How do YOU pirate?

[Grimlorn]

I'm the Pirate King, bitch.

 

[Sigourn]

You do know christina is to blame for that, dont you?

Oh, yes. Who can forget the part where she removed the cepo al dólar and everything skyrocketed because "it won't affect prices, at all" (said by someone who is not in the government anymore).

The best team in the last 50 years, they called it.

 

[buru5]

Fuck it, I'm tired of rating buru's posts "retarded", this thread is too much work.

Yeah, maybe try making a proper argument instead?

No, that's a copyright violation. In case of games it's actually special case, because life of a platform and perfect compatibility is MUCH shorter than copyright period. Basically in case of computer, and console, games they are abusing copyright by using it on field where it should have MUCH shorter protection time and less ability to restrict users.

Theft is the misappropriation or taking of anything of value which belongs to another, copyright infringement is exactly that.

You can't have taken something if the 'victim' still has the thing. That's why we have different words for things like copyright infringement or plagiarism. Also, your incredibly shitty definition of theft would include collecting taxes or even accepting payment for selling the video game.

I see you still don't understand what a sale is. That's what you're stealing, by the way. Like has been pointed out a few times, you're stealing that "10%" cut that the developers should be getting from your sale (if you had paid for it, which you didn't, which is theft).

Either way, the cognitive dissonance is too strong with you people. Can't admit any wrong doing although it's inconsequential either way. Pirating a game doesn't make you a terrible person, it's ok, really. Thief.

And, my "incredibly shitty definition of theft" is the common definition of theft, and yes I agree it applies to taxes but that's a different discussion for another time.

 

[Raghar]

I live in the land

Which one?

 

[kris]

I am the worst pirate of them all. I wait for discounts and bundles, stealing often more than 50% of their income. sometimes i also use mods, enjoying their games 200%, but still for less than half the cost.

and i wont apologise for my accursed ways.

 

[Jimmious]

I live in the land

Which one?

DE-BAY

 

[Damned Registrations]

I see you still don't understand that a sale is. That's what you're stealing, by the way.

I'm stealing the sale from where, the future? Was minority report a documentary? You can't prove they would have made a sale. You can't even say it's likely. Hell, you can't even say it's possible- I've pirated so much stuff at this point that if they would have all been sales I'd be bankrupt several times over. There's no way they all lost sales because I couldn't possibly afford all of them.

The only way a company loses a sale is if they get chargebacks on stolen credit cards, and actually reverse a sale that really did happen. It's even worse than simply losing the sale, in fact, because they also get hit with fees from banks and additional fees if they can't make all these reversals in time -which they might not even be able to do if that money got invested in the next project already. Amusingly, it's usually shitheads like you that argue against piracy who are perfectly willing to buy that stolen shit and cause these kinds of problems, because paying an actual thief for the goods is somehow less harmful in your eyes than putting that same amount of money towards the developers.

 

[buru5]

I'm stealing the sale from where, the future? Was minority report a documentary? You can't prove they would have made a sale. You can't even say it's likely.

I was never going to pay for that pack of gum to begin with!

Hell, you can't even say it's possible- I've pirated so much stuff at this point that if they would have all been sales I'd be bankrupt several times over. There's no way they all lost sales because I couldn't possibly afford all of them.

Sounds like a personal problem. You being poor doesn't justify theft.

 

[Lhynn]

Its odd that people feel its wrong to pirate.
Its illegal, yes, theres no question about that, but it isnt wrong.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I was never going to pay for that pack of gum to begin with!

That's my point. You're essentially arguing that a shopkeeper should be able to have you arrested when you leave the store without buying some gum, because you should have bought it, even though he still has all his gum and you never wanted any to begin with.


Pick your analogy, the bait and switch crap isn't convincing. Either the copy of the game is an object, in which case the owner still has his, or it's a sale, in which case I can't have taken it because it wasn't made yet. Either way your argument is hollow.

 

[FritzedProcess]

I used to pirate a lot, but in the last 10 years or so buying games in digital platforms has been so convenient and so cheap if you can wait a couple of months after release that I can't be arsed to look for an ISO + a crack. If I find I can't wait, I go check a "let's play" video in youtube to see if the game's good enough to justify the release price (if the release price is around the 30-20 euros price point I'm a lot less reluctant to buy on release, though).

 

[buru5]

That's my point. You're essentially arguing that a shopkeeper should be able to have you arrested when you leave the store without buying some gum, because you should have bought it, even though he still has all his gum and you never wanted any to begin with.


Pick your analogy, the bait and switch crap isn't convincing. Either the copy of the game is an object, in which case the owner still has his, or it's a sale, in which case I can't have taken it because it wasn't made yet. Either way your argument is hollow.

Bait and switch? My argument has been the same since the beginning. You don't understand the argument if you think that's what I was implying to begin with. If you took a stick a gum without paying for it but think "but I wasn't gunna pay for it to begin with" justifies it, you'd be wrong and it would still be considered theft. You not buying the product and not taking it at all is not theft; that's just simple reaching on your part, and it's absurd. It doesn't matter if you think a download isn't a real product either. Money is a tangible thing and denying a sale by taking the product without paying has a tangible effect on the pocketbook of the creator, even if you're not taking the original. There are only so many people in an install base, you just removed 1 customer from that install base. Like the movie theater analogy I made earlier, sneaking into a showing is considered theft despite you actually taking any real tangible product because you failed to pay for the service.

Violating copyright laws by copying the material in question is still considered theft by law (and by common sense). You are not the creator of the material, legally you have no right to copy it and use it without meeting the creators criteria (paying for it). You're failing to grasp the financial burden of your actions.

If you don't see how NOT PAYING for something that you legally have to pay for is theft then we'll just have to agree to disagree and stop this argument that ultimately comes down to a semantic debate regarding the meaning of the word "theft".

 

[Damned Registrations]

If that were the case preventing sales by giving bad reviews should be theft as well. Companies have no right to their install base, that's retarded. There is no tangible effect, because as mentioned, if there were, I could singlehandedly bankrupt companies by 'stealing' a billion copies of their shit.

Likewise, if preventing a game from being sold constitutes theft, then I ought to get a commission for any sales I cause by recommending a game. Wheres my jewbucks at for telling people how awesome Fromsoft is? I created sales, surely they owe me money! They can't use this flimsy 'they never wanted to pay me to advertise their game' argument after reaping the benefits!

You're inventing a financial burden where there is none. Whether or not I copy and distribute a copy of EU4 to 5 billion people around the world who wouldn't have bought it anyways has no impact on their finances. You're falsely assuming all copies of a game are of equal value, which is not the case.

 

[buru5]

You're inventing a financial burden where there is none. Whether or not I copy and distribute a copy of EU4 to 5 billion people around the world who wouldn't have bought it anyways has no impact on their finances.

You're making an assumption, you can't possibly claim to know that these people wouldn't have bought it otherwise. But whatever you say, man.

 

[Luckmann]

[...] Either the copy of the game is an object, in which case the owner still has his, or it's a sale, in which case I can't have taken it because it wasn't made yet. [...]

This is honestly one of the best one-sentence summaries that gets to the heart of the issue that I've seen. Kudos.

You're inventing a financial burden where there is none. Whether or not I copy and distribute a copy of EU4 to 5 billion people around the world who wouldn't have bought it anyways has no impact on their finances.

You're making an assumption, you can't possibly claim to know that these people wouldn't have bought it otherwise. But whatever you say, man.

No, he's mentioning it as a qualifier, you buffoon. As in he's specifying that it's 5 billion people around the world who wouldn't have bought it anyways. Going by sales figures, this wouldn't even be hard to achieve. The overwhelmingly vast majority of mankind alive today have never and will never buy any one game.

I can mention at least 30 people by name that I could give a copy of a game to, that will most likely never play it, and that would never, ever have bought it anyway.

 

[buru5]

I can mention at least 30 people by name that I could give a copy of a game to, that will most likely never play it, and that would never, ever have bought it anyway.

Sorry, but your limited personal experience doesn't prove a thing.

"5 billion people who would never pay for it anyways" is a baseless hypothetical. Aka, not an argument. Life isn't that simple, you don't get to pick the qualifier when it's not realistic. Anyone you're sending the game to would have the hardware to play it, meaning they're part of the install base, which means your robbing the creator of all those potential sales. This is simple. Take your fedora off for a second and use some critical thinking.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's a much more realistic hypothetical than the hundred-thousand dollars worth of shit I'd have hypothetically bought if torrents didn't exist that you're claiming I've deprived companies of somehow.

If you're arguing I owe all that money, why not go ahead and assume I was going to rob a bank to buy them while you're at it and have me pay for the bank robbery as well? Throw in some armed robbery and murder charges too, maybe killing some cops. All reasobly hypothetical assumptions right? I obviously couldn't live without that Dragon's Dogma soundtrack I pirated. Murder is the only solution. Wait, since the piracy averted that, perhaps we owe the inventor of torrents all the money that those murders would have cost the economy! But wait, we can go deeper!

Your whole argument is baseless hypotheticals about who would potentially buy a game. You're arguing that torrents are costing sales even for games which are no longer for sale, are in foreign languages, or are outright illegal to purchase in some countries, simply because they have the hardware. You're also arguing that people with literally no money, minors who don't have a cent to their name, would have bought tens of thousands of dollars of movies, music, games, etc. Those are your hypotheticals. My only hypothetical is that I know whether or not I'd pay for something myself- which isn't a hypothetical at all because if I was going to buy something, I'd have to know I was going to buy it in order to do so.

 

[pippin]

For me it's a matter of available stuff. If I can get it at a store it's very likely that I'll end up getting it. When there's no options to get a product, not even on amazon or ebay (the last resort for me), then I might consider pirating. I gave up pirating music due to shitty rips and comics because of shitty scans. I'll still pirate out of print stuff though.

When it comes to games it's a bit different. Digital distribution is perfect for games. Getting the box was only completely justified when the goodies were related to the game itself (think Gold Box, Wasteland or Ultima) and not just ugly toys or ugly t shirts. And even then, abandonware sites can set you up for life. There's only a handful of technically demanding games to play right now and everything tells me it's going to be like that for many years.

 

[Luckmann]

Sorry, but your limited personal experience doesn't prove a thing.

I was making an example in order to illustrate the point, but I see now that you're genuinely retarded and thus unable to grasp it even with a roadmap. My apologies.

"5 billion people who would never pay for it anyways" is a baseless hypothetical. Aka, not an argument. Life isn't that simple, you don't get to pick the qualifier when it's not realistic. Anyone you're sending the game to would have the hardware to play it, meaning they're part of the install base, which means your robbing the creator of all those potential sales. This is simple. Take your fedora off for a second and use some critical thinking.

It is not a baseless hypothetical. It was a qualifier. An operative word. As in by definition we were talking about people that were not potential sales. Is any of this getting through to you? Anything at all? It's extremely simple.

 

[buru5]

Well my qualifier is people who are potential sales, and guess what: they decided to pirate the game instead of buy it! That's a lot of money not in the developer's pocket. How do I know this happens? Because I've done it myself! Do I win the argument now? Additionally, here's a stupid-proof diagram showing that piracy hurts media sales, you know the thing I was trying to tell you that it does? The thing that my argument hinged on?

You all should know: anyone who is interested in a game and willing to play it or download it illegally is a potential sale. After all, the only way to purchase digital media if piracy didn't exist would be to PURCHASE it. Oh no, they don't have enough money to buy the game?! Somehow that makes it ok? No. These arguments reek of socialist propaganda. Piracy is theft. You are illegally downloading something you should be paying real money for. Deal with it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Good to know that before piracy I was illegally playing games I didn't own by renting them or borrowing them from friends. Guess I was a dirty socialist even as a 4 year old playing games my older brother had.

Also, linking an effectively unsourced inforgraphic on a blog as proof.

 

[buru5]

Good to know that before piracy I was illegally playing games I didn't own by renting them or borrowing them from friends. Guess I was a dirty socialist even as a 4 year old playing games my older brother had.

Also, linking an effectively unsourced inforgraphic on a blog as proof.

Sources are at the bottom. I'll post em for you since you didn't bother clicking the link.

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-socially-acceptable-110228/
http://www.podcastingnews.com/content/2008/06/average-teens-ipod-has-800-of-pirated-music/
http://www.yalelawtech.org/p2p-law-piracy/envisional-estimates-infringing-use/
http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2010/downloads/study_pdf/2010_BSA_Piracy_Study-Standard.pdf

 

[Damned Registrations]

Oh I saw the 'sources'. You forgot the RIAA I wonder why?

 

[taxalot]

Here is how I pirate.

I got myself a government job, paid by taxpayer money. Once at the office, I spend my days doing nothing all ; talking to coworkers, drinking coffee, surfing some web forums, staring blankly into space. I have many strategies.
At the end of the month, I get my salary and I spend some of it legally on video games.

It's the most elaborate, intricate form of piracy. It's also legal.

 

[buru5]

Oh I saw the 'sources'. You forgot the RIAA I wonder why?

Because I read the sources (which you didn't) and discovered that the RIAA one was missing the content due to it being an old source. You'd know that if you weren't a lying thief. Ridiculing sources instead of critiquing them isn't a valid argument, btw.