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Attitudes Towards Piracy

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I've been reading and participating in a thread about the closure of Megaupload on another website - a rather large fan website dedicated to a certain series of PC strategy games. The thread has grown quite long and is full of people making excuses to justify software piracy, or just plain obfuscating the issue. Myself and another participant have labelled software pirates and "selfish and greedy", and stated we believe the usual laundry list of excuses used to justify piracy are nothing more than a smokescreen for the pirate's desire to obtain something for nothing. I'm rather astonished to find not only are my beliefs in a very small minority, I've actually been attacked in the thread for expressing them. Some of the arguments I've read defending piracy or trying to obfuscate the issue are woeful, and I have to wonder how the minds of these people work?

 

Is piracy really so endemic? Do so many people really think it's acceptable to help themselves to the work of others who expect financial remuneration for their efforts? Don't they view their behaviour as parasitic at best and utterly self defeating at worst?

 

I'm at the point now where I will give my grudging respect to those who admit they pirate stuff just because they can, rather than the delusional idiots who think they are on some kind of moral crusade or try to use some kind of ridiculous logical fallacy to justify piracy.

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Hi.

 

Rather than churn out the usual, 'It's perfectly normal to want something for nothing', I'll say instead that if you want to pay for stuff you are abnormal.

 

It has a bit more of an impact that way around, doesn't it?

 

Personally, I agree with Richard Bach's view: if it's worth having, it's worth paying for.

 

I don't pirate and I'm pretty sure I never will, but I don't have any negative feelings for those who do. What they're doing is after all quite natural.

 

Regards,

D

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I think a lot of this has been recently covered in the thread further down the page!

 

The majority of participants in that (myself included) were very clear that though they were not "pro-piracy", they are worried about the way that sites accused of copyright infringement have been unilaterally closed down or censored as a direct result of the lobbying of large corporations without due process or proper legal recourse - something that bodes ill for the freedom of information on the Internet.

 

MegaUpload was shut down by an authority with no jurisdiction in any of the countries from which it operated, in an operation which destroyed an arguably legitimate business and shut out millions of people from access to their (legit) data, causing harmful ripples to many other businesses and individuals - an operation that as it turns out, was possibly executed illegally and now may collapse because of it.

 

The Pirate Bay was censored at the behest of a large corporate entity whose only interests are self-serving, again demonstrating that freedom of expression and content on the web is under threat from those who would seek to control it for their own ends.

 

In any discussion on piracy, one can surely stand for progressive technological change, for freedom of speech on the Internet, for new ways of buying and selling intellectual property and for challenging the backwards attitude of many publishers, labels and content promotors, the outrageously disproportionate fines and punishments for those prosecuted for piracy/copyright offences and the oft-made and erroneous assumption that 1 illegal download = 1 lost sale without being "pro-piracy".

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To add:

 

Kickstarter is a wonderful example of a technological platform which is successfully funding crowd-sourced projects in music, film and games, bypassing the parasitic publishing middle men and demonstrating that people will gladly pay (and pre-pay!) for that which they think is worth their money.

 

It encourages risk-taking and takes cultural influence away from corporations and puts it back into the hands of artists and consumers and ensures that the intellectual property rights stay with those to whom it should rightly belong - the creator.

 

This is the kind of thing we should look to in the future and it is the kind of thing that the record labels, movie studios and games publishers will fight tooth and nail to prevent as it pushes them another step closer to redundancy.

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My concern was the apparently very large majority of people on the other site who at the very least tacitly condone piracy. It was an eye opener for me.

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I don't pirate and I'm pretty sure I never will, but I don't have any negative feelings for those who do. What they're doing is after all quite natural.

 

On that basis you wouldn't have negative feelings for other types of thieves,- say, those who stole money from you - "what they're doing is after all quite natural?"

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Like many things in this world, piracy is not a black and white matter. I certainly do not condone it, but I also believe that the manner in which is dealt with is reactionary rather than responsive and only throws more fuel on the fire. There are undoubtedly pirates out there that would download something just because they can, which I firmly believe to be the case with pirates of flight simulation products; these are the people who I believe deserve our ire. But there are also those who undoubtedly pirate due to conditions created by shattered marketplaces that no longer seem to accept economic realities. It is a sad truth that in their effort to crack down on piracy, some companies have turned to measures that punish legitimate customers excessively while the pirates avoid such measures. This, in my opinion, is not a problem solely created by the pirates; to rest the blame solely on their shoulders is excessive and unjust. It is my hope that the industries impacted by piracy can resolve the problem without further alienating consumers and perhaps ultimately encouraging rather than discouraging piracy.

 

On that basis you wouldn't have negative feelings for other types of thieves,- say, those who stole money from you - "what they're doing is after all quite natural?"

 

I would say that most people's reaction would not be that of Bishop Myriel; however, I again think that you have to ask yourself to what extent it is being done because of the greed of the individual and to what extent it is being done due to problems in the system itself.

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But there are also those who undoubtedly pirate due to conditions created by shattered marketplaces that no longer seem to accept economic realities.

 

This is something I don't agree with. We're not talking about food, shelter or warmth. We're talking about entertainment products. The draconian DRM, overly expensive or greedy publisher excuses are just a smokescreen. If you don't like the DRM, price or business model then that doesn't give one a cart blanche to download a pirated version.

 

Here's the best article I have read on the subject, it's well worth a read:

 

http://www.tweakguid...m/Piracy_1.html

 

Note especially the part about the game "World of Goo". It addresses all the usual grievances:

 

i) It's from a small indie developer.

ii) It has no DRM.

iii) It is priced very cheap.

iv) It has received good reviews online and has a very respectable Metacritic score.

 

Yet despite this the developers reckon it had a piracy rate of 90%.

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We're not talking about food, shelter or warmth. We're talking about entertainment products.

 

Their status as being necessities or not does not change the way the market functions. Those who steal for these reasons undoubtedly deserve more sympathy, but that's quite another issue.

 

The draconian DRM, overly expensive or greedy publisher excuses are just a smokescreen.

 

I think it would be great to know to such a degree the precise motivations of everyone who pirates; however, I do not believe this to be the case as we cannot read minds. For some it is undoubtedly a smokescreen and excuse, for others it likely isn't.

 

If you don't like the DRM, price or business model then that doesn't give one a cart blanche to download a pirated version.

 

Nor did I claim in my post that it does, or that their motives justify piracy; merely that the actions that large firms have taken have contributed in their own ways to piracy. In the absence of such contributions, all pirates of a particular product would fall squarely into the former camp as I discussed in my previous post.

 

 

I will take a look.

 

Note especially the part about the game "World of Goo". It addresses all the usual grievances:

 

i) It's from a small indie developer.

ii) It has no DRM.

iii) It is priced very cheap.

iv) It has received good reviews online and has a very respectable Metacritic score.

 

Yet despite this the developers reckon it had a piracy rate of 90%.

 

I've already addressed this scenario in my previous post in the sentence directly preceding the one you quoted, so I won't address it again here except to say again that these are the pirates who do not deserve the benefit of the doubt when they steal from indie developers.

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Flight 1seem to have the right idea. 30day money back guarantee so you know you won't get a dud, and you rarely hear about there stuff being "cracked".

 

 

 

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Yaaarrr, I be fed up to the gunwhales wi' bilge-sucking pirates me hearties. Shiver me timbers if their pillaging ways don't be costing me more in doubloons and pieces of eight to get me paws on the finest FSX fare. 'Tis the cat o nine tails they deserve, a taste o' me cutlass, or a trip to Davy Jones' Locker. Savvy?

 

Al


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

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Pirates are kind of like hoarders. They download and download and download hoarding up a massive library. Truth is they are not even using the majority of their library just hoarding it.

 

That Kim Dotcom guy is still in my country and I think that trial is going to go on for years.


Matthew Kane

 

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What i found funny is the fact that you have to watch 7 minutes about anti-piracy when you buy a legit DVD.

 

PS : If you find a way to get free Airsimmer product, please do so. Ex ET member speaking

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What i found funny is the fact that you have to watch 7 minutes about anti-piracy when you buy a legit DVD.

 

PS : If you find a way to get free Airsimmer product, please do so. Ex ET member speaking

 

You are looking to get a ban...


Rob Prest

 

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You are looking to get a ban...

 

No, absolutely not.

 

Just saying that Airsimmer is worst than piracy, they took money from people that love the A320 project, and then didn't care about them. No news, updates, etc... as of today nothing...

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