Piracy: Common Myths

[chrisrlink]

I haven't heard in the US (So far) of anyone getting hammered by dling stuff off file host like mega,mediafire etc it's only when you use P2P (torrenting) unprotected or via a free vpn I had cox shut me off once i believe it was in 2019 because i torrented botw (wii U)(right in the middle of nintendo's E3 presentation no less so long story short i got reinstated and still pirate via file host no warning letters or shutdowns since

 

[Deleted member 514389]

I'm personally a fan of this:

During a recent investor's call, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata made a fairly surprising observation regarding the piracy that's run somewhat rampant on its two gaming platforms. "I do not think we should attribute bad software sales solely to piracy," Iwata explained.
engadget.com/2010-10-09-iwata-dont-chalk-up-poor-software-sales-to-piracy.html

I used to download everything I wanted. But lately I've been buying the games I've enjoyed

This is me lately too.
Helps a bunch that most new games are super boring and I can't find interest in them.
Weirdly enough I'm only playing a GaaS game (Apex) lately...
Nothing else

 

[Deleted member 446461]

Not sure if I should stay in Venezuela and keep suffering as to not get caught as soon as I set a single foot on Spain or just learn yet another language just to move into a different country.

EDIT: Just read the WIPO link. It's irrelevant, since literally everyone I know pirate stuff, either by buying a CD with the software's name written with a Sharpie marker, or just by outright torrenting. No VPNs, no security, no privacy. Nearly everything here is pirated (not sure if my grandma's Windows 7 is actually pirated -- it seems to be detected as genuine), but everyone I know as far as I'm concerned is a pirate. Even the public state channels grab movies that are supposed to be streaming site-exclusive and AIRS THEM WITHOUT GIVING A SINGLE F̴̵̷̡̼̣̹̟̫̳͍͕̻̳̦̙̪͠ͅU͖̻͍̝͔̜͎̰͚̟̠̗̬͕͟͝C̸҉̵̨͈͖̗͍̦̹̖̦͖̠̣͓͍̟̝͓͍͜K̷̯̦͇̖̹͍͇̞̕.̴̻͚̞͎̟̺̕͜͠



Guess what -- the government is so corrupt that no one cares.

 

[Uiaad]

The thing about piracy is, when you make it easy to buy a game people, people will buy it and piracy will go down. But like things are at the moment with the market fracturing with everybody and their dog wanting their own launcher and storefront, it becomes easier to pirate because it's more convenient too.

I'm not saying Steam was ever perfect, but it worked and people knew there was another sale just around the corner. I remember I would easily drop £100 on Steam during sales and not bat an eyelid. Now half the games I want are on EGS (which I refuse to give a penny to but that is more of a personal thing ) and will usually end up buying them on console.

Now on to the reason, I pirate games ... No one ever seems to put out demos anymore and maybe I have become so jaded over the years, between reviewers who can't afford to get a bad review in fear of upsetting a company and games to fall flat on the hype. So I pirate to see if I would actually play the game and enjoy it. There are very very few series that I would say " yes I'm getting that day one " and companies once they have your money will nickel and dime you at every turn. Once what was something that companies would give you as free, as a thank you for enjoying their products you now pay to get. The prime example here is the Tales of series and you only have to go back to Xillia to see if you have save data from the other tales of games they would give you costumes from the characters of the other games now it's " oh you want your character to look like Milla Maxwell that will be £5 "

There will always be that hardcore element in the world that doesn't want to pay for anything and you will never stop them - You know the ones, the ones that will buy a PS5 in the middle of a shortage and will leave it rotting in its box only popping up on forums to ask if it has been hacked yet and these people, in my opinion, have more money than sense but there is very little you can do to stop them.

Just remember kids, Piracy is a civil matter and not criminal (generally) so next time you pirate Bloggo's Pow it's not a policeman you will be dealing with it's a man in a suit ... probably several men in suits haha (anyone get the Bloggo's pow reference ? or am I on my own ?)

 

[vlvt]

gotta be careful as some countries come down really hard on piracy...even a small download could land you jailtime or a hefty fine

 

[Deleted member 569451]

The root of the problem is moral relativism which states that people can add or remove rights.

There are natural rights for sentient beings such as humans and higher intelligences.
Natural rights are as true as gravity and electromagnetism. It is a law of the universe.
You can observe the effects of natural laws and understand it. Ignore natural laws at your own peril.

Man-made laws pretend that people can add or remove rights from other human beings.
People use copyright laws to steal money from others.

What happens is that big corporations, not artists or individual creators, claim that they have the right to steal money from others through fine. They don't actually have the rights to steal from others by sending cops and beating the shit out of people.

Copyright laws and patent laws don't just enrich big corporations but also pretend big corporations have rights that they don't have.

Mainstream schools don't teach objective morality so that people live under slavery. Objective morality is one of the most occulted secrets.

If corporations want to make money, they should make paying for a downloadable game easier than downloading it for free. That's it. People will pay for the software support.

 

[subcon959]

If corporations want to make money, they should make paying for a downloadable game easier than downloading it for free. That's it. People will pay for the software support.

They don't even want to make downloadable games cheaper than physical versions so that's never happening. They will just phase out physical releases so there's no comparison/alternative left and then they can charge whatever they want. Too many people will happily pay full price for day one rights and others will cave due to FOMO. It's not going to get any better, so piracy isn't going away either.

 

[Gep_Etto]

Mainstream schools don't teach objective morality so that people live under slavery. Objective morality is one of the most occulted secrets.

No such thing as objective morality. All morality is made up by people and therefore subjective. There are no "natural rights" - have you ever seen a fox give up on hunting/eating a chicken because she was nesting her eggs or entered a divinely determined "no fox zone"?

 

[eyeliner]

Piracy is undertaken by peg legged people.

 

[duwen]

The thing about piracy is, when you make it easy to buy a game people, people will buy it and piracy will go down. But like things are at the moment with the market fracturing with everybody and their dog wanting their own launcher and storefront, it becomes easier to pirate because it's more convenient too.

^ This. And it's not just gaming that suffers. Look at the video streaming platforms and how their current implementation is essentially putting a few more nails in the already struggling cinema business.
For example; I was really looking forward to going back to a cinema for the first time in close to two years (due to the pandemic), and had pegged "Dune" as the movie I was going to see... unfortunately, Warner Bros made the dumb decision of not only staggering regional theatrical release dates, but also making it available on streaming platforms ahead of a big chunk of it's theatrical openings. As a consequence I'd already (illegally) seen a lovely 1080p rip of it on my 49" 4k TV a week before it released in cinemas where I am.
I enjoyed it enough that I still intend to see it on the big screen, but when I finally did get the chance to visit the cinema (earlier this week) I instead opted to spend my money on seeing "Last Night in Soho", which hasn't been released on streaming platforms and so hasn't been pirated yet (other than some extremely poor CAM copies that no one in their right mind would watch).

Let's hope that both movies and gaming fair better than the music industry.

 

[TomRiddle]

unfortunately, Warner Bros made the dumb decision of not only staggering regional theatrical release dates, but also making it available on streaming platforms ahead of a big chunk of it's theatrical openings. As a consequence I'd already (illegally) seen a lovely 1080p rip of it on my 49" 4k TV a week before it released in cinemas where I am.

I think the fact that it's convenient for you to pirate a film like Dune highlights just how bad streaming services had gotten.

In a way streaming services are the very thing they swore to destroy, which was killing off the need to use cable/piracy when you could pay for something so convenient, so cheap and easy that it would be more of a hassle to pirate or subcribe to multiple different cable plans just for a few good channels.

But alas Netflix lost it's way a decade later, it's forgotten it's roots and isn't the same "Netflix" that killed the legendary (almost mythical/unheard of on people now, blockbuster).

For we unfortunately no longer live in the early 2010's when subbing to Netflix and Hulu was all you needed to get all of the content, now there are 5+ streaming services that you gotta get to watch most content you would have seen on Netflix just a couple of years ago.

I'd even argue it's getting to the point now that it's cheaper to find a good vpn to torrent everything as opposed to paying multiple services to make the monthly bill be as tolling as cable once was.

and when a good chunk of the user-base subscribed to Netflix only because, (again it was more convenient), will only make them or other people resort back to either pirating or some other ways then streaming.

To quote the overused (but imo correct) saying in these general discussions about internet piracy:

"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates." - Gabe Newell.

If Hollywood wants people to stop pirating and consume media legally then they have to go back on providing a service that is convenient if not better then what *said pirates are offering at a price that's generally acceptable by most consumers.

Because otherwise yelling about how "morally superior" it is and banging the war-drum to be against piracy won't help the industry at all, they've been doing that FOR 20+ GODDAMN YEARS and internet piracy still hasn't gone away and never will go away in the slightest.

and it sure won't convince pirates who will find it incredibly annoying instead.

Maybe this wasn't your specific point or discussion in your last post but I thought that I'd be something to at least point out fully at least as to why people pirate over paying legally in general and in the specific case of steaming vs piracy.

 

[zkcdoctor]

Piracy is wrong, but what I'm curious about is, are there any cases abroad where people have been punished for it?

 

[OilFreak]

Morally: No.
Legally: Still piracy.

 

[gameboy64]

WIth so many anti-consumer decisions lately it's hard not to pirate games...

 

[AncientBoi]

Long may she wave.

 

[JustABadger]

Piracy is wrong, but what I'm curious about is, are there any cases abroad where people have been punished for it?

In Japan people get punished for being the uploaders.

 

[SylverReZ]

In Japan people get punished for being the uploaders.

Well that went into place a few years or so back. It's also illegal to use cheat devices to modify the way the game plays.