you to legally access the product. Jump into The Future, in a world where all bookstores are self-service. There are no staff to stop you reading away - so does that make it ok?

Well I do give a fuck where does my money go. Also, you do feel blame if you're saying that you consider it a wrong thing.

Which is never a 100% reliable source of information
More often than not they don't.
Which is never a good thing for gamers.

There are a lot a things that you consider "the truth" and just "know it" and you simply cannot back it up.

It was just what I thought at the time. I said it was just a "bet", and since I was wrong thinking you think the way I mentioned, apologies.

All I hear is "it's bad, it's bad". Back it up, goddamit! You're supposed to give arguments to support your opinions, and I see none! All of my music CD collection that I bought consists of songs I've heard before, on youtube or other unnofficial means. Music samples might be manipulative, there are songs that have only one good moment in them. Metal don't get radio playtime, it's only shitty pop music, that's so repetitive, dull and boring that no sane person would ever want to have contact with. TV promotions in music? That's a joke. There's no such thing there. The bands don't play concerts in every place of the world, furthermore, some (most) of the bands I listen to are old, disbanded or, unfortunately, dead or mostly dead.

Since when you jumped to the conclusion that what's defined by law automatically makes it morally right?! It's not always that way, gosh!

You don't have to read an entire novel to know if it's good, the point of a book is to suck you in from the beginning to end, and there are no "demos" in a form of a small, incomplete book. Nobody will throw you away from the store if you read a bit of it.

The music album is a completely different thing. Each song is a story of it's own, and in some cases, an album consists of 2-3 good songs while the rest being pure sh-... average, dull and uninteresting. Obviously you don't know that if you don't listen to each song, and you shouldn't buy something you're not sure of

Everything I have said hinges on my belief that if you don't own something, or a legal licence for that thing, then you shouldn't have/experience/whatever it. I'm sorry if I needed to make that clearer?


e:

As far as the book thing goes, I like how you think you can magically judge the quality of an entire book by reading the first few pages in store YOU CAN'T. Is that any different to watching someone play the first few minutes of a game? Of reading reviews and looking at screenshots? Of possibly even playing a demo?

The point of my post wasn't as much to define why piracy is good or bad, as much as to show you that justifying it through quality assurance isn't adequate. There are other ways to look at the quality of something. It won't always be spot on. Sometimes you'll buy a lightbulb and it won't work - you can't go and steal the lightbulb to personally test it.