Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Right, but you're giving it away to people who would otherwise not have known about it, and people who pirate all their software anyway. You may be giving it away to a small portion of people who browse warez sites and also buy software, but that's a VERY small portion of the visitors to those sites. It's free to do and you really don't lose any potential profit; or maybe some miniscule nonzero value.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
The problem is that piracy works better than normal merchandise.
This is one of the things moozooh has been saying. It works sometimes, but not always.
What I meant is that, in practice, there is a law that people can choose to obey or not, without worrying about a direct consequence to the self.
@FODA:
Well, yes, that's one way to look at the problem. But if punishments were harder, new problems would come up and some problems that are already there would get worse.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Can we make a list of pros and cons of piracy or would that be impossible?
for the author:
Pros
- easier advertising
- it can generate a better profit if it's a very good product
Cons
- it can hurt the profits if it's a mediocre, or bad product
for the end-user:
Pros
- cheap
- can try it out before commiting a big investment
Cons
- you don't usually get the whole product
- no technical support
- no warranties
- you "may" get caught (nah)
I was about to post here but this thread is on the edge of being ignited to a flamewar :P
But yeah, just the other day I got hold of some older games I skipped playing before because it had StarForce copy protection on it. The game was UFO:Aftershock. This is definately the best game in this genre since the original JA and X-Com. So I went and looked up what kinds of reviews it got. ALL the reviews of this game from back then was bashing of how it used StarForce.
Basically, a pretty damned good game got so much negative reviews that it drowned (and apparently bankrupted the developers) and never hit it off.
You can discuss if this game got owned by the fact they used a DRM or if it was just the fear of the DRM. The game itself is nearly perfect.
(And just as I said in the start, I did NOT buy this game when it came out because of StarForce DRM.)
Can we make a list of pros and cons of piracy or would that be impossible?
Your list pretty much nails it — I can't seem to find anything to add to it. From looking at it it seems that it's in the author's interest to make quality products and support them in some way. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Warp, see, the problem is that we won't ever agree on this issue because you're arguing from the standpoint of law defined by somebody else, and I'm arguing from the standpoint of making sense, defined by myself.
That's where you are wrong (which is an euphemism for "you are deliberately distorting what I'm saying").
When I say "you don't have the right to make that decision on behalf of the author" and "it's not your property", I'm talking from a moral point of view. While those are also legal terms, that's a side-issue. In this case law and morality coincide.
As a completely hypothetical example, let's assume that you see your neighbor tending his garden, and you think that he is doing it completely wrongly. His plants will suffer and not grow well if he keeps doing it that way. You can go and tell him that he is doing it wrong. However, you don't have any moral or any other kind of right to go to his garden without his permission when he is not at home and fix what you see is the problem. If your neighbor doesn't want you touching his garden, then you stay out. Going in there is both a moral and a legal crime.
Intellectual property makes no difference. You don't own it, you don't have any rights to it, it's owned by someone else, and you don't have any moral right to do whatever you want with it without the owner's permission, no matter how many excuses you use to explain why what you are doing is actually a "good" thing.
You claim that I speak only from the point of view of the law, and refuse to acknowledge the moral issues related to piracy. I have the feeling that you are doing that as yet another excuse to try to justify your acts. After all, law and morality don't always coincide, so if it's just "the law speaking" then you don't have to worry about it because morally you may be doing the right thing. Which is bullshit.
I buy games because I enjoy the feeling of weight and ownership each copy has. It's like holding a book in your hands instead of seeing it on the screen. Basically if a game is for a console I own, I will always buy the damn thing instead of ripping it.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
As a completely hypothetical example, let's assume that you see your neighbor tending his garden, and you think that he is doing it completely wrongly. His plants will suffer and not grow well if he keeps doing it that way. You can go and tell him that he is doing it wrong. However, you don't have any moral or any other kind of right to go to his garden without his permission when he is not at home and fix what you see is the problem. If your neighbor doesn't want you touching his garden, then you stay out. Going in there is both a moral and a legal crime.
Alright, let's do it your way. Let's discuss morality and deciding for other people.
You walk down the street and see a man beating his child. You are now at a choice, whether to interfere or not. Obviously the man doesn't want your "help", as it's not your child and it would be a moral crime for you to decide for their parent. If you're going to argue that a human being is different from property, whatever, let it be a cute fluffy kitten. Until the police arrives (if it does), there's still quite enough time to beat it senseless, or even worse. Your decision?
Warp wrote:
You claim that I speak only from the point of view of the law, and refuse to acknowledge the moral issues related to piracy. I have the feeling that you are doing that as yet another excuse to try to justify your acts.
I have two great surprises for you. The first is that morality is subjective. The second is that I don't have to justify anything to you of all people.
If you're going to continue condemning me for justifying piracy on a site dedicated to making key input movies of games, many of which are still sold by first-parties (btw, you aren't possibly using ROMs here? That would be a crime, you know!), then I'm going either to ask you to bring this to PM (which I'm not going to read), or take this discussion out of the thread myself and lock it for good.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
This discussion looks like it's becoming split-worthy.
moozooh wrote:
You walk down the street and see a man beating his child. You are now at a choice, whether to interfere or not. Obviously the man doesn't want your "help", as it's not your child and it would be a moral crime for you to decide for their parent. If you're going to argue that a human being is different from property, whatever, let it be a cute fluffy kitten. Until the police arrives (if it does), there's still quite enough time to beat it senseless, or even worse. Your decision?
I'd interfere. Being more sentient than your average garden plant, your hypothetical abused child/fluffy kitten cannot be considered property in the traditional sense of the word.
Also, this article is relevant to the current discussion on piracy:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4194/iphone_piracy_the_inside_story.php
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
You walk down the street and see a man beating his child. You are now at a choice, whether to interfere or not. Obviously the man doesn't want your "help", as it's not your child and it would be a moral crime for you to decide for their parent. If you're going to argue that a human being is different from property, whatever, let it be a cute fluffy kitten. Until the police arrives (if it does), there's still quite enough time to beat it senseless, or even worse. Your decision?
Yeah, because copying someone's intellectual property is completely comparable to stopping someone from beating a child.
Clearly you don't have any rational arguments (not that it surprises me), so I'm going to stop now. Think what you want about it.
I would save the poor plants :( Also many current games I haven't bought because of their DRM as well. That's what you morally do to music labels if you want to protest against them, not pirate the music :P
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
moozooh wrote:
You walk down the street and see a man beating his child. You are now at a choice, whether to interfere or not. Obviously the man doesn't want your "help", as it's not your child and it would be a moral crime for you to decide for their parent. If you're going to argue that a human being is different from property, whatever, let it be a cute fluffy kitten. Until the police arrives (if it does), there's still quite enough time to beat it senseless, or even worse. Your decision?
THE CAST
"You" = the reader
"a man" =Warp
"his child" = common sense
"fluffy kitten" = himself
"police" = alcoholics anonymous
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
