Does the hunt on piracy piss off anyone else here?

[Inazuma]

piracy is stealing, by legal definition. why is this so difficult to understand? is it because people want to justify it in some way? just come to terms with it, i download shit all the time and don't feel bad.

and how can you not debate the legality of it? the legality of it is what determines whether or not you get caught and go to jail for it. it is simply illegal. either come to terms with it or don't do it.

Let's compare stealing and piracy for music.

Stealing
Joe takes a music cd off the shelf at Best Buy and walks out of the store without paying for it. Best Buy no longer has that music cd.

Piracy
Joe sits at his computer and downloads music mp3's off the internet. That music cd is still sitting on the shelf at Best Buy.

Did you spot the difference? If not, go back and read again.

You're right, they are different. But in both cases you got a product without paying for it, despite the fact that the owners of the product only intended to let you have it if you paid for it. The information on the disc is the product being sold, not so much the disc itself. The disc is just a means for delivering that information that you are buying.

I agree! I was merely comparing the words "stealing" and "piracy". They are both illegal and in both cases Joe has the music without the copyright holder's permission. I never said otherwise. I just don't like seeing people use the word "stealing" incorrectly.

Someone physically stealing the TV from your house, or using a cloning machine on it, leaving the original, are not the exact same thing. That's all I am trying to say here. Don't pretend that this difference doesn't exist. It's why we have the phrase "copyright infringement". If there was no difference, there would have been no need to create that phrase.

[jp1]

This discussion is always the same.

Hell, I guess if I could do one piece of work and then be paid a million times over for it I would be on the righteous intellectual property train too.

I have a real hard time respecting the whining nonsense of people who make a metric shit ton of money for minimal effort. They should sit back and enjoy the good life and quit bitching about it.

Piracy is stealing.
Piracy is morally wrong.

Still it is just stupid to say that it is justifiable for the government to spend millions/billions of dollars to protect the intellectual property of people who are already making millions/billions of dollars. The amount of money spent to enforce something shouldn't be equivalent to or greater than the amount of loss.

The parking enforcement argument doesn't hold a lot of water in my book either..because I think it is a stupid waste of resources as well. Government money should be spent to protect people from harm and to punish those that cause people harm.

As a side note to all of this as well...if I am paying for the intellectual property and not the physical property then when my disc gets ruined or lost or whatever else might happen it needs to be replaced at manufacturing cost by the publisher. They want to have their cake and eat it too. Is it intellectual property or is it physical property? Make up your damned mind.

[Luke]

Let's compare stealing and piracy for music.

Stealing
Joe takes a music cd off the shelf at Best Buy and walks out of the store without paying for it. Best Buy no longer has that music cd for about a minute. Joe trips off the alarm and after sitting in a small room with a security guard whose shirt is half tucked, half un-tucked, also named Joe. "Thief Joe" is then escorted to the city jail, and after some paperwork and fines, is released. Best Buy recovers their stolen cd. "Security Joe" goes home and discusses his day over a sloppy Joe dinner with his wife and his three boys, named Joe jr, Joe III, and Joe IV.

Piracy
Joe gets in a boat with several of his Somalian cronies. They hi-jack a freighter ship by force that was en-route to deliver thousands of cd's and dvd's to a Best Buy warehouse. That shit won't make it Best Buy. In fact, few of the pirates and crew will actually survive, thanks to "no negotiating with Pirates" policy that so many countries have adopted. Joe does, however, form an unusual bond with a Somalian pirate due to their infatuation with Lady Gaga. They spent night and day discussing how awful it must be for some people to be born with Pokers for Faces. Sadly, neither survived.


Did you spot the difference? If not, go back and read again.

I kinda sorta fixed that, using a few artistic liberties.

[corn619]

It takes money to make a game, companies expect to at least recoup the money spent on making the game with sales. So you are stealing, your stealing the hard work, talents and money of others without paying for it. Anyone who justifies piracy by saying its not stealing lives in a warped reality. I bet if it someone was stealing years of your hard work you would consider it stealing. While publishers make games to make money, developers make games to bring joy and adventure to people and support their family. Just because someones hard work and money isn't put into a physical object doesn't give someone else the right to take it for free.

[Limewater]

If there was no difference, there would have been no need to create that phrase.

THIS.

Saying Piracy is stealing is like saying that theft is stealing. Or that shoplifting is stealing. Or that embezzlement is stealing. Or that knocking over a bank is stealing. Or that robbery is stealing...

Still it is just stupid to say that it is justifiable for the government to spend millions/billions of dollars to protect the intellectual property of people who are already making millions/billions of dollars.

Also THIS.

Every single person hurt by piracy is a multi-millionaire with three mansions and a helicopter. That's why everyone wants to make video games-- every single person involved, from the coders to the executives, to the guys stuffing boxes in a factory is incredibly wealthy.

[Incognito D]

What I dislike most isn't those pirating the software, but others who don't pirate things and take the moral high ground.
It's not uncommon for me to see people calling pirates "scum" and "less than human". What an overreaction. They're just pirating video games, entertainment, things designed for nothing but fun. They're not murdering people.
It's like in school, everyone hated the kids that grassed up the others and sucked up to the teachers. I don't like to see people sucking up to corporations and thinking that they're so morally superior.

[jp1]

Still it is just stupid to say that it is justifiable for the government to spend millions/billions of dollars to protect the intellectual property of people who are already making millions/billions of dollars.

Also THIS.

Every single person hurt by piracy is a multi-millionaire with three mansions and a helicopter. That's why everyone wants to make video games-- every single person involved, from the coders to the executives, to the guys stuffing boxes in a factory is incredibly wealthy.

[sarcasm]
ALSO, they all get a percentage of sales...because that is how it works.


Every single hard working guy stuffing boxes gets a percentage of the sale of a video game. It isn't just that they will keep making $10 an hour and the already rich publishers will continue to raise their own profits...because that's not how the world works.

[/sarcasm]
The ONLY people losing money are the ones that are already making a shitload of it because they get paid many times over for the same work. But, ok I'll feel sorry for them if it will comfort you that it is the right thing to do.

[jp1]

I would also like to add that every individual that is involved in the entertainment industry is a saint and all they want to do is make our lives better through the gift of joy. None of them are concerned with becoming filthy rich and living like hogs because they all do it for the love of the craft and we all know they are splendid and remarkable human beings. To take a dime out of the pocket of any of these individuals should be punishable by death!

EDIT: Sorry, limewater brought out the sarcasm bucket and I got carried away bathing in it. I'm done now.

[Erik_Twice]

Hell, I guess if I could do one piece of work and then be paid a million times over for it I would be on the righteous intellectual property train too.

Go ahead, create something and get paid a million times for it.

Guess what? It's not easy. Being a writer is the best way of being poor.

I have a real hard time respecting the whining nonsense of people who make a metric shit ton of money for minimal effort.

Minimal effort, of course, how is this going to be hard? I mean, why aren't you winning millions again?

they should sit back and enjoy the good life and quit bitching about it.

So they should stop creating then? Or creating things so you can then tell them to "stop bitching about your easy useless overpaid job"? Fuck you.

The amount of money spent to enforce something shouldn't be equivalent to or greater than the amount of loss.

And it isn't. If you think it is, prove it.

The parking enforcement argument doesn't hold a lot of water in my book either..because I think it is a stupid waste of resources as well. Government money should be spent to protect people from harm and to punish those that cause people harm.

Hahaha, and not being able to drive isn't harm?

C'mon you are but a child. Do you have any idea of how the world works? I don't think so.

[Limewater]

[sarcasm]
ALSO, they all get a percentage of sales...because that is how it works.


Every single hard working guy stuffing boxes gets a percentage of the sale of a video game. It isn't just that they will keep making $10 an hour and the already rich publishers will continue to raise their own profits...because that's not how the world works.

[/sarcasm]
The ONLY people losing money are the ones that are already making a shitload of it because they get paid many times over for the same work. But, ok I'll feel sorry for them if it will comfort you that it is the right thing to do.

I'm turning off the sarcasm for a moment.

Piracy hurts software sales. It's not a simple one-for-one deal as software publishers like to claim, but it does hurt sales. Many people wish royalty agreements in the software business don't make an unusually large amount of money, particularly on niche titles or software that, for whatever reason, doesn't sell that many copies.

Lower software sales means less work is available for those on the production lines. Less work available means fewer jobs, which means that people are downsized. So now, instead of making $10 an hour, Joe the Fifth (Hi Luke!) is making $0 an hour. This is true for people (not on royalty plans) all the way up the production chain, including programmers and artists and designers who are not on royalty schemes.

But people complain about software companies getting paid over and over making a piece of software. Is there a better alternative? I mean, if it costs $20 million to develop a video game, would you prefer they make only one copy and try to sell it to someone for $25 million? That's not exactly a model that works.