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.

I'm only asking you to say why it's bad. Because I say that it's not a rule.

Ironically, Varrok isn't voicing any opinions or arguments in support of piracy, he's just complaining about how the opposing views aren't good enough.

If you like something enough to read/watch/play it, you should be prepared to pay for it. Otherwise, that stuff doesn't get made. Yeah, I do believe buying a game anulls your earlier piracy; there's no difference in profit on the devs' end, just one player:one purchase. But that point could only consistently defend piracy in a world where everyone bought the things they pirated. And if that were the case, people wouldn't pirate things in the first place.

I've stated my position plenty of times, and in 99% of cases it's simple:

Everyone does shitty things out of convenience. You dodge a friend you don't feel like talking to. You eat the flesh of murdered animals. You pirate something you could easily afford. No-one will judge you for doing these things, as long as you're honest with yourself, and others, about what you're doing.

Varrok, you're stealing stuff because you don't like paying for it. Nobody cares about that. Just don't try and spin petty theft as a morally justified act, because it's not, and it never will be.

That's entirely moot. Owning a copy of the game - taking receipt of that product, digital or not - is theft if you didn't pay the amount pre-agreed.

"Diminishing stock" was never a concern in theft, even when digital distribution didn't exist; it's just a fake issue pirates throw out to try and justify their actions. You can have as many copies as you want, as long as you pay for them.

I did before, you should read my earlier posts.

It's not a fake issue. That's a real deal considering the nature of digital files, and calling it a "fake issue" sounds pretty ignorant, and hits not only in thieves, and also people who buy a file and make some copies for yourself (Regarding polish law, you can't have more than one backup of game/music you bought, it's forbidden. At least they're not executing this law at all.)

Digital stocks are not diminished if you pirate a game.
Digital stocks are not diminished if you buy a game.
Digital stocks have no bearing on this discussion.

Im a fan of this discussion.
+1

By the way, I was not the one who mentioned any kind of stocks to begin with.

Regarding Phylum's bookstore example

I have no idea how bookstores around the world work but down here a lot of them have areas specifically to sit down an read in the store itself and they encourage reading before buying. My mom has spent entire days in bookstores just reading and has even completed novels in bookstores, and she usually ends up purchasing a few she enjoyed on the way out.

Comic book stores are generally the same and most stores that sell music will have areas you can listen to the albums they have in stock on

Therefore this example is lost on me

holy shit this is the most gamefaqs.txt thing ever

Piracy ? It's the don't ask, don't tell policy.

But you've just asked!

I'm not gonna pirate this because I suck

Not paying for something and acquiring it through means that don't benefit those that created it=Stealing.

The 'IT'S NOT STEALING IT'S MAKING A COPY' argument is fucking stupid.

I'll buy it. Eventually.

I keep hoping for a PS3 release but maybe I just need to get with the times.

So if somebody bought a game, and the disc got damaged, so he downloaded it illegally, he stole?

I think that's technically still just stealing, yeah. Bit of a grey area but I'm sure it's still stealing in the eyes of the law.

In the eyes of law, yes. Law is imperfect. I meant morally. I hate that some of you generalize piracy to just stealing. Of course what Mac said is right (the first part), but pirating something does not necessarily mean somebody didn't pay for it or doesn't intend to pay for it. I remember an article of two saying that pirates tend to buy more music than people who never pirate. I don't know the credibility of that study, but there are definitely people who are morally correct and willing to support the artists/creators they like, and it's hurtful and unjust to put them in the same bag with douches who simply choose not to pay for something they can pay for.

What I mean is I couldn't honestly call a person in the previous-post-example a thief.

But why would you pirate something you will only buy anyway? You can never know 100% that you will want to buy something you pirate, hence my Cube World story.

Our world is based on a system of monetary transactions. People do things, and they get money for it. That money comes from people playing for a product or service. If you take something without paying for it then that subverts the system, and is bad. I don't think we should have any problems agreeing on that. It doesn't matter how much you say that you couldsee above buy the game later, taking something that is not yours is bad.

If you buy a game and it's broken, then you can ask for a refund. Some stores even offer returns/switches/trade-ins within a certain time. Maybe this isn't possible where you live, or maybe you just don't have faith in those systems and want to play the games yourself before you commit to buying them. That's logical. That's probably even reasonable. On my scale of "how bad is this" out of ten it probably only reaches 0.01, if that.

It's also worth mentioning that, no matter how much you say it encourages people to buy the game, somebody is putting someone else's work up to the world in a way the creator(s) never intended. This is much much worse than downloading the game will ever be. A lot of my feelings about piracy come from this end - that people shouldn't make the work of others unofficially accessible. The decision to put your work up for free should only be the decision of the person(s) who actually made it. I don't even care about the monetary side of it, it's about whoever did the work getting to control distribution.

Perhaps the issue here is that everyone is arguing from a slightly different perspective of piracy. Let’s consider the following:

• Piracy is the act of acquiring a copy of a digital good without legally purchasing it. No money changes hands and the creator is not reimbursed for pirated media.
• Piracy is, in most countries, against the law.

Now here are some of the possibilities of the outcomes of an act of piracy:

• The act of pirating a piece of media neither guarantees nor precludes the possibility of the person pirating the media from later purchasing a legitimate copy of the media.
• It is entirely possible to pirate a piece of media, consume or part-consume that media, and then never purchase a legitimate copy.
• It is also entirely possible to pirate a piece of media, consume or part-consume that media, and then proceed to purchase a legitimate copy, reimbursing the creator in the process.
• It is also possible to pirate a piece of media, consume or part-consume that media, and then proceed to purchase other media created by the creator.

Finally, it is basically impossible to source accurate statistics proving that any of these possibilities are more commonly-occuring than the other.

Now people can use all kind of reasoning to justify piracy – they use it in lieu of a demo, as a try-before-you-buy; they can’t afford to buy it right now but they will when they can; they want to experience media but don’t want to support the creator/s for ethical reasons; or they’re just plain selfish or ignorant. These are all arguments we’ve seen before at some point or another. I don’t think most of them hold water – they’re excuses to try to justify having your cake and eating it too. The traditional model is that you either pay for the media or you don’t get to experience it, but some want it both ways.

I also think there are legitimate problems with the digital market that needs to be addressed. A complaint I see every now and again is that purchased games can have DRM which damages the experience, which a pirated version will have stripped out, thus making the pirated version a better experience – this would be frustrating for anyone. You can be sold a buggy or broken game and have to wade through shit to get a refund.

The fact remains that piracy is, technically speaking, illegal, and there are no guarantees that those who pirate will reimburse creators. While people who do that definitely exist the fact is that having a free source of media is awfully tempting for a lot of people. Digital media has made it hella easy for people to get free stuff, and plenty of people will take advantage.


In my eyes, piracy is technically illegal, and for the most part is not easily justifiable. There are some cases where it can be excused or understood, but for the most part I think it’s a result of laziness, greed or not wanting to part with cash unless it’s a “safe bet”. The best solution is for:

• creators and marketplace vendors to reduce the factors that can lead to piracy with affordable prices, simple purchasing/download/install process, frictionless DRM (or none at all), stringent bug-testing (and easier refunds for broken games), offering demos wherever possible, combined with honest reviews and accessible media coverage are all solutions.
• buyers to realize that for media to get made it needs to be funded, and that comes from spending their money smartly on media they want to support at marketplaces that are buyer-friendly. They can figure this out through the vast amounts of professional critics, amateur reviews, Youtube videos/Let’s Plays, social media chatter etc.

I think Manco pretty much nailed the solutions, with the second set being the most important, as it's treating the source of human depravity instead of the symptoms. I differ slightly in terms of piracy justifications, as I know the situation from the other side of the coin, and there's much, much more to it than just the reasons mentioned by him. Also, I don't consider "not wanting to part with cash unless it’s a “safe bet”" a bad thing. It's nothing bad, a perfectly sane behavior.

Also, fuck DRM. And fuck EA. (There's a strong connection in my brain between those two to the point that it's hard to address one without the other)

What about my point about the people who upload the games in the first place, though?