With the fuckton of bullshit the large music labels are pouring down to save their outdated business model and their billions of profit per year, I am actually actively pirating. Not just because it's easier and free, but to give a big FUCK YOU to the entire industry.

I'm a big believer in consumer power. If you collectively refuse to buy stuff that only fuels a bullshit system, eventually the system will collapse.

Isn't that sentiment kind of meaningless because you're not sacrificing anything yourself?

I hope you dont let this logic harm the indie industry.

With all due respect, this is something only a teenager would say. Pop music has always been 95% shit. It's no different now than it was fifty years ago. But supporting music you like by buying it helps good musicians make more good music.

I know Havoc is mostly full of bullshit, but I believe in this case he’s referring to the business dealings and legal practices that groups like the RIAA et al are employing to protect their interests, not the quality of the music itself.

People don't want you to steal from them. Wow, that's weird.

People steal music from independent artists to make a catchy riff for their copyright adverts.

That's more weird.

That is pretty weird.

First off, there is nothing being stolen but that is a completely different discussion.

Second, when someone does 'steal' something, it's not in any kind of proportion to demand 30.000 dollars per track because that's somehow seen as 'lost revenue', and comletely ruin someone for the rest of their lives.

Third, the music industry is pushing laws that infringe on everyone's privacy and rights. Buying politicians and buying judges.

Fourth, the big labels don't want to admit that musicians don't need them anymore. You can become famous on your own these days and they obviously don't like it one bit. Youtube used to be a target for them until they got money out of it. Now everything else is a target.

This is an industry that will kill and destroy everything in order to protect their bottom line, and I won't have any part in that. If there's an independant artist not associated with this bullshit I'll happily buy their album if I like their music. Otherwise they can go straight to hell.

First off, yes there is. You stole an experience. Yes, you did.

Second, they charge you that much because you didn't just steal it, you also made it available for everyone else to steal it by downloading it from you. Yes, you did.

Third, they are at their wits end trying to figure out how to stop you fucking degenerate, dishonest scumbags from taking their shit. If I stole from you on a daily basis you would probably come up with some pretty draconian ideas on how to stop it. Yes, you would.

Fourth, business men don't want to be put out of business? Well, holy shit. What a fucking revelation. Yes, it is.

This is an industry that produces a ton of music that we enjoy, and would like you to please stop being a piece of shit, and stealing from them. If that were to happen they would calm right the fuck down.

You can't blame companies for trying to keep their arse in buisness

I've uh, pirated some games I have on console, for convenience, 'cus I've only recently got a computer capable of playing the newer games and I just find it all a lot easier, I still paid for the games, just not on this particular platform, would that be bad?

It's not as bad as just being a cunt who is actually self deluded enough to blame the companies attempts to get you to stop stealing from them for stealing from them.

I download most everything, including a lot of purchases. I'm one of those niche cases where the shit I really like is rare, old or not available for download otherwise, and the typical 'popular' stuff (god I sound like a hipster) I like is easy to acquire through torrents or whatever.

So I support what I want to and mass-download what I don't need to.

The correct way to deal with piracy is for all the labels/studios/companies supplying all of their product through subscription based services, like iTunes and netflix rolled into one, and have the value of extra content or information available through the subscription outweigh the ease of pirating.

What if, the company that made the game died and so they wouldn't get paid anyway? Like Westwood and the good Command and Conquers, would that be unethical?

Not really. Unless the company went under explicitly because of piracy, then it would be sad.

Honestly, pirate Nintendo games everyone.

Is it bad to pirate the first Diablo game? There is simply no way to buy the game legitimately now, absolutely none. Technically it's not abandonware though because battle.net still supports it

We've established that pirating is bad, no matter the reason. Fair enough, you can't buy the game anywhere, but its still bad.

You've made an enemy today. *gives evils*

This doesn't make sense. If there's no way to buy the game where the copyright holder does recieve money then there should be no ethical qualms by aquiring it via torrent or second hand. It's a case of I would have gave you the money but you don't have it anymore, but I still want to have it.

Legally? I'm not too sure but morally? S'all good.

No we haven't.

What if some dying grandpa desperately wants to play Tiny Tank on his deathbed and the only option is to pirate it? And the company expressly gives consent/doesn't give a flying fuck if you do so? What if a musical artist releases his tracks for free as well as for purchase? (as many do) and then his label denies the previously free tracks? You really don't sound like you understand the variables here beyond pirating a brand new video game.

I've also given money to musical artists who distribute their stuff for free on Bandcamp. I guess it all balances out in the end.

When my mother was dying of cancer, and was clearly in her last days, I bought a bootlegged copy of Star Wars Episode III for her to watch, as the movie had just come into theatres. I didn't feel bad about that.

Sounds like a nice guy.

Whoever wrote that article meticulously weaved in every old person stereotype he could. I can't tell if he meant it in an endearing way or not.

that makes me feel good about piracy. lawl.

fucking good on him. good old geezer.

I will never feel bad for having pirated Westwood stuff. No way am i gonna send my money to EA instead.

I usually pirate stuff either is it's way too expensive for what it is and I only need for one time (I needed Dreamweaver because of coursework, that's all), or the site you buy the program from looks unsafe to trust with my money.

I'm pretty sure when I get a new PC, I'll be torrenting FL Studio. I think its just convenience mainly, whatever you want, whenever you want it. Tempting. Also, like I said, I have no money.

Admittedly I've pirated stuff before, but i've never really felt like I'm doing any real harm. I just watch this and try to take my mind off what I'm doing.

This sums up my views on piracy: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...-Becomes-Theft

As an extension, I feel that pirating things that we would never have access to otherwise is acceptable - such as Adobe software. A company that feels it can sell its software for £150 for a single license to students is a company that does not deserve my money. Its not that I can use alternatives - because there simply aren't alternatives that offer the same as some Adobe software, like Flash and Premiere.

This is dumb. How is pirating an indie game ethically any different from pirating a non-indie game?

If you pirate World Of Goo you are taking money away from two people who spent years making a game and publishing it themselves - they profit directly from sales.

If you pirate Battlefield 3 the developers are paid by the publisher once the game is finished - after that, the publisher takes all the money and the creators see none of it.

EDIT: And I wouldn't say never pirate something indie, I just don't like to as a rule of thumb. I pirated Minecraft back in the day because there wasn't a demo for it (besides that crappy Classic thing on the website). I have since bought it, but I really didn't know if I'd like it and didn't wanna spend £12 on something I might not end up enjoying. Yes its a flawed argument but whatever. Notch ended up the winner anyway, because it went from Alpha to Beta while I was playing with my torrented copy, meaning I had to pay 2x as much.

Indie developers are usually small teams or solo people working on a pet project, from their own pocket. They’re passionate about what they’re doing and generally don’t produce cynical mass-marketed money-grabs.

Big publishers meanwhile are often the ones who drive the industry into underhanded practices like shitty DRM and day-one DLC. They’re the ones who produce the bland mass-market drivel. They can afford massive advertising campaigns and huge teams of developers to work on their shit.


I’ve heard it can often be more complex than that – one example I heard was that a publisher didn’t pay its developers the royalties from their game until the quarter after its release.

This is what's commonly referred to as an "untruth". Publishers, and developers split profits from games.

Okay, fair enough - but even still, I'm willing to bet that the creators in most circumstances don't see more than 15% of their games profits.

Supposing that was true, how does that make it okay?

Not supporting the publisher should be the responsibility of the artist by choosing another publisher or self publishing or the responsibility of the consumer by refusing to buy the publisher's stock.