Poll: Do you pirate?

Thread: Pirating

Page 28 of 97 FirstFirst ...
18
26
27
28
29
30
38
78
... LastLast
  1. #541
    Quote Originally Posted by Collegeguy View Post
    How is that picture even remotely funny? People pirate because of commercials? Seriously. Oh man, the junk people come up with.
    It's extremely insulting to have to put up with commercials and anti-piracy ads when you actually payed for the product. I really fucking hate that.

  2. #542
    Deleted
    Really depends on the economical state of the country you live in imo, for example in my country the medium salary is around 300Euros (minimal salary is 150euros) where a game is about 30-60 euros so imagine what a though decision is when it comes to buy or pirate a game you like, even if you would want to buy it, it's really difficult to throw away at least 10-20% out of your salary on a game. Same goes for movies unless you go and see them in cinemas (a ticket is 3euros and for a 3d movie is 5euros so it's a fair price I'd say). Same principle applies to music and software. The only difference are the TV shows, they air on our television years later or never so we pretty much are forced to get them from somewhere else.

    I do afford to buy games and anything else I want but as some people posted earlier, when I feel I'm being robbed because corporations get too greedy , I look for alternatives ways of getting what I want.

  3. #543
    Quote Originally Posted by Arazor View Post
    I had an interesting experience with so called "pirating"

    Ages ago, i bought the Dawn of War anthology, all of the Dawn of war games in one box set, was awesome, i loved it. when i moved, i lost the CD keys for the games, misplaced my game manuals or something, anyway, i decided to buy them all again on steam, the price was pretty good in one of their sales. After installing, i had a problem, only one of the expansions launched, after alot of searching on the internet, it turned out alot of people had the same problem, and steam and THQ were throwing the blame at each other and no one was fixing it.

    So i torrented the whole lot of them. Weeks later, i get an email from some company, (cant remember the name now) i dont know how legit it was, but it seemed like a warning of sorts, they specified the date and time i had downloaded the files and warned me that legal action could be taken against me if i persisted. I just found it rather funny considering i had bought the games TWICE before.

    Would my defence stand in court if it had ever come to that?
    Owning the game gives you license to have archival copies, so long as you have not otherwise transferred your license away, do not sell the archival copies, or do not otherwise give it to somebody else. Only thing questionable is the source, and I have a feeling that would make it illegal.

  4. #544
    Quote Originally Posted by Arazor View Post
    I had an interesting experience with so called "pirating"

    Ages ago, i bought the Dawn of War anthology, all of the Dawn of war games in one box set, was awesome, i loved it. when i moved, i lost the CD keys for the games, misplaced my game manuals or something, anyway, i decided to buy them all again on steam, the price was pretty good in one of their sales. After installing, i had a problem, only one of the expansions launched, after alot of searching on the internet, it turned out alot of people had the same problem, and steam and THQ were throwing the blame at each other and no one was fixing it.

    So i torrented the whole lot of them. Weeks later, i get an email from some company, (cant remember the name now) i dont know how legit it was, but it seemed like a warning of sorts, they specified the date and time i had downloaded the files and warned me that legal action could be taken against me if i persisted. I just found it rather funny considering i had bought the games TWICE before.

    Would my defence stand in court if it had ever come to that?
    Talking only about Sweden here, you have full legal right to download anything that you've at any one time purchased, and that is why some things are still allowed. I regularly do it; I buy physical copies and download them, since I don't want to scratch discs.

    I've not read up on UK laws, so do that for yourself.
     

  5. #545
    The first rule of Usenet is...

  6. #546
    Legendary! Collegeguy's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    Antarctica
    Posts
    6,955
    Quote Originally Posted by darkwarrior42 View Post
    It's funny because the people who buy the product are the ones getting yelled at about piracy and being forced to sit through advertising.

    But hey, if you enjoy paying for advertisements, good for you I suppose. I hate advertising with a passion, but I will endure it on sites like Hulu, or on websites I regularly visit, as I know it's what pays for the content. (I almost never actually watch or listen to said advertisements, but I allow them to play uninterrupted). When I buy a dvd, I find it borderline offensive that they feel the need to advertise at me on a product I purchased.
    Ya, it is such a drag for me too when commercials show up before my movie starts. This is an outrage. Time to stick it to the man.

  7. #547
    Deleted
    I buy everything that's worth buying.

  8. #548
    Deleted
    I only ever pirate games that either have intrusive drm or odd requirements - e.g i'll be buying diablo3 for my home pc but i'll be downloading a pirated copy that has the internet requirement code removed for my laptop as i use that when i dont always have access to the internet. If i was still regularly working away from home and had no day-to-day internet connection i wouldnt be buying it at all. I also returned a game a few years back ( possibly one of the old colin mcrae games but i cant remember) and pirated a copy instead, as after ~20 attempts at installing it the DRM still wouldnt let the game start properly.

    I pirate the odd movie now and then but i havent been the cinema or bought a dvd for myself in years and that wouldnt change if i couldnt download stuff. I buy all the dvd's for the kids as kids movies are normally much more reasonably priced - except for the usual big blockbuster films that decide to charge twice the price of all the other regular dvd's as they now people will buy them anyway.

    I dont pirate or buy music and never have done - there are plenty of radio stations around that cater to almost all tastes and i cant think of anything worse than repeatedly listening to the same stuff no matter how good i thought it was first time i heard it. Besides that if you listen to any radio station that plays new music you'll be bored of almost all the songs way before they are actually available to buy.

  9. #549
    Quote Originally Posted by Caiada View Post
    Maybe we, you, and society have different opinions and you really just hold yours superhigh. I don't. Society doesn't, and the society you live in probably doesn't condone piracy. Don't like it? Change it, because chances are, there's lots of folks who agree with you, somewhere. Find enough, and society changes.
    I am changing the society by not paying for products that are not a) worth the money b) not up to standards of material products that I pay same price for.

    Piracy is a negative workd created by publishers and developers. The society I live in does not consider it to be a major issue for ppl to download music, movies or games of the internet. Cause there are plenty of music, movies and games that I can get there for free 100% legally. The only diffrence with copyrigted content ? The millioners that are intrested in more money.

    Here is a simple fact. PPL will buy it if its good enough. Thats why the gaming companies with great repuation have been able to grow why those releasing shitty and buggy products die.

  10. #550
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by jibbyjackjoe View Post
    So clearly your argument is "if it cannot be stopped, then it must continue"!

    Oh, the youth of the planet!
    Not at all, I'm just asking. Why is every single queston/query/statement by a side on any issue always automatically taken to be an argument in favour of that issue. I want to see to what lengths some of the 'anti-piracy' people go.

    How can they stop people from recording music they hear through tools like stereo mix?

  11. #551
    We all know the majority of pirating isnt these oddly specific examples people are giving. Ones about using a stereo to record from the radio to a cassette. I mean come on? That might happen 0.00005 percent of the time. People are constantly toerrenting and download and uploading movies and music and games. Thats what most of this is about.

  12. #552
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Collegeguy View Post
    Ya, it is such a drag for me too when commercials show up before my movie starts. This is an outrage. Time to stick it to the man.
    Uh dude, its simple.

    You pirate the stuff and its convenient, instant and watchable.

    You get the DVD and you have to sit through crap. Of course it isn't the sole reason people pirate and for many it isn't even a reason at all but it is an obvious example of the pathetic service provided by the content providers that whine so much about piracy. If you want to avoid adverts it remains (at least in some cases) better to pirate than actually buy the product. That you missed the point entirely is astonishing.

    ---------- Post added 2012-02-28 at 12:58 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemonpartyfan View Post
    We all know the majority of pirating isnt these oddly specific examples people are giving. Ones about using a stereo to record from the radio to a cassette. I mean come on? That might happen 0.00005 percent of the time. People are constantly toerrenting and download and uploading movies and music and games. Thats what most of this is about.
    Not really. Suppose pirate-bay goes eventually and with it a load of torrent sites and file-sharing websites.

    What will people be doing? Using stereo mix to grab the songs from youtube, or just leaving a sound recorder on a radio station to get songs. It isn't hard.

  13. #553
    I really only pirate things I can't stream legally. I'm not paying lots of money to import something because the businesses don't want to sell it to me at a reasonable price.

  14. #554
    Quote Originally Posted by jibbyjackjoe View Post
    So clearly your argument is "if it cannot be stopped, then it must continue"!

    Oh, the youth of the planet!
    Yes - thankfully the youth of this planet will take over. And the 1% that owns the 99% will continue to try to get the last 1%.

  15. #555
    I do it, I download almost all my music/movies/some professional books/series and some software (don't really play games other than WoW so I don't download those). Basically, I'd never be able to find more than half of those things in my country and I don't think Amazon delivers anything other than like, books, here, so I don't see another way to get it (short of flying to another country).

  16. #556
    Of course I do get the whole "stealing ist bad" thing and I'm aware pirating means someone's hard work doesn't get paid for. But honestly: it's not my fault. Professions do become obsolete sometimes. You don't see a lot of goldsmiths nowadayas. Record companies, publishers etc. are refusing to realize the paradigm shift that the society and industry have gone through since 1989 and are completely clueless when it comes to adapting their business.

    The times of making shitloads of money out of selling data mediums with licensed content are over. Yes, it's a huge industry with a wide array of occupations attached to it, but it doesn't change a thing about the fact that the era of making big money with CDs etc. is OVER.

    The whole reason for record companies making all the money they made in the last few decades is the fact that the end-customer wasn't aware of how overpriced the product was. It's not 1989 any more. Anyone can afford a CD burner today, everyone knows how cheap a blank CD is. The perception of the particular media and its use has changed very much in the heads of the people.

    It should have been obvious to these companies that they won't be able to charge people (in some places) 20 Euros for a CD forever. Not from a generation who works with blank data media, burning and copying hardware and lightning fast means of transferring data on a daily basis. There's simply no justification.

    In fact, a much cheaper way to produce CDs was already established in the early 90es - without passing the savings on the end customer. They held a self-determined price standard for many years now and earned crazy amounts of money with it. Guess one could say it was fun while it lasted. They're trying everything to criminalize a whole generation of people just because they choose to be in denial of their business model going obsolete.

    You're not going to your local shoemaker's shop anymore to get your kicks patched up. You just buy new ones, because in this time and age, cheap mass production of shoes has established itself, it's affordable, it's the way to go in 2012 and that's too bad for Mr. McKinley, the friendly shoemaker from next door because making shoes is all he knows, but that's the way it goes. Business models become obsolete. Especially ones where there's the irony of companies like Sony pushing for affordable home CD burners and stuff THEMSELVES because they short-sightedly figured they could press even more money out of the customer with it.

    Yeah, I get it, stealing is wrong, but I don't care which law says what - I DO understand a 20 year old who doesn't see why he should pay some 30 bucks for a movie when downloading and burning it on a DVD by yourself at home is such a fast and cheap thing to do. I don't pirate music, games or movies myself, I'm an early 80ies model and I still have some traditional approach to CDs etc. left. But a guy who's growing up with today's technology - I can't really blame him.

    I did pirate some software for studies and work, because the prices are completely absurd and far from any middle class financial reality, and I don't regret it. I'd be nowhere without this stuff. I actually even think it's kind of justice that the whole file sharing and data copying technology thing got out of hand so badly. When a company tries to charge you ridiculous 65 Euros for a game that lasts 8 hours or wants 800 Euros for their generic DAW software, that's just absurd and filthy greed. Suck it.

    The entertainment industry will have to find ways to deal with technological progress that has arrived in your average Joe's household. And criminalizing people won't help because it won't change a thing about the fact that soon, nobody's gonna be bying their stuff anyway.

  17. #557
    Pirating music is a non-issue. Fans buy the songs, go to concerts, etc. there is money to be made by musicians regardless of piracy.

    Pirating movies is a bit trickier. Trailers sell tickets, not movies, and there is hardly any way to know how good a movie is before paying for it.

    Pirating productivity software is a non-issue. Letting people use your professional product at home for free grows the group of users skilled in your product, which can then lead (and usually does) to further enterprise sales. If people are pirating your productivity software a lot, you're probably doing fine, in spite of it sounding weird. How many of us started fiddling with a cracked copy of photoshop when we were young, or 3dmax, or some other ridiculously expensive product, and then went on to be professionals who use those products for a living?

    Pirating games nowadays is a dying thing, perpetrated mostly by those who either can't pay for it or those who do it out of some principle. Sure, the scene is still cracking stuff left and right, but that's just what the scene does. Between "let's play" videos, a boom in youtube gaming punditry, and a more robust user community, the internet - which ironically fed piracy for many years - gave a lot of people all the reasons they needed to stop pirating. You can now see how good or bad a game is in full detail, not just in "PR-approved" marketing bits, by simply browsing the web.

    Not only that, but pirating helped a lot of people find a creative outlet and develop skills that were later used by the industry. From the guy who started remixing mp3's he got from napster, to the one who edited or encoded movies/tv shows/anime series, to the guy who learned all the photoshop filters doing school work or some personal website, to the guy who got into homebrews through pirated roms, etc. Piracy is a wonderful wellspring of creativity that is much needed since neither the industry nor governments do much to gift the younger generations with the tools - and freedom to use those tools - needed to create the driven professionals of tomorrow.

    So, yes, until society changes in some way to make piracy obsolete, piracy is a wonderful thing and should be cherished by most individuals.

  18. #558
    Quote Originally Posted by Collegeguy View Post
    Ya, it is such a drag for me too when commercials show up before my movie starts. This is an outrage. Time to stick it to the man.
    Your arrogant sarcasm is amusing, considering I did "stick it to the man" by just not bothering with movie theaters anymore. Anywhere else, I can ignore the commercials one way or another.

    (And just so we're clear on how much I hate advertising, I try to leave adblock disabled on sites I regularly visit, but sites that have annoying or irritating ads get blocked regardless... which, atm, includes MMO, among a few others. I have 4 companies I've been boycotting for about 10 years because a few commercials they aired that long ago annoyed me.... I can and have held the grudge this long, and have no intentions of stopping any time soon. I don't particularly care what you think about this, but advertising at me will, at best, lead me to scorn and dislike your product. At worst, it'll ensure I never buy it. Ever.)

  19. #559
    On the matter of streaming movies and such, there's also the problem that companies can't (or don't want to) compete. For instance, there are movies and series that can't even be bought anymore - yet watching them online is considered an act of piracy. Well, and how is anyone supposed to watch them, then, if there's no "legal" alternative?

    If the company itself provided a streaming service, allowing you to watch anything you wanted from them for a measly price, why would anyone go through the bother of looking for an online pirate copy, with less quality, slower speed and bandwidth limits? I for one, would make use of the legal service if they provided that option.

    Think iTunes. They are very succesful, and all they are doing is providing legal means for digital download. The model works, internet is not the enemy, but an ally. As soon as companies realize that, piracy will go down. Provided they don't go overboard with the prices, of course, moreso considering all the money they save in terms of distribution. Nobody is going to pay $10 to watch a movie online, but one or two, why not?

  20. #560
    Quote Originally Posted by Zardi View Post
    Think iTunes. They are very succesful, and all they are doing is providing legal means for digital download. The model works, internet is not the enemy, but an ally. As soon as companies realize that, piracy will go down. Provided they don't go overboard with the prices, of course, moreso considering all the money they save in terms of distribution. Nobody is going to pay $10 to watch a movie online, but one or two, why not?
    I don't really know why I'm replying to you specifically but while (if done properly with a little work on the artist's end) they can make ALOT more money by ditching the labels, I just think, they've become accustomed to not having to do a whole lot after they spent time in the studio. It's vacation time until they have to record again. I'm talking about the big, well-known, wealthy artists that have been around forever (i.e. the ones who throw the stink about pirating music) when I say that, not young, upcoming, indie artists. The thing is though, they would rather the label do all the advertising, promotional things instead of doing it themselves, or paying a few people to do it for them. I'm surprised more artists who are in touch with the internet haven't done so already.

    QUICK EDIT: What I mean about the above is that they could go to a pure digital format while still maintaining a presence in stores through advertising or "cards" (think gametime code cards) that allow access to the download service of the "digital" cd. Yes, if that was how the music, movie or game industry went alot of people would be out of work, and bandwidth would go through the roof let alone those who don't know how to turn a computer on wouldn't be a buyer but idk... it's early.

    Actually, I guess what I ultimately meant is that record labels (for those who use computers/don't mind not having physical media) SHOULD sell the "digital" products online at a reduced price since you know, you don't have to pay for all those in the supply chain who get that physical media on the shelves in stores. We can't do that though, because then everything will be DRM'ed out the ass and we'll be right back to pirating anyway.
    Last edited by alturic; 2012-02-28 at 01:35 PM.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •